[HN Gopher] Heat stress mitigation by trees and shelters at bus ...
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Heat stress mitigation by trees and shelters at bus stops
Author : rntn
Score : 133 points
Date : 2025-05-05 16:41 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| mykowebhn wrote:
| This is great for focusing on providing adequate public
| transportation.
|
| I would also love to see attempts at providing heat stress
| mitigation FOR trees.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Design #12 looks nice. The same performance as trees.
|
| It has annoyed me alot that buss shelters seem to be built like
| sun ovens only protecting versus rain and wind.
| nottorp wrote:
| The protection from wind is the problem when it's hot - no
| air movement and thus less cooling inside the shelter than
| outside it.
|
| On the other hand, most trees won't protect you from rain.
|
| Maybe it's best to have a shelter under trees.
| metalman wrote:
| heat stress mitigation for trees, could actualy be exploited
| for our, and there benifit. treat a tree as a bunch of fancy
| pumps, which it is, and choose trees that have best shape and
| canopy for cover, that are also water hogs, as they do pump a
| lot of water from the ground to stay cool, so give them extra
| via burried waterers that drip feed them water to there roots,
| and they will cool the surrounding area a bit more, set enough
| of them up, and paint all availible roofs with the new super
| reflective paints, and it might be possible to create
| niehborhood islands of cool
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Trees are relaxing to look at when your bus is late :) and 3.2C
| cooler than shelters!
|
| Though most know such things intuitively, hard numbers help
| transit designers make their case.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| That's without mentioning the fact that trees emit chemicals
| into the air that help make it rain. It was discussed here on
| Hacker News recently.
|
| That will help to lower temperatures across a wide area.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| And they're natural filters. It's a win/win/win.
| mhotchen wrote:
| I think about this often. I hear people talking about why we need
| sunscreen these days and in my mind it's simply due to the lack
| of foliage and natural shade in both modern urban and rural areas
| (which are largely farm land these days)
| infecto wrote:
| Wouldn't the simpler explanation be that we are more aware of
| the risks to over exposure to the sun? We certainly can use
| more trees but most folks spend most of their time indoors for
| work.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| It is. Sunscreen recommendations usually also applies if you
| plan on staying in shade. UV (like visible light) reflects
| off of walls too.
| roflmaostc wrote:
| actually the reflectance of UV is usually much lower than
| visible light.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01315-1/figures/
| 2
| ricw wrote:
| It's actually much more that the ozone layer, which filters
| uv, is much thinner than it was even 60-70 years ago. The
| ozone layer might be growing again, but at a very slow
| pace.
|
| Simple fact is, we're much more exposed to uv than prior
| generations.
| dgacmu wrote:
| "much" more might be overstating it? We get about 6% more
| UV:
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/10031614252
| 9.h...
|
| Which corresponds with the ozone layer being about 5%
| thinner:
|
| https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en021819-ozone-
| layer-1980-2...
|
| Not good (or good for us) but also not a huge huge
| change, since we stopped the thinning of the ozone layer
| mostly in time.
| ekianjo wrote:
| People are moke likely to cover themselves too much and
| refrain from going outside which in turns makes them vitamin
| D deficient which is way worse than potential UV induced
| cancer risks
| andra_nl wrote:
| Can you support this claim somehow? Because on the face of
| it this sounds dangerously wrong.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| This dietician blog on the British Heart Foundation
| website suggests it's wrong but partly right[0], saying "
| _although having low levels of vitamin D is associated
| with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, the low
| vitamin D is a result of lifestyle factors that increase
| your risk of heart disease and stroke, rather than the
| cause of increased risk._ ".
|
| The leading causes of death in the UK[1] are heart
| disease, lung cancer, influenza, dementia, vascular
| disease (stroke?) and lower respiratory disease. Skin
| cancer is 1% of cancer deaths, and for melanoma the peak
| of diagnosis is people 85-89 years old[2]. Considering
| average life expectancy, people are generally diagnosed
| with skin cancer a few years after they die.
|
| The partial claim "refrain from going outside which in
| turn .. is way worse than potential UV induced cancer
| risks" could be right. Avoiding exercise and increasing
| your heart disease risk, in the hope that you'll avoid
| one of the more treatable and less fatal cancers in very
| late life, is probably the wrong tradeoff. Not to do with
| Vitamin D or covering up or suncream though. Still, why
| not do both - cover up and go out, lower heart disease
| risk and lower your chances of skin cancer diagnosis in
| late life.
|
| [0] https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-
| matters-maga...
|
| [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/h
| ealthan...
|
| [2] https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/melanoma/background-
| informati...
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, perhaps especially in the US, a lot of people are
| more inclined to mitigate all kinds of risks today than they
| were a few decades ago. See also seat belts, helmets, etc.
| Per another comment though I don't see any evidence that
| extends to not even going outside and, while my dermatologist
| is 100% on-board with sunscreen and hats, she's never even
| hinted that I might spend less time outside,
| bluGill wrote:
| No doctor tells you to never go outside in normal
| situations. If there are high pollution or severe weather
| events they will tell you stay inside for the duration. I'm
| sure there are others, but they are not common so it
| doesn't matter that I can't think of them.
|
| However many people only go outside in the context of
| walking from their car to the door of wherever they are
| going, and some who work from home can go for weeks without
| going outside at all. This is a bad thing, you need
| exercise (though it could be inside), but realistically
| many people are not getting enough.
| ghaff wrote:
| Certainly, and especially outside of an urban
| environment, walking any real amount takes a degree of
| intentionality that is easy to put off.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "these days". If you ask "why do
| white people need sunscreen" a large part of the reason is
| that we evolved this skin tone in a Europe that was
| completely covered in forest until agriculture became
| widespread. If you ask "why do people wear more sunscreen
| than in the 50s" the answer is risk awareness. And especially
| in the last 10 years a much bigger awareness of the effects
| of skin aging.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Europeans developed light skin after the agriculturar
| revolution, not before.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2467926-most-
| europeans-...
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.29.635495v2
| ....
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| No.
|
| "The peoples of Europe are fair-skinned and reddish,
| because they live in a cold climate and are not scorched
| by the sun."
|
| Source: Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, and Places, 5th
| century BC.
|
| "The physical characteristics of the Germans are
| consistent: blue eyes, reddish hair, and large bodies."
|
| (Tacitus, Germania, chapter 4)
|
| Egyptian tomb paintings from the New Kingdom (c.
| 1550-1070 BC) visually represent foreign peoples with
| distinct skin tones - "Europeans", in the form of Sea
| Peoples or early Aegean peoples (e.g., Minoans or
| Mycenaeans), were sometimes shown with light red or pale
| skin tones.
| fwip wrote:
| The agricultural revolution was roughly 10,000 BC, wasn't
| it? Your sources are more recent than that, and so don't
| disagree with the point the parent post was making.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Yes, there was an agricultural revolution during the
| neolithic times. We have evidence this for the Southwest
| Asia aka Middle East, Asia around the Yangtze and Yellow
| rivers, South, Central and North Americas.
|
| I am open to this hypothesis (conjecture?), it just lacks
| supportive evidence. On the other hand, we have ample
| evidence that agricultural revolution did not "turn
| people white" in the other regions.
| wongarsu wrote:
| According to [1] more like 6000-4000 BC for Europe.
| Granted, that's still before 1700BC.
|
| From a cursory study of Wikipedia my rough summary would
| be: Europe used to be roughly divided in the "Western
| Hunter Gatherers" (WHG) and "Eastern Hunter Gatherers"
| (EHG). The WHG typically had dark skin, dark hair and
| blue eyes, the EHG were typically light skinned with
| brown eyes. Blond hair may have originated from EHGs in
| North Eurasia and spread from there. Around 6000 BC
| farmers from Anatolia (~modern Turkey) started moving
| into Europe, the EEF (Early European Farmers). Those were
| typically smaller than European hunter-gatherers, light
| skinned and dark haired. They migrated North, partially
| replacing the EHG and WHG, partially mixing with them,
| and in some places the EHG and WHG simply took up
| farming. But Easter Europe is less amenable to farming,
| meaning the dark-skinned WHG diminished the most while
| the light-skinned EHG and EEF became the dominant groups
| in Europe's genetic diversity
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_European_Farmers#/
| media/...
| codr7 wrote:
| Also, no one was selling sunscreen back then.
|
| That all started in the seventies when skin cancer was
| invented.
| stefs wrote:
| imo: people used to be outside a lot more. by summer they
| usually had a good tan, so they didn't suffer the sunlight that
| much. of course this did lead to _premature_ (from our modern
| point of view) skin aging.
|
| heat and light are different factors, even though they mostly
| come hand in hand. outside, heat is definitely a bigger problem
| than it used to be, but also we don't spend as much time
| outside. if heat became a problem people used to take time off,
| rest during the hottest times of the day and work
| earlier/later.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Also the 20th century abandonment of the hat.
|
| (remind me, what was the California "bus shelter" design that
| was basically an expensive stick and got widely ridiculed on
| here?)
| jollyllama wrote:
| "La Sombrita"
| huhkerrf wrote:
| It was called La Sombrita:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Sombrita
|
| And, it's even worse than just not working. It's a shelter to
| provide shade _for women_ that provided almost none. Because
| apparently shade is now part of the gender wars.
| fwip wrote:
| As somebody who took daily bus trips for nearly a decade of
| my life, I would definitely prefer the meager shade from
| these to the bare bus stops they were replacing. Standing
| in the sun for even fifteen minutes waiting for a bus can
| be miserable.
|
| I'm not sure what your point about "gender wars" is. Is
| this pole too effeminate for a man to be shaded by?
| RunningDroid wrote:
| > I'm not sure what your point about "gender wars" is. Is
| this pole too effeminate for a man to be shaded by?
|
| They were referring to this: >Its purpose was to assist
| female bus riders by offering shade during the hottest
| hours of the day and providing sidewalk lighting at
| night.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| > I'm not sure what your point about "gender wars" is. Is
| this pole too effeminate for a man to be shaded by?
|
| TFA address this: "Its purpose was to assist female bus
| riders by offering shade during the hottest hours of the
| day and providing sidewalk lighting at night."
| npteljes wrote:
| >why we need sunscreen these days
|
| It's not about foliage, it's because we like to look as young
| as possible - or put another way, as undamaged as possible.
| Sunscreen adds to that a lot, because it mitigates sun damage.
| At a given age, people used to look much older than we do now,
| and that is partly because of less sun exposure.
| lucidguppy wrote:
| You can have a pretty good simulacrum of a forest using only two
| tennis courts worth of land (a pittance in most US cities that
| have 30% reserved for parking).
|
| Look up Miyawaki method.
| thih9 wrote:
| Some fun related links:
|
| https://parkingreform.org/resources/parking-lot-map/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_forest
| amunozo wrote:
| We all know this. We need political will.
| washmyelbows wrote:
| Trees good, study finds
| vanschelven wrote:
| See also https://thegreencities.eu/
| padjo wrote:
| People who want to chop down trees for any reason other than them
| being in danger of falling down really baffle me.
| sillystu04 wrote:
| I hate male trees because they make hay fever much worse.
| Cutting them down and replacing them with female trees would
| achieve all the good benefits of trees without affecting hay
| fever.
|
| The only downside of female trees is that they shed pods,
| fruits & seeds into urban environments. But even this might
| conceivably have some benefits to biodiversity.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urba...
| badmintonbaseba wrote:
| Would the female trees do that if there weren't any male
| trees around?
| bluGill wrote:
| Not many male trees are needed to breed so even if one is
| around you get the problem.
|
| Not all trees have separate male and female trees as well.
| If you only have one type of tree you have no biodiversity
| and that is almost as bad as no trees.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| This comment sounded very strange to me, but as the linked
| article says about "male" trees:
|
| > Growers' breeding of purely male diodar trees had created,
| said Ogren, "something that doesn't even exist in nature".
| lippihom wrote:
| A note about hay fever - not sure how bad yours is but mine
| was debilitating (hated leave the house during spring). The
| last two years I've been doing immunotherapy shots in the
| winter and this year my allergies are almost completely gone.
| It's been an unbelievable quality of life change. Would
| highly recommend if you have insurance that covers it (tho
| looking back now, I'd also gladly pay out of pocket).
| padjo wrote:
| Ironically the tree outside my house was recently removed
| because the fruit annoyed people. Personally I thought the
| tree was well worth the hour or two a year it took to remove
| the fruit in autumn.
| bluGill wrote:
| Non native trees can be a harmful invader to the native
| environment and should be chopped down. If you can get a large
| enough area to do it at once chopping down all of a type of
| tree can stop the spread of disease thus saving tree father
| away that get isolated (though you can argue these are trees in
| danger of falling anyway)
| stackedinserter wrote:
| My former landlord (his wife, actually) forced our neighbours
| to cut down their beautiful apple tree because in August, every
| two years, apples fell on the ground and made mess on a shared
| lawn.
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| Yes! It's insane to me how many people value concrete more than
| trees.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| There are a few other reasons that aren't baffling:
|
| roots destroy water pipes and heave sidewalks and pavement.
| They can interfere with power lines as well. :(
| dylan604 wrote:
| sounds more like poor planning than anything else.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| From life in Oslo, Norway.
|
| In so far as improving the comfort of passengers using mass
| transit the best way to attract more travelers and retain
| travelers is to run enough busses, trains, subway trains, during
| rush hour so that the passangers are not packed like sardines ass
| to dick for 30 mins or more twice a day.
|
| Then cooling inside the inside the passaenger area is also key
| Sweating like a pig while playing a sardine makes the experience
| even worse.
|
| Starting work drenched in sweat and the smell of other poeples
| perfume and cologn is not a good start.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| 100% this - make it more comfortable and handle the rush.
|
| I live in London, we have tons of public transport.
|
| In the middle of the day, outside of rush hour, I use it a lot
| and it can be really pleasant, particularly suburban rail, you
| can stretch out a bit, there is often air conditioning, a nice
| view from the window, etc.
|
| When it's busy I will drive even if it takes longer because my
| car is guaranteed to have personal space and is clean.
| bluGill wrote:
| I agree, but that costs a lot money. It costs $100/hour (this
| is likely low since I haven't checked in several years what
| inflation has done) to run a bus. That is one bus, even a tiny
| city will need more than 100 buses to just provide bad service,
| and would need 5-10 times as many just to give good service. If
| running buses were free everyone would have a bus every 5
| minutes, with many different routes to choose from. Providing
| good places to wait for your bus is cheap by contrast, the cost
| of a single bus will upgrade many bus stops and the investment
| will last longer than the bus (though you need to maintain it)
|
| You are wrong about rush hour. You need to provide good service
| all day, not just during rust hour. People who have good rush
| hour service and then a "family emergency" pops up mid day when
| they discover service is bad will go back to driving just in
| case that happens again. Plus running all day service at the
| same rates ends up breaking even - between staff willing to
| take less per hour, and good service enticing people to ride
| you can generally break even on your costs.
| seszett wrote:
| > _even a tiny city will need more than 100 buses to just
| provide bad service, and would need 5-10 times as many just
| to give good service_
|
| Wikipedia says De Lijn (the company that provides public
| transport for Flanders) has 2200 busses total. Service could
| be better but it's not awful either, and that's for a whole
| region of 6 million inhabitants, so I think your numbers are
| quite off. A _tiny_ city only requires a handful of busses, a
| medium one use 50 busses or so.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I assume that the major urban areas also have decent rail
| and tram systems, though. It makes a big difference.
|
| Dublin has a metro population of about 1.5 million, and has
| about 1,400 buses (excluding intercity and private
| services); however its rail and tram systems are, er,
| inadequate. Berlin has about 1,600 buses for a metro area
| of 6 million, but of course has a far better rail and tram
| system.
| seszett wrote:
| Right, I totally forgot that the bus network here is only
| there to fill the gaps between the tram lines, which
| might not be the case in other places.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, there's a route (or set of closely related routes)
| near my office which, at peak times, has a 100 person
| double decker bus about once per _minute_. Really, it
| should be a tram route, but that would require building a
| tram line, and Dublin tends to see that as an immense
| undertaking to be done only once a decade or so (and this
| decade's one is already planned out).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Have they made any efforts to make peak demand... less
| peaky?
|
| That's kinda a problem with big capex transit projects:
| you're spending all this cash to 24/7 fix a problem that
| only exists for 5-10 hours/week.
| f6v wrote:
| Just keep in mind that a company car is a major perk all
| salaried employees strive to get because that allows them
| to commute to work for free from all those tiny villages.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > You need to provide good service all day, not just during
| rust hour.
|
| Providing good service at non-rush-hour is comparatively
| easy, though; it just has to be relatively frequent.
| Particularly for buses, the trouble at rush hour is that you
| can effectively hit capacity for a line; you get buses
| waiting for other buses to leave stops, and so on.
| bluGill wrote:
| While true, if you have good all day service and run into
| that problem you have more than enough demand to build a
| train.
| antennafirepla wrote:
| Everything costs money. The cost is relatively low to the
| public and economic benefit from plentiful public transit.
| Breaking even financially would be icing on the cake. Public
| transit is a service, we should expect it to cost money --
| and not necessarily pass 100% of the cost to passengers,
| since it needs to be affordable to provide the full benefit
| to people.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Let's agree that the service should be subsidized. Let's
| establish that Im amenable to a free service 100% tax
| payer.
|
| I am, in fact amenable to this.
|
| How do you establish fairness though?
|
| Best case scenario, say in the US ex-NYC, you will always
| have 20-40% of people needing to ride their cars because
| the tails of the distribution are prohibitively expensive.
|
| Nor are these people necessarily wealthy - the economically
| wealthiest class of people are urban dinks.
|
| So how to do you establish fairness to this 20-40% of
| people subsidizing the others?
| rsynnott wrote:
| > So how to do you establish fairness to this 20-40% of
| people subsidizing the others?
|
| Well, for a start, they're not, necessarily. That thing
| they're driving on, it didn't magically appear, you
| realise. Road maintenance and construction is a _huge_
| part of total transport spending.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Yes, and road maintenance is proportional to the fourth
| power of the axle load. Busses are typically loaded at
| 4-8 times the per-axle weight of passenger cars.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Busses are a band-aid that get employed as a cure too often.
| Ideally, you're running trams at surface level with decently-
| distanced stops and biking/walking infrastructure in between.
| Busses require infrastructure - large roads - which
| discourage pedestrian activity and encourage personal vehicle
| use. You want people walking near businesses that they might
| patronize, not flying past in large vehicles that make the
| space uncomfortable for pedestrians.
| some_random wrote:
| Is there a single city in the world with
| trams/subways/trains/etc but no buses?
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Very few, if any, but there are cities that use busses
| for what they're good for, and not as a bad urban
| planner's trams.
| bluGill wrote:
| You need roads anyway! Most of the businesses need to get
| trucks in to deliver the things they need. Thus you can
| reuse those roads for buses for places that are less busy
| and this is cheaper than a train. The real trick is how to
| get private one passenger automobiles off the roads.
|
| In very dense areas you should have both roads and trains.
| However only the most dense cities in the world can support
| that, and then only in their most dense which is often
| small. For everyone else buses save money over trains.
| trainsarebetter wrote:
| But buses actually don't. you just pay for it later.
| Roads are one of the fastest deteriorating forms of
| infrastructure. the hole " but rail dosnt make money"
| argument ignores the fact that... roads don't ether
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The time frame before a rail line will save money over
| buses is measured in decades.
|
| With buses, you don't include the cost of road
| maintenance because buses share the roads with millions
| of other vehicles so the allocable cost is neglible.
| bluGill wrote:
| Extept that you have to maintain the roads anyway. taking
| a few buses off won't save much so long as the road for
| trucks exists.
| Retric wrote:
| A one lane road with minimal parking can handle a crazy
| number of deliveries and busses. Allow cars on that road
| and suddenly it's almost useless as a transportation
| option.
|
| Thus the urban infrastructure dilemma.
| hansvm wrote:
| Busses are huge though. You can get fares cheaper than the
| cost of gasoline for an equivalent single-passenger trip just
| by using the available seats and ignoring standing room
| completely. The seats are pretty wide, so that satisfies the
| anti-sardine requirement easily.
|
| The point about needing good service all day, not just during
| rush hours, is more interesting. If your hypothesis is that
| people just want the experience to not be terrible while
| they're in the bus, more trips during rush hours definitely
| suffices. You do need a minimum level of service in the
| middle of the day for the idea to be practical for some
| people. Surely 15-30min routes are fine though?
| kedihacker wrote:
| Per 15 minute is maximum for good service. 30 minutes is
| infrequent. 10 is very good.
| bluGill wrote:
| 7 minutes max is good. Anything longer than that is bad,
| though you can accept up to every 30 minutes, anything more
| than that is unacceptable. I used to ride a every 30 minute
| bus, and I always started checking where the bus was (as
| opposed to the schedule/time!) long before I wanted to
| leave. A couple times I made a mistake and arrived at the
| stop just after the bus left, and was then in for an
| unacceptably long wait for the next bus.
|
| Mid day you need better service than rush hour. People
| going to work generally have a schedule and they have input
| into it - they can plan their day around when the bus goes.
| People doing errands in the mid day do not know when they
| will be done, if there happens to be a line when you go to
| the checkout you miss your bus. When you are at work you
| have more control over when you leave and so will always
| make your bus.
|
| When people see your bus system as a way to get to work and
| a car is for everything else you can do worse service than
| when you want people to get rid of the car.
| aftbit wrote:
| Do you have any source or more information on the $100/hr
| figure? That seems shockingly high to me. It only costs about
| twice or three times that to run a small airplane or a
| farming combine.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Is it surprising though?
|
| Without looking up the data, off the top of my head.
|
| The bus driver needs a commercial license with air brakes,
| is a public employee and has benefits.
|
| He has to be making 75k/year + overhead. Let's say overhead
| is 50%
|
| $56.25 / hr.
|
| Then there's the diesel cost. A large bus must get ~ 10 mpg
| highway, but a city bus is all stop and go - disastrous for
| a vehicle as massive as a bus. Let's say it gets 4 mpg.
|
| $4/gal diesel * 30 mph average speed / 4 mpg = $30 / hr on
| diesel.
|
| We're at $86.26/hr.
|
| You could argue my driver makes too much, and my mpg is too
| low, but I havent included:
|
| - routine maintenance
|
| - fixing broken vehicles
|
| - cleaning
|
| - amortization
|
| So, play with the numbers if you will; but $100/hr has to
| be a good, round estimate, for running costs.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Then there's the diesel cost. A large bus must get ~ 10
| mpg highway, but a city bus is all stop and go -
| disastrous for a vehicle as massive as a bus. Let's say
| it gets 4 mpg.
|
| Increasingly, most buses would be either electric, or
| heavy hybrid (ie electric with a diesel generator).
|
| But also, consider the money they take in. My local bus
| system's buses take up to 100 people. The charge is 2
| euro for a journey where the last leg starts within 90
| minutes of the first leg, on any mode of transport.
| However in practice the average journey would be in the
| 30 min range. So if the buses are constantly full, that's
| 400 euro per hour takings!
|
| Of course, it's not really that high; the buses are not
| always full, some people are using monthly or annual
| tickets, which are cheaper, some people are kids or over
| 65 or otherwise get cheap or free travel, the trains and
| trams also have to be paid for, and so on. But it's
| sufficient that they were actually able to cut the price
| (it used to be up to 3.50 for a single bus journey); the
| increased use from the cheaper simpler system offset the
| reduction in revenue per journey.
| mapt wrote:
| > Then there's the diesel cost. A large bus must get ~ 10
| mpg highway, but a city bus is all stop and go -
| disastrous for a vehicle as massive as a bus. Let's say
| it gets 4 mpg. $4/gal diesel * 30 mph average speed / 4
| mpg = $30 / hr on diesel.
|
| We've already got decent electric bus options implemented
| in a number of cities, and they're only going to get
| better. That's before you consider hooking them up to
| wires like a sensible transit network.
|
| Municipal fleets often make it a point to use alternative
| energy with buses, like CNG before batteries were a
| practical option. They do it for public image, because of
| the urban air quality issues with old-school diesel
| exhaust, and for cost reasons.
|
| A more interesting point is pavement. Public buses,
| garbage trucks, and schoolbuses are some of the most
| significant non-weather-related causes of road wear, and
| this is only going to get worse the heavier the axle
| weight if you try to run long-range battery banks. Road
| wear scales with axle weight raised to the fourth power.
| Arguably there is a case to be made for the articulated
| or even bi-articulated designs if it allowed you to drop
| axle weight, with significant benefit to the Packed Like
| Sardines problem. Articulated EVs have a lot more freedom
| to redistribute the weight and to power individual axles
| more intelligently.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the US every transit agency published their costs to the
| FTA. I looked that data up about 5 years ago, and I can't
| remember how to search it, but it should be online if you
| want to figure it out. (unless Trump has removed that?)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Honestly, for 'emergency' things a taxi service is a good
| complement. Busses are good at regular routes between
| frequent routes/hubs, not for 'I need point to point
| immediatly now'.
|
| The goal should be more to cover peoples normal transit
| needs. So plenty of routes with stops very near most people's
| homes and destinations, and a high enough frequency at most
| hours of the day and night to not cause too much waiting
| frustration.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _That is one bus, even a tiny city will need more than
| 100 buses to just provide bad service, and would need 5-10
| times as many just to give good service_ "
|
| You say that as if it's an unthinkable impossibility. As of
| 2017 London had 8,600 busses carrying 6.5M passengers every
| day. Yes a big city needs a lot of buses, so they have a lot
| of buses. No problem. What would it cost if there were no
| buses and 6.5M more car journeys every day? And the roads and
| parking spaces for - what - 1M+ more cars to account for
| that?
|
| What financial cost to the city for roads and infrastructure
| and traffic lights and signs and maintenance, what financial
| cost to the people needing cars, what time cost of humans
| stuck in traffic, what health cost of less exercise, what
| health cost of pollution, what accident cost?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _You are wrong about rush hour. You need to provide good
| service all day, not just during rust hour._
|
| Your first half talks about how high the hourly rate to run a
| bus is. Then in the second half you recommend the same
| service level for busy versus non-busy times? Seems sub-
| optimal.
| bluGill wrote:
| All day service ends up increasing all hours use -
| including rush hour.
|
| however no matter what it is expensive and you need years
| of service before people change habbits. Often the expense
| is so high that 'you cannot get there from here'
| fads_go wrote:
| Yes, it costs, and yes, to make public transit a valid
| alternative service needs to be frequent all day.
|
| However, all of the maintenance around allowing private
| transport is also a cost. That includes all of the private
| costs for car ownership. If public transport is a valid
| option, then car ownership becomes a choice.
|
| A tiny city might need 100 busses, but how many cars does
| that replace? What is the full cost of those cars? If
| everyone made a monthly "bus payment" instead of a "car
| payment" (actually payments when you add insurance,
| maintenance, ...), I think we'd find the bus system much less
| expensive.
| godelski wrote:
| > It costs $100/hour to run a bus
|
| That sounds pretty cheap!
|
| Googling suggests you can get 40 people on the _average_ bus,
| but let 's say that's 20! Let's be super rough to get
| guesstimates. California has an average gas price of
| $4.83/gal[0] and average car is like 24mpg. We'll take that
| at 60mph and assume you're driving that (mpg is usually worse
| in cities). So let's say ($4.8/g) * (1/24 g/m) * (60 m/h) =
| 12. So at half capacity the bus is more than half the price.
| That's even before we include things like insurance,
| maintenance, and anything else (like parking fees). Sure,
| we're super rough, but given how big the difference is I'd be
| surprised if refining switched the conclusion.
|
| Of course, there's extra convenience of cars, but a lot of
| time we don't need that extra convenience. A lot of times
| we're going the same way everyone else is and our convenience
| becomes inconvenient. There's also lots of extra conveniences
| of public transportation too. If you've experienced good
| public transit you probably prefer it in most situations.
|
| I agree, things need to run all day but I disagree that it
| costs a lot of money. I think the bigger issue is the
| negative feedback loop. Public transportation sucks, so no
| one uses it. -> Public transportation can't get more funding
| because no one uses it. -> No one uses public transportation
| because it sucks. Unfortunately this is one of those things
| where "build it and they will come". It won't happen right
| away, momentum is a bitch, but it can't ever happen without
| making the investment. And clearly it is actually cheap.
|
| [0] https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA
| bluGill wrote:
| if you can get the money to buy and run all those buses and
| run them for several years while people figure out they are
| good. They also need to be good - many buses run terrible
| routes that won't get you where you want to go in a
| reasonable anount of time.
| godelski wrote:
| I recognize this. Please read my last paragraph.
| elric wrote:
| > Municipalities are attempting to create safe and comfortable
| transit systems in the face of climate change.
|
| Citation needed. Over here, municipalities are trying to find
| further ways of reducing the cost of public transport. Spending
| money on comfort is simply not going to happen. Belgium's 2nd
| largest city's transit system has famously malfunctioning
| escalators (some of which have been broken for half a decade).
| The offering is reduced year after year, while prices go up.
|
| I wish things were different.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| That's the cost of more and more of the budget going to
| pensions, as more and more of the "workers" are 65+ retirees...
| elric wrote:
| Everything is a tradeoff. I'm sure pensions will become more
| affordable if we keep killing people by means of air
| pollution and car crashes. /s
|
| But I'm sure we'll keep subsidising company cars.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Planting trees is hard. Phoenix AZ has a tree planting program
| called the Shade Phoenix Plan and they publish public reports.
|
| Watering and maintenance are a big cost. Iirc it's about $1000 to
| plant a tree. $100 for the tree and $900 for the irrigation and
| labor to plant it. In the first 10 years of the program 2/3 of
| the 106,000 planted trees were removed due to accidents, storms,
| not enough water/aging. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.phoenix.gov/content/dam/phoenix/heatsite/documen...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It being difficult to grow trees that provide good in phoenix
| is literally the nick cake "you don't say" meme.
|
| Expecting something like that work without questionable degree
| of investment to make some tree work survive of its element is
| contradictory to all the adaptations that make plant life
| suitable for arid climates (i.e not providing a ton of area to
| the sun relative to their mass).
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Fair. I used Phoenix because it's the only published city
| shading plan I've come across. It could just be that arid/hot
| climates are the places trees are needed. The study linked
| was in Houston, Texas.
|
| The Phoenix report is valuable because it provides lessons
| that should be avoided going forward: change the laws so
| property owners are not liable if a tree outside their
| business hurts someone, don't plant a tree if you can't
| irrigate it, work with local residents to plant and water
| trees to save on labor and increase success, etc.
|
| If there's other municipal shade reports I'd love to read
| them. Helping people find shade is what I do for a living.
| [1]
|
| [1] shademap.app
| viburnum wrote:
| Milwaukee started its shade program in the 1980s.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Like the startups which try to make solar systems to condense
| drinking water from the air. They demonstrate it in wet
| climates where the idea works but the solar panels don't
| because it's cloudy and cool. Those environments don't need
| drinking water because they are rainy. Then they try it in
| deserts where the water is needed and the solar panel bit
| works, but the whole thing doesn't work because there's no
| water in the air - that's why the water is needed there(!).
|
| ThunderF00t Busted! videos on scammy startups keeping on
| raising money for this fundamentally unworkable idea:
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass
| Water
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vss1ke5tTvI - Fontus self-
| filling water bottle
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vss1ke5tTvI - self-filling
| water bottle lab experiment what would be reasonably possible
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfmQcY_sEt0 - WaterSeer
| part 1
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gPSyU564Io - WaterSeer
| part 2
|
| Drinking game: drink every time he says "it's a. de.
| humidifier."
| JohnMakin wrote:
| At least in CA, we're going the opposite direction - complete
| removal of shelter, even the benches have dividers on them so
| people can't sleep. This is meant to deter homeless, but the city
| also doesn't really provide them anywhere else to go, so things
| that provide additional shelter at bus stops are essentially a
| non-starter for the city.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Given the cost of maintaining trees, I'm surprised councils in
| the UK haven't just removed street trees and "planted" metal
| ones.
| newer_vienna wrote:
| "Here's a scientific study that shows that trees and shelters are
| nice because they provide shade"
|
| thanks, I guess. I didn't need a study telling me something I
| already know and agree with
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Someone got paid: it all keeps the money flowing. Always check
| if the fence serves a purpose.
| MattSayar wrote:
| Reminds me of a Technology Connections video describing how
| helpful awnings are in reducing temperatures inside your house
| [0]. Are there any modern-looking awnings that wouldn't look out
| of place in my neighborhood?
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbDfi7Ee7k
| profsummergig wrote:
| Do we need reasons to plant cities in urban areas now?
|
| Look at photos of Tel Aviv. Lush green trees everywhere. Compare
| it with any other city in the desert. Completely changes the
| quality of life.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| Trees as shelter works as long there is water for the
| trees(evaporation cools, like in sweating). With increasing heat
| stress there is not enough water and the trees will simply die.
| Or burn.
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