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Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

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Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#31

Post by JimboOmega »

baddox wrote: post #25
pjlegato wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the heavily subsidized public bus service in San Francisco, Muni, operates abysmally. Buses are usually filthy, massively overcrowded during rush hour, often very late, and make frequent stops. In many cases, taking the bus is only slightly faster than walking. Compounding the problem is the lack of buses on many popular commute routes, such as the Lombard-downtown route that Leap follows. They will either av…

> In many cases, taking the bus is only slightly faster than walking. I live in Soma, within one block of stops on several ostensibly good bus routes, but I still find that I need to be going at least 2 miles (sometimes even 3, depending on the destination) for it to be faster to bus than to walk. This obviously wouldn't be the case if any of said bus routes stuck even remotely to the stated schedule, or if traffic w…

The bus is pretty heavy on shenanigans, but I have found the real-time tracking to be pretty accurate - though there are a few places it can get way off (especially where it's not tracking an already-moving bus, e.g., at the transbay terminal).

Traffic is probably the biggest factor that causes randomness and there's no avoiding that, private bus or no.

Bicycling, though... is often the fastest way for me to get around the city.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#32

Post by throwawaymsft »

ngoel36 wrote: post #22

I don't understand why I would take this for $5 a ride over LyftLine or UberPool ($5/$7 without Surge) which offers presumably much quicker service and no walking to/from stops. That being said, I would be pumped to see something like this between SF and Palo Alto

You're on a comfortable bus, in a comfortable chair with a table, with giant windows, and not being jostled around in the back of a minivan.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#33

Post by r00fus »

baddox wrote: post #25
pjlegato wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the heavily subsidized public bus service in San Francisco, Muni, operates abysmally. Buses are usually filthy, massively overcrowded during rush hour, often very late, and make frequent stops. In many cases, taking the bus is only slightly faster than walking. Compounding the problem is the lack of buses on many popular commute routes, such as the Lombard-downtown route that Leap follows. They will either av…

> In many cases, taking the bus is only slightly faster than walking. I live in Soma, within one block of stops on several ostensibly good bus routes, but I still find that I need to be going at least 2 miles (sometimes even 3, depending on the destination) for it to be faster to bus than to walk. This obviously wouldn't be the case if any of said bus routes stuck even remotely to the stated schedule, or if traffic w…

> This obviously wouldn't be the case if any of said bus routes stuck even remotely to the stated schedule, or if traffic was at least somewhat predictable.

These are symptoms of the same problem. In France (at least in Grenoble where I worked for a year) there are dedicated bus lanes (dedicated lights for those lanes). Without those, buses are subject to the same issues caused by traffic.

I agree with the commenter above who remarked that the public transport woes are due to poor urban planning. To answer why urban planning is so misguided you'd have to follow the money.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#34

Post by asimjalis »

JimboOmega wrote: post #12
rguzman wrote: post #2

I can't shake the feeling that the existence of leap and that it seems compelling are symptoms of deeply flawed urban planning.

I can't shake the feeling that it's an answer to the problem "I like the idea of commuting in a shared vehicle, but the bus is dirty and sometimes homeless people ride it."

I have used buses in SF. They are unreliable. Sometimes a bus just never shows up, regardless of what the schedule says. Then two buses show up at the same time. This has happened to me several times.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#35

Post by joshavant »

pjlegato wrote: post #18
gmarx wrote: post #11

I used to wonder, years ago when I lived in SF, why does a supposedly green city have such lousy public transportation? If this is successful, expect MUNI to use legal means to get rid of it.

Privately run, regularly scheduled bus services open to the public, called "jitneys," are already illegal in San Francisco.[1] Leap and similar services seem to be ignoring this law. They were banned in the 1970s as Muni's service degraded, to shield it from competition. [1] http://missionlocal.org/2014/06/up-until-the-1970s-muni-had-...

That's interesting, considering, for many years, I've seen this bus around San Francisco with 'jitney bus' literally printed on the side: http://images.nymag.com/travel/weekends/20090910sanfransisco...

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#36

Post by deegles »

schintan wrote: post #5

the seats look sparse ..how are they going to get by with so few seats and still be competitive on price ?

Assuming a bus costs 100k@4% financing, that's about 2,200 a month.

Salary for a driver could be another 100k (including benefits, taxes, etc). That's 8.3 k per month.

CNG buses get about 3mpg at about $2/gallon equivalent cost to diesel (http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/20120227-Die...)

Assuming 150 miles driven per day, that's $3,000 per month in fuel costs.

Total costs per bus: $13,500/month or $450 per day.

At $5 per ride, that's 2,700 rides per month or 90 per day. Even if they could only fit 10 people, that's less than 10 rides per day. Seems reasonable to me.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#37

Post by girvo »

pjlegato wrote: post #21
JimboOmega wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't shake the feeling that it's an answer to the problem "I like the idea of commuting in a shared vehicle, but the bus is dirty and sometimes homeless people ride it."

You say that as though disliking a ride on a filthy bus while sitting next to a homeless guy who smells like urine and stale vomit and is leering saliciously at every woman on the bus while murmuring obscenities and rubbing his groin is some sort of illegitimate and invalid reason that only a precious bourgeois person would dare to think.

Nice one, going for the emotional and gender-based play. Homeless people are people too, surprisingly, and in my experience those that complain about homeless people on public transport are whinging about the mere presence of them, not saying that they're as extreme as your example.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#38

Post by ojbyrne »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #28
andy318 wrote: post #17

Anyone know Leap's arragement with their drivers? Their TOS makes it seem like the Uber for buses. From Terms of service - "LEAP DOES NOT PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION SERVICES, AND LEAP IS NOT A TRANSPORTATION CARRIER. IT IS UP TO THE DRIVER OR VEHICLE OPERATOR TO OFFER TRANSPORTATION SERVICES WHICH MAY BE ARRANGED THROUGH USE OF THE SERVICES"

Got to love it when the ALL CAPS directly contradicts all published marketing and intuition. >see why Leap is the daily commute you’ll love >Here’s how you ride >Our first route travels between Lombard Street and Downtown. >You’ll love our buses >Our buses are fueled by renewable natural gas and take cars off the road. >We stripped our buses down >Every bus has a Leap team member on board >Our beautifully designed ap…

Especially when the FAQ says:

"Do you use professional drivers?

All of our drivers have years of experience driving public and private transit. Each driver must pass through a complete background check and adhere to a zero tolerance alcohol and drug policy."

It sounds like its just a way to make bus drivers 1099 contractors, while dictating everything they do, since it seems unlikely to me that there are many bus owner/operators.

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#39

Post by jlees »

patmcguire wrote: post #20

Things like this exist in New York, although they're significantly more... informal. Two dollars, cash. http://projects.newyorker.com/story/nyc-dollar-vans/ Leap can be faster because they cut a lot of things that the SFMTA buses provides. A big delay on the public buses is letting people with wheelchairs on and off, if they are using the same design as the video it looks like they don't support that. They can also c…

Reminds me of the Nairobi matatus, too: https://medium.com/@transitapp/hello-nairobi-cc27bb5a73b7

Re: Leap: Your daily commute redesigned

#40

Post by girvo »

pjlegato wrote: post #24
aetherson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys. It costs 3x as much, and it's a hassle to get on without a smartphone. That's how it competes. It's a bus that tries to price out the poorer people (and doesn't serve their neighborhoods. And is most convenient with a smartphone). Their bet is that you won't miss the $4 per ride surcharge if you can avoid dealing with poor people.

Assumes facts not in evidence; there is no reason to suppose that a class-based explanation is correct when the much simpler explanation of "not having to leave an hour early to work around Muni's terrible service quality" adequately explains the situation.

A class-based explanation and Muni being a terrible service "ripe for disruption" are not mutually exclusive. You can't, however, argue that a private bus service that requires a smartphone and costs 3x what regular public transport does doesn't have interesting effects on who can and can't use it.
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