3 ms·

Like sharoots in Israel

by redwood 11y ago

ebiester 11y ago
Or the dolmus in Turkey. Or the equivalent service in many countries. It always irritated me that American countries don't use the more practical neighborhood-to-neighborhood model to provide more convenient service outside the main lines. This could also be used to transport people in a hub-and-spoke model throughout the valley, like they do in Istanbul. A combination of Caltrain, BART, and quick-moving busses and vans could more efficiently move people. The van drivers just couldn't make as much as a bus driver, or the subsidy would have to be bigger. (12 people * 2 dollars = 24 dollars for an hour one-way in rush hour, which is hard to make profitable.)
andronebula 11y ago
I can not agree more. The whole concept of services like these revolves around "private vans ride along the most dense and profitable streets to achieve 100% utilization of the vehicle". Share taxis (jitneys, dollar vans, etc) is a world-wide phenomenon which is very common in the developing world, because the municipalities there can not afford to subsidize public transit which is rarely profitable[1]. The only thing that share taxis can do efficiently is to generate profits for the owners, while they are dramatically inefficient at: - providing guaranteed time frame for the services which is convenient to many categories of passengers (e.g. from 07:00 to 23:30) - providing coverage of all neighbourhoods of a city - providing integrated payments (you can not transfer from one van to another for free when changing routes) - synchronizing timetables between 2 different services, which is crucial to connections [2] Essentially, those private transit services are the same old jitneys, but running only for commuters and having efficient ordering systems (smartphones). And private transit systems never evolve into efficient passenger transportation networks [3] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#Farebox_ratios_around_the_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#Farebox... [2]: http://www.humantransit.org/2013/08/guest-post-on-lusaka-transportation-for-human-transit.html http://www.humantransit.org/2013/08/guest-post-on-lusaka-tra... [3]: http://www.humantransit.org/2014/02/the-evolution-of-logic-in-developing-world-transit.html http://www.humantransit.org/2014/02/the-evolution-of-logic-i...

Like sharoots in Israel

by redwood 11y ago

Like sharoots in Israel

Or the dolmus in Turkey. Or the equivalent service in many countries. It always irritated me that American countries don't use the more practical neighborhood-to-neighborhood model to provide more convenient service outside the main lines. This could also be used to transport people in a hub-and-spoke model throughout the valley, like they do in Istanbul. A combination of Caltrain, BART, and quick-moving busses and vans could more efficiently move people. The van drivers just couldn't make as much as a bus driver, or the subsidy would have to be bigger. (12 people * 2 dollars = 24 dollars for an hour one-way in rush hour, which is hard to make profitable.)

andronebula 11y ago

I can not agree more. The whole concept of services like these revolves around "private vans ride along the most dense and profitable streets to achieve 100% utilization of the vehicle". Share taxis (jitneys, dollar vans, etc) is a world-wide phenomenon which is very common in the developing world, because the municipalities there can not afford to subsidize public transit which is rarely profitable[1]. The only thing that share taxis can do efficiently is to generate profits for the owners, while they are dramatically inefficient at: - providing guaranteed time frame for the services which is convenient to many categories of passengers (e.g. from 07:00 to 23:30) - providing coverage of all neighbourhoods of a city - providing integrated payments (you can not transfer from one van to another for free when changing routes) - synchronizing timetables between 2 different services, which is crucial to connections [2] Essentially, those private transit services are the same old jitneys, but running only for commuters and having efficient ordering systems (smartphones). And private transit systems never evolve into efficient passenger transportation networks [3] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#Farebox_ratios_around_the_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#Farebox... [2]: http://www.humantransit.org/2013/08/guest-post-on-lusaka-transportation-for-human-transit.html http://www.humantransit.org/2013/08/guest-post-on-lusaka-tra... [3]: http://www.humantransit.org/2014/02/the-evolution-of-logic-in-developing-world-transit.html http://www.humantransit.org/2014/02/the-evolution-of-logic-i...