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How about we just make the job of driving a bus suck less by making it pay more and giving drivers more leeway to handle problems on their busses, and more supp

How about we just make the job of driving a bus suck less by making it pay more and giving drivers more leeway to handle problems on their busses, and more support from law enforcement for same, to address the shortage of workers? Then we don't need robo-busses and we can just use the non-robo busses we already have and perhaps even buy more of them, and setup more routes? The issues with busses are lack of coverage by the network and the shortage of drivers because it's an awful job that pays shit wages, both of which are down in large part due to lack of funding and the political will to allocate it. We don't need a computer to solve these issues.

daseiner1 2y ago
The problem with buses is that nobody wants to be on a bus with the people who are regularly on buses.
- taurknaut 2y ago
  Really? I take the bus all the time. It's just normal people. Unless this is an obscure reference about drug use in your neighborhood or something that's completely going over my head.
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    To be clear, the majority of bus takers in my experience (several large cities on the West Coast of the US) are perfectly nice people. But often enough as to be a nuisance there are individuals who are: severely mentally ill, openly using drugs or intoxicated, blasting music on their phones, hostile or aggressive, lecherous and intimidating towards female passengers.
  - nradov 2y ago
    This varies widely by area. In the SF Bay Area due to public policy failures in housing, mental health, and substance abuse, some of the main bus routes have turned into rolling homeless shelters. You don't always see that but it's pretty obvious on certain routes at certain times. This makes some normal people uncomfortable — particularly women traveling alone. Regardless of whether that reaction is rational or not, it's another factor that discourages normal people from riding the bus and causes them to vote against public transit funding.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      what public policy would you suggest?
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    there is pretty often someone crazy on the buses i take, both in SF and DC where i grew up. generally i dont feel unsafe but i also dont enjoy being in an enclosed space with someone losing their mind
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  And who exactly are you picturing would be riding a robo bus then? Or is this going to be an expensive bus for tech workers so they needn't rub elbows with the poors?
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    Counterintuitively, I would be likelier to take the bus if it were more expensive. My original comment is not about “the poors” and I am not a tech worker nor do I make “the big bucks”. Lower the pitchforks, please.
- cozzyd 2y ago
  maybe in some places, but usually the problems with buses are insufficient headways and lack of traffic priority.
  - seabass-labrax 2y ago
    The bus stops themselves are also a large consideration. Depending on the local climate one really needs a rain/wind shelter to make waiting comfortable enough, and it is obviously beneficial to have bins, seats and electronic departure boards. A very enlightened transport network would provide free Wi-Fi, but that might be asking for just a bit too much! All in all, I feel that the 'waiting' phase of catching a bus is often neglected, yet vitally important to the total experience.
    - cozzyd 2y ago
      The best way to improve the waiting component is to make it shorter, but indeed, most stops should have shelters (and they do, at least most of the ones I use in my city...) Wi-Fi might have made sense years ago, but there is good cell service everywhere.
      - xnx 2y ago
        > The best way to improve the waiting component is to make it shorter Or to be able to wait exactly at the point you're departing from instead of an arbitrary point outside.
        cozzyd 2y ago
        Assuming that there is on average more than one passenger per stop, this would increase wait times, no?
nytesky 2y ago
Bus drivers should be in their own cab. That would help a lot.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  You could say they already are, at least with regard to recent vehicles for the European market: https://www.powerprogress.com/news/mercedesbenz-delivers-citaro-hybrid-buses-to-transport-firm-in-rome/8012818.article https://www.powerprogress.com/news/mercedesbenz-delivers-cit... The driver's area is entirely separated by an internal door, with an optional hole in the glass for operators which take cash. These separating doors became most widely fitted after the COVID-19 outbreak (for the drivers' safety), but they were already in use in many European cities years before that.
triceratops 2y ago
If you increase wages you make buses either a) more expensive - less incentive for car drivers to switch (and you're hurting low-income passengers) or b) more loss-making - easier for car drivers to lobby politicians to kill them off. Bus fare is already pretty expensive when you consider the quality of service, speed, and convenience outside major metro areas. > due to lack of funding If there's a lack of funding, and there's tech that will make buses cheaper, it's a no-brainer to adopt it. > the political will to allocate it Willpower and political capital are limited resources. Why squander them when there are alternatives?
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > more loss-making - easier for car drivers to lobby politicians to kill them off. This logic only holds if you assume public services must make money and this is not a universal rule. Tons of public services hemorrhage money. It's called "spending money to get things" and we as a society have been doing it for basically as long as money has existed. > If there's a lack of funding, and there's a tech that will make buses cheaper, it's a no-brainer to adopt it. A regular car retrofitted to operate "autonomously" costs upwards of 100k by a quick google, and we're not talking a Mercedes here, we're talking a bog standard crossover. Busses cost near 6 times what that "autonomous" car costs for a boring one that a person drives, how much do you think a robo one will cost? Also worth noting, the prototype pictured in the article looks to move WAY fewer people than a standard city bus.
  - triceratops 2y ago
    > if you assume public services must make money and this is not a universal rule I don't assume that. But I'm not the electorate. > Tons of public services hemorrhage money And that makes them easy targets for cuts. I personally prefer having public services stick around to serve people. That means stiffening them against political attacks as much as possible, and taking easy wins if they're available. > how much do you think a robo one will cost? So now we're arguing the actual cost-benefit of the technology. That's a much better way to approach it than reflexively dismissing it.
  - 2y ago
constantcrying 2y ago
>We don't need a computer to solve these issues. Awful jobs that pay bad wages seem exactly what we want to solve with machines.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  Sure, except the machines some ten years in and who knows how many (tr)(b)illions of dollars still don't work.

daseiner1 2y ago

The problem with buses is that nobody wants to be on a bus with the people who are regularly on buses.

taurknaut 2y ago
Really? I take the bus all the time. It's just normal people. Unless this is an obscure reference about drug use in your neighborhood or something that's completely going over my head.
- daseiner1 2y ago
  To be clear, the majority of bus takers in my experience (several large cities on the West Coast of the US) are perfectly nice people. But often enough as to be a nuisance there are individuals who are: severely mentally ill, openly using drugs or intoxicated, blasting music on their phones, hostile or aggressive, lecherous and intimidating towards female passengers.
- nradov 2y ago
  This varies widely by area. In the SF Bay Area due to public policy failures in housing, mental health, and substance abuse, some of the main bus routes have turned into rolling homeless shelters. You don't always see that but it's pretty obvious on certain routes at certain times. This makes some normal people uncomfortable — particularly women traveling alone. Regardless of whether that reaction is rational or not, it's another factor that discourages normal people from riding the bus and causes them to vote against public transit funding.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    what public policy would you suggest?
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  there is pretty often someone crazy on the buses i take, both in SF and DC where i grew up. generally i dont feel unsafe but i also dont enjoy being in an enclosed space with someone losing their mind
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
And who exactly are you picturing would be riding a robo bus then? Or is this going to be an expensive bus for tech workers so they needn't rub elbows with the poors?
- daseiner1 2y ago
  Counterintuitively, I would be likelier to take the bus if it were more expensive. My original comment is not about “the poors” and I am not a tech worker nor do I make “the big bucks”. Lower the pitchforks, please.
cozzyd 2y ago
maybe in some places, but usually the problems with buses are insufficient headways and lack of traffic priority.
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  The bus stops themselves are also a large consideration. Depending on the local climate one really needs a rain/wind shelter to make waiting comfortable enough, and it is obviously beneficial to have bins, seats and electronic departure boards. A very enlightened transport network would provide free Wi-Fi, but that might be asking for just a bit too much! All in all, I feel that the 'waiting' phase of catching a bus is often neglected, yet vitally important to the total experience.
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    The best way to improve the waiting component is to make it shorter, but indeed, most stops should have shelters (and they do, at least most of the ones I use in my city...) Wi-Fi might have made sense years ago, but there is good cell service everywhere.
    - xnx 2y ago
      > The best way to improve the waiting component is to make it shorter Or to be able to wait exactly at the point you're departing from instead of an arbitrary point outside.
      - cozzyd 2y ago
        Assuming that there is on average more than one passenger per stop, this would increase wait times, no?

nytesky 2y ago

Bus drivers should be in their own cab. That would help a lot.

seabass-labrax 2y ago
You could say they already are, at least with regard to recent vehicles for the European market: https://www.powerprogress.com/news/mercedesbenz-delivers-citaro-hybrid-buses-to-transport-firm-in-rome/8012818.article https://www.powerprogress.com/news/mercedesbenz-delivers-cit... The driver's area is entirely separated by an internal door, with an optional hole in the glass for operators which take cash. These separating doors became most widely fitted after the COVID-19 outbreak (for the drivers' safety), but they were already in use in many European cities years before that.

triceratops 2y ago

If you increase wages you make buses either a) more expensive - less incentive for car drivers to switch (and you're hurting low-income passengers) or b) more loss-making - easier for car drivers to lobby politicians to kill them off. Bus fare is already pretty expensive when you consider the quality of service, speed, and convenience outside major metro areas. > due to lack of funding If there's a lack of funding, and there's tech that will make buses cheaper, it's a no-brainer to adopt it. > the political will to allocate it Willpower and political capital are limited resources. Why squander them when there are alternatives?

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> more loss-making - easier for car drivers to lobby politicians to kill them off. This logic only holds if you assume public services must make money and this is not a universal rule. Tons of public services hemorrhage money. It's called "spending money to get things" and we as a society have been doing it for basically as long as money has existed. > If there's a lack of funding, and there's a tech that will make buses cheaper, it's a no-brainer to adopt it. A regular car retrofitted to operate "autonomously" costs upwards of 100k by a quick google, and we're not talking a Mercedes here, we're talking a bog standard crossover. Busses cost near 6 times what that "autonomous" car costs for a boring one that a person drives, how much do you think a robo one will cost? Also worth noting, the prototype pictured in the article looks to move WAY fewer people than a standard city bus.
- triceratops 2y ago
  > if you assume public services must make money and this is not a universal rule I don't assume that. But I'm not the electorate. > Tons of public services hemorrhage money And that makes them easy targets for cuts. I personally prefer having public services stick around to serve people. That means stiffening them against political attacks as much as possible, and taking easy wins if they're available. > how much do you think a robo one will cost? So now we're arguing the actual cost-benefit of the technology. That's a much better way to approach it than reflexively dismissing it.
- 2y ago

constantcrying 2y ago

>We don't need a computer to solve these issues. Awful jobs that pay bad wages seem exactly what we want to solve with machines.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Sure, except the machines some ten years in and who knows how many (tr)(b)illions of dollars still don't work.