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Wow, that's quite the negative response. > It would be cool if one side of the route didn’t have to be to a light rail station. The whole purpose of the progr

Wow, that's quite the negative response. > It would be cool if one side of the route didn’t have to be to a light rail station. The whole purpose of the program is to get locals interested and used to mass-transit systems - so that would defeat the purpose. > Or, if the trip wasn’t limited to a two mile area It's a new program. What do you expect? >I think it would be cool if you could order a ride on an app, There is an app.... >a vehicle comes to your exact location and then takes you to your exact destination. As you mentioned later in your post, Uber does exactly this. If you want to use Uber, then use Uber... Why such a negative view about a new alternative? I think you missed the whole point of this project.

briandear 7y ago
I think the point of the project is pointless: getting into an on demand car to take you to someplace that isn’t where you are going. You use an app to call a car. You walk potentially a few blocks, then wait, to get in the car. That takes you somewhere else where you wait again to get on a train, to then take you to another train station which incidentally isn’t your exact destination either. It sounds like a good way to make a 20 minute trip turn into an hour trip. Regarding Uber — correct, Uber does solve this problem, so why have a taxpayer funded version of Uber that isn’t even as good as Uber? For the disabled and others with limited mobility/mental capacity, this does sound like a great program however. A system with specially trained drivers to help highly vulnerable people is welcome. But a taxpayer subsidized Uber-light seems like a waste of money. You can already take an Uber Pool to a train station if that’s your thing, so what problem is this actually solving that the market isn’t already solving?
- marcinzm 7y ago
  >I think the point of the project is pointless: getting into an on demand car to take you to someplace that isn’t where you are going. You use an app to call a car. You walk potentially a few blocks, then wait, to get in the car. That takes you somewhere else where you wait again to get on a train, to then take you to another train station which incidentally isn’t your exact destination either. It sounds like a good way to make a 20 minute trip turn into an hour trip. Yes, it's public transit, you trade money for time, like all public transit. It also lowers road congestion for the city. By your logic all public transit should be abolished and replaced by cars, right?
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > By your logic all public transit should be abolished and replaced by cars, right? We did that. It’s called the entire south. And that’s why cities like New York lose more residents to Phoenix, Atlanta, and Dallas than they get from those places.
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      >We did that. It’s called the entire south. And that’s why cities like New York lose more residents to Phoenix, Atlanta, and Dallas than they get from those places. That's mostly due to those places being cheap to live in. Which implies, as we're a capitalistic society, that people value living there a lot less than they value living in NYC. NYC is full and yet people will pay ever more money to live here.
    - TheGRS 7y ago
      I would love to see the data that suggests people are moving out of New York to Phoenix because they couldn't stand the public transit anymore
      - rayiner 7y ago
        The public transit is part of an overall package: bad schools, expensive housing (or small housing for the price), etc. If you’re a family do you want to live in 1,000 square feet and shlep to your kids’ activities in the rain, or drive exactly where you want to go? The commutes in New York are far longer too, because of public transit. 94% of New York commutes on public transit take more than 30 minutes. https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute. 29% take more than an hour. Meanwhile, half of all car commutes in Houston are 30 minutes or less, and just 1% are more than an hour. Don’t get me wrong, I personally love public transit. I get on the train, and I can do work because I’ve got a professional job with flexible work hours and locations. Oh, and I have an au pair to schlep my kids to school, gymnastics, and play dates. For ordinary families, being able to do a quick detour on the way to work to do day dare drop off is a god send.
- rayiner 7y ago
  If the reason we want mass transit is for poor and disabled people, why not taxpayer subsidized Uber? Why force low income people to waste time on mass transit? Why force disabled people to deal with the challenges of navigating transit systems where elevators may or may not work?
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 7y ago
    In my experience subsidized ride services are not financially viable. There are just too many disabled people for it make financial sense, so what happens is the government gives the contract to companies that do their best to lower their operating costs, that means grouping rides regardless of destinations and you end up with shuttles of disabled people driving all over the city/state taking hours to go to places that are only 15/30 minutes from their homes. In addition the drivers are under heavy pressure so you get the same behaviour as delivery companies that throw their packages out of the car window except it's vulnerable people being manhandled out of the car. Finally even with the subsidy a large amount of money is left to be paid by the user, personally I pay more than twice what it'd cost me to own a car myself and that's limiting myself to only going to and from work. The solution would be to make public transport accessible and then I'm sure all disabled people would not feel forced but relieved at the opportunity to use them.
    - chrisieb 7y ago
      That sounds a lot like the issue we have here in Paris regarding poor transit services for the disabled. The service - called PAM75 - is just bad, slow and expensive for what it is. I do think however some of the aspects of the uber model could be applied to this situation to mitigate at least some of the problems you cited, namely lousy driver behavior and ride grouping. Even just a simple app to book rides would be light years ahead of the current offering. All in all, I've found this PAM75 service is a decade late, and has not by any means been affected by the arrival of the uber model, at least compared to how the taxi industry has been afflicted.
  - caymanjim 7y ago
    What planet do you live on where downtown in any large city can support the number of private vehicles that would be required to absorb the riders if mass transit went away? It's certainly not any major city I've ever been to. It's already literally faster to walk in midtown Manhattan than it is to drive (or, unfortunately, take the bus, since bus lanes are not well-policed enough to keep them moving quickly). I've lived in or spent a lot of time in many large cities in the US, and the only one I can think of where there's room for even a few more cars is Phoenix.
- TheGRS 7y ago
  It's probably helpful to think of the service as like a mini bus that provides an extra transfer point. You're getting some great efficiencies from all of the services that way. If you keep a few of these vans in a neighborhood instead of going from south of Seattle to north of Seattle, you can keep using the vans for that area over and over again. Going straight point A to point B in an Uber means it needs to now pick someone up at point B to gain any efficiency. > why have a taxpayer funded version of Uber that isn’t even as good as Uber? Because that's not the point of the service at all. Its to get you to your next transfer point and that's it. The problem with everyone using an Uber is that it doesn't scale, but public transit does scale.
- egypturnash 7y ago
  what problem is this actually solving that the market isn’t already solving? Taking the bus/train/light rail generally uses less energy per passenger than driving a bunch of cars. Burning less fuel to get where you’re going is definitely a bonus IMHO. It’s going to take more time, but it’s also a lot cheaper - $3-5 vs $20-40 for an Illegal App Taxi to go downtown or to the airport or whatever. Also it is a way to get people in the suburbs used to using public transit, so maybe they’ll actually be willing to vote for improvements to it.

briandear 7y ago

I think the point of the project is pointless: getting into an on demand car to take you to someplace that isn’t where you are going. You use an app to call a car. You walk potentially a few blocks, then wait, to get in the car. That takes you somewhere else where you wait again to get on a train, to then take you to another train station which incidentally isn’t your exact destination either. It sounds like a good way to make a 20 minute trip turn into an hour trip. Regarding Uber — correct, Uber does solve this problem, so why have a taxpayer funded version of Uber that isn’t even as good as Uber? For the disabled and others with limited mobility/mental capacity, this does sound like a great program however. A system with specially trained drivers to help highly vulnerable people is welcome. But a taxpayer subsidized Uber-light seems like a waste of money. You can already take an Uber Pool to a train station if that’s your thing, so what problem is this actually solving that the market isn’t already solving?

marcinzm 7y ago
>I think the point of the project is pointless: getting into an on demand car to take you to someplace that isn’t where you are going. You use an app to call a car. You walk potentially a few blocks, then wait, to get in the car. That takes you somewhere else where you wait again to get on a train, to then take you to another train station which incidentally isn’t your exact destination either. It sounds like a good way to make a 20 minute trip turn into an hour trip. Yes, it's public transit, you trade money for time, like all public transit. It also lowers road congestion for the city. By your logic all public transit should be abolished and replaced by cars, right?
- rayiner 7y ago
  > By your logic all public transit should be abolished and replaced by cars, right? We did that. It’s called the entire south. And that’s why cities like New York lose more residents to Phoenix, Atlanta, and Dallas than they get from those places.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    >We did that. It’s called the entire south. And that’s why cities like New York lose more residents to Phoenix, Atlanta, and Dallas than they get from those places. That's mostly due to those places being cheap to live in. Which implies, as we're a capitalistic society, that people value living there a lot less than they value living in NYC. NYC is full and yet people will pay ever more money to live here.
  - TheGRS 7y ago
    I would love to see the data that suggests people are moving out of New York to Phoenix because they couldn't stand the public transit anymore
    - rayiner 7y ago
      The public transit is part of an overall package: bad schools, expensive housing (or small housing for the price), etc. If you’re a family do you want to live in 1,000 square feet and shlep to your kids’ activities in the rain, or drive exactly where you want to go? The commutes in New York are far longer too, because of public transit. 94% of New York commutes on public transit take more than 30 minutes. https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute. 29% take more than an hour. Meanwhile, half of all car commutes in Houston are 30 minutes or less, and just 1% are more than an hour. Don’t get me wrong, I personally love public transit. I get on the train, and I can do work because I’ve got a professional job with flexible work hours and locations. Oh, and I have an au pair to schlep my kids to school, gymnastics, and play dates. For ordinary families, being able to do a quick detour on the way to work to do day dare drop off is a god send.
rayiner 7y ago
If the reason we want mass transit is for poor and disabled people, why not taxpayer subsidized Uber? Why force low income people to waste time on mass transit? Why force disabled people to deal with the challenges of navigating transit systems where elevators may or may not work?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 7y ago
  In my experience subsidized ride services are not financially viable. There are just too many disabled people for it make financial sense, so what happens is the government gives the contract to companies that do their best to lower their operating costs, that means grouping rides regardless of destinations and you end up with shuttles of disabled people driving all over the city/state taking hours to go to places that are only 15/30 minutes from their homes. In addition the drivers are under heavy pressure so you get the same behaviour as delivery companies that throw their packages out of the car window except it's vulnerable people being manhandled out of the car. Finally even with the subsidy a large amount of money is left to be paid by the user, personally I pay more than twice what it'd cost me to own a car myself and that's limiting myself to only going to and from work. The solution would be to make public transport accessible and then I'm sure all disabled people would not feel forced but relieved at the opportunity to use them.
  - chrisieb 7y ago
    That sounds a lot like the issue we have here in Paris regarding poor transit services for the disabled. The service - called PAM75 - is just bad, slow and expensive for what it is. I do think however some of the aspects of the uber model could be applied to this situation to mitigate at least some of the problems you cited, namely lousy driver behavior and ride grouping. Even just a simple app to book rides would be light years ahead of the current offering. All in all, I've found this PAM75 service is a decade late, and has not by any means been affected by the arrival of the uber model, at least compared to how the taxi industry has been afflicted.
- caymanjim 7y ago
  What planet do you live on where downtown in any large city can support the number of private vehicles that would be required to absorb the riders if mass transit went away? It's certainly not any major city I've ever been to. It's already literally faster to walk in midtown Manhattan than it is to drive (or, unfortunately, take the bus, since bus lanes are not well-policed enough to keep them moving quickly). I've lived in or spent a lot of time in many large cities in the US, and the only one I can think of where there's room for even a few more cars is Phoenix.
TheGRS 7y ago
It's probably helpful to think of the service as like a mini bus that provides an extra transfer point. You're getting some great efficiencies from all of the services that way. If you keep a few of these vans in a neighborhood instead of going from south of Seattle to north of Seattle, you can keep using the vans for that area over and over again. Going straight point A to point B in an Uber means it needs to now pick someone up at point B to gain any efficiency. > why have a taxpayer funded version of Uber that isn’t even as good as Uber? Because that's not the point of the service at all. Its to get you to your next transfer point and that's it. The problem with everyone using an Uber is that it doesn't scale, but public transit does scale.
egypturnash 7y ago
what problem is this actually solving that the market isn’t already solving? Taking the bus/train/light rail generally uses less energy per passenger than driving a bunch of cars. Burning less fuel to get where you’re going is definitely a bonus IMHO. It’s going to take more time, but it’s also a lot cheaper - $3-5 vs $20-40 for an Illegal App Taxi to go downtown or to the airport or whatever. Also it is a way to get people in the suburbs used to using public transit, so maybe they’ll actually be willing to vote for improvements to it.