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Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

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Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#31

Post by simoncion »

troygoode wrote: post #13
wooster wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, at least, I see a lot of people riding Muni who are fare evading. I've also never seen any fare enforcement on a Muni bus, despite living here for ~6 years.

I have a monthly pass and can't always be bothered to swipe my ClipperCard. It would look to you like I'm fare evading, but I'm not really. Perhaps others are doing the same.

The Fare Inspectors will fine you if you haven't bothered to swipe your card, even if you have a monthly pass. The card stores a record of the last $WAY_TOO_MANY interactions with a Clipper Card reader, so it's trivial for them to check. Those guys have no sense of humor. :(

I'm a huge fan of Caltrain's policy: Monthly pass holders only have to interact with a reader twice at the beginning of the month [0]; once when you board and once when you disembark. For the rest of the month the conductors use their brains to remember the current month, and compare that against the end date on your monthly pass.

[0] And -realistically- you don't even have to do that. I went a couple of months without interacting with the Caltrain readers; the conductors never said a thing.

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#32

Post by monopolemagnet »

Folks might want to see Nancy Pelosi's daughter's documentary San Francisco 2.0 on the impact of inequality on the city, which happened to be plugged on the most recent Real Time.

http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/san-francisco-2-0/index.htm...

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#33

Post by simoncion »

hugh4 wrote: post #28
jeromegv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? That's why public transit and government exists, to offer services to every single person.

That's one view of the role of government, I'm not so sure it's the right one. I at least think it should be up for debate.

The thing about common carriers is that they're designed to be the carriers of last resort. They have special dispensation from a governing body to operate and -in return- they are obliged to offer their services to all who can afford them.

Common carriers are a long-standing practice that has clear benefits for society as a whole. What's more, back in the 1960s and 1970s we -as a nation- realized that there is value in helping the weak, infirm, disadvantaged, and those subject to discrimination participate as fully as they are able to in the public sphere.

If you want a somewhat less academic reason, remember that you can be afflicted by illness, infirmity, handicap, or -albeit on a longer timescale- discrimination at any time. When you're down, it's good to have services available that help prevent you from hitting rock bottom and allow you to help yourself get back on your feet quicker than you would on your own.

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#34

Post by andronebula »

redwood wrote: post #10

Like sharoots in Israel

I can not agree more. The whole concept of services like these revolves around "private vans ride along the most dense and profitable streets to achieve 100% utilization of the vehicle".

Share taxis (jitneys, dollar vans, etc) is a world-wide phenomenon which is very common in the developing world, because the municipalities there can not afford to subsidize public transit which is rarely profitable[1].

The only thing that share taxis can do efficiently is to generate profits for the owners, while they are dramatically inefficient at:

- providing guaranteed time frame for the services which is convenient to many categories of passengers (e.g. from 07:00 to 23:30) - providing coverage of all neighbourhoods of a city - providing integrated payments (you can not transfer from one van to another for free when changing routes) - synchronizing timetables between 2 different services, which is crucial to connections [2]

Essentially, those private transit services are the same old jitneys, but running only for commuters and having efficient ordering systems (smartphones). And private transit systems never evolve into efficient passenger transportation networks [3]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#Farebox... [2]: http://www.humantransit.org/2013/08/guest-post-on-lusaka-tra... [3]: http://www.humantransit.org/2014/02/the-evolution-of-logic-i...

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#35

Post by organsnyder »

argonaut wrote: post #15
dogecoinbase wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, with wages like those they might actually be able to afford to live in the city they work in!

Nobody is entitled to live in the city they work in.

Why not? Is a living wage really a luxury?

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#36

Post by organsnyder »

simoncion wrote: post #4
hugh4 wrote: post #2

It's interesting that Chariot can sell a bus ride for barely more than the (heavily subsidised) MUNI costs. In my limited experience though, it seems that when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare. Everybody else either has some kind of pass or is fare evading.

> ...when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare... By this, do you mean "I'm the only one who seems to be paying in cash?". If you do, then the vast majority of folks who aren't fare-jumping are either: * Using a Clipper Card [0] that has a "cash" balance * Using a Clipper Card that has a monthly pass on it * Using a Clipper Card that has a transfer from another bus on it * Using a paper transfer…

Not sure how it works on the muni, but I had a similar thought when I saw lots of people getting on my town's BRT without paying a fare. Then I got a six-month pass (from my employer), and now it looks like I'm not paying a fare, either, since it only had to be validated once.

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#37

Post by tdyen »

bruceb wrote: post #14
hugh4 wrote: post #2

It's interesting that Chariot can sell a bus ride for barely more than the (heavily subsidised) MUNI costs. In my limited experience though, it seems that when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare. Everybody else either has some kind of pass or is fare evading.

When it was started it also was not wheelchair accessible. Not sure if this is still the case. Cherry picking profitable routes is not the same as providing access to all residents of the city.

Reminds me of insurance companies cherry picking the healthy people. The profit motive conflicts with providing a universal service. While it can work, in Australia we have a public Health system, Medicare, that covers everybody.

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#38

Post by tdyen »

monopolemagnet wrote: post #32

Folks might want to see Nancy Pelosi's daughter's documentary San Francisco 2.0 on the impact of inequality on the city, which happened to be plugged on the most recent Real Time . http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/san-francisco-2-0/index.htm...

Inequality increases crime. Heaps of references like this

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-06/want-to-fig...

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#39

Post by andronebula »

hugh4 wrote: post #2

It's interesting that Chariot can sell a bus ride for barely more than the (heavily subsidised) MUNI costs. In my limited experience though, it seems that when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare. Everybody else either has some kind of pass or is fare evading.

> It's interesting that Chariot can sell a bus ride for barely more than the (heavily subsidised) MUNI costs.

It's because they serve only high-density areas with commuter-only routes that operate only in a very limited time frame (morning hours).

I think that such a model can not be called 'urban transit', a better term for it would be 'commuter private transit'.

And it has nothing to do with efficient massive urban transportation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207669

Edit: grammar

Re: Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle

#40

Post by [deleted] »

tdyen wrote: post #37
bruceb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it was started it also was not wheelchair accessible. Not sure if this is still the case. Cherry picking profitable routes is not the same as providing access to all residents of the city.

Reminds me of insurance companies cherry picking the healthy people. The profit motive conflicts with providing a universal service. While it can work, in Australia we have a public Health system, Medicare, that covers everybody.

[deleted]
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