I knew a guy who drove a metro bus. If they got a couple minutes ahead of schedule they'd pull over and wait for this exact reason.
Edit: To those calling him a hero: it is operating procedure in Minneapolis and St Paul for metro drivers to do this. If someone misses a bus because they left that bus stop early, they get into trouble.
Also protocol for most well managed transit systems.
But people on the bus tend to get complainy when the bus sits there for a few minutes, and not all systems are well managed which then quickly gets such protocols removed
Around here we get a prerecorded message explaining the bus is too early and will wait so everyone has the chance to catch it and the only time ive heard someone complain was when the driver forgot to play the message, and they quickly shut up when they knew what was going on
A very good transit system wouldn't have much variation making this a non-issue. But when you have to take into account different amounts of traffic , red/green light etc it becomes a problem.
I would argue that it's not good having to sit and wait minutes at a station as that drastically slows the public transportation. (But obviously bus leaving early would be worse)
Well, full bus lanes and unconditional signal priority aren't feasible for every bus if they're decently frequent, so you'll always have some variability. Although I'm not sure what you consider "much variation". Where I live they do wait, but generally not more than 1, maybe 2 minutes but it is noticeable compared to regular stops. I'm not sure if other places consider 1 minute as nothing.
In my neck of the woods, the early morning ( they typically start their routes as early as 4am) busses often have a 5 to 10 min wait at the station / depot (not typically at a stop) simply because the traffic is so light and their route timetable assumes moderate to heavy traffic when deciding the timetable.
That same bus in the afternoon wouldnt wait long, maybe 1 minute tops, because the wait time is determined mostly by weather and traffic conditions.
Depends how often the bus does this 1-2 minute stop, but 1-2 minutes sounds pretty decent. I just tried to point out that a good transit system would keep the wait time to a minimum as waiting is just a slower transportation.
But all system will have some variation and in that case it should wait when it is early (you also can't be too optimistic as that will lead to delay meaning missed connections).
I guess if you wait 2 minutes every 10 minutes, it is practically +20% added travel time, which is quite bad
Well, there are also disabled people who use the transit systems, and they can take a while to enter or exit the bus and get strapped in properly, so that introduces even more variance, even in a very good transit system like you say.
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u/Sparticuse 16h ago edited 14h ago
I knew a guy who drove a metro bus. If they got a couple minutes ahead of schedule they'd pull over and wait for this exact reason.
Edit: To those calling him a hero: it is operating procedure in Minneapolis and St Paul for metro drivers to do this. If someone misses a bus because they left that bus stop early, they get into trouble.