The other day while waiting for a bus, I was thinking about how city buses should be smaller and run more frequently. Instead of a 40-seater every 15 minutes, they could run a 10-seater every 5 minutes. (More precisely, they could run as frequently as necessary during rush hour to handle all the passengers–a bus a minute if necessary–but more spaced out at other times. For example, on weekend mornings the bus is never crowded, so they could run the much smaller buses with just slightly higher frequencies than they currently run big buses now.)
The advantages of my proposal are clear: the bus comes more frequently, also since the lag time is smaller, loading and unloading won’t take so much time, and as an extra bonus, you’ll probably skip a lot more stops because there are fewer people on the bus who might want to get off at any particular point. Also, I don’t know about fuel efficiency, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the fuel cost per passenger is lower because you’re not having to run these huge empty buses in off-peak hours. Finally, van-sized buses could maneuver better in traffic.
The only additional cost that I see is having to hire more bus drivers, but with unemployment at 9%, I don’t think it would be hard to find people to do this. What really irritates me are those huge, huge buses that take forever to fill up and take about a half hour just to go a few crosstown blocks. If they were broken up into vans, the wait would be less and the ride much more pleasant.
P.S. Yes, I know this isn’t one of the world’s most important problems. But it is a big expenditure, so why not try to do it right?
P.P.S. I’m sure there’s lots of research on this topic but it’s not something I’m at all informed on. The above are just my personal impressions.