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In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

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Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#61

Post by akgerber »

gruez wrote: post #57
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know it's not by accident, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Under "Counterarguments" section it's been argued that the streetcar lines were already on a downward decline by the time GM bought them, so blaming GM seems tenuous.

US streetcar lines were in the 'transit death spiral' in no small part because they were largely built before cars were common, and became dramatically slower once car traffic started obstructing their right-of-way, which they were usually required by contract to maintain.

(There were many other factors, including their overexpansion during a securities bubble and that their concessions were usually for a 'nickel fare' with no inflation adjustment, which lead to declining real revenue over time)

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#63

Post by feet »

chaos_emergent wrote: post #30
pif wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, So what? The first and only point of a public transport system is, you know, transporting people. Limiting congestion and pollution comes very far in terms of priority, and only once the core mission is fulfilled.

Plus, the counter-factual is not the same use of bus systems, but instead lower use of bus systems in favor of private ride share companies who don’t have the incentive to limit congestion or pollution at all. The consumer revolution has plainly exposed that people will consistently choose the more convenient option.

I hear trains are pretty damn convenient in Europe. I wonder why the US doesn't have anything like that, hmm

Cue: people who claim some absurd innate differences while ignoring the lobbying efforts of car manufacturers

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#64

Post by RF_Savage »

The greater Helsinki area municipal transit authority "HSL" had this years a go. You could hail a mini bus with an app if you had some friends with you. I guess it was not sustainable, even if it was well liked. As it got shut down after a few years.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#65

Post by VyseofArcadia »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #8

Aren’t these just subsidized taxis? They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, I don’t see how they ultimately bring down costs since you still need individual cars and drivers... Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an Uber/Lyft with anyone else despi…

> They don’t help with congestion

Definitely not the point of these. In larger cities, bus transit is for reducing congestion without massive infrastructure investment. In smaller cities, bus transit is purely for helping people who can't/don't drive get to where they need to be.

The problem is, there is not enough ridership in smaller cities for a bus to be frequent or cover a wide area. This solves that problem, but it only works since congestion isn't a problem.

As soon as there enough people to worry about congestion, bus transit is better.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#66

Post by fennecfoxen »

whatever1 wrote: post #37

Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time. I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations. Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time,…

> Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time.

Bus Rapid Transit called. It promised 95% of the raw speed and 4x the service frequency at 25% of the cost.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#67

Post by vel0city »

bluGill wrote: post #27

Another bad idea that keeps coming back. Real experts have written about it. Start with https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.ht... and be prepared to read for a while to understand why this is not a good idea despite the hype.

> It’s one tool for providing lifeline access to hard-to-serve areas, where availability, not ridership, is the point.

From your own article. Flexible/microtransit/whatever you want to call it can be a good idea, and it can be done right. Its not a replacement for a bus route with any level of decent ridership, its for the areas where there literally aren't enough people interested in riding a bus to make the bus practical. Once ridership numbers get high enough, the transit groups should absolutely upgrade those areas to actual bus lines, but until then it is an option to serve places that otherwise wouldn't be able to be effectively served by decent bus service economically.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#69

Post by Symmetry »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #49
whatever1 wrote: post #37

Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time. I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations. Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time,…

You know it's not by accident, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Streetcars, combining the routing inflexibility of trains with the vulnerability to traffic of busses. We could have saved them if we'd banned cars from city centers and you can argue that if you want to but it wasn't GM that did them in.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#70

Post by woodruffw »

gruez wrote: post #59
woodruffw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The object of a public transportation system is to transport the public , not individual people. That means mass design considerations, which are the same considerations as anti-congestion. Reducing pollution is a nice side effect.

>The object of a public transportation system is to transport the public, not individual people "Individual people" comprise "the public". >That means mass design considerations In a town of 49,000 people, and where there are only 5 buses that run once per hour, I think such considerations isn't really worth considering, at least compared to the convenience factor of not having to wait 1 hour.

> "Individual people" comprise "the public".

The point I was making is that public transportation systems should be designed with multiple people in mind. Otherwise they're just subsidized taxicabs (which is fine, in an extremely rural area, but Wilson is a moderately sized city right on I-95).

> In a town of 49,000 people, and where there are only 5 buses that run once per hour, I think such considerations isn't really worth considering, at least compared to the convenience factor of not having to wait 1 hour.

"Mass design" doesn't mean a NYC-scale subway or bus system; it means a combination of (1) incentivizing mass transit, bringing demand up, and (2) expanding access to transit and restructuring routes to meet demand. It wouldn't surprise me if Wilson hadn't done a ridership-based restructuring of their routes and timetables in the last 30 years.

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