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Chariot is shutting down

blog.chariot.com

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Re: Chariot is shutting down

#71

Post by lemoncucumber »

brezina wrote: post #68
blt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old cities: built dense for walking, because cars didn't exist. new cities: built dense for walking and public transit because private car ownership isn't that common in China 20th century USA cities: built for cars. Sprawl makes public transit too expensive because it requires many lines with low ridership. Wide roads, long distances, and cars flying around everywhere makes walking scary. Driving becomes the only at…

The core of san francisco, probably 30% of the city's 49 sq mile landmass, and where 60%+ of the population lives, was built before cars existed. Most of SF was a walking/horse city, and then a walking/streetcar/cablecar city.

It's no coincidence that SF is the only part of the Bay Area where it's truly viable to live without a car.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#72

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

lhorie wrote: post #63
rsynnott wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> visitor accessible, payment system. And more realtime bus information These do exist: purchasing fares via the Muni app is pretty straightforward and services like nextmuni.com and similar apps can tell you when the next bus is coming. Frequency is definitely subpar though. When I first came to SF, I was supposed to meet with a job interviewer for dinner in a place at mission. The subway train took 30 minutes to sh…

Muni data is not at all accurate.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#73

Post by [deleted] »

brezina wrote: post #68
blt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old cities: built dense for walking, because cars didn't exist. new cities: built dense for walking and public transit because private car ownership isn't that common in China 20th century USA cities: built for cars. Sprawl makes public transit too expensive because it requires many lines with low ridership. Wide roads, long distances, and cars flying around everywhere makes walking scary. Driving becomes the only at…

The core of san francisco, probably 30% of the city's 49 sq mile landmass, and where 60%+ of the population lives, was built before cars existed. Most of SF was a walking/horse city, and then a walking/streetcar/cablecar city.

[deleted]

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#74

Post by dawhizkid »

mlevental wrote: post #67
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-...

matatu just means taxi or something like that (it actually comes from 'three' in Swahili because the conductors used to yell "give me three" at potential passengers). they are absolutely no fun to ride since the operators pack them to the brim with people and other cargo (animals too) and they wait until full to take off (so sometimes, for infrequently traveled routes you end up waiting hours). this is all to say not…

haha I'm not saying an exact replica - I mean the general idea of a themed privately operated bus is interesting. obviously it would be subject to more regulatory scrutiny than over there. you could have a party bus vibe, or a meditation one, or a social one, etc etc.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#75

Post by yggda »

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.…

The way I handle this in the Bay Area is keep an extra autoload Clipper card for any guests that are coming to visit. hand it off to them when they get here. It's pretty easy to let them know how much to settle up for when they depart.

I'm not sure how most visitors to the bay get in but two desks at SFO and OAK across from baggage claim seem like a good start to implement the same kind of solution.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#76

Post by wutbrodo »

blt wrote: post #45
geofft wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

old cities: built dense for walking, because cars didn't exist. new cities: built dense for walking and public transit because private car ownership isn't that common in China 20th century USA cities: built for cars. Sprawl makes public transit too expensive because it requires many lines with low ridership. Wide roads, long distances, and cars flying around everywhere makes walking scary. Driving becomes the only at…

This isn't quite true for many of the big cities of interest. There was an active high-modernist effort in the ~70s to destroy the walkable, transitable, livable parts of many American cities and cut freeways across them like big ugly neighborhood-destroying scars.

Even transit wastelands like LA had an actual urban core (that they're now rebuilding), as well as a relatively extensive network of streetcars.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#77

Post by capkutay »

aezed wrote: post #46
dopamean wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man. I feel bad for the employees. They probably thought getting bought by a big company like Ford meant they would stick around for a while.

Getting bought by a big company rarely means that the acquired employees are going to stick around for awhile.

Not necessarily true. A lot of acquisitions are 'acquihires' meaning they were bought just for their talent capital.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#78

Post by atombender »

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…

I don't know the West coast very well, so I'm curious -- are there any (smaller) cities there where you can actually get by without a car to do grocery shopping, commute to one's office (assuming it's in the same town/city), etc.? I'm thinking something comparable to Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Berlin, where you can get by with a bike and/or subway, or often just walking. Portland? Seattle?

I've visited Silicon Valley and SF, and I remember it as being really pedestrian-unfriendly. A friend of mine has a story about visiting San Jose without a car, and not being able to go to a bookstore because, while the map showed it as being a block away and he could clearly see it, there was no way to reach it on foot from where he was.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#80

Post by mlevental »

dawhizkid wrote: post #74
mlevental wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

matatu just means taxi or something like that (it actually comes from 'three' in Swahili because the conductors used to yell "give me three" at potential passengers). they are absolutely no fun to ride since the operators pack them to the brim with people and other cargo (animals too) and they wait until full to take off (so sometimes, for infrequently traveled routes you end up waiting hours). this is all to say not…

haha I'm not saying an exact replica - I mean the general idea of a themed privately operated bus is interesting. obviously it would be subject to more regulatory scrutiny than over there. you could have a party bus vibe, or a meditation one, or a social one, etc etc.

no worries i didn't think you meant exact replica - just giving some context.
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