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US cities pay too much for buses

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Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#91

Post by lenerdenator »

namdnay wrote: post #14
lenerdenator wrote: post #2

> "A new paper argues that lack of competition, demand for custom features and “Buy America” rules have driven up costs for transit agencies in the US." If that's not the most NYC finance-centered headline ever, I don't know what is. "If we just offload our bus-building industry to somewhere else, we could save $x on taxes each year. Yeah, it eliminates jobs and is another blow against strategically-important heavy i…

it's not a question of "offloading" it, it's a question of reaping the benefits of global competition Would you really be better off if you could only buy cars made by US manufacturers? Did americans really lose out when Toyota and co arrived? Would Boeing aircraft really be better if they didn't have to compete with Airbus? Or would the incumbents just get lazy?

> it's not a question of "offloading" it, it's a question of reaping the benefits of global competition

_What benefits_?

> Would you really be better off if you could only buy cars made by US manufacturers? Did americans really lose out when Toyota and co arrived?

Been through Flint, MI lately?

How about Gary, IN? Camden, NJ? East St. Louis, IL?

> Would Boeing aircraft really be better if they didn't have to compete with Airbus? Or would the incumbents just get lazy?

They already do have to compete with Airbus for pretty much everything that doesn't involve the US Government as a customer. That's the majority of the global aircraft market. How's that working out? The incumbent still got "lazy", not so much from entitlement but from a "need" to constantly reduce costs while simultaneously increasing revenues for the benefit of shareholders. You can only make aircraft building (or anything else) so profitable before you hit a ceiling. Boeing hit that ceiling, but of course, that doesn't matter. Number must go up.

People in postindustrial economies cannot work as cheaply as people in developing economies because they must pay local prices for goods and services required for them to live. Going with the global competition because "it's cheaper" doesn't address the hundreds of thousands of people in the US who now don't have the ability to earn a living in the way that they did before while still being forced to consume using the value of their labor. Worse yet, it enriches people who don't have our national best interests in mind.

This kind of "globalization benefits Americans" mindset is why we're in the mess we're in now with a tyrant in office and people having no faith in the economy or the future. It's not 1990 anymore. The experiment's over, it failed. Horribly.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#92

Post by savanaly »

xnx wrote: post #39

Ultimately due to a lack of transit competition. Municipal transit will be bloated and inefficient on every level because no amount of failure will put them out of business. Indeed, most agencies' main goal is to increase budget (any increase in service or customer satisfaction is incidental) because more budget equals bigger projects and more staff which is more prestigious and higher paying.

I'm with you at heart, but experience says government owned transit works just fine and even great in other countries. What's their secret sauce?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#93

Post by esafak »

bluGill wrote: post #63

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 b…

I'm hearing you say we should have self-driving buses... which is feasible since their route is fixed.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#94

Post by bombcar »

bluGill wrote: post #68
hx8 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cost to ship a bus anywhere in the world approaches the cost of shipping a container - $2 to 10k probably. A tiny fraction of the price.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#95

Post by stackskipton »

crazygringo wrote: post #43
SoftTalker wrote: post #4

Not sure why transit agencies are still paying for custom paint schemes or colors when they just turn around and wrap the whole bus with advertising. Just buy a plain white bus. The article didn't mention corruption but I would not rule it out. Follow the money. Whose pockets are being filled when one transit agency is paying 2x what another one does for the same bus.

> still paying for custom paint schemes or colors Because you need to be able to recognize from a distance, hey that's a city bus. Not a charter bus. Not a school bus. Not a long distance bus. And buses aren't usually wrapped with advertising. It's usually just a banner on the sides below the windows. Some ad campaigns pay much more money to extend it over the windows with that mesh material. But that's generally a s…

>Because you need to be able to recognize from a distance, hey that's a city bus.

Sure, but fix here seems to be that DOT Regulations state that transit buses are painted "Lime Green" (example) and other companies should not use said color. People would quickly learn that Lime Green = transit bus in same way School Bus Yellow means school bus.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#96

Post by kjkjadksj »

esafak wrote: post #93
bluGill wrote: post #63

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 b…

I'm hearing you say we should have self-driving buses... which is feasible since their route is fixed.

Bus driver also does things like trigger ramp for handicapped people, strap in wheelchairs securely, answer questions about the route, and security surveillance.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#97

Post by bombcar »

xethos wrote: post #74
myrmidon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't think there is any future for them longer term (>10y). Long distance, diesel vehicles might hold out for a bit longer than a decade, but the situation looks kinda inevitable even there to me. CO2 wise, electrifying a bus like this should pay off much quicker than replacing individual vehicles, because utilization is higher (not a lot of people drive 12h a day).

Even more damning, diesel is objectively, inarguably more expensive to run, costing more than four times as much as [Vancouver's] battery-electric busses in fuel/electricity. Even looking purely at the financials, diesel is fucked.

Diesel’s last remaining benefits are of no value for a bus (locomotive-class horsepower possibilities and rapid refueling) as a bus never weighs much and goes in a circle.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#98

Post by kjkjadksj »

myrmidon wrote: post #7

I think this shows one of the downsides of trade barriers very well: You get stuck with undesirable industries (diesel bus manufacturing), binding capital and labor better used elsewhere (and you easily end up with underperforming, overpriced solutions, too). But I'm curious how much this actually affects transport costs. If such a bus is used 12h/day, then even overpaying 100% for the vehicle should get outscaled by…

Aren’t most busses CNG these days?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#99

Post by notatoad »

roryirvine wrote: post #49
tdeck wrote: post #30

Our buses are also less comfortable and "rattle" more that busses I've ridden in many other first world countries. I'm not sure if this is an economics thing but the standard New Flyer buses feel a bit dated.

What's causing the rattle? In the UK, there were always a few buses in any given fleet that rattled more than others, especially when idling or at low revs - something to do with resonance with the body panels, I think. But that was back when diesel engines were universal, so hasn't really been a thing since hybrids and (more recently) BEVs took over. Looks like New Flyer hybrids use BAE Systems' Hybridrive, which wa…

in my experience the rattle is usually from the fittings inside the bus, not the bus itself - mounting brackets for information screens or advertising panels, seatbelts on the accessible seating, that sort of thing. and part of the rattle is just down to under-use - a bus with all the seats filled shakes less, because the suspension is tuned for a full bus not an empty one.

one of the buses i ride frequently has a ski rack installed in it that looks like a homemade contraption, and it rattles like crazy.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#100

Post by mschuster91 »

myrmidon wrote: post #55
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between private companies and state-run companies / authorities. When a US airline thinks it's better for them to switch over to Airbus, by all means do so, that's competition. But taxpayer money should not be used to prop up other countries' economies unless explicitly designated that way (e.g. contributions to international agencies, economic aid), and certainly not if that replaces domestic un…

I disagree with this. You are basically asking taxpayers to fund an uncompetitive (i.e. wasteful) local industry. I think that's justifiable when you have high local unemployment (making the thing a job program, really), or when you really need the industry for strategic reasons (food and weapon manufacturing), but when that is not the case, doing this raises labor costs in general and hurts your actually useful and…

The thing is, fundamentally there is very little difference between a truck, a bus and a tank. A big ass diesel engine and literal tons of steel. And in war time, you can convert the bus and truck manufacturing facilities into making tanks and airplanes.

That is why even something as manufacturing cars, trucks and airplanes is vital to be resilient. And in addition, it's bad enough how much of a grip China has on our balls with rare-earth metals, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and the threat of snacking a piece of Taiwan. India isn't much better, they keep buying up Russian oil despite sanctions. We don't need to hand them more economic power.

And yes, resilience costs money. We need to explain that to our populations - and most importantly, we need to make sure that our populations actually get some more of the wealth and income that is being generated every year so they can afford it, like in the past!

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