Buses in the United States move more people than rail, yet their average speeds in major cities are dismal. In New York and San Francisco, buses crawl at roughly eight miles per hour — barely double walking pace. Transit planner Nithin Vejendla argues that one of the most powerful fixes requires no new infrastructure, no controversial congestion charges, and almost no money: simply removing bus stops.
Buses in some cities, particularly those in the US, stop far more frequently than those in continental Europe. Frequent stopping makes service slower, less reliable, and more expensive to operate. This makes buses less competitive with other modes, reducing ridership.
The numbers are stark. American cities average about five stops per mile, with older cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco packing in as many as eight. European systems typically space stops at 300 to 450 meters apart — roughly four per mile. That difference compounds over every route, every trip, every day.
Why Frequent Stops Make Everything Worse
Each stop costs time in ways most riders never think about. The bus decelerates, kneels to accommodate wheelchairs and strollers, waits for passengers to board and alight, then accelerates back into traffic — possibly missing a light cycle in the process.
Buses spend about 20 percent of their time stopping then starting again.
That lost time directly inflates operating costs. Since drivers are paid by the hour, slow buses are expensive buses. Vejendla points out that close to 70 percent of Washington DC's transit operating budget goes toward labor, fringe benefits, and overhead. Every minute a bus spends idling at a lightly used stop is money that could fund more frequent service elsewhere.
The stop-density problem also degrades the physical experience of waiting for a bus. American transit agencies maintain so many stops that they cannot invest meaningfully in any of them.
This results in many stops being 'little more than a pole with a sign', lacking basic amenities like shelters, benches, or real-time arrival information.
Marseille, by contrast — not a particularly wealthy French city — provides shelters, seating, real-time arrival displays, level boarding platforms, and curb extensions at its stops as a matter of course. The difference is not wealth but arithmetic: fewer stops means more resources per stop.
The Coverage Trap
American transit agencies have historically maximized coverage — placing a stop within walking distance of as many people as possible — even when doing so guts the usefulness of the service. Vejendla frames this as a false trade-off. Many North American bus stops have overlapping "walksheds," meaning riders already have access to multiple stops within easy walking distance. Removing one barely changes access but measurably speeds up service.
A McGill study found that even substantial stop consolidation only reduced system coverage by one percent.
New York's transit authority tested this directly, increasing the distance between stops on a local route from ten to seven stops per mile — a 42 percent increase in spacing — yet average walking distance rose by only 12 percent. The math consistently favors consolidation.
One could argue that aggregate statistics obscure the impact on specific riders, particularly elderly and disabled passengers for whom even a small increase in walking distance can be a real barrier. The article acknowledges that uneven sidewalks and lack of shelter disproportionately affect these populations, but the proposed remedy — better-quality stops after consolidation — assumes investment that agencies might not actually make. That gap between theory and practice deserves scrutiny.
Speed as Access
The article reframes what "access" means in a transit context. Rather than counting the number of bus stops near a rider's home, Vejendla argues planners should measure where the system can actually take people within a given timeframe.
By speeding buses up, stop balancing actually increases the number of destinations reachable within a given timeframe.
This is the core insight. A bus that stops every block may technically be accessible to more people, but if it takes 45 minutes to travel three miles, the network it provides access to is functionally tiny. Faster buses expand the isochrone — the map of reachable destinations — far more than an extra stop every two blocks ever could.
Real-World Results
The evidence Vejendla marshals is persuasive. San Francisco saw travel speeds increase 4.4 to 14 percent after reducing from six stops per mile to two and a half. Vancouver's pilot removed a quarter of stops and saved passengers five minutes on average — ten minutes on the busiest trips. Los Angeles achieved a 29 percent increase in operating speeds and a 33 percent ridership jump on its Wilshire/Whittier corridor.
The cost savings are equally concrete.
In Vancouver, stop balancing on one route saved the transit operator $700,000 CAD (about $500,000) in annual operating costs owing to peak vehicle savings. They estimate they will save a further $3.5 million each year by cutting stops across their 25 most frequent routes.
Montreal's analysis found that stop balancing could "save a bus" — reduce the total fleet needed by one — on 44 separate routes. These are not hypothetical projections; they are measured outcomes from systems that actually did the work.
Reliability Matters More Than Speed
Perhaps the most underappreciated benefit is improved reliability. Each stop introduces uncertainty into a schedule. Consolidating stops reduces the variables a bus encounters, making arrival times more predictable.
Studies show that waiting time feels two to three times longer to passengers than in-vehicle time, and unpredictable waits feel longer still.
This is where the psychology of transit matters as much as the engineering. A bus that arrives reliably every 12 minutes feels faster than one that arrives unpredictably every 8. Operators agree: Vancouver found that stop balancing improved reliability most dramatically on the slowest, most erratic trips.
Still, reliability improvements depend on stop balancing being part of a broader operational strategy. Removing stops alone will not fix bunching caused by traffic congestion, operator shortages, or poor signal timing. The article presents stop balancing as one tool among many, but the enthusiasm for its simplicity risks implying it can do more heavy lifting than it actually can.
Bottom Line
Vejendla makes a compelling, evidence-heavy case that American bus systems are hobbled by a legacy of too many stops placed too close together. The fix is remarkably straightforward: widen the spacing, invest in the remaining stops, and reinvest the savings into frequency and reliability. European systems have proven this model works. The political obstacle is not cost or infrastructure — it is the instinct to maximize coverage over usefulness, an instinct that ironically drives away the riders it aims to serve.
Bus stop balancing is a rare example of a transit reform that is at once fast, cheap, and effective. Fewer, better-placed stops can improve the speed and reliability of buses, while freeing up resources to improve the stops that remain.
The strongest version of this argument is not that every city should adopt European spacing overnight, but that the current American default — inherited from an era of different ridership patterns and expectations — has never been rigorously defended on its merits. The data suggests it cannot be.
When people talk about improving transit, they mention ambitious rail tunnels and shiny new trains. But they less often discuss the humble bus – which moves more people than rail in the US, the EU, and the UK – and whose ridership has bounced back more quickly after Covid than rail.[ref 1]
The problem with buses is that they are slow. For example, buses in New York City and San Francisco crawl along at a paltry eight miles per hour, only about double walking speeds in the fastest countries. There are lots of ways to speed up buses, including bus lanes and busways, congestion pricing, transit-priority signals, and all-door boarding. But one of the most powerful solutions requires no new infrastructure or controversial charges and has minimal cost: optimizing where buses stop.
Buses in some cities, particularly those in the US, stop far more frequently than those in continental Europe. Frequent stopping makes service slower, less reliable, and more expensive to operate. This makes buses less competitive with other modes, reducing ridership. This is why, despite having fewer bus stops, European buses have a higher share of total trips than American ones.
Bus stop balancing involves strategically increasing the distance between stops from 700–800 feet (roughly 210–240 meters; there are 3.2 feet in a meter), common in older American cities or in London, to 1,300 feet, closer to the typical spacing in Western Europe, such as in Hanover, Germany. Unlike many transit improvements, stop balancing can be implemented quickly, cheaply, and independently by transit agencies. By removing signs and updating schedules, transit agencies can deliver faster service, better reliability, and more service with the same resources.
American bus stops are too close together, driving low bus ridership.
American bus stops are often significantly closer together than European ones. The mean stop spacing in the United States is around 313 meters, which is about five stops per mile. However, in older, larger American cities, stops are placed even closer. In Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, the mean spacing drops down to 223 meters, 214 meters, and 248 meters respectively, meaning as many as eight stops per mile. By contrast, in Europe it’s more common to see spacings of 300 to 450 meters, roughly four stops per mile. An additional 500 feet takes between 1.5 and 2.5 minutes to walk at the average pace of 2.5 to 4 miles per hour.
