Sounds like transit scheduling in the SF Bay Area. I forgot how many times I've seen a Caltrain depart just as a matching BART train was arriving in the station, just because they're separate agencies who technically coordinate some schedules, but in practice don't have any system constraints to enforce synchronized transfers.
When my sister graduated for her Electroengeering degree there was a fellow who wrote his master thesis about how to efficiently schedule bus lines.
If I remember correctly one of the findings was that it would make sense to not let all buses start or finish at a bus/train station. I found that interesting. Maybe I can find it.
I don't understand;you're suggesting it would be more efficient to pickup/dropoff at random points in the city?
That would just decrease the stop-to-passenger effeciency in favor of passenger-to-walktime, but the optimization should be trying to favor the former?
