A new bus metric
Dec. 2nd, 2003 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeLet's say I'm trying to get home from Teele Square on a Sunday or after 8 PM. The 89 bus goes across Winter Hill; experience shows it saves me about 15 minutes over walking. But, it runs every hour (leaving the Foodmaster at x:20). So 25% of the time, it's worth waiting for the bus. Trying to get to Sullivan in the morning, the 95 saves me 15 minutes but runs every 20, so it's 75% useful.
This clearly isn't the only metric; you don't want to wait an hour outside to save three, usually, and I can time when I leave home to catch the 95. But for evaluating transportation options in the abstract, if you can identify a clear alternative, "how often does it save me time" seems to be a neat metric that I haven't seen discussed before. (And is also useful for busses with random schedules, like the CT2: 50% effective from Sullivan Square to campus, if it saves 10 minutes over the T but runs every 20.)
This clearly isn't the only metric; you don't want to wait an hour outside to save three, usually, and I can time when I leave home to catch the 95. But for evaluating transportation options in the abstract, if you can identify a clear alternative, "how often does it save me time" seems to be a neat metric that I haven't seen discussed before. (And is also useful for busses with random schedules, like the CT2: 50% effective from Sullivan Square to campus, if it saves 10 minutes over the T but runs every 20.)
