A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit • Hacker News Board

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#51

Post by rayiner » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 12:35 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #48

tsotha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The "productive people" were driven away because they didn't want to live next to black people. This is wrong. You think one day all the white people said "Hey, wait a minute! We've been living next to black people for generations, and that has to stop"? It's not the taxes on people that are the problem, it's the taxes and regulations on businesses. Detroit took the attitude the car companies would always be around…

Its both actually. Take the riots from the 60s and 70s, and the blight of the 80s (when I was there!), white flight led to a huge implosion of property taxes. They tried to make that up in business taxes, which then forced out the businesses, and the death spiral continues! Cities are pretty fragile places, one disruption can set off a chain reaction and...bam! It will take some revolutionary thinking to save Detroit…

> There is no great migration of people to red cities (cities in red states with low taxes), and even those red cities are quite blue (Atlanta in Georgia, Houston in Texas). Cities are just against libertarian principles, dense societies need to pull resources together to survive and thrive.

As someone who lived in Atlanta for a long time and now lives in Chicago, I find the idea that southern boom cities are less taxed and less regulated to be laughable. Atlanta is completely owned by the democratic party. The boom in these cities is being driven by housing prices, not business climate.

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#52

Post by britta » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 12:37 AM UTC

akgerber wrote: post #18

This is a party bus service to allow bar hopping in a car-dependent city when passengers are too intoxicated to drive. It only runs on Friday & Saturday nights between a couple of suburban bars & the downtown & university district of Detroit. It might well be a good business (and certainly better than drunk driving), but it's not a meaningful substitute for functional mass transit. Public transit systems require subs…

My college town has a private bus service aimed at drinkers that has been running for twenty years now, shuttling people between the student neighborhood and the bars on Thursday-Saturday evenings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill%27s_Bus

The interesting part is that it's not even a good business - after about ten years, the founder ran out of money and then sold the business to the owner of one of those bars. I'd speculate that the bar business slightly subsidizes the bus service, run as something of a service to the community (reducing drunk driving).

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#53

Post by encoderer » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 12:40 AM UTC

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #21

This guy seems a bit mislead. There are definitely not 15 million people in metro Detroit. There are only 5 million people in the census area that includes Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Flint, and has an area over 15000 square kilometers.

Nonsense!

As long as I can remember the Detroit metro area has always included the entire state of Michigan. And Toledo, Ohio. And Indiana. All of indiana.

(Some joking aside, Indiana as the destination of the next round of white-flight from the Detroit suburbs is amusing to me.)

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#54

Post by jlgreco » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 12:53 AM UTC

steiza wrote: post #46

jlgreco wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a city that gets comparable service as relatively remote rural areas, then yeah, it pretty much is an anarchy. The only thing that you can fairly compare a city to is other cities. As far as cities in America goes, I think it is fair to say that many attributes of Detroit are very reminiscent of an anarchy. There may be better examples, but Detroit stands out for its former prominence.

I can assure you Detroit has "normal" services like city water, garbage collection, electricity, and the majority of roads are maintained (even if 100% of them don't get plowed during the winter). I still don't see how anyone can say that is "reminiscent of anarchy". Is there an anarchy you lived in that it is reminiscent of? Downtown Detroit has two major sports teams (the Tigers and the Red Wings), renown cultural…

I don't intend to be harsh, but all of those things are basically baseline expectations. I can't help but think that you are damning the city with faint praise.

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#55

Post by astrodust » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 1:41 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #44

astrodust wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically: Lobbyists tend to pursue an agenda of bans and mandates, and so long as your political system is dependent on the interests of lobbyists and their associated campaign financing, these goals will often be achieved.

More specifically, you're just making up theories.

I guess having followed US politics for the last two decades has taught me nothing.

I'm sure it's all attributable to "The Government" being sinister and evil.

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#56

Post by darklajid » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 1:45 AM UTC

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Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#57

Post by rayiner » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 2:25 AM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #55

rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically, you're just making up theories.

I guess having followed US politics for the last two decades has taught me nothing. I'm sure it's all attributable to "The Government" being sinister and evil.

My point is that you have no basis for your claim re: lobbyists and campaign funding. Use of government-granted monopolies to achieve particular ends predates modern media, and campaign funding was a much less pivotal issue back in the day when all the money in the world wouldn't buy you anything more than a newspaper ad.

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#58

Post by altcognito » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 3:38 AM UTC

steiza wrote: post #46

jlgreco wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a city that gets comparable service as relatively remote rural areas, then yeah, it pretty much is an anarchy. The only thing that you can fairly compare a city to is other cities. As far as cities in America goes, I think it is fair to say that many attributes of Detroit are very reminiscent of an anarchy. There may be better examples, but Detroit stands out for its former prominence.

I can assure you Detroit has "normal" services like city water, garbage collection, electricity, and the majority of roads are maintained (even if 100% of them don't get plowed during the winter). I still don't see how anyone can say that is "reminiscent of anarchy". Is there an anarchy you lived in that it is reminiscent of? Downtown Detroit has two major sports teams (the Tigers and the Red Wings), renown cultural…

Hey, now I realize the Lions are bad, but they also play downtown.

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#59

Post by prostoalex » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 3:38 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #23

tsotha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you should rail against libertarians when discussing a city that's where it is at least in part because the productive people were driven away through extra taxes and regulation.

The "productive people" were driven away because they didn't want to live next to black people. The Detroit metro area isn't any smaller than it used to be--people just moved to the suburbs. There aren't appreciably fewer regulations in the Detroit suburbs, and taxes aren't any lower either (what you save in sales tax you more than lose in property taxes). It's also a little funny considering that 27% of US GDP comes…

Isn't that just the headquarters trick? Someone like Wells Fargo is SF-based and someone like Chase is NY-based, yet economic activity of those two is happening all around the world, and just gets reported in SF and NY.

Re: A Private Bus Company Debuts in Detroit

#60

Post by iamdave » Sun, Oct 21, 2012, 6:43 AM UTC

mukaiji wrote: post #4

It's an interesting experiment. If it succeeds, it would be ironic that the solution to America's public transportation is coming from Detroit: after all, GM & co are the guys who bought America's trolleys in the 1950's and disassembled them to boost sales of cars. EDIT: related story on SF's private lines http://stamen.com/zero1/

If it succeeds, it doesn't automatically mean it's a "solution" to something as geographically varied, respectively massive, and fiscally complicated and regimented as subsidized public transit.

If it succeeds, it does mean it succeeded in the conditions of Detroit, as mass-transit is something so delicate it inherently must be optimized for the city in which it operates. That said, I do absolutely wish them luck living in a city with what I consider absolutely horrible public transit[1]

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[1] This is subjective, highly of course. And given the population boom taking place in Austin, Texas it's somewhat hard to fault CapMetro entirely for the woes of riding the bus. I will say though many will find themselves in agreement living here seeing CapMetro time and time again implement projects that utterly fail because they made no sense to begin with. Yep, I'm looking right at you Red line.