There's also a bunch of PE money in the space for specialized vehicles, leading to the usual consequences. Fire trucks are the canonical example. Shittier trucks that take 3x longer to get and are dramatically less reliable.
US cities pay too much for buses
111–120 of 590 posts
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is exactly what the majority of Americans voted against Hardly. Less than two thirds of Americans actually bothered to vote. And a slight minority of those voted for the current government. In any case, why does this need to be about identity politics? And if so, why are you suggesting that only the left is committed to an open, free market? Isn't that more traditionally a right-wing position?
All fun and games to point out seeming contradictions! Especially here. Unfortunately GP is right - optics matters more than factual correctness, and the optics here is mixed - yes gov is overspending, but the solution is to offshore more jobs.
"Government is spending the amount required for developed world jobs to build buses." would be a better title than "US cities pay too much for buses." The macro of deflationary globalization due to enormous surplus labor in the developing world are mostly over.
Someone's comment said "why not let China subsidize US bus deployment?" I think that's a fine argument, as long as we're still spending to keep the US manufacturing muscle strong. The cost is the cost to have domestic skilled manufacturing labor at the ready, and someone is going to have to pay it, because you're not going to be able to buy warships from China for war with China. No different than the US auto and aerospace industries retooling from civilian to military production rapidly during previous world wars.
Corporate America cares about quarterly profits, not capability readiness. This is an incentive alignment and capital efficiency issue requiring policy improvement.
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good example. That budget behavior is common. Fortunately, if that has true negative effects, the market corrects by putting one company out of business.
Let me know when the market gets around to that. At this time it's ignored all the ones I've worked for.
Is it "ignoring" it, or is it priced in to the company's valuation?
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#114So the authors basic argument is to offshore bus production. As if that doesn’t carry any negative side effects. This is exactly what the majority of Americans voted against and exactly why the left can’t find its footing. Everyone is now fully aware that offshoring for a cheap sticker price comes with higher, harder to price costs elsewhere.
The side effects of “Buy American” rules do not include a dynamic, competitive domestic bus manufacturing industry. Just the opposite.
If the Chinese want to subsidize our mass transit buildout, why not let them? Are busses really critical national security concerns?
If we needed the existing NA producers to build military busses it sounds like we’d be screwed!
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#115I think this shows one of the downsides of trade barriers very well: You get stuck with undesirable industries (diesel bus manufacturing), binding capital and labor better used elsewhere (and you easily end up with underperforming, overpriced solutions, too). But I'm curious how much this actually affects transport costs. If such a bus is used 12h/day, then even overpaying 100% for the vehicle should get outscaled by…
Aren’t most busses CNG these days?
Most buses are diesel, and are transitioning to either battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell. Almost no fleets in the US are running majority CNG.
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate those advertising wraps. Most of them cover the windows that I as a rider want to look out of (you can see out, but they are not clear). If I don't want to look out give me a window shade, but when I want to look out I want to be able to see.
get your own bus and you can do what you want with it! /s
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Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#117So the authors basic argument is to offshore bus production. As if that doesn’t carry any negative side effects. This is exactly what the majority of Americans voted against and exactly why the left can’t find its footing. Everyone is now fully aware that offshoring for a cheap sticker price comes with higher, harder to price costs elsewhere.
Blaming this on the amorphous "left" is extraordinary, when offshoring has been a 40 year project of corporate America and "shareholder returns at any cost". A neoliberal global order has been the traditional Republican platform.
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#118Worth watching Modern MBA on the inefficiencies of transit in USA. Detailed analysis and comparison against Asian, European and Latin American systems along with private and government run operations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ3LSNXwZ2Y
unbelievably in depth channel, love all of the local business interviews (from other videos with restaurants and such)
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of it is that "legacy" products often involve more difficult engineering than people think. Circa 1980 this bus design was a notorious failure in NYC: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Grumman_Flxible_870 Buses get shaken really hard.
It is amusing/depressing to consider this as getting punished for having expensive engineering to avoid failures. If you do put in more engineering to get a more robust solution, you wind up not hitting the expensive failures and people start to assume you just spent more money in engineering than you needed to.
Coincidentally, it was just a couple weeks ago that a (non-technical, relatively younger) family member made a point me that Y2K was completely overblown.
Sigh.
Re: US cities pay too much for buses
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm hearing you say we should have self-driving buses... which is feasible since their route is fixed.
Bus driver also does things like trigger ramp for handicapped people, strap in wheelchairs securely, answer questions about the route, and security surveillance.
None of those should be needed. Get more people riding and they take care of security.
wheelchairs are hard - but the driver strapping them in is robbing everyone else of their valuable time so we need a better soultion anyway