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US cities pay too much for buses

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Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#181

Post by crazygringo »

conductr wrote: post #109
crazygringo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still paying for custom paint schemes or colors Because you need to be able to recognize from a distance, hey that's a city bus. Not a charter bus. Not a school bus. Not a long distance bus. And buses aren't usually wrapped with advertising. It's usually just a banner on the sides below the windows. Some ad campaigns pay much more money to extend it over the windows with that mesh material. But that's generally a s…

Buses typically have lit signage indicating their route number or next stop, it’s kind of a dead giveaway and paint job can be ignored

When they're further away you can't read the signage, and long-distance buses have signage too.

The paint job really is important because it's vastly more visible. It also often does things like distinguish between local buses and commuter buses, depending on your city.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#182

Post by marcosdumay »

logifail wrote: post #145
bluGill wrote: post #63

Don't be fooled, paying less won't help much since the cost of a bus is a small part of the costs of running a bus route. about half your costs are the bus driver. The most expensive bus is still only 1/3rd of your hourly cost of running the bus. If a more expensive bus is more reliable that could more than make up for a more expensive bus (I don't have any numbers to do math on though). Half the costs of running a b…

> about half your costs are the bus driver (Genuine question) is this true around the globe, or is that US-specific? We were in Portugal over the summer and travelled with Flixbus (for the first time ever) to get from Porto to Lisbon. Were impressed by the high-quality service and great value for money. Wonder how much the driver makes per hour?

It's true in developed and developing countries, it's probably not true in all poor countries. I'd guess the driver makes for a larger share of the cost in Portugal than in the US.

But the one most important factor defining the total cost by trip is the number of passengers by trip. If 60 people all show up to pay the driver's daily salary, it gets quite cheap.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#183

Post by bluGill »

rootusrootus wrote: post #168
cyberax wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have self-driving, you don't _need_ buses. Large buses are fundamentally inefficient, they can never be made competitive compared to cars. And the main source of inefficiency is the number of stops and fixed routes. You can easily solve all the transportation problems with mild car-pooling. Switching buses and personal cars to something like 8-person minibuses will result in less congestion and about 2-3 tim…

Yeah I remember once doing the math, and it takes a relatively high level of ridership before a bus (or train) reaches the per-passenger efficiency of something like a Civic Hybrid carrying three passengers. We have a number of routes in my local area that I think could be more quickly and economically served by replacing the full size bus with something much smaller.

general rule of thumb is 5 passangers for a but to break even. Now a civic is a smaller car so it will be better, and you specified 3 passanges whes single occupant is by far more likely - even with those unrealistic assumption a typical bus will do well overall.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#184

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

gosub100 wrote: post #160
rfrey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The left serves corporations at least as much as it claims to represent the people. That is why they are blamed.

Sorry to be glib but I’m not sure you’re familiar enough with the political left to make a statement like this so confidently.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#185

Post by xnx »

savanaly wrote: post #92
xnx wrote: post #39

Ultimately due to a lack of transit competition. Municipal transit will be bloated and inefficient on every level because no amount of failure will put them out of business. Indeed, most agencies' main goal is to increase budget (any increase in service or customer satisfaction is incidental) because more budget equals bigger projects and more staff which is more prestigious and higher paying.

I'm with you at heart, but experience says government owned transit works just fine and even great in other countries. What's their secret sauce?

Historically denser cities.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#186

Post by jltsiren »

mschuster91 wrote: post #18
namdnay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a question of "offloading" it, it's a question of reaping the benefits of global competition Would you really be better off if you could only buy cars made by US manufacturers? Did americans really lose out when Toyota and co arrived? Would Boeing aircraft really be better if they didn't have to compete with Airbus? Or would the incumbents just get lazy?

There's a difference between private companies and state-run companies / authorities. When a US airline thinks it's better for them to switch over to Airbus, by all means do so, that's competition. But taxpayer money should not be used to prop up other countries' economies unless explicitly designated that way (e.g. contributions to international agencies, economic aid), and certainly not if that replaces domestic un…

Taxpayer subsidies to domestic entities should also be explicit.

Public sector organizations should focus on their operational requirements when deciding what to buy. When a transit agency wants to buy buses, it should not pay extra due to unrelated policy goals. If the best option is foreign, and there is an equivalent but more expensive domestic option, the price the agency pays should be the price of the foreign option. If politicians want to subsidize domestic labor, they can tell the transit agency to choose the domestic option and pay the rest from an appropriate budget.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#187

Post by SpicyUme »

citizenpaul wrote: post #170
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also don't know much about these so called purchasing contracts either. For example. do they contain sustainment services, maintenance equipment, storage facilities, or other sourcing requirements? When using federal funds, you're generally required to purchase all American products, I remember trying to furnish an office with just two desks and four chairs (nothing fancy), and the initial cost estimates were over…

All the contract stuff is too muddled to even consider debating online. I'd start with one HUGE obvious waste. Why don't the buses anywhere have some sort of uber style pickup. My point. I see countless buses running empty all the time through the day where I live outside of busy hours. It is so depressing to watch 3 empty busses pull up to an empty stop to not pick anyone up then do it again and again and again.. I…

There are some variable pickup transit services, but you may not see them because of when/where they go. I know around me there are zones where you can call for pickup and they use small shuttle buses. I think they drop of within the zone or at other bus stops, but I haven't used the service so I'm not sure.

My preferred way to solve bus lane reliability would be to shut down streets or lanes to only allow buses.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#188

Post by bradfa »

cwmma wrote: post #180
ecshafer wrote: post #133

I think that the authors solution, outsourcing production is not quite right, they gloss over other issues. >In a large country like the US, some variation in bus design is inevitable due to differences in conditions like weather and topography. But Silverberg said that many customizations are cosmetic, reflecting agency preferences or color schemes but not affecting vehicle performance. This is kind of absurd, I hav…

Off the top of my head, road salt, used in the northern areas of America to melt snow can cause corrosion of metal pieces on the underside of the bus. So Chicago or Boston might need to take that into account but Miami probably doesn't.

Yearly fluid film or woolwax treatment solves the rust concern in salt states. Roughly $1k/year/bus in operating expense. Schools do this to their buses already, it’s totally common.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#189

Post by stocksinsmocks »

dayvid wrote: post #88

Worth 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

I would also love to know the real reason why US manufacturing seems to be so much more costly than it is anywhere else, even after adjusting for wage differences.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#190

Post by milesvp »

citizenpaul wrote: post #170
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also don't know much about these so called purchasing contracts either. For example. do they contain sustainment services, maintenance equipment, storage facilities, or other sourcing requirements? When using federal funds, you're generally required to purchase all American products, I remember trying to furnish an office with just two desks and four chairs (nothing fancy), and the initial cost estimates were over…

All the contract stuff is too muddled to even consider debating online. I'd start with one HUGE obvious waste. Why don't the buses anywhere have some sort of uber style pickup. My point. I see countless buses running empty all the time through the day where I live outside of busy hours. It is so depressing to watch 3 empty busses pull up to an empty stop to not pick anyone up then do it again and again and again.. I…

I've thought about this a lot, and wonder if the last mile problem could be lessened with an uber style pickup you suggest. I have a civil engineer relative who follows this stuff better than I do, and he says all the pilot programs he's seen (in the US) tend to be wildly unprofitable.

That said, I think that some program like this is essential to bootstrapping a really good transit system. The last mile problem really does stop a lot of would be commuters and is a huge, largely hidden cost, in regional transit planning. You could have fewer, more reliable trunks, that can run less reliably after core commuting hours, all because you have ways of alleviating the pain associated with difficulty getting to out of the way places. This allows people to make life decisions that they might not otherwise be able to make. And once you have a solid core, you can continue to grow it, by continuing to encourage long term ridership. Couple this with increasingly aggressive zoning changes to allow for density, and I think you could really grow out a transit system in 10-20 years.

But this is a fantasy of mine. It would likely be wildly unpopular to run an unprofitable program long enough to make all of this possible, and would probably only work in regions that have the potential for good transit anyways. You'd also need a large cohort of YIMBYs, that while currently growing in many regions, aren't guaranteed to still vote that way in a decade when they have more to lose.

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