[HN Gopher] In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van inst...
___________________________________________________________________
In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having
to take a bus
Author : moino06
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-07-20 10:40 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Sorting out the numbers here:
|
| - 15 vans.
|
| - 37,000 trips / week (6-day service). I suspect most are on
| weekdays.
|
| - 6,170 trips/day
|
| - 13.5 hour operation (5:30 am - 7 pm)
|
| - ~457 trips / hour
|
| - ~30 trips / van-hour
|
| I'm not sure how many seats per van, though I suspect 6--9 (3
| rows of 3 seats). If a trip is 15 minutes, then that's an average
| of 7.5 passengers/trip.
|
| Keep in mind that net trips includes the deadhead (no passenger)
| portion.
|
| The ridership numbers seem unusually high to me. I'd be
| interested in seeing trip profiles.
|
| By comparison, BART in the SF Bay Area has an annual ridership of
| over 20 million, and over 104,000 weekday riders. (I also suspect
| a Bart rider is two trips.) Bart moves 3x what Wilson are
| claiming for weekly numbers, and roughly as many people in an
| hour as Wilson does in a day. The Transbay Tunnel can accommodate
| 24 ten-car trainsets per hour. Each car can carry more than 200
| passengers at crush load, or 48,000 passengers/hour for the tube
| as a whole.
|
| https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity
|
| https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars
|
| Put another way, microtransit is trying to shoehorn transit into
| a sprawl- and car-centric urban landscape. Dense development and
| well-travelled routes are what make transit efficient and viable.
| zeroth32 wrote:
| In Asia it is called marshrutka. It is amazing to see how US
| reinvents wheel and gives it cool names.
| pif wrote:
| [OT]
|
| > In Asia it is called ...
|
| So a few billions of people, speaking a multitude of languages,
| all use the same name for a concept? How nice!
| richiebful1 wrote:
| If I had to guess it comes from Russian marshrut/marshrut
| (route). Marshrutki/Marshrutkas in the former Soviet Union
| typically run on fixed routes just like busses.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| Indeed, and in Germany it's called "Rufbus" and that's what you
| have in small villages where a regular bus service is not
| available. I know there are such in other countries but I don't
| know the other names.
| midislack wrote:
| You can't even pronounce that word in most Asian languages.
| Loughla wrote:
| We already have this in my rural area in the states. There's a
| shuttle that picks people up to funnel them to either the local
| parking lot near the interstate (to catch a larger bus to the
| closest city center) or to disperse them to the 5 or 6 large
| employers across 3 counties.
|
| You call the company, they send a van. Usually you get picked
| up with two or three other people and it might take an hour to
| get where you're going (when a car could do it in 30-45 minutes
| in a direct route). Or you schedule a regular pick up, and they
| coordinate to have you ride with 10 or so other people, but the
| ride is a lot shorter.
|
| And it's 100% free. The large employers pay to subsidize its
| use for the entire area because they get such a value from it.
| You can get the shuttle to take you anywhere.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Also "jitney" in the Philippines (and formerly USA) or "dollar
| van" in NY
| riffic wrote:
| this (mini-buses, _dial-a-bus_ as it was known in the 70s) was
| one of the patterns in Christopher Alexander 's _A Pattern
| Language_
|
| https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl020.htm
|
| > Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up to six
| people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone, able to
| provide point-to-point service according to the passengers'
| needs, and supplemented by a computer system which guarantees
| minimum detours, and minimum waiting times. Make bus stops for
| the mini-buses every 600 feet in each direction, and equip these
| bus stops with a phone for dialing a bus.
| kyletns wrote:
| This is amazing. Of course a full train or bus can be an order of
| magnitude more efficient, and so should be installed and run
| where there's demand, but replacing the prohibitively-expensive
| private option of Uber with an affordable, if slower, city option
| is just... lovely!
| erjiang wrote:
| In my past life I built and sold dispatch software for
| microtransit / on-demand rides. (UberPool as a service, more or
| less.)
|
| What this article doesn't say:
|
| * Many, many cities have something similar already, but only for
| riders with disabilities. ("paratransit") You need to schedule
| your ride the day before, but they will take you from door to
| door.
|
| * The cost per ride is quite high: more than $20 per ride, often.
| This cost is borne by the city, while riders pay little to
| nothing. In very few cases does it make financial sense - most
| places aren't replacing their buses with microtransit.
|
| * The best utilization I've seen is on campuses, where there are
| a fixed set of stops in a small region, and a large population of
| people who can't or don't want to drive (maybe due to limited
| parking).
| anyoneworks wrote:
| Istanbul has an oddly good system, where vans run a set route,
| but you can ask for them to stop wherever. I feel like this
| would be a better balance that would allow for greater
| coverage, while also lowering the cost of equipment and in the
| very least, eliminating the need to walk as much to a stop.
| It's also faster because it's basically a large taxi, so once
| the van is full, you only stop where the passengers need. This
| is only a supplement there, but I think it would work better
| than the majority of bus set-ups currently used.
| slackfan wrote:
| So... a taxi, or a route taxi like they have in Russia with extra
| steps.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| These make good partners for bus systems that run lots of busses
| during rush hours but become infrequent or nonexistent at night
| and weekends.
|
| Including a few free rides on this service with a season ticket
| for a bus makes it much easier for people to go carless.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Do they pickup multiple passengers? It does seem like subsidized
| taxis, and not really "mass transit," but I'm glad it's helping
| people. I think a tram system powered by overhead lines is much
| more efficient, and better, they just need to lay the tracks.
|
| I think about Berlin and how you can get just about anywhere on
| the tram system, and if you are well behaved your trip could be,
| well, free.. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/public-transport-in-
| berl....
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| I've often calculated how long I'd have to spend on mass transit
| to get to some desireable event and back - and decided,
| reluctantly, to skip it. Because the waits+rides would take
| longer than the event lasted.
|
| The option to use microtransit _once a week_ would be well worth
| paying twice as much.
| The-Bus wrote:
| NYC needs a broader bus network, but it doesn't need to use the
| existing large (or XL articulated aka bendy bus) to do so.
|
| Hong Kong has Public Light Buses that carry 1M passengers a day:
| https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_trans...
|
| Dollar vans effectively do this currently, but it's cheaper than
| any light rail or other solution, especially for outer borough
| transportation.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I take the buses in Brooklyn pretty regularly, and I don't find
| the routes themselves especially lacking[1]. But higher volume
| would be nice, and I'd be interested to see evidence presented
| that smaller buses would accomplish that (versus more dedicated
| bus lanes and high fines for blocking the lanes).
|
| [1]: https://new.mta.info/map/5261
| bdcravens wrote:
| The small city I grew up (about 30k) had a similar service in the
| 80s.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Aren't these just subsidized taxis? They don't help with
| congestion, they don't help with pollution, I don't see how they
| ultimately bring down costs since you still need individual cars
| and drivers...
|
| Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way
| at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that
| work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an
| Uber/Lyft with anyone else despite selecting the pool option.
|
| Am I missing anything?
| Symmetry wrote:
| For a bus line with only a few people replacing the bus with a
| car is going to reduce pollution on net. Replacing a full bus
| with a number of full vans will be bad for the environment, of
| course, but on most routes and most of the time busses aren't
| full. Ideally we would use a mixture of busses and vans
| depending on the demand for a particular route.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Less parking needed if people take these. In my suburb, it may
| be hard to get an Lyft and it may cost like $6 to go 1-2 miles
| if they do show up. Other than that, if I don't have a car,
| there's no bus to take me to most parts of the city, I'd have
| to walk or ride or a bike.
|
| Yes, they seem like subsidized taxis but with more capacity
| than normal taxis and maybe less direct routes than normal
| taxis. If people have more time than money, I think this can
| help.
|
| In terms of pollution and congestion, if they increase the
| density of people traveling more than they increase the total
| distance traveled, then I would assume they help reduce both.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| There are van taxis that do this in third world countries,
| they're not terrible. Faster than a bus line and cheaper than a
| regular taxi. I think if pooling was more of a norm and people
| were a bit less time sensitive it'd work great here with the
| support of an app.
| bluGill wrote:
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > People are very time sensitive.
|
| People have been convinced they _need_ to be time
| sensitive. "30 minutes or it's free", "next day shipping",
| etc. are everywhere. In many cases, we're not as time
| sensitive as we've been trained to think.
|
| American public transit is so frequently poor that it often
| means a 10 minute trip by car might be two hours by bus,
| but a whole bunch of people would be fine with a 30-45
| minute option being available.
| ipaddr wrote:
| In America you have the appointment time, class start
| time, shift start time. Changing that would take a huge
| social shift
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's been a few years since I was in Europe, but I'm
| pretty sure folks there make appointments and show up at
| work/school at a specific time.
|
| Public transit is fine for all of these things _if_ it
| runs reliably, often, and with sensible routing. You
| leave a little earlier, but someone else is doing the
| driving, so it 's a nice time to read, check email, etc.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > but I'm pretty sure folks there make appointments and
| show up at work/school at a specific time.
|
| Your recollection is perfectly correct, we certainly do
| make and keep appointments!
| pessimizer wrote:
| If we wouldn't expect the van drivers to be less time
| sensitive, we certainly shouldn't expect all of society to
| become less time-sensitive to accommodate inconsistent
| transportation. We can't afford to have people late all the
| way down, because lateness accumulates by blowing
| coordination. It's through promptness and good logistics
| that we save time that we can use to relax.
|
| We should just prioritize consistent public transportation.
|
| edit: if you're five minutes late at doing something you
| want to do, you may have wasted five minutes, or you more
| likely haven't wasted any time, because you spent that five
| minutes doing something _else_ that you wanted to do.
|
| If you're five minutes late meeting someone, you're far
| more likely to have wasted their five minutes, unless they
| can shift other small tasks around to fill those five
| minutes.
|
| It adds up to a lot of lost time spent waiting and
| uncomfortable.
| phphphphp wrote:
| I think you're missing that the demand dynamics are different
| in underserved areas. They're an alternative to a fixed bus
| route, so there's a much greater tolerance for flexibility,
| i.e: 30 mins for one of these micro-transit buses to show up,
| and a 50% longer journey time vs. an Uber is very acceptable as
| a bus alternative, but an Uber rider would be very unlikely to
| accept that, which means Uber Pool is very unlikely to find a
| co-passenger whereas micro-transit is.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Also woth noting in many cases these are intended to help
| link one in further out areas to existing mass transit
| infrastructure - IIRC Via in seattle has its service area to
| help one get from home to a link light rail station.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > They don't help with congestion
|
| Definitely not the point of these. In larger cities, bus
| transit is for reducing congestion without massive
| infrastructure investment. In smaller cities, bus transit is
| purely for helping people who can't/don't drive get to where
| they need to be.
|
| The problem is, there is not enough ridership in smaller cities
| for a bus to be frequent or cover a wide area. This solves that
| problem, but it only works since congestion isn't a problem.
|
| As soon as there enough people to worry about congestion, bus
| transit is better.
| beej71 wrote:
| Also in larger cities, large busses are frequent. If my small
| town ran busses every 10 or 15 minutes, there'd be a lot more
| riders.
| pif wrote:
| > They don't help with congestion, they don't help with
| pollution,
|
| So what? The first and only point of a public transport system
| is, you know, transporting people. Limiting congestion and
| pollution comes very far in terms of priority, and only once
| the core mission is fulfilled.
| conductr wrote:
| We already know how to fulfill the mission. Every decision
| after are second order and involves trade offs of various
| factors to various stakeholders. This is sacrificing
| congestion, pollution and possibly cost efficiency in order
| to gain ride time efficiency
| jltsiren wrote:
| The primary purpose of public transport (within an urban
| area) is reducing traffic. The vast majority of people can
| use private vehicles just fine, and if traffic is not an
| issue, the rest can use taxis. Subsidized ones if necessary.
|
| Reducing traffic is the primary goal. When there is less
| traffic, the city can reserve less space for streets and
| parking. That leaves more space for the purposes people are
| in the city for. Also, areas with fewer cars tend to be more
| pleasant than areas with heavy traffic.
|
| Congestion and pollution are secondary issues.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > The vast majority of people can use private vehicles just
| fine,
|
| Roughly half the population of the UK has nowhere off road
| to park the car and only enough space in the road to park
| one or sometimes only one for each two dwellings and you
| risk someone else taking the space if you move your car.
| This means that while it might be literally true there is
| nonetheless a substantial number of people for whom using a
| private vehicle is not just fine.
| jltsiren wrote:
| You have it backwards.
|
| Half the population of the UK lives in areas where public
| transport has enabled limiting the space required by
| traffic. In some other parts of the world, similar
| situations have been resolved by removing excess houses,
| making more space for traffic.
|
| Also, private vehicles include bikes and scooters, which
| are often more appropriate for urban settings than cars.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The object of a public transportation system is to transport
| the _public_ , not individual people. That means mass design
| considerations, which are the same considerations as anti-
| congestion. Reducing pollution is a nice side effect.
| gruez wrote:
| >The object of a public transportation system is to
| transport the public, not individual people
|
| "Individual people" comprise "the public".
|
| >That means mass design considerations
|
| In a town of 49,000 people, and where there are only 5
| buses that run once per hour, I think such considerations
| isn't really worth considering, at least compared to the
| convenience factor of not having to wait 1 hour.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > "Individual people" comprise "the public".
|
| The point I was making is that public transportation
| systems should be designed with multiple people in mind.
| Otherwise they're just subsidized taxicabs (which is
| fine, in an extremely rural area, but Wilson is a
| moderately sized city right on I-95).
|
| > In a town of 49,000 people, and where there are only 5
| buses that run once per hour, I think such considerations
| isn't really worth considering, at least compared to the
| convenience factor of not having to wait 1 hour.
|
| "Mass design" doesn't mean a NYC-scale subway or bus
| system; it means a combination of (1) incentivizing mass
| transit, bringing demand up, and (2) expanding access to
| transit and restructuring routes to meet demand. It
| wouldn't surprise me if Wilson hadn't done a ridership-
| based restructuring of their routes and timetables in the
| last 30 years.
| bluGill wrote:
| They can't transport many people either though.
| vel0city wrote:
| Most of the time these are replacing areas with bus lines
| with small ridership. Its cheaper and on average faster to
| service those areas with this model instead of driving a
| lot of empty busses around constantly. If ridership
| increases to the point where busses again make sense I
| imagine they'll resume bus service to those areas.
|
| Some of the transit around me had areas change to this
| model. I know people who used to ride the bus and now take
| this. Being able to dispatch a ride (and even schedule one
| a day ahead of time!) makes things a lot easier, more
| reliable, and faster. Previously they would have to walk a
| few blocks to the main street and wait in the 100F weather
| for up to 10-15 minutes. Potentially they'd have to change
| busses depending on where they were trying to get to, often
| having yet another wait in the 100F weather. Now they're
| able to schedule their ride ahead of time, the car meets
| them outside their apartment, and they're able to get a
| ride directly to nearby shops or the light rail/major bus
| terminal to get someplace else.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| Plus, the counter-factual is not the same use of bus systems,
| but instead lower use of bus systems in favor of private ride
| share companies who don't have the incentive to limit
| congestion or pollution at all. The consumer revolution has
| plainly exposed that people will consistently choose the more
| convenient option.
| feet wrote:
| I hear trains are pretty damn convenient in Europe. I
| wonder why the US doesn't have anything like that, hmm
|
| Cue: people who claim some absurd innate differences while
| ignoring the lobbying efforts of car manufacturers
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The US does have trains in the north east, or so I have
| heard.
| nicwolff wrote:
| > These days, the service runs about 37,000 trips a week, Lentz
| said, or more than two and a half times the 26,000 rides the old
| bus system ran in a typical, pre-pandemic week.
|
| Are "trips" different from "rides" in some way that makes this
| arithmetic correct?
| bombcar wrote:
| Sounds like a "trip" is roundtrip (two rides) - so 37,000 trips
| is 74,000 rides, which is more than deuce and a half times
| 26,000.
| patch_collector wrote:
| I recall Hong Kong's solution, at least when I was there a decade
| ago. You had the Metro with fixed rails for core routes, then
| double-decker buses that went to additional areas in large loops.
| Next were the green minibuses that had small loops, branching off
| from the other services. After that were red minibuses, which had
| specific pickup locations, then would drop you off anywhere
| nearby. All of which could be paid for using the same Octopus
| card.
|
| It was great.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I think Hong Kong can pull this off in part because so much of
| the city is long thin corridors which can be nearly entirely
| serviced by the metro, commuter train, by light rail in the new
| territories (and I guess the cable car). This covers a high
| percentage of commuter needs, and so buses, minibuses, and
| taxis are to some extent gap-fillers to get people from major
| arteries to the remaining small proportion of outlying
| destinations.
|
| It is great, you are right.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time.
|
| I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either
| came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under
| snowstorms. Add to that the <10mph average speed that a typical
| bus that stops every 2 minutes achieves, and a 2mile commute can
| last easily 45 minutes.
|
| I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not
| align with my destinations.
|
| Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower
| housing costs, I start exactly 20' before my punch in time, I
| park under my office building and I am never late (maybe 1/300
| due to an accident). Oh and I always arrive dry.
|
| Commuting in general is bad. Commuting by bus is one of the worst
| things that us peasants have to deal with on a daily basis.
| kevincox wrote:
| The biggest problem with most bus systems is that they use the
| same roads as private traffic. This means that for any
| individual person taking the car is faster than taking the bus.
| Of course all of these people who live in car-dependent suburbs
| already have a car so the additional cost to drive is low and
| they will get there faster and arguably more comfortable (sure,
| you can't read a book but you have your own personal
| environment). The end result is that the roads are full, need
| constant expansion and no one takes the bus.
|
| Subways on rail are often faster than driving so they tend to
| be incredibly popular and greatly reduce traffic on the road.
| But subways on rails are not the only way to ensure that public
| transit is fast.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| You know it's not by accident, right?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
| Symmetry wrote:
| Streetcars, combining the routing inflexibility of trains
| with the vulnerability to traffic of busses. We could have
| saved them if we'd banned cars from city centers and you can
| argue that if you want to but it wasn't GM that did them in.
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Vulnerability to traffic" can be alternately expressed as
| "right of way violated by individual cars." The history of
| the decline of streetcars in the US is the history of
| automotive companies convincing the public that cars take
| priority over all other forms of transportation,
| consequences for the commons be damned.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The same reason they invented the crime of "jaywalking".
| saimiam wrote:
| I'd argue Jaywalking is probably one of biggest reasons
| traffic in India is so chaotic.
|
| People simply walk on the street and it wrecks traffic
| flow, reducing all flow to stop and go with accompanying
| honking.
|
| I, for one, wish jaywalking were treated as a crime on
| Indian streets.
|
| Maybe then we'd fight to take back the pavements
| currently used by hawkers and for parking.
|
| Side note: how does one reverse the tragedy of the
| commons? How do we make people treat roads and public
| areas like a shared resource?
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Some European cities, especially in the Netherlands,
| found a solution, and I think it works quite well.
| saimiam wrote:
| You mean bikes? India is usually too hot to cycle.
|
| Here's another statistic which amazed me when I first
| heard - apparently 70% of working age Mumbaikars (Mumbai-
| ites?) walk to work.
|
| That could be another reason why there are so many people
| on the road all the time.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think they probably meant the Netherlands' general
| urban planning principles. Cycling access is one small
| part, but there are lots of other things that can be
| copied: making it impractical to drive in city centers,
| restricting commercial traffic to highways and off-hours
| stops, fully separating pedestrian and cycling crossings,
| etc.
| gruez wrote:
| Under "Counterarguments" section it's been argued that the
| streetcar lines were already on a downward decline by the
| time GM bought them, so blaming GM seems tenuous.
| akgerber wrote:
| US streetcar lines were in the 'transit death spiral' in no
| small part because they were largely built before cars were
| common, and became dramatically slower once car traffic
| started obstructing their right-of-way, which they were
| usually required by contract to maintain.
|
| (There were many other factors, including their
| overexpansion during a securities bubble and that their
| concessions were usually for a 'nickel fare' with no
| inflation adjustment, which lead to declining real revenue
| over time)
| martopix wrote:
| Except in Switzerland.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Thrymr wrote:
| The city of <50k residents from the article is never going to
| have a subway system on rails. This is a solution for small
| cities that replaces the terrible bus service you've
| experienced. The microtransit system described specifically
| eliminates the bus stops that you cite as drawbacks.
| ahoy wrote:
| Public bus transit and private car transit are inherently in
| conflict. You basically can't run them on the same streets and
| expect the bus to not suck.
|
| You could, of course, run the bus in a dedicated, separate
| right-of-way to solve that problem. But like you said, just
| build rail at that point
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > You basically can't run them on the same streets and expect
| the bus to not suck.
|
| That's just nonsense or specific to some areas. I spent a
| couple of hours on the Stagecoach buses today travelling from
| Paignton to Kinsgwear and then Dartmouth to Totnes and back
| to Paignton. The same journey by car would probably have been
| more expensive because of the cost of parking the car in busy
| tourist towns and it wouldn't have been much quicker. Some of
| the roads are barely wide enough for two cars to pass each
| other yet the buses still keep to their timetable.
| andylynch wrote:
| Quite. Bus schedulers are very well informed on traffic
| patterns and account for this. Some days when things are
| faster then usual this means they will ask drivers to stop
| for a bit in order to avoid running early.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I used to commute by bus rapid transit. It was great. The buses
| were every 5-10 minutes during peak times, the stations and
| website gave spot on updates, the air conditioning always
| worked, the buses were clean, you had internet the whole way
| and generally everyone could find seating. When there was an
| accident or road construction the bus... went around it.
|
| When I moved to a subway-oriented city the trains were a bit
| more frequent and not subject to street traffic, but they were
| more crowded, the internet/phone service regularly failed; and
| when things went wrong, they REALLY went wrong, which occurred
| monthly. A 15 minute ride turning into hot crowded 1h+ mess was
| not uncommon. And the regular track and station closures
| created all sorts of chaos that I never dealt with on the bus.
|
| Bus rapid transit is one of the most underrated modes of
| transportation and light rail easily the most overrated, IMO.
| It's not bad, but it has captured the public's attention in an
| unhealthy way.
|
| Of course, now I work from home and walk to about 50% of the
| places I need to go, even in the deep suburbs.
| rockinghigh wrote:
| > Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time.
|
| Are you talking about the US? I found buses to work quite well
| in France, Japan, London, Switzerland. Even in the US, they
| work fine in dense areas.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Public bus systems _can_ be good; most cities and
| municipalities simply don 't bother to make it so (because
| "polite society" drives everywhere).
|
| NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of
| the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes,
| split-service (local and express on the same route, with
| corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light
| rail, streetcars, subways). This is all in contrast to how many
| bus networks in the US operate: they pick you up on the side of
| the highway, drive with the rest of traffic, and drop you off
| on either the highway or in a bus depot in the middle of
| nowhere.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah, same in Chicago, really the same as mass transit
| anywhere: You need density to make it work. My little town of
| under 100K population tries to do city bus services but it's
| a joke. Most routes run once or twice an hour which is not
| often enough to be convenient. Busses drive around empty or
| with one or two riders. It's a service that costs millions of
| dollars a year to operate and is used by a tiny minority of
| the people. It's a sacred cow though.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Sounds pretty good, if you overlook people smoking meth or
| crack, publicly urinating and defecating on the bus,
| violence, etc. Not unique to buses for sure. Thanks, but I'll
| keep my "polite society" vehicle and properly planned
| highways in Orange County.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You don't see that during rush hour.
| kaetemi wrote:
| Sounds like they need to put toilets on the bus. People
| poop, it's normal.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I have never once seen any of these on a public bus, either
| in my city or others. What you're describing sounds like a
| civic problem where you live, not some kind of intrinsic
| quality of public transportation.
| lambic wrote:
| Same. I've travelled by bus in many cities on three
| continents and never experienced anything like that. The
| worst bus I've been on was in San Francisco but even that
| was pretty clean and decent.
|
| I haven't owned a car for three years and public transit
| has been fine most of the time, but I live in a city that
| prioritises public transit. On the rare occasion that I
| can't get a bus somewhere there is a car sharing service
| I can fall back on.
| mcspiff wrote:
| I've lived in 3 Canadian cities and 1 major US city.
| Regularly used public transit in all of them. Used
| transit around both Canada and the US as a tourist, plus
| a few locations in Europe, Australia.
|
| For any location where I was using it for more than a
| week I've encountered something unpleasant. Various
| degrees and extremes, but in my experience (not OP) it
| certainly seems to be intrinsic to public transit.
|
| Some of these could arguably be a net good (it's much
| better that the drunk is on the bus rather than driving
| himself!) and I continue to prefer transit over driving
| myself when available, but I would never deny that it's
| not always an enjoyable experience
| woodruffw wrote:
| To be fair: I've seen plenty of unpleasant things on
| public transport. Subways, in particular, are a different
| world from public buses in NYC.
|
| When I think about these things, I interrogate my frame
| of reference. At least for the US, the most appropriate
| contrast is the road trips I've taken, during which I saw
| no shortage of drunk drivers and general mishegaas at gas
| stations and rest stops.
| mcspiff wrote:
| Totally agree. But to run with your frame of reference
| point if I may, it's also important to look at those
| events from other's POV. I'm a larger, older man. What I
| find mildly uncomfortable on a late night bus alone might
| feel absolutely dangerous for my wife. Or someone with
| disabilities, etc.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Yeah, that's a great point, and a source of bias. On top
| of that, it would be a real contortion for me to claim
| that NYC's public transit is even _remotely_
| accommodating to people with disabilities.
| scarmig wrote:
| Definitely saw a foilie in use on the bus yesterday
| evening.
|
| The issue is that my city promotes itself as a good
| example of public transit and receives accolades from
| public transit folks, and naive people take it as
| archetypal.
| falcolas wrote:
| Taking the bus to Javits Center will quickly show how even NY
| with their subways and buses fall short. I ended up walking
| about 10 NY city blocks b/c the bus wasn't running.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I won't excuse Javits: they built it in one of the most
| inconvenient neighborhoods in Manhattan for public transit
| (presumably because it's a convention center, meaning that
| most of the expected traffic is out-of-towners staying at
| nearby hotels). That being said, the 7 to Hudson Yards is
| (IME) the best way to get there, and is among the more
| reliable subway services.
|
| Edit: That being said, 10 city blocks is half a mile.
| That's an ordinary walk in NYC.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's definitely a perception issue that's borne from some
| reality. Having taken buses in a few cities, I can say some
| buses were perfectly fine, clean, and felt dignified to ride.
| A utility of the commons. Some other cities, it felt like
| taking a vandalized back alley vending machine to work.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > because "polite society" drives everywhere
|
| In other words, because they are currently bad.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Chicken and egg; we've (in the US) culturally encoded
| public transport as inconvenient, inefficient, and for
| "poor people," all but ensuring that it remains that way.
| Other parts of the world don't have that stigma, and are
| better off for it.
| deepsun wrote:
| In Eastern Europe they are pretty good, moving like 80% of
| public. Way faster than 10mph, I couldn't beat it by bicycle (I
| tried) on most routes.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Why is rail any different? If one train goes down on a subway
| line, all of the trains after it are pretty much stuck too. A
| few lines can sometimes route around pain, but that's kind of
| rare.
|
| In general, public transportation is just pretty inconvenient.
| (Now, I like walking so it's a bonus for me, but I can see how
| it's not for everyone.)
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time.
|
| Bus Rapid Transit called. It promised 95% of the raw speed and
| 4x the service frequency at 25% of the cost.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Bus Rapid Transit calls when you are proposing a subway or a
| tram, promising great things at a low price. After you agree
| to settle for a shinier bus line instead of the nice, fast,
| reliable transit system you originally wanted, the value
| engineers get to work compromising the design, and you end up
| with... another bus route. Maybe it has a different color of
| paint this time.
| mcspiff wrote:
| Both Seattle, WA and Ottawa, ON built out dedicated BRT
| infrastructure that was later repurposed for light rail. So
| I wouldn't say it's always just a new coat of paint.
| marssaxman wrote:
| The downtown Seattle transit tunnel is an unusual beast;
| it was built from the start as a hybrid bus and rail
| system, though the city did not yet have any plan to
| build a train network. The builders designed the tunnel
| and its stations for train service and laid tracks
| anyway, expecting they would eventually be needed.
|
| So... where BRT is a proposal to save money on transit by
| building cheaper infrastructure - a promise it can always
| keep, since bus service can be degraded as far as
| necessary to fit a budget - the DSTT project instead used
| the promise of future rail service as a motivation to
| spend _more_ money on transit, building better
| infrastructure than they actually needed at the time.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It sounds like you were just going to end up with a
| mediocre, compromised system anyway. "Light rail" is still
| bringing us things like the Santa Clara VTA system at
| _best_ , and the Virginia Beach "Tide" at its worst.
| Likewise cities with "real" subways include such luminaries
| as Atlanta and Miami. Have you tried to take the metro
| system in Miami?
| sdrwefgfvb wrote:
| That sounds specific to where you live. In London the buses are
| amazing.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > a 2mile commute can last easily 45 minutes.
|
| at 10mph average, which includes stops, I doubt a 2 mile
| commute could take 45 minutes. It should take... 12 minutes.
| Let's call it 15.
|
| > I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not
| align with my destinations.
|
| It's probably good for your health.
|
| Seriously, now: I get your point. The
|
| > under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms
|
| is the worst part, I guess.
|
| I commuted by bus only occasionally in my life, and I've
| luckily been telecommuting for the past ~15 years or so. But I
| can relate.
| sjf wrote:
| You don't take the bus, it probably _is_ 45mins. You are not
| including time walking to /from the bus stop at both ends.
| Time spent _waiting_ for the bus- this is probably the
| biggest one. Time for people getting on and off at bus stops
| and paying- in some places, for example in London, there are
| stops every couple of hundred meters on the route, it is kind
| of ridiculous.
| andylynch wrote:
| Having them close together is a massive help to people with
| mobility issue, bags, and /or small children. TFL policy is
| to reduce journey times by keeping stops less than five
| minutes' from homes, and closer in town centres. The buses
| also won't normally stop unless there is someone boarding
| or alighting.
| simonsarris wrote:
| > I doubt a 2 mile commute could take 45 minutes. It should
| take... 12 minutes. Let's call it 15.
|
| We can look this up. For instance, going from somewhere
| random in Tribeca to a random bar 2 miles away is a 42 minute
| walk or a 37-42 minute bus ride (with 1 change, with busses
| running every 15 minutes). This is a good example of a
| failure mode if the bus doesn't go exactly where you want it
| to.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/dir/''/40.7237156,-73.9777888/@4.
| ..
|
| What if you do a _perfect_ straight line single bus for 2
| miles from Tribeca it 's still 24 minutes, with busses every
| 15 minutes, so between 24-39 minutes.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/dir/''/40.7437799,-73.9917792/@4.
| ..
|
| The subway option is much faster (original comment is
| comparing busses to subways)
| jxramos wrote:
| I still remember when I as a full time public transit commuter
| well into my adulthood. When new friends who didn't own cars
| would begin spending significant time with me we'd have to
| naturally public transit around town. Many of these individuals
| never really spent significant time outside of a car or a
| building having to stand around waiting outdoors. This became
| obvious when the weather got rough in winter and it was
| revealed they didn't own a proper coat to spend time freezing
| outside. I've lent out many of my extra coats in these
| situations.
| Animats wrote:
| Santa Clara County, CA, had that in 1974-1975.[1] It was a
| failure. Mini-buses running around with zero or one passenger.
|
| The trouble is, there have to be a lot of people wanting roughly
| the same trip for mini-buses to work. Otherwise you're just
| running a taxi service with an oversized vehicle.
|
| It works when there's a common source or destination, such as an
| airport or a downtown area or a school. It doesn't work in a big
| diffuse area, where everybody wants a different trip.
|
| [1] https://trid.trb.org/view/52882
| Proven wrote:
| moviewise wrote:
| Via-shuttle is available in the SF Bay Area:
| https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/public-works/...
| Tagbert wrote:
| Yes, we have Via in Seattle, too.
|
| It picks up people and takes them to the closest light rail
| station or takes them home from the station. It has a fixed
| radius of operation and typically there are 2-5 people in the
| van. It is a feeder system to bring riders to light rail
| trains.
| moviewise wrote:
| And the on-demand shuttle service is expanding to nearby towns:
| https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/via-cupertino-shuttle-ser...
| reidacdc wrote:
| We had something like this in the exurbs of Calgary in the 1970s,
| it was called "DART", for "Dial-A-Ride Transit".
|
| It was semi-on-demand, and not door-to-door.
|
| The scheme was, you called the DART line (from your land-line,
| obviously) and gave your address, and there was a mini-bus that
| made the rounds of the residential neighborhood, which would come
| to your address on its next round. It would then take you to the
| local transit junction point, a nearby shopping mall with several
| bus bays where a number of regular bus routes converged, and you
| would make your connection and complete your journey in the
| regular way.
|
| It seemed to me to be a reasonable way of efficiently delivering
| infrequent transit service to a large area, although I personally
| only used it a couple of times to visiit a friend.
| jmpman wrote:
| I've imagined that self driving cars would fill in this "last
| mile" from the end destination to an air conditioned transit
| hub. Once you get enough density in a transit hub, the
| frequency and destinations should explode, making the network
| usable, even in car heavy towns like Houston.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't see how. Once you have a car you may as well drive
| all the way there, and self driving makes it much faster.
| Then you have the convenience of the car when you get there.
| either way you need a parking lot for the car to sit in.
|
| Transit works best when you can get rid of a car. The cost of
| owning a car is very high, transit good enough that you would
| get rid of a car is only a little cheaper. Bad transit is
| only a little cheaper, but most people will just use their
| car. Note that I said a car: most people are in a family
| situation with more than one car (or at least more than one
| person who could get a car if they wanted one), so we can
| save money by having them get rid of one car and the other
| car is only used for those 5% tasks that transit isn't good
| for.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The self-driving cars in the parent poster's comment
| wouldn't be personally owned. They'd pick you up, drop you
| off, and then go get the next person. It wouldn't be doing
| much sitting in parking lots at busy times, and could park
| in municipal lots out of the busy areas at night.
| kderbyma wrote:
| good for small towns.....cities no....not a good deal at all...
| tremon wrote:
| Why?
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Buses have higher economies of scale?
| vel0city wrote:
| Not if they're driving on routes where you only get maybe
| 2-3 riders an hour.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Answered you in comment below by accident.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Cities have the demand to support real transit which is vastly
| more cost and energy efficient. They have congestion which
| isn't helped much by shuttles compared to a bus or other high
| capacity transit. Congestion also slows the shuttle down so you
| need more shuttles and more depots. They also have more
| destinations at cyclable distances.
|
| Paratransit is for mobility for theose who can't drive in areas
| that can't justify a train or enough buses for a <1hr max wait
| time. It needs a larger per km subsidy to be affordable.
|
| Edit: apologies, responded to the wrong comment
| ls15 wrote:
| > They have congestion which isn't helped much by shuttles
| compared to a bus or other high capacity transit
|
| Multiple simultaneously driving taxis can be replaced by one
| shuttle van at times or for routes where large busses would
| run mostly empty, because they lack flexibility.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Yeah, if you need coverage shuttles are great albeit at a
| high marginal cost per trip. If you need capacity then they
| don't really work. A city will spend more on shuttles than
| they would on a network extensive and well designed enough
| to get good utilization.
|
| I guess they are useful in some US cities as a stepping
| stone where there are massive political and legislative
| barriers to building a functional city.
| ls15 wrote:
| But I found them useful in Berlin (see my other comment
| in this thread) and Berlin already has one of the best
| public transport networks in the world, I think. For me
| they were just closing the gap between taxi and public
| transport. In terms of use cases and in terms of pricing.
| ls15 wrote:
| Berlin had an on demand ride sharing shuttle service, called
| _BerlKonig_ , that has been run by Berlin's public transport
| provider BVG. Unfortunately it was recently discontinued, but
| apparently the BVG is planning a new on demand service.
|
| BerlKonig was automatically following routes that would
| optimize for a higher load factor.
|
| For me it was the best option for certain scenarios.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Yessss!!! There is no best one-size-for-all solution for
| transportation, we need lots of different methods to select the
| best methods for the situation. Scooters, [e-]bikes, vans,
| trolleys, buses, subways, trains, funiculars. (And more that have
| yet to be invented; personally I hope for rentable e-assist pedi-
| cabs to take cargo like groceries home in cities without the need
| for a 2-ton+ vehicle)
|
| I think this van service combined with an "Uber Pool" model
| enables highly efficient trips that can supplement mass-transit.
| Within the planning of bus routes, there are always routes that
| will take a lot longer or require transfers, but are rarely
| taken; vans that can "go anywhere" would fill those gaps, without
| the need for profit-making (and without the discrimination and
| exploitation of taxis).
|
| From the article, here's why van supplementation can work: _" For
| $1.6 million, we're providing well over twice as many trips and
| covering 100 percent of the city with a system that picks you up
| within 15 to 20 minutes of your request, versus a bus that was
| only running once an hour."_ It's more expensive [to the city]
| but it provides much greater mobility and time-saving for
| citizens.
|
| When you're a single mom and groceries are an hour ride one-way,
| and the bus only comes once an hour, and you work late, just
| getting food is a nightmare that takes 3+ hours at the end of a
| long day. Because of that, she may have to spend $25-50 on taxis
| (many grocery stores aren't open late), which further reduces her
| already stretched income. Supplemental transportation methods can
| solve this problem and transform quality of life for
| disadvantaged people in society.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| This kind of strategy must be combined with changing the ways
| cities are built. Your last point about the single mom, this
| SHOULDNT be a problem. At all. How did people 100 years ago
| deal with not having access to food without a time consuming
| trip? They either grew their own, or they lived close enough to
| a place where they could buy it. The private automobile
| completely killed the idea of living close to what you need.
| Originami wrote:
| 100 years ago there were no single moms. Unmarried births
| have increased from 19% in 1950 to 72% in 2010 for Africa-
| American women: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/
| files/2014/12/e...
|
| Largely due to the expansion of the welfare state which
| encourages single motherhood.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Also, 110 years ago, most people in America did not live in
| cities
| [deleted]
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| This is America trying to fix problems that are caused by their
| poor-to-nonexistent urban planning, FWIW. I've lived in several
| countries in Europe, and you have to be far out into the
| countryside before it gets difficult to go grocery shopping
| with a bike and bike trailer, or even just a backpack and
| walking.
| [deleted]
| midislack wrote:
| Where's this all coming from lately? Seems that walkable cities
| (code for making vehicle ownership so expensive and onerous that
| only the elite can drive) and the push for public transit is a
| top down affair that is being force fed to the public not just
| via the usual media outlets, but also legions of GPT based
| Internet shills.
|
| It also seems very European. All the big cities already have
| buses and trains in the US. Outside these places it's not only
| not practical, it's totally infeasible. So who is making this
| push? WEF? Mayor Pete?
| hammock wrote:
| Why does no one talk about the private bus companies and the
| colectivos that are found throughout Central and South America?
| The system is amazing for anyone who has used it, compared to
| alternatives.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Perhaps tell us why it's amazing and the road to where it is
| today.
|
| I think most can surmise that all forms of transit have been
| repeatedly tried all over the world. Sharing details and their
| applicability to other other municipalities are what will
| advance transit.
| hammock wrote:
| Sure. I'm not really an expert in how they work but if you
| speak Spanish they're easy enough to use.
|
| Most cities have private bus companies that run their own
| routes. Where the bus is going is posted in the front on a
| piece of paper and you just hop on when you see one. The
| companies compete with each other so the routes often change,
| the prices are low and supply always meets demand.
|
| Colectivos are a different phenomenon. In certain meeting
| places there are combi buses (12 pax vans basically) each one
| going to a different place usually a suburb or a neighboring
| town or a landmark outside of town or somewhere within
| commuting distance. You pay a small fee and the driver will
| sit there until all the seats are full, and then drive to the
| destination. Sometimes you sit 5 min before departing,
| sometimes 30 min. But usually it's not so bad and it's far
| and away the cheapest way to get these longer distances
| reliably.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| The greater Helsinki area municipal transit authority "HSL" had
| this years a go. You could hail a mini bus with an app if you had
| some friends with you. I guess it was not sustainable, even if it
| was well liked. As it got shut down after a few years.
| kevinpet wrote:
| I think this featured in Charlie Stross's novel Rule 34. His
| version includes what seems like dynamic rerouting based on
| willingness to pay a premium.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Back in the late-70s/early-80s the town I lived in had a thing
| called Dial-a-Bus which was longer than a minivan with maybe
| 10-15 seats, built lighter than a modern airport shuttle. It
| could pick you up from home and drop you off at an address, etc.
| I remember when the price jumped from 10 cents to 25 cents per
| ride. Prank calls were a thing unfortunately.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| in Hong Kong - especially in the New Territories - the mini-van
| is basically the main mode of semi-public transport.
|
| The 'Xiao Ba ' basically operate fixed routes, seats about 13,
| pick up and move per stop, but don't stop on empty stops unless
| called to do so via open outcry from a passenger who wants to get
| off at that spot.
|
| Somewhere in between taxi (entirely private, no fixed route) and
| bus (entirely public, fixed route). They're great, and generally
| missing from transportation systems in the Western world
| bluGill wrote:
| Another bad idea that keeps coming back. Real experts have
| written about it. Start with
| https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.ht...
| and be prepared to read for a while to understand why this is not
| a good idea despite the hype.
| HonestOp001 wrote:
| It is the future, getting the large inefficient buses off the
| system is the goal.
|
| His thesis that the vehicles meander and no technology will fix
| that is refutable in that technology can identify opportunities
| to minimize inefficiencies. A good algorithm will create
| efficient routes for the flexible transit.
|
| Finally, the author is a public transit consultant. He is not
| going to be good for a reference when he is on one side of an
| item. He may be a subject matter expert, but he is blinded to
| what can be accomplished. Judging from other people's comments
| from other countries, my thesis is more accurate.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Flexibility and efficiency are often at odds.
|
| Fixed route service is FAR more efficient than any sort of
| micro transit service can ever be, unless we are looking at
| areas with very low demand.
|
| The most efficient algorithm is always going to be having
| people gather in one spot to be picked up and dropped off
| rather than driving all over to different points.
| treis wrote:
| >Fixed route service is FAR more efficient than any sort of
| micro transit service can ever be
|
| Theoretically fixed route service is far more efficient.
| Practically, it's not because it takes a lot of demand to
| run at high frequency and high utilization. As an example,
| I live in Atlanta and it costs the system $9 per bus ride
| these days. And given the nature of the system and the city
| it usually takes people more than one bus ride to get where
| they need to go.
|
| Lyft/Uber usually comes out to be slightly to much cheaper
| excepting long cross-metro rides. The problem is that I
| don't get my $15.50 subsidy.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| You aren't making an apples to apples comparison though,
| your assertion is that it costs the system $18 for you to
| take a trip, but you're only looking at the fare charges
| by Uber/Lyft. Uber and Lyft continue to operate at a
| loss, and are therefore subsidizing their rides as well.
| Additionally, they are able to maintain a contingent
| workforce that a public transit agency would likely never
| be able to get away with. Uber and Lyft are directly
| subsidized by investor money, in addition to the lower
| wages earned by drivers who _also_ cover the capital
| expenditure for vehicles and cover the maintenance costs.
|
| And final point, mass transit demand still hasn't
| returned to pre pandemic levels. Obviously, it may be the
| case that we have seen a long term shift in demand, but
| the fact remains that the current system was built
| out/provisioned for a higher level of demand, so it's not
| surprising that the cost structure is higher right now
| than it should be. Pre pandemic it looks like bus/rail
| cost Marta around $4.50 per trip.
| treis wrote:
| >You aren't making an apples to apples comparison though,
| your assertion is that it costs the system $18 for you to
| take a trip, but you're only looking at the fare charges
| by Uber/Lyft.
|
| The $18 is operating cost and doesn't include capital
| costs. Lyft is EBIDTA profitable and Uber likely is on
| rides too. Their fares are enough to cover the operating
| cost of the system. Comparison is as apples to apples as
| it can be.
|
| >Pre pandemic it looks like bus/rail cost Marta around
| $4.50 per trip.
|
| Even still. To use a practical example, my kid's day care
| is 4 miles away. I would need 2 buses to get there by
| MARTA so $9 if we assume pre-pandemic costs. Lyft will
| take me there for between $8.93 and $14.17 with various
| options on shared + wait time. For a solo car for a pick
| up in 4 minutes it's $11.01.
|
| Lyft will take me 9 minutes to get there while MARTA will
| take 46 minutes if I time everything perfectly. More
| realistically it's an hour which is barely faster than
| walking the 4 miles.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Lyft's adjusted EBITA was $55 million in Q1, given their
| active rider number stands at ~19 million, at best they
| are likely offering rides at cost.
|
| That still leaves out the costs incurred by the drivers.
| Opex for transit agencies includes maintenance, insurance
| and driver salaries and benefits which are much more
| costly than it is for Lyft.
|
| You are right that sprawling metro areas are very well
| suited for mass transit, though. There does need to be a
| sufficient amount of demand in order for it to work.
|
| The fact of the matter is that the main problem is a land
| use pattern that requires over $9 to travel to and from a
| child's daycare.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| Are buses that inefficient? Why is the objective to remove
| them, and by what measure are they inefficient?
| bluGill wrote:
| Buses require expensive drivers and so they are the most
| expensive form of transit. A small bus costs almost as much
| as a big on to run. A train costs more per trip, but a
| train typically has many more people on. In theory you
| could run a train for service where a small bus would work,
| but since nobody does that the fact that a train would cost
| a lot more for that service is irrelevant.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Buses are far from the most expensive form of transit.
| High-speed ferryboats or helicopters probably claim that
| prize. I'm pretty sure airplanes are also more expensive,
| as are subways if you include the cost to build them in
| the first place, as well as cars if you include total
| cost of ownership.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cost is typically measured per passenger km or some such.
| Ferryboats can come out cheap if there are enough people
| on them. I'm not aware of anyone using helicopters for
| mass transit. Airplanes are very cheap for long distance
| service.
| bluGill wrote:
| > A good algorithm will create efficient routes for the
| flexible transit.
|
| You assume there is such an algorithm. That assertion so far
| has proven false, and I see no reason to believe that any
| algorithm can overcome the fundamental problems.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| You buried the lede for this piece. It doesn't say that micro
| transit is a bad idea, just that its objectives are different
| than fixed route transit. Specifically, it optimizes for
| coverage instead of ridership, which makes sense for low
| density areas.
|
| Even the NPR article says that larger cities are experimenting
| with micro transit but only for harder-to-reach areas.
|
| It has a place as a complement to fixed route transit, not as a
| replacement.
| vel0city wrote:
| > It's one tool for providing lifeline access to hard-to-serve
| areas, where availability, not ridership, is the point.
|
| From your own article. Flexible/microtransit/whatever you want
| to call it _can_ be a good idea, and it can be done right. Its
| not a replacement for a bus route with any level of decent
| ridership, its for the areas where there literally aren 't
| enough people interested in riding a bus to make the bus
| practical. Once ridership numbers get high enough, the transit
| groups should absolutely upgrade those areas to actual bus
| lines, but until then it is an option to serve places that
| otherwise wouldn't be able to be effectively served by decent
| bus service economically.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| It makes me think of how I've heard some universities will
| pave the paths that students had walked, vs creating the
| paved paths and hoping students walk on them [0]:
|
| > The team at UNC went back into the archive for us and found
| some plans from the 60s and 70s, when they were really
| expanding the campus. An archivist discovered one of the
| written goals for planners was to "build paths where students
| were going rather than building some sort of grid system."
|
| I believe micro-transit could play a similar role, basically
| helping the planners even figure out which routes people want
| to take before they turn them into fully funded routes.
|
| [0]: https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/desired-
| paths-...
| ilauuk wrote:
| We have this in Jerusalem. At busy times the van takes up to
| around 6 people and at quiet times you're by yourself. At busy
| times your ride can take up to triple what it would have taken
| otherwise, because it makes stops for other people. Like 45 mins
| instead of 15, which makes it pretty unpredictable. You also
| often have to wait a while for it. They're called TikTak here.
| It's mainly useful for getting a direct ride where you'd
| otherwise have to take more than one bus.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Make of this what you will: North Carolina's cities used to have
| remarkably developed streetcar networks[1].
|
| It is depressing and frustrating to see public authorities
| attempt to recreate the successes of public transport on
| fundamentally inefficient, commons-hostile substrates.
|
| [1]: https://www.ourstate.com/history-of-north-carolina-
| streetcar...
| chrismartin wrote:
| I live in a city with a "modern" streetcar. I even rode it to
| work for a few months. Two reasons why it's not great.
|
| 1. It shares busy streets with cars yet has zero ability to
| maneuver in traffic. If just one car is parked a few inches
| beyond the edge of the parking lane, the entire streetcar route
| is blocked.
|
| 2. The tracks trap bicycle tires and cause many bicycle
| crashes. This happened to colleague of mine, fortunately at low
| speed. There have been dozens of crashes and at least one
| death.
|
| Electric bus service is cheaper to install and has neither of
| these disadvantages.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Both of these are serious issues, and point to an underlying
| problem: cities have been re-planned _around_ their streetcar
| networks, not _with_ them in mind. Improperly planned,
| streetcars are just less mobile buses.
|
| There are known solutions to both of these: give streetcars
| unilateral right of way, isolate them from car traffic at
| intersections and stops, and give cyclists their own
| separated lanes.
|
| Depending on the city, electric bus service might be the
| right choice! But I'll note: we _undid_ all of the things
| that make streetcars advantageous, and we could _redo_ them
| with sufficient political will.
| chrismartin wrote:
| Even when cyclists have their own lanes, they need to cross
| the streetcar tracks in order to (1) make turns and (2)
| avoid obstacles (e.g. cars suddenly pulling out). If they
| don't plan and execute the track crossing at a
| perpendicular enough angle, the wheel gets trapped and the
| rider usually wipes out. The victim is then often blamed
| for getting hurt by infrastructure of a design that is
| known to hurt people [0].
|
| [0] https://tucson.com/news/local/court-rules-against-
| tucson-bic...
| woodruffw wrote:
| You're absolutely right. I think the way Amsterdam does
| this is instructive: nearly all cycling-trolley crossings
| are completely perpendicular, and all cycling-automotive
| crossings are isolated _and_ separate from any nearby
| trolley crossing.
| treis wrote:
| Streetcars are always less mobile buses. You can do
| everything you suggest for buses and get the same benefits
| plus everything that being a bus offers you.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The advantages to streetcars aren't limited to what I
| suggest. They also include noise and air quality
| advantages (hooking up to municipal power sources instead
| of carrying their own engines), human advantages (they
| tend to be more comfortable than buses, both because of
| road quality and size), capacity, and so forth.
|
| There are many, many situations where buses (ideally,
| electrified ones) are the right choice. But there are
| also many situations where streetcars are the right
| choice, which is why many cities run both (or one over
| the other).
| treis wrote:
| >hooking up to municipal power sources instead of
| carrying their own engines
|
| You can do that with a bus
|
| >they tend to be more comfortable than buses, both
| because of road quality and size
|
| (1) You can make bigger buses if you want
|
| (2) There's little difference in a streetcar on a track
| and a bus on a flat road. And it's a lot cheaper to get
| flat roads than to lay track
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| >make bigger buses
|
| Nontrivial after adding the second deck (common in UK &
| Hong Kong), or an articulation (common in EU and mainland
| China) However for tram, the upper limit is your platform
| length. It's also common to run single trains off-peak,
| couple two together during busy hours to double the
| capacity.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > You can do that with a bus
|
| Right, at which point it's a cramped, bumpier trolley. It
| no longer has the main advantage that buses offer, which
| is being able to alternate their routes based on traffic
| or blockages.
|
| You can make bigger buses, but they still need to conform
| to a different set of safety and size standards. Trolleys
| can make better use of standard lane space (and
| frequently fit better into standard lanes in older
| cities, since they can articulate for turns much better).
|
| Laying track does not _have_ to be expensive. Small-to-
| mid-sized cities in Europe do it cheaply and sustainably;
| many of the US 's cities have streets that are _already
| graded_ for streetcars and could be replanted without
| full surveys. I won 't claim that it's uniformly cheaper
| than running a bus network, but that's not the sole
| factor in our civic construction process -- we also
| consider quality of life, performance, and appeal.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > If just one car is parked a few inches beyond the edge of
| the parking lane
|
| In places where I have lived and worked that have trams the
| car always comes off worst because the tram is just so much
| heavier and more robust. And no one is going to defend the
| car owner because the tram has right of way. I have even seen
| buses just touch cars that were illegally parked in bus
| stops, just a gentle scratch and easily deniable, but you can
| bet that the car driver never does it again.
| chrismartin wrote:
| In my experience, the streetcar driver is unwilling to make
| contact. It waits (perhaps for the car to be towed),
| passengers hop off and continue their journey on foot.
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