Not in a majority of American cities where mass transit is non-existent. Which is awful.
New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
71–80 of 458 posts
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#72I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…
> expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. ... and be faster . The SFMTA in San Francisco , at an average travel speed of 5 miles / hour. Is only slightly faster than brisk walking. Also, from the downtown FiDi out 2 miles in every direction, the Bus has a bus stop at Every block. Yes, every block.
> > expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment.
> ... and be faster.
mere reliability would be a nice start. denver's RTD system can't deal with predictable spikes in usage like the start of a semester at universities, or adjust itself when three or four of the high-frequency buses stack up on top of each other such that buses that should show ever 15 minutes don't appear for an hour.
everything in a smartphone that makes uber/lyft possible would've been cost effective to cram into a bus 20 years ago. but as far as i know they're still just talking (intermittently) on a radio.
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there realistic situations where a cheaper and more convenient form of driven transport leads to fewer VMT?
Sure. A faster / better / cheaper train or bus takes cars directly off the road. So you can add more subways / trains / buses / etc. to do this.
Adding more units, where existing units are underutilized, makes no sense.
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#74Sorry i get less sick when i commute by car hence i refuse to spend time with other people using buses/trams/subway.
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. ... and be faster . The SFMTA in San Francisco , at an average travel speed of 5 miles / hour. Is only slightly faster than brisk walking. Also, from the downtown FiDi out 2 miles in every direction, the Bus has a bus stop at Every block. Yes, every block.
Even biking works if you have bike racks on the bus and light rail. But most buses can only accommodate 1-3 bikes and light rail has no racks onboard at all.
well a folding bike aka the Brompton works better for this use case
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#76I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…
You make a good point here, and mass transit has done the square root of bugger all to improve accessibility for a new generation. For example: I live in the countryside and want to get a bus into town. Fair enough but sometimes the buses run late, and sometimes they run really late - like half an hour plus. I often don't have that kind of time to waste, especially not if it means standing or sitting around in the ra…
Live tracking is not rocket science. See example what we got in Vilnius, Lithuania. Over there every city bus have GPS trackers for various other reasons anyway.
https://www.trafi.com/lt/vilnius/autobusai/1g-greitasis-auto...
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#77I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…
> expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. ... and be faster . The SFMTA in San Francisco , at an average travel speed of 5 miles / hour. Is only slightly faster than brisk walking. Also, from the downtown FiDi out 2 miles in every direction, the Bus has a bus stop at Every block. Yes, every block.
For San Francisco I’d settle with “not smell of feces/vomit so badly you can’t stomach riding in the first place.”
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#78I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…
You make a good point here, and mass transit has done the square root of bugger all to improve accessibility for a new generation. For example: I live in the countryside and want to get a bus into town. Fair enough but sometimes the buses run late, and sometimes they run really late - like half an hour plus. I often don't have that kind of time to waste, especially not if it means standing or sitting around in the ra…
> Thing is, it's not very start-uppable as a concept: you need partnerships with any bus companies involved, you need GPS equipment in the buses, you need parternships with cell networks and good enough coverage that location and ancillary information can be sent back to base to be served up through the app, etc.
It may not be something you hack together in a weekend, but it's definitely startuppable. Love that word, btw, can I keep it?
Because of the partnerships needed, it won't scale quickly, but I wonder if it has potential as a non-profit startup. Or even for-profit, you just need to work on the value proposition to the local transit agencies. Some areas in the US do have this, after all. I'm not sure if it's GPS or what, but I've seen it Seattle when I visited, and also in Arlington, VA, where I used to live:
http://mobile.commuterpage.com/realtime.cfm?stopCode=41209&f...
I believe in Arlington, it was mostly grant funded (state and federal), but somebody's gotta be out there doing the work.
I live in Maine now - having decent public transportation would be a nice first step.
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#79I'm very interested in the convergence of Lyft-Line/Uber-Pool service with bus service. It's easy to imagine Lyft and Uber running dynamically adjustable bus/van routes -- basically jitneys/peseros that take advantage of smart phones -- that are faster, more reliable, and cheaper than city buses. (Vans are super cheap per passenger if they are always full.) Lyft has taken small steps in this direction by asking Line…
As the article mentions - this is what Via does https://ridewithvia.com/
Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both services are subsidizing their rides significantly, so while I think transit does need to work on improvements it’s important to remember that the comparison is currently unfair and will change when investors start looking for profits.
You don't think the public transportation systems are subsidized?
At a certain point the comparison breaks down.
Yes, public transit is subsidised. But it isn't subsidised in such a way that it is expected to eventually become self sustaining - tax-payer funding is expected to continue in perpetuity.
That's not the case with Uber and Lyft. VCs are subsiding their rides on the expectation that eventually the company will dominate the market enough to not require subsidy any more.