Game review: Bus

 

Bus, one of a number of games from Perplext that come in two-inch tall boxes, is a fast-playing affair with an approach to public transit that is unlike any city I've ever visited. The prophet Jarrett Walker calls these systems flexible transit, as opposed to fixed lines. Buses on fixed lines, in places like Cedar Rapids or New York or St. Petersburg or Washington, follow the same routes all the time, and it's up to the riders to figure out the best paths to their destinations. 

Example of a fixed line in St. Petersburg, Florida:
The Sun Runner runs the same loop, over and over again

With flex routes, on the other hand:

You can summon a flexible service just as you would summon a taxi, and a van or small bus will come to you, or at least very close to you. Unlike a taxi, though, it may still pick up other people during your trip, and there are usually restrictions on where you can use a flexible service to go. (Jarrett Walker, Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives [Washington: Island Press, revised edition, 2024], p. 49)

The buses in Bus are not like Uber or paratransit, in that there are specific stops where they pick up and drop off passengers. What differentiates them from fixed route systems is that where they go from each stop depends on the optimal arrangement of passengers' chosen destinations. 

This approach can help the transit vehicle avoid time-wasting maneuvers such as driving into alleys and cul-de-sacs. The path of the vehicle may still be meandering, but it is less so than if it was going to people's doors. (2024: 53)

Flexible systems work at low densities, like outer-ring suburbs and rural areas, where demand for transit is very low. 

The productivity of flexible services is usually under five boardings per hour, and most estimates of the theoretical maximum put it below ten.... The low maximum capacity means that if too many people want to use the service, the transit authority has to deploy more vehicles and drivers, which raises the cost of operations. The only alternative is to make the service less flexible, by turning it back into something like a fixed line. (2024: 52)

Ready for a game of Bus?

In the game of Bus, the secret is the town is very small, with service covering four square blocks, and only 15 potential passengers. There are three places for passengers to board (the white circles marked "BUS" in the picture above), and six possible destinations (the colored circles). So, there's no wandering around county backroads, but routes need to be improvised by players, and re-imagined every time they pick up another passenger. I think that could potentially frustrate a real live passenger, but the competition between buses--the green contraptions shown in the picture below--encourages efficient routes and timely dropoffs.

Bus game in progress

Playing the Game

Passengers come in pairs, are picked up at the bus stop and then taken to their color-coded destinations. Each passenger card has, in addition to its pair of passengers, a number indicating the "speed limit," the maximum number of spaces the player can move with each turn. For example, the top card shown in the picture above--the one that's shown right-side-up--has a blue passenger who wants to be taken to the blue dot on the grid, and an orange passenger who wants to be taken to the orange dot. The larger number "3" means the player driving those passengers can move three spaces (or less) with each turn. The smaller number "3" above it is the number of points the card is worth at the end of the game.

Drivers can pick up passenger cards any time they stop at a bus stop, as both buses are in the picture above. The most I've had at one time is two cards' worth (four passengers).  Since routes are flexible, picking up a second pair of passengers can affect the optimal order in which they're dropped off. The key, says the website, is "absolute efficiency," not feeling sorry for a passenger you've been toting around for a while. By the way, it doesn't specifically state this in the rules, but when I play the buses must drop off passengers on the side of the street with the colored dot indicating the destination. No reckless running across these streets, as I've seen people do in real life, even on stroads like 1st Avenue East by Lindale Mall.

The game ends when one player completes five passenger cards. Then points are totaled. I tend to try to get cards with high speed limits, and ignore the points, to my later disadvantage, I'm sure. In my experience, games can be completed in less than 15 minutes.

Evaluation

I'm not sure this is the best training module for an actual bus driver, but it does get a person thinking about public transportation, albeit a rather esoteric (in my experience) kind of system. For some smaller towns, this might even inspire a better way to do transit!

The variable "speed limits" will amuse anyone who's ever driven or ridden a bus. Except for Bus Rapid Transit routes, buses move at the speed of traffic, and stop when the other vehicles do as well as to pick up additional passengers. Maybe the variable speeds during the game illustrate how a huge issue for efficient transit is our society's over-reliance on private vehicles?

Video section

One of the best songs ever about transit (3:24):

Bus instructional video (5:36):

SEE ALSO: Taras Grescoe, "Time to Buy a Farecard," High Speed, 18 April 2025