3 ms·
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 th
by 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 agoThat 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.