14 ms·

Dollar vans, NYC’s other transit system

103 points by panic 7y ago

jaxbot 7y ago
During a snow storm/PABT outage this past winter, I observed a jitney line from 8th ave down halfway to 10th. It's pretty crazy to see the mishmash of alternative transit modes people will piece together when their main route (NJT, PATH, NJ bus, etc) goes offline.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>The license costs $550, according to the TLC website. After getting a license, a driver needs to get their van insured, which can cost around $15,000 a year, Clarke and several van drivers told the Eagle. Well no wonder there's many unlicensed vans. They way the incentives are set up they may as well print "don't even bother" at the top of the license form in big bold letters. With those kinds of costs in addition to the cost of running the van you'd be making pennies. Run unlicensed and on normal insurance (or better yet, read the statutes and figure out where the risk/reward sweet spot is) and you'd save a ton of money. If you don't have a lot of money or a legitimate business that needs protecting then it's a no brainier. Edit: Down-voting me won't make running above the table any more financially attractive. If the insurance made financial sense the state wouldn't need to force them to get it or at the very least it would not be the owner's primary gripe. Most small businesses love to advertise their credentials and how insured they are. Every other business complains about labor cost and regulation. These guys are complaining about insurance. That should be a massive tip off that something is wrong.
- close04 7y ago
  The costs of running a commercial service are always higher. Between insurance, licensing, generally stricter rules on technical aspects (like periodic service checks, etc.) you start spending a lot. The liability is a lot higher for these cases. This is exactly why Uber went the route of "we're just a tech company even the drivers are basically driving taxis". Having those drivers conform to the same rules would have made the fare just as expensive as a taxi fare.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    But should the costs be higher? So much of these costs are protectionist measures implemented by government to protect the interests of established businesses. To borrow a turn of phrase from the gun rights camp, business licenses, if they exist at all, should be low-cost and shall-issue.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      So much of them are necessary measures to protect people, though. The trouble is distinguishing the two. For example, medallions are obviously and pretty explicitly a protectionist measure. On the other hand requirements to display fares clearly and use an approved meter are there to help customers from being ripped off.
      - devdas 7y ago
        Medallions protect against the negative of there being too many taxis, causing congestion and revenue loss for drivers, which would lead to more dangerous driving and poorly maintained vehicles.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      Are they? In the quote at least, the vastly bigger expense is insurance, which is likely provided by the market based on statistics of some kind, not some arbitrary number from the government.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Yes, but "the market" has figured out that you can sue the pants off an insured business whereas an uninsured business is not worth paying a lawyer to go after. Just carrying the insurance makes you a higher risk of costing the insurance company money by itself. If insurance made financial sense to carry for the average or averagely unlucky operator the state wouldn't need to make it mandatory and drivers wouldn't grumble about it or at the very least it wouldn't be their primary gripe. They'd gripe about labor costs and labor laws like every other business does.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  That expensive insurance covers the fact that it's getting substantially more mileage (and thus risk) than a personal-use vehicle, and that ~20 people could be injured or killed in an accident. There's a reason it's required.
- pkaye 7y ago
  I vaguely remember a news article while back a taxi organization in the city had self insured its drivers and one bad accident has enough claims to bankrupt the entire organization. Edit: here is the article. They were found liable for $8M for paralyzing a passenger. A chicago company was liable for $26M in another case. https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/25/technology/yellow-cab-bankruptcy/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/25/technology/yellow-cab-bankr...
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  > Well no wonder there's many unlicensed vans. Practically and economically, yes, it makes sense. No wonder, indeed. But I find it really sad that the government fails to simply enforce the insurance requirement. These vans are an important part of the transportation solution for many people and the government is failing to protect these riders. Regulation defiant buses are rewarded and regulation compliant buses are penalized.
HALtheWise 7y ago
The model of having large vehicles that pick up a bunch of people, but drop each person off exactly at their doorstep, is something that has been repeatedly proposed for self-driving vehicles in the future (by Tesla and others). I wonder if these dollar vans provide clues about what such a system could look like at an even larger scale.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Most of the reason this works is because vans usually have a mid-range capacity between a car and a bus (10-20 people). 4-seater cars are not economical to do like this, and buses are too big to fill up, and when they're full everyone wants to get off at every stop. The vans with their smaller capacity fill up fast and then only drive to let people off. Judging by the way dollar vans and similar minibus manifestations work in other places I've been to, there are a couple of things to note here: - They're not purely pickup/dropoff at the house. They're dropoff at the house, but to pick up you have to walk to the street where they're all usually running. And one end of it is a major pickup location; in the case of these vans, usually a subway station. - Because they only drive off when full, they only make trips where one end of the route is a major pickup location, creating a hub-and-spoke network. Traveling between spokes is something that these vans do very poorly, because there aren't nearly as many people doing that. - At said major pickup point, they will usually cause major traffic congestion as they weave in and out of traffic and around each other. Several cities in South America (e.g. Bogota) replaced minibus-only systems with BRT or more formalized public transport because of the benefits of reducing congestion.
  - Zanni 7y ago
    This sounds a bit like the inter-city taxi system in Morocco. There's a central taxi park where you go and drivers call out their destination and number of seats remaining. When the taxi is full (or its getting close to the end of the day), it goes. They'll drop you at your specific destination in the other city. They call these "Grand" taxis. There are also "little" taxis you can take within the city and hire on an individual basis (i.e. you don't need to wait for them to fill up).
  - 7y ago
keiferski 7y ago
Sounds a bit like Marshrutkas, which are cheap vans that function as the primary “public transit” system in many post-Soviet cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka
- mlevental 7y ago
  or matatus in east africa.
  - NickBusey 7y ago
    Or tro tros in west Africa.
- grenoire 7y ago
  Blue and white ones, a little boxier than these, are called minibuses in Turkey. Cheap, follows a route, but has no predetermined stops except for the initial and terminal ones.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  See also the see also section of that article - share taxis are perhaps the most universal form of public transport. Wherever there is a gap in formal public transport provision, there'll be a guy with a minibus driving a loose approximation of a regular route. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
- samschooler 7y ago
  Gallineras (or just "bus") or chicken buses are this concept as a (beautiful) school bus in central and some central American countries. As well as "collectivos" which are the van version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_bus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_bus
  - wil421 7y ago
    Chicken buses are awesome. I’ve been on the one from the second picture in Nicaragua. Someone even had a chicken. The best part is most of them still have US school system wording on the side. I remember seeing “School System of Milwaukee” or something similar.
Endy 7y ago
I thought they were talking about the jitney buses run by companies like Spanish Transit from Paterson <-> NYC. They're absolutely vital means of transport when the trains are reliably behind schedule (as they currently almost always are) or when the NJTransit buses aren't running on time because of some unknown issue. I wish they would expand their offerings, because I live and work at two major points of their routes (except that it's different routes) and if they closed the triangle, I'd be able to avoid using Uber or Lyft.
- rinchik 7y ago
  `vital means of transport` - definitely disagree here, those "buses" are also dangerous (constant harassment) and also no AC in the summer, drivers openly smoke while driving with passengers in those. I would think those vans are a horrible way of commuting and local authorities don't inspect or monitor those at all.
  - Endy 7y ago
    Never had a driver who smoked yet. On the other hand, tell me something, how do you get from Paterson or Passaic to NYC or Union City in less than an hour and at an affordable rate? NJTransit is slow whether it's train or bus, and they're at the absolute upper limit of being affordable. When I say they're vital, I absolutely mean it. For those of who have relied on the buses in and out of the City, the NJTransit option simply isn't viable on a daily basis compared to far more reliable and numerous jitneys. Uber & Lyft are simply out of the question on the basis of cost. Oh, and add in the fact that for those of us who live in Jersey and cannot drive, options are limited overall.
    - rinchik 7y ago
      I use NJ transit buses (check 190, practically the same route). Was using those small buses you are talking about and it was a complete nightmare. Agree that it’s not consistent but after a while You get to experience stuff that is just horrendous! Also the fact that decayed commuting services like that are considered vital for some commuters is a sign of how bad of a state NJ infrastructure is in. Those busses are a clear sign of corruption and a symptom of a much larger problem.
nofinator 7y ago
A NYC redditor posted a fascinating how-to about Dollar Vans 6 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ap4t6k/dont_be_intimidated_a_beginners_guide_to_taking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ap4t6k/dont_be_intimid...
stcredzero 7y ago
I've spent a fair bit of time driving in New York City, since the early 90's. When is autonomous driving ever going to get to NYC? It sometimes seems insane to drive there. I have a hard time imagining computer drivers being able to deal with NYC human drivers. (Same goes for Boston, only more so.)
- IanCal 7y ago
  What is it about the driving that doesn't seem reasonable for a computer to deal with? I've never been. Often what appears to be hard is because it hits things that are hard for humans. Full 360 degree constant coverage isn't a problem, fast reaction times are easy (so if it's about quickly stopping/starting that should be easily better). Complex parts come from more "human" standards, if you can only come out of a junction easily by making eye contact with an oncoming car for example.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    >Complex parts come from more "human" standards, if you can only come out of a junction easily by making eye contact with an oncoming car for example. It's that kind of thing. If you drive like you would in some calmer and less congested city you'll never get anywhere. You often have to take your space because no one is going to give it to you. It's not just vehicles. If a car pauses at a crosswalk because someone has stepped into it, the rest of the crowd will smell hesitancy and just cross en masse against the light. Plus lots of police manually directing traffic at intersections. Lots of partially blocked streets because of construction and delivery vehicles. Parts of the city are really nerve-wracking to drive in at busy times of the day. I actually do think it's worse than Boston with respect to a previous comment although the layout is much more of a grid which makes things easier in some respects.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    What is it about the driving that doesn't seem reasonable for a computer to deal with? It's not just the other humans, though that's a big part. There have been times when the condition and design of the streets and roads themselves have been challenging.
privateSFacct 7y ago
The Caribbean islands have a lot of these types of vans on ring roads and elsewhere. So cheap and nice and fast and amazingly decorated in some cases. But forget seatbelts and be prepared to squeeze. Was really $1 in the Caribbean though when I was there briefly.
syntaxing 7y ago
I haven't taken these in a while but there is a huge word by mouth van system that connects the five Burroughs (besides SI). Someone tried using huge coach bus equivalent and was offering $1 a ride but that got shut down pretty quickly because of apparent traffic issues these coach bus were making.
SeeDave 7y ago
I'm curious what makes these succeed in NYC while Chariot failed in SF.
- harshalizee 7y ago
  It's a grey market system. Don't really have to heed to regulations and investors. And they're all privately owned and decentralized.

103 points by panic 7y ago

During a snow storm/PABT outage this past winter, I observed a jitney line from 8th ave down halfway to 10th. It's pretty crazy to see the mishmash of alternative transit modes people will piece together when their main route (NJT, PATH, NJ bus, etc) goes offline.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>The license costs $550, according to the TLC website. After getting a license, a driver needs to get their van insured, which can cost around $15,000 a year, Clarke and several van drivers told the Eagle. Well no wonder there's many unlicensed vans. They way the incentives are set up they may as well print "don't even bother" at the top of the license form in big bold letters. With those kinds of costs in addition to the cost of running the van you'd be making pennies. Run unlicensed and on normal insurance (or better yet, read the statutes and figure out where the risk/reward sweet spot is) and you'd save a ton of money. If you don't have a lot of money or a legitimate business that needs protecting then it's a no brainier. Edit: Down-voting me won't make running above the table any more financially attractive. If the insurance made financial sense the state wouldn't need to force them to get it or at the very least it would not be the owner's primary gripe. Most small businesses love to advertise their credentials and how insured they are. Every other business complains about labor cost and regulation. These guys are complaining about insurance. That should be a massive tip off that something is wrong.

close04 7y ago
The costs of running a commercial service are always higher. Between insurance, licensing, generally stricter rules on technical aspects (like periodic service checks, etc.) you start spending a lot. The liability is a lot higher for these cases. This is exactly why Uber went the route of "we're just a tech company even the drivers are basically driving taxis". Having those drivers conform to the same rules would have made the fare just as expensive as a taxi fare.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  But should the costs be higher? So much of these costs are protectionist measures implemented by government to protect the interests of established businesses. To borrow a turn of phrase from the gun rights camp, business licenses, if they exist at all, should be low-cost and shall-issue.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    So much of them are necessary measures to protect people, though. The trouble is distinguishing the two. For example, medallions are obviously and pretty explicitly a protectionist measure. On the other hand requirements to display fares clearly and use an approved meter are there to help customers from being ripped off.
    - devdas 7y ago
      Medallions protect against the negative of there being too many taxis, causing congestion and revenue loss for drivers, which would lead to more dangerous driving and poorly maintained vehicles.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Are they? In the quote at least, the vastly bigger expense is insurance, which is likely provided by the market based on statistics of some kind, not some arbitrary number from the government.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Yes, but "the market" has figured out that you can sue the pants off an insured business whereas an uninsured business is not worth paying a lawyer to go after. Just carrying the insurance makes you a higher risk of costing the insurance company money by itself. If insurance made financial sense to carry for the average or averagely unlucky operator the state wouldn't need to make it mandatory and drivers wouldn't grumble about it or at the very least it wouldn't be their primary gripe. They'd gripe about labor costs and labor laws like every other business does.
ceejayoz 7y ago
That expensive insurance covers the fact that it's getting substantially more mileage (and thus risk) than a personal-use vehicle, and that ~20 people could be injured or killed in an accident. There's a reason it's required.
pkaye 7y ago
I vaguely remember a news article while back a taxi organization in the city had self insured its drivers and one bad accident has enough claims to bankrupt the entire organization. Edit: here is the article. They were found liable for $8M for paralyzing a passenger. A chicago company was liable for $26M in another case. https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/25/technology/yellow-cab-bankruptcy/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/25/technology/yellow-cab-bankr...
HillaryBriss 7y ago
> Well no wonder there's many unlicensed vans. Practically and economically, yes, it makes sense. No wonder, indeed. But I find it really sad that the government fails to simply enforce the insurance requirement. These vans are an important part of the transportation solution for many people and the government is failing to protect these riders. Regulation defiant buses are rewarded and regulation compliant buses are penalized.

HALtheWise 7y ago

The model of having large vehicles that pick up a bunch of people, but drop each person off exactly at their doorstep, is something that has been repeatedly proposed for self-driving vehicles in the future (by Tesla and others). I wonder if these dollar vans provide clues about what such a system could look like at an even larger scale.

bobthepanda 7y ago
Most of the reason this works is because vans usually have a mid-range capacity between a car and a bus (10-20 people). 4-seater cars are not economical to do like this, and buses are too big to fill up, and when they're full everyone wants to get off at every stop. The vans with their smaller capacity fill up fast and then only drive to let people off. Judging by the way dollar vans and similar minibus manifestations work in other places I've been to, there are a couple of things to note here: - They're not purely pickup/dropoff at the house. They're dropoff at the house, but to pick up you have to walk to the street where they're all usually running. And one end of it is a major pickup location; in the case of these vans, usually a subway station. - Because they only drive off when full, they only make trips where one end of the route is a major pickup location, creating a hub-and-spoke network. Traveling between spokes is something that these vans do very poorly, because there aren't nearly as many people doing that. - At said major pickup point, they will usually cause major traffic congestion as they weave in and out of traffic and around each other. Several cities in South America (e.g. Bogota) replaced minibus-only systems with BRT or more formalized public transport because of the benefits of reducing congestion.
- Zanni 7y ago
  This sounds a bit like the inter-city taxi system in Morocco. There's a central taxi park where you go and drivers call out their destination and number of seats remaining. When the taxi is full (or its getting close to the end of the day), it goes. They'll drop you at your specific destination in the other city. They call these "Grand" taxis. There are also "little" taxis you can take within the city and hire on an individual basis (i.e. you don't need to wait for them to fill up).
- 7y ago

keiferski 7y ago

Sounds a bit like Marshrutkas, which are cheap vans that function as the primary “public transit” system in many post-Soviet cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka

mlevental 7y ago
or matatus in east africa.
- NickBusey 7y ago
  Or tro tros in west Africa.
grenoire 7y ago
Blue and white ones, a little boxier than these, are called minibuses in Turkey. Cheap, follows a route, but has no predetermined stops except for the initial and terminal ones.
jdietrich 7y ago
See also the see also section of that article - share taxis are perhaps the most universal form of public transport. Wherever there is a gap in formal public transport provision, there'll be a guy with a minibus driving a loose approximation of a regular route. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
samschooler 7y ago
Gallineras (or just "bus") or chicken buses are this concept as a (beautiful) school bus in central and some central American countries. As well as "collectivos" which are the van version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_bus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_bus
- wil421 7y ago
  Chicken buses are awesome. I’ve been on the one from the second picture in Nicaragua. Someone even had a chicken. The best part is most of them still have US school system wording on the side. I remember seeing “School System of Milwaukee” or something similar.

Endy 7y ago

I thought they were talking about the jitney buses run by companies like Spanish Transit from Paterson <-> NYC. They're absolutely vital means of transport when the trains are reliably behind schedule (as they currently almost always are) or when the NJTransit buses aren't running on time because of some unknown issue. I wish they would expand their offerings, because I live and work at two major points of their routes (except that it's different routes) and if they closed the triangle, I'd be able to avoid using Uber or Lyft.

rinchik 7y ago
`vital means of transport` - definitely disagree here, those "buses" are also dangerous (constant harassment) and also no AC in the summer, drivers openly smoke while driving with passengers in those. I would think those vans are a horrible way of commuting and local authorities don't inspect or monitor those at all.
- Endy 7y ago
  Never had a driver who smoked yet. On the other hand, tell me something, how do you get from Paterson or Passaic to NYC or Union City in less than an hour and at an affordable rate? NJTransit is slow whether it's train or bus, and they're at the absolute upper limit of being affordable. When I say they're vital, I absolutely mean it. For those of who have relied on the buses in and out of the City, the NJTransit option simply isn't viable on a daily basis compared to far more reliable and numerous jitneys. Uber & Lyft are simply out of the question on the basis of cost. Oh, and add in the fact that for those of us who live in Jersey and cannot drive, options are limited overall.
  - rinchik 7y ago
    I use NJ transit buses (check 190, practically the same route). Was using those small buses you are talking about and it was a complete nightmare. Agree that it’s not consistent but after a while You get to experience stuff that is just horrendous! Also the fact that decayed commuting services like that are considered vital for some commuters is a sign of how bad of a state NJ infrastructure is in. Those busses are a clear sign of corruption and a symptom of a much larger problem.

nofinator 7y ago

A NYC redditor posted a fascinating how-to about Dollar Vans 6 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ap4t6k/dont_be_intimidated_a_beginners_guide_to_taking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ap4t6k/dont_be_intimid...

stcredzero 7y ago

I've spent a fair bit of time driving in New York City, since the early 90's. When is autonomous driving ever going to get to NYC? It sometimes seems insane to drive there. I have a hard time imagining computer drivers being able to deal with NYC human drivers. (Same goes for Boston, only more so.)

IanCal 7y ago
What is it about the driving that doesn't seem reasonable for a computer to deal with? I've never been. Often what appears to be hard is because it hits things that are hard for humans. Full 360 degree constant coverage isn't a problem, fast reaction times are easy (so if it's about quickly stopping/starting that should be easily better). Complex parts come from more "human" standards, if you can only come out of a junction easily by making eye contact with an oncoming car for example.
- ghaff 7y ago
  >Complex parts come from more "human" standards, if you can only come out of a junction easily by making eye contact with an oncoming car for example. It's that kind of thing. If you drive like you would in some calmer and less congested city you'll never get anywhere. You often have to take your space because no one is going to give it to you. It's not just vehicles. If a car pauses at a crosswalk because someone has stepped into it, the rest of the crowd will smell hesitancy and just cross en masse against the light. Plus lots of police manually directing traffic at intersections. Lots of partially blocked streets because of construction and delivery vehicles. Parts of the city are really nerve-wracking to drive in at busy times of the day. I actually do think it's worse than Boston with respect to a previous comment although the layout is much more of a grid which makes things easier in some respects.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  What is it about the driving that doesn't seem reasonable for a computer to deal with? It's not just the other humans, though that's a big part. There have been times when the condition and design of the streets and roads themselves have been challenging.

privateSFacct 7y ago

The Caribbean islands have a lot of these types of vans on ring roads and elsewhere. So cheap and nice and fast and amazingly decorated in some cases. But forget seatbelts and be prepared to squeeze. Was really $1 in the Caribbean though when I was there briefly.

syntaxing 7y ago

I haven't taken these in a while but there is a huge word by mouth van system that connects the five Burroughs (besides SI). Someone tried using huge coach bus equivalent and was offering $1 a ride but that got shut down pretty quickly because of apparent traffic issues these coach bus were making.

SeeDave 7y ago

I'm curious what makes these succeed in NYC while Chariot failed in SF.

harshalizee 7y ago
It's a grey market system. Don't really have to heed to regulations and investors. And they're all privately owned and decentralized.