US cities pay too much for buses

> Perhaps you should stop listening to propaganda from the ubranists

I know this site is US-centric but excuse me if I don't take anti-public-transport propaganda at face value. I've lived in Europe all of my life and I've been to major US cities on the west coast so I've seen great public transport as well as the car-centric culture with my own eyes.

> Yep. That's how bad buses are.

No, that claim is ridiculous and obviously incorrect - It's laughable, really. Care to [try to] substantiate it?

> One bus does the same amount of road damage as 1000-5000 cars.

Sure, buses do cause more road damage than personal vehicles, but that's hardly a significant factor. Care to list all of the externalities for personal cars? Does parking build and maintain itself? How about all of the opportunity cost for space occupied by parked cars? Injuries caused by impaired drivers?

> A well-designed city like Houston will have enough road space so that buses are do not affect the traffic disproportionately. But then it means that such a city does not _need_ buses.

I have no idea what you meant by this. That doesn't logically follow.

I think you misunderstand how US drug purchases work. There is very little competitive market whatsoever anywhere in the prescription med system; there are simply "brands" and "patented meds" and "generics" plus various underserved niches where pharma companies can extract high prices from desperate patients (see e.g., Martin Shkreli and Daraprim.)

With respect to generics, there's little incentive to make a better formulation. If patients have insurance, they'll get whatever "bioequivalent" generic is available from the pharmacy if it matches the insurance provider's formulary price requirements. That manufacturer can change any time, since by law they're all deemed equivalent. It's like buying generic store-brand ibuprofen: you have no idea which factory is actually making the stuff, and it can change from package to package.

There's also very little benefit to having a "brand name" generic that has better bioavailability since you really can't charge more for it: insurance companies and pharmacies will just switch to another generic brand with lower costs. Trying to argue better bioavailability could also involve admitting that your existing bioequivalence studies are bunk, which would require an expensive new certification process. Plus, even in a functioning and truly competitive market, trying to experiment with different formulations to figure out which "gets better results" is a dangerous game for individuals; it's not like buying different Kleenex and deciding which holds together better. You have to do a lot of risky trial and error and get frequent blood tests.

So basically we have a system that ensures a completely non-functioning non-competitive market, and then we throw in an exclusive term where new medication can be sold at any price and we expect market forces to somehow constrain manufacturers. But the market forces are very weak and limited here. When we clearly end up paying dozens of times more than other countries (even for unpatented medicine) people raise the R&D issue to justify the costs. But that's sort of like saying "hey, the Mafia spends a lot on churches, so their extractive business model is fine." If you really want churches (or R&D) we should find a more rational way to come up with those funds.

PS this paper is a good (old) study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8026413/

> instead of constantly starting and stopping to access road-side mailboxes

Q: What's the (average) distance between deliveries to road-side mailboxes?

I'm thinking of the average driving time between them, compared with the time to get out of a vehicle, put mail in a mailbox, and get back in the a vehicle...

I know "mounted delivery routes" sound and feel more efficient, but just how much more efficient are they actually?

We should note that USPS letter volumes are falling (just like everywhere else in the world) and somehow parcel/packet delivery services do not need to have "mounted routes", the delivery crew appear to be able to just get out of their vehicles(?)

> I've lived in Europe all of my life and I've been to major US cities on the west coast so I've seen great public transport as well as the car-centric culture with my own eyes.

So you're telling me that you've never seen a well-run people-oriented city like Houston?

And I grew up in Europe. I got my driving license around the age of 25, and my first car at 29.

> No, that claim is ridiculous and obviously incorrect - It's laughable, really. Care to [try to] substantiate it?

See?

> Care to list all of the externalities for personal cars? Does parking build and maintain itself? How about all of the opportunity cost for space occupied by parked cars? Injuries caused by impaired drivers?

Care to list all the externalities of buses? Do bus drivers spring out of sea foam and dissolve after the shift? How about all of the opportunity cost for people who can't make commutes that are forbidden by the bus network? The entire human lifetimes wasted every day while waiting for buses?

> Injuries caused by impaired drivers?

Self-driving solved it?

> I have no idea what you meant by this. That doesn't logically follow.

If buses don't affect your traffic flow, then you have enough road space so that residents can just use cars.

Ah yes, like the health insurance market, so competitive it took a CEO murder to fix abusive practices from the dominant actor.

How compelling of an example, really.