So I live in a remote community that has one main train route out of the mountains. Everyone goes to/from the train station to commute to the local metro for work. We have fixed bus routes during the major commute hours in the morning and evening, but during the day we have three small buses that act like an Uber. You call them, they pick you up and drop you off anywhere in the community for $2.
It works great! Less cars on the road and flexibility you just won’t get without a lot more empty buses driving around all the time.
And it makes money cause there’s enough popular destinations that the buses often have 3-5 riders sharing rides.
Do people really dislike ride sharing more than public transport? Why? I dislike public transport when it's ineffective.
It takes me about 45 minutes to get to work by walking + train, and there's about one train every hour (less often in the morning), so it's inflexible.
If I go by bike, it's about 55 minutes (but then I need a shower, which can take a bit more if your company doesn't provide the right facilities). I'd say that the time saving for a train is ridiculous if we factor in the price for the railway system.
If I go by car it's 25 minutes, but then I need to find a parking spot, and usually pay for it.
If I could rideshare to work and just be dropped in front of my office, and forget about it, with a price on par (even slightly higher) than my car ride, I'd pick that solution most of the times (I'd still ride my bike for training that's it).
I'm an American but I lived in Europe for a while, and it hurts me every day that we don't have public transit.
When I was in Europe, my daily routine was get up, grab a donut from the corner shop connected to my flat, walk one block to the subway. If I was lucky, there would be a tram waiting at the other subway station and I could just jump on, or walk the 8 blocks to the office. When I stayed at the office late, the subway was closed but I could always take the night tram the long, long way around.
It sounds complicated, but it really isn't. You buy a ticket, then you can simply walk onto any form of public transit. Subway, tram, busses, even a ferry over the river. And it cost the equivalent of $1.50 to go all the way across one of the largest cities in Europe. It's easy and pleasant, and leaves you free to read a book or work on your laptop if you really want.
Meanwhile in the US, I have to maintain this car, I have to pay something like $30/week in gas and parking. I have to deal with our inadequately maintained roads that damage my car. I also have to deal daily with the incredibly high-stress situation of not letting other drivers fucking kill me. I have at minimum two close calls a week.
I could take the bus here, but it turns a 20 minute commute into 2 hours.
I'd take a subway and a sidewalk 100% of the time. Zero question, no hesitation. It's simply superior in all ways.
I used to love taking the bus when I lived a block away from a major bus line. It took maybe 25-50% longer overall but I could actually use that time rather than driving and sitting in rush hour traffic.
Honestly I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that public transit takes around twice as long. It’s self selected. The people who are going to use it live close and us it because that worthwhile. So on average it makes sense that it would be some multiple of the time it takes to drive.
What’s so great about transit besides the environmental savings. Having to share space with other people, walk to the train station, put up with a train schedule, have no way to travel past some arbitrary time (midnight to 2am in most places), no way to transport large items or groceries, no way to go off the beaten path, having to live in densely populated cities with no room for any activities. I like the idea of having public transport but not at the expense of the incredible roadways we have.
Something that is needed here and probably many places is competition in Public Transport. I imagine a time where it will be cheaper to have your electric car drive you into work than to catch a train, then drives itself home and charges until you're ready to be picked up again. Or just driverless taxis on the cheap.
Public transport here costs at least $20 a week just for students relatively close to the city. You can expect $50+ for adults, it's not uncommon for people here to live 1+ hours away and commute from the coast, costing $15+ per trip.
It seems to be fashionable to rag on Muni these days, but after living in two other urban cities, Muni is the best public transportation I've seen. It runs practically everywhere and is quite affordable and prompt.
Muni cars run on clean electric lines, and their busses are now electric hybrids. Each is outfitted with a GPS that updates boards at each stop to let you know in real-time how long before the next bus arrives. They have a phone number and a website that has this real-time info too. Hell, that website even has an iPhone version!
It costs 45 bucks a month to go anywhere you want. It runs 24 hours a day with plenty of frequency and services pretty much every inch of the city. What more can you ask for?
Ever checked out Atlanta's MARTA system? The bus service is random and wait times are often 30 minutes to 2 hours. Without a car, you're basically screwed.
This is amazing. Of course a full train or bus can be an order of magnitude more efficient, and so should be installed and run where there’s demand, but replacing the prohibitively-expensive private option of Uber with an affordable, if slower, city option is just… lovely!
I wonder how good “public transport” could be if it matched the money inflows of private cars. Possibly amazing.
Think customisable bus routes, cheap subsidised taxis, a fast bus every small-n minutes and so on.
Clearly we won’t find out as it’s a massive sunk cost, but I think this alternative reality could be great.
Having lived in places with both amazing and terrible public transport, I understand the skeptics, but also know just how amazing public transport can be.
Honest question. How are street cars better than busses?
They put one in near me recently, and all I could think is that compared to a bus it cost a ton more money, took forever to build, and can't be rerouted in case of an issue. Additionally, it doesn't even bypass traffic so it's not any faster.
Why not just buy a few busses to run the exact route they built the street car on instead ?
Living in a small northern Ontario town, I wish we had Lyft or Uber here. Instead, just taxi's (or family) and public transport.
Our public transport is based on a center hub topology with the hub being downtown. So if my kid wants to take the bus to work, about kilometer away, it takes 45 minutes half of which is in the wrong direction and involves at least one transfer. Oddly, it takes even longer to get home.
I don't really get why trams are better than buses. Do they really carry a ton more people than buses? Why are people more likely to ride them?
Buses come in short/long/articulated/double-decker sizes and don't need to be on rails or require overhead electrical lines. The only argument I can think of is that you get a smoother ride and no need to burn fuel with a tram.
(I've only ridden the trams in one city, and they were pretty much slower buses on rails that happened to make a lot of dinging noises. Worked fine in the central district, I guess.)
No one likes buses, because buses are slow. They're slow because they make lots of stops that are irrelevant to your trip. As someone that regularly rode the school bus on a route that took an hour, compared to a 10 minute direct route. Fuck buses.
Yes taxis, exist, but not many. The only people I knew that ever took them were people that lost their licenses.
What you've actually described is a shuttle service. They exist everywhere. They're not popular because they're slow. Last time I took a shared shuttle from the airport it took an additional 45 minutes to get home than driving direct. They have more convenient pick up schedules and locations, but the transit times are almost as bad.
What cities do you regularly ride public transportation in? I've used public transportation in several major North American cities and disagree that public transportation is good enough. Most cities can do a lot to improve their public transit infrastructure.
For better or worse, trains have fixed routes and aren't very dynamic. I actually find it a bit surprising we don't see more of a formalized mini-bus system in the US given that it was pretty popular in some other countries even before GPS and apps. I guess UberPool serves a somewhat similar purpose.
Perhaps there's not a lot of overlap between people who take Uber a lot and people who willingly step into a bus of any kind.
I actually want to take a bus, or walk. Taking the bus for groceries is insane, only someone living in suburbs could come up with that ;) You should be walking for groceries. Buses save a lot of time since you don't have to drive so you can read or even work; even in my location where buses are far away and there's no express bus nearby (so I make a transfer), for my commute in realistic, not over-the-top traffic the bus is only about 1.5-2.25x slower counting parking time in the free garage, so the net wasted time is actually higher by car; buses are way cheaper (same commute, $2.75 by bus, $5-6 by car before even counting tolls and with free parking); less bad for your health, esp combined with walking; much less stressful; you don't have to bother with parking that is often scarce in the areas you'd actually want to go; you can drink 3 beers and not worry about who will drive; if the weather is terrible like now in Seattle, buses mostly keep running even though most people cannot drive and Ubers are non-existent.
Mind you, that's all in the city where buses actually kinda suck. Where I'm from, subway runs 19 hours a day, and peak hour train interval are 50 seconds, up to 7 minutes at night. Many people still drive (it actually takes much longer at rush hour), well as I say, why stop the self-inflicted suffering, there are all kinds of kinky people :)
The way I see it, driving yourself is a menial job that makes about as much sense to do as pumping your own overflowed sewer with your own advanced plumbing gear. If you cannot pay someone else to do it (no plumbers or buses/ubers accessible), either you live really far in the mountains, or the place you live in is run by idiots.
Crime rates, except for the most benign property crime like car prowls and package theft, seem to be way higher in the LCOLs I looked at, ~4 years ago when we were deciding where to move to. I was actually surprised how much higher, although I don't remember the details. Anecdotally, someone I know lives in a LCOL in Texas and they got burglarized no problem in a gated burb that is way far out, you cannot get there in any way other than by car.
It works great! Less cars on the road and flexibility you just won’t get without a lot more empty buses driving around all the time.
And it makes money cause there’s enough popular destinations that the buses often have 3-5 riders sharing rides.
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