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> But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities That's sometimes true but often not. Utah might need buses to go up t

> But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities That's sometimes true but often not. Utah might need buses to go up the canyons, but might have passed some requirement at some point that said that all the buses need to be able to do this because someone got burnt once by not having enough of those buses. Or some well-meaning (or vote seeking?) city councillor might have put through a bill to put USB-A chargers in all the seats, which will stick around far longer than those coming as standard making them an expensive custom option. What you end up with is requirements that make the buses custom purchases, which massively inflates their costs, when any reasonable person would say that such custom attributes aren't (always) needed. By having a strong opinion about something, the city will pay far more than if they bought an off-the-shelf solution. Much of "the west" is particularly affected by this sort of attitude. Everywhere and everyone is convinced that they are special in some way and need something specific, but end up paying for it. This is part of why India can send a probe to Mars for $72m, or why Singapore can buy busses at $300k instead of $1m. And to be clear, I say this having grown up in the UK and moved to Australia, both places with a certain amount of this attitude.

4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
Do you have a specific citeable example of unnecessary “custom requirements” driving up the cost of city buses in the US
- danpalmer 1y ago
  My point about the buses is about "missing the forest for the trees", so the fact that you've focused on getting a specific citable example while missing the point is quite ironic. Here's an industry article about the phenomenon: https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-excess-customization/ https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-exc... And here's a study documenting excess customisation as a driver of the costs: https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for-public-transit-buses/#:~:text=A%20final%20notable,economies%20of%20scale https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for... – which notes that "70 percent of contracts in the BGS data in 2024 were for unique buses".
- lozenge 1y ago
  Well there's one in the article, the colour of the floors.

4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago

Do you have a specific citeable example of unnecessary “custom requirements” driving up the cost of city buses in the US

danpalmer 1y ago
My point about the buses is about "missing the forest for the trees", so the fact that you've focused on getting a specific citable example while missing the point is quite ironic. Here's an industry article about the phenomenon: https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-excess-customization/ https://enotrans.org/article/a-bus-is-a-bus-the-costs-of-exc... And here's a study documenting excess customisation as a driver of the costs: https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for-public-transit-buses/#:~:text=A%20final%20notable,economies%20of%20scale https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paying-less-for... – which notes that "70 percent of contracts in the BGS data in 2024 were for unique buses".
lozenge 1y ago
Well there's one in the article, the colour of the floors.