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US cities pay too much for buses

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Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#21

Post by SoftTalker »

mschuster91 wrote: post #3

A lot of fluff (although I do appreciate the hard numbers and reasons - thirteen shades of grey for flooring is utterly ridiculous) for essentially these two points: - low lot size combined with a lot of customization demands leads to high per-unit costs - "Buy American" is expensive. D'uh. Unfortunately the article doesn't dig down deeper into why BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are cheaper - 996 style slave lab…

Transit agencies (at least the big ones) normally do their maintenance and repair in-house. So they will want to buy one make/model of bus as much as possible so that they don't have to train mechanics on many different manufacturer's products and stock parts for many different models. Once those decisions are made, any competitors will have that weighing against them. That will tend to reduce the number of viable competitors.

Same with municipal vehicles, most towns will buy all Ford or all Chevrolet and as few different models as possible.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#22

Post by infecto »

lenerdenator wrote: post #2

> "A new paper argues that lack of competition, demand for custom features and “Buy America” rules have driven up costs for transit agencies in the US." If that's not the most NYC finance-centered headline ever, I don't know what is. "If we just offload our bus-building industry to somewhere else, we could save $x on taxes each year. Yeah, it eliminates jobs and is another blow against strategically-important heavy i…

One of the worst takes I have ever seen. It’s not about offloading an industry but if another geography has a comparative advantage everyone benefits.

I would also argue that customizations are indeed a total waste of money for systems that already cash strapped.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#23

Post by mschuster91 »

mrits wrote: post #17
myrmidon wrote: post #7

I 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…

What is wrong with diesel bus manufacturing? Just the exhaust pedestrians have to breath in? It seems near the bottom of the list for things we'd need to solve for carbon emissions.

It's not just pedestrians, but residents who gotta breathe in the particulate and other exhaust emissions. That, in turn, significantly affects poorer parts of the population who have no other choice than to live and rent near heavily trafficed roads.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#24

Post by rangestransform »

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…

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/mta-time-clock-vandaliz...

this is the kind of domestic union labour you're up against. american union labour should absolutely at least be subject to competition from union labour elsewhere, including european bus manufacturers.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#25

Post by SoftTalker »

mschuster91 wrote: post #23
mrits wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with diesel bus manufacturing? Just the exhaust pedestrians have to breath in? It seems near the bottom of the list for things we'd need to solve for carbon emissions.

It's not just pedestrians, but residents who gotta breathe in the particulate and other exhaust emissions. That, in turn, significantly affects poorer parts of the population who have no other choice than to live and rent near heavily trafficed roads.

Modern diesels emit almost no particulates. The older ones yes, but few are still on the road in public transit service.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#26

Post by myrmidon »

mrits wrote: post #17
myrmidon wrote: post #7

I 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…

What is wrong with diesel bus manufacturing? Just the exhaust pedestrians have to breath in? It seems near the bottom of the list for things we'd need to solve for carbon emissions.

I honestly don't think there is any future for them longer term (>10y). Long distance, diesel vehicles might hold out for a bit longer than a decade, but the situation looks kinda inevitable even there to me.

CO2 wise, electrifying a bus like this should pay off much quicker than replacing individual vehicles, because utilization is higher (not a lot of people drive 12h a day).

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#27

Post by jmyeet »

As people should know by now, in the last few decades China has built a massive amount of public transit infrastructure, both within cities and regional [1]. Some of the subway systems are pretty amazing (eg Chongqing [2]). I'm interested in how they did this and I think it comes down to a few major factors:

1. They standardize rolling stock. The same stuff is used across the country. I think this is really important. If you think about how the US does things, every city will have its own procurement process. This is wasteful but is just more opportunity for corruption;

2. China had a long term strategy to building its own trains (and, I assume, buses). They first imported high speed trains from Japan and Germany but ultimately wanted to build their own; and

3. Streamlined permitting. China has private property but the way private property works in the US is as a huge barrier to any change or planning whatsoever. China just doesn't allow this to happen.

I keep coming back to the extortionate cost of the Second Avenue Subway in NYC. It's like ~$2.5 billion per mile (Phase 2 is estimated at $4 billion per mile). You may be tempted to say that China isn't a good comparison here because of cheap labor or whatever. Fine. But let's compare it to the UK's Crossrail, which was still expensive but way cheaper than the SEcond Avenue Subway.

California's HSR is hitting huge roadblocks from permitting, planning and political interests across the Central Valley, forcing a line designed to cut the travel time from LA to SF to divert to tiny towns along the way.

There is a concerted effort in the US to kill public transit projects across the country (eg [3]). You don't just do this by blocking projects. You also make things take much longer and make the processes so much more expensive. In California, for example, we've seen the weaponization of the otherwise well-intentioned CEQA [4].

I feel like China's command economy is going to eat us alive over the next century.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xszhbm/chinese_hig...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7gvr_U4R4w

[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...

[4]: https://californialocal.com/localnews/statewide/ca/article/s...

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#28

Post by hx8 »

mrits wrote: post #17
myrmidon wrote: post #7

I 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…

What is wrong with diesel bus manufacturing? Just the exhaust pedestrians have to breath in? It seems near the bottom of the list for things we'd need to solve for carbon emissions.

There is nothing wrong with diesel bus manufacturing, but if you were to generate a list of the 1000 most desirable products to manufacture I don't think diesel bus would be on the list. We have companies and manufacturing expertise tied up in building buses when they could be building {X}.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#29

Post by PaulHoule »

Tompkins County bought Proterra buses, they had some serious problems. When they jacked one up to work on it the axle came off and they immediately took all our electric buses out of the fleet -- and Proterra was bankrupt and not able to make it right.

TCAT is still scrambling to find diesel buses to replace those and older diesel buses that are aging out. Lately they've added some ugly-looking buses which are the wrong color which I guess they didn't customize but it means they can run the routes.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#30

Post by tdeck »

Our buses are also less comfortable and "rattle" more that busses I've ridden in many other first world countries. I'm not sure if this is an economics thing but the standard New Flyer buses feel a bit dated.
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