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In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

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Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#161

Post by chrismartin »

woodruffw wrote: post #89
chrismartin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city with a "modern" streetcar. I even rode it to work for a few months. Two reasons why it's not great. 1. It shares busy streets with cars yet has zero ability to maneuver in traffic. If just one car is parked a few inches beyond the edge of the parking lane, the entire streetcar route is blocked. 2. The tracks trap bicycle tires and cause many bicycle crashes. This happened to colleague of mine, fortun…

Both of these are serious issues, and point to an underlying problem: cities have been re-planned around their streetcar networks, not with them in mind. Improperly planned, streetcars are just less mobile buses. There are known solutions to both of these: give streetcars unilateral right of way, isolate them from car traffic at intersections and stops, and give cyclists their own separated lanes. Depending on the ci…

Even when cyclists have their own lanes, they need to cross the streetcar tracks in order to (1) make turns and (2) avoid obstacles (e.g. cars suddenly pulling out). If they don't plan and execute the track crossing at a perpendicular enough angle, the wheel gets trapped and the rider usually wipes out. The victim is then often blamed for getting hurt by infrastructure of a design that is known to hurt people [0].

[0] https://tucson.com/news/local/court-rules-against-tucson-bic...

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#162

Post by woodruffw »

chrismartin wrote: post #161
woodruffw wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of these are serious issues, and point to an underlying problem: cities have been re-planned around their streetcar networks, not with them in mind. Improperly planned, streetcars are just less mobile buses. There are known solutions to both of these: give streetcars unilateral right of way, isolate them from car traffic at intersections and stops, and give cyclists their own separated lanes. Depending on the ci…

Even when cyclists have their own lanes, they need to cross the streetcar tracks in order to (1) make turns and (2) avoid obstacles (e.g. cars suddenly pulling out). If they don't plan and execute the track crossing at a perpendicular enough angle, the wheel gets trapped and the rider usually wipes out. The victim is then often blamed for getting hurt by infrastructure of a design that is known to hurt people [0]. [0…

You're absolutely right. I think the way Amsterdam does this is instructive: nearly all cycling-trolley crossings are completely perpendicular, and all cycling-automotive crossings are isolated and separate from any nearby trolley crossing.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#163

Post by 8bitsrule »

I've often calculated how long I'd have to spend on mass transit to get to some desireable event and back - and decided, reluctantly, to skip it. Because the waits+rides would take longer than the event lasted.

The option to use microtransit once a week would be well worth paying twice as much.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#164

Post by 1123581321 »

hammock wrote: post #159
1123581321 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps tell us why it’s amazing and the road to where it is today. I think most can surmise that all forms of transit have been repeatedly tried all over the world. Sharing details and their applicability to other other municipalities are what will advance transit.

Sure. I’m not really an expert in how they work but if you speak Spanish they’re easy enough to use. Most cities have private bus companies that run their own routes. Where the bus is going is posted in the front on a piece of paper and you just hop on when you see one. The companies compete with each other so the routes often change, the prices are low and supply always meets demand. Colectivos are a different pheno…

I like that. The certainty that the bus will only travel while full helps with planning, in a way. And of course keeps the cost down.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#165

Post by ahazred8ta »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #8

Aren’t these just subsidized taxis? They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, I don’t see how they ultimately bring down costs since you still need individual cars and drivers... Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an Uber/Lyft with anyone else despi…

> They don’t help with congestion ... Am I missing anything?

What congestion? Most of the US doesn't even HAVE congestion.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#166

Post by supertrope »

ahoy wrote: post #83
whatever1 wrote: post #37

Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time. I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations. Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time,…

Public bus transit and private car transit are inherently in conflict. You basically can't run them on the same streets and expect the bus to not suck. You could, of course, run the bus in a dedicated, separate right-of-way to solve that problem. But like you said, just build rail at that point

Dedicated lanes are still cheaper than an entirely new right of way such as transitway, tunnel, or above grade upper deck road.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#167

Post by Schroedingersat »

ls15 wrote: post #34
Schroedingersat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you need coverage shuttles are great albeit at a high marginal cost per trip. If you need capacity then they don't really work. A city will spend more on shuttles than they would on a network extensive and well designed enough to get good utilization. I guess they are useful in some US cities as a stepping stone where there are massive political and legislative barriers to building a functional city.

But I found them useful in Berlin (see my other comment in this thread) and Berlin already has one of the best public transport networks in the world, I think. For me they were just closing the gap between taxi and public transport. In terms of use cases and in terms of pricing.

Point. I guess I was more responding with the use case of an alternative to mass transit.

I agree that filling the gaps that busses or trains can't is a great use case, and I guess that my point about small towns was just one example of a gap.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#168

Post by stmfreak »

woodruffw wrote: post #44
whatever1 wrote: post #37

Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time. I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations. Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time,…

Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere). NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is al…

No, public transit systems can only be good on paper. Then they get implemented, the fares are held artificially low for equity reasons, bums move in, polite society abandons the system and it turns into a rolling cesspool. Every time.

My private car however has only my germs. No drugs. No needles. No piss. No stinky bums laying across the seats. My music. Air conditioning. Goes where I want, when I want it.

The only difference is cost. My private car costs me a lot. Your public transit dream also cost ME a lot.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#169

Post by namlem »

SoftTalker wrote: post #118
woodruffw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere). NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is al…

Yeah, same in Chicago, really the same as mass transit anywhere: You need density to make it work. My little town of under 100K population tries to do city bus services but it's a joke. Most routes run once or twice an hour which is not often enough to be convenient. Busses drive around empty or with one or two riders. It's a service that costs millions of dollars a year to operate and is used by a tiny minority of t…

Sounds like the problem is cost. Once we can eliminate the salary of the driver with autonomous buses, it will be much easier to run more of them.

Re: In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

#170

Post by woodruffw »

stmfreak wrote: post #168
woodruffw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere). NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is al…

No, public transit systems can only be good on paper. Then they get implemented, the fares are held artificially low for equity reasons, bums move in, polite society abandons the system and it turns into a rolling cesspool. Every time. My private car however has only my germs. No drugs. No needles. No piss. No stinky bums laying across the seats. My music. Air conditioning. Goes where I want, when I want it. The only…

As evidenced by functioning public transport virtually everywhere else in the world: the things you're describing are civic problems, not problems with public transit. It's no particular coincidence that the US, with its car-dominated culture, has more civic problems on public transit than just about any other nation.

> Your public transit dream also cost ME a lot.

Are you operating under the misapprehension that my local, state, and federal taxes don't pay for your roads? We can play that game all day, but I don't think it's going to be a very fruitful one. And that's before we even get to the question of externalities, via which your car costs me a great deal.

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