What if public transit was like Uber? A small city ended its bus service to find out
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What if public transit was like Uber? A small city ended its bus service to find out::Small-scale, tech-based solutions to transportation problems have emerged as a great equalizer in the battle for infrastructure dollars between big cities and rural communities.
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What makes this a bad idea? Sounds much better than busses to me. It's on demand, not on a fixed route, gors anywhere in the town, and is still the price of a bus ride.
It doesn't reduce the number of cars on the road. If anything, it increases it because they got rid of buses.
I see, yes that's a good point, but I'd guess that's not the goal of this program. Not sure if that's a goal of any transportation agency, at least not that I've heard, but it should be.
Yeah, but busses actually consume quite a bit of fuel versus a smaller passenger vehicle, and in smaller towns running a regular bus that doesn't have many or even any passengers might still be less environmentally sound, especially if they use an EV and charge between call-outs.
Even in my home town which is of decent size, the bus routes are super inefficient time-wise as they require a stop and transfer at the central station (making a trip take 1-2 hours) whereas taking the direct route up the highway is maybe 15m
Trolley buses are great, look them up.
Yeah I'm aware of trolley buses. Again, running the infrastructure for this versus independent electric vehicles for smaller populations or low-use areas doesn't necessarily make sense
Yeah… except, if a city hasn’t been designed around supporting a trolly system, you’re not getting a trolly bus any time soon. You’re looking at years, potentially over a decade of work.
The picture understates it. You've also got to consider that the road on the left could be half as wide, and that the situation on the right requires a massive parking deck just off-screen that the one on the left doesn't need.
Destroying walkability by physically forcing destinations further apart in order to insert more lanes and parking in between is what makes designing for cars a disastrous vicious cycle.
Because you don't need a car to get that last mile. A much better and more flexible option woykd be robust trains/trams/subway system in dense cities that take you most of the way with electric options such as e-bikes or scooters to get you thay last bit if you need it. This does nothing but keeps our society dependant on car manufacturers and litters the road with more cars.
Did you read the article? This is a tiny sprawling city of 50k residents, and there simply wasn't enough population density to justify most of the bus routes they were operating. I live in Europe and love the public transport here, but it's possible that for extremely low density areas a scheme like this makes sense. Possibly combined with normal public transit along trunk routes
Hi! I’d like to introduce you to winter. It destroys this as a workable solution, because for multiple months of the year it’s impossible for these to run. Meaning they’d need a last mile winter solution, such as… a car.
There’s also the issue of these types of solutions being notoriously hard to maintain. I believe the majority of city “e-thing” companies have gone under because it’s an unworkable system.
Take a normal bike. Finnland is able to support this.
E-bikes, scooters, bicycles and public transit works in winter, just so long as you maintain the infrastructure they need.
Additionally, any claims that this would not be workable from a cost perspective is false, as winter maintenance is 100% required for car infrastructure, and winter maintenance for car infrastructure keeps on happening year after year.
Completely unsubstantiated.
Ok, I'm curious. I started using scooters this year, and every scooter I've seen says not to use below certain temps (-10C or so).
Naturally, you should follow whatever specifications come with your scooter, but this is partly up to engineering specifications and partly up to local winter weather.
My point was primarily about that snow and ice does not inherently render bicycles and scooters unusable, it's a matter of actually maintaining their infrastructure.
I’m talking about temperature, not snow and ice. Most batteries aren’t rated for temps in the far negatives, and the northern states routinely see -40 degree temps.
LOL, nope.
There are places that have on demand busses rather than fixed routes.