12 ms·
Uber to introduce fixed-route shuttles in major US cities
- mouse_ 1y agoGreat idea
- blinded 1y agoGuess the sarcastic response would be: "so a bus?"
- jrflowers 1y agoIt is also not sarcastic to point out that a bus is a bus.
- babyshake 1y agoIf it is busses that show their live position and ETA until your pickup location, that would be a significant improvement on the status quo. Bus schedules tend to be pretty unreliable in areas with traffic.
- dafugg 1y agoBusses already do that in many places around the world and seem to handle variable traffic as gracefully as possible.
- bko 1y agoSo I guess the question is why isn't this available in many other places? The technology has been available for a long time. In a free market you would allow competitors to enter with a better product and displace the one that's falling behind. Hopefully this will be a step in the right direction
- danans 1y ago> So I guess the question is why isn't this available in many other places? Probably because voters and politicians in those places don't value public transportation.
- dkkergoog 1y ago[dead]
- gamblor956 1y agoOutfitting hundreds or thousands of busses costs a lot of money. Maintaining the equipment costs more money. The lack of availability comes down to priorities. Most bus agencies don't have the spare cash lying around to do this.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoBuses also tend to destroy roads. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-damage-1000-cars/283-2cf2e8bf-3add-4fed-b598-6d7570a9799d https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-da...
- ryoshoe 1y agoReal-time bus tracking is available in the all the cities Uber is testing this service in.
- jasonhong 1y agoMy colleagues who studied this issue told me that there were several patents on bus tracking, making it cost prohibitive for many cities. It also led to the Tiramisu project, which used people's smartphones to track buses and how crowded those buses were. https://tiramisutransit.com/ https://tiramisutransit.com/
- fidotron 1y agoPublic transit agencies are not free to pick the best suppliers; there are political considerations at best and outright corruption at worst.
- kimbernator 1y agoIt's really hard to see this as an improvement to publicly funded systems when there's not really any reason we couldn't have this in said systems. This is yet another erosion to public ownership of infrastructure that will be lauded by hyper-capitalists as a good thing. This whole "enshittification" trend occurs because of the pressure to constantly squeeze a percent more out of consumers each quarter than the last. Why are we handing everything over to that? This service is -literally- guaranteed to get worse and/or more expensive over time.
- apsurd 1y agoThe reason I run into when thinking on late stage capitalism improvements is: "People want the chance to be rich". We vote and support all this private ownership because we want to keep that window open that that owner could be us. Renters bemoan their landlord and also they're reading how to invest in real estate, rent out an ADU, and run 5 airbnbs. It's always real estate for your average person to climb the wealth ladder. I'm stuck on that reality, people don't seem to want shared resources?
- piva00 1y agoBusses already do that, I can look up right now where the next bus on my stop is, its ETA (also displayed on the stop's signaling), and it's usually right on time.
- mdeeks 1y agoSmall point: I think the ETA is based on the position of the bus and how long it would take to drive to your stop in perfect conditions. It doesn't take into account traffic or any other road blockages or accidents like Google Maps or others. At least this is how I've observed it working here on AC Transit in the bay area. Many times I have sat at a bus stop for 25 minutes waiting for a bus that was always five minutes away.
- piva00 1y agoIt does consider traffic, reroutes in case of need, etc. but that doesn't really affect bus times here, heavy traffic roads have exclusive bus lanes, inner roads don't tend to have much traffic even during rush hour.
- cguess 1y agoHere in NYC the MTA bus time app is pretty accurate, Google Maps's timing for bus arrivals I've never seen be accurate on the other hand.
- a2128 1y agoI live in a second-world country and we have had live bus position tracking and ETA since about 8 years ago. In some countries like Netherlands, bus stops can even have LCD displays that show you a live ETA or any disruptions/cancellations without needing an app
- arprocter 1y agoThe MTA in NYC can't seem to make this work correctly for trains At our (penultimate aboveground) stop you can look down the track and see if there are any trains waiting - even if there aren't, the live board still likes to claim there's one 'coming in a minute' My only guess is it works off of what should be happening, and not what actually is going on
- cguess 1y agoIt works fine for the trains and busses, you either don't live in NYC or don't know what you're talking about? The MTA app and displays are almost dead on accurate for arrival times for the busses and trains. Sometimes there's a minute or so of a difference from reality but that's more than small enough to be useful.
- arprocter 1y agoI was talking specifically about the display boards, not the app
- subpixel 1y ago? This has been standard for a long time even in the US
- Suppafly 1y agoThe thing with these startups, and Uber in general, is that they are forcing these industries to do the upgrades in technology that should have done on their own already but weren't doing because they had the industry captured previously. The downside to Uber is that there is little stopping taxi and bus services from improving their end user experiences and pushing Uber back out of those spaces. Buses at least are ran by municipalities that are slow up change, so Uber has time to get established there. It's insane that taxis didn't kill Uber in it's infancy though.
- blitzar 1y agoLike this? https://traintimes.org.uk/map/london-buses/#9 https://traintimes.org.uk/map/london-buses/#9
- rsynnott 1y ago... I'm not sure I've been anywhere where they don't do that in the last few years? It's inherently a little unreliable (in particular, it's hard to know ahead of time what dwell time at a stop will be, or if the bus will even need to stop at the stop), but it's fairly standard these days. This thing is a good interface to them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(app) In many countries bus stops also have electronic signs indicating when the next buses are coming. Here's a thing from 15 years ago about their introduction in Dublin, which is not exactly world-leading, transport-wise: https://www.archiseek.com/discussion/topic/rtpi-coming-to-a-bus-stop-near-you/ https://www.archiseek.com/discussion/topic/rtpi-coming-to-a-...
- nickff 1y agoThere are many places where private busses are the norm; in many countries these private operates have been crowded-out by subsidized governmental competitors, but there may be room for some now.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoI miss the Peter Pan bus system in western Massachusetts. Last time I rode buses daily. https://peterpanbus.com/locations/massachusetts/ https://peterpanbus.com/locations/massachusetts/
- oblio 1y ago> There are many places where private busses are the norm And 90% of those places are developing countries, just sayin'.
- riehwvfbk 1y agoWell, no. In a low density US city a bus route goes into all the places where nobody is waiting in the name of increasing coverage. Adding more routes is impossible due to lack of funding. This makes it take 2-3 times as long as a car to get anywhere, which it then makes buses transportation of last resort. Which further decreases ridership and funding. A municipal service cannot implement on-demand hailing because it has to serve the one or two people who can't use a phone (never mind that it would be cheaper to hire a personal assistant for them to book their rides). And so innovation is left to private enterprises. Here come the downvotes! However, on a sibling thread about on-demand buses in China the same folks will praise innovation...
- vineyardmike 1y ago> Here come the downvotes! Government/municipal transit exists, in part, to service a “long tail” of need among the residents. Its goal is not innovation but reliable presence for many. There is room for private taxis, buses and trains full of people, private cars, bikes, etc. in the wide distribution of transportation modes.
- bluGill 1y agoTransport depends on a good network of places you can get to. That is why transit tends to be a monopoly - if there are two players there are places you can't get to so you want whoever you selected to serve more places. Note that I count roads as one of your transport networks.
- paddy_m 1y agoAnother thing that happens is that social services (healthcare, DMV, probation office, welfare) move offices out of expensive transit dense areas to cheap far flung offices. Then local governments force bus routing to these places, it leads to a miserable experience for everyone involved. The best measure of a transit project is "How many people use this per day". ie is it doing something valuable. Note: I don't know of a solution for this other than more holistic government service planning. I do think it's valuable and good that those in need of government services can get there without a car. But it isn't always the sole fault of transit agencies that they have low ridership slow busses.
- dmix 1y agoIt says maximum of 3 people in a ride (at least the current plan) so not really.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- MentatOnMelange 1y agoSo its like a more expensive version of public transportation, that also causes more traffic congestion and pollution because you've got a ton of cars on the road doing the job of a single bus/trolley/train
- SonOfKyuss 1y agoIt seems like it is targeted at people who currently commute by car. It could be a net benefit if the number of car riders who use it outnumber the amount of people it cannibalizes from public transportation.
- delfinom 1y agoThis is actually just competing with exhausting "competiton" in this space. In NYC we got dollar vans. https://queenseagle.com/all/dollar-van-transit-system https://queenseagle.com/all/dollar-van-transit-system
- Suppafly 1y agoMy kid was in the hospital in Chicago and there were a ton of shuttles that run routes between the various hotels and the hospital. In a big city, shuttles have a lot more flexibility than buses. While I don't know if Chicago has something akin to dollar vans, I could see it really working if those shuttles all just added a few extra stops. A lot of cities have shuttles organized to do the routes between colleges and bars, usually owned and managed by the bars themselves.
- bko 1y agoThe whole argument about "inefficiency of duplicative services" is an idea that needs to die. Whether its the Soviet Union trying to optimize shampoo production to create a single "shampoo" brand or a health care provider requiring a "certificate of need" [0] to open up, the results are always the same: no competition, bad service, low supply and high prices [0] https://www.health.ny.gov/facilities/cons/ https://www.health.ny.gov/facilities/cons/
- 1y ago
- vlovich123 1y ago> The routes, which are selected based on Uber’s extensive data on popular travel patterns, might have one or two additional stops to pick up other passengers. This is a blindspot Uber will have on traffic that’s not currently serviced by their taxi model but maybe could be serviced by a shuttle. But maybe that traffic is riskier / more volatile since it’s not on Uber already. Interesting optimization problem.
- biophysboy 1y agoUber’s next step should be to connect the shuttles together to increase volume and create a dedicated, isolated route to increase efficiency. Then they can call it “Transport AI Network” or TRAIN for short
- techterrier 1y agoyou are AdamSomething and I claim my £10
- biophysboy 1y agoI didn’t know who AdamSomething is until now but I can see the resemblance :). Thanks for the rec
- kylehotchkiss 1y ago:slow-clap:
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aanet 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- arccy 1y agomaybe gamified busses will convince people to use public transport instead of driving everywhere.
- orange_joe 1y agothey rolled this out to NYC a month or two ago. They were airport shuttles with an initial price of $10 and will go to $25. It was dramatically more comfortable than taking the subway and then transferring to the air train and the normal price is honestly fairly competitive against the subway + air train (~$12).
- bsimpson 1y agoUber Shuttle leaves from Atlantic Terminal, which is also the home of the LIRR. It's a train that goes to the airport on a fixed schedule. More comfortable and reliable than the Subway for $2 more.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoI have a place near Penn Station and take the LIRR to JFK almost religiously. But the most expensive part of the journey is the Uber to Penn. Having a shuttle that picks me up at my apartment and deposits me in Jamaica would be a solid pitch against the LIRR.
- bsimpson 1y agoThat sounds like the old Super Shuttle (which I know from CA, not NY). I thought Uber's offering was more like a bus - you meet at the terminal and it takes you to the airport.
- 1y ago
- pasc1878 1y agoUber have been running fixed route shuttles in London since 2020 albeit they use boats https://www.thamesclippers.com/plan-your-journey/route-map https://www.thamesclippers.com/plan-your-journey/route-map
- LatteLazy 1y agoWell… it’s operated by a company called Thames Clipper Uber just bought the naming rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Clippers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Clippers
- blitzar 1y agoUber also invented fixed route shuttles running on "metal rails" in the UK. https://www.uber.com/gb/en/ride/travel/trains/ https://www.uber.com/gb/en/ride/travel/trains/
- nicoritschel 1y agoSan Clemente (south of LA) replaced local bus service with subsidized ($2)lyft rides for a select list of pickup/dropoff spots a few years ago. I receive vouchers every month just for having used Lyft in the town. Similar; surely more expensive big picture, but far more convenient.
- danans 1y agoCasual carpool has been doing this in San Francisco for 30 years, no billion dollar corporation needed: https://sfcasualcarpool.com/ https://sfcasualcarpool.com/
- gorfian_robot 1y agoSF at it's best
- mdeeks 1y agoI know everyone thinks this is a bus, but as a regular bus commuter in the bay area, I think there is room to expand here that a bus can't always meet. A few problems: * Bus stops are often far from homes and offices * There’s rarely parking near stops so you can't drive to it * Routes are fixed and rarely change. * The process for petitioning for a new stop is painfully slow and done based on rough approximation of demand, community input, budgeting, and other red tape. I can't even guess what data they use to decide. * Many people can’t or won’t walk long distances to reach it. * The websites, maps, and schedules for buses are often very bad and hard to interpret I can see someone like Uber filling a gap here with a shuttle service (not low density cars or SUVs). * They have hundreds of thousands of users in a metro area. * Get those users to enter where they live, where they need to go, and roughly at what time. * They find a group ~30 people with similar locations, routes, destinations, and times to create a route * It doesn't have to be door to door. Just an acceptable walking distance at both ends. * Dedicated stops don't have to be approved and built. Just pull over on a major street. * It is extremely easy to use Uber No idea if this can be made economical of course. It also sounds like a really hard problem to solve.
- bsimpson 1y agoThis sounds a lot like Chariot, which tried to augment SF's bus routes in 2014.
- levocardia 1y agoAlso, importantly: * There is an accountability component where if you behave badly you will be banned from the shuttle service
- ceejayoz 1y agoThat's entirely possible on buses. https://smdp.com/news/newsom-signs-bill-allowing-big-blue-bus-bans-for-offenders/ https://smdp.com/news/newsom-signs-bill-allowing-big-blue-bu... > Current law allows organizations like the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) to issue prohibition orders. BART is the only such agency that has actually issued prohibitions in California, giving out 1,118 such orders from 2019-2022. About 30% of orders issued by BART in 2022 were for battery or threats against riders.
- Yizahi 1y agoUber Shuttle works in my home city since 2019. It's Kyiv, 3mil population, ancient public transportation network but probably a bit better than USA (by hearsay). While it was working in normal conditions (before Covid and war) it wasn't that good. Routes were limited and timing iffy. Inside it was a regular small bus, so nothing fancy. And more expensive that public transport. So it is a serviceable transportation if there are no normal bus available at your route and at the same time uber shuttle route is matching yours. But any proper city transport beats them on all counts. PS: from the article it seems this is not about Uber Shuttle feature, but a different new ride share feature. Anyway, I'll leave my comment, but consider that it is not quite relevant.
- timerol 1y ago> but probably a bit better than USA (by hearsay). The only thing I know about Kyiv's transit is one tweet (https://twitter.com/threestationsq/status/1572163173066706944 https://twitter.com/threestationsq/status/157216317306670694...), and that makes me confident that it has better transit than any US city other than possibly NYC.
- ModernMech 1y agoChariot?
- robotburrito 1y agoSo will this end up destroying public transit for them to eventually 6x the price?
- bdamm 1y agoPublic transit is a joke in marginally services areas anyway. Wherever public transit is already working well it will likely continue to do well. Competition is good, and if your life depends on subsidized transit, well, yeah you might end up bearing more of the cost. I don't personally see a problem with that.
- kurtis_reed 1y agoBusiness doesn't actually work like that
- doener 1y agoUber invents … the bus.
- tokai 1y agoFor everyone saying this isn't a bus service because they pick you up and modify routing; that concept is called a Telebus and is over 50 years old.
- dogman144 1y ago- Uber builds a bus - Uber asks to use bus lanes because because once again, and ITT, private sector frames public sector as “a peer product” that should have competition because this is America and so on - Uber gets access to bus lanes - pub transit degrades bc now it shares service with competition that operates under an entirely different model. A lion is introduced into a zoo with house cats, but hey they’re both cats and think of the zoo observers, they deserve options! - Taxpayers fund Uber and buses, only one has the revenue model to provide unbiased social good - Buses, like Amtrak and pub transit, degrade and degrade and degrade - look how government can’t do anything! Turning a profit” for public services is the most harebrained meme that is simultaneously deeply damaging and continually propagated by certain folks, to include ITT. Or we could just all get mercenaries for our burbclaves. Not like police turn a profit either!
- mmooss 1y agoYou forgot the step where, after public transit competition is crushed, they raise prices.
- yewW0tm8 1y agoBest part is this urban areas, commuting just a few miles a day. We should be doing the opposite; reducing traffic except for those with mobility issues and for utilitarian situations like deliveries and moving large objects. Everyone that can walk/bike should.
- ardit33 1y agoMost of BUS lanes in NYC are not fully occupied. 2/3rd of the time they are just sit empty. But, I agree on the part that they will slow down a bit existing public transportation, but, if Uber served routes that are currently difficult to reach, it has public service as well. Why would someone pay $10 for the Uber service, meanwhile the local one is just $3? There is a good chance that the local bus doesn't cover certain areas properly, or stops too frequently, making it a slow trip for regular commuters. Ps. In Europe there is both public and private trains, both running the same tracks. I don't see a problem with this.
- ardit33 1y agoGood idea for certain routes: But "like between Williamsburg and Midtown in NYC" -- That's route is baffling and probably not needed. There is already a subway, (L then Transfer to 1-6 lines, or R/W). During peak hours, the subway is faster.
- teqsun 1y agoNo one here wants to admit that personal safety is a major factor in avoiding some forms of public transit in many cities in America. This model has the chance to succeed based on that alone.
- mcphage 1y ago> No one here wants to admit that personal safety is a major factor in avoiding some forms of public transit in many cities in America. Is there any data backing this up? Is it from the same people who think nobody rides the NYC subway for safety reasons, despite there being over 3 million riders per day?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> personal safety is a major factor in avoiding some forms of public transit in many cities in America Perceived safety and comfort. Buses are safer than cars [1]. The problem is you might have someone who hasn’t managed their BO in a week sitting next to you, and that’s frankly happened enough time to me that I don’t take it in New York or the Bay Area anymore. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5906382/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5906382/
- vel0city 1y agoYou're way more likely to die riding in your car than riding public transit. It's not even close. Riding in your car is likely the most dangerous thing you'll do and yet people just act like it's a totally safe thing to do.
- potato3732842 1y agoNobody(TM) is worried about the tiny risk of dying. They're worried about the risk of being victim of a crime or other unpleasantry at the hand of someone else, a risk which is small and fairly up to change on transit but damn near zero for most people in their own car and if not nearly zero almost completely up to them and how they conduct themselves.
- 1y ago
- MaxMonteil 1y agoInteresting to see the contrast with this other post here [0]. US offers a more "bus-like" service and Shanghai offers a more "Uber-like" bus service. Like some kind of carcinization in public transport. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43980845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43980845
- epmatsw 1y agoReminds me of Chariot from back in the day. That was nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_(company)
- wenc 1y agoThis sounds like something Via is doing https://ridewithvia.com/ https://ridewithvia.com/ I signed up for Via in Chicago but it didn’t quite work out for me. I guess Uber’s network is bigger so high probability of coincidence routes.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoProject 2025 calls for massive cuts to public transit and instead give money and tax breaks to companies like Uber and Lyft to provide transit instead. This is just Uber getting ready for that phase of the plan.
- gwbas1c 1y agoI wonder if this could put a real dent in rush hour? (Letting my imagination wander a bit) If everyone on the highway did this... Could Uber be more convenient than public tranit? Would they be able to regularly group passengers so that people are picked up and dropped off nearby? Could Uber be cheaper than parking garages in large cities? Could this put such a large dent in the number of cars on the road that traffic moves faster?
- exiguus 1y ago> In Europe this is called public transportation Just kidding! This comment reminds me of how Uber's leadership underwent a complete overhaul due to their questionable business practices. It seems like not much has changed, and they're still trying to exploit the public for their own profit. To learn from them, i can highly recommand: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321080908_A_REVIEW_OF_UBER'S_MAIN_PHENOMENON_BAD_LEADERSHIP_PRACTICES https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321080908_A_REVIEW_...
- 1659447091 1y ago>> ...fixed-route rides along busy corridors during weekday commute hours in major U.S. cities >> The commuter shuttles will drive between pre-set stops every 20 minutes ... there will be dozens of routes in each launch city ... To start, riders will only ever have to share the route with up to two other co-riders This sounds like there are going to be people driving empty cars (and later empty large SUVs) on a loop in already busy and congested areas. Do the drivers at least get paid whether or not they have riders? Major US Cities already have services like SuperShuttle and other car pooling for shared rides with people going the same way, as an added bonus, you can get picked up in front of your house -- no "turn-by-turn directions to get them from their house to the corner where they’ll be picked up". This Uber service seems wasteful when they already have shared rides.
- m2fkxy 1y agoThis sounds like marshrutki. These are very common in post-Soviet countries to fill the demand left unmet by public transportation service.
- culebron21 1y agoAmericans had jitneys back in early XX century. Brits got jitneys in 1980s under Thatcher.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoSeems fine to me, just charge them a fee to use bus lanes, which can then go into funding public transit. Win-win.
- jimjimjim 1y agoI can't believe the techcrunch article didn't mentioned the word bus at all.
- bainganbharta 1y ago[dead]
- tlogan 1y agoIsn’t this what public transit is supposed to provide? In San Francisco, I just hope Mayor Lurie will work to make riding Muni a less intimidating experience. I understand some people still find it convenient, and that’s great—but unfortunately, safety has seriously declined in recent years. Personally, I just can’t bring myself to ride it anymore. Maybe it’s because I live near a Walgreens, and I often see the same groups of “shoppers” (aka shoplifters) frequently hopping on and off at the same stop I use. It’s hard to feel secure in that environment.
- jdross 1y agoMany people who would otherwise love public transit – like me, hi, I grew up in NY and rode Muni & BART my entire 10 years in SF – avoid it in places like SF or the bus in NYC because increasingly over the last 15 years "the public" part has included very antisocial people, zero enforcement of social norms allowed, and declining enforcement of law.
- billllll 1y agoI ride Muni, BART and Caltrain all the time (I'm car-free in SF), and I have no idea what you're talking about. Here are the actual statistics of crime per vehicle mile on Muni: https://www.sf.gov/data--crimes-muni https://www.sf.gov/data--crimes-muni Crime in SF and other big cities have been going way down. If anything, you're probably safer than ever in SF (and other common political targets like NY and Chicago). Also, how can you know that Muni is more dangerous, if you're too scared to even get on in the first place? Can you really say your fear is based on facts and experience?
- tlogan 1y agoMay I ask if you can compare your experience now comparing to 2006? Is it better? Safer?
- archagon 1y agoDitto. I ride Muni (bus and rail) in the Mission close to every day, and although I sometimes encounter people behaving erratically or anti-socially, I don’t recall the last time I felt “unsafe.” (Not that it’s always a pleasant experience, but it’s fine, and cheap.)
- the_clarence 1y agoI commuted in public transport my whole life until I moved to SF, saw a bunch of violence and mugging my first times riding the bus and decided to never ride the bus ever again here.
- tlogan 1y agoI wasn’t always this way. San Francisco has always had an edge to it, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it’s become. I used to play chess at United Nations Plaza—yes, right there at the heart of the Tenderloin—with all kinds of interesting people. It had character, but it wasn’t unsafe like it is now. Things have truly changed, and not for the better.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago> Ride-hail and delivery giant Uber is introducing cheap, fixed-route rides along busy corridors during weekday commute hours in major U.S. cities Note that Uber is not introducing this in Europe or other cities where they have good public transport. Instead of bus or trams that carry X people at once, reducing congestion, emissions, etc., you still have individual cars carrying one person at a time.
- emrah 1y agoUber is slowly reinventing the "dolmuş" and "minibüs" concepts in Istanbul :)
- nektro 1y agoUm no i'd rather that money go towards actual buses.
- mFixman 1y agoCityMapper, a local transport app, tried to do this in London a few years ago. It was a failure because they couldn't compete in price with the government-subsidised buses, so the vans they used were almost always completely empty. It was also a bad service: the few times I took it it was extremely late compared to the app time estimation. I can see Uber succeeding if they have routes that are not covered by existing public transit, and are actually good at estimating pick-up and drop-off time to make a reliable service. This is a much harder problem that it looks.
- Bjartr 1y agoIt's interesting, there was a recent post here on HN that described a Chinese bus service that accepted route suggestions and had people vote on them. With a significant claim being they could stand up a new route in 3 days. The comments on that were somewhat impressed, but mostly despondent that it couldn't work in the West with how slow bus routes are changed in cities for a variety of reasons. It seems to me that that's something that the likes of Uber could do fairly easily if it chose to. After all, skipping government beaurocracy is something Uber is experienced at, for good and ill.
- xtiansimon 1y agoMy local town has a small stand up Ford bus (~24 seat?) called the Loop Bus. At $1 a ride it’s obviously subsidized. Compared to in town taxi, which is $12, it’s an interesting alternative if your destination is on the route. It goes past the local hospital, through downtown, and past the local super. I like the idea of commercial loop bus for communities who can’t afford the municipal option.
- pxeger1 1y agoI’m a fan, if only because Uber’s vehicle tracking is so much more reliable than any public bus network I’ve ever used.
- slivym 1y agoPeople talk about this being a replacement for busses, but I think that misunderstands what a bus service is. A bus service generally is a utility provided by the local government to meet the needs of constituents. The routes are determined by what the government decides are useful, not by which routes are profitable. The problem with introducing competition to this system is that a universally provided bus service is going to have profitable and unprofitable routes and cross-subsidization. If you introduce a new service that's private you're going to find that service very quickly identifies and competes for the profitable routes, but it won't have an interest in the unprofitable routes. Suddenly the local utility is more unprofitable than before, there's no reason for it to be running on routes that are now serviced by the private company, and now the private company can start extracting a higher and higher premium on the profitable routes.
- xyst 1y agoUber leadership probably need to dial down the ketamine during these internal summits/war rooms for "new" ideas