"Explain Situation" type question

[dddannie6]

Hi,

So I am going over the wrong questions that I got on a practice online GRE exam. I have provided the question below for your reference:


This is the passage:


In recent years, the Holdsville Transportation Authority (HTA) has noted consistent delays on its Holdsville-River Valley bus, which runs from downtown Holdsville to the suburb of River Valley. In order to decrease the commuting time from Holdsville to River Valley, the HTA recently eliminated the James Street stop on the Holdsville-River Valley line. However, data show that the average commuting time from Holdsville to River Valley has actually increased since the elimination of the stop.

And the question:

Which of the following provides the best explanation for the increase in commuting time from Holdsville to River Valley?

A. Almost all of the commuters who previously used the James Street stop now use the adjacent Green Street stop, causing overcrowding and excessive boarding and de-boarding delays at the Green Street stop.

B.A small percentage of the commuters who previously used the James Street stop now use alternate modes of transportation to commute from Holdsville to River Valley.

C. 90% of Holdsville-River Valley commuters were in favor of eliminating the James Street stop.

D.The Holdsville-River Valley bus route runs along River Street, which is always congested with heavy automobile traffic.

E. The Johnstown bus line, another line operated by the HTA, has also experienced an increase in average commuting time since eliminating a stop on its route.

So the answer to this question is B. However, I do not understand why? So I know that I am not suppose to bring any outside knowledge when it comes to answering questions about the passages. Choice B assumes that there is a green street stop that the passage never mentions so I don't understand how I am suppose to figure that this is a plausible option. It also assumes that all commuters who use to get on James street went on Green street which is an inference I also have no evidence about. For all I know all commuters could have bought cars and thats why the streets are soo congested, which will account for who delayed the bus is being.

On my review, this question is labeled as a "explain a situation" kind of a question which I have not encountered in the past. How do I tackle these kinds of questions and are these likely to appear on the GRE?

Best,
Dannialles D

[tommywallach]

Hey Dannie,

Well, first thing's first. The correct answer is (A). (B) is the answer you picked on your test (I looked you up). When reviewing, the green check tells you where the right answer is. The black mark is the one you picked.

Now, let's talk about all your questions!

1. This is indeed an explain a result question. Are they common? No. But no individual question type is particularly common, to be honest!

2. These questions do not require any specific real-world knowledge. HOWEVER, they do require knowledge of how the real world works. So you won't need to know the political situation in Russia, but you will need to know that there are different countries, and they have governments. Not so bad, right? : )

I like to think of this type of question as going:

"Hey, you know what's weird? Weird thing. What's up with that?"

4. So, let's focus on what's weird.

They took away a bus stop, commute times got longer.

A. Almost all of the commuters who previously used the James Street stop now use the adjacent Green Street stop, causing overcrowding and excessive boarding and de-boarding delays at the Green Street stop.

This explains it! If everybody moved to another stop and it caused overcrowding, that could slow down the overall bus route.

B.A small percentage of the commuters who previously used the James Street stop now use alternate modes of transportation to commute from Holdsville to River Valley.

Alternate modes of transportation should speed up the commute! This just makes the weird situation weirder. Now, if all of the commuters switched to cars (and we know there were lots of commuters at that stop), that might slow down traffic overall. But "a small percentage"? No way.

C. 90% of Holdsville-River Valley commuters were in favor of eliminating the James Street stop.

Totally out of scope. We don't care what people thought about it.

D.The Holdsville-River Valley bus route runs along River Street, which is always congested with heavy automobile traffic.

We already knew there was traffic. This doesn't explain why traffic got worse.

E. The Johnstown bus line, another line operated by the HTA, has also experienced an increase in average commuting time since eliminating a stop on its route.

This is out of scope. We don't care about other bus lines.

Hope that helps!

-t