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It's pretty easy to outcompete public transit on specific profitable lines. The problem is that public transit has to serve a lot of unprofitable lines and by
by ahtihn 1y ago
It's pretty easy to outcompete public transit on specific profitable lines.
The problem is that public transit has to serve a lot of unprofitable lines and by having a private competitor putting pressure on the only parts that actually make money, the overall economics of public transit become much worse.
- tptacek 1y agoRight, I think everybody gets that. But: they have private competitors. They can't just define that problem away. Most people don't take busses or private shuttles; they just drive.
- kalleboo 1y agoThe same as package delivery - Amazon takes the easiest portion, FedEx/UPS the middle tier, and then USPS gets handed off all the most difficult addresses
- steveBK123 1y agoPrecisely - USPS legally is required to delivery everywhere, they have no choice. Their pricing doesn't adequately reflect the difficulty of delivery either. FedEx/UPS can also be very picky about which services they offer to who. I've had plenty of FedEx/UPS return shipments that they refuse to pickup due to service level agreements on different shipment classes. USPS you can literally click on their website for them to come pickup a stupid $8 shipment from your door. They'll drive to your house and ring your doorbell to pick it up, incredible.
- rented_mule 1y agoThis varies. UPS and FedEx deliver to my door. The USPS will only deliver to my nearest post office, not to my door. There is no home mail delivery at all in our town, nor in much of our county. Each affected home gets a free PO Box.
- gruez 1y ago> Their pricing doesn't adequately reflect the difficulty of delivery either. What's preventing them from properly pricing their services? The whole implication in this line of discussion seems to be that Amazon is taking advantage of USPS, and they're somehow hapless to prevent that from happening.
- kalleboo 1y agoU.S. Code Title 39, and the United States Postal Regulatory Commission. The former basically defines the USPS as socialist redistribution to rural areas, and the latter is what actually decides what rates the USPS is allowed to charge. > The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining. No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities
- gruez 1y agoSure, they can't close post offices, but that doesn't really say anything about why they can't charge more for parcels to rural areas?
- Zigurd 1y agoAmazon uses delivery lockers for the most difficult addresses. USPS only picks up the business for locations it already serves. USPS also has some pricing power in these deals. At least until there was some kind of politicized thing about Jeff Bezos and Trump.
- steveBK123 1y agoThis is the difference between private & public sector services that is generally missed by the "big gubmint bad" heads. The purpose of private enterprise is to make money, and you can slice out a business that serves the most price insensitive, high margin, low maintenance clients. The purpose of public services is to.. serve the public. For example, public safety net programs are always going to have more waste than a private company, because if your program is there to prevent citizens from starving, you give the benefit of the doubt on eligibility. A private company doesn't need to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, they provide a service to paying customers, and are generally OK losing customers due to payment friction vs giving away services free.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoSo competition in profitable routes and subsidies on unpopular ones?