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Comment by mung | Hacker News Reader

Busses have to be one of the worst modern mass-transit options. Auckland NZ has bus lanes, so that is fine. But they are diesel. So they are noisy and polluting. Get two or three busses in a row and you cannot see past them. They block entire roads, and really, the have a low head count for the amount of space they take up. I'm not even speaking as a driver, I'm speaking as a pedestrian. Busses really suck.

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A large bus on a road takes space of 3-4 cars. With a typical car carrying 1-2 people, the hugest bus uses space more efficiently if it carries more than 8 people; a smaller bus, 1-3 people. Where I live (admittedly a large and reasonably dense city), bus occupancy is an order of magnitude higher at peak, hours.

This is instant efficiency; this does not take into account the fact a bus is not point-to-point, and carries more passengers than its average occupancy, because passengers get on and off along the way.

It seems like your compliant should be directed more specifically towards diesel vehicles than actual busses. There are low-emission busses out there.

Here in Norway the trend is toward battery electric buses via diesel hybrids and gas (not gasoline).

But even the diesels are quieter than the buses I have seen in the US and certainly a lot cleaner.

Buses in both the US seem stuck in some alternate reality where clean fuel and quiet motors are somehow impossible. I realize that this might well be an unwarranted generalization from my experience in the Raleigh-Durham Triangle, perhaps it's better elsewhere.

Also, good diesels are fine. We have lots of terrible diesel buses here in Hamilton, ON, but I've seen diesel buses which don't spew ghastly acrid smoke everywhere.

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