Friday Jul 4 2008
All times are London time
As a cyclist, I find London’s buses - not just the bendy ones, but all of them - to be infuriating. They take up so much space! But a good economist always asks, “compared to what?”. Here’s the answer, via Virtual Economics. The original is from a campaign by the city of Munster, I am told. It matches up pretty well with my intuition.
About Tim Harford
I write leaders for the FT and two columns for FT Magazine: "The Undercover Economist", about economics in everyday life, and "Dear Economist", in which readers' questions are answered, tongue-in-cheek, with the latest economic theory. To find out about my books, "The Undercover Economist" and my new book "The Logic of Life", or about my radio series, More or Less, see timharford.com.
It doesn’t seem to simulate real-world conditions very well, though. Those bicycles appear neither to be on the pavement nor facing the wrong way up a one way street.
Posted by: wowbagger | March 24th, 2008 at 8:13 am | Report this commentIt’s not a comparable picture, the frame of reference is not the same on all of them. The car photo is zoomed in more then any of the others. Really I see nothing of relevance in the photo.
Posted by: Destin | March 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm | Report this commentThe main problem with the picture is that it assumes the bus is FULL. It rarely is. For the bus user it surely gives a better more flexible service with a smaller bus every ten minutes instead of a big bendy every twenty.
Incidentally, the opprobrium heaped on cyclists is also over-the-top and over-hyped, I have no issue with them riding on empty pavements or not stopping at a red light if there is no danger or disruption to either walkers or other drivers.
Posted by: RNB | March 24th, 2008 at 1:36 pm | Report this commentVery droll Wowbagger. Ever been to Muenster? I have, first time I was there I nearly got knocked over by a horde of cyclists as I got out the hirecar—I’d parked next to a cycle lane. A local friend tells me they have a very high crime rate, but it’s all bike theft, and most locals own several bikes.
Yes, the car pic is zoomed in, but you can see where the cropping is, and the line of cars clearly goes past the pavement cafe (if it’s the one I think it is it’s not that expensive for a central location).
Cycling is very popular there already (partially because it’s very very flat), but the buses are frequently full as well. I like the pic, nice and demonstrative.
Really need to get my bike back out of storage now I’ve not got a car.
Posted by: MatGB | March 24th, 2008 at 7:30 pm | Report this commentThe idea of this campaign was to show how efficient busses are in terms of traffic space (?) as opposed to everybody taking his own car or even the bike (as MatGB pointed out, riding a bike in Münster is a given - if I had a choice I’d never take the car into town - but then for me it’s only twenty minutes on foot to the location shown anyway ;-)).
The group of people is the full capacity of the bus you see - so that’s the reference point.
Yes, public transportation is a solution for crowded streets, as any New Yorker would be able to tell you (although there they’d probably need teleportation devices to cope).
Posted by: Arne Reuter | March 25th, 2008 at 11:26 am | Report this comment