Regular reminder that all new videos in 2024 have English-language captions!

Waiting 20 minutes for an "every 10 minutes" bus and then three buses showing up is an experience everyone who has ever used transit has had.

In the Netherlands, the amount of signal priority is actually based on their delay. The first of a bus bunched, being delayed, will have more priority while the second bus will not get any priority. Also a good way to de-bunch busses, I think.

In London, when they started tracking all the busses by GPS, busses bunched up behind started waiting for a few minutes to even out the service. They'd play an automated PA, that went something like "this bus will wait here for a few minutes to even out the service". Unfortunately this led to a fairly extreme reactions by frustrated passengers, such as shouting at drivers, even some abuse. No excuse for that of course, but they had to stop doing it! I think the practice now is for the bus affected will be told to deliberately drive slowly. The announcement is still used very occasionally but they're quite rare now.

It's one thing if a route running every 5-10 minutes run back to back. It's another thing when this happens to a route running once every 30 minutes.

I used to take a specific bus route in Toronto every day, and EVERY DAY leaving work, rather than the maximum wait time of 15 minutes it should have been, I would wait between 30 min and 1 hr before three or four buses would show up. It was the most consistent and frustrating thing in my life at the time. I sent complaints every month or so, but it never changed. It was only so frustrating because I KNEW there must be a solution to make it at least a little better, but I’m sure the operators simply did not care to solve the problem. I started fantasizing about stealing a radio and directing the drivers myself based on the real-time arrivals GPS system they use/Nextbus app.

If I’m in a hurry I get infuriated when the bus sits at an empty stop for no apparent reason. However I think the reason is probably that they are countering bunching. Great video thank you!

Another potential good idea is to let the rear emptier bus overtake the delayed bus and also have both buses exchange their schedules so the emptier bus can play catchup eaiser while the fuller bus can have some capacity to play with

The problem becomes even more complex when it happens with buses from different routes. Like, not a bus for 5 mins straight, then 5 buses from different routes show up at once at the stop simply doesn't fit them. It is even more frustrating, when the buses have gps tracking, and the authorities aren't doing anything about it...

I would love to live somewhere where the busses are frequent enough for bunching to be a problem.

As a note with London busses if bunching occurs usually the bus is told to wait at the stop to even out the service, this is usually is accompanied by announcement saying what is happening.

Bunching is a common occurrence on the corridors of the jitneys in Hudson County, NJ because there is no preset timetable. NJ Transit is put at a disadvantage because not only do these jitneys show up way more often than NJ Transit buses do, but the jitney drivers all speak Spanish. They appeal to Latinos. A high percentage of Hudson County is Latino, and by being Latino-owned and operated, they take advantage of this. Frequency is their key to success, so even though they charge more than NJT, people still take them because they show up first. They also have the advantage of stopping at every single corner. They operate between George Washington Bridge, Journal Square, and Newport Centre mall, and some go to the PABT as well. Similar situation in Flatbush, Brooklyn. But a difference is there, the jitneys are operated by and served for West Indians. When the MTA discontinues bus routes in Brooklyn and Queens, these vans take over. During periods when even limited public mass transit is unavailable, such as the January 2005 Green Bus Lines and Command Bus Company strike or the December 2005 New York City transit strike, these vans were crucial.

Love that you're taking this on, Reece. This is so much of what working transit planners in North America have to deal with on a daily basis, and try to explain to the public when we are, for example, proposing to remove stops. Also really looking forward to your headway management vid.

MBTA loooves having duplicate (or semi-duplicate) routes especially outside of downtown. Usually theyll have 30-45 minute headways and it's always hilarious having BOTH buses one after the next

Exactly, transit priority signals are extremely important, just having transit priority signals can go a long way! Transit is a service to the people, and of course they're longer than cars and carry way more people than a car so it must have priority to get everyone inside where they need to go in a timely manner instead of contributing to congestion on the roads. When there's transit priority signals, bus lanes, or even a dedicated bus highway like in Pittsburgh, these are the things that make a city's transit network so much better. In Pittsburgh's case, the South Busway opened in 1977 along the Route 51 corridor to allow buses to skip the crowded and light-filled Route 51! And it provides connections to the city's light-rail. Another example of a bus highway is the Adelaide O-Bahn guided busway. Built to serve Adelaide's suburbs, its unique feature of a non-transfer service direct from suburban streets to the city center made it attractive. Adelaide's track is 12 km/7.5 mi long and includes three interchanges at Klemzig, Paradise and Tea Tree Plaza. Interchanges allow buses to enter and exit the busway and to continue on suburban routes, avoiding the need for passengers to transfer to another bus to continue their journey. Not to mention, the O-Bahn has sump buster devices to prevent cars.

“The green wave”, which moves at the speed of public transit, is nice for bicycle riders as well, because they can also utilize it.

i would really love to see a video talk about paratransit, which while it doesn't often bunch suffers from just about every problem associated with it. It's always extremely far behind schedule in a way that increases throughout the day (hope you like getting home from work 3 hours late), very high stress and unpredictable, its a genuine nightmare. The nightmare is always worse in places that have no other transit to speak of (urban sprawl, especially low income areas that can't afford a 'real' bus system and have a lot of elderly and disabled people). very, very few people are aware of how unbelievably bad it is, and it would mean a lot to see somebody talk about it, since it's a fact of life for people who must rely on paratransit in areas that don't have 'real' transit. I would do it myself but I think I would start screaming and never stop haha

In Hong Kong, bunching is very common which are typical bad, but there are certain routes that intentionally bunch because the number of people waiting is overwhelming that a single double-decker per minute is far too little to handle, but they are regulated that they cannot divert away from the original route to reach the destination quicker. Therefore, the solution is to have multiple buses bunch up on departure, so that everyone can get on the bus fairly easily. This is where the best long-term solution is to split routes but it's not so easy.

Hey Reece! Longtime viewer (since you had around 20k subs I think?) and I’ve just gotta say, the production quality of your videos lately has been fantastic! The graphics in particular have really been stepped up since I first started watching (did you even have graphics back then?) and especially in the past few months - keep it up! You’re easily one of my favorite transit-oriented channels

This would be a great problem to have in my town where buses only come every 30 minutes. If they're early and you miss it, that's a 30 minute wait, which means you'll likely be very late for whatever you needed to get to. Waiting for 10 minutes and having 2 buses show up would still be a better experience than what we have. XD

In Turin in the 80's ATM (now GTT) developed a management system to keep the service more regular and to know what happens on the vehicles. In the 2000's this was updated and now every driver knows if they are on schedule and distance from the previous and the following veicle and obviously communicate with the management center.

Toronto is very focused on complaining about the regular driving experience while fully depending on long from built new transit without bothering to do much to improve what we have. It's ridiculous that we don't have transit priority signals configured for every major surface transit route.

I have NEVER seen buses in Charlotte be bunched up like that... granted I also never see them on time in the first place, but that's a different story 😅 Oh, I see the problem. Almost no one uses Charlotte's buses so they can't fall behind with passengers... :(

As a bus driver with several years of experience driving high frequency routes through busy neighborhoods, what my colleagues and I would do is play leapfrog. I regularly pushed the bleeding edge of my schedule, leaving runners for the next bus. As a result, I regularly caught up with my leader, and I would pass them whenever nobody onboard pulled the stop request and speed onto the next stop, picking up all my leader's passengers and allowing them to become a de-facto drop-off only bus. That would allow them to make up time and pass me again. Leapfrogging minimized my leader's subsequent delay, and relieved them of some of their work. Back at the garage, there was a group of drivers not well liked because they wouldn't play leapfrog and just let their leaders do all the work.

Happens quite often in the Lisboa metro area. Cadencies are schedule quite wide and during rush hour it gets even worse since bus lanes are non existent. A lot of people opt to drive instead which as we all know makes traffic even worse.

Ticketing here wasn't an issue for me since the only thing a passenger had to do was to tap it's smart card into the reader and it was ready to go in the blue corridor(Lima). The real cause of bunching when i tried to return home was bad infrastructure. You see, in the line covered by the blue corridor there are 2 bypasses and none of them were intended to put public transit as a priority. moreover, it is a place where you can often find vehicles in a gridlock. The result that you will have is 5 up to six buses from different routes bunched up.

😅Once i saw a bus being overtaken by the same busline, supposed to go every 20 min. They kept overtaking eachother for the rest of the line. This is extremely rare and was probably caused by a road incident earlier. The first bunching was kind of helped a little bit by the fact that the empty bus kept overtaking the delayed bus at bus stops.

In Dresden it is common that the empty bus overtakes the full bus so it can clear the upcoming stops. And in my experience bunching is a sign for an overwhelmed transit form, so another solution could be to switch from bus service in that certain route to tram or from tram to stadtbahn/metro.

You mentioned frequency, which exacerbates the risk of bunching. There's another parameter which is line length : the longer the line, the more delay (or advance) a vehicle is likely to get. So designing the network by avoiding needlessly long lines is also a measure to improve reliability, like transit priority (but cheaper).

A major factor in bunching is having to load disabled passengers via the lift, which can massively increase the amount of time needed at a stop, especially since the driver generally has to leave his/her seat to secure the wheelchair and then un-secure it when the person wants to get off again.

I think the one situation where you might want multiple buses at a time is when there is a replacement service for a (less frequent) train (due to construction works), and they all leave after the train arrives and people switch over. (Though even then it might be useful to add another bus in-between the bunches.) Also, it's really noticable you were in Berlin recently - a lot of Berlin footage mixed in.

I love the NYC Subway solution to this: if downtown 6 trains are delayed, and the train in front could delay the train behind, they make an announcement that the next stop is bleeker st and then brooklyn bridge. This skips Astor place, Spring st, and Canal St, so a bunch of people get off. But when you do hear the announcement it doesnt take much thinking to realise that another 6 train is probably just behind it.

My regular route often involves mandatory stops to adhere to the timetable, often for several minutes when traffic is light. Even though I know that it means I will still reach my destination at the scheduled time I suppose it's just human to feel slightly frustrated by not moving.

I love the video! I find a bus in Ottawa interesting because they purposely send 2 buses out at the same time sometimes, so the two buses can take turns picking people up and leapfrog each other at each stop, effectively halving the stops and saving me a lot of time. However, when the buses are doing pick up and drop off or mostly drop off both buses stop together pretty often, which isn't as great.

Last month, for the first time ever in Sydney, I was waiting for a bunched bus and the first one went on "set down only" and skipped our stops to catch up with timetable. Just 2 minutes later another came long. I thought this was great. I would rather have a bus go on set-down only now and then than removing stops.

This is really interesting! Thanks for the explainer on bunching, it's something that I've noticed as a rider but had very little understanding of.

Another problem with bunching is that beacause people have been waiting for so long for a bus, they all get on the lead bus as soon as it arrives, so when the second bus gets to the station there's almost no people. Then most users will feel that the buses are overcrowded, even though the total capacity could have been enough for everyone to go comfortably.

Thanks for exploring this issue, Reece. When it comes to buses, I sometimes feel that direct communication between drivers might help -- for example, the driver of bus #2 with its many empty seats could agree to leapfrog the jam-packed bus #1 to clear out the upcoming stops along the line.

Most of these suggestions seem super do-able and practical, but fewer stops creates accessibility issues. If you're walking to the bus stop with a mobility aid or small children an additional 2 blocks can actually be pretty far. I rarely see elderly and disabled people, or parents with small children on busses outside of the downtown core, and I wonder if the distance between stops plays a role in this (of course there are several other reasons too, but it would be interesting to know if this is a factor).

When I was a kid I could only dream of watching content related to public transit, thank you for taking the time to make it happen!

This is one of the best produced RMTransit videos I've ever seen.

I love how at the start of the video, while Reece is asking "Have you ever...?" the video shows a bus from my home town, where yes, yes I have. Many times.

The MTA here seems to allow lateness, but not running early, so drivers will sometimes stop and wait for the schedule to catch up. Plus if there’s bunching the lead bus will stop while the trailing bus will move to the next stop (if no one is getting off there). They’ll then continue to pass each other like this to try to stop overcrowding at stops, or on the bus itself. Of course if one bus is stuffed to the gills they won’t stop to pick up more passengers at all.

In Berlin these kind of busses are called Rudelbusse (Pack Busses). In the last five years it got worse. More and more lines are effected. Another phenomenon in Berlin are subway ghost trains. The Daisy System shows that the next train should come in 4 minutes. These 4 minutes run down (Sometime it takes 6 minutes to do so.) and it start to blink, like the train is coming now. It blinks for several minutes, than it disappear from the board and the next normal train shows up. I wonder what happened to all the trains. Wormholes?

Good stuff. Bunching is a huge issue in Copenhagen where I'm from. Especially on the trunk "A-bus" lines. Like on Line 1A for example it is not uncommon, especially northbound, to wait for 20-25 minutes and see 3-4 buses in a row, for a line that'd normally run every 7.5 minutes. And thats just one example. Though bunching sometimes occurs on the S-train as well since so many lines share a congested network core, it means malfunctions or errors can happen super easily. And of course my own mother who already doesn't like public transit was in the city last night. I had dropped her off at a park n ride station and when she was trying to get back home the trains for her line got bunched and the departure displays at the station didn't display that properly. So she already waited 17 minutes for her train then even more, and she was already distrustful of any and all information displayed since she could not count on it. Especially when even the platform staff said they just didnt know why it did this. She ultimately ended up taking another line after waiting 35 minutes. This was on top of her forgetting her phone so communication was a pain and she couldn't look up the journey planners live feed... which she wouldn't have done regardless because she is already so distrustful of transit and dislikes it so much. Sorry for the long rant.

Here in Portland, OR, you'll occasionally see a bus from another line behind a bus on another line, because many of our routes share the same bus stops with eachother. It's always kinda funny to see that. But after we opened up our first Frequent Express line - buses that run every 12 minutes or less in a semi-BRT system - it's really not uncommon to see a normal bus following right behind the iconic green bus, which is even more hilarious.

Excellent video. I've asked a lot before but I'd still love to see an explainer video of the La Paz/El Alto transit system. It's just a fascinating system and I'd love to see it through your eyes

Thank you for making this video! I’ve been noticing this for years. Cities take notes!

Bus bunching is the perfect argument for dedicated lanes.

4:40 Finally some footage from Tallinn, Estonia. Any chance of a dedicated video about Tallinn? If no, a video about the Rail Baltic project would be interesting.

You can explain things like these very good! I understood it very quick 👍👍👍

Great video! 1 technique of slowing transit vehicles is "holding" using a headway management algorithm for every vehicle on the line. It creates a unique variable dwell time for every vehicle at every station based on the location of the other vehicles on the line.

Ah, the short turn, something I've experienced a couple times on our wonderful German railways... Do note that for regional trains at least (and where I live), most significant delays tend to be around three to eight minutes and bunching only happens at more exceptional instances like infra failures (how often did the points fail again? lol).

As rightly pointed out, a ton of things can cause bunching. In Chicago, I find a ton of time is spent boarding passengers on buses, as boarding/fare paying can only happen from the front. I understand the North American fear that boarding from all doors might lead to some people not fare dodging, but if it leads to the system operating more efficiently and reliably (which would increase ridership), that seems like a trade-off worth making.

I know we're not supposed to point this out, but the biggest initiator of bunching, particularly on any network with high-step boarding, is wheelchair loading. I remember San Diego Transit used to have high-floor buses, and loading or unloading a single wheelchair could take 5-7 minutes. On 15 minute headways, that one rider could eat the entire spacing just by getting on and off the bus. Near as I can tell, low-floor buses and level boarding is a hugely essential part of the solution, far more than station number or spacing.

In Warsaw, a city with A LOT of long, cross-city bus lines bunching can sometimes go to the extreme of 4 or even 5 buses arriving at stops together. But there are lines without bunching, and these are lines running on corridors with separate bus lanes.

Your research always impresses me.

An excellent video. But the points made in a graphic at 4mins 15secs need to be stressed. In places (eg most of Britain) where drivers are still expected to sell tickets, there can be 'random delays' while the passenger struggles to find the fare (or even the right app!), and/or the driver struggles to find the correct ticket on their machine.

I'm a bus driver usually the controllers are allowed tell drivers who are ahead of schedule to slow down but aren't allowed tell drivers who are behind schedule to speed up as that could be dangerous.

I once saw 5 (FIVE!) northbound Jane Street busses bunched together at the stop at Wilson Street here in Toronto. I often see 3 busses bunched together on Kipling Avenue here in Etobicoke.

When i started studying urban planning in the middle of copenhagen, it was my first experience with "big city" transit. I had never seen bunching before and was just so flabbergasted at 3 busses showing up at once, then being stuck in traffic for 20 minutes for a walk that could take 5 minutes on foot.

My university’s transit system somehow manages to have this so badly😭 the route I take has 2 buses on it and it takes 30 minutes (with light traffic) to complete the loop, so on a good day there’s 15 minute headways (no schedule, you kind of just have to hope). The issue is that SO OFTEN they get bunched up, so you can barely miss the two buses and at that point it’s quicker to just walk rather than wait the 30 min for a bus route that would’ve saved me 5-10 minutes

Which is very stupid if you are on a bus, but the next bus which normally goes 15 minutes later, passes you, becoming the lead bus, but after everyone has already been picked up, so then instead of the front bus being the slowest, the back bus is the slowest (last time that happened to me I tried transferring to the front bus during a loop in the route but I missed it)

The worst nightmare is missing a connection ... when said connecting was the last possible option for the day.

Hello, bus driver here. 👋 The type of vehicle is also important. Double decker buses have longer dwell times at bus stops because it takes longer for people to go up and down the stairs. An articulated bus would carry as many passengers but they would be able to board and alight faster. The other thing is how many doors there. Most buses in the UK are single door so this also slows things down as everyone has to enter and exit the vehicle through a single point. Ideally there should be two or more doors per vehicle but whilst the UK bus system is geared more towards a revenue seeking model rather than a public service model, we're likely to stay with single door buses.

Thanks for that video! We have several bus stops in my neighbourhood that are now unused because of bunching. The service is every 7-10 minutes, but one can often wait 25 minutes. Then two buses arrive and skip the stop because they are late or full. Since the buses don't pass on schedule anymore, one can wait up to 35 minutes to get their bus. People have taken the habit of walking further away to take other, less frequent, buses that are on time. The same line is both under and over-utilised. There has been talk of a subway, then a REM extension to help with this, but with CDPQ getting out of the project, we are back to square one.

When I caught the 99 at an unpopular stop going to high-school sometimes I'd be skipped 3 or 4 times. Bus drivers need to coordinate their skips. They would all point behind them like the next guy wasn't going to just skip me too hahah

I consider there to be a far worst nightmare for transit users: The Short Turn. Especially at night in bad winter weather, being dumped short of your destination in an unfamiliar neighbourhood with no idea when the next vehicle is coming especially when you had timed your trip as precisely as you could in advance to get to where you need to on time and now are at risk of being late? Horrific. I had this happen on the 511 streetcar in Toronto the other night and was reminded of how unreliable this makes transit seem. I would love for you to do a video on short turns similar to this one. Does it even happen with other transit agencies?

in bucharest, there is a huge problem with bunching due to traffic and also due to the drivers which leave together so that they can chit-chat at the other end, and also some drivers just leave from the end whenever they feel like it. it's pretty rare to see lines with every vehicle nicely distanced apart. thankfully, the situation has started to change, but not a ton.

10:05 the digital systems where I'm from are accurate up to 10 seconds and they change colour if you're late or too early and are usually well respected by the drivers, I've never heard a radio call of someone saying to slow down or speed up

In my area of Sydney, Australia where I live, the transit authority changed the bus operator for the contract area I am in as of October last year. Since then, bunching on the main road that goes to & from the major hub and delays & cancellations in general have gotten worse. I have needed to leave home half an hour earlier to get to & from work since.

About ticketing causing delays (text at 4:17): Some intercity buses from Umea get delayed significantly by ticket and bagage handling at the university hospital bus terminal. It's so bad that they might accumulate a 10-minute delay en-route further north. There's also a particularly bad signalled intersection in Umea, where buses frequently get stuck. This particular traffic light is on a road section between the intercity coach station and the UH, a 2 km section with six signalled intersections, none of which are transit-prioritized.

You’re bringing back memories of when I commuted on the NJ TRANSIT 87 bus in Jersey City. Phenomenally frequent service on paper, stops every other block, and 100% on super congested two lane streets. So yes, tons of bus bunching, despite the best efforts of schedule planners, as there seemed to be no political appetite for changing traffic signals and no space for much in the way of infrastructure. Fortunately Jersey City is so transit dense I could counter the 87’s bunching by taking either of two other bus routes that stopped a few blocks away and walking as well…

The best solution for this is on very busy routes ,create an new express route so that people can reach downtown faster or build a subway line along the route (ofc the subway stations is not every bus stops )

My worst nightmare is when a crazy person/people enters the train car I'm in. While I keep hearing there is more protection on the trains in my area, I never see it.

I once saw a bus pass me by at a stop with "departures only" on its dot matrix sign and then a couple minutes behind it was another bus that picked me up, but I haven't seen it since. I've also once been on a bus in the evening and it stopped for a few minutes and the driver said we were ahead of schedule so it would be a couple minutes before we started moving again.

In college, there was a loop service around the campus that ran every few minutes. There was one stop on the far side of campus with a timer. The driver would set the timer for 10 minutes (or something, forget the value) when they left, and if another bus reached that stop before the timer hit 0, they had to wait. Prevents bunching, but annoying if you're on that bus sitting at a stop for 10 minutes. The loop ran both clockwise and counter-clockwise though, so not many people were actually on the bus at that timed stop.

In Detroit one culprit I've noted is school traffic, Between about 2:30 and 4:00 some routes get overwhelmed with high school students and there are no extra buses to accomodate them. But the worst offenders are the oversized trains that can spend over an hour blocking an east-west arterial road while they uncouple and recouple cars in yards that are not meant to accomodate trains of that size.

Sometimes I've seen buses leapfrog others in the bunch. A while back I read something about drivers being actively told how far ahead the next bus, and instructed to keep back. There's also having schedule leeway in the turnaround point, though that works better with lower frequnecies and also shorter routes.

Seems like having the late bus pass up pick-up stops until they're on time again is the most powerful and direct solution. I think I recall Vancouver busses passing me by with a "Next Bus Pls" message on their front sign. If you can see the following bus it's not annoying to have to wait a few extra minutes. If it occurs and you can't see the next bus, and you haven't had previous experience with this, then it can be bewildering.

Back when I was a bus commuter, pdx drivers on my high-frequency route would often roll past my stop in a vehicle heaving with passengers and make giant "GET THE NEXT ONE" gestures. The first time it happened I was annoyed but I figured it out soon enough. They'd also sometimes just switch to drop-off only and use the route display to communicate it, until things evened out again.

A man barely misses his bus. "You run three minutes early!", he complains to the driver. "No", the driver replies, "I'm actually seventeen minutes late.".

I used to take the second bus to school, only waiting a couple minutes for an empty bus, otherwise was a cramp and packed bus and missing both would be half an hour wait... pain...

Growing up in India, which was 50 years ago, bunching happened frequently, the bus behind just overtook the bus in front without stopping at the same stop, provided no one was getting off at that stop and even out the service. There was and still is a bus driver and ticket conductor.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world but particularly in Sydney, there are 2 types of bus drivers. 1) Schedule? What schedule? I thought this was a leisurely Sunday drive. 2) I'm on the last lap of this F1 race and I'm coming first no matter what

Bunching used to be endemic on the TTC a decade or so ago. Wait 25 minutes, only for 2 buses to show up within seconds of each other. I remember taking the same bus that arrives with less people regularly. It's still a problem but more frequent service and express buses have alleviated the issue somewhat.

Bad as bunching is (and I encountered a conga line of six buses in Stoneybatter in Dublin yesterday evening), what's worse is the ghost bus: the scheduled bus that never arrives. This can be a consequence of bunching, but I've also seen it happen at times where traffic hasn't been bad enough to cause delays.

I think I should praise my transit agency, I rarely expirenced this problem. Dresden has the changing rythms of traffic lights for the Tram to fasten things up, and a app to know when the next Tram / Bus appears.

One of the bus routes I regularly catch often has two services arrive at once when I get there, but it's soon after a connecting train arrives. I have no idea if TfNSW does it like this on purpose, but it does work well for those periodic bursts of riders.

I’d love to see a video about the transit system in Prague, it’s a pretty solid system (often compared to Berlin, though at a smaller city scale). It has been partly covered by Adam Something (who lives there afaik) but I’d love to see a deeper dive

In Warsaw tram stops are usually long enough to accommodate more than 1 tram at a time so that in case few lines get bunched together passengers don't need to wait to board one vehicle at a time.

It's good that you bring this up, from January 6, 2024, Belgian public transport De Lijn has a new transport plan that will purchase half of their bus stops and said they want people to go to the nearest bus stop & tram stop. But some people who live in rural villages have to there is no bus stop on their king door, they have to go by car to a big city and then take the bus & flex bus (and some flex buses did not arrive on time) & tram

6:55 something like that happend to me recently, my bus was delayed by 10 minutes so to even out service our bus skipped a pretty full stop with the bus after mine stopping. Berlin also has some express bus lines, that stop way less

I live in the San Francisco Bay area and there was a route in San Francisco the #15 that would often bunch up and the drivers would do what we referred to as leapfrogging the lead vehicle would stop at the stop, and if the trailing vehicles did not have a request for people to get off they would drive on by and now the vehicle that was in the second position now becomes the vehicle in the first position and stops at the next stop to pick up passengers, and if they have anybody getting off they'll get off. In this way, the buses would actually move pretty quickly as a pack, but still annoying when you're standing there for 20 minutes and then four buses show up in a row. To your point, this route has been replaced by a tram.

Here in Adelaide we would have 2 school buses cat & mouse and a normal one in the mix as well on the school route as well 1 or 2 of them was an artic as metro buses do school bus runs

I've seen buses on the same number do a "leapfrog" where the bus behind overtakes the bus in front and picks up passengers at the next stop, and then the bus that's behind which was previously in front overtakes it again and so on.

for neighborhood scale routes, close stations and very high frequency are necessary to keep buses competitive vs the much faster on demand e bike. removing stops and reducing frequency essentially transforms your neighborhood shuttle into an intercity coach - which is a different kind of bus.

You said that this happens a lot more often to buses but in my experience, trains have this problem more often because if the train in front is just a couple minutes late, the next train has to wait because there is no way to pass it, only in big train stations via a platform change, whereas with buses here if one is too late, the other one just passes it.

I remember going to school one morning and waiting 40 minutes for a bus (only a handful of stops after the interchange, on a route that has buses every 10 minutes), 6 buses turned up at onc, all full (to the door full), had to wait for the 7th bus, which was still nearly full, I was late for school before I bordered the bus, but so was everyone on my route so was pretty easy to explain to the teachers, especially given some of them were on the buses themselves. This was in the days before having a mobile phone was the norm, especially for children, so I couldn't call or text anyone. The joy.

I really can't say which song Floor sings is my favorite, it always depends on my mood - but I can say one thing; when I often lack energy during the long polar night, this is the song I listen to the most (several times a day). But no matter what Floor sings, she always gives me exactly what I need to feel good. That's what I call art