12 ms·

I used Chariot a bit a couple years ago. Sad to see it go. For people who haven't heard of it, it worked like this: I live in SF, and worked in Redwood City. Ev

by idoh 8y ago

I used Chariot a bit a couple years ago. Sad to see it go. For people who haven't heard of it, it worked like this: I live in SF, and worked in Redwood City. Every day, there was some type of large van that would pick me up a couple blocks from where I lived and dropped me off a couple blocks from where I worked. So it was like a middle ground between public transportation and Uber / Lyft.

aniketpant 8y ago
Isn't what you described an example of how buses work. I know very little about the state of public transport in SF but if it was better won't it solve what Chariot tried to do?
- lykr0n 8y ago
  Chariot is a Point A to Point E services. Busesses are a Point A -> B -> C -> D -> E service. One is more efficient if you have a large number of people going to the same place at the same time, the other is more efficient if a lot of people need to go to different places.
  - seattle_spring 8y ago
    or in my case, point A...ZA in 6 miles. Literally 27 stops (and one transfer).
  - paxys 8y ago
    Not quite. Chariot routes also have a sizable number of stops between start and end points. The only difference is that rides have to be booked in advance, so the drivers know what stops they can skip.
    - lykr0n 8y ago
      Where I work, Chariot is used as a Park n Ride type solution. We have 4 routes where you can hop on and get taken to work. I'm guessing other companies can have different configurations.
- rconti 8y ago
  San Francisco and Redwood City are roughly 30 miles apart. In the Bay Area, in particular, buses tend to work on a city or county level, which would mean to make this trip, assuming buses were conveniently located, timed, and without too many stops, it would involve using several transit systems, unfortunately. San Francisco and Redwood City not only have dozens of other cities between them, but they're also in 2 different counties (San Francisco and San Mateo county, to be specific). I don't want to say we don't have cooperation between transit agencies, but they are at least distinct entities for these services. A better solution would be the train. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) serves many counties and cities, but does not go that far south. Caltrain serves both San Francisco and Redwood City quite well; however, the nearest station is miles from the Marina district, and depending on destination, would require a transfer on the other end as well. Of course, I'm sure Chariot involved multiple stops as well, but presumably most riders took it every day, so it was a route that was tailored to the riders of that van, rather than a generic public transit service that might have inconveniently timed transfers, too many stops, or other issues. EDIT: Actually, it looks like I am incorrect. SamTrans (San Mateo County) actually does go from Redwood City to San Francisco by bus, at least on the 397 and 398 routes, but only midday and it will take almost 2 hours, as it's entirely on surface streets for those ~30 miles (and the terminus on either end is not particularly more likely to be more convenient than the much faster train) http://www.samtrans.com/schedulesandmaps/maps.html http://www.samtrans.com/schedulesandmaps/maps.html
  - dabockster 8y ago
    This sounds like why Sound Transit exists in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area. It basically creates an adapter pattern-like third agency that manages the long distance routes between the major cities and counties.
    - cbhl 8y ago
      The problem is that two municipalities (one on each side of the bay) voted down the measures that would have funded the regional transit agency. Thus, the train lines stop at the borders of these two municipalities, and there are two other train systems that cover the missing area. (BART, Amtrak, and Caltrain.)
- dsl 8y ago
  SF public transit is pretty disfunctional and Chariot was trying to offer an alternative. - Timeliness - Busses and trains reliability are a joke compared to developed countries - Cleanliness - Due to an unmitigated homeless problem, the busses and trains operate as "day shelters" - Organization - There are dozens of different transit operators for what is one major metro region. Schedules are poorly synced, and even with a unified payment card you still have to buy different passes for multiple agencies - Reliability - The union bullies the city around, and there is no accountability.
  - geofft 8y ago
    A lot of the history of transit-disrupting startups in the SF Bay Area can be attributed to how truly bad public transit in the SF Bay Area is. I understood Uber a lot more after trying to hail a taxi in SF. (Same with Boring Company and LA traffic.) A real disruptive solution for humanity - but a hard one to monetize - would be to figure out why cities with good public transit / shared transit infrastructure managed to build them (off the top of my head, Tokyo, NYC-of-the-past, parts of China, Chicago, etc.) and figure out how to replicate it elsewhere.
    - chrischen 8y ago
      There are many cities that do certain things better than others, but what I don't understand is that most local politicians don't travel there and learn from how others govern their cities and don't accept their own problems have been solved elsewhere.
      - rsynnott 8y ago
        Chicken and egg problem. You can’t have a good transport system if people don’t use it (too expensive) and people won’t use it unless it’s good. Was in San Francisco recently and it really is mostly impressively bad, but one of the major sources of badness is that it’s mostly pretty infrequent. Presumably because people don’t use it. Edit: One thing they could fix, easily; unified, visitor accessible, payment system. And more realtime bus information. Those are simple things that they could borrow off any decent-sized European city. Further edit: looks like the Clipper card is easier to get than I thought. Googled before I went, but must have gotten outdated information.
- RobLach 8y ago
  Chariot was a shuttle bus service.
- muzz 8y ago
  Chariot is private so can span multiple cities, counties, etc without a problem (for example, Palo Alto is 2 counties away from San Francisco) Chariot had a lot of smaller busses, like the size of those airport parking lot shuttles. Personally, I'm really surprised at this. Chariot seemed to have a lot of corporate accounts (for things like shuttles to/from CalTrain to Company X), that I would have guessed they could charge a premium for.
- ng12 8y ago
  There is a bus that does that route. It follows El Camino (35-40mph most of the way) from San Jose to San Francisco. I used to take it as a broke college student and it was absolutely a last resort. Not only does it make dozens of stops but the bus is generally dirty and a hangout for transients. It ran 24/7 and took well over 2 hours each way, so homeless people would ride it basically all day.
  - cbhl 8y ago
    Well, a series of three buses (one by Muni, one by SamTrans, and one by VTA). But the homeless sleeping on the bus for $6/night is well documented: https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnig...
    - masonic 8y ago
      VTA allows this because it artificially inflates their dismal census.
- abalone 8y ago
  It's correct to describe Chariot as a midpoint between buses and Uber/Lyft. Buses operate on a fixed route that takes years to change. Chariot was minibuses with more dynamic, niche routes. But like any mass transit system it needs a critical mass to break even. And they faced heavily subsidized competition on both sides.[1] (Buses subsidized by taxpayers, Uber/Lyft subsidized by VC.) [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/San-Francisco-s-Chariot-shuttle-service-to-shut-13524705.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/San-Francisco-s...
- hadlock 8y ago
  In Latin/South America, routes like this are handled by private transport called Combis in similar looking vans. They supplement public transport and have been wildly successful as a public/private partnership. Also, San Francisco and Redwood city are in different counties with different politics, private enterprise is sometimes faster at filling gaps in transit than public government, especially in the short term.
- Zhenya 8y ago
  In Russia and eastern Europe this sort of transportation is called a Marshrutka: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka Works really well.
- mc32 8y ago
  My impression is it was like a super express bus, so it was local at pickup, then many miles on freeway, then a few miles on local again eith drop offs.
hashhar 8y ago
There are very similar services operating in metro cities in India which can attributed to overcrowded public transportation during peak hours. Shuttl is one which immediately comes to mind and seems to be doing good. They have a concept of you buying a fixed number of rides instead of paying per ride. The fixed package cost less and then you are locked into their service for a while / try it for a while. It has solved the first mile problem but the last mile travel still remains to be solved.
hinkley 8y ago
Seattle subsidizes a similar program, including providing the vans ('vanpool'). I know this has been going for around 10 years, and I'm somewhat sure it's much older than that. https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/travel-options/rideshare.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/travel-opt...
eCa 8y ago
It sounds a bit like marshrutka[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka
- dmazin 8y ago
  Every time I return to Russia these fascinate me. They have many routes and will stop wherever you request. The general term is Share taxi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    The Wikipedia picture is from Senegal. When I visited, these were chaotic, but by some means the passengers would get to the destination. I spent one journey with my head between my knees, since the whole floor of the bus was loaded with sacks of grain and sugar women had bought at the market. Another journey, I was wedged amongst about 20 children — there is always room for an additional child on a car rapide. The windows were kept closed (I have no idea why), it was about 40° inside. I particularly remember being asked to get off the bus, but for the first time, there was also a confused African man. He was from Guinea, and like me had no idea what was happening. I understood bits of the French explanation, he understood bits of the Mandinka, and we found the replacement bus together.
    - cdubzzz 8y ago
      Bush taxis, essentially. I spent three years using them in West Africa and that experience is why I am pretty much unfazed by any transit system here in the US. I’m surprised you were asked to get off one. Where I was pretty much everyone took it as a challenge to see just how many people they could jam in to the damn things (:
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    In Morocco they're called Grands Taxis, and they are quite useful for getting around from village to village. In the morning people come to the public square and once enough passengers who want to travel along the same route have assembled you all pack into an old diesel Mercedes sedan and split the fare. I remember the driver buying all of his passengers lunch on one of my trips!
tim-- 8y ago
I really appreciate how the NSW Australian Government is working on a solution to this. They are currently running trial on-demand services, where a mini-van will come and pick you up after a request from an app[0]. I don't understand why the US cities are so adverse to setting up similar systems. [0] https://transportnsw.info/travel-info/ways-to-get-around/on-demand-public-transport https://transportnsw.info/travel-info/ways-to-get-around/on-...
- dwd 8y ago
  Sound similar to ConXion who I've used in the past to avoid paying airport parking. For the Sunshine Coast > Brisbane Airport trip they pick you up at your door in a smaller 12 seater to meet up near the highway with the larger coach for the hour or so run in. They run hourly trips each way.
bernatfp 8y ago
FWIW Citymapper offers a similar service in London. Essentially carpooling with more seats. Admittedly though, they don't cover such long distances.
beavisthegenius 8y ago
I tried to schedule Chariot last year to Foster City from SF. They said they don't do FC. Sucks for them.

by idoh 8y ago

aniketpant 8y ago

Isn't what you described an example of how buses work. I know very little about the state of public transport in SF but if it was better won't it solve what Chariot tried to do?

lykr0n 8y ago
Chariot is a Point A to Point E services. Busesses are a Point A -> B -> C -> D -> E service. One is more efficient if you have a large number of people going to the same place at the same time, the other is more efficient if a lot of people need to go to different places.
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  or in my case, point A...ZA in 6 miles. Literally 27 stops (and one transfer).
- paxys 8y ago
  Not quite. Chariot routes also have a sizable number of stops between start and end points. The only difference is that rides have to be booked in advance, so the drivers know what stops they can skip.
  - lykr0n 8y ago
    Where I work, Chariot is used as a Park n Ride type solution. We have 4 routes where you can hop on and get taken to work. I'm guessing other companies can have different configurations.
rconti 8y ago
San Francisco and Redwood City are roughly 30 miles apart. In the Bay Area, in particular, buses tend to work on a city or county level, which would mean to make this trip, assuming buses were conveniently located, timed, and without too many stops, it would involve using several transit systems, unfortunately. San Francisco and Redwood City not only have dozens of other cities between them, but they're also in 2 different counties (San Francisco and San Mateo county, to be specific). I don't want to say we don't have cooperation between transit agencies, but they are at least distinct entities for these services. A better solution would be the train. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) serves many counties and cities, but does not go that far south. Caltrain serves both San Francisco and Redwood City quite well; however, the nearest station is miles from the Marina district, and depending on destination, would require a transfer on the other end as well. Of course, I'm sure Chariot involved multiple stops as well, but presumably most riders took it every day, so it was a route that was tailored to the riders of that van, rather than a generic public transit service that might have inconveniently timed transfers, too many stops, or other issues. EDIT: Actually, it looks like I am incorrect. SamTrans (San Mateo County) actually does go from Redwood City to San Francisco by bus, at least on the 397 and 398 routes, but only midday and it will take almost 2 hours, as it's entirely on surface streets for those ~30 miles (and the terminus on either end is not particularly more likely to be more convenient than the much faster train) http://www.samtrans.com/schedulesandmaps/maps.html http://www.samtrans.com/schedulesandmaps/maps.html
- dabockster 8y ago
  This sounds like why Sound Transit exists in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area. It basically creates an adapter pattern-like third agency that manages the long distance routes between the major cities and counties.
  - cbhl 8y ago
    The problem is that two municipalities (one on each side of the bay) voted down the measures that would have funded the regional transit agency. Thus, the train lines stop at the borders of these two municipalities, and there are two other train systems that cover the missing area. (BART, Amtrak, and Caltrain.)
dsl 8y ago
SF public transit is pretty disfunctional and Chariot was trying to offer an alternative. - Timeliness - Busses and trains reliability are a joke compared to developed countries - Cleanliness - Due to an unmitigated homeless problem, the busses and trains operate as "day shelters" - Organization - There are dozens of different transit operators for what is one major metro region. Schedules are poorly synced, and even with a unified payment card you still have to buy different passes for multiple agencies - Reliability - The union bullies the city around, and there is no accountability.
- geofft 8y ago
  A lot of the history of transit-disrupting startups in the SF Bay Area can be attributed to how truly bad public transit in the SF Bay Area is. I understood Uber a lot more after trying to hail a taxi in SF. (Same with Boring Company and LA traffic.) A real disruptive solution for humanity - but a hard one to monetize - would be to figure out why cities with good public transit / shared transit infrastructure managed to build them (off the top of my head, Tokyo, NYC-of-the-past, parts of China, Chicago, etc.) and figure out how to replicate it elsewhere.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    There are many cities that do certain things better than others, but what I don't understand is that most local politicians don't travel there and learn from how others govern their cities and don't accept their own problems have been solved elsewhere.
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      Chicken and egg problem. You can’t have a good transport system if people don’t use it (too expensive) and people won’t use it unless it’s good. Was in San Francisco recently and it really is mostly impressively bad, but one of the major sources of badness is that it’s mostly pretty infrequent. Presumably because people don’t use it. Edit: One thing they could fix, easily; unified, visitor accessible, payment system. And more realtime bus information. Those are simple things that they could borrow off any decent-sized European city. Further edit: looks like the Clipper card is easier to get than I thought. Googled before I went, but must have gotten outdated information.
RobLach 8y ago
Chariot was a shuttle bus service.
muzz 8y ago
Chariot is private so can span multiple cities, counties, etc without a problem (for example, Palo Alto is 2 counties away from San Francisco) Chariot had a lot of smaller busses, like the size of those airport parking lot shuttles. Personally, I'm really surprised at this. Chariot seemed to have a lot of corporate accounts (for things like shuttles to/from CalTrain to Company X), that I would have guessed they could charge a premium for.
ng12 8y ago
There is a bus that does that route. It follows El Camino (35-40mph most of the way) from San Jose to San Francisco. I used to take it as a broke college student and it was absolutely a last resort. Not only does it make dozens of stops but the bus is generally dirty and a hangout for transients. It ran 24/7 and took well over 2 hours each way, so homeless people would ride it basically all day.
- cbhl 8y ago
  Well, a series of three buses (one by Muni, one by SamTrans, and one by VTA). But the homeless sleeping on the bus for $6/night is well documented: https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnig...
  - masonic 8y ago
    VTA allows this because it artificially inflates their dismal census.
abalone 8y ago
It's correct to describe Chariot as a midpoint between buses and Uber/Lyft. Buses operate on a fixed route that takes years to change. Chariot was minibuses with more dynamic, niche routes. But like any mass transit system it needs a critical mass to break even. And they faced heavily subsidized competition on both sides.[1] (Buses subsidized by taxpayers, Uber/Lyft subsidized by VC.) [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/San-Francisco-s-Chariot-shuttle-service-to-shut-13524705.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/San-Francisco-s...
hadlock 8y ago
In Latin/South America, routes like this are handled by private transport called Combis in similar looking vans. They supplement public transport and have been wildly successful as a public/private partnership. Also, San Francisco and Redwood city are in different counties with different politics, private enterprise is sometimes faster at filling gaps in transit than public government, especially in the short term.
Zhenya 8y ago
In Russia and eastern Europe this sort of transportation is called a Marshrutka: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka Works really well.
mc32 8y ago
My impression is it was like a super express bus, so it was local at pickup, then many miles on freeway, then a few miles on local again eith drop offs.

hashhar 8y ago

There are very similar services operating in metro cities in India which can attributed to overcrowded public transportation during peak hours. Shuttl is one which immediately comes to mind and seems to be doing good. They have a concept of you buying a fixed number of rides instead of paying per ride. The fixed package cost less and then you are locked into their service for a while / try it for a while. It has solved the first mile problem but the last mile travel still remains to be solved.

hinkley 8y ago

Seattle subsidizes a similar program, including providing the vans ('vanpool'). I know this has been going for around 10 years, and I'm somewhat sure it's much older than that. https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/travel-options/rideshare.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/travel-opt...

eCa 8y ago

It sounds a bit like marshrutka[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka

dmazin 8y ago
Every time I return to Russia these fascinate me. They have many routes and will stop wherever you request. The general term is Share taxi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
- Symbiote 8y ago
  The Wikipedia picture is from Senegal. When I visited, these were chaotic, but by some means the passengers would get to the destination. I spent one journey with my head between my knees, since the whole floor of the bus was loaded with sacks of grain and sugar women had bought at the market. Another journey, I was wedged amongst about 20 children — there is always room for an additional child on a car rapide. The windows were kept closed (I have no idea why), it was about 40° inside. I particularly remember being asked to get off the bus, but for the first time, there was also a confused African man. He was from Guinea, and like me had no idea what was happening. I understood bits of the French explanation, he understood bits of the Mandinka, and we found the replacement bus together.
  - cdubzzz 8y ago
    Bush taxis, essentially. I spent three years using them in West Africa and that experience is why I am pretty much unfazed by any transit system here in the US. I’m surprised you were asked to get off one. Where I was pretty much everyone took it as a challenge to see just how many people they could jam in to the damn things (:
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  In Morocco they're called Grands Taxis, and they are quite useful for getting around from village to village. In the morning people come to the public square and once enough passengers who want to travel along the same route have assembled you all pack into an old diesel Mercedes sedan and split the fare. I remember the driver buying all of his passengers lunch on one of my trips!

tim-- 8y ago

I really appreciate how the NSW Australian Government is working on a solution to this. They are currently running trial on-demand services, where a mini-van will come and pick you up after a request from an app[0]. I don't understand why the US cities are so adverse to setting up similar systems. [0] https://transportnsw.info/travel-info/ways-to-get-around/on-demand-public-transport https://transportnsw.info/travel-info/ways-to-get-around/on-...

dwd 8y ago
Sound similar to ConXion who I've used in the past to avoid paying airport parking. For the Sunshine Coast > Brisbane Airport trip they pick you up at your door in a smaller 12 seater to meet up near the highway with the larger coach for the hour or so run in. They run hourly trips each way.

bernatfp 8y ago

FWIW Citymapper offers a similar service in London. Essentially carpooling with more seats. Admittedly though, they don't cover such long distances.

beavisthegenius 8y ago

I tried to schedule Chariot last year to Foster City from SF. They said they don't do FC. Sucks for them.