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US cities pay too much for buses

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Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#31

Post by melling »

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.

Yes, the exhaust that people have to breathe.

I realize they have improved but aren’t natural gas buses better?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#32

Post by rangestransform »

jmyeet wrote: post #27

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…

> They standardize rolling stock.

re: buses, we have the same rickety ass new flyers essentially everywhere in the US, that doesn't make them any cheaper

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#33

Post by ajross »

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…

Economy of scale is basically all of it, honestly. The lede is that Denver pays ~60% more than Singapore[1] per bus. Because Singapore ordered 24x as many buses.

[1] There's an even worse number for Cincinatti.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#34

Post by michaelt »

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

Not sure why transit agencies are still paying for custom paint schemes or colors when they just turn around and wrap the whole bus with advertising. Just buy a plain white bus. The article didn't mention corruption but I would not rule it out. Follow the money. Whose pockets are being filled when one transit agency is paying 2x what another one does for the same bus.

> 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 competing quotes from other vendors.

And if you're an ambitious, hard-nosed type that can really turn the screws on vendors, leaving no stone unturned in your search for savings - would you be working in the purchasing department of a municipal bus company?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#35

Post by PaulHoule »

myrmidon wrote: post #16
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…

I think labor cost alone is most plausible, especially combined with higher quantities. Average yearly salary in urban China is Getting parity with subsidies, worker/environmental protection and regulation overhead would not even come close to make the US price-competitive for labor intensive work like this right now, IMO.

Chinese manufacturers use more advanced processes, not just cheap labor. For instance they built a mushroom factory in Shanghai where they only touch the mushrooms with a forklift -- contrast that to the "big" indoor mushroom farms in Pennsylvania that make those Agaricus white button mushrooms where somebody has to cut each mushroom with a knife. They just opened one in Texas.

BYD constructs cars with radically different methods than Western manufacturers, who can close much of the gap when they catch up in technique

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1mnel0i/f...

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#36

Post by gjsman-1000 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

Not sure why transit agencies are still paying for custom paint schemes or colors when they just turn around and wrap the whole bus with advertising. Just buy a plain white bus. The article didn't mention corruption but I would not rule it out. Follow the money. Whose pockets are being filled when one transit agency is paying 2x what another one does for the same bus.

That already exists in MetroTransit in Minnesota. The only company that was seriously interested for several years was Planned Parenthood.

https://www.startribune.com/the-drive-birth-control-bus-ad-s...

This did not improve public sympathies for bus service broadly speaking.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#37

Post by PaulHoule »

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…

The thing is the public sector does have competition. We have a surplus of houses with XXL master bedroom suites in Arizona and a deficit of high speed rail. If they used union labor to build houses in Arizona and non-union labor to build high speed rail it would be the other way around.

If it costs the public sector 3x as much to do things as the private sector people are going to turn against the public sector. Have crazy people screaming on the street corner in the city and people will retreat to the suburbs and order from Amazon instead of going shopping, order a private taxi for their burrito instead of going to a restaurant. If the public sector were efficient, responsive and pleasant people would be voting for more of it.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#38

Post by bikelang »

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…

> the article doesn't dig down deeper into why BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are cheaper - 996 style slave labor production, a lack of environmental protection laws and, most notably, a lot of state/regional subsidies artificially dumping prices below sustainability

I’m not sure that this is accurate. My understanding is that BYD invested heavily into automation. Their factories have few human employees left. They do almost all their automation robotics design and manufacturing in house to boot. That’s a huge advantage

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#39

Post by xnx »

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.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#40

Post by dgacmu »

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 a backwards-facing business. It would seen better to be investing in the success of the segment of the industry that's by this point obviously going to dominate in the not so far future (electric buses).

(At least, globally. China and Europe are all in on electric buses; I doubt any of us have a good crystal ball for what's going to happen in the US.)

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