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US cities pay too much for buses

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Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#121

Post by notatoad »

bluGill wrote: post #50
kube-system wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the gist of the article is that we don't have the same busses across the US. Yes there are only two major manufacturers, but they're all being procured in different ways, in different custom configurations, all across the country.

We do. What is different is the options. The bus itself is the same, but you can put options on the bus that drive up the price.

"standardizing" doesn't just mean ending up with the same stuff. it means making an up-front committment to a supplier that you will buy the same stuff, and getting a better deal in exchange for that committment.

if you end up buying a whole bunch of units of the same stuff without planning to, you're wasting all that potential efficiency.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#122

Post by isthispermanent »

rootusrootus wrote: post #104
isthispermanent wrote: post #89

So 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.

> 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?

China is neither an open or free market. Opening the door to China and their industrial policy is exactly what distorts traditionally free and open markets.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#123

Post by tallanvor »

crazygringo wrote: post #85
SoftTalker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School buses are a distinctive bright yellow, there's no mistaking them for anything else. Charter and long distance buses don't stop at the city bus stops. City buses will still have a sign/screen displaying the route number/name.

Yeah but the point is you want to look down the street and see if there's a city bus a few blocks away or not. If so, hurry up and walk the block to the bus stop. If not, quickly grab a coffee or decide to grab a Citibike or whatever else that depends on that information. Spotting buses a few blocks away is a crucial skill in cities.

It really isn't when many cities have apps that give you real-time information as to when to expect the next bus.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#124

Post by dashundchen »

isthispermanent wrote: post #89

So 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.

[flagged]

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#125

Post by everdrive »

rfrey wrote: post #117
isthispermanent wrote: post #89

So 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.

It's also just not advisable. It's better to attack policies rather than groups.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#126

Post by TrainedMonkey »

isthispermanent wrote: post #89

So 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.

> So the authors basic argument is to offshore bus production.

No, their recommendation are transit subsidies with strings attached aimed at driving domestic economies of scale. Of course, depending on how a model is defined, 100 offshore unit cap can absolutely be gamed by making a "custom" model for each city or year.

> Finally, they recommend that foreign bus manufacturers be allowed to sell up to 100 vehicles of a given model, at which point they would need to establish a US manufacturing facility to expand sales further.

> To reduce costs, the researchers suggest that the federal reimbursements for bus purchases be capped at the 25th percentile cost of similar vehicles

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#127

Post by kccqzy »

twoodfin wrote: post #114
isthispermanent wrote: post #89

So 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!

It's primarily a jobs program. We do not really care about a competitive domestic bus manufacturing industry, but we care more than this uncompetitive industry is hiring workers.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#128

Post by jibe »

twoodfin wrote: post #114
isthispermanent wrote: post #89

So 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!

A literal bus factory may not be critical for national security, but the ability to manufacture a vehicle is. So the know-how, the supply lines, and the manufacturing facility are important. The ability to manufacture a fuel injector, a transmission, a windshield is going going to apply to a bus, a plane, a tank..

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#129

Post by conductr »

SoftTalker wrote: post #41
michaelt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whose pockets are being filled when one transit agency is paying 2x what another one does for the same bus. I mean, that could just be normal, routine failure to negotiate effectively. If every bus vendor says "call for pricing" and your organisation has "always" paid $940k per bus, when you're told to buy some more buses, you might not even know you can get them for half or a third of that price by getting competi…

OK I agree... add "incompetence" along with "corruption" as a potential reason. Though corruption is easier to get away with if it appears as incompetence.

It’s a matter of procurement process and personnel. They simply aren’t always concerned with cost as the primary decision point and thus tend to not negotiate as hard as you might like. I’m in a finance role, company’s money is my responsibility so I very frequently have to tell procurement people that think a product “ticks all the boxes of the RFP” or similar, that the runner up product only missed on items we can live without so paying 2x isn’t worth it. I does come off as lacking critical thinking, but I’ve come to learn they just go off the requirement and don’t really know which things are critical versus nice to have. Those kinds of things, so I’d blame this entirely on whoever is supposed to have financial oversight over the bureaucracy. Do they have CFOs or similar, idk honestly, but that’s a reason most for profit companies do. They are monitoring large financial decisions for reasonableness.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#130

Post by roryirvine »

bombcar wrote: post #97
xethos wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more damning, diesel is objectively, inarguably more expensive to run, costing more than four times as much as [Vancouver's] battery-electric busses in fuel/electricity. Even looking purely at the financials, diesel is fucked.

Diesel’s last remaining benefits are of no value for a bus (locomotive-class horsepower possibilities and rapid refueling) as a bus never weighs much and goes in a circle.

Yep - and, in urban areas, buses are pretty much the best possible use case for BEVs, aren't they? Short distance, high utilisation, predictable routes with far more stop/start than normal traffic.

Consider also that bus depots are the perfect site for big battery banks hooked up to their charging stations, and tend to have plenty of room for solar panels on the roof. So electrification is good for the grid too.

It's one of those rare situations where everyone benefits.

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