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

61–70 of 590 posts

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#61

Post by PaulHoule »

taeric wrote: post #53
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.

Some of it is that "legacy" products often involve more difficult engineering than people think. Circa 1980 this bus design was a notorious failure in NYC:

https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Grumman_Flxible_870

Buses get shaken really hard.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#62

Post by sidewndr46 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #15
sidewndr46 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imagine how much money the government could save by just continuing to collect taxes and not providing any services! we could privatize everything!

That's ... decently close to what the current political course of action is, a strategy called "starve the beast" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

The very first sentence in that sayes "cutting taxes". I'm explicitly proposing that taxes be maintained or raised while reducing or eliminating government services.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#63

Post by bluGill »

Don't be fooled, paying less won't help much since the cost of a bus is a small part of the costs of running a bus route. about half your costs are the bus driver. The most expensive bus is still only 1/3rd of your hourly cost of running the bus. If a more expensive bus is more reliable that could more than make up for a more expensive bus (I don't have any numbers to do math on though).

Half the costs of running a bus route are the driver's labor. The other half needs to pay for maintenance, the cost of the bus, and all the other overhead.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#64

Post by taeric »

PaulHoule wrote: post #61
taeric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some of it is that "legacy" products often involve more difficult engineering than people think. Circa 1980 this bus design was a notorious failure in NYC: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Grumman_Flxible_870 Buses get shaken really hard.

It is amusing/depressing to consider this as getting punished for having expensive engineering to avoid failures. If you do put in more engineering to get a more robust solution, you wind up not hitting the expensive failures and people start to assume you just spent more money in engineering than you needed to.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#65

Post by bluGill »

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.

I hate those racks. 2 bikes capacity means the transit agency needs to ensure they are not well used since they will fill up fast if people actually use them. Also the time it takes to put a bike on/off them is time robbed from everyone else on the bus who is now 30 seconds latter to where they want to be. They just are not worth it, and cannot be. Either take the bike on the bus (good luck even getting it to fit, much less doing this in a reasonable amount of time for reasonable effort), or lock them up at your stop.

I find buses are safe too. I don't understand the worry myself. However buses in the US normally run terrible routes that make them useless for getting around and so people who want to seem "green" need to find some excuse and not understanding the real problem blame safety and not that the route is useless.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#66

Post by bluGill »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #60
PaulHoule wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bein…

Honor system with regular fare inspection is a good best practice. However it only works when the fines for not having a fare are high enough that everyone knows it isn't worth the risk. If you are checked once a month the fine should be the costs of 3 months pass, though you can work the math in many different ways, just make sure paying for a ticket (preferably a monthly pass!) is cheapest and everyone believe that.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#67

Post by gjsman-1000 »

bluGill wrote: post #66
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bein…

Honor system with regular fare inspection is a good best practice. However it only works when the fines for not having a fare are high enough that everyone knows it isn't worth the risk. If you are checked once a month the fine should be the costs of 3 months pass, though you can work the math in many different ways, just make sure paying for a ticket (preferably a monthly pass!) is cheapest and everyone believe that…

The problem with fining the homeless is that they don't pay, followed by being onboard the next day. This can't be solved without being a little mean.

In 2023, Democratic lawmakers changed it from being a misdemeanor to being an administrative citation, with... get this... $35 for first offense, scaling up to $100 + 120 day ban by 4th offense. More merciful than going through a court system inconsistently, at least in theory. Huge surprise it's not working out.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#68

Post by bluGill »

hx8 wrote: post #28
mrits wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with diesel bus manufacturing? Just the exhaust pedestrians have to breath in? It seems near the bottom of the list for things we'd need to solve for carbon emissions.

There is nothing wrong with diesel bus manufacturing, but if you were to generate a list of the 1000 most desirable products to manufacture I don't think diesel bus would be on the list. We have companies and manufacturing expertise tied up in building buses when they could be building {X}.

A bus - because of the issues with shipping is something worth building not "too far" from where used. There is value in scale manufacturing so it won't be every city, but making buses for a different continent probably isn't right either.

Note that engineering can be done in one location for multiple factories.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#69

Post by bluGill »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #67
bluGill wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honor system with regular fare inspection is a good best practice. However it only works when the fines for not having a fare are high enough that everyone knows it isn't worth the risk. If you are checked once a month the fine should be the costs of 3 months pass, though you can work the math in many different ways, just make sure paying for a ticket (preferably a monthly pass!) is cheapest and everyone believe that…

The problem with fining the homeless is that they don't pay , followed by being onboard the next day . This can't be solved without being a little mean. In 2023, Democratic lawmakers changed it from being a misdemeanor to being an administrative citation, with... get this... $35 for first offense, scaling up to $100 + 120 day ban by 4th offense. More merciful than going through a court system inconsistently, at least…

Homeless should be on a different program that gives them a free pass anyway. The pass should be paid for by the service that deals with the homeless not the transit agency (note that I just forced a lot of budget changes!). The service wants to hand out those passes because it is a chance for them to see what else they can do for those people (who often don't want help and so they need to be careful what they offer vs force)

There should be passes for disabled vets, children, and other poor people as well.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#70

Post by gjsman-1000 »

bluGill wrote: post #69
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with fining the homeless is that they don't pay , followed by being onboard the next day . This can't be solved without being a little mean. In 2023, Democratic lawmakers changed it from being a misdemeanor to being an administrative citation, with... get this... $35 for first offense, scaling up to $100 + 120 day ban by 4th offense. More merciful than going through a court system inconsistently, at least…

Homeless should be on a different program that gives them a free pass anyway. The pass should be paid for by the service that deals with the homeless not the transit agency (note that I just forced a lot of budget changes!). The service wants to hand out those passes because it is a chance for them to see what else they can do for those people (who often don't want help and so they need to be careful what they offer…

Believe me, visit Reddit for Minneapolis, the most transit-optimist place you can find, and see what they think about their light rail. Full grown adult women won't ride it. Children? That's almost child endangerment by itself.

I have no problem with homeless people getting free transit if they need it. However, the subset of homeless that are consistently riding for free and making nuisances, they may need to be forcibly kept off the train. It doesn't even need to be police action - install physical barriers, requiring cash or pass, and hand out passes to the homeless like candy with revocation for repeated misbehavior.

Post reply on HN