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

511–520 of 590 posts

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#511

Post by Symbiote »

crote wrote: post #491
Symbiote wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses in places like Ireland, Scotland, much of Scandinavia, etc will never need air conditioning. Places a little warmer (England, Denmark, Netherlands, northern Germany) might be warm enough for a few days per year, but the cost of purchase and maintenance of A/C might not be worthwhile.

How many of those places have you been to? They might not need year-round A/C like some other countries, but the increasingly-common heat waves definitely require them. The buses are almost intolerable with air conditioning, there's no way in hell they'd ever purchase them without it. The additional purchase cost is a rounding error, and you're far worse off if cooking people alive during the summer means losing cust…

I've been to all of them, and lived/live in two of them.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#512

Post by smath »

RobKohr wrote: post #202

"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…

Also (I think?):

- Govt beaureucreats spending taxpayer money - Availability of cheap credit for the US govt (the spender is other countries buying the debt) - Availabiulity of cheap student loans

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#513

Post by unethical_ban »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #221
cenamus wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they all basically come with AC and heating? At least in basically any semi-modern bus I've ever been in in Europe. No matter if it's -20 or +35 celsius, as long as they turn the AC actually on it's tolerable. And we also have some mountains here, so there's some buses for that (still stock from the factory)

No, they certainly don’t all come with AC and heat.

The number of places in the US that will never need both at some point is vanishingly small.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#514

Post by gottorf »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #474
RobKohr wrote: post #202

"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…

You’re assuming the federal government rubber stamps their 80%

Fairly accurate assumption to make in this case. Incentives around government spending are structured against close scrutiny of how much gets spent on what and why.

Politicians love splashing their names on papers on how they got a bill passed to spend $X on $GOOD_SOUNDING_PROJECT, and the bigger the X, the better. Government employees are strongly incentivized against the reduction of their own employment should that spending go away. Lobbyists and service providers obviously have a direct interest in ensuring those contracts continue.

Nobody but the taxpayer has any interest at all in ensuring that money gets spent on things worth spending on and, moreover, that the spent money actually achieves the outcomes desired and intended behind those projects. And how much influence does the average taxpayer have on any of that? It rounds to zero.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#515

Post by mellow_observer »

simianwords wrote: post #455
phil21 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that a great majority of problems in the US these days fundamentally boils down to principal agent problems. The 2008 financial crisis is a great example. Once banks no longer kept mortgages on their own books, it just became a matter of time until that was going to blow up. The incentives change.

You are right but in a roundabout way. It’s true that most problems in US can be explained by this but it’s also true that the west and US particularly are successful because they can bypass the principal agent problem to an extent. You just have to look at India or Africa a bit to understand the severity to which this problem permeates day to day in these countries.

That's an interesting line of thought. How would you say the US/west are able to bypass this problem more effectively?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#516

Post by m101 »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #505

The biggest killer are all the specific changes each city decides they need. If a standard feature set could be achieved mass production would be easier to arrange. Perhaps with a module system to remove or add some subset of feature that are easily to adapt to it. The 80% of federal funding¹ should be based on a "universal common standard", and cities pay 20% plus the city pays 100% for various customisations they n…

Similar to another comment here: the principle agent issue here is the person designing the spec for busses is not the person paying for the buses. If it was the case then the market would settle on a common standard as everyone seeks the lowest price.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#517

Post by BobbyTables2 »

I’m all for mass transportation m, but city buses blocking a busy two-lane road for several minutes waiting at a stop has got to end. Even when not stopped, they do a pretty good job at impeding traffic.

The bus system has one set of costs. But it has another set of external costs on the rest of society.

In contrast, I’ve seen British short trains arrive + unload + load + depart in far less than 5 minutes total, and that involves a far greater number of passengers than a crawling bus.

Yeah, trains require more infrastructure, but I think the public could grow to like them.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#518

Post by BobbyTables2 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #499
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes more than just misaligned incentives to get a banking crisis -- you have to have structural corruption preventing the transfer of the loss gradient back to the "misaligned" decision makers. Nah, you can do it just on the basis of information asymmetries. Banks can sell mortgages. People think buying mortgages is safe, because banks don't loan money to people they don't think can pay it back, and even if th…

Let me tell you something about people... You can sit them down and explain precisely why buying something, like a new car, is a bad financial decision and that they cannot afford it anyway, and then watch them go buy it anyway. To the point where I have seen people laugh about how dumb of an idea it is, while in the act of doing it. The "I wish someone explained to me..." that comes later when it all falls apart is…

I’m always amazed at the number of 20-30 year olds driving luxury SUVs and souped up trucks.

Feels like I’m in a bizarro world where logic and math no longer apply.

Even if I could easily afford it, it seems crazy between the purchase cost and the yearly insurance cost.

They could still have a new car and use the money saved to pay down mortgage or invest it.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#519

Post by BobbyTables2 »

qgin wrote: post #398
RobKohr wrote: post #202

"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…

I have a $6500 deductible. I definitely care what things cost because my insurance almost never actually helps pay for anything unless I have an unbelievably bad year. The problem is that literally nobody can tell me how much anything is going to cost until I get the bill in a month. Not even because they don't want to tell me. Nobody at the desk even knows what my price is going to be because it's all numberwang.

The funny thing is there are only a few insurance companies (BCBS, Aetna, United, …) and types of plans (PPO, HMO, EPO).

I could be misinformed but I feel like there are only a few possible combinations of one’s actual coverage.

A simple spreadsheet could easily track everything. The providers even know how much they get from each company, so they know the allowed in-network cost for a patient.

It’s just utter laziness and stupidity.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#520

Post by ranadomo »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #517

I’m all for mass transportation m, but city buses blocking a busy two-lane road for several minutes waiting at a stop has got to end. Even when not stopped, they do a pretty good job at impeding traffic. The bus system has one set of costs. But it has another set of external costs on the rest of society. In contrast, I’ve seen British short trains arrive + unload + load + depart in far less than 5 minutes total, and…

Transit violence is not limited to outlier cases like the nyc immolation or Iryna's horrific slaughter. Women in particular may never feel safe on public transit and avoid it entirely at night and alone. Daily harassment, stalking, threats and verbal abuse are "facts of life" for the majority of female passengers in metro areas. They will all move up or out to safer environments and take their car or private transportation everywhere. Pretending like Americans are instinctually averse to public transit is an absurd contention when they've been behaviorally conditioned by the insanely dangerous environment and a justice system that works to inflict it upon them until they give up or die.
Post reply on HN