13 ms·

Why can't we just invest in buses? This will become the luxury/premium version of "public transit"

andys627 7y ago
This is analogous to micro transit - on demand, smaller buses or vans. One crucial difference, the most expensive cost is eliminated - the driver. Larger buses still have a significant place and will become much cheaper when the driver is gone.
Waterluvian 7y ago
I think you answered your own question. I want a door to door bus without the homeless guy and two kids yapping on their phones. I would love to never own or be responsible for a car ever again. Just summon them when needed or book them in advance.
- ronilan 7y ago
  Your wish will be summoned. Just make sure to never have kids and never fall on your luck.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Are you implying this replaces mass transit? I don't understand how that makes any sense. Why didn't cars replace mass transit? Why hasn't Uber killed mass transit?
    - jonstewart 7y ago
      Cars did replace mass transit in many cities. Many cities had better mass transit decades ago than they do now. And ridesharing companies have had deleterious effects on mass transit. They haven’t killed it, but studies are starting to show there’s been some harm and, at the same time, that ridesharing contributes to worsening congestion.
  - adolph 7y ago
    Embrace the power of “and.” Public transit can coexist with whatever this future thing will be called.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      Maybe. But the more well-off people crawl into cocooned experiences, the less they care about public infrastructure. Look, for example, at how suburbs not only often lack public transit themselves, but work to fight regional transit.
      - pb7 7y ago
        Well-off people are already the ones (involuntarily) funding the public infrastructure. No need to guilt trip any further.
        wpietri 7y ago
        They are funding it less and less. And things like the wave of white flight and suburbanization in the 1960s and 1970s make it clear how comfortable well-off white people are doing that. In any case, I'm not arguing for guilt trips as a means of solving the problem. Instead, I think the right solution is the bedrock of any community: shared experience.
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    Why no kids? I'm a dad without a car. I never wish I had a car.
    - jiofih 7y ago
      It’s about not having to “deal” with kids on the bus.
  - baddox 7y ago
    I don't quite understand your argument. Should I enjoy sitting near people having violent mental health crises because I might one day have a mental health crisis? It seems to me that the compassionate approach would be to support the availability of mental health care. Being content with sharing public space with people suffering from mental health problems does not seem like a compassionate or helpful approach.
    - true_religion 7y ago
      You? Probably not but true OP was taking about kids on cellphones, and people who looked poor.
  - puranjay 7y ago
    How is it ab absolutist either/or situation? You can have public buses as well as a private fleet of self driving cars.
codemac 7y ago
Completely agreed that buses need lots of love, especially in SF. However, Uber/Lyft exist, and this divide exists as we stand today. I really hope these are cheaper, and help us drive down the cost of transportation. Secondly, I'm very excited about areas that are subruban-ish where we could get rid of many many cars and use something like this instead.
npunt 7y ago
The only reason busses are the size they are is the labor cost of the driver only makes sense with many, many passengers. When that is eliminated, the equation changes. Even if these weren't point-to-point, smaller vehicles can a) serve more routes that would otherwise be below breakeven for minimum passengers served by a bus, b) be more comfortable for passengers to enter/exit, and c) take up less room on streets. Buses barely fit on streets, they only make sense on very dense thoroughfares as an alternative to rail.
- Nition 7y ago
  Plus it can come right to your house at (roughly) the time you want it. Closer to being like owning a car.
- eropple 7y ago
  Labor costs are the only thing? Fuel efficiency and traffic (how many double parked Ubers jamming a single lane road will I see tomorrow? Will it be more or less than half a dozen?) would like a word.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    How many empty or near-empty buses will you see driving around tomorrow?
    - snickerbockers 7y ago
      I guess it depends on where when and where you ride the bus, but every time I get on a bus in San Francisco its overflowing with people to the point that they have difficulty closing the doors.
      - baddox 7y ago
        That's because you want to ride on the popular bus routes, which isn't a coincidence. If lots of people wanted to ride on the empty bus routes, they wouldn't be empty—they'd be the overflowing ones!
zknz 7y ago
the photos imply to me that these are "micro" buses- they are shared as if you share the space with people unknown to you - https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/7bBqzbzAyUqFclbeGM16iq/b559f98959c716acf116dd2bf1fa7de8/CASTRO_RENDER_WEBSITE_CROP.jpg https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/7bBqzbzAyUqFclbeGM... The person is getting on a different place to the rest... ?
- baddox 7y ago
  That doesn't seem too unreasonable. The car-summoning services like Uber and Lyft already offer discounts for opting into shared rides where other riders may join you.
- prawn 7y ago
  I expect that you'd be able to pay a premium to get a vehicle to yourself (or use a different service that offers that). Otherwise you're at the mercy of their algorithms. Based on pickup and dropoff locations/times, each vehicle would pick 4-6 people from disparate locations and then work out the optimal route and drop schedule. You'd get a cheaper fare (or monthly subscription) in exchange for tolerating the extra pickups and dropoffs. Fewer stops than a typical bus, more nimble, and more flexibility with locations/routes. I imagine we'll see apps that offer a further discounted fare if you move closer to a thoroughfare for pickup or accept a dropoff short of your house (e.g., end of the street).
choathedolls 7y ago
America is not built for public transit and without huge federal investment in rebuilding communities, that will not change. Simply getting more buses on the road when you're dealing with pretty huge suburbs is going to get very costly -- and remember, public transit fares can't be expensive to pay the costs, they have to remain low. So you're talking about a huge uphill battle with suburb communities who a) don't want "shit" in their backyards and b) don't want to pay for it. So, this method is easier to roll-out, easier to bring profits from (especially with an ageing population who don't want to live in city centers), and can easily fit into nearly any community in America with ease. Ideally, you would be right, we would instead be investing in a massive public transit overhaul from trains to buses but as the saying goes, we do not live in a perfect world.
- prawn 7y ago
  "Simply getting more buses on the road when you're dealing with pretty huge suburbs is going to get very costly..." The service we're talking about with the Cruise vehicles (and "easier to bring profits from") is getting more buses on the road in huge suburbs, right? Why couldn't a service like this be purchased/leased by a community/city/state to become part of its public transport mix? It's not like this will be the only self-driving minivan in the future.
tlrobinson 7y ago
Alternatively: the more efficient and affordable version of “taxis”.
shadowgovt 7y ago
Unlike buses, this has a chance to pay for itself.
- fnord77 7y ago
  Why should public transit have to pay for itself? The downstream economic benefits of mass transit are enormous. Expecting transit to break even is a recipe for poor service
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    But the original question was "Why can't we just invest in buses?" And that's the answer. Who invests in something with negative ROI? (Which is, indeed, why so many mass transit systems are taxpayer-supported).
ebg13 7y ago
> Why can't we just invest in buses? True fact: Not everyone who needs a bus is able to get to a bus stop, which is why cities have door-to-door paratransit services. Does it make you feel better if this replaces that instead of replacing buses?
Glyptodon 7y ago
Because buses are miserable and waste time. In my city I stopped using the bus after it took 50 minutes to get home from somewhere 15 to 20 minutes away.
- acdha 7y ago
  The experience is bad because we don’t invest in them. Most cities have heavily prioritized single-rude vehicles and act like the resulting congestion is a natural part of life. If instead we had priority signals, lanes, etc. the experience would be far more pleasant. Unfortunately in most cities, however, that’s deemed a lower priority than more subsidized street parking.
  - baddox 7y ago
    You haven't actually proposed a solution though, because I have very little control over how much is invested in public transit, but I do have near total control over whether I take public transit.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    Widening a street to put extra lines isn't a small undertaking. I like taking the bus and chose where I lived based on transit availability but I would much prefer small buses that run more frequently. Bigger buses are only full a small amount of time each day, but then run slower because they have to make more stops, and when they're not full they still take up a lot of room and require a lot of energy to run. I'm so down with small self-driving buses.
    - ericd 7y ago
      At the risk of stating the obvious, you don't have to add extra lanes to make dedicated bus lanes, you just have to take lanes away from cars. Would not be popular, but if you could guarantee that these things didn't get stuck in traffic, and they ran frequently, I think they'd steal a huge amount of share from cars, and it would lessen the sting for many people.
rorykoehler 7y ago
A bus doesn't pick you up from where you are and drive the shortest route possible to drop you to exactly where you want to go. I'm really surprised people don't understand this. Every time this topic is discussed on HN the same question gets asked.
- baddox 7y ago
  And bus routes always somehow manage to offer two simultaneous problems: the bus stops are too far from your location and destination, and the bus stops so frequently that it takes forever to get anywhere.
chaostheory 7y ago
Because unlike the private sector, the public transit officials don’t listen to the public. For example, everyone from across the SF Bay Area have been clamoring for BART to get stainless steel seating like what NYC and HK have for years. Why? Because it’s more hygienic and it’s less smelly over time. However BART just keeps using either some fabric or plastic based seating. There are also only so many bus stops and it’s not on demand.
thebradbain 7y ago
This is a completely valid concern, too. I would hope that these fleets would be operated in conjunction with the city – or even be municipally owned – and integrated with the public transit system. I feel that these would be great for last-mile transit, however, or serve areas that don't have the population density for high frequency transit; in my mind, these complement busses, not replace them.
rasengan0 7y ago
https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4 https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4
mikl 7y ago
Because buses are in many ways a worse experience than taking a cab or driving yourself. Bus downsides: 1. Does not go from where you are to where you need to go. Having to go from and to bus stops increases travel time and reduces convenience. Even worse if you have transfers. 2. Scheduling issues. The bus may not go when you need it to. Late evenings, maybe not at all. 3. Stops lots of places where you don’t need to get off, making travel speed much slower. 4. Personal space problems. Having to sit thighs-touchingly close to strangers is unpleasant, and unless the bus is pretty empty, unavoidable. Even worse if it’s so full you have to stand. 5. Privacy problems. You can’t use the ride time to make a phone call, scratch your balls or do something else without having to share it with everyone around you. 6. Reliability problems. Depending on where you live, busses are often delayed or cancelled. 7. Noise problems. The bus is loud, the other passengers often noisy. 8. Comfort problems. Bus seats are usually a lot less comfy than a car seat, with less leg room, etc. Busses are cheaper than taxis, and in some ways more convenient than driving, but those advantages do not outweigh the downsides for most people.

This is analogous to micro transit - on demand, smaller buses or vans. One crucial difference, the most expensive cost is eliminated - the driver. Larger buses still have a significant place and will become much cheaper when the driver is gone.

Waterluvian 7y ago

I think you answered your own question. I want a door to door bus without the homeless guy and two kids yapping on their phones. I would love to never own or be responsible for a car ever again. Just summon them when needed or book them in advance.

ronilan 7y ago
Your wish will be summoned. Just make sure to never have kids and never fall on your luck.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Are you implying this replaces mass transit? I don't understand how that makes any sense. Why didn't cars replace mass transit? Why hasn't Uber killed mass transit?
  - jonstewart 7y ago
    Cars did replace mass transit in many cities. Many cities had better mass transit decades ago than they do now. And ridesharing companies have had deleterious effects on mass transit. They haven’t killed it, but studies are starting to show there’s been some harm and, at the same time, that ridesharing contributes to worsening congestion.
- adolph 7y ago
  Embrace the power of “and.” Public transit can coexist with whatever this future thing will be called.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Maybe. But the more well-off people crawl into cocooned experiences, the less they care about public infrastructure. Look, for example, at how suburbs not only often lack public transit themselves, but work to fight regional transit.
    - pb7 7y ago
      Well-off people are already the ones (involuntarily) funding the public infrastructure. No need to guilt trip any further.
      - wpietri 7y ago
        They are funding it less and less. And things like the wave of white flight and suburbanization in the 1960s and 1970s make it clear how comfortable well-off white people are doing that. In any case, I'm not arguing for guilt trips as a means of solving the problem. Instead, I think the right solution is the bedrock of any community: shared experience.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  Why no kids? I'm a dad without a car. I never wish I had a car.
  - jiofih 7y ago
    It’s about not having to “deal” with kids on the bus.
- baddox 7y ago
  I don't quite understand your argument. Should I enjoy sitting near people having violent mental health crises because I might one day have a mental health crisis? It seems to me that the compassionate approach would be to support the availability of mental health care. Being content with sharing public space with people suffering from mental health problems does not seem like a compassionate or helpful approach.
  - true_religion 7y ago
    You? Probably not but true OP was taking about kids on cellphones, and people who looked poor.
- puranjay 7y ago
  How is it ab absolutist either/or situation? You can have public buses as well as a private fleet of self driving cars.

codemac 7y ago

Completely agreed that buses need lots of love, especially in SF. However, Uber/Lyft exist, and this divide exists as we stand today. I really hope these are cheaper, and help us drive down the cost of transportation. Secondly, I'm very excited about areas that are subruban-ish where we could get rid of many many cars and use something like this instead.

npunt 7y ago

The only reason busses are the size they are is the labor cost of the driver only makes sense with many, many passengers. When that is eliminated, the equation changes. Even if these weren't point-to-point, smaller vehicles can a) serve more routes that would otherwise be below breakeven for minimum passengers served by a bus, b) be more comfortable for passengers to enter/exit, and c) take up less room on streets. Buses barely fit on streets, they only make sense on very dense thoroughfares as an alternative to rail.

Nition 7y ago
Plus it can come right to your house at (roughly) the time you want it. Closer to being like owning a car.
eropple 7y ago
Labor costs are the only thing? Fuel efficiency and traffic (how many double parked Ubers jamming a single lane road will I see tomorrow? Will it be more or less than half a dozen?) would like a word.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  How many empty or near-empty buses will you see driving around tomorrow?
  - snickerbockers 7y ago
    I guess it depends on where when and where you ride the bus, but every time I get on a bus in San Francisco its overflowing with people to the point that they have difficulty closing the doors.
    - baddox 7y ago
      That's because you want to ride on the popular bus routes, which isn't a coincidence. If lots of people wanted to ride on the empty bus routes, they wouldn't be empty—they'd be the overflowing ones!

zknz 7y ago

the photos imply to me that these are "micro" buses- they are shared as if you share the space with people unknown to you - https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/7bBqzbzAyUqFclbeGM16iq/b559f98959c716acf116dd2bf1fa7de8/CASTRO_RENDER_WEBSITE_CROP.jpg https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/7bBqzbzAyUqFclbeGM... The person is getting on a different place to the rest... ?

baddox 7y ago
That doesn't seem too unreasonable. The car-summoning services like Uber and Lyft already offer discounts for opting into shared rides where other riders may join you.
prawn 7y ago
I expect that you'd be able to pay a premium to get a vehicle to yourself (or use a different service that offers that). Otherwise you're at the mercy of their algorithms. Based on pickup and dropoff locations/times, each vehicle would pick 4-6 people from disparate locations and then work out the optimal route and drop schedule. You'd get a cheaper fare (or monthly subscription) in exchange for tolerating the extra pickups and dropoffs. Fewer stops than a typical bus, more nimble, and more flexibility with locations/routes. I imagine we'll see apps that offer a further discounted fare if you move closer to a thoroughfare for pickup or accept a dropoff short of your house (e.g., end of the street).

choathedolls 7y ago

America is not built for public transit and without huge federal investment in rebuilding communities, that will not change. Simply getting more buses on the road when you're dealing with pretty huge suburbs is going to get very costly -- and remember, public transit fares can't be expensive to pay the costs, they have to remain low. So you're talking about a huge uphill battle with suburb communities who a) don't want "shit" in their backyards and b) don't want to pay for it. So, this method is easier to roll-out, easier to bring profits from (especially with an ageing population who don't want to live in city centers), and can easily fit into nearly any community in America with ease. Ideally, you would be right, we would instead be investing in a massive public transit overhaul from trains to buses but as the saying goes, we do not live in a perfect world.

prawn 7y ago
"Simply getting more buses on the road when you're dealing with pretty huge suburbs is going to get very costly..." The service we're talking about with the Cruise vehicles (and "easier to bring profits from") is getting more buses on the road in huge suburbs, right? Why couldn't a service like this be purchased/leased by a community/city/state to become part of its public transport mix? It's not like this will be the only self-driving minivan in the future.

tlrobinson 7y ago

Alternatively: the more efficient and affordable version of “taxis”.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Unlike buses, this has a chance to pay for itself.

fnord77 7y ago
Why should public transit have to pay for itself? The downstream economic benefits of mass transit are enormous. Expecting transit to break even is a recipe for poor service
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  But the original question was "Why can't we just invest in buses?" And that's the answer. Who invests in something with negative ROI? (Which is, indeed, why so many mass transit systems are taxpayer-supported).

ebg13 7y ago

> Why can't we just invest in buses? True fact: Not everyone who needs a bus is able to get to a bus stop, which is why cities have door-to-door paratransit services. Does it make you feel better if this replaces that instead of replacing buses?

Glyptodon 7y ago

Because buses are miserable and waste time. In my city I stopped using the bus after it took 50 minutes to get home from somewhere 15 to 20 minutes away.

acdha 7y ago
The experience is bad because we don’t invest in them. Most cities have heavily prioritized single-rude vehicles and act like the resulting congestion is a natural part of life. If instead we had priority signals, lanes, etc. the experience would be far more pleasant. Unfortunately in most cities, however, that’s deemed a lower priority than more subsidized street parking.
- baddox 7y ago
  You haven't actually proposed a solution though, because I have very little control over how much is invested in public transit, but I do have near total control over whether I take public transit.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  Widening a street to put extra lines isn't a small undertaking. I like taking the bus and chose where I lived based on transit availability but I would much prefer small buses that run more frequently. Bigger buses are only full a small amount of time each day, but then run slower because they have to make more stops, and when they're not full they still take up a lot of room and require a lot of energy to run. I'm so down with small self-driving buses.
  - ericd 7y ago
    At the risk of stating the obvious, you don't have to add extra lanes to make dedicated bus lanes, you just have to take lanes away from cars. Would not be popular, but if you could guarantee that these things didn't get stuck in traffic, and they ran frequently, I think they'd steal a huge amount of share from cars, and it would lessen the sting for many people.

rorykoehler 7y ago

A bus doesn't pick you up from where you are and drive the shortest route possible to drop you to exactly where you want to go. I'm really surprised people don't understand this. Every time this topic is discussed on HN the same question gets asked.

baddox 7y ago
And bus routes always somehow manage to offer two simultaneous problems: the bus stops are too far from your location and destination, and the bus stops so frequently that it takes forever to get anywhere.

chaostheory 7y ago

Because unlike the private sector, the public transit officials don’t listen to the public. For example, everyone from across the SF Bay Area have been clamoring for BART to get stainless steel seating like what NYC and HK have for years. Why? Because it’s more hygienic and it’s less smelly over time. However BART just keeps using either some fabric or plastic based seating. There are also only so many bus stops and it’s not on demand.

thebradbain 7y ago

This is a completely valid concern, too. I would hope that these fleets would be operated in conjunction with the city – or even be municipally owned – and integrated with the public transit system. I feel that these would be great for last-mile transit, however, or serve areas that don't have the population density for high frequency transit; in my mind, these complement busses, not replace them.

rasengan0 7y ago

https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4 https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4

mikl 7y ago

Because buses are in many ways a worse experience than taking a cab or driving yourself. Bus downsides: 1. Does not go from where you are to where you need to go. Having to go from and to bus stops increases travel time and reduces convenience. Even worse if you have transfers. 2. Scheduling issues. The bus may not go when you need it to. Late evenings, maybe not at all. 3. Stops lots of places where you don’t need to get off, making travel speed much slower. 4. Personal space problems. Having to sit thighs-touchingly close to strangers is unpleasant, and unless the bus is pretty empty, unavoidable. Even worse if it’s so full you have to stand. 5. Privacy problems. You can’t use the ride time to make a phone call, scratch your balls or do something else without having to share it with everyone around you. 6. Reliability problems. Depending on where you live, busses are often delayed or cancelled. 7. Noise problems. The bus is loud, the other passengers often noisy. 8. Comfort problems. Bus seats are usually a lot less comfy than a car seat, with less leg room, etc. Busses are cheaper than taxis, and in some ways more convenient than driving, but those advantages do not outweigh the downsides for most people.