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I 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 pr

by mdeeks 1y ago

I 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 ago
This sounds a lot like Chariot, which tried to augment SF's bus routes in 2014.
levocardia 1y ago
Also, importantly: * There is an accountability component where if you behave badly you will be banned from the shuttle service
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  That'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.
  - mdeeks 1y ago
    I can't imagine how this is enforced. Clipper cards and cash will get you on any bus without any sort of check to see if you're allowed. There is probably a lot of overlap of people who get banned the people who skip gates and fares.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      If Walmart and Target can manage facial recognition for shoplifting, I'd imagine it's at least possible to do with a bus system.
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        Walmart and Target probably are a lot less concerned with accuracy than a fare collecting entity would be; any benefit from facial recognition is a plus for them even if it often either is wrong or fails to hit when it should, whereas with toll collection it has to be near 100% to replace other payment mechanism, and nearly never get a false hit (though misses might be okay) to be a convenience method when people are still expected to have a reliable method for on hand for backup.
      - tlogan 1y ago
        Ah yes, the legendary facial recognition system—right next to the locked-up underwear and $1 deodorant. Flawless crime-fighting tech, really. /s
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > 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 Curious if these bans are actually effective.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
- mdeeks 1y ago
  Strongly agreed. I have unfortunately had many infuriating and dangerous experiences on AC Transit and Bart. I'd pay extra to not have to be afraid I won't make it home to my kids.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Why aren't you paying extra then - Uber/Lyft or your own car?
    - mdeeks 1y ago
      Sometimes I do, but its eight times the cost and takes an extra 30 minutes each way. Ideally I would love to take public transportation. I love the idea of it, the economics, the traffic reduction, and the general social benefit. Unfortunately here it comes with some big negatives and they really wear you down after over a decade of it not really changing much.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  If you behave badly on public transit there's a real chance that you get the ultimate ban: jail time.
  - mdeeks 1y ago
    There is a very large and rampant amount of bad behavior well below the "jail time" threshold. Even then, the police can't be everywhere all of the time.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      > There is a very large and rampant amount of bad behavior well below the "jail time" threshold. Where? I don't see it in major cities I am in, and I take public transit regularly.
    - watwut 1y ago
      Then your city has much larger problem. In my city, public transport is as safe as anywhere else. That is how most people get to work. And kids to school.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > If you behave badly on public transit there's a real chance that you get the ultimate ban: jail time In New York or San Francisco?
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  The requirement to actually pay will keep much of the riff-raff out. In my local bus system, you theoretically have to pay but the drivers are not going to throw you off the bus if you don't and so the buses all have a few homeless guys who just ride all day.
  - vkou 1y ago
    Don't know what town you live in, but here in Seattle, very few bus routes have homeless people who ride them all day. The vast majority don't. The reason transit in this city sucks (still head and shoulders above the vast majority of the US) isn't because there's 12,000+ homeless people living in it[1], it's because the buses don't run frequently enough and because all the fucking single-occupant car traffic turns what would be a 20 minute bus ride into a 40 minute slog, and because you'd be insane to bike for your last-mile. --- [1] Increasing every year, and under the current mayor's tenure, we lost a net of 200 shelter beds.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > because the buses don't run frequently enough Yup. The subway works because one need not bother checking timetables. You show up at the station and expect a car. I could totally see interspersing shuttles between buses reducing latency to the point that it leads to an uptick in bus use.
    - lazyasciiart 1y ago
      The RapidRide routes actually have hit plausible frequency. I live near the newly opened G line, and can now just walk out to the bus stop assuming there will be one within 10 minutes, usually less. And they’ve given enough dedicated lane space that it is faster than traffic.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Are you assuming people share your prejudice? Who is 'riff-raff'? Maybe I think you are (and vice versa). I've never had a problem with someone who seems to be unhoused (I wouldn't know). I have had problems with people on their phones in big SUVs, or who just feel like being a*holes.
- mmooss 1y ago
  I think it's a worry of people not familiar with cities. I ride public transit in cities all the time. It's fine.
  - mdeeks 1y ago
    I ride the bus and Bart in the San Francisco bay area and I've lived here my entire adult life. It is not fine. About once a week some kind of event happens. Off the top of my head these are things I have experienced both on Bart and AC Transit (though mainly Bart): * I've been punched twice. Not hard, but an angry person hitting me in the shoulder and the back because they were drunk or high and I guess I looked at them wrong * I've been shoved out of the way hard probably five separate times? * People openly smoking crack, smoking weed. * People high out of their mind. Just on monday some guy had his pants around his ankles high out of his mind swirling around and rubbing up against riders. * A man shouting and punching the top of the train saying he's going to kill himself * A man screaming profanities, calling women the c-word, sluts, saying he's going to rape people * Multiple fights * Someone getting their phone swiped out of their hand and punched in the head when he tried to chase them. * I watched someone eat most of a burrito, stand up, turn it upside down and squish it onto the seat. * I saw a man with a concealed gun tucked behind him into his belt walking around the station looking for someone. These are definitely some of the worst events, but something on the spectrum of "bad" happens weekly.
- 77pt77 1y ago
  Good luck with that. All you need is a phone number and a credit/debit card. Uber does not veto passengers at all.
jasonjmcghee 1y ago
> Get users to enter where they live, where they end to go, and roughly at what time Friends / people I've seen using uber have "home" and "work" saved. And they have trip history. They likely already have a very good sense of this stuff.
- belinder 1y ago
  Problem is you don't want necessarily to sell this to people you have frequent/consistent trips for, as you're getting a lot of money from that. Here you want to capture the market of people that aren't using the service, so it's not information from the app
Animats 1y ago
> I know everyone thinks this is a bus It's not a bus. It's an ordinary Uber driver with their own car, with multiple customers and a different, confusing pricing scheme. It's not Uber buying and operating their own fleet of branded vans, like SuperShuttle.[1] How does the driver get paid? If it's a regular route, with regular times, it ought to be a regular job paid by the hour, regardless of whether the vehicle is empty or full. But that wouldn't be Uber's gig slavery system. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2020/12/30/rip-supershuttle-first-2020-casualty-big-tech/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2020/12/30/rip-supe...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > How does the driver get paid? Ideally these routes wouldn’t need a driver for long. Waymo could offer this, for example. They don’t because they need not compete on price. More practically: in many states where this has been announced, Uber drivers get a minimum wage.
  - eek2121 1y ago
    In CA they do, what other states? In response to those laws, Uber has taken even more money from drivers. The last number I heard was that drivers only get 53% of cash per ride. Don’t misunderstand me, Uber is a cancer that needs to die and I am about to be at the point where I make a platform that will do just that. My point is that those laws aren’t helping. More needs to be done.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  I just want to point out that your criticism is not disagreeing with the parent post. You can both be right — this can be better than a bus, and uber can be illegally claiming workers as contractors.
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  Is squeezing into the 7th seat in the trunk of an Uber-XL SUV worth the faux-instantaneous nature of this product? Get the Transit app folks [1], great GPS tracking of the right bus for you, advocate for an efficient well-funded bus/train service in your city and a municipal DOT that doesn't have to host 5 community meetings for every small change in routes. [1]: https://transitapp.com https://transitapp.com P.S: I'm an Uber One member, it certainly has its place in a car-less life. But this ain't it Chief.
KptMarchewa 1y ago
> * The websites, maps, and schedules for buses are often very bad and hard to interpret There's an app for that, it's called Google Maps.
dylan604 1y ago
I haven't thought about this for quite some time, but I remember the local mass transit, DART, offered shuttle vans if people got together and showed enough interest in people meeting in one spot and being dropped off in one spot. DART provided the driver and van, and the users just paid whatever the fare. This allowed DART to offer service and acted as a trial run on if a full bus route was needed. Seems like something that whatever transit authority can use as well. Uber just has a better PR department with much larger budgets than metro agencies, so to younger people this probably seems like an original idea.???
- mdeeks 1y ago
  It's not about PR budget or whatever. It's about the fact that they have an incredibly easy to use app, with millions of people actively using it, and a ton of software engineers who are really great at logistics problems like this. Our transit authority hasn't managed to spring this up for us and I'm not confident they have the capability. FWIW I'm not "younger people". I'm just someone who's been using mass transit to commute for the past 15 years and desperately wants something better. I don't care if it is an original idea. I just want it to exist.
- DavidPeiffer 1y ago
  I lived about a mile outside of the DART zone where they were trialing this, if it's the program I'm thinking of. I attempted to use it one time, but had issues with the app. I love the concept though, and hope there's an economically viable way to implement something similar.
- mjevans 1y ago
  The DART program I remember was (near Seattle) King County metro's Dial A Ride Transit (DART) program which... literally worked that way. I don't know what the fee structure was offhand as at the time in my life I saw a lot of those large vans / mini busses I wasn't a target consumer.
  - nothercastle 1y ago
    Isn’t the pickup window like 2-4 hrs. Only functional for severely handicapped and disabled
mihaaly 1y ago
Probably improving buses is a too radical idea here?
yibg 1y ago
What happens if there aren't ~30 people that are going where I'm going from where I am? I don't want to wake up to go to work and find out there is no route for me.
colechristensen 1y ago
My main problem with the local bus system is people keep getting stabbed or otherwise assaulted on busses and at stops, and the last time I took a significant public transit ride it seemed like somebody was going to get stabbed, somebody was smoking, and I'm pretty sure I witnessed two or three drug deals.
dotancohen 1y ago
> Dedicated stops don't have to be approved and built. Just pull over on a major street. Is this legal in the areas where Uber operates? It certainly would not be legal in the areas I'm familiar with. Unless they have taxi medallion.
caseyy 1y ago
Many cities in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia have (or used to have) Marshrutki[0]. These mini-buses and passenger vans don't stop at bus stops but where they are flagged down. You press a button where you want to be let off. I say some cities used to have them, not because they went out of fashion (though sometimes they did), but because a Marshrutka is a specific type of passenger van, usually an old one not subject to modern safety requirements for economic reasons. Many of the companies operating them have modernized, and they have low-floor accessible shuttle-style buses with air bags and seat belts, including for disabled people, but they still go their route, can be waved down to pick you up, and drop you off when you ask. There has never been a similar mode of transport in any Western country I've lived in, though I have heard rumors, and apparently, some US states have/had jitneys. Norway may also have something similar in the western tourist towns, because I found buses drop you off where you ask. But perhaps it's a courtesy. UK companies have made some similar efforts[1]. Generally, such mini-buses are not needed in urban areas. But there are areas where either super quick travel from point A to point B is essential and walking to and from a bus stop is unacceptable (airport-rail links and similar), or where there isn't enough demand to run a proper bus service. These could benefit from a taxi bus approach. Anyway, Marshrutki and their contemporary counterparts address all the issues you've listed. P.S. The solution for scheduling is the free market. Operators compete for customers, flooding the streets[2] during relevant hours. There may be 20 uncoordinated mini-bus operators, but for the user, the overall experience is that they usually have to wait only a few minutes along the route before waving one down. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-44614616 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-44614616 [2] https://www.alamy.com/fixed-route-taxi-minibuses-move-along-the-central-street-on-a-sunny-autumn-morning-in-tula-russia-image452426088.html https://www.alamy.com/fixed-route-taxi-minibuses-move-along-...
- zhivota 1y ago
  These are common in all developing countries. In the Philippines it's called a Jeepney. They even did pop up around NYC, catering to Hispanic neighborhoods IIRC, and have been in various states of legality over the years. I think now they may be somewhat regulated.
nerdsniper 1y ago
> Get those users to enter where they live, where they need to go, and roughly at what time. Uber/Lyft can already make pretty accurate educated guesses on all of this (in aggregate) with their existing data.
adolph 1y ago
> They find a group ~30 people with similar The point to point for number of dollars information that Uber may have is the critical part. Municipal transit organizations are information poor since even if they could use municipal datasets of bluetooth sniffers etc to determine point to point commonalities, they still don't have pricing data to construct a meaningful offering.
onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
The problem is, even in a city like San Francisco, that's relatively densely populated AND has a centralized office area - there is A LOT less overlap than you'd think. The typical bus already runs at loss of 4 dollars for every 1 dollar it takes in in fare. So you're not going to end up with a much cheaper ride than if you just took a private taxi, but you're going to have a significantly longer trip. Almost no one is interested in that. I hope to be proven wrong.
kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 1y ago
> There’s rarely parking near stops so you can't drive to it Sorry, but, what the actual fuck? If your bus stop requires parking so you can drive an hour in your car to be driven another hour in a bus, then why bother building a bus stop?
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  To collect the potential ridership of a dispersed area on the border of an urban space without running bus routes to each persons house. Then they leave their cars in a big parking garage and get off the road, reducing congestion in the urban space.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Popular in a few countries and has many names. For example Bristol has Park & Ride https://travelwest.info/park-ride/ https://travelwest.info/park-ride/
  - kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 1y ago
    I guess that it works in very low-density places that are close to the city or something like that. But the problem is that the parking takes up space, so, instead of having some kind of transport hub, where economic activity happens (as is usual next to train stations or bus terminals), you end up with a bus terminal/train station in the middle of nowhere, where the only thing you can do is take your car back to suburbia, and furthering its car dependency. And I'm not sure the regular driver is as city-minded as people here to think of the congestion and all that stuff when they decide between taking the car to the city or to the parking lot and then having to deal with the bus and its schedules. Also, we're talking about buses, not trains. Unlike a train, you can take a (small) bus into a lower-density area, as it is the case in some cities.
hedora 1y ago
At least in the bay area, the main feature is that this is an illegal bus. Each city council is able to sabotage bus services through their area, and they do. It inflates property values and keeps “undesirable” people out. This bypasses the intentional sabotage that’s been applied to bay area public transit. Of course, it’ll still be much, much worse than a competent bus system. I wonder how well it will work in other countries.
- ghiculescu 1y ago
  Why will it be much much worse?
  - x-complexity 1y ago
    > > This bypasses the intentional sabotage that’s been applied to bay area public transit. Of course, it’ll still be much, much worse than a competent bus system. I wonder how well it will work in other countries. > Why will it be much much worse? Off the top of my head: - Efficiency-wise, it's worse to have two things that do the same thing than to have the one thing work as it's supposed to (keyword being 'supposed to'). - (Overlaps with point 1) Market inefficiencies by having marketing & branding overheads for each service, when a single solution would not need to have it. ------ Whilst I agree it would be worse than having an actual competently-run bus system, having no competition causes perverse incentives (both external & internal) to leech into the system & make it incrementally worse. At the end of the day, it's a sign that's necessary to point out existing failures. Banning this specific sign from existing only allows the failures to worsen, regardless of the intentions behind banning/regulating it out of existence.
- thatswrong0 1y ago
  > This bypasses the intentional sabotage that’s been applied to bay area public transit I lived there for a long while and I'm genuinely wondering what this is? I feel like there were at least some unintentional secondary effects of certain policies but can't think of anything recent and intentional.
  - 1y ago
princevegeta89 1y ago
Public transport in the Bay Area sucks ass. I still find my personal transport more convenient and the fastest to do my 40 mile commute every day [east bay to south bay]
narrator 1y ago
You didn't mention that you can ban crackheads and the criminally insane from riding the Uber bus if they assault people, shoot up drugs in front of people, smoke crack or meth on the bus or start screaming uncontrollably. Huge in California.
pards 1y ago
In Toronto, a crowdfunded shuttle service [0] was started to solve this exact problem - lots of people in an area underserved by public transit going to the similar locations at similar times of day. The City shut it down. [0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shuttle-bus-axed-1.2916451 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shutt...
tekno45 1y ago
All of this can be fixed by investing in public transit with taxes instead of giving uber money.

by mdeeks 1y ago

bsimpson 1y ago

This sounds a lot like Chariot, which tried to augment SF's bus routes in 2014.

levocardia 1y ago

Also, importantly: * There is an accountability component where if you behave badly you will be banned from the shuttle service

ceejayoz 1y ago
That'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.
- mdeeks 1y ago
  I can't imagine how this is enforced. Clipper cards and cash will get you on any bus without any sort of check to see if you're allowed. There is probably a lot of overlap of people who get banned the people who skip gates and fares.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    If Walmart and Target can manage facial recognition for shoplifting, I'd imagine it's at least possible to do with a bus system.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      Walmart and Target probably are a lot less concerned with accuracy than a fare collecting entity would be; any benefit from facial recognition is a plus for them even if it often either is wrong or fails to hit when it should, whereas with toll collection it has to be near 100% to replace other payment mechanism, and nearly never get a false hit (though misses might be okay) to be a convenience method when people are still expected to have a reliable method for on hand for backup.
    - tlogan 1y ago
      Ah yes, the legendary facial recognition system—right next to the locked-up underwear and $1 deodorant. Flawless crime-fighting tech, really. /s
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > 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 Curious if these bans are actually effective.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
mdeeks 1y ago
Strongly agreed. I have unfortunately had many infuriating and dangerous experiences on AC Transit and Bart. I'd pay extra to not have to be afraid I won't make it home to my kids.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Why aren't you paying extra then - Uber/Lyft or your own car?
  - mdeeks 1y ago
    Sometimes I do, but its eight times the cost and takes an extra 30 minutes each way. Ideally I would love to take public transportation. I love the idea of it, the economics, the traffic reduction, and the general social benefit. Unfortunately here it comes with some big negatives and they really wear you down after over a decade of it not really changing much.
lenerdenator 1y ago
If you behave badly on public transit there's a real chance that you get the ultimate ban: jail time.
- mdeeks 1y ago
  There is a very large and rampant amount of bad behavior well below the "jail time" threshold. Even then, the police can't be everywhere all of the time.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    > There is a very large and rampant amount of bad behavior well below the "jail time" threshold. Where? I don't see it in major cities I am in, and I take public transit regularly.
  - watwut 1y ago
    Then your city has much larger problem. In my city, public transport is as safe as anywhere else. That is how most people get to work. And kids to school.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > If you behave badly on public transit there's a real chance that you get the ultimate ban: jail time In New York or San Francisco?
SoftTalker 1y ago
The requirement to actually pay will keep much of the riff-raff out. In my local bus system, you theoretically have to pay but the drivers are not going to throw you off the bus if you don't and so the buses all have a few homeless guys who just ride all day.
- vkou 1y ago
  Don't know what town you live in, but here in Seattle, very few bus routes have homeless people who ride them all day. The vast majority don't. The reason transit in this city sucks (still head and shoulders above the vast majority of the US) isn't because there's 12,000+ homeless people living in it[1], it's because the buses don't run frequently enough and because all the fucking single-occupant car traffic turns what would be a 20 minute bus ride into a 40 minute slog, and because you'd be insane to bike for your last-mile. --- [1] Increasing every year, and under the current mayor's tenure, we lost a net of 200 shelter beds.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > because the buses don't run frequently enough Yup. The subway works because one need not bother checking timetables. You show up at the station and expect a car. I could totally see interspersing shuttles between buses reducing latency to the point that it leads to an uptick in bus use.
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    The RapidRide routes actually have hit plausible frequency. I live near the newly opened G line, and can now just walk out to the bus stop assuming there will be one within 10 minutes, usually less. And they’ve given enough dedicated lane space that it is faster than traffic.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Are you assuming people share your prejudice? Who is 'riff-raff'? Maybe I think you are (and vice versa). I've never had a problem with someone who seems to be unhoused (I wouldn't know). I have had problems with people on their phones in big SUVs, or who just feel like being a*holes.
mmooss 1y ago
I think it's a worry of people not familiar with cities. I ride public transit in cities all the time. It's fine.
- mdeeks 1y ago
  I ride the bus and Bart in the San Francisco bay area and I've lived here my entire adult life. It is not fine. About once a week some kind of event happens. Off the top of my head these are things I have experienced both on Bart and AC Transit (though mainly Bart): * I've been punched twice. Not hard, but an angry person hitting me in the shoulder and the back because they were drunk or high and I guess I looked at them wrong * I've been shoved out of the way hard probably five separate times? * People openly smoking crack, smoking weed. * People high out of their mind. Just on monday some guy had his pants around his ankles high out of his mind swirling around and rubbing up against riders. * A man shouting and punching the top of the train saying he's going to kill himself * A man screaming profanities, calling women the c-word, sluts, saying he's going to rape people * Multiple fights * Someone getting their phone swiped out of their hand and punched in the head when he tried to chase them. * I watched someone eat most of a burrito, stand up, turn it upside down and squish it onto the seat. * I saw a man with a concealed gun tucked behind him into his belt walking around the station looking for someone. These are definitely some of the worst events, but something on the spectrum of "bad" happens weekly.
77pt77 1y ago
Good luck with that. All you need is a phone number and a credit/debit card. Uber does not veto passengers at all.

jasonjmcghee 1y ago

> Get users to enter where they live, where they end to go, and roughly at what time Friends / people I've seen using uber have "home" and "work" saved. And they have trip history. They likely already have a very good sense of this stuff.

belinder 1y ago
Problem is you don't want necessarily to sell this to people you have frequent/consistent trips for, as you're getting a lot of money from that. Here you want to capture the market of people that aren't using the service, so it's not information from the app

Animats 1y ago

> I know everyone thinks this is a bus It's not a bus. It's an ordinary Uber driver with their own car, with multiple customers and a different, confusing pricing scheme. It's not Uber buying and operating their own fleet of branded vans, like SuperShuttle.[1] How does the driver get paid? If it's a regular route, with regular times, it ought to be a regular job paid by the hour, regardless of whether the vehicle is empty or full. But that wouldn't be Uber's gig slavery system. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2020/12/30/rip-supershuttle-first-2020-casualty-big-tech/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2020/12/30/rip-supe...

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> How does the driver get paid? Ideally these routes wouldn’t need a driver for long. Waymo could offer this, for example. They don’t because they need not compete on price. More practically: in many states where this has been announced, Uber drivers get a minimum wage.
- eek2121 1y ago
  In CA they do, what other states? In response to those laws, Uber has taken even more money from drivers. The last number I heard was that drivers only get 53% of cash per ride. Don’t misunderstand me, Uber is a cancer that needs to die and I am about to be at the point where I make a platform that will do just that. My point is that those laws aren’t helping. More needs to be done.
pinkmuffinere 1y ago
I just want to point out that your criticism is not disagreeing with the parent post. You can both be right — this can be better than a bus, and uber can be illegally claiming workers as contractors.
pj_mukh 1y ago
Is squeezing into the 7th seat in the trunk of an Uber-XL SUV worth the faux-instantaneous nature of this product? Get the Transit app folks [1], great GPS tracking of the right bus for you, advocate for an efficient well-funded bus/train service in your city and a municipal DOT that doesn't have to host 5 community meetings for every small change in routes. [1]: https://transitapp.com https://transitapp.com P.S: I'm an Uber One member, it certainly has its place in a car-less life. But this ain't it Chief.

KptMarchewa 1y ago

> * The websites, maps, and schedules for buses are often very bad and hard to interpret There's an app for that, it's called Google Maps.

dylan604 1y ago

I haven't thought about this for quite some time, but I remember the local mass transit, DART, offered shuttle vans if people got together and showed enough interest in people meeting in one spot and being dropped off in one spot. DART provided the driver and van, and the users just paid whatever the fare. This allowed DART to offer service and acted as a trial run on if a full bus route was needed. Seems like something that whatever transit authority can use as well. Uber just has a better PR department with much larger budgets than metro agencies, so to younger people this probably seems like an original idea.???

mdeeks 1y ago
It's not about PR budget or whatever. It's about the fact that they have an incredibly easy to use app, with millions of people actively using it, and a ton of software engineers who are really great at logistics problems like this. Our transit authority hasn't managed to spring this up for us and I'm not confident they have the capability. FWIW I'm not "younger people". I'm just someone who's been using mass transit to commute for the past 15 years and desperately wants something better. I don't care if it is an original idea. I just want it to exist.
DavidPeiffer 1y ago
I lived about a mile outside of the DART zone where they were trialing this, if it's the program I'm thinking of. I attempted to use it one time, but had issues with the app. I love the concept though, and hope there's an economically viable way to implement something similar.
mjevans 1y ago
The DART program I remember was (near Seattle) King County metro's Dial A Ride Transit (DART) program which... literally worked that way. I don't know what the fee structure was offhand as at the time in my life I saw a lot of those large vans / mini busses I wasn't a target consumer.
- nothercastle 1y ago
  Isn’t the pickup window like 2-4 hrs. Only functional for severely handicapped and disabled

mihaaly 1y ago

Probably improving buses is a too radical idea here?

yibg 1y ago

What happens if there aren't ~30 people that are going where I'm going from where I am? I don't want to wake up to go to work and find out there is no route for me.

colechristensen 1y ago

My main problem with the local bus system is people keep getting stabbed or otherwise assaulted on busses and at stops, and the last time I took a significant public transit ride it seemed like somebody was going to get stabbed, somebody was smoking, and I'm pretty sure I witnessed two or three drug deals.

dotancohen 1y ago

> Dedicated stops don't have to be approved and built. Just pull over on a major street. Is this legal in the areas where Uber operates? It certainly would not be legal in the areas I'm familiar with. Unless they have taxi medallion.

caseyy 1y ago

Many cities in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia have (or used to have) Marshrutki[0]. These mini-buses and passenger vans don't stop at bus stops but where they are flagged down. You press a button where you want to be let off. I say some cities used to have them, not because they went out of fashion (though sometimes they did), but because a Marshrutka is a specific type of passenger van, usually an old one not subject to modern safety requirements for economic reasons. Many of the companies operating them have modernized, and they have low-floor accessible shuttle-style buses with air bags and seat belts, including for disabled people, but they still go their route, can be waved down to pick you up, and drop you off when you ask. There has never been a similar mode of transport in any Western country I've lived in, though I have heard rumors, and apparently, some US states have/had jitneys. Norway may also have something similar in the western tourist towns, because I found buses drop you off where you ask. But perhaps it's a courtesy. UK companies have made some similar efforts[1]. Generally, such mini-buses are not needed in urban areas. But there are areas where either super quick travel from point A to point B is essential and walking to and from a bus stop is unacceptable (airport-rail links and similar), or where there isn't enough demand to run a proper bus service. These could benefit from a taxi bus approach. Anyway, Marshrutki and their contemporary counterparts address all the issues you've listed. P.S. The solution for scheduling is the free market. Operators compete for customers, flooding the streets[2] during relevant hours. There may be 20 uncoordinated mini-bus operators, but for the user, the overall experience is that they usually have to wait only a few minutes along the route before waving one down. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-44614616 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-44614616 [2] https://www.alamy.com/fixed-route-taxi-minibuses-move-along-the-central-street-on-a-sunny-autumn-morning-in-tula-russia-image452426088.html https://www.alamy.com/fixed-route-taxi-minibuses-move-along-...

zhivota 1y ago
These are common in all developing countries. In the Philippines it's called a Jeepney. They even did pop up around NYC, catering to Hispanic neighborhoods IIRC, and have been in various states of legality over the years. I think now they may be somewhat regulated.

nerdsniper 1y ago

> Get those users to enter where they live, where they need to go, and roughly at what time. Uber/Lyft can already make pretty accurate educated guesses on all of this (in aggregate) with their existing data.

adolph 1y ago

> They find a group ~30 people with similar The point to point for number of dollars information that Uber may have is the critical part. Municipal transit organizations are information poor since even if they could use municipal datasets of bluetooth sniffers etc to determine point to point commonalities, they still don't have pricing data to construct a meaningful offering.

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago

The problem is, even in a city like San Francisco, that's relatively densely populated AND has a centralized office area - there is A LOT less overlap than you'd think. The typical bus already runs at loss of 4 dollars for every 1 dollar it takes in in fare. So you're not going to end up with a much cheaper ride than if you just took a private taxi, but you're going to have a significantly longer trip. Almost no one is interested in that. I hope to be proven wrong.

kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 1y ago

> There’s rarely parking near stops so you can't drive to it Sorry, but, what the actual fuck? If your bus stop requires parking so you can drive an hour in your car to be driven another hour in a bus, then why bother building a bus stop?

lazyasciiart 1y ago
To collect the potential ridership of a dispersed area on the border of an urban space without running bus routes to each persons house. Then they leave their cars in a big parking garage and get off the road, reducing congestion in the urban space.
- viraptor 1y ago
  Popular in a few countries and has many names. For example Bristol has Park & Ride https://travelwest.info/park-ride/ https://travelwest.info/park-ride/
- kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 1y ago
  I guess that it works in very low-density places that are close to the city or something like that. But the problem is that the parking takes up space, so, instead of having some kind of transport hub, where economic activity happens (as is usual next to train stations or bus terminals), you end up with a bus terminal/train station in the middle of nowhere, where the only thing you can do is take your car back to suburbia, and furthering its car dependency. And I'm not sure the regular driver is as city-minded as people here to think of the congestion and all that stuff when they decide between taking the car to the city or to the parking lot and then having to deal with the bus and its schedules. Also, we're talking about buses, not trains. Unlike a train, you can take a (small) bus into a lower-density area, as it is the case in some cities.

hedora 1y ago

At least in the bay area, the main feature is that this is an illegal bus. Each city council is able to sabotage bus services through their area, and they do. It inflates property values and keeps “undesirable” people out. This bypasses the intentional sabotage that’s been applied to bay area public transit. Of course, it’ll still be much, much worse than a competent bus system. I wonder how well it will work in other countries.

ghiculescu 1y ago
Why will it be much much worse?
- x-complexity 1y ago
  > > This bypasses the intentional sabotage that’s been applied to bay area public transit. Of course, it’ll still be much, much worse than a competent bus system. I wonder how well it will work in other countries. > Why will it be much much worse? Off the top of my head: - Efficiency-wise, it's worse to have two things that do the same thing than to have the one thing work as it's supposed to (keyword being 'supposed to'). - (Overlaps with point 1) Market inefficiencies by having marketing & branding overheads for each service, when a single solution would not need to have it. ------ Whilst I agree it would be worse than having an actual competently-run bus system, having no competition causes perverse incentives (both external & internal) to leech into the system & make it incrementally worse. At the end of the day, it's a sign that's necessary to point out existing failures. Banning this specific sign from existing only allows the failures to worsen, regardless of the intentions behind banning/regulating it out of existence.
thatswrong0 1y ago
> This bypasses the intentional sabotage that’s been applied to bay area public transit I lived there for a long while and I'm genuinely wondering what this is? I feel like there were at least some unintentional secondary effects of certain policies but can't think of anything recent and intentional.
- 1y ago

princevegeta89 1y ago

Public transport in the Bay Area sucks ass. I still find my personal transport more convenient and the fastest to do my 40 mile commute every day [east bay to south bay]

narrator 1y ago

You didn't mention that you can ban crackheads and the criminally insane from riding the Uber bus if they assault people, shoot up drugs in front of people, smoke crack or meth on the bus or start screaming uncontrollably. Huge in California.

pards 1y ago

In Toronto, a crowdfunded shuttle service [0] was started to solve this exact problem - lots of people in an area underserved by public transit going to the similar locations at similar times of day. The City shut it down. [0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shuttle-bus-axed-1.2916451 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shutt...

tekno45 1y ago

All of this can be fixed by investing in public transit with taxes instead of giving uber money.