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Comment by JimboOmega | Hacker News Reader

I can't shake the feeling that it's an answer to the problem "I like the idea of commuting in a shared vehicle, but the bus is dirty and sometimes homeless people ride it."

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I have used buses in SF. They are unreliable. Sometimes a bus just never shows up, regardless of what the schedule says. Then two buses show up at the same time. This has happened to me several times.

> Then two buses show up at the same time. This has happened to me several times.

This is called bus bunching, here's an explanation. http://www.wbez.org/series/curious-city/why-buses-arrive-bun...

I know someone who works at Muni (and generally will answer all my random muni questions).

Bus bunching is, as that article notes, kind of inherent to the system.

And the obvious solutions (like leapfrogging) drive people crazy. Actually, a lot of Muni's problems relate to "people get really upset when you do the obvious fix". Like reducing the number of stops... good luck with that!

>Then two buses show up at the same time

Just two? You've never caught a bus in Chicago then..

You say that as though disliking a ride on a filthy bus while sitting next to a homeless guy who smells like urine and stale vomit and is leering saliciously at every woman on the bus while murmuring obscenities and rubbing his groin is some sort of illegitimate and invalid reason that only a precious bourgeois person would dare to think.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Nice one, going for the emotional and gender-based play. Homeless people are people too, surprisingly, and in my experience those that complain about homeless people on public transport are whinging about the mere presence of them, not saying that they're as extreme as your example.

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