Canadian Town Picks Uber For Public Transit (cnet.com) 200
Stephen Shankland reports via CNET: Innisfil, population 32,727 as of 2014, concluded in a March council meeting that subsidizing the car-hailing service was a better deal than paying for a bus line. The city plans to pay 100,000 Canadian dollars (about $75,000) for a first stage of the program and CA$125,000 for a second round about 6 to 9 months in. That compares to CA$270,000 annually for one bus and CA$610,000 for two, the town said. The town evaluated on-demand transit proposals as an alternative to buses. "Uber emerged as the only company with an app-based platform (i.e. UberPool) that would facilitate ridesharing and the matching of two or more passengers on trips across the entire town," the town said in its explanation of the move. Innisfil will subsidize Uber trips so citizens pay between CA$3 and CA$5 themselves, depending on the destination, the town said. "You can't have taxpayers pay for a transit system which they cannot use," Innisfil Mayor Gord Wauchope told The Toronto Star. "And this was a transit system that people can get from anywhere in the town of Innisfil, and use it for a reasonable price."
Can't use (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Can't use (Score:2)
Is the default assumption that government is run by morons who don't have two brain cells to rub together, and therefore plan public transit without making provisions for the people who need public transit the most?
While, as a libertarian, I think that would be a pretty awesome assumption, it's also usually wrong.
Re:Can't use (Score:5, Insightful)
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The concept might make a lot of sense, but the implementation weirds me out.
A Canadian town will subsidise an American corporation to provide a public service. I can appreciate that the costs to provide public transit to such a small town might be prohibitively high but you could have run your own public taxi service instead and get some return on the tax money being spent.
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A Canadian town will subsidise an American corporation to provide a public service.
Is it any different from agencies of governments outside the United States standardizing on the Windows operating system?
you could have run your own public taxi service instead and get some return on the tax money being spent.
Not if outsourcing the service is less expensive.
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A Canadian town will subsidise an American corporation to provide a public service.
Uber is bleeding cash and losing billions annually. The subsidies are flowing the other way.
Re:Can't use (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, most public transportation companies are really private companies that are owned by the taxpayers. Or in some places, it's a few private companies contracted to provide service (especially local interurban buses).
So it's not really that unusual, other than it's Uber. Here they're relying more on the experience of Uber to be able to provide the right amount of service - otherwise if they had to provide their own taxi service, then they lack all the analytics and information needed to properly provide service. (Plus, unlike a taxi service, UberPool does allow pickup/dropoff of other people going the same way).
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The service only supports an area with ~10,000 people, but a high concentration of businesses and tourists. It is limited in service area by safety regulations (can only be on roads with a speed limit under 35mph), but it will be interesting to see how well it does. On paper, it seems like
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It's a long way to miss a bus that passes every hour. "Go earlier" I ear you say, well, there lies the problem.
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From TFS:
"Uber emerged as the only company with an app-based platform (i.e. UberPool) that would facilitate ridesharing and the matching of two or more passengers on trips across the entire town"
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Re: Can't use (Score:2)
*Personally, I can relate; I'm forced to carry one of these around (for a whole slew of reasons) and I'm definitely growing weary of it.
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What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".
It explains it in the FAQ linked in the summary you were to lazy to click.
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If you don't have a smart phone, they have kiosks:
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What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".
Betcha some local coffee shops will go into the business of summoning rides for their customers.
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serious question. how much ass wiping and spoon feeding do we need to deliver with a nearly free entitlement? seriously.
it's not good enough to provide subsidized transit to people, we also have to hand deliver the means to order it? no amount of responsibility on the gift-receiver to figure something out on their own?
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If you seriously don't have a smart phone I will give you an old iphone 4 and help set you up with a $12/month plan with minutes/data/sms. Or you can buy a decent low end smartphone for well under $50
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> If you seriously don't have a smart phone I will give you an old iphone
> 4 and help set you up with a $12/month plan with minutes/data/sms.
> Or you can buy a decent low end smartphone for well under $50
Used smartphones are cheap. Here in Canada, our wallets get raped for smartphone plans. *DISCOUNT CARRIERS* are $30 per month if you want 100 MEGAbytes of data; $40 to $45 per month if you want 3-to-5 gigabytes of data. And you need data to download the app and actually use it.
Re:Can't use (Score:5, Funny)
What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".
0800-GET-F**KED:)
Well I called that and got a ride... it wasn't Uber though!
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Well I called that and got a ride... it wasn't Uber though!
Uber oder unter... doesn't the customer decide?
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What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".
0800-GET-F**KED:)
Why would I call the IRS to order an Uber car?
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What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".
0800-GET-F**KED:)
Shouldn't that number start with 900?
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In the US, they can just whip out their Obama Phone [youtube.com] ....
I would guess the Canadians have an analogous program?
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Err...I do not think that word [wikipedia.org] means what you think it means...?
And if you were a good son/daughter, would you not buy a smart phone for your parents?
I did and I've taught them how to use Uber, which is proving already to be VERY useful, in that they are getting old and less able to drive, and now they're using it for Dr. appts, etc.
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You do not need a smartphone [forbes.com] to hail an Uber.
You can summon it with a text msg from a $15 flip-phone.
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My Obamaphone is a low-end Android smartphone (with a camera so bad that I wouldn't use it). Perhaps your friend got it through the wrong company, since the exact phone you get all depends on which company you sign up with.
Not what personal computers are for (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Not what personal computers are for (Score:2)
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I entered the business over a decade before you did, and except for the obsessive use of social media I'm with the young people on this issue. Life before my locked-down toy computer is now another geologic era. When you needed a cab in those good old days of yours, you and your girl had to go out in the rain and yell at cars until one deigned to stop for you. Firing up an app on my iPhone as I pay the waiter and having a car waiting as we step outside is a whole new world.
And for today's phones, that's o
Use Wikipedia (Score:2)
But is it personal? (Score:2)
You could also maybe recognize that computers are computers. They compute. Size isn't really the issue.
You're right. The issue is whether it's truly a personal computer, in that the person who owns it controls what computing is done. A home microwave oven has a computer in it, but it's not a personal computer in this sense. Neither is an iPhone or iPad in most cases, particularly when the device for loading user-written programs into an iPhone or iPad [apple.com] costs more than the iPhone or iPad itself.
Re: Can't use (Score:2)
The "poor" in western countries can universally pay for cars, phones and $120/mo cable. If they can't the government gives it to them for free.
I'm sure setting up a call center is of minimal cost to an Uber-sized company.
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Where do you get your fake news? The poor around here (Canada) have shopping carts to keep all their worldly possessions in. I doubt that they have phones as a phone is useless without a plan which are fucking expensive here. The working poor do have cars, which gives them somewhere to live because they sure as hell can't afford the rent if they were lucky enough to find somewhere to rent. The idea of them having cable without a TV...
...where does this leave the disabled people? (Score:2)
Does uber gaurentee that a certain percentage of their fleet will be handicapped or disabled accessible? I know that this is always a consideration when designing "public" transportation systems, what promises of accessibility could uber possibly make about cars that they don't own?
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TRue, but TFA is about some three-horse hicksville in the middle of fuck knows where.
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Last year a 105yo Frenchman set a cycling distance record for centurians.
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The same number you dial to hail a public transit bus, moron.
Except that I walk out to the street corner when I want to catch a bus. Or an STD for that matter...
CA$3 to CA$5 per ride? (Score:2)
Innisfil will subsidize Uber trips so citizens pay between CA$3 and CA$5 themselves, depending on the destination, the town said.
Isn't CA$3 to CA$5 per ride more expensive than bus rides?
Uber may be better for the city, but it doesn't sound like it will be better for the consumer.
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Depends. What was the baseline cost of riding the city bus? If it was anywhere close to that amount, the net result is faster travel for the same user cost, with a massively lower cost to the city.
If it takes off, this may create a stream of side income for a lot of people with working used cars - instead of a bus factory far, far away.
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In Montreal the most expensive way to pay for a fare costs 3.25 $ for a bus+metro trip that can last up to 2 hours, and on top of that there's child, student, or senior rebates.
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That is just the per-ride cost. What about the tax cost that the service has?
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Actually nevermind, I just realized the uber cost was 3-5, not a subsidy of 3-5.
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>bus+metro trip that can last up to 2 hours
How much more would a poor person pay to trim that 2 hour ride to, say 30 minutes? Subsidized Uber sounds like a perfect answer.
Time has value, especially to those working an hourly wage.
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What was the baseline cost of riding the city bus?
City buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, charge 3 USD for an all-day pass. (Source: fwcitilink.com) Is this price abnormally low by the standards of the rest of anglophone North America?
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That seems a little low. Also, it is nowhere near the cost of providing the service. According to this badly scanned pdf (https://www.fwcitilink.com/pdfs/Citilink-2015-Annual-Report.pdf) fare revenue for that system is $1.4M, total expenses $12.6M. With 2M passenger boardings, that comes out to an actual cost of ~$6 per ride. Now, the benefits of having a public transportation system are many; I'm just pointing out that most fares have no relationship to the cost of the service.
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Innisfil will subsidize Uber trips so citizens pay between CA$3 and CA$5 themselves, depending on the destination, the town said.
Isn't CA$3 to CA$5 per ride more expensive than bus rides? Uber may be better for the city, but it doesn't sound like it will be better for the consumer.
Yes, that it less than the cost of the fare and subsidy for a bus ride.
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In Brisbane, Australia, bus trips would be around the A$5 mark. However, the fares are only about of the running cost of the service, and don't even come close to covering the capital costs. The subsidies come from the city council and the state government. Well, ultimately the ratepayers but you know what I mean.
Re:CA$3 to CA$5 per ride? (Score:5, Informative)
The fares for the neighbouring city of Barrie [barrie.ca] are $3 for a single zone and $6 for two zones on route 90.
For York Region (just south of Innisfil), the regular fare is $3-4.50 [www.yrt.ca].
In Toronto the regular fare is $3.25 nominal, $3 if paid by token or card [www.ttc.ca].
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Bus rides cost whatever the city decides they cost. Usually, bus fare is subsidized and the system runs at a loss.
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In Baltimore, it's US $3.60 for a round-trip, US $1.80 for a one-way, and US $3.95 for a day pass on all public transit.
Here's the thing: generally, public transit is slow and limited. The light rail is on a rail, and takes three times as long as driving if you include the 15-45 minute wait (sometimes trains come 40 minutes in between--and, hell, sometimes they alternate so every other train goes all the way, so the next train may stop short of your destination and require you to get off and wait anoth
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So Canada thinks they can spend $75,000 per year of money they take out of your income so you can further pay $3.50 for a one-way trip that takes 20 minutes, instead of paying $20 for that same trip. Their alternative is spending several billions for a bus system or hundreds of billions for a rail system with long transit times. Seems legit.
Well public transit is usually slow and limited because one driver can transport many passengers. What's the efficiency of Uber over, well, Uber? Basically it seems like a scheme to pay taxes to pay Uber instead of paying Uber to provide the exact same taxi service. Unless it's used as some quasi-bus service, I know we have that certain rural areas here in Norway. Essentially you can order transport to/from where the regular public transport ends in advance and you get that at a heavily discounted/subsidize
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Well public transit is usually slow and limited because one driver can transport many passengers. What's the efficiency of Uber over, well, Uber?
Well, hold on, my original argument spoke of time spent on the bus or rail system.
A single light rail ride here ranges from having a car containing 3 passengers to three cars containing 40 passengers. Obviously, the light rail using a driver to move 3 passengers is slow, clunky, and inefficient: it takes 49 minutes of driver time to move those 3 people, when the driver could spend those 49 minutes moving 120 passengers.
What happens when we include the passengers, though?
A 3-passenger, 49-minute trip
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It varies. In the towns around my area, $2-$3 is typical. A bus ride in Toronto costs at least $3/ride for an adult.
But keep in mind that this is closer to a cab ride than a bus ride...
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That's the fare charged to the riders, what's the service costing the taxpayers? Especially in smaller towns, buses can be shockingly expensive to operate.
population (Score:5, Funny)
Innisfil, population 32,727 as of 2014
Is anybody else weirdly disappointed that the town does not have 41 more people?
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We'll be there in 2048.
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You think wrong.
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Innisfil, population 32,727 as of 2014
Is anybody else weirdly disappointed that the town does not have 41 more people?
You just restored my faith in Slashdot.
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Innisfil, population 32,727 as of 2014
Is anybody else weirdly disappointed that the town does not have 41 more people?
You just restored my faith in Slashdot.
This needs to be modded up.
LOL
Good short term, bad long term (Score:5, Insightful)
Great for the town budget now, but lousy for long term social stability. They're encouraging part-time under-employment.
It would have been better to launch a town-owned cab company. Probably with somewhat worse service, but with full employment for a couple of people. (Innisfil only has a population of 36K). And with city-owned, electric vehicles.
Even better would have been to escalate this to the county level, and let Simcoe build a region-wide transit system based on the taxi model. By scaling up they could have some inter-city links and a few handicap/accessible vans. Simcoe county is about 5K square kilometers and has four or five decent-sized urban centers in it.
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With a "guaranteed source" of ridership, this should be good for the Uber drivers.
Next, they need to unionize to ensure that they are making a living wage after the cost of operating their vehicles.
As it stands, many Uber drivers are giving away the cost of operating their vehicle for free - which is how their cars are so nice compared to typical taxis.
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It would depend on what your goal was:
Social stability for a small fixed number of full-time taxi drivers, lack of reliability for customers including the elderly and disabled, and more drunk driving fatalities and the social instability those fatalities create in those families left behind.
OR
A more elastic workforce, elastic capacity (with UberPool or LyftLine), cheaper pricing, and more reliable service, that responds to a market that is already inherently elastic and variable where everybody calls an Ube
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I bit better then having some people being part-time wage slaves stuck in poverty.
Currently there aren't enough full-time jobs for the people who want them.
Good idea, except (Score:4, Insightful)
Good idea, except that they will be giving 20% of that money to Uber. Have they used their own application, they could end up saving a lot.
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Cost (to the town) for developing that app probably is higher than 10 years of Uber's 20% fees. Cost of maintaining the app could conceivably be higher than the ongoing 20% fee.
Unless the town has a resident programmer who gives his time away for free, like Uber drivers with their cars.
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They could let their police department dispatcher handle the calls from a list of drivers on a sheet of paper for a fraction of the cost.
Or they could hire someone else to do that job, and call him a taxi dispatcher. And outsource that to a private company. Like taxi companies have been doing for decades. No need for that 20% cut to Uber.
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Have they used their own application, they could end up saving a lot.
Savings all sound good when you look at them in isolation. Cost of development is non-trivial. Cost of distribution is non-trivial. Cost of maintenance is non-trivial.
Giving a small percentage to someone who's very good at those things is often cheaper than doing them yourself.
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Did they factor the cost of being vendor locked-in to Uber? I don't think so.
Sounds like a good use case for an open source application. Development costs could be shared among different cities.
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Did they factor the cost of being vendor locked-in to Uber? I don't think so.
I'm sure they didn't give it any thought and the peanut gallery and armchair businessmen on Slashdot know they just got it wrong.
I have a better one for you:
a) what is the exact monetary cost of vendor lock in?
b) what is the exact wording of the contract given you seem to know so much about this specific deal?
Every deal has risk, including the deal of employing your own people / contractors to develop your own app. Because we all know governments are really efficient at spending money developing their own I
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So your logic is that since we can't calculate the exact value of the vendor lock-in, let's use $0 as an estimate.
I never said the federal government should be involved. They could however not use a mobile phone software if it's too expensive. 20% is very expensive.
Uber is losing money (Score:2)
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What you call network effect should be called vendor lock-in. The more people are using Uber, more they will be able to raise fees and the city will be in a shitty situation.
Plus I'd be really pissed off as a Uber competitor (Lift or regular cab) if my taxes subsidized my competitor without even an open bid process. Sounds like a good plan to get sued.
Is it necessary? (Score:3)
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> I am not sure if Innisfil is some isolated community or near a larger city
Innisfil (36k people), and it's about 10 min south of Barrie (140k people).
As someone from a city that - last time I checked 30 years ago - had 3x the population of Barrie, I don't know if either of those places are large enough to support a proper transit system.
Besides, Barrie is a bedroom community full of people who commute to Toronto for work. I'm pretty sure 99.9% of people there have their own car.
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Elliot Lake has only 10,000 people and has a bus service with 4 routes that costs $2.50 a ride or $62 a month. The routes run Monday-Saturday, once an hour from 7 AM to 6 PM, and 9PM on Thursday and Friday. The bus routes cover the majority of the town, especially those with apartment buildings which would be more likely to require buses, as well as the commercial areas.
Smells funny (Score:2)
Seems like Innisfil tailored the contract for Uber. Does Lyft work in Canada?
Anyway, since Uber drivers bear almost all of the costs how will Uber fulfill the contract if drivers can not profit?
Who do you sue when the Uber driver is exhausted from doing 20 fares that day and has an accident and his insurance refuses to cover anything since they found out he was operating the vehicle as a taxi.
I suppose it ought to be Innisfil for picking this evil company.
This is the Holy Grail of vulture capitalism (Score:2)
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If nothing else, they will have data to determine if their money is being spent effectively.
So what about people without cell phones (Score:2)
so will any uber driver have full insurance? (Score:2)
so will any uber driver have full insurance? in that town and not ubers on / off one?
WIll the town do safety and background checks?
This is freakin' brilliant (Score:3)
I have to say, I'm unbelievably happy to see this. The effects of a program like this are far greater reaching than the article mentions. First of all, it creates income opportunities for more people than just the couple of drivers of a bus. Second it eliminates the need for the town to cover the maintenance costs for large investments like that, but drives more opportunities for local automotive maintenance businesses (usually smaller family owned establishments). Third, they are putting money into the service, not buying an expensive "thing". What will they do with a bus in 5-6 years when it's worn out and needs to be replaced? Buying large items like that doesn't solve the need, but subsidising a service industry that does solve the need it really smart.
In the current economy where cities are constantly fighting against service based businesses like Uber, AirBnB and others that don't pay their premiums for cab medallions and hotel licenses, this is a real win, not only for the local population, but for local businesses to improve their individual opportunities. I'm not in the industry, but so far as I can tell, this is an all around win that doesn't require the local government to establish more rules and regulation, more people to enforce those rules and more time to be wasted in council meetings discussing all of the "what-if" scenarios. For those, like me, that favor smaller government that still works for the people, this is a great example that I hope to see replicated all over.
I'll use my personal "commute" as an example of how this works with, not against, other larger public transit systems.
My typical work day is as follows:
1. Drive to my local train station (about 4 miles from home so let's say $2 in gas and averaged maintenance costs).
2. Pay $1.50 to park at the train station (large lot with about 300 spaces for commuters).
3. Take a train to the city $200 monthly (I'm in the suburbs).
4. Take the train back to my local station.
5. Drive home (another $2 in gas/maintenance).
The public transportation in the large municipal area where I live is very good, but locally in my town, there are no bus options for getting to the train.
IF we implemented something like this in our town, I would pay my $4 a day to an Uber driver that would drive me too and from the train station. Now, maybe that doesn't save me any money, but it doesn't cost anything more. The local town, on the other hand, can take that huge space for parking, where the cost of maintaining the lot is barely covered by the parking fees, and create a great new "downtown" business space where a coffee shop and other commuter conveniences would be right at the train station.
Here are the big wins in my mind:
New local businesses generate more local tax revenues for an overall increase in local government revenues.
Environmental improvements with fewer greenhouse emissions from cars.
Less traffic in the downtown suburb.
Local folks that are looking for a "side hustle" to make ends meet have another opportunity!
Here's the really interesting thing. My wife and I probably only need one car! That's at least $5,000 a year back in my pocket.
Honestly, I don't see the downside in suburban areas like this. Would it work in a larger metropolitan city? Probably not since busses and subways really do a good job to alleviate the traffic that would be caused by a bunch of extra cars that only hold 3-4 people at a time, but I really think that more smaller towns, like mine, can benefit from this in a big way.
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How many Uber drivers would be required to get everybody to that train station who is parking there? And they probably all want to be there at about 8AM so they can get to work on time. You'd basically need as many Uber drivers as there are people parking in that lot every day.
Accessibility (Score:2)
So how well does Uber handle wheelchairs?
Expect to see this for Dial-A-Ride (Score:2)
Subsidizing Uber or Lyft to provide those services instead might save t
Disgusting (Score:2)
I actually love Uber, but this is a *terrible* move. Two of the greatest advantages of public transit: traffic reduction and reduced carbon emissions, will not be realised with this scheme. Car sharing is a much better idea, so that hundreds of Uber vehicles aren't just randomly driving around all the time pumping CO2 into the air. It would also be more convenient and far less expensive not having to pay drivers.
Once automated vehicles are a reality, this would be a great solution, but we're a long way a
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"I can hardly wait for the day we can fire all of these unionised drivers and replace them with autonomous vehicles."
I'm sure politicians and business management are all with you: more money to give themselves raises and keep the record level of economic disparity rising.
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It would be interesting to know how the software is optimized for ride sharing, I would imagine that it's possible to be fairly cynical about that.
Plus the town is probably pretty small, given that it only has 32Ki population, and small buses are reasonably fuel efficient these days. So I would have thought that two drivers with a small bus could pretty well clean up all the available business, the subsidy and the fares in and out of hours. Seems like a good deal for uber and a couple of drivers sharing th
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Perhaps an uber-like system operating minibuses would be ideal. Finland was trying something like this. There were no set bus lines/routes. People just asked for a ride and the system would build the route on the fly.
Here's a cheaper idea: keep the bus stops, but wire every stop with a button that someone can push when they need a pickup. This then flags the stop on a display for the driver so that they know to stop at that stop. For people already on the bus they can have buttons at each seat that tells the driver they want to get off at the next stop. this way, instead of slowing down and stopping at every stop whether it is needed or not, the bus only stops when someone needs to get on or off. This would save fue
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No, this is Obamacare for public transportation... Only there is one provider and if you like your bus, too bad.
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Our town of ~50k runs a fleet of around a dozen buses. There is no fare, they are free to ride. They run around empty mostly. The bus stops are planted at the most dangerous and inconvenient places, the buses have a little "yield" sign on the back that flashes to tell you the driver isn't looking when they pull out
We also pay for a large school bus fleet, so far as I can tell there's no co-ordination in scheduling between the fleets and it's almost impossible for high school kids to ride out to the high sch
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In Ontario (and many other places) it's actually required to yield to a bus driver who is re-entering the lane. Otherwise, buses would pull over and never be able to get back into the lane because people would just keep on passing them. The flashing yield sign is probably to just remind the drivers that an actual law exists and to obey it.