When thinking of public transportation, I frequently think of the quote,
“A developed country is not when the poor have cars. It is when the rich use public transportation.”
Because it’s so true. The US really isn’t a developed country, for the most part, still. I think that’s going to start causing a lot of pain pretty soon, for a number of reasons (related to climate change and gridlock).
I fear the days of the true self driving cars. The average number of occupants in cars is way too low as it is now. Imagine what will happen if empty cars join the fray.
Um, both of those are bus routes.
All you’re doing is saying that technology can somehow magically make running less popular/busy routes economical.
I’ll grant you, it might in some cases.
Having better knowledge on a minute by minute basis of exactly where the demand for journeys is could be helpful but given the scale that any reasonable mass transit system has to operate on, is knowing that Mrs Miggins wants to go from 32 Acacia Gardens to her doctor’s surgery in the next ten minutes really going to provide much in the way of efficiencies over her knowing that if she pops down to the corner, she can catch a bus at the bus stop at 15 mins past the hour?
The reality with any such service is that the customers need to know within a reasonable degree of certainty that if they want to go from Point A to Point B, there is a knowable way of doing that within a certain knowable period of time.
Knowing that if I stick my desire for a journey on an app, a vehicle will eventually appear at some point if enough other people also want to go on similar journeys is useful but not for any journey where I need to know when/how I will get to my destination.
For those journeys, not knowing when/if a bus will turn up or when it will get me to my destination is essentially the same as there being no bus.
Also things that are already well served by existing systems (in sensibly organised cities and countries at least).
Special services for sporting events/trade fairs are a thing.
Any scenario where you have a knowable number of people wanting to either go from Point A to various places or from various places to Point B at known times is easily doable with existing systems.
As with so many ‘tech’ company solutions, the things they try to fix have not already been solved not because the technology wasn’t there or because everyone who previously thought about them was an idiot but because they are difficult.
The easy ones generally already have the best solutions available in the existing circumstances.
Which is why tech co’s talk about being disruptive because the only way they can better the existing solutions is usually by changing the existing circumstances. Which is hard.
A lot harder than they like to admit.
I would like to know why every time a “blogger” writes an opinion based story about the traffic issues rideshare creates they dont address the factors that push people to use ridesharing in the first place. Why didnt this blogger take the 5 minutes it took me to find San Fransisco municiple transportation agency’s report that shows that they admitted they were not prepared for the growth in population. In 2015 they called for a re-evaluation of transportation baselines because new construction in 2013 was 27% higher then the normal over the previous 10 year average.
Why didn’t the blogger mention that SF is still lagging behind on more then a dozen transportation projects that are truly needed in order to properly connect the various parts of SF in order to make it seemless. SF built the nice new Salesforce Transit station but its use is pointless since they still need to build a tunnel to connect it to the existing Caltrain terminus in SoMa. Tax payers will never approve the 3 billion per mile for SF Downtown Extension. And no, thats not a typo. Thats 3 billion dollars.
Uber makes 70% of its revenue from 7 major areas of the US. The Bay Area is one of them. Dont forget that SF made the top 20 for cities with the most rain in the US. All 7 of Uber’s biggest money making areas are among the top 20 cities for bad weather. 4% of people in SF are shown to use rideshare monthly. Who wants to run in the rain from from bus to train to bike. So before you start railing against rideshare too hard, look at yourself first then start your blog by saying you NEVER took a rideshare once. And yes, getting in an Uber with someone else who ordered it counts.
That really doesn’t follow.
Just because something is personally temporarily more convenient does not mean that one can’t point out that it is overall a Bad Thing.
I’d suggest you read the linked article which for something you describe as an ‘opinion based story’ cites a surprising number of studies and surveys.
Personally, I would like to know why people sign up for BoingBoing to shill for a ‘technology’ company that is apparently so successful and beneficial. If it’s so great why does it need you to tell us all about it?
As I read through all the comments there are many similarities across the majority of comments. And that is, public transportation has issues and short-comings in most major cities in the US. If you look at major cities like San Fran, NYC and Boston as well as others, the common issue tends to be lack of reliable public transportation when its really needed. Only now are they finally adressing it even though cities like San Fran and others have publicly admitted to knowing of the issue for far longer then ridesharing has been around. They chose not to do anything because of the cost combined with the fact the people didnt have an option. The cities can rake in the money without spending for improvements. Public transit, like cab companies, rail again the use of rideshare for the same reason. Lost revenue. They just want things to stay the same. 10 years ago poor blue collar workers with no transportation had no options to get to work. Public transportation and cab companies didnt have to do anything to fix their short-comings because they had you by the short hairs.
I would be remiss if I didnt mention that the average voting tax payer is NEVER going to vote YES for major tax increases to fund anything that costs 3 billion dollars for one tunnel that runs for a mile and a half.
So you cant have your cake and eat it too.
I live in a mid-sized Midwestern city. There is a grocery store a 4 minute drive from my house. It would be a very long walk to the bus stop and then three busses, easily an hour total to get there. (The closest bus stop was discontinued ten years ago.) I don’t dare even try when the sidewalks are icy, which is much of the winter. Even if I get there by bus I can’t get but two bags of groceries back if they’re light. Cabs were expensive and slow, usually dirty. But I’d pay more for Uber if I needed to, if the drivers aren’t making a living wage. I worry about other disabled people who can’t afford to.
Depending on where you are in Chicago, the calculus is reversed: taking the Blue Line out to O’Hare (for $2.25) right to the terminals (except for International – Terminal 5 – but that’s only for flights that don’t have a U.S. airline partner) as opposed to driving in traffic and then having to park in one of the lots, walk to either the bus shuttle pick-up or the overhead tram station (or one to the other), wait for and then take that transportation to the actual terminals…depending on the time of day, it can be literally twice as long to drive as to sit on a subway train.
ETA: And that’s the cheapest alternative to public transportation, comprising only gas & upkeep plus $10-18/day for parking if you go to a remote lot instead of the one right by the terminals, which is something like $2 for the first hour or two, but then $54/day; Uber/Lyft/taxi will cost in the neighborhood of $50-75 before tip.
The elephant in the room? Physical fitness. Among people I know, their willingness to walk somplace, take public transport, or ride a bike to get where they’re going are all 3 directly proportional to their level of physical fitness. Without fitness, people see their bodies as passive and physically vulnerable–unable to protect themselves or to flee danger. Gym memberships are great, but not required to get fit. Personal trainers are great, but not necessary. With the phethora of youtube instructional videos for equipment-free exercises people can do at home, this is potentially a golden age of fitness for rich and poor alike. How do we normalize home-based exercise as the foundational basis for daily living to the extent that smartphone use has become ubiquitous? That is how we increase non-car/truck transportation utilization.
Thank you for these thought provoking points! As a driver belonging to the low-middle class, I have at least one positive experience to add- the ability to earn AND be paid within the same day, reducing my reliance on credit, payday loans and bank/ overdraw fees during cash shortages.
If people who travel a lot were getting decent service from the existing taxi companies, Lyft and Uber would have never gotten any market share.
Suppose that L & U were to disappear tomorrow. Wonderful new transit options would not magically appear (Look at the original budget/completion date/ridership estimates for the Calif high speed rail, compared to current estimates, for an idea of what would happen) (Edit - breaking news - California governor scales back high-speed train | AP News)
What we’d get would be a return of the medallion cab owners to the (ahem) driver’s seat. Can I see a show of hands for all those who can’t wait for that to happen??
Lots of countries have owner-driven services that do just that, right now. And we used to have them in many US cities. They are called “jitneys” and they work just fine. Ask your local politician why we don’t have them where you live. Be prepared to receive a bullshit answer.
There’s your problem right there. It’s your civic duty and environmental responsibility to move to a high-rise in the center of a megalopolis. Problem solved. 
Yes. I’m just talking about non-fixed bus routes.
In a sufficiently dense urban area, it wouldn’t be that hard to find people who want to travel along fairly arbitrary routes. Knowing where people are and where they want to go could make existing public transportation infrastructure a lot more efficient.
Ideally, when self-driving cars are the norm, none of them will be empty. Because we will not own cars any more. We will subscribe to a service that provides cars on demand. As soon as a car drops someone off, it picks up someone else nearby who needs one. And fills up with passengers along the way. And if there is not an immediate need, it parks itself in the nearest open spot, which it knows about because everything is networked. There won’t be huge SUVs or pickup trucks with one person in the driver’s seat, which is what clogs up the roads around here. If we can get an elevator bank to prioritize riders in a building, we can make a network of shared vehicles that does the same.
Fuck Uber, by the way. I can’t wait for their investors to dump them, either before or after Uber’s terrible business model and practices bankrupt them all.
When we have self-driving cars, Uber and Lyft and other companies will figure out ways to send the cars off without any people in them to go to the store for the workers to place things into the car. People will order groceries, take-out food, items from Wal-Mart, etc. with their apps and it will be fetched for them by the automated vehicles. Welcome to more congestion.
Then they won’t be empty. They’ll be full of goods. And I’ll be at work, while a car does all the things I normally would have to sit in traffic for. Not seeing the downside, not that I think you’re correct at all about what roads will look like once self-driving cars are the norm. Mostly because people, who are terrible drivers on the whole, won’t be involved in routing traffic. Traffic doesn’t exist when every car is controlled by the same complex algorithm, or several coordinated ones. It just moves.
Anyone remember San Francisco’s Jitney buses? The good old days.
They do something like that where I live. The bus company has these little minibuses that you can call/book on an app.
I’ve no idea how it compares pricewise with the normal bus.
Hahahahahahah, good one.
I’m afraid that’s not how people work. Some people will use a service like that. Those will be the people who currently don’t own a car either and use taxis or rentals. Public transport is public transport and if people can afford to have their own (financially and/or ethically) they will. Most people treat their car as an extra room of their house and don’t want to share it.
Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the wishful thinking, I’d love to live in that world. I just don’t think it’s realistic.
My prediction is that the roads will be half filled with empty cars to fetch children from sports clubs and parents from work.
At least that is what will happen if the global warming/insect collapse/mass extinction apocalypse doesn’t get us first.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a star-eyed optimist. I see loud, stupid muscle cars rolling around, driven by assholes who don’t give a shit about anything but themselves. But I also know the insurance industry exists. Once the safety of self-driving cars is proven, they’ll jack up the rates for anyone selfish enough to still want to drive themselves around on public roads, making it a rare hobby for people with more money than sense.
The vast majority of people only drive because they have to. Tell them they can step into a rolling room anywhere they like and magically get where they’re going safely, cheaply, and quickly, and they don’t have to buy, clean and maintain a vehicle that sits in a driveway for most of its usable life, and they’ll sign on. The only reason they treat cars as an extra room on their house is because it costs them like one.
