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15 comments on Public transport: making the right mobility choices
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You have badly misused the analysis !!
How many km does the average pax travel ?
If the average trip distance is 10 km, average pax density is 9.9 tennysons.
Still, I see the best role of buses to be feeders for Urban Rail.
Alan
Hi, Alan.
I'm sorry, can you say more about how I've misused the analysis? I don't understand what you are pointing out.
Best,
Andre'
Alan
I don't know that I am 42.7 million boardings and the total service Km 42.9 [million k] which equates to .99 passengers per bus km. is a direct quote and it doesn't actually make sense either he meant 42.7 million pax km or 0.99 boardings per bus k, I think it is 42.7 million pax km.
Andre, I say 5+ pax per bus k because that is approx the ratio of fuel consumption of a 1.2 litre car to a bus (factoring in an average car load of 1.2).
My main point is that buses do not improve FF useage performance and public bodies are mis-representing that they do, they need to make harder decisions to improve the non FF functioning of cities, ie increase walkability via increasing density (Auckland is a large low density city) or a fixed guideway electrified automated system (ie monorail GRT), the short term bus fix is a fraud in this case.
Public transport planners are faced with a social responsibility (I accept this) but I don't accept it when they pass this off as a clean green solution as part of their marketing when in fact it isn't.
Alan, your point about "average trip distance" is also relevent in the fact that the longer the average trip distance is the "more efficient" PT is, the corollary is that the longer distance travelled still consumes more energy.
Neven
which equates to .99 passengers per bus km
Quite wrong.
I can board a bus a streetcar or bus and have it take me three blocks to the next stop. If there is one boarding/km and the average trip distance is 500 m, then the average # of riders/bus would be 0.5.
Conversely if 1,000 people boarded a train at the start of a 1,000 km journey and all disembarked upon arrival, there would be 1 boarding/km, but the train would hold 1,000 people for the entire trip.
If the average trip distance was 10 km (not unusual for spread out cities), this implies an average of 9.9 passengers on board the bus.
Without knowledge of average trip length, the # of boardings per bus km has relatively little meaning for transit planning. (It has some meaning but care should be applied in using it).
Alan
the longer distance travelled still consumes more energy
Not so. The impact of the weight of the passengers is trivial. Energy consumption is a function of how many km the buses traveled (and how fuel efficient the buses were, smaller usually more efficient than larger).
Alan