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Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

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Re: Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

#51

Post by dzhiurgis »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #33
mousethatroared wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they smell like urine, are generally filthy and they are the most likely place a middle class person is to be trapped in a small environment with a mentally ill person. If: - America solved its mental health crisis - Americans became cleaner - Americans became better behaved in public Then Americans who can afford not to take the bus would reconsider it.

You don't even need to go this far. Passenger cars-- heck, even coach buses-- are engineered for passenger comfort and convenience. City buses are engineered to secure the driver against passengers, to be simply maintained and hosed out as needed, and to accommodate overcrowding standing-room-only discomfort. Seats are hard, leg room is deficient, shoulder room is deprived, and that's even before we talk about trying…

My pet peeve is all the rattle. You are basically inside a giant guitar. Everything resonates or produces low frequency rumble that causes anxiety. Dunno if they can make it more stiff using carbon or aluminium. Probably would have to remove most of the windows.

Re: Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

#52

Post by dzhiurgis »

ahtihn wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't especially like Uber as a company, but it's not reasonable to spin a service that outcompetes a publicly-funded competitor as a conspiracy against the public, and in many of the cities Uber operates in, the transit authorities had been faceplanting all on their own without any help.

It's pretty easy to outcompete public transit on specific profitable lines. The problem is that public transit has to serve a lot of unprofitable lines and by having a private competitor putting pressure on the only parts that actually make money, the overall economics of public transit become much worse.

So competition in profitable routes and subsidies on unpopular ones?

Re: Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

#55

Post by skeeter2020 »

crazygringo wrote: post #35
afavour wrote: post #3

> Meanwhile, the federal government is cutting support for public services, including transit systems — many of which still haven’t fully recovered from Covid-era budget crunches. Though ridership nationwide is up to 85 percent of prepandemic levels, Bloomberg News recently estimated that transit systems across the country face a $6 billion budget shortfall. The gameplan is clear. Take the high value, richer customer…

> Take the high value, richer customers from the public transit system as it declines and ensure its complete demise. Richer customers don't pay more for public transit. It's not like clothing, where they buy a better product and produce most of the profit. Removing some customers from bus systems doesn't have much of an effect. Bus systems are very flexible in changing routes and times to meet demand. It's not going…

Rich customer here is not like 1% rich, but everyone above a min. wage job rich. If you remove them from the public system ridership drops signficantly and the scale required to support it erodes. It also becomes much easier to get concensus to reduce funding, accelerating the process.

The argument here is more like Canada's public/private healthcare: anyone able to will opt out of the public side. If you don't keep the funding for it in place it will be comparably worse. I would expect it is much easier to cut funding to public transit with less riders, which this will definitely cause.

Re: Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

#56

Post by kalleboo »

gruez wrote: post #49
steveBK123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely - USPS legally is required to delivery everywhere, they have no choice. Their pricing doesn't adequately reflect the difficulty of delivery either. FedEx/UPS can also be very picky about which services they offer to who. I've had plenty of FedEx/UPS return shipments that they refuse to pickup due to service level agreements on different shipment classes. USPS you can literally click on their website for the…

> Their pricing doesn't adequately reflect the difficulty of delivery either. What's preventing them from properly pricing their services? The whole implication in this line of discussion seems to be that Amazon is taking advantage of USPS, and they're somehow hapless to prevent that from happening.

U.S. Code Title 39, and the United States Postal Regulatory Commission. The former basically defines the USPS as socialist redistribution to rural areas, and the latter is what actually decides what rates the USPS is allowed to charge.

> The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining. No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities

Re: Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

#57

Post by gruez »

kalleboo wrote: post #56
gruez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their pricing doesn't adequately reflect the difficulty of delivery either. What's preventing them from properly pricing their services? The whole implication in this line of discussion seems to be that Amazon is taking advantage of USPS, and they're somehow hapless to prevent that from happening.

U.S. Code Title 39, and the United States Postal Regulatory Commission. The former basically defines the USPS as socialist redistribution to rural areas, and the latter is what actually decides what rates the USPS is allowed to charge. > The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining. No…

Sure, they can't close post offices, but that doesn't really say anything about why they can't charge more for parcels to rural areas?

Re: Uber Just Reinvented the Bus Again

#58

Post by crazygringo »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #55
crazygringo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the high value, richer customers from the public transit system as it declines and ensure its complete demise. Richer customers don't pay more for public transit. It's not like clothing, where they buy a better product and produce most of the profit. Removing some customers from bus systems doesn't have much of an effect. Bus systems are very flexible in changing routes and times to meet demand. It's not going…

Rich customer here is not like 1% rich, but everyone above a min. wage job rich. If you remove them from the public system ridership drops signficantly and the scale required to support it erodes. It also becomes much easier to get concensus to reduce funding, accelerating the process. The argument here is more like Canada's public/private healthcare: anyone able to will opt out of the public side. If you don't keep…

That's stretching the definition of "rich" beyond any possible meaning.

But yes, if you want to talk about the middle-class, which is what you seem to actually be referring to, let's.

In most cities, they've already dropped out of buses. They take their own cars. A more expensive bus service like Uber's probably isn't going to taking much ridership away from public buses, but rather give middle-class people more options, so maybe they don't need a second car.

And again, bus systems are remarkably scalable. Unlike things like subways and light rail. Routes and capacity are extremely flexible. Just because there are more transportation options, doesn't mean there's going to be a demise of city buses.

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