Live data from Hacker News

New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

planetizen.com

271–280 of 458 posts

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#271
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's espescially cruel when you consider that rural/small towns are usually the ones least set up for pedestrian traffic. Not only are there no taxis/uber/buses , there are no sidewalks, street lights, few traffic signals, etc.

Even worse, if you do walk after the bars close, you are more likely to get stopped by the police simply because you are out walking. Living a mile outside the city, you can get stopped because you are walking on the side of the major road. You are supposed to take the slower route through the countryside.

This only seems like an issue if your in what I'd call a bad area. The definition of this seems to be "bored, overstaffed cops policing minor incidents & creating crime", which you see often in the more affluent *burbs here on the West Coast.

IMO that is why areas like Lake Oswego, Shoreline, etc are slum as far as I'm concerned. I would never want to live in a place where my power goes out every other month, my house costs $800k+, and the police and local gov't are trying to fuck me at every turn. Why pay a premium for a shit community?

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#272
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "unable to make it work". Why should buses/train/subway have to be profitable? Roads for your car sure aren't. Every dollar we subsidize public transit, is far more than a dollar saved on road repair & upgrades. Just think of buses. Two to three axles. If all the riders took cars instead, that's one hundred axles. Road wear is a function of weight, for which axles is a proxy, and obviously one hundre…

I'm referring to the US as this is specifically a US problem. Our best system New York's MTA has frequent outages. While the trains are new the tracks and switches are decaying at an incredible rate. My current city, Miami, the city is looking at reducing mass transit service [0]. After already approving a 1-cent tax to expand service MDTA reneged and used the increase to pay for existing issues (fair enough, it need…

Am I misunderstanding something or are you really complaining about a 1 cent tax? I wish I could have any service paying as little as 1 cent over my current taxes. Hell, I'll happily pay 10£ even for a shitty service probably..

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#273
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standing up for an hour does not require a "peak of physical fitness"!!! It's probably a good thing to do - that's why standing desks are so popular.

Standing for an hour is absolutely not something you can expect of the general population, especially the elderly.

> expect of the general population

Reminder that chronic obesity is a leading cost of healthcare in the U.S.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that there are a lot of fixed cost overheads, right? Surely the cost per mile from SFO to LAX is already much higher than what you quoted for SFO to JFK, and it's reasonable if local transit is even more expensive per distance.

28.6¢ SFO to LAX A train is something like 10 times more fuel efficient per passenger. It's a much less complicated machine, and carries something like 10 times as many passengers per vehicle. It's not reasonable that a train is more expensive. It doesn't have to accelerate to 550 mph 6 miles up. Piloting it doesn't require years and years of training. Compare SFO to your local caltrain station and tell me which one…

Trains go much slower, so labor costs per mile are going to be higher. Also planes do not need 400 miles of track to get from SFO to LAX

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#275
post #114
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though Uber has been saying that they are improving urban transportation Note here that there are other dimensions of improving, not expressed in VMT. Such as convenience, availability, time to get to certain point, ability to perform certain tasks (e.g. compare traveling with two huge suitcases to/from an airport in public transport with two transfers and in a ride service car), etc. So when talking about imp…

Those are all important aspects, but it's also important to factor in accessibility (in the monetary sense, not physical - although that as well!), because that's one of the main reasons for public transit to exist. Yes, Uber and Lyft will provide better opportunities for transporting two large suitcases across town. But at what cost to the person who needs an affordable journey to work? Neither can come close to rep…

Thanks to Uber, my girlfriend can enjoy safe reliable transportation to/from work, allowing her to sleep an extra hour daily while not having to inject herself into rush hour crowds in metro, not even mentioning creeps and pickpockets.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#276
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably supposed to use the contactless "smart" card to board. In many systems this card is linked to your bank account and tops you off at a certain amount each time your balance reaches a certain minimum threshold (e.g. once your balance is $10, it takes out $40 from your bank account).

Huh, what's wrong with it taking exactly as much off as you're spending? Here contactless cards take it off exactly and immediately.

There are at least two problems. The first is that the banks are going to charge the agency a transaction fee. The second is that you start having to put in all kinds of anti-fraud mechanisms (think about someone riding around on buses with a negative account balance that never gets checked because the card scanner is only synced when the bus comes in to the depot). Not saying more user-friendly systems can't be rolled out, but this works good enough for most systems.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#277
post #18

I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…

I'm regularly bothered by the fact that mass transit is more expensive than driving. Alone it is definitely cheaper disregarding sunk costs (price of car, etc.), it's still cheaper as long as I don't have to have a new car every few years, and if I have passengers mass transit is many times as expensive as driving. Shouldn't it be the opposite? I figure I can take 4 people from Mountain View to San Francisco and back…

Most states estimate the cost per mile of an automobile at above $0.50/mile for business expenses. When gasoline was >$4, that estimate was estimated to be $1/mile.

You're also not estimating the liability very well. Likelihood and cost of death or injury of 5 people MV to SF and back added with chances of uninsured drivers leaves most drivers well underinsured. Also, the statistical unlikelihood of having a fully occupied vehicle.

Other costs include road subsides, parking subsidies/real estate costs.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#278
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not only luggage. There are groceries. There are other purchases. There's just a strain of standing on your feet for an hour, which may not be easy for someone who is not in the peak physical condition.

Standing up for an hour does not require a "peak of physical fitness"!!! It's probably a good thing to do - that's why standing desks are so popular.

Freedom of choice is better than having to stand on the bus, even if it is possibly better for your health. Which it probably isn't, as public transit is how infections spread quickly and efficiently.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#279
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a certain point the comparison breaks down. Yes, public transit is subsidised. But it isn't subsidised in such a way that it is expected to eventually become self sustaining - tax-payer funding is expected to continue in perpetuity. That's not the case with Uber and Lyft. VCs are subsiding their rides on the expectation that eventually the company will dominate the market enough to not require subsidy any more.

> That's not the case with Uber and Lyft. I mentioned this elsewhere, but I wonder if maybe cities should run light rail and buses along the most used routes then subsidize private companies (like Lyft and Uber) to service people outside of those routes. I used to ride #43 Taylor's Ferry in Portland twice a day and I was sometimes on the bus by myself or with three or four other people. I bet it would have been far c…

Why can't the city just run smaller vehicles, like minivans or airport shuttles, on less popular routes? Sub-contracting may be cheaper for the city but would make for terrible PR. Since driver salaries are the biggest cost, the only way private companies could make these routes profitable is by doing the very same things Lyft/Uber are criticized for: low wages, no benefits etc.

EDIT: Reading some of the other replies, I suppose making rides on these routes on-demand instead of fixed timetable services may change the economics of less popular routes.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#280
post #18

I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…

I'm regularly bothered by the fact that mass transit is more expensive than driving. Alone it is definitely cheaper disregarding sunk costs (price of car, etc.), it's still cheaper as long as I don't have to have a new car every few years, and if I have passengers mass transit is many times as expensive as driving. Shouldn't it be the opposite? I figure I can take 4 people from Mountain View to San Francisco and back…

I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison.

You're essentially comparing the cost of fuel versus the cost of: road infrastructure, costs of a vehicle, costs of a driver, costs of risk (insurance / safety), parking and servicing (cleanliness).

The train's parking space at the station and during off-hors is paid for your ticket, as are the tracks and tunnels it travels through, its trained driver, its safety measures, the cleaning and security personnel.

What you'd have to figure is, that the fuel might be $20. But you need to buy a car, pay for it monthly, pay for insurance, pay taxes indirectly to fund your roads, pay for your license and the police who ensure safety of the environment you drive in, enforcing the rules, you need to clean your car yourself and park it during off hours. All of those costs and some others (like say, maintenance/repairs) must be averaged into your car ride. And you'd need to divide that by the average amount of occupants, which is something like 1.2 for trips to work, not 4.

And then you get a typical long-term situation. I agree, it can be frustrating to think 'this car I already paid for, on a road which I pay for anyway, with this monthly insurance I already have, the license I already have, the 3 people I already have lined up to make this exact trip, and the police that's already in place to ensure a safe road, this trip is cheaper than the train'... But there's a lot to it as you can see, and it's not even a typical trip.

One important aspect about public transport is that it subsidises low-popularity roads. e.g. where I'm from, a bus ticket is basically the same price in the entire province, despite some routes earning no profit due to them just connecting small villages with a bunch of old people with bigger cities. The solution of say Uber would be to stop servicing or increase the price there to where it becomes economically feasible. The public transport approach is to not stop servicing or charge ridiculous rates, but simply to move money around so that everyone has a semblance of affordable transportation available. It's similar to post delivery, it's under pressure because there's no money to be made in lots of low-density areas. But there's something to be said for the ability to cheaply send a letter anywhere in the country for a roughly standardised price. That context too should be considered when comparing prices to very specific trips. You'd often end up comparing an averaged out transport mode price versus a specific high-occupancy car trip, cherry picking without the intention.

Post reply on HN