Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US cities pay too much for buses

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 590 posts

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#51

Post by PaulHoule »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #36
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.

It's a pet peeve of mine that buses in my city have wrap-around ads for a car dealer an hour's drive away. (Turns out all the car dealers in this area are owned by the same people) Then there was that bus which had a supergraphic that made the whole bus look like an MRI machine advertising the medical center.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#52

Post by taeric »

The idea that you can leverage competition to build public infrastructure things feels dubious, to me. Will try to take a dive on some of that literature.

At face value, though, public infrastructure is largely the sort of thing that enables many things with no obvious stakeholder that could have done it themselves. Certainly not in a way that would have an easy path to profits for the infrastructure.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#53

Post by taeric »

PaulHoule wrote: post #29

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 wr…

This is something I would honestly expect if you try and get cheaper from market pressure.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#54

Post by kube-system »

bluGill wrote: post #50
kube-system wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the gist of the article is that we don't have the same busses across the US. Yes there are only two major manufacturers, but they're all being procured in different ways, in different custom configurations, all across the country.

We do. What is different is the options. The bus itself is the same, but you can put options on the bus that drive up the price.

That's exactly what the person above was getting at.

> 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.

Having everything ordered piecemeal in smaller custom orders is more expensive and gives cities a disadvantage in negotiation power

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#55

Post by myrmidon »

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…

I disagree with this.

You are basically asking taxpayers to fund an uncompetitive (i.e. wasteful) local industry.

I think that's justifiable when you have high local unemployment (making the thing a job program, really), or when you really need the industry for strategic reasons (food and weapon manufacturing), but when that is not the case, doing this raises labor costs in general and hurts your actually useful and globally competitive industries, too.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#56

Post by gjsman-1000 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #51
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a pet peeve of mine that buses in my city have wrap-around ads for a car dealer an hour's drive away. (Turns out all the car dealers in this area are owned by the same people) Then there was that bus which had a supergraphic that made the whole bus look like an MRI machine advertising the medical center.

Personally, I'm not opposed to bus service; quite the opposite. Especially if I could bring an eBike.

However, buses can and should feel safe for everyone, whether you're 5 years old or 95 years old, a US citizen or a visitor from Japan, whether it's 2 PM or 2 AM. In the United States, they absolutely don't. This can be fixed, but nobody has the political will to be perceived as a little mean.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#57

Post by PaulHoule »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #56
PaulHoule wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pet peeve of mine that buses in my city have wrap-around ads for a car dealer an hour's drive away. (Turns out all the car dealers in this area are owned by the same people) Then there was that bus which had a supergraphic that made the whole bus look like an MRI machine advertising the medical center.

Personally, I'm not opposed to bus service; quite the opposite. Especially if I could bring an eBike. However, buses can and should feel safe for everyone, whether you're 5 years old or 95 years old, a US citizen or a visitor from Japan, whether it's 2 PM or 2 AM. In the United States, they absolutely don't. This can be fixed, but nobody has the political will to be perceived as a little mean.

In my town all the buses have a bus rack in the front that fits up to two bikes or e-bikes.

I perceive buses in my town be very safe. I definitely see emotionally disturbed people downtown and near the homeless colony behind Wal-Mart, but I don't see them on the bus.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#58

Post by bluGill »

SoftTalker wrote: post #21
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 co…

Sure, but a bus lasts 12 years in service (depending on use slightly different, but 12 is a reasonable number for discussion). You should be buying them on a longer contract to deliver 1/12 of your total fleet every year for several years. This means that you only need to ask what to train the mechanics on at the end of the contract and in turns there are not that many different buses you need to train on. Keeping the same manufacture does reduce training costs some, but it isn't like every bus is different.

Even ignoring the above, all but the smallest agencies can dedicate mechanics to each make. A mechanic can maintain so many buses per year - lets say 10 for discussion (I have no idea what the real number is), so if you have 100 buses you need 10 mechanics. if you have 4 trained on brand A, 4 on brand B, and 2 on both you are fine.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#59

Post by tdeck »

roryirvine wrote: post #49
tdeck wrote: post #30

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.

What's causing the rattle? In the UK, there were always a few buses in any given fleet that rattled more than others, especially when idling or at low revs - something to do with resonance with the body panels, I think. But that was back when diesel engines were universal, so hasn't really been a thing since hybrids and (more recently) BEVs took over. Looks like New Flyer hybrids use BAE Systems' Hybridrive, which wa…

I'm not sure? Perhaps the shocks are different, or the seats are just harder, or perhaps I'm imagining it.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#60

Post by gjsman-1000 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #57
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm not opposed to bus service; quite the opposite. Especially if I could bring an eBike. However, buses can and should feel safe for everyone, whether you're 5 years old or 95 years old, a US citizen or a visitor from Japan, whether it's 2 PM or 2 AM. In the United States, they absolutely don't. This can be fixed, but nobody has the political will to be perceived as a little mean.

In my town all the buses have a bus rack in the front that fits up to two bikes or e-bikes. I perceive buses in my town be very safe. I definitely see emotionally disturbed people downtown and near the homeless colony behind Wal-Mart, but I don't see them on the bus.

In Minnesota, we built light rail... with an honor system for boarding.

It got so bad, especially on the middle cars (the "party cars") after COVID, that the middle car was retired and they are now in Year 3 of a security improvement plan.

https://www.metrotransit.org/public-safety

They are also retro-fitting screens into the buses, showing the buses' own live camera feeds, to further reinforce the perception of being watched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SBd3wno61k

It's still not working in some areas.

https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-46th-st-light-rail-c...

https://www.instagram.com/karenthecamera/?hl=en

Post reply on HN