Then, there's the Houston bus system ca. mid 2000's, where the bus might leave several minutes early or several minutes late. Imagine not making your connection in 100+ degree Fahrenheit 90+ humidity while dressed for a job interview. Contrast this with the Minneapolis bus system, where you could time the busses at stops within 2 minutes in the central city, even while a foot of snow covered the ground. Both systems used essentially the same equipment -- same models and manufacturers.

Then there is the Wilmington, DE, bus system, where the posted schedule is completely made up. You just go and stand at a stop for 20-40 minutes until a bus comes. (It may or may not, sometimes the drivers decide to just clock out their shift early.)

This might be rational, actually.

Given the inherent randomness of traffic, it might just make more rational sense to have busses at 'intervals' instead of specific times.

Might make for more throughput.

That really only works if your intervals are relatively short, not where they’re 30-60 minutes, as in Wilmington.

Traffic isn't fully random. Rush hour peaks happen about the same time etc.

Handling that is an infrastructure and priority question. Given the political will one can build bus lanes and equip buses with a radio system which enables priority on traffic lights. In my hometown (Munich, Germany) this works quite well and most buses see mostly green lights.

There are many systems that just go with frequency rather than a schedule, which works more efficiently for routes with lots of trips. I’m surprised Japan uses a schedule, but maybe it’s just for inter city service and not say subways?

Which is fine as long as that frequency is frequent enough that waiting people aren't suffering, right?

There was a discussion on reddit recently talking about this issue in context of LA's buses. People don't mind if the bus is on time if there's one every 5-10 minutes but in non-rush hour times, having to wait 20+ min at a stop is too long.

If I'm remembering correctly, it's literally a schedule. They give you a minute-precision schedule on an electronic sign: http://images.freeimages.com/images/previews/c5b/jr-train-st...

In normal situations, the arrival time doesn't change, and the train pulls in within seconds of the right time. It is startlingly precise (to someone used to American transit), even during high traffic times in the middle of Tokyo.

There are schedules for the subways, but also a very high frequency for trains.

Off the top of my head, during busy hours for me going towards Tokyo there would be a train every 5-8 minutes. (And there are multiple lines, although I'm quite far out, so they condense as they get closer).

I mean, "the bus might leave several minutes early" describes the bus system in Vancouver, current day. I used to tweet them frequently because a bus I had arrived on time for was already long gone (evidenced by the complete lack of a line of people waiting, when normally it would be a long lineup).

> Then, there's the Houston bus system ca. mid 2000's, where the bus might leave several minutes early or several minutes late.

Yes, only Houston has this problem, not almost every single bus system in the world.

Minnesota always struck me as very... Scandinavian. Must try and visit in summer when it's not so cold.

> Contrast this with the Minneapolis bus system, where you could time the busses at stops within 2 minutes in the central city, even while a foot of snow covered the ground. Both systems used essentially the same equipment -- same models and manufacturers.

Aghh, I hate the Minneapolis bus system, I remember two times in the winter when the bus just didn't come, real nice when it's -8F outside. Or buses being 15 minutes late. But worse of all are the bus drivers themselves. However the Blue Line and Green Line follow the schedule much better then the buses. If your in Minneapolis your best off either driving, biking, taking LRT or catching a Lyft or Uber.

Well yes, the system didn't work nearly as well if you were going or travelling from farther out. That's yet another data point to indicate that it's as much about political will as it is about environment.

I wasn't far out, I was In Uptown a busy area of Minneapolis a couple miles south of downtown.

I was just 8 blocks north of the office I worked at.

Downtown? But do you live in Minneapolis or have you lived in Minneapolis because your profile says "Bay Area iOS Developer"?

I commuted between Minneapolis and Houston in 2008. I had an apartment in both cities.

Got to like all the down voters. Do any of you live in Minneapolis or have any experience taking the bus system there? I seriously doubt it.

I was just in Japan a few months ago, bouncing around Tokyo/Narita/Takasaki/Asahi and I experienced the exact same thing. Their rail system really does operate like clockwork.

Japan calls itself a "Machine Civilization" for a reason.

Fascinating. Are the passengers walking to the station and know exactly how long the walk takes? Or is it some closely timed transfer from another source?

> some closely timed transfer from another source

Often when different lines meet the tracks are organised such that the trains pull up together on either side of a platform: a so-called cross-platform interchange[1]. The passengers on either train then have 30 seconds or so to board the other train if they wish to change. Obviously this has to be precisely timed - if one train is late or the other departs early, the transfer can't take place.

It really is an amazing system, a wonder of the world. There's one part of the yamanote line that runs parallel to the keihin-touhoku line. In this section, the K-T line acts as an express, whereas the yamanote generally stops all stations. So as the lines meet, you'll have a bunch of people get off the yamanote onto the "express" keihin-touhoko - they arrive synchronously, then the keihin speeds past a few slow poke yamanotes, before arriving in sync again with a yamanote a few trains ahead of the original one, so people can switch back before the keihin diverges and goes off on its route. It's unbelievable, choreographed like a steel ballet. The best train system in the world bar none.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-platform_interchange#Tok...

I mean, what? There are often different companies running different train systems in the same city, and you will have a fair walk.

Are the trains all automated or manually run? Or some mix of the two?

It's not fully automated. The drivers are very disciplined (https://youtu.be/xzkU6tmdImY?t=639) although I don't know to what extent they have automation helping them.

Wow that's fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

If you get the same train to work every day you start to know exactly how long the walk takes. I can comfortably arrive at my local station (in London) in the right minute.

Ha! With the caveat being, your train will invariably be late :-)

Hey, Japan isn't that great either: https://www.dropbox.com/s/64g140pswnt6slb/7.jpg?dl=0

It'll usually leave on time from the main terminal station. Arriving is another matter.

Well, I live in London close to the end of one of the tube lines, and I try to leave home at 8:58 so that I can be on the platform when the 9:04 train arrives :)

Of course, being London sometimes the times are off and the system probably wouldn't work if the station was not close to the ends (less predictability due to random delays)

And London runs like a clock as compared to Rome or Paris which are more like ballpark suggestions rather than a schedule.

It really depends on the line/station. For example, the trains leaving Montparnasse are nearly always on time.

The rail schedule in Paris is just a guy smoking a Gauloises and shrugging.

Here in Ireland it's you, sitting at a bar, waiting for a pint of Guinness to settle.

As you stare deeper into the rising, darkening mist of the pint, you edge ever closer to it. Until the darkness obscures all else in your view.

The LUAS and DART aren’t half bad if you’re in Dublin at least.

The Luas is frequent which makes up for a lot, but the schedule is given as (every X minutes) and often misses that due to sharing with road traffic for large parts of the track.

Still better than bus eireann, where if you're getting on in the last 25% of the route, the timetable is often every hour, +/- 30 minutes, which means there could be a bus at any time and it's not likely to be the scheduled time.

Often it’s tranfering from another platform. If you take the same route regularly you get to know which carriage is best to board on the first train so that when you depart and cross the platform you’ll be on able to board the carriage nearest your exit when it arrives at the final destination.

There are lots of little hacks like this because trains always stop in the same place, and leave at the stated times.

Transfer times are often quite short too, particularly if it’s just walking across the platform.

Oh, yes. Definitely. The trains are extremely reliable in Japan, so people know exactly when they have to leave to catch the train they want. People also use smart phone apps that tell them the train schedules, so they'll often arrive right before the train leaves. Why would you arrive five minutes early and just stand around when you know the train is going to leave at exactly 7:32?

Strange to see this one voted gray--it makes perfect sense that with a very reliable system, people would modify their behavior (and possibly way of thinking, which is also interesting) accordingly.

I used to walk to Baltimore Penn Station for my commute. Without even trying, I'd arrive at the same minute almost every day. (My train, however, would not, because we're a failure as a civilization.)

Places in the world where public transportation works well and isn't a after thought, are indeed fascinating. It's strange how people support and pay for reliable service and do actually get it. A bit of a culture shock the first time I went overseas I was puzzled for a bit on how the train station actually knew all of the times and was confident enough to print them out.

> It's strange how people support and pay for reliable service and do actually get it

People in the U.S. pay for reliable service, we just get a lot less in return. The D.C. Silver Line cost $150 million per km, even though it's almost entirely above-ground and mostly runs through low-density suburbs along highway medians that were specifically reserved for it decades ago when the highways were built. Stockholm, in contrast, built a new line mostly underground through central Stockholm for about $250 million per km.

Most of the stations were only a single line, so no transfers. It seemed that the passengers knew exactly what time they needed to leave to make it to the station on time.

For my wife and her friends: yes, she knows exactly how long it takes her to walk to the station and will leave with only a minute to spare for the train to arrive.

I can't do that, I always worry I'll be delayed somehow haha

I just checked the San Jose light rail and it looks like they actually have a schedule, but I could swear a few years ago their weekend schedule just said "about once an hour".

Back in 2005 I visited the US for the first time, in San Diego for work with some colleagues. Being European we decided to take the bus from where we stayed to wherever we needed to go, as you do. Yes, we knew that the US was extremely car-centric, but after looking online and finding a public bus with an appealing route quite close to where we stayed (Mission Beach, quite nice!) we assumed we were just lucky.

That was an eye-opening experience. Firstly the realization that the schedules didn't really mean anything there (the bus showing up 30 minutes later than advertised), secondly the entirely insane experience on the bus itself - ranging from the behavior of the driver to that of the other passengers.

After that we immediately grabbed a taxi to a car rental place.

In some places in North America, especially because you have 'car culture' - you end up with a total other kind of class of folks on public transit. It depends on where you live.

Try taking the public transit in Monaco, for example - most do it. It's hilarious. Full gowns, diamonds, the works.

It's "funny" but in my area, people often block doors to let a bit more people jump in, disrupting the schedule in the other way.

What structure would help preventing this ?

doors set to stop people too far from trying to get in ?

One idea would be a sort of controlled-access staging area before the train that would admit roughly the capacity of the next arriving train. The doors to the staging area close as the train is arriving or the staging area is full, and the doors to the train don't open until the doors to the staging area area confirmed closed. It doesn't stop people from holding open those doors, but I think having 2 layers would help. That said constructing such a system in existing systems seems really improbable. You would have to build it in from the beginning.

fair point

Tokyo famously has employees in white gloves who will push stragglers onto subway cars during rush hours.