17 ms·

In microtransit, passengers order a shuttle van instead of having to take a bus

70 points by moino06 4y ago

hammock 4y ago
Why does no one talk about the private bus companies and the colectivos that are found throughout Central and South America? The system is amazing for anyone who has used it, compared to alternatives.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Perhaps tell us why it’s amazing and the road to where it is today. I think most can surmise that all forms of transit have been repeatedly tried all over the world. Sharing details and their applicability to other other municipalities are what will advance transit.
  - hammock 4y ago
    Sure. I’m not really an expert in how they work but if you speak Spanish they’re easy enough to use. Most cities have private bus companies that run their own routes. Where the bus is going is posted in the front on a piece of paper and you just hop on when you see one. The companies compete with each other so the routes often change, the prices are low and supply always meets demand. Colectivos are a different phenomenon. In certain meeting places there are combi buses (12 pax vans basically) each one going to a different place usually a suburb or a neighboring town or a landmark outside of town or somewhere within commuting distance. You pay a small fee and the driver will sit there until all the seats are full, and then drive to the destination. Sometimes you sit 5 min before departing, sometimes 30 min. But usually it’s not so bad and it’s far and away the cheapest way to get these longer distances reliably.
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      I like that. The certainty that the bus will only travel while full helps with planning, in a way. And of course keeps the cost down.
moviewise 4y ago
Via-shuttle is available in the SF Bay Area: https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/public-works/transportation-mobility/community-shuttle https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/public-works/...
- Tagbert 4y ago
  Yes, we have Via in Seattle, too. It picks up people and takes them to the closest light rail station or takes them home from the station. It has a fixed radius of operation and typically there are 2-5 people in the van. It is a feeder system to bring riders to light rail trains.
- moviewise 4y ago
  And the on-demand shuttle service is expanding to nearby towns: https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/via-cupertino-shuttle-service-to-expand-into-santa-clara/ https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/via-cupertino-shuttle-ser...
Proven 4y ago
kderbyma 4y ago
good for small towns.....cities no....not a good deal at all...
- tremon 4y ago
  Why?
  - killingtime74 4y ago
    Buses have higher economies of scale?
    - vel0city 4y ago
      Not if they're driving on routes where you only get maybe 2-3 riders an hour.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Answered you in comment below by accident.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Cities have the demand to support real transit which is vastly more cost and energy efficient. They have congestion which isn't helped much by shuttles compared to a bus or other high capacity transit. Congestion also slows the shuttle down so you need more shuttles and more depots. They also have more destinations at cyclable distances. Paratransit is for mobility for theose who can't drive in areas that can't justify a train or enough buses for a <1hr max wait time. It needs a larger per km subsidy to be affordable. Edit: apologies, responded to the wrong comment
  - ls15 4y ago
    > They have congestion which isn't helped much by shuttles compared to a bus or other high capacity transit Multiple simultaneously driving taxis can be replaced by one shuttle van at times or for routes where large busses would run mostly empty, because they lack flexibility.
zeroth32 4y ago
In Asia it is called marshrutka. It is amazing to see how US reinvents wheel and gives it cool names.
- AlbertoGP 4y ago
  Indeed, and in Germany it’s called "Rufbus” and that’s what you have in small villages where a regular bus service is not available. I know there are such in other countries but I don’t know the other names.
- Loughla 4y ago
  We already have this in my rural area in the states. There's a shuttle that picks people up to funnel them to either the local parking lot near the interstate (to catch a larger bus to the closest city center) or to disperse them to the 5 or 6 large employers across 3 counties. You call the company, they send a van. Usually you get picked up with two or three other people and it might take an hour to get where you're going (when a car could do it in 30-45 minutes in a direct route). Or you schedule a regular pick up, and they coordinate to have you ride with 10 or so other people, but the ride is a lot shorter. And it's 100% free. The large employers pay to subsidize its use for the entire area because they get such a value from it. You can get the shuttle to take you anywhere.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Also “jitney” in the Philippines (and formerly USA) or “dollar van” in NY
- pif 4y ago
  [OT] > In Asia it is called ... So a few billions of people, speaking a multitude of languages, all use the same name for a concept? How nice!
  - richiebful1 4y ago
    If I had to guess it comes from Russian маршрут/marshrut (route). Маршрутки/Marshrutkas in the former Soviet Union typically run on fixed routes just like busses.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
Aren’t these just subsidized taxis? They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, I don’t see how they ultimately bring down costs since you still need individual cars and drivers... Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an Uber/Lyft with anyone else despite selecting the pool option. Am I missing anything?
- phphphphp 4y ago
  I think you’re missing that the demand dynamics are different in underserved areas. They’re an alternative to a fixed bus route, so there’s a much greater tolerance for flexibility, i.e: 30 mins for one of these micro-transit buses to show up, and a 50% longer journey time vs. an Uber is very acceptable as a bus alternative, but an Uber rider would be very unlikely to accept that, which means Uber Pool is very unlikely to find a co-passenger whereas micro-transit is.
  - seltzered_ 4y ago
    Also woth noting in many cases these are intended to help link one in further out areas to existing mass transit infrastructure - IIRC Via in seattle has its service area to help one get from home to a link light rail station.
- pif 4y ago
  > They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, So what? The first and only point of a public transport system is, you know, transporting people. Limiting congestion and pollution comes very far in terms of priority, and only once the core mission is fulfilled.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    They can't transport many people either though.
    - 4y ago
ilauuk 4y ago
We have this in Jerusalem. At busy times the van takes up to around 6 people and at quiet times you're by yourself. At busy times your ride can take up to triple what it would have taken otherwise, because it makes stops for other people. Like 45 mins instead of 15, which makes it pretty unpredictable. You also often have to wait a while for it. They're called TikTak here. It's mainly useful for getting a direct ride where you'd otherwise have to take more than one bus.
kyletns 4y ago
This is amazing. Of course a full train or bus can be an order of magnitude more efficient, and so should be installed and run where there’s demand, but replacing the prohibitively-expensive private option of Uber with an affordable, if slower, city option is just… lovely!
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Do they pickup multiple passengers? It does seem like subsidized taxis, and not really "mass transit," but I'm glad it's helping people. I think a tram system powered by overhead lines is much more efficient, and better, they just need to lay the tracks. I think about Berlin and how you can get just about anywhere on the tram system, and if you are well behaved your trip could be, well, free.. [0] [0] https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/public-transport-in-berlin#:~:text=Berlin%E2%80%99s%20public%20transport%20system%20is%20a%20barrier%2Dfree%20system.%20You%20can%20enter%20stations%20and%20jump%20on%20and%20off%20trains%20without%20needing%20to%20show%20a%20ticket%20or%20scan%20through%20a%20ticket%20barrier.%20Considering%20this%2C%20it%20can%20be%20tempting%20to%20travel%20without%20a%20valid%20ticket.%20We%20highly%20recommend%20against%20this https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/public-transport-in-berl....
reidacdc 4y ago
We had something like this in the exurbs of Calgary in the 1970s, it was called "DART", for "Dial-A-Ride Transit". It was semi-on-demand, and not door-to-door. The scheme was, you called the DART line (from your land-line, obviously) and gave your address, and there was a mini-bus that made the rounds of the residential neighborhood, which would come to your address on its next round. It would then take you to the local transit junction point, a nearby shopping mall with several bus bays where a number of regular bus routes converged, and you would make your connection and complete your journey in the regular way. It seemed to me to be a reasonable way of efficiently delivering infrequent transit service to a large area, although I personally only used it a couple of times to visiit a friend.
- jmpman 4y ago
  I’ve imagined that self driving cars would fill in this “last mile” from the end destination to an air conditioned transit hub. Once you get enough density in a transit hub, the frequency and destinations should explode, making the network usable, even in car heavy towns like Houston.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    I don't see how. Once you have a car you may as well drive all the way there, and self driving makes it much faster. Then you have the convenience of the car when you get there. either way you need a parking lot for the car to sit in. Transit works best when you can get rid of a car. The cost of owning a car is very high, transit good enough that you would get rid of a car is only a little cheaper. Bad transit is only a little cheaper, but most people will just use their car. Note that I said a car: most people are in a family situation with more than one car (or at least more than one person who could get a car if they wanted one), so we can save money by having them get rid of one car and the other car is only used for those 5% tasks that transit isn't good for.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The self-driving cars in the parent poster's comment wouldn't be personally owned. They'd pick you up, drop you off, and then go get the next person. It wouldn't be doing much sitting in parking lots at busy times, and could park in municipal lots out of the busy areas at night.
bluGill 4y ago
Another bad idea that keeps coming back. Real experts have written about it. Start with https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.html https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.ht... and be prepared to read for a while to understand why this is not a good idea despite the hype.
- HonestOp001 4y ago
  It is the future, getting the large inefficient buses off the system is the goal. His thesis that the vehicles meander and no technology will fix that is refutable in that technology can identify opportunities to minimize inefficiencies. A good algorithm will create efficient routes for the flexible transit. Finally, the author is a public transit consultant. He is not going to be good for a reference when he is on one side of an item. He may be a subject matter expert, but he is blinded to what can be accomplished. Judging from other people’s comments from other countries, my thesis is more accurate.
  - chaos_emergent 4y ago
    Are buses that inefficient? Why is the objective to remove them, and by what measure are they inefficient?
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Buses require expensive drivers and so they are the most expensive form of transit. A small bus costs almost as much as a big on to run. A train costs more per trip, but a train typically has many more people on. In theory you could run a train for service where a small bus would work, but since nobody does that the fact that a train would cost a lot more for that service is irrelevant.
      - semi-extrinsic 4y ago
        Buses are far from the most expensive form of transit. High-speed ferryboats or helicopters probably claim that prize. I'm pretty sure airplanes are also more expensive, as are subways if you include the cost to build them in the first place, as well as cars if you include total cost of ownership.
woodruffw 4y ago
Make of this what you will: North Carolina’s cities used to have remarkably developed streetcar networks[1]. It is depressing and frustrating to see public authorities attempt to recreate the successes of public transport on fundamentally inefficient, commons-hostile substrates. [1]: https://www.ourstate.com/history-of-north-carolina-streetcars/ https://www.ourstate.com/history-of-north-carolina-streetcar...
- chrismartin 4y ago
  I live in a city with a "modern" streetcar. I even rode it to work for a few months. Two reasons why it's not great. 1. It shares busy streets with cars yet has zero ability to maneuver in traffic. If just one car is parked a few inches beyond the edge of the parking lane, the entire streetcar route is blocked. 2. The tracks trap bicycle tires and cause many bicycle crashes. This happened to colleague of mine, fortunately at low speed. There have been dozens of crashes and at least one death. Electric bus service is cheaper to install and has neither of these disadvantages.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Both of these are serious issues, and point to an underlying problem: cities have been re-planned around their streetcar networks, not with them in mind. Improperly planned, streetcars are just less mobile buses. There are known solutions to both of these: give streetcars unilateral right of way, isolate them from car traffic at intersections and stops, and give cyclists their own separated lanes. Depending on the city, electric bus service might be the right choice! But I'll note: we undid all of the things that make streetcars advantageous, and we could redo them with sufficient political will.
    - treis 4y ago
      Streetcars are always less mobile buses. You can do everything you suggest for buses and get the same benefits plus everything that being a bus offers you.
      - 4y ago
The-Bus 4y ago
NYC needs a broader bus network, but it doesn't need to use the existing large (or XL articulated aka bendy bus) to do so. Hong Kong has Public Light Buses that carry 1M passengers a day: https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_transport/minibuses/index.html https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_trans... Dollar vans effectively do this currently, but it's cheaper than any light rail or other solution, especially for outer borough transportation.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I take the buses in Brooklyn pretty regularly, and I don't find the routes themselves especially lacking[1]. But higher volume would be nice, and I'd be interested to see evidence presented that smaller buses would accomplish that (versus more dedicated bus lanes and high fines for blocking the lanes). [1]: https://new.mta.info/map/5261 https://new.mta.info/map/5261
whatever1 4y ago
Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time. I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the <10mph average speed that a typical bus that stops every 2 minutes achieves, and a 2mile commute can last easily 45 minutes. I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations. Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time, I park under my office building and I am never late (maybe 1/300 due to an accident). Oh and I always arrive dry. Commuting in general is bad. Commuting by bus is one of the worst things that us peasants have to deal with on a daily basis.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere). NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is all in contrast to how many bus networks in the US operate: they pick you up on the side of the highway, drive with the rest of traffic, and drop you off on either the highway or in a bus depot in the middle of nowhere.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    It's definitely a perception issue that's borne from some reality. Having taken buses in a few cities, I can say some buses were perfectly fine, clean, and felt dignified to ride. A utility of the commons. Some other cities, it felt like taking a vandalized back alley vending machine to work.
  - CodeWriter23 4y ago
    Sounds pretty good, if you overlook people smoking meth or crack, publicly urinating and defecating on the bus, violence, etc. Not unique to buses for sure. Thanks, but I'll keep my "polite society" vehicle and properly planned highways in Orange County.
midislack 4y ago
Where’s this all coming from lately? Seems that walkable cities (code for making vehicle ownership so expensive and onerous that only the elite can drive) and the push for public transit is a top down affair that is being force fed to the public not just via the usual media outlets, but also legions of GPT based Internet shills. It also seems very European. All the big cities already have buses and trains in the US. Outside these places it’s not only not practical, it’s totally infeasible. So who is making this push? WEF? Mayor Pete?
bdcravens 4y ago
The small city I grew up (about 30k) had a similar service in the 80s.
RF_Savage 4y ago
The greater Helsinki area municipal transit authority "HSL" had this years a go. You could hail a mini bus with an app if you had some friends with you. I guess it was not sustainable, even if it was well liked. As it got shut down after a few years.
nicwolff 4y ago
> These days, the service runs about 37,000 trips a week, Lentz said, or more than two and a half times the 26,000 rides the old bus system ran in a typical, pre-pandemic week. Are "trips" different from "rides" in some way that makes this arithmetic correct?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Sounds like a "trip" is roundtrip (two rides) - so 37,000 trips is 74,000 rides, which is more than deuce and a half times 26,000.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
Yessss!!! There is no best one-size-for-all solution for transportation, we need lots of different methods to select the best methods for the situation. Scooters, [e-]bikes, vans, trolleys, buses, subways, trains, funiculars. (And more that have yet to be invented; personally I hope for rentable e-assist pedi-cabs to take cargo like groceries home in cities without the need for a 2-ton+ vehicle) I think this van service combined with an "Uber Pool" model enables highly efficient trips that can supplement mass-transit. Within the planning of bus routes, there are always routes that will take a lot longer or require transfers, but are rarely taken; vans that can "go anywhere" would fill those gaps, without the need for profit-making (and without the discrimination and exploitation of taxis). From the article, here's why van supplementation can work: "For $1.6 million, we're providing well over twice as many trips and covering 100 percent of the city with a system that picks you up within 15 to 20 minutes of your request, versus a bus that was only running once an hour." It's more expensive [to the city] but it provides much greater mobility and time-saving for citizens. When you're a single mom and groceries are an hour ride one-way, and the bus only comes once an hour, and you work late, just getting food is a nightmare that takes 3+ hours at the end of a long day. Because of that, she may have to spend $25-50 on taxis (many grocery stores aren't open late), which further reduces her already stretched income. Supplemental transportation methods can solve this problem and transform quality of life for disadvantaged people in society.
- helloooooooo 4y ago
  This kind of strategy must be combined with changing the ways cities are built. Your last point about the single mom, this SHOULDNT be a problem. At all. How did people 100 years ago deal with not having access to food without a time consuming trip? They either grew their own, or they lived close enough to a place where they could buy it. The private automobile completely killed the idea of living close to what you need.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Originami 4y ago
    100 years ago there were no single moms. Unmarried births have increased from 19% in 1950 to 72% in 2010 for Africa-American women: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/12/ednext_XV_2_mclanahan_fig02-small.jpg http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/12/e... Largely due to the expansion of the welfare state which encourages single motherhood.
hunglee2 4y ago
in Hong Kong - especially in the New Territories - the mini-van is basically the main mode of semi-public transport. The '小巴' basically operate fixed routes, seats about 13, pick up and move per stop, but don't stop on empty stops unless called to do so via open outcry from a passenger who wants to get off at that spot. Somewhere in between taxi (entirely private, no fixed route) and bus (entirely public, fixed route). They're great, and generally missing from transportation systems in the Western world
patch_collector 4y ago
I recall Hong Kong's solution, at least when I was there a decade ago. You had the Metro with fixed rails for core routes, then double-decker buses that went to additional areas in large loops. Next were the green minibuses that had small loops, branching off from the other services. After that were red minibuses, which had specific pickup locations, then would drop you off anywhere nearby. All of which could be paid for using the same Octopus card. It was great.
- SeanLuke 4y ago
  I think Hong Kong can pull this off in part because so much of the city is long thin corridors which can be nearly entirely serviced by the metro, commuter train, by light rail in the new territories (and I guess the cable car). This covers a high percentage of commuter needs, and so buses, minibuses, and taxis are to some extent gap-fillers to get people from major arteries to the remaining small proportion of outlying destinations. It is great, you are right.
kevinpet 4y ago
I think this featured in Charlie Stross's novel Rule 34. His version includes what seems like dynamic rerouting based on willingness to pay a premium.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Sorting out the numbers here: - 15 vans. - 37,000 trips / week (6-day service). I suspect most are on weekdays. - 6,170 trips/day - 13.5 hour operation (5:30 am - 7 pm) - ~457 trips / hour - ~30 trips / van-hour I'm not sure how many seats per van, though I suspect 6--9 (3 rows of 3 seats). If a trip is 15 minutes, then that's an average of 7.5 passengers/trip. Keep in mind that net trips includes the deadhead (no passenger) portion. The ridership numbers seem unusually high to me. I'd be interested in seeing trip profiles. By comparison, BART in the SF Bay Area has an annual ridership of over 20 million, and over 104,000 weekday riders. (I also suspect a Bart rider is two trips.) Bart moves 3x what Wilson are claiming for weekly numbers, and roughly as many people in an hour as Wilson does in a day. The Transbay Tunnel can accommodate 24 ten-car trainsets per hour. Each car can carry more than 200 passengers at crush load, or 48,000 passengers/hour for the tube as a whole. https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars Put another way, microtransit is trying to shoehorn transit into a sprawl- and car-centric urban landscape. Dense development and well-travelled routes are what make transit efficient and viable.
Animats 4y ago
Santa Clara County, CA, had that in 1974-1975.[1] It was a failure. Mini-buses running around with zero or one passenger. The trouble is, there have to be a lot of people wanting roughly the same trip for mini-buses to work. Otherwise you're just running a taxi service with an oversized vehicle. It works when there's a common source or destination, such as an airport or a downtown area or a school. It doesn't work in a big diffuse area, where everybody wants a different trip. [1] https://trid.trb.org/view/52882 https://trid.trb.org/view/52882
erjiang 4y ago
In my past life I built and sold dispatch software for microtransit / on-demand rides. (UberPool as a service, more or less.) What this article doesn’t say: * Many, many cities have something similar already, but only for riders with disabilities. (“paratransit”) You need to schedule your ride the day before, but they will take you from door to door. * The cost per ride is quite high: more than $20 per ride, often. This cost is borne by the city, while riders pay little to nothing. In very few cases does it make financial sense - most places aren’t replacing their buses with microtransit. * The best utilization I’ve seen is on campuses, where there are a fixed set of stops in a small region, and a large population of people who can’t or don’t want to drive (maybe due to limited parking).
- anyoneworks 4y ago
  Istanbul has an oddly good system, where vans run a set route, but you can ask for them to stop wherever. I feel like this would be a better balance that would allow for greater coverage, while also lowering the cost of equipment and in the very least, eliminating the need to walk as much to a stop. It's also faster because it's basically a large taxi, so once the van is full, you only stop where the passengers need. This is only a supplement there, but I think it would work better than the majority of bus set-ups currently used.
riffic 4y ago
this (mini-buses, dial-a-bus as it was known in the 70s) was one of the patterns in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl020.htm https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl020.htm > Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up to six people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone, able to provide point-to-point service according to the passengers' needs, and supplemented by a computer system which guarantees minimum detours, and minimum waiting times. Make bus stops for the mini-buses every 600 feet in each direction, and equip these bus stops with a phone for dialing a bus.
karmakaze 4y ago
Back in the late-70s/early-80s the town I lived in had a thing called Dial-a-Bus which was longer than a minivan with maybe 10-15 seats, built lighter than a modern airport shuttle. It could pick you up from home and drop you off at an address, etc. I remember when the price jumped from 10 cents to 25 cents per ride. Prank calls were a thing unfortunately.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
These make good partners for bus systems that run lots of busses during rush hours but become infrequent or nonexistent at night and weekends. Including a few free rides on this service with a season ticket for a bus makes it much easier for people to go carless.
slackfan 4y ago
So... a taxi, or a route taxi like they have in Russia with extra steps.
8bitsrule 4y ago
I've often calculated how long I'd have to spend on mass transit to get to some desireable event and back - and decided, reluctantly, to skip it. Because the waits+rides would take longer than the event lasted. The option to use microtransit once a week would be well worth paying twice as much.

70 points by moino06 4y ago

Why does no one talk about the private bus companies and the colectivos that are found throughout Central and South America? The system is amazing for anyone who has used it, compared to alternatives.

1123581321 4y ago
Perhaps tell us why it’s amazing and the road to where it is today. I think most can surmise that all forms of transit have been repeatedly tried all over the world. Sharing details and their applicability to other other municipalities are what will advance transit.
- hammock 4y ago
  Sure. I’m not really an expert in how they work but if you speak Spanish they’re easy enough to use. Most cities have private bus companies that run their own routes. Where the bus is going is posted in the front on a piece of paper and you just hop on when you see one. The companies compete with each other so the routes often change, the prices are low and supply always meets demand. Colectivos are a different phenomenon. In certain meeting places there are combi buses (12 pax vans basically) each one going to a different place usually a suburb or a neighboring town or a landmark outside of town or somewhere within commuting distance. You pay a small fee and the driver will sit there until all the seats are full, and then drive to the destination. Sometimes you sit 5 min before departing, sometimes 30 min. But usually it’s not so bad and it’s far and away the cheapest way to get these longer distances reliably.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    I like that. The certainty that the bus will only travel while full helps with planning, in a way. And of course keeps the cost down.

moviewise 4y ago

Via-shuttle is available in the SF Bay Area: https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/public-works/transportation-mobility/community-shuttle https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/public-works/...

Tagbert 4y ago
Yes, we have Via in Seattle, too. It picks up people and takes them to the closest light rail station or takes them home from the station. It has a fixed radius of operation and typically there are 2-5 people in the van. It is a feeder system to bring riders to light rail trains.
moviewise 4y ago
And the on-demand shuttle service is expanding to nearby towns: https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/via-cupertino-shuttle-service-to-expand-into-santa-clara/ https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/via-cupertino-shuttle-ser...

Proven 4y ago

kderbyma 4y ago

good for small towns.....cities no....not a good deal at all...

tremon 4y ago
Why?
- killingtime74 4y ago
  Buses have higher economies of scale?
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Not if they're driving on routes where you only get maybe 2-3 riders an hour.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Answered you in comment below by accident.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Cities have the demand to support real transit which is vastly more cost and energy efficient. They have congestion which isn't helped much by shuttles compared to a bus or other high capacity transit. Congestion also slows the shuttle down so you need more shuttles and more depots. They also have more destinations at cyclable distances. Paratransit is for mobility for theose who can't drive in areas that can't justify a train or enough buses for a <1hr max wait time. It needs a larger per km subsidy to be affordable. Edit: apologies, responded to the wrong comment
- ls15 4y ago
  > They have congestion which isn't helped much by shuttles compared to a bus or other high capacity transit Multiple simultaneously driving taxis can be replaced by one shuttle van at times or for routes where large busses would run mostly empty, because they lack flexibility.

zeroth32 4y ago

In Asia it is called marshrutka. It is amazing to see how US reinvents wheel and gives it cool names.

AlbertoGP 4y ago
Indeed, and in Germany it’s called "Rufbus” and that’s what you have in small villages where a regular bus service is not available. I know there are such in other countries but I don’t know the other names.
Loughla 4y ago
We already have this in my rural area in the states. There's a shuttle that picks people up to funnel them to either the local parking lot near the interstate (to catch a larger bus to the closest city center) or to disperse them to the 5 or 6 large employers across 3 counties. You call the company, they send a van. Usually you get picked up with two or three other people and it might take an hour to get where you're going (when a car could do it in 30-45 minutes in a direct route). Or you schedule a regular pick up, and they coordinate to have you ride with 10 or so other people, but the ride is a lot shorter. And it's 100% free. The large employers pay to subsidize its use for the entire area because they get such a value from it. You can get the shuttle to take you anywhere.
selimthegrim 4y ago
Also “jitney” in the Philippines (and formerly USA) or “dollar van” in NY
pif 4y ago
[OT] > In Asia it is called ... So a few billions of people, speaking a multitude of languages, all use the same name for a concept? How nice!
- richiebful1 4y ago
  If I had to guess it comes from Russian маршрут/marshrut (route). Маршрутки/Marshrutkas in the former Soviet Union typically run on fixed routes just like busses.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

Aren’t these just subsidized taxis? They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, I don’t see how they ultimately bring down costs since you still need individual cars and drivers... Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an Uber/Lyft with anyone else despite selecting the pool option. Am I missing anything?

phphphphp 4y ago
I think you’re missing that the demand dynamics are different in underserved areas. They’re an alternative to a fixed bus route, so there’s a much greater tolerance for flexibility, i.e: 30 mins for one of these micro-transit buses to show up, and a 50% longer journey time vs. an Uber is very acceptable as a bus alternative, but an Uber rider would be very unlikely to accept that, which means Uber Pool is very unlikely to find a co-passenger whereas micro-transit is.
- seltzered_ 4y ago
  Also woth noting in many cases these are intended to help link one in further out areas to existing mass transit infrastructure - IIRC Via in seattle has its service area to help one get from home to a link light rail station.
pif 4y ago
> They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, So what? The first and only point of a public transport system is, you know, transporting people. Limiting congestion and pollution comes very far in terms of priority, and only once the core mission is fulfilled.
- bluGill 4y ago
  They can't transport many people either though.
  - 4y ago

ilauuk 4y ago

We have this in Jerusalem. At busy times the van takes up to around 6 people and at quiet times you're by yourself. At busy times your ride can take up to triple what it would have taken otherwise, because it makes stops for other people. Like 45 mins instead of 15, which makes it pretty unpredictable. You also often have to wait a while for it. They're called TikTak here. It's mainly useful for getting a direct ride where you'd otherwise have to take more than one bus.

kyletns 4y ago

This is amazing. Of course a full train or bus can be an order of magnitude more efficient, and so should be installed and run where there’s demand, but replacing the prohibitively-expensive private option of Uber with an affordable, if slower, city option is just… lovely!

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Do they pickup multiple passengers? It does seem like subsidized taxis, and not really "mass transit," but I'm glad it's helping people. I think a tram system powered by overhead lines is much more efficient, and better, they just need to lay the tracks. I think about Berlin and how you can get just about anywhere on the tram system, and if you are well behaved your trip could be, well, free.. [0] [0] https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/public-transport-in-berlin#:~:text=Berlin%E2%80%99s%20public%20transport%20system%20is%20a%20barrier%2Dfree%20system.%20You%20can%20enter%20stations%20and%20jump%20on%20and%20off%20trains%20without%20needing%20to%20show%20a%20ticket%20or%20scan%20through%20a%20ticket%20barrier.%20Considering%20this%2C%20it%20can%20be%20tempting%20to%20travel%20without%20a%20valid%20ticket.%20We%20highly%20recommend%20against%20this https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/public-transport-in-berl....

reidacdc 4y ago

We had something like this in the exurbs of Calgary in the 1970s, it was called "DART", for "Dial-A-Ride Transit". It was semi-on-demand, and not door-to-door. The scheme was, you called the DART line (from your land-line, obviously) and gave your address, and there was a mini-bus that made the rounds of the residential neighborhood, which would come to your address on its next round. It would then take you to the local transit junction point, a nearby shopping mall with several bus bays where a number of regular bus routes converged, and you would make your connection and complete your journey in the regular way. It seemed to me to be a reasonable way of efficiently delivering infrequent transit service to a large area, although I personally only used it a couple of times to visiit a friend.

jmpman 4y ago
I’ve imagined that self driving cars would fill in this “last mile” from the end destination to an air conditioned transit hub. Once you get enough density in a transit hub, the frequency and destinations should explode, making the network usable, even in car heavy towns like Houston.
- bluGill 4y ago
  I don't see how. Once you have a car you may as well drive all the way there, and self driving makes it much faster. Then you have the convenience of the car when you get there. either way you need a parking lot for the car to sit in. Transit works best when you can get rid of a car. The cost of owning a car is very high, transit good enough that you would get rid of a car is only a little cheaper. Bad transit is only a little cheaper, but most people will just use their car. Note that I said a car: most people are in a family situation with more than one car (or at least more than one person who could get a car if they wanted one), so we can save money by having them get rid of one car and the other car is only used for those 5% tasks that transit isn't good for.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The self-driving cars in the parent poster's comment wouldn't be personally owned. They'd pick you up, drop you off, and then go get the next person. It wouldn't be doing much sitting in parking lots at busy times, and could park in municipal lots out of the busy areas at night.

bluGill 4y ago

Another bad idea that keeps coming back. Real experts have written about it. Start with https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.html https://humantransit.org/2019/08/what-is-microtransit-for.ht... and be prepared to read for a while to understand why this is not a good idea despite the hype.

HonestOp001 4y ago
It is the future, getting the large inefficient buses off the system is the goal. His thesis that the vehicles meander and no technology will fix that is refutable in that technology can identify opportunities to minimize inefficiencies. A good algorithm will create efficient routes for the flexible transit. Finally, the author is a public transit consultant. He is not going to be good for a reference when he is on one side of an item. He may be a subject matter expert, but he is blinded to what can be accomplished. Judging from other people’s comments from other countries, my thesis is more accurate.
- chaos_emergent 4y ago
  Are buses that inefficient? Why is the objective to remove them, and by what measure are they inefficient?
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Buses require expensive drivers and so they are the most expensive form of transit. A small bus costs almost as much as a big on to run. A train costs more per trip, but a train typically has many more people on. In theory you could run a train for service where a small bus would work, but since nobody does that the fact that a train would cost a lot more for that service is irrelevant.
    - semi-extrinsic 4y ago
      Buses are far from the most expensive form of transit. High-speed ferryboats or helicopters probably claim that prize. I'm pretty sure airplanes are also more expensive, as are subways if you include the cost to build them in the first place, as well as cars if you include total cost of ownership.

woodruffw 4y ago

Make of this what you will: North Carolina’s cities used to have remarkably developed streetcar networks[1]. It is depressing and frustrating to see public authorities attempt to recreate the successes of public transport on fundamentally inefficient, commons-hostile substrates. [1]: https://www.ourstate.com/history-of-north-carolina-streetcars/ https://www.ourstate.com/history-of-north-carolina-streetcar...

chrismartin 4y ago
I live in a city with a "modern" streetcar. I even rode it to work for a few months. Two reasons why it's not great. 1. It shares busy streets with cars yet has zero ability to maneuver in traffic. If just one car is parked a few inches beyond the edge of the parking lane, the entire streetcar route is blocked. 2. The tracks trap bicycle tires and cause many bicycle crashes. This happened to colleague of mine, fortunately at low speed. There have been dozens of crashes and at least one death. Electric bus service is cheaper to install and has neither of these disadvantages.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Both of these are serious issues, and point to an underlying problem: cities have been re-planned around their streetcar networks, not with them in mind. Improperly planned, streetcars are just less mobile buses. There are known solutions to both of these: give streetcars unilateral right of way, isolate them from car traffic at intersections and stops, and give cyclists their own separated lanes. Depending on the city, electric bus service might be the right choice! But I'll note: we undid all of the things that make streetcars advantageous, and we could redo them with sufficient political will.
  - treis 4y ago
    Streetcars are always less mobile buses. You can do everything you suggest for buses and get the same benefits plus everything that being a bus offers you.
    - 4y ago

The-Bus 4y ago

NYC needs a broader bus network, but it doesn't need to use the existing large (or XL articulated aka bendy bus) to do so. Hong Kong has Public Light Buses that carry 1M passengers a day: https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_transport/minibuses/index.html https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_trans... Dollar vans effectively do this currently, but it's cheaper than any light rail or other solution, especially for outer borough transportation.

woodruffw 4y ago
I take the buses in Brooklyn pretty regularly, and I don't find the routes themselves especially lacking[1]. But higher volume would be nice, and I'd be interested to see evidence presented that smaller buses would accomplish that (versus more dedicated bus lanes and high fines for blocking the lanes). [1]: https://new.mta.info/map/5261 https://new.mta.info/map/5261

whatever1 4y ago

Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time. I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the <10mph average speed that a typical bus that stops every 2 minutes achieves, and a 2mile commute can last easily 45 minutes. I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations. Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time, I park under my office building and I am never late (maybe 1/300 due to an accident). Oh and I always arrive dry. Commuting in general is bad. Commuting by bus is one of the worst things that us peasants have to deal with on a daily basis.

woodruffw 4y ago
Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere). NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is all in contrast to how many bus networks in the US operate: they pick you up on the side of the highway, drive with the rest of traffic, and drop you off on either the highway or in a bus depot in the middle of nowhere.
- ehnto 4y ago
  It's definitely a perception issue that's borne from some reality. Having taken buses in a few cities, I can say some buses were perfectly fine, clean, and felt dignified to ride. A utility of the commons. Some other cities, it felt like taking a vandalized back alley vending machine to work.
- CodeWriter23 4y ago
  Sounds pretty good, if you overlook people smoking meth or crack, publicly urinating and defecating on the bus, violence, etc. Not unique to buses for sure. Thanks, but I'll keep my "polite society" vehicle and properly planned highways in Orange County.

midislack 4y ago

Where’s this all coming from lately? Seems that walkable cities (code for making vehicle ownership so expensive and onerous that only the elite can drive) and the push for public transit is a top down affair that is being force fed to the public not just via the usual media outlets, but also legions of GPT based Internet shills. It also seems very European. All the big cities already have buses and trains in the US. Outside these places it’s not only not practical, it’s totally infeasible. So who is making this push? WEF? Mayor Pete?

bdcravens 4y ago

The small city I grew up (about 30k) had a similar service in the 80s.

RF_Savage 4y ago

The greater Helsinki area municipal transit authority "HSL" had this years a go. You could hail a mini bus with an app if you had some friends with you. I guess it was not sustainable, even if it was well liked. As it got shut down after a few years.

nicwolff 4y ago

> These days, the service runs about 37,000 trips a week, Lentz said, or more than two and a half times the 26,000 rides the old bus system ran in a typical, pre-pandemic week. Are "trips" different from "rides" in some way that makes this arithmetic correct?

bombcar 4y ago
Sounds like a "trip" is roundtrip (two rides) - so 37,000 trips is 74,000 rides, which is more than deuce and a half times 26,000.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

Yessss!!! There is no best one-size-for-all solution for transportation, we need lots of different methods to select the best methods for the situation. Scooters, [e-]bikes, vans, trolleys, buses, subways, trains, funiculars. (And more that have yet to be invented; personally I hope for rentable e-assist pedi-cabs to take cargo like groceries home in cities without the need for a 2-ton+ vehicle) I think this van service combined with an "Uber Pool" model enables highly efficient trips that can supplement mass-transit. Within the planning of bus routes, there are always routes that will take a lot longer or require transfers, but are rarely taken; vans that can "go anywhere" would fill those gaps, without the need for profit-making (and without the discrimination and exploitation of taxis). From the article, here's why van supplementation can work: "For $1.6 million, we're providing well over twice as many trips and covering 100 percent of the city with a system that picks you up within 15 to 20 minutes of your request, versus a bus that was only running once an hour." It's more expensive [to the city] but it provides much greater mobility and time-saving for citizens. When you're a single mom and groceries are an hour ride one-way, and the bus only comes once an hour, and you work late, just getting food is a nightmare that takes 3+ hours at the end of a long day. Because of that, she may have to spend $25-50 on taxis (many grocery stores aren't open late), which further reduces her already stretched income. Supplemental transportation methods can solve this problem and transform quality of life for disadvantaged people in society.

helloooooooo 4y ago
This kind of strategy must be combined with changing the ways cities are built. Your last point about the single mom, this SHOULDNT be a problem. At all. How did people 100 years ago deal with not having access to food without a time consuming trip? They either grew their own, or they lived close enough to a place where they could buy it. The private automobile completely killed the idea of living close to what you need.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Originami 4y ago
  100 years ago there were no single moms. Unmarried births have increased from 19% in 1950 to 72% in 2010 for Africa-American women: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/12/ednext_XV_2_mclanahan_fig02-small.jpg http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/12/e... Largely due to the expansion of the welfare state which encourages single motherhood.

hunglee2 4y ago

in Hong Kong - especially in the New Territories - the mini-van is basically the main mode of semi-public transport. The '小巴' basically operate fixed routes, seats about 13, pick up and move per stop, but don't stop on empty stops unless called to do so via open outcry from a passenger who wants to get off at that spot. Somewhere in between taxi (entirely private, no fixed route) and bus (entirely public, fixed route). They're great, and generally missing from transportation systems in the Western world

patch_collector 4y ago

I recall Hong Kong's solution, at least when I was there a decade ago. You had the Metro with fixed rails for core routes, then double-decker buses that went to additional areas in large loops. Next were the green minibuses that had small loops, branching off from the other services. After that were red minibuses, which had specific pickup locations, then would drop you off anywhere nearby. All of which could be paid for using the same Octopus card. It was great.

SeanLuke 4y ago
I think Hong Kong can pull this off in part because so much of the city is long thin corridors which can be nearly entirely serviced by the metro, commuter train, by light rail in the new territories (and I guess the cable car). This covers a high percentage of commuter needs, and so buses, minibuses, and taxis are to some extent gap-fillers to get people from major arteries to the remaining small proportion of outlying destinations. It is great, you are right.

kevinpet 4y ago

I think this featured in Charlie Stross's novel Rule 34. His version includes what seems like dynamic rerouting based on willingness to pay a premium.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Sorting out the numbers here: - 15 vans. - 37,000 trips / week (6-day service). I suspect most are on weekdays. - 6,170 trips/day - 13.5 hour operation (5:30 am - 7 pm) - ~457 trips / hour - ~30 trips / van-hour I'm not sure how many seats per van, though I suspect 6--9 (3 rows of 3 seats). If a trip is 15 minutes, then that's an average of 7.5 passengers/trip. Keep in mind that net trips includes the deadhead (no passenger) portion. The ridership numbers seem unusually high to me. I'd be interested in seeing trip profiles. By comparison, BART in the SF Bay Area has an annual ridership of over 20 million, and over 104,000 weekday riders. (I also suspect a Bart rider is two trips.) Bart moves 3x what Wilson are claiming for weekly numbers, and roughly as many people in an hour as Wilson does in a day. The Transbay Tunnel can accommodate 24 ten-car trainsets per hour. Each car can carry more than 200 passengers at crush load, or 48,000 passengers/hour for the tube as a whole. https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars Put another way, microtransit is trying to shoehorn transit into a sprawl- and car-centric urban landscape. Dense development and well-travelled routes are what make transit efficient and viable.

Animats 4y ago

Santa Clara County, CA, had that in 1974-1975.[1] It was a failure. Mini-buses running around with zero or one passenger. The trouble is, there have to be a lot of people wanting roughly the same trip for mini-buses to work. Otherwise you're just running a taxi service with an oversized vehicle. It works when there's a common source or destination, such as an airport or a downtown area or a school. It doesn't work in a big diffuse area, where everybody wants a different trip. [1] https://trid.trb.org/view/52882 https://trid.trb.org/view/52882

erjiang 4y ago

In my past life I built and sold dispatch software for microtransit / on-demand rides. (UberPool as a service, more or less.) What this article doesn’t say: * Many, many cities have something similar already, but only for riders with disabilities. (“paratransit”) You need to schedule your ride the day before, but they will take you from door to door. * The cost per ride is quite high: more than $20 per ride, often. This cost is borne by the city, while riders pay little to nothing. In very few cases does it make financial sense - most places aren’t replacing their buses with microtransit. * The best utilization I’ve seen is on campuses, where there are a fixed set of stops in a small region, and a large population of people who can’t or don’t want to drive (maybe due to limited parking).

anyoneworks 4y ago
Istanbul has an oddly good system, where vans run a set route, but you can ask for them to stop wherever. I feel like this would be a better balance that would allow for greater coverage, while also lowering the cost of equipment and in the very least, eliminating the need to walk as much to a stop. It's also faster because it's basically a large taxi, so once the van is full, you only stop where the passengers need. This is only a supplement there, but I think it would work better than the majority of bus set-ups currently used.

riffic 4y ago

this (mini-buses, dial-a-bus as it was known in the 70s) was one of the patterns in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl020.htm https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl020.htm > Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up to six people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone, able to provide point-to-point service according to the passengers' needs, and supplemented by a computer system which guarantees minimum detours, and minimum waiting times. Make bus stops for the mini-buses every 600 feet in each direction, and equip these bus stops with a phone for dialing a bus.

karmakaze 4y ago

Back in the late-70s/early-80s the town I lived in had a thing called Dial-a-Bus which was longer than a minivan with maybe 10-15 seats, built lighter than a modern airport shuttle. It could pick you up from home and drop you off at an address, etc. I remember when the price jumped from 10 cents to 25 cents per ride. Prank calls were a thing unfortunately.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

These make good partners for bus systems that run lots of busses during rush hours but become infrequent or nonexistent at night and weekends. Including a few free rides on this service with a season ticket for a bus makes it much easier for people to go carless.

slackfan 4y ago

So... a taxi, or a route taxi like they have in Russia with extra steps.

8bitsrule 4y ago

I've often calculated how long I'd have to spend on mass transit to get to some desireable event and back - and decided, reluctantly, to skip it. Because the waits+rides would take longer than the event lasted. The option to use microtransit once a week would be well worth paying twice as much.