121–130 of 458 posts
Gee, it's almost like people only use public transportation when it's reliable, cost-effective, and efficient.
> efficient Specifically, it should be efficient and preferably fast for me , not just in aggregate
Transit systems in the US need some payment technology upgrade. On a couple of occasions, I haven't been able to board a bus due to not having exact change. Once, I was with kids & family visiting NYC. We were planning to take a public bus from a suburb to the city. The fare turned out to be $16 for all of us, but I had $11 and some $100 bills. Guess what, I couldn't board the bus as they can't return change. The bus…
Drivers not giving change sounds ridiculous. What's the reasoning behind that? In Europe it doesn't seem to be a problem.
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> expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. ... and be faster . The SFMTA in San Francisco , at an average travel speed of 5 miles / hour. Is only slightly faster than brisk walking. Also, from the downtown FiDi out 2 miles in every direction, the Bus has a bus stop at Every block. Yes, every block.
This is a basic contradiction which I am not sure is solvable. If the stops are too far away, you (or somebody for whom walking is harder, like older people, less physically fit people, etc.) won't be able to use it. If stops are too close, getting through them takes a lot of time. I know there is a body of work that tries to find optimal setup for such cases, but I'm not sure it's possible to make everybody happy he…
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> Even though Uber has been saying that they are improving urban transportation Note here that there are other dimensions of improving, not expressed in VMT. Such as convenience, availability, time to get to certain point, ability to perform certain tasks (e.g. compare traveling with two huge suitcases to/from an airport in public transport with two transfers and in a ride service car), etc. So when talking about imp…
Those are all important aspects, but it's also important to factor in accessibility (in the monetary sense, not physical - although that as well!), because that's one of the main reasons for public transit to exist. Yes, Uber and Lyft will provide better opportunities for transporting two large suitcases across town. But at what cost to the person who needs an affordable journey to work? Neither can come close to rep…
And good luck getting transit to get you to the airport at 0500 on a Saturday morning.
In SF a bus ride used to cost 2.25$, and I think it’s now 2.50$. Lyft line most of the time is 4$ + 1$ for an extra passenger. Uber is probably similar and perhaps cheaper, I don’t know. In short, there’s no benefit in using busses anymore.
In SF a bus ride used to cost 2.25$, and I think it’s now 2.50$. Lyft line most of the time is 4$ + 1$ for an extra passenger. Uber is probably similar and perhaps cheaper, I don’t know. In short, there’s no benefit in using busses anymore.
1) People who did not have physical/temporal access to transit (ex: works at restaurant but transit doesn't run after closing), and thus did not make many trips have increased mobility through uber and lyft. This is important in urban areas because housing that is transit adjacent has become too expensive for many to afford. This increased physical mobility is unambiguously good for society and social mobility.
2) People who do have physical/temporal access to transit are using uber/lyft because, as transit as it is currently implemented in many cities is a terrible experience. There are untimed transfers, possibly anti-social behavior, and the busses are stuck in the same traffic as cars. The best way to improve this would be to add more bus-only lanes and congestion pricing to every city concerned about congestion. Also, higher density transit with timed transfers and more consumer oriented policies will help. IMO, transit should be faster than cars.
3) Much of the US is too low density for effective transit use. Expanding transit coverage in both routes and frequency to match peoples needs would be prohibitively expensive and inefficient in many areas. IMO, there are many places where uber and lyft are a better solution than busses for many folks, and there are a few low density rural cities that have replaced bus services with subsidized ride share service successfully.
4) VMT is a good measure of what we're trying to optimize in cities WRT mobility, but it doesn't account for the cost of parking to society in terms of high value land being occupied by abandoned vehicles. Measured purely in VMT terms, driving your own car to a restaurant, parking, and driving home is better than taking an uber, and having the few minutes of dead head space between fares.
I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…
I'm regularly bothered by the fact that mass transit is more expensive than driving. Alone it is definitely cheaper disregarding sunk costs (price of car, etc.), it's still cheaper as long as I don't have to have a new car every few years, and if I have passengers mass transit is many times as expensive as driving. Shouldn't it be the opposite? I figure I can take 4 people from Mountain View to San Francisco and back…
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It would also solve congestion, though.
yeah but the point is do we really want to reduce congestion by making poor people unable to afford transportation