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Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

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Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#51

Post by [deleted] »

jerguismi wrote: post #47
jks wrote: post #41

I live in Helsinki and have tried this service a couple of times. Every time I have had the whole van for myself, except once there was a journalist doing a story on the fancy new service. It's not really fair to compare the price to a single bus ride: if you live in Helsinki and don't own a car, you already have a monthly ticket and the incremental cost of getting on a bus is zero. This is in effect a cheap taxi tha…

Nah, the service is not private but public transport project, and it isn't viable business. The trips are covered by the tax money paid by you (and me). There is no way a taxi trip could cost $5 using that kind of vehicle. You also have to factor in the operational costs and note that the cars are Mercedez Benz vans with wifi etc.

[deleted]

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#52

Post by mradamh »

mikeash wrote: post #26
jasondemeuse wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>do what really works for most people -- buses Do buses really work better for most people? I live in Chicago and it seems like most people I know (including me) ride the trains unless it can be avoided.

It seems to be universal. I've seen it in places from SF to DC to small-town France to Beijing: the bus a second choice that you only take when the train doesn't go where you need it to go. I'm still trying to figure out why , though. Despite sharing that opinion myself, I still can't quite figure out what the concrete reasons are. It seems to come down to: subway routes are much easier to figure out, stops are much…

I'm sure I am in the minority, but avoid bus trips wherever possible because I get horribly motion sick on them. I few years ago I had a job with a 20 minute bus commute and it was torture. I'd break out in a cold sweat every time and stagger off the bus feeling light headed and dizzy.

This does seem to be an inherent problem for me with road vehicles. I experience a similar problem riding in the back of a car. I'm not immune from motion sickness on trains, but it is an order of magnitude better.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#53

Post by snir »

hershel wrote: post #49
snir wrote: post #46

We've actually been working on something like this for San Francisco (and we plan to expand onwards after operating here): http://www.takehitch.com The municipality tends to work a little slower here (chatted a bit with SFMTA in the past), so we're starting with a model that just focuses on private cars. But the fundamental point--dynamic re-routing to create custom routes where people can ride in the same vehicle--i…

Since it's a new model,How is the response from drivers you try to recruit ?

Response has been really good (a subjective answer :)). For more objectivity, we've received ~40 leads for one CL post, and got about 10 leads in small little twitter campaign ($5 ad).

People seem to be genuinely excited about collaborative consumption, and we enable route-sharing (I hesitate to use "ridesharing" since the term has become overloaded and isn't accurate to its origins). Passengers are sharing their ride with others, and that's new in the on-demand era.

There have been plenty of mental models built up with the one-to-one sector though (one driver, one customer), so we have seen the need to start explaining from the ground-up, so as to articulate the differences.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#54

Post by cameldrv »

mikeash wrote: post #26
jasondemeuse wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>do what really works for most people -- buses Do buses really work better for most people? I live in Chicago and it seems like most people I know (including me) ride the trains unless it can be avoided.

It seems to be universal. I've seen it in places from SF to DC to small-town France to Beijing: the bus a second choice that you only take when the train doesn't go where you need it to go. I'm still trying to figure out why , though. Despite sharing that opinion myself, I still can't quite figure out what the concrete reasons are. It seems to come down to: subway routes are much easier to figure out, stops are much…

Trains are faster if they're grade separated because they don't have to wait for traffic. Not waiting for traffic also makes them more reliable, especially during rush hour. If you can't rely on the schedule, you have to put padding into your schedule, which makes them effectively even slower. Trains are also faster because they have lots of doors and the passengers are waiting at the same level as the doors, and you're not waiting for people to buy tickets, so the stops are quicker. Since they move faster, you can also run a more frequent service with the same number of vehicles (driver cost is a very large component of operating costs of a public transit system) They're also smoother and so more pleasant to ride. You're usually also waiting for them out of the elements.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#55

Post by hershel »

snir wrote: post #53
hershel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it's a new model,How is the response from drivers you try to recruit ?

Response has been really good (a subjective answer :)). For more objectivity, we've received ~40 leads for one CL post, and got about 10 leads in small little twitter campaign ($5 ad). People seem to be genuinely excited about collaborative consumption, and we enable route-sharing (I hesitate to use "ridesharing" since the term has become overloaded and isn't accurate to its origins). Passengers are sharing their rid…

That's great to hear. Best of luck.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#56

Post by oh_sigh »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #33

This was actually proposed by by Christopher Alexander in _A Pattern Language_ originally published in 1977. He cites an MIT study from which he may have gotten the idea. http://books.google.com/books?id=hwAHmktpk5IC&&pg=PA110 I'm actually surprised it hasn't been done before now, we've had the technology for a while. (It's not clear from the brief write-up if this one is a private company or municipal service). The…

Do you happen to remember the number of this pattern in the book? I read A Pattern Language by flipping to random pages, and following various trails of references, but I don't think I've come across this one yet...

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#57

Post by kgermino »

cameldrv wrote: post #54
mikeash wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be universal. I've seen it in places from SF to DC to small-town France to Beijing: the bus a second choice that you only take when the train doesn't go where you need it to go. I'm still trying to figure out why , though. Despite sharing that opinion myself, I still can't quite figure out what the concrete reasons are. It seems to come down to: subway routes are much easier to figure out, stops are much…

Trains are faster if they're grade separated because they don't have to wait for traffic. Not waiting for traffic also makes them more reliable, especially during rush hour. If you can't rely on the schedule, you have to put padding into your schedule, which makes them effectively even slower. Trains are also faster because they have lots of doors and the passengers are waiting at the same level as the doors, and you…

The thing is "They're also smoother and so more pleasant to ride. " is the only thing on that list that's even remotely inherent to trains over buses. Yet you rarely see people arguing to improve the buses so the other things you mentioned aren't an issue.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#58

Post by jks »

jerguismi wrote: post #47
jks wrote: post #41

I live in Helsinki and have tried this service a couple of times. Every time I have had the whole van for myself, except once there was a journalist doing a story on the fancy new service. It's not really fair to compare the price to a single bus ride: if you live in Helsinki and don't own a car, you already have a monthly ticket and the incremental cost of getting on a bus is zero. This is in effect a cheap taxi tha…

Nah, the service is not private but public transport project, and it isn't viable business. The trips are covered by the tax money paid by you (and me). There is no way a taxi trip could cost $5 using that kind of vehicle. You also have to factor in the operational costs and note that the cars are Mercedez Benz vans with wifi etc.

Well, yeah, it's the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority getting around another branch of government (it's the ELY-keskus that gives out taxi permits, part of the state instead of the city). I agree that there is no way this can be a profitable business now, but if they can get a sufficient user base it could become one.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#59

Post by ChuckMcM »

There is a bus which was making runs by the Caltrain station that made me think of this same thing. Which is basically if you took a bus that was going to a common aggregation node (like Caltrain) and let people summon it (like Uber) you could then present them with an estimate when the bus would show up (like NextBus) and how long the trip would take to your destination. Then in the morning as everyone summoned "I want to get to Caltrain" you layout the route and start driving. The bus driver just has a modified GPS navigator thing which is telling them to turn and to stop and wait.

Connect the dots with NFC and you've got Uber Bus or something similar.

Re: Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transit

#60

Post by anologwintermut »

untog wrote: post #16
danielweber wrote: post #14

I'd love this. If American public transportation fans would stop fantasizing about trains and instead do what really works for most people -- buses -- then we could have things a lot better. I've been waiting for years for a service that dispatches a nice bus to ride in on my way to work without me having to walk/drive to a bus stop and hope the schedule is right. I'd accept a modest increase in the commute time if I…

If American public transportation fans would stop fantasizing about trains and instead do what really works for most people -- buses Trains really work for large numbers of people. A single NYC subway train can carry something like 2,400 people. A bus can carry something like 1/10 of that at best. Once you factor in the subway and local train services to New Jersey, CT, Long Island and Upstate New York you really, re…

The story that trains are superior for high density is not necessarily true. Buses with dedicated lanes appear to have high throughputs and lower infrastructure costs ( not to mention can continue to run into lower density areas or have routes more easily changed as the population density shifts).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit#Comparison_wi...

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