One pet peeve that gets to me is something that’s done on a lot of commuter railways and S-Bahns, the 10/20 minute schedule. The schedule looks like:
2:10
2:20
2:40
2:50
3:10
etc, when it should be like this:
2:10
2:25
2:40
2:55
3:10
This minimizes waiting and allows for frequent service every 15 minutes.
What are your pet peeves?
This is my hometown. Bus is supposed to come every 10, then 20, then 10 minutes. Really, they come once every 45 minutes to an hour due to traffic congestion and not enough busses. They operate from 7:00 AM to 8 PM, no service on Sundays.
Because of all this, you can’t rely on the bus for transportation, lest you want to show up to every stop an hour early so you don’t miss work. The only people who ride the bus are kids, people with suspended licenses, or people too elderly/disabled to drive. They only use the bus because they legally cannot drive. So now everyone says "Well I don’t use the bus, so why would I pay more taxes to support the bus? and funding gets cut, causing a negative feedback loop.
It was incredibly frustrating before getting my license to get around anywhere. And that was like 20 years ago or some shit, so bus prices are higher now than the $0.50 ~ $0.75 when I was in middle school/high school. I think it’s closer to $3 now to go one-way.
This is pretty close to the town I lived in for the last 10 years. The bus system was basically just a glorified school bus for the university. It could, if you planned well enough, usually get you on time if you were going to campus. If you wanted to go anywhere else in town, good fucking luck.
90% of the routes just went from a handful of apartment complexes to campus. If you wanted to go anywhere else besides campus (or even less convenient places on campus) it would require 2-3 busses and take 2-3 hours.
Minor nitpick: this is a positive feedback loop, as the response to the input produces conditions that lead to more of the same input