They already have a bus system built from scratch (as well as some metal parts, I assume). It's too costly: "Council considered the options for fixed-route bus service during the 2016 Budget deliberations ($270,000 annually for one bus and $610,000 for two buses), but it was determined that they would be too costly for the limited level of service that they would provide"
But now you're saying they should buy vehicles, hire drivers, hire an iOS dev, an Android dev, a back-end coder, an ops team to watch the servers 24/7, a coder to handle payment back-end, a general manager to run the whole thing, pay AWS or GCP or a bare metal hoster for the servers, hire customer support to handle issues, pay Google (or Bing) maps commercial license fee, cover gas, maintenance, tires for all of the aforementioned vehicles and still have a lot of money left over from that fat $610,000 check to justify this project?
"Funding" isn't the issue. You want the bus system to be good enough that people want to use it.
I'm sure there are several dozen people who live within 2 miles of where I live that work within 2 miles of where I work. Batch us into groups by pickup time, dispatch small buses to my neighborhood to pick us up, sending texts to give estimates of arrival, drive us to drop off spots. Make the bus climate controlled and with power adapters and WiFi so we can work or play or read while this is happening.
Your answer is to ignore reality and wave a magic wand to fix everything.
If they spent 100x as much public money (our bus service is hugely subsidised and still completely inadequate), a mesh network would still not be able to cover my regular travel needs. Let alone the more complex needs of others.
Possibly we can solve the problem with a shared-Uber system. But there's no way my city government could be trusted to develop that. There are systems that have been developed out there but they are not in my country yet. It's been possible for a decade, so probably another decade away.
Your answer is that I need to wait a decade at a bus stop for a new technology to be deployed in my city.
Meanwhile "Full suspension of NZ Bus services impacting bus users from 2am Friday 14 July; Auckland bus users urged to plan ahead due to driver strike from Monday; Aucklanders urged to plan ahead with train services disrupted and Harbour Bridge closures possible; Auckland's buses are back on track - Bus driver shortage has reduced by 72%"
Fuck that.
There's a reason people spend a shit-ton on cars - because cars have value (they are not just status) and public buses don't work.
Buses don't require a lot of capital, which is why there are tech company shuttle buses and not tech company train lines. It would make sense to make public buses work better (more dedicated lanes, more expresses, and so on).
Also, tech companies are already outsourcing shuttles to contractors. Those contractors could run other lines if someone were willing to pay them.
If it made sense for the tech companies to pay the city to run buses then they probably would. The question is how to provide better service while serving the general public.
I wonder if a company like Uber would eventually start running buses?
That's not a terrible idea but once again you run into the issues of reliability and budget. At the end of the day you need to convince city officials to spend what little money they have remaining in their budget on your new system because it offers a greater value than all of their other proposed upgrades to the city AND that what you have is as reliable or better than the current system they have in place. This means asking them to trust a small company they've never heard of to manage the transit systems for their city and potentially drop contracts with companies that they have been working with for a very long time (remember this is politics). Also keep in mind that software or hardware failure in these systems could result in multiple fatalities. I'm not trying to be a naysayer, it's just important to recognize that getting something like this implemented is not as easy as convincing consumers to try/buy your product.
The best bet would probably be to get a forward-thinking city to experiment with this in a small area and then go from there.
You can build a robust bus system, government run and not expected to make a profit, for example. You can have registered cabs. You can have rental bikes (bonus if they are electric assisted). If you can make sure scooters don't litter the walkways, that works as well. If you already have the infrastructure in place, perhaps trams or subways are a good thing.
We could expand busses to be able to travel from city to city. Same thing with trains: Make them run on time and expand. Busses, however, use the most extensive existing infrastructure and would likely be more cost-effective in most areas.
Not all "busses" need to be large, though. In some areas or at some times of day, a 15 passenger van might be enough. We could have bonus points if we changed school bus laws so that we don't have a duplicate bus system that leaves busses unused for much of the day.
In the US, one could take a sliver of the military budget (where there is plenty of waste) to pay for it.
I really don't see how buying more buses to service areas that are lacking is somehow harder or more expensive than a technology that hasn't matured yet to the level that will satisfy the public.
I very much hope that the tech does massively improve but my opinion of it getting there soon is much more dim (although I'd say in the above case, lots of self driving tram like buses would be still better).
This pretty much. Building public infrastructure is insanely expensive and there are capacity limits that can't easily be solved. We need to add public transport to the mix that 1) doesn't require heavy additional investment in infrastructure and 2) solves convenience concerns that make buses unappealing and 3) can reliably replace privately owned vehicles.
It would take a non-trivial increase in funding, I bet. Like maybe 5-10 times the funding we have now. Take Portland for example, which has relatively decent public transit for an American city of that size. For any meaningful trip within the city, it takes 2-3x as long on the bus compared to driving a car. They'd have to run a lot more buses to make it competitive. That's expensive.
isn't the answer obvious. Google can call a bus company and have a solution in place in a day, or contribute billions to a goverment project that will take 15 years to finish (just look at BART, SJ light rail etc etc)
I think we need something like Uber pool but run as subsidized city infrastructure. Like a fleet of small bus or maybe even a full size bus without a fixed route, picking up and dropping passengers throughout the city.
I feel like there's valuable information that could help planners plan bus routes and potentially local transit train tracks but why would someone like Uber ever voluntarily share this data with planning authority?
Why don't the tech companies just fund improvements to actual mass transit instead of the busses? It seems like in the long run, if they continue to grow, that would make far more sense.
In the extreme situation that these services somehow killed traditional public transit, we'd figure it out. This is not a hard problem to solve. Imagine an iPad inside a bus stop.
Cars have value, and for a few trips they are clearly better no matter what transit does. However for most of the trips people make every day a great transit system could exist that we be as good as - or better - than a car trip. Yes it would cost a lot more than the current transit system, and it would at best take a couple decades to build. However such a system could cover your needs.
While it looks like your bus service is hugely subsidized,it is NOT! Sure the numbers are big, but look at per person in the city and the amount is tiny. If you forcefully took the money everyone spends on cars and put it to transit that would be many orders of magnitude more money than they are getting now. What great transit needs is about what you spend on a car in a month for just insurance and fuel (meaning maintenance and the cost of the car are not included), so if you get rid of a car (not all cars, one car!) you can save a lot of money and that is something your transit system could do in your city if you would invest.
The a bus can go on strike is a problem to work on. You don't allow your electric service to turn off service because of a strike. You don't allow the hospital close because of a strike. (both of them do have unions and go on strike).
> What's stopping the city from buying and operating driverless cars?
Cost and inefficiency? The city should invest in and expand access to efficient public transit, not spend money on expensive multi-ton vehicles that can move one fare at a time. The solution to "some people live far from bus stops" should first be "local government adds more bus stops", not "local government spends billions on small cars."
How do you propose doing that, though? Mass transit almost everywhere runs at a significant loss already and if we're talking buses then there's a significant driver shortage. In the US the distances and routes required outside of dense urban centers also pretty much necessitate a huge increase in transit time compared to driving, making the whole thing a bad value for people who can afford a car.
More than infrastructure, zoning and regulations preventing transit from being effective need to be in place. Hell, in an ideal city you don't even need transit as much because you can walk and cycle everywhere. Remove the need to traverse miles and miles of asphalt by letting people live near where they work and recreate and you may find that expensive rail line isn't even necessary.
Also, if the buses are backed up they need their own lane. If they don't have one it's hardly even transit.
But now you're saying they should buy vehicles, hire drivers, hire an iOS dev, an Android dev, a back-end coder, an ops team to watch the servers 24/7, a coder to handle payment back-end, a general manager to run the whole thing, pay AWS or GCP or a bare metal hoster for the servers, hire customer support to handle issues, pay Google (or Bing) maps commercial license fee, cover gas, maintenance, tires for all of the aforementioned vehicles and still have a lot of money left over from that fat $610,000 check to justify this project?
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