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Chariot is shutting down

blog.chariot.com

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Re: Chariot is shutting down

#161

Post by devocracy »

atombender wrote: post #122
hhw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver, BC is probably the easiest city on the West Coast to manage without a car. The downtown core is very walkable, and there is reasonable public transit through most of the greater metro area. There's a high proportion of residential buildings downtown, and many have pretty empty parking lots as cars aren't necessary for a lot of people most of the time, and there are a number of competing car share services…

Vancouver ticks a lot of boxes, but it's a bit cold, unfortunately.

Those of us living in the frozen wasteland that is winter in the rest of Canada can definitely not relate!

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#162

Post by leroy_masochist »

Sad to hear this.

People talked a lot of shit about Chariot -- "Silicon Valley tech bros got funding and invented a bus route", blah blah blah -- but urban minibus routes are AWESOME when well-executed.

Seriously we were promised flying cars and we can't even get marshrutki.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#163

Post by nitrogen »

ryandrake wrote: post #103
yggda wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or, for an ethical gray-area solution if your guest has only a one way trip (like to the airport): give them a Clipper card with some minimal ($2) balance. They should be able to go to their destination regardless of the fare. The card’s balance will go negative, but they can just throw it away.

The BART gates won't let you out if you don't have enough money on a ticket, so you'd have to jump the gate or add funds at a kiosk (think the same applies for cards, too).

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#164

Post by ctab »

eob wrote: post #151

I just wanted to chime in to thank Chariot for the service they provided. In my experience, few startups literally make your entire day better. I’ve been using Chariot to commute across SF for about two years and it has given me more time at home with my wife and son, better ability to predict when I’ll arrive at work, and a way to use my commute as a quiet space for the reading I could never quite manage on a crowde…

Thanks for the kind words. The ability to improve people's daily lives, as you described, was a big reason a lot of us chose to work there and something we were hoping to see at a larger scale eventually. Today's news came as a shock to most of us.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#165

Post by vladgur »

atombender wrote: post #141
vladgur wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within the Larger Bay Area there is plenty of smaller cities with a well developed and prolific downtowns that have startups, retail, supermarkets, bars and restaurants all within walking distance of a rail system connecting you to SF: Mountain View, Oakland, Redwood City or where I live - San Mateo. My family and I have been a 1-car household for more than a decade and mostly walk everywhere including a train s…

I've only visited Silicon Valley once, so my impression may be skewed, but to me it came across as this incredibly bland, entangled sprawl of anonymous strip malls, with each "city" indistinguishable from the next. To some extent these cities seemed walkable, but in practice everyone has a car, and most endeavours have you end up on the highway. Everyone seems to complain about either traffic or about the awfulness o…

Bay Area is a large metropolitan area, so yes, there are places like what you described.

There are also great cities with walkable downtowns often right next to a train station. You can choose to live close to these areas and enjoy walkability, or live a bit further and drive everywhere. There are definitely choices

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#166

Post by laurentoget »

Not very surprising. There is a problem with trying to fund urban transit by selling it as a service for those who use it. urban transit is a service which benefits every member of the community it serves , both individuals and corporations, by reducing congestion. In most places with an efficient transit network, fare revenue is not the biggest source of funding.

This is shocking for americans who grow up in the post Reagan era, but some things are easier done by governments.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#167

Post by csydas »

dabockster wrote: post #41
rconti wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sounds like why Sound Transit exists in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area. It basically creates an adapter pattern-like third agency that manages the long distance routes between the major cities and counties.

I was going to comment the same; I lived in Tacoma and committed to Seattle for 4 years, and it was incredibly convenient, even with the traffic on I5. The seattle-tacoma route had more frequent intervals than the local Tacoma busses did and the transit was pretty nice. Usually full but never packed (except last bus of the evening)

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#168

Post by dwd »

tim-- wrote: post #143
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.

I really appreciate how the NSW Australian Government is working on a solution to this. They are currently running trial on-demand services, where a mini-van will come and pick you up after a request from an app[0]. I don't understand why the US cities are so adverse to setting up similar systems. [0] https://transportnsw.info/travel-info/ways-to-get-around/on-...

Sound similar to ConXion who I've used in the past to avoid paying airport parking.

For the Sunshine Coast > Brisbane Airport trip they pick you up at your door in a smaller 12 seater to meet up near the highway with the larger coach for the hour or so run in. They run hourly trips each way.

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#169

Post by romwell »

crucini wrote: post #156
dba7dba wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Los Angeles area had very advanced light railway system including Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric Railway Company up until 1960s. Check the map of Pacific Electric Railway Company, and you can see a railway running on the beach from Hermosa Beach up to Santa Monica. The famous Venice Beach Bike Path was originally what the Pacific Electric Railway Company rail used to be. Can you imagine light rails ON the b…

I've heard that story plenty of times, but I have my doubts, which increase over time. I think people simply didn't like streetcars once buses were available. I think streetcars were seen as a horrible, dangerous, inconvenient technology with massive infrastructure costs. The first crack in my belief was a comment by a former Baltimore fire chief (I think) who had worked as a streetcar and bus driver earlier. He talk…

>I've heard that story plenty of times, but I have my doubts,

It's not a story, it's a goddamn historical fact[1].

>I'm sure there's a grain of truth in there, about lobbying - but was it really the decisive factor?

Of course not just lobbying, but also immense loads of corruption and monopoly practices[1].

>Streetcars were a very cool idea but unfortunately motor buses were better in every objective way.

Yeah, that's why streetcars in Europe were all replaced by buses just like the were in the US, and nobody builds "light rail" (read: streetcar systems) anymore anywhere.

Oh wait, exactly the opposite is true, because, well, street cars work, and[1].

The real reason you don't see streetcars is that the benefits of a public transit system are externalities[2], and so they must be funded by the government.

Streetcars were never simply not funded by the government in the way highways are funded -- because of things like [1] -- and so they were destroyed by companies that made [1] happen.

You're welcome.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Re: Chariot is shutting down

#170

Post by TeMPOraL »

capkutay wrote: post #77
aezed wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Acquihiring doesn't necessarily involve keeping everyone from the acquired company.
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