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2. Find your Alderperson by entering your address [here](https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/iframe/lookup_ward_and_alderman.html). Email their office or meet in person to share your experience. Many offer a weekly "ward night" for constituents. This usually is one on one.
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Former bus driver here (not CTA)- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- there are ways to mitigate/reduce this, but the CTA just doesn’t give a fuck.
That’s why. The CTA does not care enough about poor service to solve this problem. I blame the top- Dorval Carter.
Super curious on the ways to mitigate it, care to share?
I see drivers try to tell people "there's a bus right behind me" or whatever and people don't listen (and sometimes the immediate follower is more full). Limiting loading time at stops sucks for a bunch of reasons. Alternating stops during rush hour is interesting, though.
There are small operational things they can do like expressing buses when they get too far off schedule. We should also be enforcing getting on at the front and off at the back so there isn't the weird shuffle as people try to move around each other.
Medium term we should be enabling all-door boarding by having Ventra readers at the back door, too.
Longer term, there should be stop consolidation as well—too many stops like we have makes reliable scheduling harder because you might stop 8 times per mile or you might skip a bunch, whereas fewer stops means you're basically guaranteed to make a stop each time. Ideally we should cut half the stops so all routes have 1/4 mile spacing.
I love when busses go express, but I rarely see it. I wonder what's involved it that decision. Clearly supervisors/whoever have some authority or guidance on when a bus should go express, since they already do (however rarely).
I would think that rider flow-of-traffic enforcement and all-door boarding run contrary. I would love to see true enforcement of that, but I understand it's just another thing drivers have to do when already dealing with shitty riders and drivers and stuff. Didn't we hear about how they were going to start doing all-door boarding some years ago? I wonder what happened with that.
I dunno how I feel about stop consolidation though! Part of what I love about the bus system is the penetration it has. There are a lot of positives to it and I imagine there's a lot of consideration that would need to go into thinning the density of stops.
Also, if they know there are 8 stops per mile, wouldn't that be factored into the schedule? I guess I always assumed they already factored a lot of that in, and this was why a hot bus will stop at its stops even when no one needs to get on/off.
> I dunno how I feel about stop consolidation though!
Almost everywhere on the planet buses stop every ~1/4 mile, Chicago is a clear outlier in our extreme density of stops and it's a major cause of [how slow our buses are](https://ggwash.org/view/5189/bus-stop-density-correlates-with-speed) compared to other places. Going from 8 stops per mile to 4 would boost average speed from ~7 miles per hour to ~14, which makes the bus way more viable for more trips. Milwaukee to Halsted down Fullerton could be 14 minutes instead of 27, the 79 from the Red line to Cottage Grove could be 7 mins instead of 15, etc. They already consolidated stops on routes like Ashland and Western and those routes see higher scheduled speeds than nonconsolidated routes.
It's also important to remember that not all stops are equal, and a majority of riders will use a minority of the stations. Starting by removing the lowest-used stations is low-hanging fruit, especially like on the Foster bus where there are 3 stops in 600 feet.
> if they know there are 8 stops per mile, wouldn't that be factored into the schedule?
Remember that buses don't stop if there's no stop requested/nobody waiting to get on. So if we figure there's a 20 second penalty for stopping (slowing down, doors opening, people getting off, boarding, getting going again), it's hard to stay on schedule when there are so many opportunities for getting off schedule. If they schedule for half the stops having this 20 second penalty but they end up stopping at all of them, the delays compound—or vice versa.
Interesting that you say Chicago is an outlier with its density! I think I actually like that. But I suppose I'd have to experience the alternative to tell if I really think it makes a difference. I've only been in areas with fairly limited penetration, so Chicago's density is lovely to me.
From your link:
>Buses that use grade-separated routes, like the 5A and other freeway buses, tend to have both fewer stops per mile and higher travel speeds, while buses in dense urban areas, like the 90s, tend to have more bus stops and travel slower.
Seems a bit obvious, and this graph is tracking speed of buses not delays or length of a given trip. I am not sure that getting riders from point A to point B *quickly* is necessarily the primary or even a top objective for CTA, and as a rider, there are other things I would prioritize over speed (which is why I choose to take a cab sometimes, right?). I think more express lines would be great, like Western and the 49/X49.
But it does make sense that the # of stops increases the likelihood of getting behind schedule, which is the issue. I wonder if there is a way to make a system which isn't based on a schedule exactly, but based on consistency. CTA plans these big bus schedules, presumably doing some amount of research (like rider loading time, skipped stops, traffic), and they must be awful to update and roll out.
What if we had a system that was more based on trying to maintain an even [6/8/15/whatever] minute headway, instead of sticking to a specific time schedule? I'll have to think on it some.
If only the trackers could consistently tell you you're looking at a 30 minute wait! If it actually told me that, I'd be walking or finding a new way to get where I'm going. But often it will just say "5 minutes away" for a very long time until you realize you've been waiting there long enough that you should have just started walking 20 minutes ago.
And if you can't walk for whatever reason? SOL.
The false tracking is more annoying than the bus bunching itself.
At this point there's no other explanation other than purposeful obfuscation. They're just lying to everybody.
What do you think it would be, if not traffic?
If you think through it, it seems like a somewhat complex issue to solve (without BRT or w/e), yet not that hard to understand. If you have a line with 8 minute headways during rush hour, and one bus gets held up at a stop, say with rowdy riders or some issue with a door or something, let's say they get stuck at one stop for 5 minutes, now the next bus would be 3 minutes behind it. Then there's traffic, maybe someone is blocking an intersection, so the following bus gets even closer. Do that a few times until now you have two buses in a row. They leapfrog when they can, but people have to get out at most stops.
Now let's say those buses get stuck in more rush hour traffic, and the bus following them, which should have been 8 minutes behind, gets closer and closer.
People in the stops these busses haven't gotten to yet have been waiting and waiting, they're frustrated. Most of them pile into the first bus that arrives, some wait for the 2nd because there's more room. By the time the third bus (right behind) gets to the stop, everyone has already been loaded on the first two.
The third bus can't exactly skip over the ones ahead of it because they're trying to meet specific stop times on the schedule. Same as when a bus is going too far ahead in its route ("hot") and drives really slowly or waits at a stop. A big no-no is to be too early, because think about it, how pissed would you be if you arrived at your stop "on time" and someone told you the bus had come 2 minutes earlier? (Super annoying when the schedule has 20 minute headways.)
Most bus routes have 20+ minute headways even at rush hour, so explain how 3 buses end up bunched up on those routes? That’s a whole lot of excuses for something that happens every day on countless different routes.
Personally, I'm not sure I've ever seen a bus bunch on a route running with 20 minute headways. Maybe a double or something, but not 3 or more buses. Not that I doubt you.
I’m checking the schedules now and the bus routes I was thinking of don’t actually have 20 minute headways according to the schedule, but I probably thought that they did because I always have to wait 20-30 minutes for a bus and almost always make it to my destination on foot before the bus ever shows up. I have waited 40-50 minutes without any bus showing up for the #4, #95, #146, #87, #22, #35 multiple times for each route.
Yeah that makes sense. My guess would be that when you had to wait 20-30 minutes (or more) for a bus, it's that there were buses removed from the schedule that day or a surprise detour that they didn't communicate.
The worst part about this is that if the tracking were actually accurate and communication was abundant, then riders can make informed decisions about whether to wait for a bus or find a new route. CTA definitely needs to solve ghost/surprise buses and communicate detours.
I once waited like almost an hour for a 66, at an area where you can't see far back down the line to visibly confirm if a bus is coming. Apparently the 66 had been rerouted around the stop I was at for some reason (can't remember if it was an accident or protests or what), but didn't communicate it anywhere. Ridiculous.
idk if i believe you on the 22 one… that and 36 are my mains and I feel like they have really good timing MOST of the time. Weekends and later at night I’ve seen about 30 mins but don’t think I’ve ever waited longer than 30 mins for a 22. unless you are so far north on clark the 36 isn’t plausible, the timing is normally 10 mins max. I will say I’ve seen alot of bunching with the 22s and 36s; sometimes even 3 or 4 in a row.
Many factors can play a role like drivers arriving late to work or not showing up at all, traffic due to rush hour or construction, events, maybe the driver took their break and took longer than expected.
The effects of bus bunching are more prominent when you run less service. What we’re seeing is the impacts of less service on top of everything that causes bus bunching like traffic.
So less buses = more bus bunches? That makes no sense at all. With 20 minute gaps in service that means that the first bus in a bunch of 3 was delayed by 60 minutes due to traffic or whatever reason. How is that more likely than on a bus route with 7 minute headways? It would make more sense with shorter wait times.
When busses are late, the first bus will pickup more than usual the amount of riders, since more people are waiting. The next bus now picks up less people. The leading bus running late tends to get later and later as it completes its run, as it is picking up not only its normal passengers, but those who would have taken the next bus, while the bus following it tends to get earlier and earlier because it is spending less time at stops since its normal passengers are on the lead bus. There is a Wikipedia article on this phenomena: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching
I’m talking about the bus bunching that OP is describing which is little to no buses up to an hour and then 3 at the same time for example. With more frequent service there will still be bus bunching but the wait would be less. This is a guess but less bus runs + delays in getting operators out to run service and/or congestion are going to make bus bunching feel like the problem when in reality it’s a lack of frequent service. If the wait is not the problem, but the fact that 2 buses are right next to each other - then you have to invest in bus priority infrastructure like bus lanes, transit signal priority, queue jumps, etc that will make sure buses don’t get stuck behind traffic.
I can't really explain why it happens every day besides the factors pointed out. It's obviously gotten worse with the pandemic, and although it rarely happens on my bus route to and from work, it has happened, and one time, the bus driver was asked why he was late and all he did was shrugged lol
I've been on busses that waited at certain stops waiting for a bus to pass them or they were too early so they had to wait until their scheduled time came up.
Someone (who knows a CTA bus driver) told me since COVID, calling in sick day of has gotten a lot easier, and bus drivers are continuing to do that. So when a driver calls in sick day of, everything can be off schedule since they have to find another driver or they just don’t get a driver.
2006-2010 I used to try to take the Lincoln bus home from school. If the bus wasn’t there, I’d start walking. I usually made the 2 miles before a bus would catch me. I remember taking the bus like 3 times all of high school.
In Miami the drivers would either leap frog stops or just wait an extended time period before taking off again. I don’t understand why they don’t just do that here or maybe it has to be coordinated by a dispatcher or something. They also have on the road supervision in Miami.
Yes it is all over the city. The 76 is not functional at certain times of the day. The city is becoming dysfunctional all around with morons being placed in positions of power for the wrong reasons
Both, passengers and other cars share a lot of the blame for this.
Passengers need to learn a one way flow of movement from front door to back door in order to keep buses moving. Even one or two passengers exiting through the front door while others are waiting to get can slow down buses.
Crap drivers who don't the give the right of way to buses need to be ticketed. There's should be an enforceable no passing through the left on buses.
There can be several factors. Traffic, people who are slower to board. A bus driver can get in trouble for accelerating too hard, so sometimes they’ll let a light go red and proceed when it’s green.
The bus system in Chicago is and always has been trash. Only the relatively few express busses are even half decent. I will continue avoiding venturing off of the red line until the day I die.
On most bus lines? Sounds sus.
All lines are at the whims of traffic, no? ime, bus bunches can & will happen to any given line, and some are more prone to it.
But it happens EVERY DAY, multiple times a day all across the city. With 20+ minute headways on most bus routes it makes no sense that we see 3-4 buses bunched up on a daily basis. It feels like purposeful negligence from the bus operators and managers.
Purposeful negligence?? Drivers absolutely hate bus bunches. Everyone does.
Yes, multiple times a day all across the city because the city has a lot of traffic, a lot of people, a lot of busses, and a lot of routes.
It is frustrating for sure, but this isn't a problem unique to Chicago. There's even [a wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching) on it. There are articles about it on public transit authorities around the world. [Curious City did a podcast about it too](https://www.wbez.org/curious-city/2014/10/15/why-buses-arrive-in-bunches).
I don't think anything would "solve" it besides fully implemented BRT with bus-only routes.
Yes, purposeful negligence. Former and current CTA bus operators have outed management at the bus garages for purposely bunching buses so that they can leap frog each other and make less stops overall. I understand that traffic happens, but it doesn’t explain why I’ve seen 4 buses bunched up on routes that have 20-30 minute headways. That means the first bus was delayed for 80-120 minutes? Every day? On routes all over the city? Fuck outta here
> Former and current CTA bus operators have outed management at the bus garages for purposely bunching buses so that they can leap frog each other and make less stops overall.
Oh this is super interesting, care to provide the source? I wonder what the thought process is, because leap frogging doesn't make sense in a lot of cases since people need to get off at a given stop. Elderly and those with limited access/mobility especially.
I once saw a 6 bus bunch on the 66! I used to have photos of it. Those weren't 20 minute headways though, I think it was 6 or 8 minute headways.
And the first bus being delayed wouldn't necessarily delay all buses behind it. I think the goal drivers have is to stick to their schedule, so they should be able to bypass a bus as long as no stops are needed there? Sometimes buses will go "Express", which I like, but I've only ever seen it happen a couple times.
I imagine that having to "jump the line" (I think that's what they call it) when a bus breaks down will mess with things too. But I think overall there's just a ton of factors that go into bus bunching, it's a very squishy topic, and there's no single fix. A imagine a whole bunch of little changes would be needed.
Everyone needs to vent sometimes. Here's a few resources to help you with the next steps: 1. Contact the CTA directly via their [feedback page](https://www.transitchicago.com/feedback/). Copy/Paste your post to save time. 2. Find your Alderperson by entering your address [here](https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/iframe/lookup_ward_and_alderman.html). Email their office or meet in person to share your experience. Many offer a weekly "ward night" for constituents. This usually is one on one. 3. Consider joining activist groups like [Commuter's Take Action](https://www.ctaction.org/) or [Better Streets Chicago](https://www.betterstreetschicago.org/) 4. Sign up for CTA delay alerts [here](https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/ILCTA/subscriber/new). Customize based on your chosen Bus or L line. Elevator outages alerts are also an option. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cta) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Former bus driver here (not CTA)- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- there are ways to mitigate/reduce this, but the CTA just doesn’t give a fuck. That’s why. The CTA does not care enough about poor service to solve this problem. I blame the top- Dorval Carter.
Exactly
Super curious on the ways to mitigate it, care to share? I see drivers try to tell people "there's a bus right behind me" or whatever and people don't listen (and sometimes the immediate follower is more full). Limiting loading time at stops sucks for a bunch of reasons. Alternating stops during rush hour is interesting, though.
There are small operational things they can do like expressing buses when they get too far off schedule. We should also be enforcing getting on at the front and off at the back so there isn't the weird shuffle as people try to move around each other. Medium term we should be enabling all-door boarding by having Ventra readers at the back door, too. Longer term, there should be stop consolidation as well—too many stops like we have makes reliable scheduling harder because you might stop 8 times per mile or you might skip a bunch, whereas fewer stops means you're basically guaranteed to make a stop each time. Ideally we should cut half the stops so all routes have 1/4 mile spacing.
I love when busses go express, but I rarely see it. I wonder what's involved it that decision. Clearly supervisors/whoever have some authority or guidance on when a bus should go express, since they already do (however rarely). I would think that rider flow-of-traffic enforcement and all-door boarding run contrary. I would love to see true enforcement of that, but I understand it's just another thing drivers have to do when already dealing with shitty riders and drivers and stuff. Didn't we hear about how they were going to start doing all-door boarding some years ago? I wonder what happened with that. I dunno how I feel about stop consolidation though! Part of what I love about the bus system is the penetration it has. There are a lot of positives to it and I imagine there's a lot of consideration that would need to go into thinning the density of stops. Also, if they know there are 8 stops per mile, wouldn't that be factored into the schedule? I guess I always assumed they already factored a lot of that in, and this was why a hot bus will stop at its stops even when no one needs to get on/off.
> I dunno how I feel about stop consolidation though! Almost everywhere on the planet buses stop every ~1/4 mile, Chicago is a clear outlier in our extreme density of stops and it's a major cause of [how slow our buses are](https://ggwash.org/view/5189/bus-stop-density-correlates-with-speed) compared to other places. Going from 8 stops per mile to 4 would boost average speed from ~7 miles per hour to ~14, which makes the bus way more viable for more trips. Milwaukee to Halsted down Fullerton could be 14 minutes instead of 27, the 79 from the Red line to Cottage Grove could be 7 mins instead of 15, etc. They already consolidated stops on routes like Ashland and Western and those routes see higher scheduled speeds than nonconsolidated routes. It's also important to remember that not all stops are equal, and a majority of riders will use a minority of the stations. Starting by removing the lowest-used stations is low-hanging fruit, especially like on the Foster bus where there are 3 stops in 600 feet. > if they know there are 8 stops per mile, wouldn't that be factored into the schedule? Remember that buses don't stop if there's no stop requested/nobody waiting to get on. So if we figure there's a 20 second penalty for stopping (slowing down, doors opening, people getting off, boarding, getting going again), it's hard to stay on schedule when there are so many opportunities for getting off schedule. If they schedule for half the stops having this 20 second penalty but they end up stopping at all of them, the delays compound—or vice versa.
Interesting that you say Chicago is an outlier with its density! I think I actually like that. But I suppose I'd have to experience the alternative to tell if I really think it makes a difference. I've only been in areas with fairly limited penetration, so Chicago's density is lovely to me. From your link: >Buses that use grade-separated routes, like the 5A and other freeway buses, tend to have both fewer stops per mile and higher travel speeds, while buses in dense urban areas, like the 90s, tend to have more bus stops and travel slower. Seems a bit obvious, and this graph is tracking speed of buses not delays or length of a given trip. I am not sure that getting riders from point A to point B *quickly* is necessarily the primary or even a top objective for CTA, and as a rider, there are other things I would prioritize over speed (which is why I choose to take a cab sometimes, right?). I think more express lines would be great, like Western and the 49/X49. But it does make sense that the # of stops increases the likelihood of getting behind schedule, which is the issue. I wonder if there is a way to make a system which isn't based on a schedule exactly, but based on consistency. CTA plans these big bus schedules, presumably doing some amount of research (like rider loading time, skipped stops, traffic), and they must be awful to update and roll out. What if we had a system that was more based on trying to maintain an even [6/8/15/whatever] minute headway, instead of sticking to a specific time schedule? I'll have to think on it some.
It kills me. You feel helpless looking at a 30+ minute wait
If only the trackers could consistently tell you you're looking at a 30 minute wait! If it actually told me that, I'd be walking or finding a new way to get where I'm going. But often it will just say "5 minutes away" for a very long time until you realize you've been waiting there long enough that you should have just started walking 20 minutes ago. And if you can't walk for whatever reason? SOL.
Or you make the executive decision to just walk & three buses pass you while you’re a mile in, pouring sweat 🙃
The false tracking is more annoying than the bus bunching itself. At this point there's no other explanation other than purposeful obfuscation. They're just lying to everybody.
And somehow they bunch on schedule, so I truly don’t understand how it’s chalked up to the unpredictability of traffic.
What do you think it would be, if not traffic? If you think through it, it seems like a somewhat complex issue to solve (without BRT or w/e), yet not that hard to understand. If you have a line with 8 minute headways during rush hour, and one bus gets held up at a stop, say with rowdy riders or some issue with a door or something, let's say they get stuck at one stop for 5 minutes, now the next bus would be 3 minutes behind it. Then there's traffic, maybe someone is blocking an intersection, so the following bus gets even closer. Do that a few times until now you have two buses in a row. They leapfrog when they can, but people have to get out at most stops. Now let's say those buses get stuck in more rush hour traffic, and the bus following them, which should have been 8 minutes behind, gets closer and closer. People in the stops these busses haven't gotten to yet have been waiting and waiting, they're frustrated. Most of them pile into the first bus that arrives, some wait for the 2nd because there's more room. By the time the third bus (right behind) gets to the stop, everyone has already been loaded on the first two. The third bus can't exactly skip over the ones ahead of it because they're trying to meet specific stop times on the schedule. Same as when a bus is going too far ahead in its route ("hot") and drives really slowly or waits at a stop. A big no-no is to be too early, because think about it, how pissed would you be if you arrived at your stop "on time" and someone told you the bus had come 2 minutes earlier? (Super annoying when the schedule has 20 minute headways.)
Most bus routes have 20+ minute headways even at rush hour, so explain how 3 buses end up bunched up on those routes? That’s a whole lot of excuses for something that happens every day on countless different routes.
Personally, I'm not sure I've ever seen a bus bunch on a route running with 20 minute headways. Maybe a double or something, but not 3 or more buses. Not that I doubt you.
I’m checking the schedules now and the bus routes I was thinking of don’t actually have 20 minute headways according to the schedule, but I probably thought that they did because I always have to wait 20-30 minutes for a bus and almost always make it to my destination on foot before the bus ever shows up. I have waited 40-50 minutes without any bus showing up for the #4, #95, #146, #87, #22, #35 multiple times for each route.
Yeah that makes sense. My guess would be that when you had to wait 20-30 minutes (or more) for a bus, it's that there were buses removed from the schedule that day or a surprise detour that they didn't communicate. The worst part about this is that if the tracking were actually accurate and communication was abundant, then riders can make informed decisions about whether to wait for a bus or find a new route. CTA definitely needs to solve ghost/surprise buses and communicate detours. I once waited like almost an hour for a 66, at an area where you can't see far back down the line to visibly confirm if a bus is coming. Apparently the 66 had been rerouted around the stop I was at for some reason (can't remember if it was an accident or protests or what), but didn't communicate it anywhere. Ridiculous.
I hear you, it’s just that it’s EVERY TIME I need to take a bus 🥲
idk if i believe you on the 22 one… that and 36 are my mains and I feel like they have really good timing MOST of the time. Weekends and later at night I’ve seen about 30 mins but don’t think I’ve ever waited longer than 30 mins for a 22. unless you are so far north on clark the 36 isn’t plausible, the timing is normally 10 mins max. I will say I’ve seen alot of bunching with the 22s and 36s; sometimes even 3 or 4 in a row.
Today was BAD. Diversey - 3, 4 buses at once, 30+ minute waits. Central, same thing.
The CTA is just warning up! Maybe there will be a 5 bus bunch up! World's record!
This was occurring back in the 80s when I had to take the bus to HS; especially in Winter.
Many factors can play a role like drivers arriving late to work or not showing up at all, traffic due to rush hour or construction, events, maybe the driver took their break and took longer than expected.
Yea, but it’s EVERY DAY on so many different routes. So why is it happening everyday?
The effects of bus bunching are more prominent when you run less service. What we’re seeing is the impacts of less service on top of everything that causes bus bunching like traffic.
So less buses = more bus bunches? That makes no sense at all. With 20 minute gaps in service that means that the first bus in a bunch of 3 was delayed by 60 minutes due to traffic or whatever reason. How is that more likely than on a bus route with 7 minute headways? It would make more sense with shorter wait times.
When busses are late, the first bus will pickup more than usual the amount of riders, since more people are waiting. The next bus now picks up less people. The leading bus running late tends to get later and later as it completes its run, as it is picking up not only its normal passengers, but those who would have taken the next bus, while the bus following it tends to get earlier and earlier because it is spending less time at stops since its normal passengers are on the lead bus. There is a Wikipedia article on this phenomena: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching
Explain 4 buses being bunched up then? I’ve seen this on the 66 and 146 routes. They should be running express service when this happens.
I’m talking about the bus bunching that OP is describing which is little to no buses up to an hour and then 3 at the same time for example. With more frequent service there will still be bus bunching but the wait would be less. This is a guess but less bus runs + delays in getting operators out to run service and/or congestion are going to make bus bunching feel like the problem when in reality it’s a lack of frequent service. If the wait is not the problem, but the fact that 2 buses are right next to each other - then you have to invest in bus priority infrastructure like bus lanes, transit signal priority, queue jumps, etc that will make sure buses don’t get stuck behind traffic.
I can't really explain why it happens every day besides the factors pointed out. It's obviously gotten worse with the pandemic, and although it rarely happens on my bus route to and from work, it has happened, and one time, the bus driver was asked why he was late and all he did was shrugged lol I've been on busses that waited at certain stops waiting for a bus to pass them or they were too early so they had to wait until their scheduled time came up.
Someone (who knows a CTA bus driver) told me since COVID, calling in sick day of has gotten a lot easier, and bus drivers are continuing to do that. So when a driver calls in sick day of, everything can be off schedule since they have to find another driver or they just don’t get a driver.
2006-2010 I used to try to take the Lincoln bus home from school. If the bus wasn’t there, I’d start walking. I usually made the 2 miles before a bus would catch me. I remember taking the bus like 3 times all of high school.
In Miami the drivers would either leap frog stops or just wait an extended time period before taking off again. I don’t understand why they don’t just do that here or maybe it has to be coordinated by a dispatcher or something. They also have on the road supervision in Miami.
Have data for “most bus lines across the city”? I find the 90 bus to be highly reliable.
The 66 bus has become unbearable for this reason. also the 66 often just misses stops with 7 or 8 people waiting. i hate it
Yes it is all over the city. The 76 is not functional at certain times of the day. The city is becoming dysfunctional all around with morons being placed in positions of power for the wrong reasons
Both, passengers and other cars share a lot of the blame for this. Passengers need to learn a one way flow of movement from front door to back door in order to keep buses moving. Even one or two passengers exiting through the front door while others are waiting to get can slow down buses. Crap drivers who don't the give the right of way to buses need to be ticketed. There's should be an enforceable no passing through the left on buses.
There can be several factors. Traffic, people who are slower to board. A bus driver can get in trouble for accelerating too hard, so sometimes they’ll let a light go red and proceed when it’s green.
The bus system in Chicago is and always has been trash. Only the relatively few express busses are even half decent. I will continue avoiding venturing off of the red line until the day I die.
On most bus lines? Sounds sus. All lines are at the whims of traffic, no? ime, bus bunches can & will happen to any given line, and some are more prone to it.
But it happens EVERY DAY, multiple times a day all across the city. With 20+ minute headways on most bus routes it makes no sense that we see 3-4 buses bunched up on a daily basis. It feels like purposeful negligence from the bus operators and managers.
Purposeful negligence?? Drivers absolutely hate bus bunches. Everyone does. Yes, multiple times a day all across the city because the city has a lot of traffic, a lot of people, a lot of busses, and a lot of routes. It is frustrating for sure, but this isn't a problem unique to Chicago. There's even [a wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching) on it. There are articles about it on public transit authorities around the world. [Curious City did a podcast about it too](https://www.wbez.org/curious-city/2014/10/15/why-buses-arrive-in-bunches). I don't think anything would "solve" it besides fully implemented BRT with bus-only routes.
Yes, purposeful negligence. Former and current CTA bus operators have outed management at the bus garages for purposely bunching buses so that they can leap frog each other and make less stops overall. I understand that traffic happens, but it doesn’t explain why I’ve seen 4 buses bunched up on routes that have 20-30 minute headways. That means the first bus was delayed for 80-120 minutes? Every day? On routes all over the city? Fuck outta here
> Former and current CTA bus operators have outed management at the bus garages for purposely bunching buses so that they can leap frog each other and make less stops overall. Oh this is super interesting, care to provide the source? I wonder what the thought process is, because leap frogging doesn't make sense in a lot of cases since people need to get off at a given stop. Elderly and those with limited access/mobility especially. I once saw a 6 bus bunch on the 66! I used to have photos of it. Those weren't 20 minute headways though, I think it was 6 or 8 minute headways. And the first bus being delayed wouldn't necessarily delay all buses behind it. I think the goal drivers have is to stick to their schedule, so they should be able to bypass a bus as long as no stops are needed there? Sometimes buses will go "Express", which I like, but I've only ever seen it happen a couple times. I imagine that having to "jump the line" (I think that's what they call it) when a bus breaks down will mess with things too. But I think overall there's just a ton of factors that go into bus bunching, it's a very squishy topic, and there's no single fix. A imagine a whole bunch of little changes would be needed.