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> "Bus driver" is not exactly a high-paying job In my city, 70% of the operating budget is labor. > passenger safety An excellent way to ensure passenger saf

by xnx 2y ago

> "Bus driver" is not exactly a high-paying job In my city, 70% of the operating budget is labor. > passenger safety An excellent way to ensure passenger safety is not to share an enclosed space with someone dangerous. > When it comes to anything 'self-driving', the main goals should be to reduce road traffic and neighborhood pollution-by-parking-spaces. When it comes to transportation systems, the goals should be: safety, utility, reliability, convenience, speed, flexibility, efficiency, environmental impact (pollution, noise, etc.).

antithesis-nl 2y ago
> In my city, 70% of the operating budget is labor Link? Because, well, your city is certainly special! Unless, like, you group things like 'pension liabilities', and 'insurance involving personnel' under 'labor', which is... creative but not accurate.
- xnx 2y ago
  "Labor" $1.3 billion of $1.8 billion budget: https://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/blog/cta%E2%80%99s-fy2023-18-billion-operating-budget-approved https://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/blog/cta%E2%80%99s...
  - antithesis-nl 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - xnx 2y ago
      I didn't want to link to a PDF, but here you go (PDF page 41): https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/FY2025_CTA_Budget_Book.pdf https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/FY2025_CTA_Budget_...
  - xethos 2y ago
    You should probably know that "Labor" includes a hell of a lot more than drivers though. That's, at minimum, the tiremen to the body guys to the mechanics that maintain the busses. That's the electricians, the carpenters, the plumbers, that maintain the shop(s). That's the planners (that dictate "X bus will be due for an oil change this day, we need to make sure it's here"), the office administrators, the shop supervisors, the road supervisors. Paying the bus drivers does not account for 70% of the budget, I assure you.
    - xnx 2y ago
      Absolutely. Having so many drivers, and so much custom hardware, leads to a cascade of additional employees and expense for legacy transit systems. A transit system (self-driving cars) oriented around driverless vehicles and very lightweight support infrastructure (distributed charging, cleaning, repairs) can be much more cost efficient and agile.
      - xethos 2y ago
        I mean sure, drivers need support, but getting rid of drivers increases the support requirements. Drivers perform the legally-required pre-trip every time they leave the yard. This finds things that must be fixed. The coach will then spend 12-28 hours on the road (across multiple drivers), with a driver making sure anything that feels off gets reported. I've dealt with self-reporting systems in this area, and I do not have the words to tell you how much less I trust self-reporting than an 8 hour test-drive by someone that knows the bus. This skips over all the local police's missing person reports that show up for every driver that can help. Completely unrelated to the job of driving - but when it's my kid that doesn't come home, arguably more important to me. Drivers are sticking around, and I think a lot of people are confused about how much they do to keep things running
YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> An excellent way to ensure passenger safety is not to share an enclosed space with someone dangerous. US citizen? Can I ask, why is it that US citizens are so worried about dangerous people in public transport? Is it a rational concern or is it more of a -no offecne meant- preconceived idea? Is it something that's evenly geographically distributed or something you find more in certain places than others? I'm asking honestly and curiously and hoping more to clear up my own preconceptions than to enforce them. I do find it strange; because I use public transport basically all the time (I don't own a car). I live in the UK and some years I commuted daily by train to work and back. Otherwise I take the bus when I have far to go. I have consistently traveled between the UK and Greece by train and ferry boat for some 15 years now. I've never felt that I was in any kind of danger, although to be fair some times the London trains can be a bit of a pain in the ass on a Saturday night (too many drunken brits, but they're mostly harmless, and really just rowdy). I've been on some pretty wild lines too. For a few years me and a friend would take the night train from Paris to Venice, and back on the return. That's a sleeper train with six-person cabins. We rode it on through the years of increasing immigration waves from Africa through Italy to the North of Europe, so I've traveled with people with ... varied life histories for sure. Still, all this time, me and my friend's most memorable experience remains the time a Chinese gentleman was asked to open his luggage by border guards in Switzerland, at which point everyone in the compartment (and possibly the ones next door) was very clearly able to smell the large fresh fish he was carrying in his bag. They took him off the train because he didn't have papers. For himself, not the fish. I hope he reached his destination. I bet everyone would have been eager to fast-track him along. I mean, it's not the boring safety of sitting in your car but it's not dangerous. Only interesting. And the night train, when it careens through the Alps you're like a baby in the cradle, swaying gently and lulled by the sound of the rails. I miss that train. I think the company went bankrupt during the pandemic and they don't run anymore. That has complicated me and my friend's travel quite a bit in the last few years. So I have good experiences of public transit. What's the problem with US public transport? Why are people so worried about it?
- xnx 2y ago
  > US citizen? Yes. I understand that there is some enforcement on trains in Europe that you be a paying passenger. In metro trains in the US this is less common or non-existent. Because of the US inability to deal with drug, mental-health, and homelessness issues, public transit often ends up being shelter for a lot of people who have nothing to lose. The risk of being murdered is low, but the risk of an unnecessarily unpleasant experience is high: begging, harassment, groping, smoke-filled train cars, food scraps, having someone spit in your face, urine, vomit, and feces are stories every commuter has. Inter-city trains are generally fine.

by xnx 2y ago

antithesis-nl 2y ago

> In my city, 70% of the operating budget is labor Link? Because, well, your city is certainly special! Unless, like, you group things like 'pension liabilities', and 'insurance involving personnel' under 'labor', which is... creative but not accurate.

xnx 2y ago
"Labor" $1.3 billion of $1.8 billion budget: https://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/blog/cta%E2%80%99s-fy2023-18-billion-operating-budget-approved https://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/blog/cta%E2%80%99s...
- antithesis-nl 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - xnx 2y ago
    I didn't want to link to a PDF, but here you go (PDF page 41): https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/FY2025_CTA_Budget_Book.pdf https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/FY2025_CTA_Budget_...
- xethos 2y ago
  You should probably know that "Labor" includes a hell of a lot more than drivers though. That's, at minimum, the tiremen to the body guys to the mechanics that maintain the busses. That's the electricians, the carpenters, the plumbers, that maintain the shop(s). That's the planners (that dictate "X bus will be due for an oil change this day, we need to make sure it's here"), the office administrators, the shop supervisors, the road supervisors. Paying the bus drivers does not account for 70% of the budget, I assure you.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Absolutely. Having so many drivers, and so much custom hardware, leads to a cascade of additional employees and expense for legacy transit systems. A transit system (self-driving cars) oriented around driverless vehicles and very lightweight support infrastructure (distributed charging, cleaning, repairs) can be much more cost efficient and agile.
    - xethos 2y ago
      I mean sure, drivers need support, but getting rid of drivers increases the support requirements. Drivers perform the legally-required pre-trip every time they leave the yard. This finds things that must be fixed. The coach will then spend 12-28 hours on the road (across multiple drivers), with a driver making sure anything that feels off gets reported. I've dealt with self-reporting systems in this area, and I do not have the words to tell you how much less I trust self-reporting than an 8 hour test-drive by someone that knows the bus. This skips over all the local police's missing person reports that show up for every driver that can help. Completely unrelated to the job of driving - but when it's my kid that doesn't come home, arguably more important to me. Drivers are sticking around, and I think a lot of people are confused about how much they do to keep things running

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago

>> An excellent way to ensure passenger safety is not to share an enclosed space with someone dangerous. US citizen? Can I ask, why is it that US citizens are so worried about dangerous people in public transport? Is it a rational concern or is it more of a -no offecne meant- preconceived idea? Is it something that's evenly geographically distributed or something you find more in certain places than others? I'm asking honestly and curiously and hoping more to clear up my own preconceptions than to enforce them. I do find it strange; because I use public transport basically all the time (I don't own a car). I live in the UK and some years I commuted daily by train to work and back. Otherwise I take the bus when I have far to go. I have consistently traveled between the UK and Greece by train and ferry boat for some 15 years now. I've never felt that I was in any kind of danger, although to be fair some times the London trains can be a bit of a pain in the ass on a Saturday night (too many drunken brits, but they're mostly harmless, and really just rowdy). I've been on some pretty wild lines too. For a few years me and a friend would take the night train from Paris to Venice, and back on the return. That's a sleeper train with six-person cabins. We rode it on through the years of increasing immigration waves from Africa through Italy to the North of Europe, so I've traveled with people with ... varied life histories for sure. Still, all this time, me and my friend's most memorable experience remains the time a Chinese gentleman was asked to open his luggage by border guards in Switzerland, at which point everyone in the compartment (and possibly the ones next door) was very clearly able to smell the large fresh fish he was carrying in his bag. They took him off the train because he didn't have papers. For himself, not the fish. I hope he reached his destination. I bet everyone would have been eager to fast-track him along. I mean, it's not the boring safety of sitting in your car but it's not dangerous. Only interesting. And the night train, when it careens through the Alps you're like a baby in the cradle, swaying gently and lulled by the sound of the rails. I miss that train. I think the company went bankrupt during the pandemic and they don't run anymore. That has complicated me and my friend's travel quite a bit in the last few years. So I have good experiences of public transit. What's the problem with US public transport? Why are people so worried about it?

xnx 2y ago
> US citizen? Yes. I understand that there is some enforcement on trains in Europe that you be a paying passenger. In metro trains in the US this is less common or non-existent. Because of the US inability to deal with drug, mental-health, and homelessness issues, public transit often ends up being shelter for a lot of people who have nothing to lose. The risk of being murdered is low, but the risk of an unnecessarily unpleasant experience is high: begging, harassment, groping, smoke-filled train cars, food scraps, having someone spit in your face, urine, vomit, and feces are stories every commuter has. Inter-city trains are generally fine.