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Chariot is shutting down

blog.chariot.com

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Re: Chariot is shutting down

#51

Post by princekolt »

eCa wrote: post #31
idoh wrote: post #5

I used Chariot a bit a couple years ago. Sad to see it go. For people who haven't heard of it, it worked like this: I live in SF, and worked in Redwood City. Every day, there was some type of large van that would pick me up a couple blocks from where I lived and dropped me off a couple blocks from where I worked. So it was like a middle ground between public transportation and Uber / Lyft.

It sounds a bit like marshrutka[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka

Oh we had plenty of those where I grew up in Brazil. Usually they were supposed to be hired only by neighborhood associations and to transport only those people that hired them, but effectively they were clandestine bus lines and would pickup anyone who hailed them. That, added to how immensely imprudent and dangerous their driving usually was caused them to be outlawed completely some 8-10 years ago.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#53

Post by foolfoolz »

rconti wrote: post #18
aniketpant wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't what you described an example of how buses work. I know very little about the state of public transport in SF but if it was better won't it solve what Chariot tried to do?

San Francisco and Redwood City are roughly 30 miles apart. In the Bay Area, in particular, buses tend to work on a city or county level, which would mean to make this trip, assuming buses were conveniently located, timed, and without too many stops, it would involve using several transit systems, unfortunately. San Francisco and Redwood City not only have dozens of other cities between them, but they're also in 2 dif…

this makes no sense that for someone in redwood city bart is the solution but not caltrain. redwood city doesn’t need 2 separate train lines before you can commute to sf.

Samtrans buses does the entire thing in one bus. it will get you into the city and back. and it’ll be 4+ hours a day commute. but the buses do run a lot of hours. chariot could probably do this in an hour each way, which would be faster than caltrain

this is pretty on par with other countries and cities. only a handful of (larger) cities have city wide metro coverage. smaller cities have better bus service. biking is huge in cities this size, including, san francisco for this reason. or ride one of the new hotness scooter apps.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#54

Post by tnolet »

dawhizkid wrote: post #43

I recently watched the Anthony Bourdain episode where he goes to Nairobi and rides on a "matatu", which are essentially privately operated party buses for commuters. I thought that was actually a pretty neat idea and could definitely see a market for that. https://explorepartsunknown.com/kenya/matatus-rule-nairobis-...

These are called mikrolet or minibus in countries like Indonesia. Super cheap, super convenient. Haven’t seen a similar thing in the Western world.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#55

Post by SilasX »

Wasn't it profitable when Ford acquired? Isn't there a pretty reliable userbase? How did they mess it up?

I don't mean to be the conspiracy guy, but it matches the pattern of the streetcar thing: Buy car-obviating service, shut it down.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#56

Post by scrumbledober »

I had a chariot driver cut me off on my bike while i was riding down second street and he was turning left onto second across my lane. He stopped once in my lane and I didn't have enough time to stop so I hit the side of his van, somewhat damaging my bike. He looked right at me and then drove away. I tried to contact chariot about this and got absolutely nowhere. Glad to see them go.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#57

Post by patmcguire »

geofft wrote: post #23
dsl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF public transit is pretty disfunctional and Chariot was trying to offer an alternative. - Timeliness - Busses and trains reliability are a joke compared to developed countries - Cleanliness - Due to an unmitigated homeless problem, the busses and trains operate as "day shelters" - Organization - There are dozens of different transit operators for what is one major metro region. Schedules are poorly synced, and even…

A lot of the history of transit-disrupting startups in the SF Bay Area can be attributed to how truly bad public transit in the SF Bay Area is. I understood Uber a lot more after trying to hail a taxi in SF. (Same with Boring Company and LA traffic.) A real disruptive solution for humanity - but a hard one to monetize - would be to figure out why cities with good public transit / shared transit infrastructure managed…

The hard part is how to make it work politically. I don't know if any place has really done it in an environment that was mostly built out already. Manhattan used to have 700k more residents than it does now, and that was when a lot of the island was still farmland - people spread out with the trains. Once you're out of space it's very difficult to develop transit, because that would probably mean a homeowner doesn't get what they want.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#58

Post by coccinelle »

rsynnott wrote: post #49
chrischen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cities that do certain things better than others, but what I don't understand is that most local politicians don't travel there and learn from how others govern their cities and don't accept their own problems have been solved elsewhere.

Chicken and egg problem. You can’t have a good transport system if people don’t use it (too expensive) and people won’t use it unless it’s good. Was in San Francisco recently and it really is mostly impressively bad, but one of the major sources of badness is that it’s mostly pretty infrequent. Presumably because people don’t use it. Edit: One thing they could fix, easily; unified, visitor accessible, payment system.…

I thought the same (bad transit, people don't use it, it becomes even worse), but after no longer being able to ride my bike, I realized that many buses and Muni trains are packed at least at rush hour. People do use public transit in SF, so its sorry state is even more of a shame.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#59

Post by debt »

SilasX wrote: post #55

Wasn't it profitable when Ford acquired? Isn't there a pretty reliable userbase? How did they mess it up? I don't mean to be the conspiracy guy, but it matches the pattern of the streetcar thing: Buy car-obviating service, shut it down.

"How did they mess it up?"

All I know is once I was driving down Cesar Chavez in San Francisco and I looked over and there was a massive lot filled with Chariot commuter vans. It was the daytime on Saturday.

I thought dang they must be wasting a ton of money just having a whole fleet of commuter vans parked in a lot, unused simply because it was the weekend. I imagine this same mentality transferred to non-peak hours during the week as well.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#60

Post by scrumbledober »

rsynnott wrote: post #49
chrischen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cities that do certain things better than others, but what I don't understand is that most local politicians don't travel there and learn from how others govern their cities and don't accept their own problems have been solved elsewhere.

Chicken and egg problem. You can’t have a good transport system if people don’t use it (too expensive) and people won’t use it unless it’s good. Was in San Francisco recently and it really is mostly impressively bad, but one of the major sources of badness is that it’s mostly pretty infrequent. Presumably because people don’t use it. Edit: One thing they could fix, easily; unified, visitor accessible, payment system.…

Doesn't the clipper card allow you to use one payment system for caltrain, bart, and muni? I'm not sure if SamTrans busses are included.
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