[Talk-us] Bus "flag" stops?

[Paul Johnson]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 8:33 AM, Harald Kliems <kliems at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 5:15 AM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:
>>
>> or are they "dynamic" (meaning you can waive your hand in any place along
>>> the route and the bus will stop)? In this case I'd not map any bus stops
>>> (as there aren't actually "spots").
>>>
>>
>> Also possible so much as there isn't an actually signposted stop within 1
>> city block.  But that does solve the other question.
>>
> From your initial description and then looking at the Tulsa transit page,
> I thought what we're talking about is not just the relatively common "you
> can get off wherever you want _on a fixed route_." With the deviation areas
> to me it sounds more like "You can get off wherever you want _in an area of
> x blocks around the nominally fixed route_". Which seems much harder to
> tag. Am I misunderstanding?
>

I'm dealing with both problems.
http://tulsatransit.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Traveler-March-2015-2.pdf
is the current edition of The Traveler, our quarterly master schedule book
which I'll be referencing since I can't link directly to what I'm talking
about.

Most routes (with the possible exception of 251 (future 751?) Fast Track
and the 9xx buses, which only serves like 8 or 10 signposted stops
exclusively) have many stops with no physical presence that are officially
bus stops recognized by Tulsa Transit.  The unmarked stops that appear in
the GTFS and driver's schedule paddles (of which I've only seen one driver
ever actually use; Tulsa Transit very much runs on indian time and drivers
typically radio to each other if they've got transfers, holding the
receiving bus where it crosses the originating line, so a long term goal is
getting a GTFS-Realtime feed going) are essentially locations where it's
very routine for passengers to hail a bus and the agency just started to
officially recognize it as such.  Bonus round is that there's a few *transfer
points* like this, where it's essentially impossible to use the system
without local knowledge as a result (a situation I'm trying to fix through
documentation).

Routes 508 and all of the 8xx routes have deviation areas, marked stops,
unmarked stops, and you can wave it down anywhere outside a one block
radius of a marked stop.

Humorous bit in that book: on PDF page 26/print page 24, you can find the
offline trip planner (no joke, you mail it in!).
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