Public transport

I just returned from my second trip to Budapest in the last year, and one key reason the city is a great place to be is its public transport. Specifically, it's breadth and volume of transport options that share a key component: during the day, you never have to wait more than 3-4 minutes for anything. This is key because it reduces the penalty per line exchange and allows for lots of short lines that the user can combine as they need, without getting out a timetable and planning.

In contrast, Seattle's bus system has large gaps between successive buses. When I lived in Queen Anne, I could take the 545 to work from Westlake and be there in about 30 minutes. Not bad, right? I just needed to get to Westlake. Any of the following lines would do: 1, 2, 13, 15, 18. And since any of those would be around any minute, this worked great!

Correction: would have worked great, if that assumption held true. The 2 and 13 ran down Queen Anne Ave and stopped 2 blocks from my place, but only ran about every 15 minutes combined. If I just missed one, I'd have to wait a long time for the next one. The 1 came over on Olympic and also stopped about 2 blocks from my place, but ran equally infrequently. All these lines, however, stop at Mercer and Queen Anne Ave (the 15 and 18 came up Mercer, alternating every 10 minutes). So, to give myself the best shot at catching any of these, I'd walk slightly further and between the 15 and 18 would never have to wait more than 10 minutes (except when a bus would inexplicably never show up) and sometimes I'd get lucky with one of the others. However, there was a mass convergence: all lines were supposed to be at Queen Anne and Mercer at 9:31. If I showed up at 9:32 (after walking about 5 minutes), I'd have to wait 9 more minutes.

For reasons that baffle me to this day, these lines then stop every 2 blocks (are we to believe that asking people to walk one extra block is a big ask??), including through the ride-free zones where all the homeless people add to the bus-stop overhead. Every stop features people getting on one at a time and if you're lucky, tapping their ORCA card, otherwise fishing for change. God forbid a person in a wheelchair want to get on the bus: that's about a 2-minute operation (in contrast, transport stops in Budapest happen in about 10-15 seconds). In other words, these bits of time add up real fast. And somehow, the bus would always get to 3rd and Pine/Pike right as the 545 was leaving (wait penalty: 9-15 minutes, depending on time of day).

Let's recap: walk 5 minutes, wait 0-9 minutes, ride the bus for about 15 minutes, walk 1 minute, wait for the 545 (0-12 minutes), then add 30 more minutes. Getting to the 545 (and lacking control over when I get there relative to 545 departure times) costs me 21-40 minutes.

I lived 2.1 miles away from the 545 stop and after a while decided that walking was the best course of action. It takes 26 minutes to do so every single time, and I can plan my arrival time to line up with the 545 so I don't have to wait as long. Taking the bus from Queen Anne occasionally saves me a few minutes and works out better, and often causes me to miss my connection. Let's call it identical for this exercise. How big of a fail is it that the break-even point for distance where riding the bus becomes worth it is in the neighborhood of 2 miles?