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Bus stop reflections | 14.11.2001 |
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 The hidden rythm of Urbania.
Imagine the situation. It is early morning. You have overslept, scalded yourself while having a shower, spilled your coffee, left the keys inside and rush to the bus stop because you have got an important appointment to get to. Up to this point the plot of the story may depend on your own daily routine and your ability to organize your time. But what is to follow serves as an example for typical urban dilemmas, it actually represents an urban myth (Well, sort of, because it is about to be demythologized): you arrive at the bus stop, you have to wait for ages and, after having reached the state of white heat, suddenly three buses will come at once. But instead of examining this phenomenon, you rather ponder on possible excuses for being late for the appointment, while taking your seat on one of them.
But why do buses come in threes? According to mathematicians it all is pretty easy to explain because it all is down to basic maths. Therefore we will have to use a mathematical model to get our heads round. Suppose that buses leave the bus depot in regular intervals, every twenty minutes, for instance. Let's also suppose that you are waiting twelve stops away from the depot. Bus A leaves at 8:00 am and, as we are talking rush hour here, for the sake of agument, 20 people wait at Stop 1 to get on it. Assuming that it takes 10 seconds to process an average customer, that will make Bus A fall behind 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Therefore the space between Buses A and B will reduce to 16 minutes and 40 seconds. Bus B leaves the depot at 8:20 and, as people had only 16 minutes and 40 seconds to gather at Stop 1, there will be less people standing there. That will reduce the distance between Bus A and Bus B furthermore. This rhythm is likely to continue, as it seems that Bus A will always get the lion's share of passengers, thereby reducing the amount of passengers to board Bus B. You can probably see a pattern emerge here: the two buses have entered a vicious circle and now it only appears natural that Bus B will catch up with Bus A eventually. But what about waiting for a bus due at 2:30 in the afternoon and encountering exactly the same problem? Well, in that case the mathematical phenomenon ties in with a sociological one. Even if you assume that within a special sequel of buses every single bus leaves the depot punctually, you cannot assume the same consistency when it comes to the passengers waiting at the stops. They come on a random basis and if there is a big crowd at one stop the next bus arriving will necessarily fall behind. This will allow people at the next stop to become more and the pattern will continue. So we do not need to wait during rush hour to tear our hair out because bus intervals are prone to differ in their length depending on how many stops there are on the bus line.That is why the bunching of buses in threes is a myth because they actually bunch in twos.
So what can you do? There are three options: get up earlier, get a flat in the city centre or rid yourself of earthly matters by getting into heavy drugs. |
Author:
 Raphael |
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