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Its pretty disappointing that transit advocacy groups spend more time fighting ride-share and jitney transit services than actually working to improve transit i

Its pretty disappointing that transit advocacy groups spend more time fighting ride-share and jitney transit services than actually working to improve transit in their cities. Instead of looking for solutions to making faster, cleaner, more reliable transit more feasible, they're blaming riders and ride-share companies for a 5% reduction in ridership.

zten 9y ago
If you're in a city that mostly moves people by bus, and has incredibly high construction costs, of course this is the solution they're going to chase. The bus service suffers with more competing vehicles on the road. People prefer rail and dedicated right-of-ways, but they also don't want their neighborhood destroyed while it's built. The transit advocacy groups end up hamstrung by these competing desires. Uber and Lyft have given everyone a taste of the self-driving car dream (on-demand comfortable private transit) -- they just need to figure out how to get rid of the drivers. It's already producing political pressure to stall or end hugely expensive transit projects because of uncertainty about what a city might really need in 20-30 years. Hopefully someone's smart enough to show that we'll all still be stuck in the same dumb traffic of our own making, regardless of a human or computer driver, because we really need to be solving for space and land use by minimizing the distance and frequency of vehicle trips instead, public transit included.
- aninhumer 9y ago
  I think once people are used to getting around by opening a smartphone and putting in a destination, there's a lot of potential for offering transport-as-a-service more efficiently than a private car the whole way. I've already seen Uber appearing in Google Maps directions, and with a bit more work you could combine that to offer Taxi -> Train -> Taxi for the full journey. Indeed, I think there are a lot of benefits once these systems start being integrated. It would likely facilitate ride grouping, since you'll have a lot of people arriving or departing from the same place at the same time. Combined ticketing could also allow stations to have special entrances for taxis that bypass ticket barriers, since they know everyone inside has already paid.
matt4077 9y ago
The statement " Uber and Lyft have reduced mass transit use" doesn't contain a value judgement. It's simply stating the most likely explanation for the observed data. But advocacy against ride-sharing is probably a good use for mass transit advocates' time: this trend drains the financial resources from mass transit, it further reduces the group of people interested in public transit to the poor, who have less political influence. And it creates more traffic, where now even more often a bus with 60 passengers is held up by three cars with one passenger each, preferably blocking traffic while unloading.

zten 9y ago

If you're in a city that mostly moves people by bus, and has incredibly high construction costs, of course this is the solution they're going to chase. The bus service suffers with more competing vehicles on the road. People prefer rail and dedicated right-of-ways, but they also don't want their neighborhood destroyed while it's built. The transit advocacy groups end up hamstrung by these competing desires. Uber and Lyft have given everyone a taste of the self-driving car dream (on-demand comfortable private transit) -- they just need to figure out how to get rid of the drivers. It's already producing political pressure to stall or end hugely expensive transit projects because of uncertainty about what a city might really need in 20-30 years. Hopefully someone's smart enough to show that we'll all still be stuck in the same dumb traffic of our own making, regardless of a human or computer driver, because we really need to be solving for space and land use by minimizing the distance and frequency of vehicle trips instead, public transit included.

aninhumer 9y ago
I think once people are used to getting around by opening a smartphone and putting in a destination, there's a lot of potential for offering transport-as-a-service more efficiently than a private car the whole way. I've already seen Uber appearing in Google Maps directions, and with a bit more work you could combine that to offer Taxi -> Train -> Taxi for the full journey. Indeed, I think there are a lot of benefits once these systems start being integrated. It would likely facilitate ride grouping, since you'll have a lot of people arriving or departing from the same place at the same time. Combined ticketing could also allow stations to have special entrances for taxis that bypass ticket barriers, since they know everyone inside has already paid.

matt4077 9y ago

The statement " Uber and Lyft have reduced mass transit use" doesn't contain a value judgement. It's simply stating the most likely explanation for the observed data. But advocacy against ride-sharing is probably a good use for mass transit advocates' time: this trend drains the financial resources from mass transit, it further reduces the group of people interested in public transit to the poor, who have less political influence. And it creates more traffic, where now even more often a bus with 60 passengers is held up by three cars with one passenger each, preferably blocking traffic while unloading.