The lack of availability comes down to priorities. Most bus agencies don't have the spare cash lying around to do this.
Probably because voters and politicians in those places don't value public transportation.
It also led to the Tiramisu project, which used people's smartphones to track buses and how crowded those buses were. https://tiramisutransit.com/
> So I guess the question is why isn't this available in many other places? The technology has been available for a long time
I live in a bigger city (Toronto), and speaking from experience, locations tend to be accurate to within a minute or so on most routes, and the app does a good job of telling you about route changes due to maintenance or detours due to construction.
Pre-Transit, Ottawa -- a medium-sized city in its own right -- had a system where you'd text a service your bus stop number and it'd give you the next bus's estimated next pass at that stop; I know that early on, that just did a lookup of the static bus schedule, but I believe it eventually started using live location data (though by that time I was using early versions of Transit anyway).
The US has this problem where transit gets continuously underfunded and people then act surprised when it's sub par. Canadian transit needs a lot of love, but US transit's consistently been some of the worst I've ever had to use.
This is yet another erosion to public ownership of infrastructure that will be lauded by hyper-capitalists as a good thing. This whole "enshittification" trend occurs because of the pressure to constantly squeeze a percent more out of consumers each quarter than the last. Why are we handing everything over to that? This service is -literally- guaranteed to get worse and/or more expensive over time.
Renters bemoan their landlord and also they're reading how to invest in real estate, rent out an ADU, and run 5 airbnbs. It's always real estate for your average person to climb the wealth ladder.
I'm stuck on that reality, people don't seem to want shared resources?
At least this is how I've observed it working here on AC Transit in the bay area. Many times I have sat at a bus stop for 25 minutes waiting for a bus that was always five minutes away.
In some countries like Netherlands, bus stops can even have LCD displays that show you a live ETA or any disruptions/cancellations without needing an app
At our (penultimate aboveground) stop you can look down the track and see if there are any trains waiting - even if there aren't, the live board still likes to claim there's one 'coming in a minute'
My only guess is it works off of what should be happening, and not what actually is going on
A municipal service cannot implement on-demand hailing because it has to serve the one or two people who can't use a phone (never mind that it would be cheaper to hire a personal assistant for them to book their rides). And so innovation is left to private enterprises.
Here come the downvotes! However, on a sibling thread about on-demand buses in China the same folks will praise innovation...
Government/municipal transit exists, in part, to service a “long tail” of need among the residents. Its goal is not innovation but reliable presence for many.
There is room for private taxis, buses and trains full of people, private cars, bikes, etc. in the wide distribution of transportation modes.
Note that I count roads as one of your transport networks.
The best measure of a transit project is "How many people use this per day". ie is it doing something valuable.
Note: I don't know of a solution for this other than more holistic government service planning. I do think it's valuable and good that those in need of government services can get there without a car. But it isn't always the sole fault of transit agencies that they have low ridership slow busses.
LA Metro also offers an on-demand hailed shuttle in several neighborhoods (Metro Micro). And has for several years, including several partnerships with Uber and Lyft that were ultimately terminated because private companies can't offer micromobility services as efficiently as a public agency can. Metro Micro costs a fraction of what LA Metro was paying Uber and Lyft but provides more rides in more neighborhoods.
LA Metro also has more e-bike coverage than any of the private e-bike services, most of which are now bankrupt.
I don't know where this "can't use a phone" thing comes from. ADA requires that transit services above a certain size offer paratransit, but doesn't specify how those rides are booked. I haven't run into anyone who can't make phone calls and can't book rides online.
In NYC we got dollar vans.
Whether its the Soviet Union trying to optimize shampoo production to create a single "shampoo" brand or a health care provider requiring a "certificate of need" [0] to open up, the results are always the same: no competition, bad service, low supply and high prices
Most US public transit systems are funded by taxes in addition to fares. The true cost of a bus ride can be many times the ticket price. If the services doesn't provide enough value for the service, let the customer decide.
> that also causes more traffic congestion and pollution because you've got a ton of cars on the road doing the job of a single bus/trolley/train
Buses are huge obstacles to the free flow of traffic (e.g. blocking right turns, slow left turns, blocking car and bike lanes with width) and are heavy polluters (diesel powered, oversized for most of their operating time).
Public transit agencies want to outlaw services like Chariot (https://sf.curbed.com/2019/1/10/18177528/chariot-san-francis...) because they don't want the competition.
Which is to say a mostly empty bus scales down very well. The limits to scaling a bus are up not down - a problem more cities should have.
This is all wrong. At any given moment, the average bus will replace at least a dozen cars, so a bus "blocking a right turn" for a few seconds is significantly less of an obstacle than a dozen or more cars in that lane.
Buses make slow left turns, yes. But not much slower than normal cars, and it's far more likely that you'll miss a left turn due to a normal driver staring at Instagram on their phone instead of watching for the green turn signal.
Buses do not take up more than their lane in the U.S. Also, buses and bus stops were around before bike lanes, which (being generous) serve 1/100,000th as many people.
One diesel-powered bus still pollutes less than the vehicles it replaces.
And finally, Chariot wasn't outlawed. It just couldn't compete on the basis of real-world economics even though it was charging a multiple of what Muni charged for the same routes. To put it bluntly: the private company so inefficient that it couldn't make the numbers work even charging 5x what the public agency was charging. (SF did suspend Chariot for a weekin 2017 because Chariot was found to have been employing drivers without licenses.)
That's not surprising because the public agency is mostly tax supported. Fares never reflect the true cost of the ride on public transportation.
What about the true cost of cars? I don’t drive, yet my taxes are used to subsidize car ownership, including the storage of vehicles in public spaces. The various externalities — pollution, congestion, deaths, excess asphalt — are not included in the true cost of private car ownership.
You still rely on roads, either for cars driven by other people to take you places or to service you with package delivery and fire and medical services at a minimum.
I have no problem with roads in the abstract for public services, including for fire protection and buses. I do have a problem with using my taxes to subsidize private car ownership. Again, why should I help pay for someone to store their private vehicle on city streets? I also have a problem with all the externalities of private car ownership that make me less safe.
Yes, transit is subsidized in the US. However, I won’t ignore the fact that private car-ownership is just as heavily subsidized - if not more so — as mass transit. If we are having a conversation about the efficiency of one form of transportation over another, we need to look at them both through the same lens.
It will be different in each state, since each state imposes different levels of gas taxes and has different registration fees.
I don't believe that's true.
As a homeowner this is abundantly clear by looking at your tax bill, and something that I suspect renters don't think about. I don't grumble much about paying my taxes, but when you look at the breakdown, it's insane how much goes to things I don't personally use or even get much benefit out of. I like the idea of public transit, but the design of the system in my area seems to be to get the poor where they need to go, not as an alternative transport method for people who can afford private vehicles.
>Buses are huge obstacles to the free flow of traffic (e.g. blocking right turns, slow left turns, blocking car and bike lanes with width) and are heavy polluters (diesel powered, oversized for most of their operating time).
They also something like 20x the damage to roads that cars and trucks do because of the way the weight is transferred to the axels. I think buses are important, but a lot of negatives are ignored because they are absorbed by the overall system.
The poor would probably be much happier with a $250 Uber voucher than a bus pass.
> They also something like 20x the damage to roads that cars
This is very evident in my city where they had to install huge concrete pads at every bus stop because of the deep ruts and potholes busses cause when they start and stop.
This is a blindspot Uber will have on traffic that’s not currently serviced by their taxi model but maybe could be serviced by a shuttle. But maybe that traffic is riskier / more volatile since it’s not on Uber already. Interesting optimization problem.
albeit they use boats https://www.thamesclippers.com/plan-your-journey/route-map
Uber just bought the naming rights
Similar; surely more expensive big picture, but far more convenient.
* Bus stops are often far from homes and offices
* There’s rarely parking near stops so you can't drive to it
* Routes are fixed and rarely change.
* The process for petitioning for a new stop is painfully slow and done based on rough approximation of demand, community input, budgeting, and other red tape. I can't even guess what data they use to decide.
* Many people can’t or won’t walk long distances to reach it.
* The websites, maps, and schedules for buses are often very bad and hard to interpret
* They have hundreds of thousands of users in a metro area.
* Get those users to enter where they live, where they need to go, and roughly at what time.
* They find a group ~30 people with similar locations, routes, destinations, and times to create a route
* It doesn't have to be door to door. Just an acceptable walking distance at both ends.
* Dedicated stops don't have to be approved and built. Just pull over on a major street.
* It is extremely easy to use Uber
* There is an accountability component where if you behave badly you will be banned from the shuttle service
https://smdp.com/news/newsom-signs-bill-allowing-big-blue-bu...
> Current law allows organizations like the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) to issue prohibition orders. BART is the only such agency that has actually issued prohibitions in California, giving out 1,118 such orders from 2019-2022. About 30% of orders issued by BART in 2022 were for battery or threats against riders.
I'd pay extra to not have to be afraid I won't make it home to my kids.
Friends / people I've seen using uber have "home" and "work" saved. And they have trip history. They likely already have a very good sense of this stuff.
While it was working in normal conditions (before Covid and war) it wasn't that good. Routes were limited and timing iffy. Inside it was a regular small bus, so nothing fancy. And more expensive that public transport. So it is a serviceable transportation if there are no normal bus available at your route and at the same time uber shuttle route is matching yours. But any proper city transport beats them on all counts.
PS: from the article it seems this is not about Uber Shuttle feature, but a different new ride share feature. Anyway, I'll leave my comment, but consider that it is not quite relevant.
- Uber asks to use bus lanes because because once again, and ITT, private sector frames public sector as “a peer product” that should have competition because this is America and so on
- Uber gets access to bus lanes
- pub transit degrades bc now it shares service with competition that operates under an entirely different model. A lion is introduced into a zoo with house cats, but hey they’re both cats and think of the zoo observers, they deserve options!
- Taxpayers fund Uber and buses, only one has the revenue model to provide unbiased social good
- Buses, like Amtrak and pub transit, degrade and degrade and degrade - look how government can’t do anything!
Turning a profit” for public services is the most harebrained meme that is simultaneously deeply damaging and continually propagated by certain folks, to include ITT.
Or we could just all get mercenaries for our burbclaves. Not like police turn a profit either!
But, I agree on the part that they will slow down a bit existing public transportation, but, if Uber served routes that are currently difficult to reach, it has public service as well.
Why would someone pay $10 for the Uber service, meanwhile the local one is just $3? There is a good chance that the local bus doesn't cover certain areas properly, or stops too frequently, making it a slow trip for regular commuters.
Ps. In Europe there is both public and private trains, both running the same tracks. I don't see a problem with this.
"like between Williamsburg and Midtown in NYC" -- That's route is baffling and probably not needed. There is already a subway, (L then Transfer to 1-6 lines, or R/W). During peak hours, the subway is faster.
This model has the chance to succeed based on that alone.
US offers a more "bus-like" service and Shanghai offers a more "Uber-like" bus service.
Like some kind of carcinization in public transport.
mouse_•3h ago