I think this featured in Charlie Stross's novel Rule 34. His version includes what seems like dynamic rerouting based on willingness to pay a premium.
In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
111–120 of 176 posts
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#112Earlier 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.
The primary purpose of public transport (within an urban area) is reducing traffic. The vast majority of people can use private vehicles just fine, and if traffic is not an issue, the rest can use taxis. Subsidized ones if necessary. Reducing traffic is the primary goal. When there is less traffic, the city can reserve less space for streets and parking. That leaves more space for the purposes people are in the city…
> The vast majority of people can use private vehicles just fine,
Roughly half the population of the UK has nowhere off road to park the car and only enough space in the road to park one or sometimes only one for each two dwellings and you risk someone else taking the space if you move your car. This means that while it might be literally true there is nonetheless a substantial number of people for whom using a private vehicle is not just fine.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#113I recall Hong Kong's solution, at least when I was there a decade ago. You had the Metro with fixed rails for core routes, then double-decker buses that went to additional areas in large loops. Next were the green minibuses that had small loops, branching off from the other services. After that were red minibuses, which had specific pickup locations, then would drop you off anywhere nearby. All of which could be paid…
I think Hong Kong can pull this off in part because so much of the city is long thin corridors which can be nearly entirely serviced by the metro, commuter train, by light rail in the new territories (and I guess the cable car). This covers a high percentage of commuter needs, and so buses, minibuses, and taxis are to some extent gap-fillers to get people from major arteries to the remaining small proportion of outlying destinations.
It is great, you are right.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
The US does have trains in the north east, or so I have heard.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
In America you have the appointment time, class start time, shift start time. Changing that would take a huge social shift
It's been a few years since I was in Europe, but I'm pretty sure folks there make appointments and show up at work/school at a specific time. Public transit is fine for all of these things if it runs reliably, often, and with sensible routing. You leave a little earlier, but someone else is doing the driving, so it's a nice time to read, check email, etc.
> but I'm pretty sure folks there make appointments and show up at work/school at a specific time.
Your recollection is perfectly correct, we certainly do make and keep appointments!
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#116Sorting out the numbers here:
- 15 vans.
- 37,000 trips / week (6-day service). I suspect most are on weekdays.
- 6,170 trips/day
- 13.5 hour operation (5:30 am - 7 pm)
- ~457 trips / hour
- ~30 trips / van-hour
I'm not sure how many seats per van, though I suspect 6--9 (3 rows of 3 seats). If a trip is 15 minutes, then that's an average of 7.5 passengers/trip.
Keep in mind that net trips includes the deadhead (no passenger) portion.
The ridership numbers seem unusually high to me. I'd be interested in seeing trip profiles.
By comparison, BART in the SF Bay Area has an annual ridership of over 20 million, and over 104,000 weekday riders. (I also suspect a Bart rider is two trips.) Bart moves 3x what Wilson are claiming for weekly numbers, and roughly as many people in an hour as Wilson does in a day. The Transbay Tunnel can accommodate 24 ten-car trainsets per hour. Each car can carry more than 200 passengers at crush load, or 48,000 passengers/hour for the tube as a whole.
https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity
https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars
Put another way, microtransit is trying to shoehorn transit into a sprawl- and car-centric urban landscape. Dense development and well-travelled routes are what make transit efficient and viable.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds pretty good, if you overlook people smoking meth or crack, publicly urinating and defecating on the bus, violence, etc. Not unique to buses for sure. Thanks, but I'll keep my "polite society" vehicle and properly planned highways in Orange County.
I have never once seen any of these on a public bus, either in my city or others. What you're describing sounds like a civic problem where you live, not some kind of intrinsic quality of public transportation.
Same. I've travelled by bus in many cities on three continents and never experienced anything like that. The worst bus I've been on was in San Francisco but even that was pretty clean and decent.
I haven't owned a car for three years and public transit has been fine most of the time, but I live in a city that prioritises public transit. On the rare occasion that I can't get a bus somewhere there is a car sharing service I can fall back on.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#118Public 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 bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere). NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is al…
Yeah, same in Chicago, really the same as mass transit anywhere: You need density to make it work. My little town of under 100K population tries to do city bus services but it's a joke. Most routes run once or twice an hour which is not often enough to be convenient. Busses drive around empty or with one or two riders. It's a service that costs millions of dollars a year to operate and is used by a tiny minority of the people. It's a sacred cow though.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#119Public 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,…
The city of <50k residents from the article is never going to have a subway system on rails. This is a solution for small cities that replaces the terrible bus service you've experienced. The microtransit system described specifically eliminates the bus stops that you cite as drawbacks.
Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus
#120Santa Clara County, CA, had that in 1974-1975.[1] It was a failure. Mini-buses running around with zero or one passenger.
The trouble is, there have to be a lot of people wanting roughly the same trip for mini-buses to work. Otherwise you're just running a taxi service with an oversized vehicle.
It works when there's a common source or destination, such as an airport or a downtown area or a school. It doesn't work in a big diffuse area, where everybody wants a different trip.