91–100 of 200 posts
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-...
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…
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 a…
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.
That kind of thinking could help them mitigate disruptive pressure, especially in markets like SF where driving is pretty awful, but so is transit.
This service was a godsend when I lived there, due to how abysmal Muni was. Sorry to hear it didn't work out for them.
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.
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.
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?
Also, San Francisco and Redwood city are in different counties with different politics, private enterprise is sometimes faster at filling gaps in transit than public government, especially in the short term.
Not all businesses need to grow to huge heights to not be considered successful. It's a shame they can't continue to operate in the areas that it works well in (such as here in SF). Scoot have had a hard time growing, but are as successful as ever in SF, so that should be seen as a success in itself. We now have very lofty expectations for businesses either Blitzscaling [1] or dying, but surely it doesn't need to be that binary.
Clearly private solutions to commuting need to exist, people are not satisfied with the public transit in most cities. In a capitalist country, the markets will reward those who succeed. Lyft/Uber are helping somewhat, but you can point to as many articles [2] showing how over congested cities become because of them (even with pooling), which take up much more road space than buses. Let's hope someone else gives this another shot, and we don't shoot them down if they don't become a unicorn.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-... [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-uber-ly...
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.
This is purely my own speculation informed by some Clayton Christiansen, but it's possible that someone at Ford sees Ford as a transportation company, not a car company. So the job to be done is moving people and things around. Ford also sponsors the Ford GoBikes that you see all over San Francisco. This could be seen as competing with the Ford the car company. Or it's just part of the portfolio of products from Ford…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
It's possible on the West Coast, and actually probably easier to do in bigger cities. However you need to be particular about where you live and work, which usually involves paying more money. It also becomes much harder if you have a significant other and kids.
Currently residing in NYC and pretty unhappy about the difficulty of getting out in nature. My ideal town is on the water; not too big; good public transportation; flat enough for biking; forests, mountains and lakes easily reachable by bike/walking/subway; dense urban core for apartment living or small house; decent downtown with some brand name shopping; temperate climate. Plus points for abundant access to public EV charges.
My home town is Oslo, Norway, which ticks all the boxes except the climate one, which always bugged me when I was living there. The lack of daylight and sun is something of a dealbreaker.
Curious what the situation is elsewhere. I've heard good things about Denver and Raleigh, for example, though those aren't so temperate either.
Pls stop trying to re-invent public transit.