On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 15:50:32 -0000, "iantheengineer"
wrote:

It is known that the bus service always seems to operate on no buses for
ages then a fleet come along at once and this is due to the fact that people
alighting on the first bus delay it so that the headway between it and the
following bus reduces, and so on until the first bus is full and perhaps
skips a few stops, and then the second bus will take over until the first
bus is able to stop again. But if the system were saturated the first bus
would load up and set off then the second would load up and set off and so
on, and the headways would remain overall similar with smaller variation.

It's much more boarding (and ticket sales) rather than alighting that
causes this problem; if off-bus ticketing were the norm (outside
London), and all buses larger than van-derived minibuses were fitted
with two sets of doors, this would be significantly reduced.

Neil

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