"During the 2013 fiscal year, the Taxi and Limousine Commission impounded more than six hundred illegal vans, two hundred and forty of them in Brooklyn."
Imagine the uproar on HN if this were to happen to, say, Uber drivers...
New York’s Shadow Transit
51–60 of 132 posts
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#52It seems *similar unlicensed busses are gone now: http://www.fastcompany.com/1839333/business-lessons-chinatow...
I never understood how those unlicensed "Chinatown buses" managed to survive anyway. Their fares weren't any cheaper than their licensed (and FAR safer) brethren in Megabus.
Megabus is cheap because of Chinatown buses. When the DOT moved in and shut down a whole slew of buses (for good reason, mind you), Megabus raised their rates dramatically.
There's a weird pricing symbiosis between the two sides.
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#53This is a great story. It's a look at how people really live in a modern city and the border between formal and informal commerce. One of the key research targets in modern sociology and economics and political science is the emergence of institutions like dollar vans. It's very difficult to get a public system to cover every route and part of the city that needs transit, but most city authorities are reluctant to li…
Hong Kong has thousands of minibuses, which are -- surprisingly -- more expensive than the bus or subway, but can often be twice as fast. (In part because they are notorious for driving dangerously.) The drivers and vehicles are actually licensed these days, but in almost all aspects they still operate in a very "informal" way; there's no route maps, for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus
"Twelve dollars, twelve minutes" (to Mong Kok from Kennedy Town), as a local said to me about the red minibus :-)
12 HKD is 1.5 USD. The route is this on Google Maps, which notes that the distance of approximately 8 km should take "13 min without traffic". So 12 minutes is basically dangerous driving!
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Kennedy+Town,+Hong+Kong/Mong...
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#54This is a great story. It's a look at how people really live in a modern city and the border between formal and informal commerce. One of the key research targets in modern sociology and economics and political science is the emergence of institutions like dollar vans. It's very difficult to get a public system to cover every route and part of the city that needs transit, but most city authorities are reluctant to li…
Hong Kong has thousands of minibuses, which are -- surprisingly -- more expensive than the bus or subway, but can often be twice as fast. (In part because they are notorious for driving dangerously.) The drivers and vehicles are actually licensed these days, but in almost all aspects they still operate in a very "informal" way; there's no route maps, for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus
[deleted]
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I understand that in Los Angeles, where the busses are awful... This seems to be a common refrain, but it's also outdated. Both the bus and subway networks in LA are massively larger than in San Francisco (which, by the way, has the world's slowest bus fleet at 8.1 mph [1]). LA County is massively larger than San Francisco (including the equivalents of the entire Peninsula, Oakland, and Marin) and has sections of v…
LA's public transit broke every misconception I had about it. It was fantastic. We actually ditched our rent-a-car and grabbed a $5/day transit pass and got to most of the places we wanted to go. All without being stuck in traffic. From Griffith Observatory to downtown, to long beach, to hollywood blvd. And it was super clean. The subway stations were beautiful. I can't wait to visit the city in a few more years afte…
I used to live in Long Beach, and you're right that the transit is quite good between heavily trafficked points and along major corridors.
But the huge area the system needs to cover means most of the resident population is significantly underserved. As a random sample, I just put the 15 miles between Lakewood to Carson into Google Maps and the transit routes start at 2 hours each way, even during peak hours! It's a 20 minute drive.
A major challenge for people living with limited means is how much slower life is when they're dependent on public transit to get around. LA's limited network removes many seemingly-accessible employment or education options entirely.
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#56This is a great story. It's a look at how people really live in a modern city and the border between formal and informal commerce. One of the key research targets in modern sociology and economics and political science is the emergence of institutions like dollar vans. It's very difficult to get a public system to cover every route and part of the city that needs transit, but most city authorities are reluctant to li…
> In Mexico City, the city has simply licensed dollar vans with just the minimal oversight necessary for public safety. They've all painted themselves green and white and the informal routes have firmed up but there is still -- decades later -- no map, public or private, of the routes of the most common form of transit in this modern city of 22 million. http://www.viadf.com.mx/directorio/Microbus looks like a good di…
That's the best start I've see to a route map. It looks like the data was collected by GPS, which is a good idea. Still, a lot of routes that I've used are not mapped and the maps that exist are of variable quality.
I think that organized projects based on smartphone users should be able to solve the problem eventually.
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#57This is a great story. It's a look at how people really live in a modern city and the border between formal and informal commerce. One of the key research targets in modern sociology and economics and political science is the emergence of institutions like dollar vans. It's very difficult to get a public system to cover every route and part of the city that needs transit, but most city authorities are reluctant to li…
Most parts of American cities (and their suburbs) are covered with nothing but hundreds of blocks of dreary, monotonous, cookie-cutter single-family homes. Outside the city center, the population density drops dramatically. How many people do you think in a block full of single-family homes? A couple hundred at most. Contrast this with a city like Seoul, where nearly every block is filled with condos and apartments,…
But it does get a bit suffocating,
Doesn't Seoul have a huge belt of mountains to go skiing and hiking in just a couple miles outside the outer subway stations? Maybe even closer around places like Seouldae? That's a pretty good option for open space.
I agree that US suburbia is stifling in its own way and hostile to transit and dollar vans. Still, LA, SF, Chicago, and NYC have plenty of places they could work.
Those density figures are misleading. You've chosen San Francisco County, LA county, and the five central NY counties, but included only the populated part of Seoul and most of the Kaanto for Tokyo. The populated parts of Tokyo and Seoul are of similar density (as is Mexico City), around 40k/mi^2, fairly consistently through their metro areas. New York varies from 110k in central Manhattan to miles low density 4k sprawl on the outskirts. SF tops out around 17k and then sprawls. LA is similar but slightly more consistent. The pretty parts of Paris are at 80k but everyone finds them liberating and exciting rather than stifling -- maybe because it's done without high rises.
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes! Caltrain is actually very accommodating to bicyclists, with no extra charge for bikes and special bike cars (that are often full at peak hours). I personally bike about a mile to a train station in Palo Alto, and about a mile from Caltrain to the office in San Francisco. However, San Francisco has some fundamental problems that make it less hospitable to biking than Copenhagen. It is notoriously hilly, and doesn…
> protected bike tracks I recently ran across a hard-to-believe, but as far as I can tell, accurate statistic: the Copenhagen metropolitan area has more miles of protected bike lanes than the entire United States combined does. That is somewhat surprising, since the Copenhagen metro area isn't really all that big.
It's not quite the same thing, but Palo Alto (suburban San Francisco) has been turning side streets into 'bike boulevards' that are inconvenient to drive on, and therefore safer to bike on. Roundabouts, signage and even bollards to block car through-traffic all serve to make these side streets quite pleasant bike corridors.
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#59I'm currently visiting Russia where Marshrutka's (minibuses) are commonplace. Coming from the US where one has to drive everywhere, it's quite convenient to pay a dollar or so and get anywhere you need to be. It's a very low-capital and safe way to solve transportation issues and requires no major infrastructure overalls.
It makes you wonder if the US national and local political situation is actually interested in the needs of the people or simply protecting their benefactors (taxi unions, etc). After seeing the efficiency of private transit, I'd be willing to accept gray markets then an overbearing police state if it means reasonable solutions.
Re: New York’s Shadow Transit
#60San Francisco has a "Jitney Bus" that attempts to correct the horrendous hole in transit between the Caltrain commuter rail and downtown. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-One-Man-Traffic-Buster-... There is also a startup called Chariot that is building a private bus line to downtown SF; this one has a surprisingly different appeal than the ones in the article in NYC: the existing public Muni bus line from the Ma…
'horrendous hole'? Do you mean the 10-15 minute walk from Market Street to the Caltrain station?
It's quite the hike. Covered in varying weather conditions. Not nearly as bad as either the heat of the deep south or the cold of the northeast, but rain or just the fog and humidity plus walk make for a damp experience.
Worse is trying to rush the distance catching one of the hourly-only off-peak trains. Or having to carry anything other than a light bag the distance.