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The Town of Innisfil partners with Uber for transit instead of buses
- sid-kap 10y agoThis is probably the best thing you can do in a town that is not even close to dense enough to support public transit (population density 361/sq. mi., 20 times less than a Silicon Valley suburb). Better than nothing because it uses tax revenues to subsidize rides for people with low incomes.
- mikepurvis 10y agoAt least it's not a huge cost to the town for now, but overall this seems like a giant fail—instead of investing in real infrastructure, they're just pouring money into an unsustainable SV company that's on point of imploding. I wonder if the town has fully considered what this partnership means as far as liability... who will be responsible if an Uber rider in Innisfil gets assaulted? In any case, Innisfil is a rural suburb of Barrie, ON, an hour north of Toronto. It's not exactly an urban metropolis: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Innisfil,+ON/ https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Innisfil,+ON/
- stale2002 10y agoMany small towns do not have anywhere near the population to make large scale public transport feesable. Sometimes a decentralized approach really does make sense.
- mikepurvis 10y agoYeah, and it's clear that Uber does bring some value to the table with the app polished, payment sorted out, etc. That said, I still wish this service could be supplied by a local outfit with its own vehicles, actual employees, etc.
- petecox 10y agoIn Chile they have a shared-ride system called a 'colectivo', where a taxi will pick up passengers along a route and passengers will share a fare. In Pichilemu, this supplemented the bus routes which only ran at most at hourly intervals. It's a coastal town with less than 15,000 residents that swells over summer to meet tourist needs. Outside those months, a bus service would certainly not be economical.
- douche 10y agoI hear tell that once upon a time, you could just be walking down the highway, stick your thumb out, and hitch a fide almost anywhere.
- megablast 10y ago> make large scale public transport feesable. Oh come on. Then don't go large scale. Go small scale. Have 2 mini-buses.
- tempestn 10y agoThe post compared the cost of a 1-2 bus system with the Uber arrangement they went with. It was several times more expensive, and far less flexible.
- markhenderson 10y agoIf you think Uber is anywhere near anything even slightly resembling imploding, you-sa crazy
- mikepurvis 10y agoWell, I guess we'll see. There's certainly been no shortage of lively discussion here and elsewhere on the subject.
- flukus 10y agoImploding is the wrong word, they'll pop like a bubble once they've burned through all the investors cash.
- wenc 10y agoCompanies like Uber (or Lyft for that matter) may go up in smoke but the idea of mobile ride-hailing and having an elastic fleet is so compelling that someone else will fill the void. The convenience factor is so astounding that the problem of economic sustainability will get solved one way or another. I was recently in several Asian cities where the public transit was excellent and taxis were plentiful, but I still found it really useful having an app for those point-to-point transportation needs. Even though the rides sometimes cost the same or more than taxi rides, apps reduce friction and variability in terms of payment methods, language, route accountability, etc. and that is worth something. Ride-hailing apps don't just sell low-priced rides, they sell a lower variability experience. There are players other than Uber in Asian markets (I used Grab) which have even better value propositions, so Uber is kept in check in those places. It is true however that the economics does not work out at the moment (it's all investor subsidized, so there is a huge distortion in the market), but if we are able to avoid a monopoly situation, I suspect the market will right itself.
- jfoster 10y agoI think of infrastructure as things that need to be specially built rather than simply purchased. If they decide that this isn't working, they can always buy some buses and hire some drivers. They will be maintaining the same road infrastructure regardless of whether it's Ubers or buses driving on it. For the "what if" cases related to assaults, shouldn't there be fewer with Uber? With both buses and Ubers, the humans involved are the source of risk, but with Uber there are fewer humans involved; no "other passengers" unless they roll out UberPool. The huge advantage of doing this is that their upfront costs are minimised to just planning & a bunch of iPads.
- glitch003 10y agoIn the article they mention they are indeed rolling out UberPool.
- dingo_bat 10y ago> who will be responsible if an Uber rider in Innisfil gets assaulted? Simple, the assaulter.
- jstanley 10y ago> who will be responsible if an Uber rider in Innisfil gets assaulted? Are you kidding? Who do you think would be responsible if a passenger on a public bus got assaulted?
- mikepurvis 10y agoThe transit authority, since they would be the one screening and training the driver and other staff. However, if the transit authority failed to respond in an adequate manner, then it would fall back on the local government overseeing the transit authority. Perhaps you would disagree, but it seems clear to me that a) Uber's driver screening process is inadequate, and b) the risk is magnified by it being a 1:1 ratio of passengers to drivers (vs a mass transit vehicle where bystanders can intervene), and c) Uber is massive compared to Innisfil, so there will be very little "overseeing" going on there. All in all, this adds up to a situation where the town and its elected representatives will end up with very little control or accountability about how the service is being run.
- JamilD 10y agoRegardless of what you think of Uber, it seems like a no-brainer for small towns to subsidize distributed, on-demand shuttles rather than run a public transit system. We need to see more suburbs do things like this for last-mile transit too.
- 013a 10y agoA better complaint is that a company like Uber can profit from it. The service they provide is so banally simple that it could be replicated by a government office or nonprofit, and has been in several markets (RideAustin as an example). This is how communities should move forward; not through Uber.
- echelon 10y agoImagine if cities open sourced their ride hailing backend and app code and made it available for other cities to use... That would be incredible!
- michaelmior 10y agoThere is LibreTaxi[0] although not quite the same experience. [0] https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi
- icpmacdo 10y agoIf anyone wants to try and start this, an open source ride sharing app that cities could set up, hit me up on Twitter (@icpmacdo). I have been thinking about this for a while. I would use a node and react native stack. Please post any suggested name's!!
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoIt's not ride hailing, but... https://github.com/onebusaway https://github.com/onebusaway
- jimmywanger 10y agoI don't understand your comment. What's wrong with private companies profiting from providing public services? For instance, if you outsource mechanical maintenance for your firetrucks, is that wrong also since a company can profit from it?
- tptacek 10y agoThis is a very old idea; it's in Christopher Alexander's _A Pattern Language_ as "Mini-buses".
- baursak 10y agoYeah, in places like Russia, this "new idea" has been implemented since the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka
- untog 10y agoI think an online version of this has the potential to be sufficiently different that we can call it "new". Dynamic routing based on real time customer location is pretty fascinating.
- crzwdjk 10y agoDynamic routing is fascinating, but also potentially frustrating for the rider. Your trip to work could take 10 minutes, or it could take 30 minutes, depending on who else wants to ride at the same time and how "dynamic" your bus routing gets. With a scheduled service, at least you know when the bus will show up. Of course, if it only runs once an hour and not at the time you want, you may still opt for the "flexible" option, but it's not guaranteed to be a win in all cases.
- patrick_haply 10y agoThat looks similar to the Kenyan Matatu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matatu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matatu
- Grue3 10y agoMarshrutkas are just privately operated buses with fixed routes ("marshrut" = "route" in Russian, marshrutka is short for "marshrutnoe taxi" = "fixed route taxi"). They used to be loosely regulated, which resulted in various safety concerns, as the vehicles they drove were barely street legal. They're pretty much phased out right now, and replaced with regular buses.
- xrd 10y agoI dislike Uber but I'm rooting for them on this one.
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- montycantsin 10y agoI'm just cherishing this moment where my hometown is on the front page of HN.
- scottfr 10y agoQuick back of the envelope calculations. For AC Transit (the primary Bay Area bus system): The Annual number of riders is: 54,987,132 [0] The average trip is: 3.1 miles [1] The budget is: $398.4 Million [2] This means the cost per passenger mile on AC Transit is: $2.33 (398,400,000/(54,987,132*3.1)) According to [3] the cost of an Uber trip in San Francisco approximately: "$2.20 plus $0.26 per minute plus $1.30 per mile" (I don't use Uber so don't know how accurate this is. If these numbers are accurate and generalize to other US transportation networks, public bus systems in the US are massively inefficient and are ripe for disruption/better solutions (note that Taxi's which aren't massively VC subsidized, are also ball-park cost competitive with the price of AC Transit on a per mile basis); (Of course an Uber/Taxi has huge advantages for the user over buses in general, not the least of which include for most points of origin/destination pairs the large time savings compared to a bus.) [0] http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and-figures/ridership/ http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and-figures/ridershi... [1] http://www.actransit.org/wp-content/uploads/designing_with_transit2.pdf http://www.actransit.org/wp-content/uploads/designing_with_t... [2] http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and-figures/budget/ http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and-figures/budget/ [3] https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-Uber-charge-passengers-for-a-ride https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-Uber-charge-passengers-f... (sorry that these numbers may come from different years, don't have a unified source) Edit: Also when calculating the cost effectiveness of the Uber/Taxi you should divide by the average number of riders. It's probably close to 1, but even something like 1.1 on average would result in a 9% savings on a per passenger mile.
- douche 10y agoUber is without a doubt the single greatest thing that has ever happened for people who don't have a driving license.
- kennywinker 10y agoNope, that's still going to be the bicycle... but check back in again in 200 years and see if uber has caught up.
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- fergie 10y agoIt will be genuinely interesting to see what happens with traffic levels.
- pacificleo11 10y agoNot a day goes by when i don't see a uber story on HN .
- kennywinker 10y agoI've never used uber, but doesn't it have a thing where drivers rate passengers? and with ratings comes blacklisting, does it not? so what happens when people start getting banned from this "public transit" system?
- thewhitetulip 10y agoNot to mention, uber is far from an (unbiased) public service, who'll ensure the bias? Also public transport should be definition be cheap and not costly, there should be no such thing as surge pricing. Strange that a city is destroying public transport and paving way for exploitation of their citizens
- joshaidan 10y agoSince the city is subsidizing fares, I imagine they would have some influence into the service being delivered. (You can voice your complaints to city hall)
- thewhitetulip 10y agoI am curious, if the fares are subsidized, then how much Uber will earn? I can imagine that surge pricing makes them a lot of money, are they going to drive away surge pricing? What if it is 2am and uber asks for 400$ ( I am not American, so pardon my analogy) to go for a small distance? Considering the rebellious attitude Uber has, I can imagine their city hall complaint as "this is how we will behave, else we will go out of your city like we did in Austin"
- joshaidan 10y agoThe Innisfil city website mentioned that there will be flat rate pricing to certain major destinations in town.
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
- jtchang 10y agoUber is providing infrastructure as a service and it is great. Maybe they can turn into a modern day real world AWS.
- mankash666 10y agoNo mention of surge pricing! Public transit doesn't surge price
- astrange 10y agoShould think no mention of surge pricing means there isn't surge pricing.
- mankash666 10y agoWhy?
- astrange 10y agoWell, it says: > When residents book a trip to one of the following destinations, they will pay $3 to $5. If there was surge pricing, they'd be paying a lot more than $5, therefore the answer to the first question would be a lie. Seems unlikely.
- mankash666 10y agoThere's no mention of surge pricing. Any "conclusion" you're drawing is an opinion, not a fact. We don't know if surge pricing applies here since there is zero mention of it. However, it is likely not being applied, given that a government is subsiding fares.
- soufron 10y agoThis is the logical development of what Douglas Rushkoff explained in his last book “Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus”. First, they protest as private companies begin to use public infrastructure. Then, they get rid of the public infrastructure. Emails replaced letters, Messenging apps replaced phones, Uber is replacing buses, etc. But the question is different from the situation where old companies are getting disrupted by new ones such , Airbnb replacing Hotels. Public Services are associated with a social consensus that is usually expressed through democratic elections. If they are public it’s because we consider that they should be available to all, regardless of income, physical ability and/or mental acuity. Of course, there is nothing new with Public Services being provided by private companies. But then, they are usually subject to some regulation. This leads to think that the replacement of Public Services with new Digital Services is a pretext for deregulation. Code is not always Law. IMAP or POP protocols are no replacement for 200 years of Communications regulations. And Uber Terms of Use are no replacement for Public Transportation regulations. What will happen then? What if we begin to rate citizens as Apps rate users: will someone get blacklisted because he got a bad rating? What about surge pricing: will citizens experience a higher price when demand is increasing? The City subsidizing the fares will use that leverage to make sure the rules are fair, but will it be enough? Digital Services can provide the same function as Public Services but they are not necessarily equivalent. And we should take in to account both the advantages and the problems of deregulation when making the switch.
- snarf21 10y agoVery well written. The thing that scares me about this thing in particular is what happens if Uber stops subsidizing the drivers after one year and says they need to increase prices by 75% moving forward. In all of these things there is a switching cost. Would the city be able to switch back? What if Uber drivers unionize or stop driving if their wages drop too low? Uber has to hope new drivers sign up and the city can do nothing about this. I think the big thing the the city is losing is control and that may easily be worth the money. It is also quite possible that some efficiencies in the busing program could pay higher dividends. I also fear that decisions like this are being done to be cool not because they are best for the community.
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- openfuture 10y agoIt's becoming more and more obvious how little power is left in "the democratic process". We're slowly moving all actual decision making to authoritarian structures while the responsibility is still supposed to reside with the government, it's not a sustainable situation and the solution is fairly simple imo. Just declare free software to be infrastructure. It is something everyone needs but no one wants to pay for so we just make everyone pay some amount of their income towards maintaining it (as well as other infrastructure) oh wait I just invented taxes - yes I'm from Europe btw. When a company owns a platform (like an operating system) it becomes the government of that space, a position that should not be held by a for-profit entity. I know people in the US aren't so fond of taxes and tbh who can blame them when all the money goes to three letter agencies, war mongering and violence. The infrastructure (health care system, electric grid, education...) is in dire need of a reboot meanwhile the mega-corporations just build their own (competitive advantage). The fact is that the classic solution to the tragedy of the commons is to make a "democratic government" (hopefully this class of institution can be redefined in a positive way with computing) which will then regulate exploits and collect taxes for maintenance of infrastructure, all in order to keep society in equilibrium so that we may live. I don't see how these behemoth creatures we deem too big to fail due to the short term implications of such an event can reasonably justify their existence when they are causing such long term harm to our environment (both metaphorical and physical). They are nothing but fiction and the authors are running out of material, I think it is time to face facts. Sorry for the rant, it got off topic but I felt a need to put this into writing.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago> I know people in the US aren't so fond of taxes... > all the money goes to three letter agencies, war mongering and violence... > The infrastructure (health care system, electric grid, education...) is in dire need of a reboot... So you are advocating to add: billions of tax dollars wasted on terrible software projects with incompetent management to the above list?
- Avshalom 10y agoWell we are already having billions of our dollars wasted on terrible software projects with incompetent management, it's just that it's baked into the price of goods instead of taxes.
- someonenice 10y agoQuestion is - How will Children be able to get a ride ? Can they create account in Uber App (minimum age requirement for Uber ?) And what about their safety ? Normally Public transport drivers are selected carefully while Uber dont seem to have such criteria.
- lhorie 10y agoThey can bike, carpool with a friend, take a cab, school bus, wait for their parents for a ride home (most households there have cars) etc.
- rubidium 10y agoMay be fine for the rich and middle class, and so this town in CA may be ok. But public transit is a survival mechanism for many poor youth.
- posguy 10y agoExactly, what will the kid with no phone do to get around suburbia when there is no basic bus service? What about the senior population? Essentially, what the city has chosen is a solution for middle to upper class people, while ignoring those less fortunate. Essentially, your going to be paying $10 round trip minimum, whereas a bus would have ran anywhere from $5 to $6 at point of use, and it is not accessible to the poor/lower middle class. Programs like Safe Place also are hosed with these Uber based solutions. What is the kid who just got beat up by <insert attacker> supposed to do? Their phone (if they had one) is probably busted, and its a couple mile walk to anywhere safe. The city didn't bother to put any call buttons out to hail a ride in these areas either... These aren't rare scenarios, and it is totally possible to do something besides busses and still serve the poor & disenfranchised well.
- greenshackle2 10y agoDid you even read the link? "What if I don't have a smart phone? To accommodate residents who want to utilize the service without a smartphone, Uber will provide the Town with a number of iPads that will be available in community hubs. Using the uberCENTRAL platform, riders will be able to request a ride via the iPad. iPads will be available at: o Town Hall o Nantyr Shores Secondary School o Sandy Cove Acres o Innisfil Recreational Complex o Lakeshore Library (Alcona) Depending on where there is demand, we will examine adding or moving the locations of these iPads." The alternative was having TWO BUSES. How likely is it that one of these TWO BUSES will be running late at night in this town with 30,000 residents when kids are likely to get beat up? Unless you get (rather conveniently) beat up near one of the handful of stops served by one of these TWO BUSES, during operating hours - probably 6am to 10pm since it's a small town - you're SOL on public transit anyway.
- lhorie 10y agoWhat's more interesting than the story (for me) is the negativity in the comments. It almost seems like people hear "Uber" and go digging for reasons to hate on the idea. But if you have been to Innisfil, it's pretty clear that this is a good attempt at tackling a transportation problem, Uber or no Uber. This is a rural town of less than 40 thousand people. There's simply no way spending close to half a million dollars per year on a single bus line makes any sense here compared to other cost/coverage models.
- huxley 10y agoInnisfil seems ideal for a small busline, if I remember it correctly the "town" is a relatively small rural grid with big lots. The density can't be great for Uber drivers.
- ungzd 10y agoIn many cities of Russia buses long ago had been replaced with "shared taxi" — commercial analog of buses, usually with micro buses. You have to shout before arriving at bus stop otherwise driver may pass it. Driver usually smokes while driving and listens loudly to songs about criminal life ("Russian chanson"). And all this taxi luxury without burden of installing privacy-invasive apps — just pass cash to driver while he drives at 80 km/h.
- dagenleg 10y agoClear example of free market fixing things.
- DeBraid 10y agoOr, Russia is not a model for capitalism.
- dagenleg 10y agoNot a model for socialism or communism either. Poor Russia.
- ungzd 10y agoIt's mostly controlled by criminal gangs, I think each city has single company (or shadow organisation with multiple formal companies) controlling all shared taxi transport in that city.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jbob2000 10y agoFor some local context, the Mayor of Innisfil is really trying to turn it into a tech hub. He is present at a lot of Canadian tech summits and really wants to make Innisfil attractive to tech. The best thing about Innisfil, in my mind, is the cheap real estate. Big homes and big offices for all!
- wenc 10y agoI think it could work for remote work, especially for folks with families, but I don't see millennials moving there. It's about an hour from downtown Toronto on a good day. On the other hand, it's close to Barrie.
- magoon 10y agoUber is a broker. Uber can't guarantee service.
- deusofnull 10y agoAre these Innisfil Uber drivers going to get anywhere near the benefits that old-school bus drivers get? Such as healthcare, vacation time, pension plans... No, they probably won't. The convenience of Uber makes it easier to miss all the things it "disrupted". Sure, growing up, cabs were not the BEST experience. But now I realize that they provided a living wage to a human being and provided them with dignity. Uber can be 2-5 dollars cheaper and 5-20 minutes faster, but I don't see how it can provide that.