11 ms·

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 Cha

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.)
    - masonic 8y ago
      Not "municipalities"; counties. And they opted out because they would have had to pay in fully with no service for years, followed by inferior service forever (they were to be cash cows).
  - csydas 8y ago
    I was going to comment the same; I lived in Tacoma and committed to Seattle for 4 years, and it was incredibly convenient, even with the traffic on I5. The seattle-tacoma route had more frequent intervals than the local Tacoma busses did and the transit was pretty nice. Usually full but never packed (except last bus of the evening)
- foolfoolz 8y ago
  this makes no sense that for someone in redwood city bart is the solution but not caltrain. redwood city doesn’t need 2 separate train lines before you can commute to sf. Samtrans buses does the entire thing in one bus. it will get you into the city and back. and it’ll be 4+ hours a day commute. but the buses do run a lot of hours. chariot could probably do this in an hour each way, which would be faster than caltrain this is pretty on par with other countries and cities. only a handful of (larger) cities have city wide metro coverage. smaller cities have better bus service. biking is huge in cities this size, including, san francisco for this reason. or ride one of the new hotness scooter apps.
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.

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.)
  - masonic 8y ago
    Not "municipalities"; counties. And they opted out because they would have had to pay in fully with no service for years, followed by inferior service forever (they were to be cash cows).
- csydas 8y ago
  I was going to comment the same; I lived in Tacoma and committed to Seattle for 4 years, and it was incredibly convenient, even with the traffic on I5. The seattle-tacoma route had more frequent intervals than the local Tacoma busses did and the transit was pretty nice. Usually full but never packed (except last bus of the evening)
foolfoolz 8y ago
this makes no sense that for someone in redwood city bart is the solution but not caltrain. redwood city doesn’t need 2 separate train lines before you can commute to sf. Samtrans buses does the entire thing in one bus. it will get you into the city and back. and it’ll be 4+ hours a day commute. but the buses do run a lot of hours. chariot could probably do this in an hour each way, which would be faster than caltrain this is pretty on par with other countries and cities. only a handful of (larger) cities have city wide metro coverage. smaller cities have better bus service. biking is huge in cities this size, including, san francisco for this reason. or ride one of the new hotness scooter apps.

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.