kiwkak wrote:

I take a different tack. You wait 15 minutes between buses because yourcounty doesn't know enough to run more thru busses. Long-distance thru busses are the ones with the biggest ridership. Within one hour, patrons can go twice as many places on a thru bus, and can walk from its stops to three times as many places, as they could on a normal three mile back and forth bus route.

Thru busses go from a suburb neighborhood through a downtown. Then they go through a second downtown and then continue out to the suburbs from there. A thru bus keeps going in one direction for as long as the union contract lets a bus driver drive. If drivers have a lounge downtown, they can swap themselves into the driver's seat and keep the same bus driving quite a ways.

The main problem with a thru bus is that if it gets late, it stays late for the rest of the route. A wise planner would compensate by putting in a couple more minutes of waiting time, just before the bus starts into any critical section of its route. Put in several more makeup minutes during rush hour.

Southwest Airlines is killing its competition because it has thru planes which stop at four or more cities a day. Southwest is always making up five or ten minutes -- it's a normal part of their business day.

P.S. Credit where credit is due. Google alone is fighting the government's need to spy on, well, probably spy on lots of church ladies. There's a shortage of terrorists. Yahoo has already spilled its dark secrets to the feds.