Public transit that is not subway on rails suck big time.
I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the <10mph average speed that a typical bus that stops every 2 minutes achieves, and a 2mile commute can last easily 45 minutes.
I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations.
Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time, I park under my office building and I am never late (maybe 1/300 due to an accident). Oh and I always arrive dry.
Commuting in general is bad. Commuting by bus is one of the worst things that us peasants have to deal with on a daily basis.
Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere).
NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is all in contrast to how many bus networks in the US operate: they pick you up on the side of the highway, drive with the rest of traffic, and drop you off on either the highway or in a bus depot in the middle of nowhere.
I used to commute by bus rapid transit. It was great. The buses were every 5-10 minutes during peak times, the stations and website gave spot on updates, the air conditioning always worked, the buses were clean, you had internet the whole way and generally everyone could find seating. When there was an accident or road construction the bus... went around it.
When I moved to a subway-oriented city the trains were a bit more frequent and not subject to street traffic, but they were more crowded, the internet/phone service regularly failed; and when things went wrong, they REALLY went wrong, which occurred monthly. A 15 minute ride turning into hot crowded 1h+ mess was not uncommon. And the regular track and station closures created all sorts of chaos that I never dealt with on the bus.
Bus rapid transit is one of the most underrated modes of transportation and light rail easily the most overrated, IMO. It's not bad, but it has captured the public's attention in an unhealthy way.
Of course, now I work from home and walk to about 50% of the places I need to go, even in the deep suburbs.
The biggest problem with most bus systems is that they use the same roads as private traffic. This means that for any individual person taking the car is faster than taking the bus. Of course all of these people who live in car-dependent suburbs already have a car so the additional cost to drive is low and they will get there faster and arguably more comfortable (sure, you can't read a book but you have your own personal environment). The end result is that the roads are full, need constant expansion and no one takes the bus.
Subways on rail are often faster than driving so they tend to be incredibly popular and greatly reduce traffic on the road. But subways on rails are not the only way to ensure that public transit is fast.
The city of <50k residents from the article is never going to have a subway system on rails. This is a solution for small cities that replaces the terrible bus service you've experienced. The microtransit system described specifically eliminates the bus stops that you cite as drawbacks.
Public bus transit and private car transit are inherently in conflict. You basically can't run them on the same streets and expect the bus to not suck.
You could, of course, run the bus in a dedicated, separate right-of-way to solve that problem. But like you said, just build rail at that point
Why is rail any different? If one train goes down on a subway line, all of the trains after it are pretty much stuck too. A few lines can sometimes route around pain, but that's kind of rare.
In general, public transportation is just pretty inconvenient. (Now, I like walking so it's a bonus for me, but I can see how it's not for everyone.)
I still remember when I as a full time public transit commuter well into my adulthood. When new friends who didn't own cars would begin spending significant time with me we'd have to naturally public transit around town. Many of these individuals never really spent significant time outside of a car or a building having to stand around waiting outdoors. This became obvious when the weather got rough in winter and it was revealed they didn't own a proper coat to spend time freezing outside. I've lent out many of my extra coats in these situations.
Aren’t these just subsidized taxis? They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution, I don’t see how they ultimately bring down costs since you still need individual cars and drivers...
Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an Uber/Lyft with anyone else despite selecting the pool option.
Definitely not the point of these. In larger cities, bus transit is for reducing congestion without massive infrastructure investment. In smaller cities, bus transit is purely for helping people who can't/don't drive get to where they need to be.
The problem is, there is not enough ridership in smaller cities for a bus to be frequent or cover a wide area. This solves that problem, but it only works since congestion isn't a problem.
As soon as there enough people to worry about congestion, bus transit is better.
> They don’t help with congestion, they don’t help with pollution,
So what? The first and only point of a public transport system is, you know, transporting people. Limiting congestion and pollution comes very far in terms of priority, and only once the core mission is fulfilled.
There are van taxis that do this in third world countries, they're not terrible. Faster than a bus line and cheaper than a regular taxi. I think if pooling was more of a norm and people were a bit less time sensitive it'd work great here with the support of an app.
I think you’re missing that the demand dynamics are different in underserved areas. They’re an alternative to a fixed bus route, so there’s a much greater tolerance for flexibility, i.e: 30 mins for one of these micro-transit buses to show up, and a 50% longer journey time vs. an Uber is very acceptable as a bus alternative, but an Uber rider would be very unlikely to accept that, which means Uber Pool is very unlikely to find a co-passenger whereas micro-transit is.
Less parking needed if people take these. In my suburb, it may be hard to get an Lyft and it may cost like $6 to go 1-2 miles if they do show up. Other than that, if I don't have a car, there's no bus to take me to most parts of the city, I'd have to walk or ride or a bike.
Yes, they seem like subsidized taxis but with more capacity than normal taxis and maybe less direct routes than normal taxis. If people have more time than money, I think this can help.
In terms of pollution and congestion, if they increase the density of people traveling more than they increase the total distance traveled, then I would assume they help reduce both.
For a bus line with only a few people replacing the bus with a car is going to reduce pollution on net. Replacing a full bus with a number of full vans will be bad for the environment, of course, but on most routes and most of the time busses aren't full. Ideally we would use a mixture of busses and vans depending on the demand for a particular route.
We have this in Jerusalem.
At busy times the van takes up to around 6 people and at quiet times you're by yourself.
At busy times your ride can take up to triple what it would have taken otherwise, because it makes stops for other people. Like 45 mins instead of 15, which makes it pretty unpredictable.
You also often have to wait a while for it.
They're called TikTak here.
It's mainly useful for getting a direct ride where you'd otherwise have to take more than one bus.
Yessss!!! There is no best one-size-for-all solution for transportation, we need lots of different methods to select the best methods for the situation. Scooters, [e-]bikes, vans, trolleys, buses, subways, trains, funiculars. (And more that have yet to be invented; personally I hope for rentable e-assist pedi-cabs to take cargo like groceries home in cities without the need for a 2-ton+ vehicle)
I think this van service combined with an "Uber Pool" model enables highly efficient trips that can supplement mass-transit. Within the planning of bus routes, there are always routes that will take a lot longer or require transfers, but are rarely taken; vans that can "go anywhere" would fill those gaps, without the need for profit-making (and without the discrimination and exploitation of taxis).
From the article, here's why van supplementation can work: "For $1.6 million, we're providing well over twice as many trips and covering 100 percent of the city with a system that picks you up within 15 to 20 minutes of your request, versus a bus that was only running once an hour." It's more expensive [to the city] but it provides much greater mobility and time-saving for citizens.
When you're a single mom and groceries are an hour ride one-way, and the bus only comes once an hour, and you work late, just getting food is a nightmare that takes 3+ hours at the end of a long day. Because of that, she may have to spend $25-50 on taxis (many grocery stores aren't open late), which further reduces her already stretched income. Supplemental transportation methods can solve this problem and transform quality of life for disadvantaged people in society.
This kind of strategy must be combined with changing the ways cities are built. Your last point about the single mom, this SHOULDNT be a problem. At all. How did people 100 years ago deal with not having access to food without a time consuming trip? They either grew their own, or they lived close enough to a place where they could buy it. The private automobile completely killed the idea of living close to what you need.
This is America trying to fix problems that are caused by their poor-to-nonexistent urban planning, FWIW. I've lived in several countries in Europe, and you have to be far out into the countryside before it gets difficult to go grocery shopping with a bike and bike trailer, or even just a backpack and walking.
We had something like this in the exurbs of Calgary in the 1970s, it was called "DART", for "Dial-A-Ride Transit".
It was semi-on-demand, and not door-to-door.
The scheme was, you called the DART line (from your land-line, obviously) and gave your address, and there was a mini-bus that made the rounds of the residential neighborhood, which would come to your address on its next round. It would then take you to the local transit junction point, a nearby shopping mall with several bus bays where a number of regular bus routes converged, and you would make your connection and complete your journey in the regular way.
It seemed to me to be a reasonable way of efficiently delivering infrequent transit service to a large area, although I personally only used it a couple of times to visiit a friend.
I’ve imagined that self driving cars would fill in this “last mile” from the end destination to an air conditioned transit hub. Once you get enough density in a transit hub, the frequency and destinations should explode, making the network usable, even in car heavy towns like Houston.
- 37,000 trips / week (6-day service). I suspect most are on weekdays.
- 6,170 trips/day
- 13.5 hour operation (5:30 am - 7 pm)
- ~457 trips / hour
- ~30 trips / van-hour
I'm not sure how many seats per van, though I suspect 6--9 (3 rows of 3 seats). If a trip is 15 minutes, then that's an average of 7.5 passengers/trip.
Keep in mind that net trips includes the deadhead (no passenger) portion.
The ridership numbers seem unusually high to me. I'd be interested in seeing trip profiles.
By comparison, BART in the SF Bay Area has an annual ridership of over 20 million, and over 104,000 weekday riders. (I also suspect a Bart rider is two trips.) Bart moves 3x what Wilson are claiming for weekly numbers, and roughly as many people in an hour as Wilson does in a day. The Transbay Tunnel can accommodate 24 ten-car trainsets per hour. Each car can carry more than 200 passengers at crush load, or 48,000 passengers/hour for the tube as a whole.
Put another way, microtransit is trying to shoehorn transit into a sprawl- and car-centric urban landscape. Dense development and well-travelled routes are what make transit efficient and viable.
Make of this what you will: North Carolina’s cities used to have remarkably developed streetcar networks[1].
It is depressing and frustrating to see public authorities attempt to recreate the successes of public transport on fundamentally inefficient, commons-hostile substrates.
I live in a city with a "modern" streetcar. I even rode it to work for a few months. Two reasons why it's not great.
1. It shares busy streets with cars yet has zero ability to maneuver in traffic. If just one car is parked a few inches beyond the edge of the parking lane, the entire streetcar route is blocked.
2. The tracks trap bicycle tires and cause many bicycle crashes. This happened to colleague of mine, fortunately at low speed. There have been dozens of crashes and at least one death.
Electric bus service is cheaper to install and has neither of these disadvantages.
In my past life I built and sold dispatch software for microtransit / on-demand rides. (UberPool as a service, more or less.)
What this article doesn’t say:
* Many, many cities have something similar already, but only for riders with disabilities. (“paratransit”) You need to schedule your ride the day before, but they will take you from door to door.
* The cost per ride is quite high: more than $20 per ride, often. This cost is borne by the city, while riders pay little to nothing. In very few cases does it make financial sense - most places aren’t replacing their buses with microtransit.
* The best utilization I’ve seen is on campuses, where there are a fixed set of stops in a small region, and a large population of people who can’t or don’t want to drive (maybe due to limited parking).
Istanbul has an oddly good system, where vans run a set route, but you can ask for them to stop wherever. I feel like this would be a better balance that would allow for greater coverage, while also lowering the cost of equipment and in the very least, eliminating the need to walk as much to a stop. It's also faster because it's basically a large taxi, so once the van is full, you only stop where the passengers need. This is only a supplement there, but I think it would work better than the majority of bus set-ups currently used.
> These days, the service runs about 37,000 trips a week, Lentz said, or more than two and a half times the 26,000 rides the old bus system ran in a typical, pre-pandemic week.
Are "trips" different from "rides" in some way that makes this arithmetic correct?
> It’s one tool for providing lifeline access to hard-to-serve areas, where availability, not ridership, is the point.
From your own article. Flexible/microtransit/whatever you want to call it can be a good idea, and it can be done right. Its not a replacement for a bus route with any level of decent ridership, its for the areas where there literally aren't enough people interested in riding a bus to make the bus practical. Once ridership numbers get high enough, the transit groups should absolutely upgrade those areas to actual bus lines, but until then it is an option to serve places that otherwise wouldn't be able to be effectively served by decent bus service economically.
You buried the lede for this piece. It doesn’t say that micro transit is a bad idea, just that its objectives are different than fixed route transit. Specifically, it optimizes for coverage instead of ridership, which makes sense for low density areas.
Even the NPR article says that larger cities are experimenting with micro transit but only for harder-to-reach areas.
It has a place as a complement to fixed route transit, not as a replacement.
It is the future, getting the large inefficient buses off the system is the goal.
His thesis that the vehicles meander and no technology will fix that is refutable in that technology can identify opportunities to minimize inefficiencies. A good algorithm will create efficient routes for the flexible transit.
Finally, the author is a public transit consultant. He is not going to be good for a reference when he is on one side of an item. He may be a subject matter expert, but he is blinded to what can be accomplished. Judging from other people’s comments from other countries, my thesis is more accurate.
We already have this in my rural area in the states. There's a shuttle that picks people up to funnel them to either the local parking lot near the interstate (to catch a larger bus to the closest city center) or to disperse them to the 5 or 6 large employers across 3 counties.
You call the company, they send a van. Usually you get picked up with two or three other people and it might take an hour to get where you're going (when a car could do it in 30-45 minutes in a direct route). Or you schedule a regular pick up, and they coordinate to have you ride with 10 or so other people, but the ride is a lot shorter.
And it's 100% free. The large employers pay to subsidize its use for the entire area because they get such a value from it. You can get the shuttle to take you anywhere.
Indeed, and in Germany it’s called "Rufbus” and that’s what you have in small villages where a regular bus service is not available.
I know there are such in other countries but I don’t know the other names.
It picks up people and takes them to the closest light rail station or takes them home from the station. It has a fixed radius of operation and typically there are 2-5 people in the van. It is a feeder system to bring riders to light rail trains.
I recall Hong Kong's solution, at least when I was there a decade ago. You had the Metro with fixed rails for core routes, then double-decker buses that went to additional areas in large loops. Next were the green minibuses that had small loops, branching off from the other services. After that were red minibuses, which had specific pickup locations, then would drop you off anywhere nearby. All of which could be paid for using the same Octopus card.
I think Hong Kong can pull this off in part because so much of the city is long thin corridors which can be nearly entirely serviced by the metro, commuter train, by light rail in the new territories (and I guess the cable car). This covers a high percentage of commuter needs, and so buses, minibuses, and taxis are to some extent gap-fillers to get people from major arteries to the remaining small proportion of outlying destinations.
This is amazing. Of course a full train or bus can be an order of magnitude more efficient, and so should be installed and run where there’s demand, but replacing the prohibitively-expensive private option of Uber with an affordable, if slower, city option is just… lovely!
The greater Helsinki area municipal transit authority "HSL" had this years a go.
You could hail a mini bus with an app if you had some friends with you.
I guess it was not sustainable, even if it was well liked. As it got shut down after a few years.
I take the buses in Brooklyn pretty regularly, and I don't find the routes themselves especially lacking[1]. But higher volume would be nice, and I'd be interested to see evidence presented that smaller buses would accomplish that (versus more dedicated bus lanes and high fines for blocking the lanes).
Do they pickup multiple passengers? It does seem like subsidized taxis, and not really "mass transit," but I'm glad it's helping people. I think a tram system powered by overhead lines is much more efficient, and better, they just need to lay the tracks.
I think about Berlin and how you can get just about anywhere on the tram system, and if you are well behaved your trip could be, well, free.. [0]
Santa Clara County, CA, had that in 1974-1975.[1] It was a failure. Mini-buses running around with zero or one passenger.
The trouble is, there have to be a lot of people wanting roughly the same trip for mini-buses to work. Otherwise you're just running a taxi service with an oversized vehicle.
It works when there's a common source or destination, such as an airport or a downtown area or a school. It doesn't work in a big diffuse area, where everybody wants a different trip.
Where’s this all coming from lately? Seems that walkable cities (code for making vehicle ownership so expensive and onerous that only the elite can drive) and the push for public transit is a top down affair that is being force fed to the public not just via the usual media outlets, but also legions of GPT based Internet shills.
It also seems very European. All the big cities already have buses and trains in the US. Outside these places it’s not only not practical, it’s totally infeasible. So who is making this push? WEF? Mayor Pete?
Back in the late-70s/early-80s the town I lived in had a thing called Dial-a-Bus which was longer than a minivan with maybe 10-15 seats, built lighter than a modern airport shuttle. It could pick you up from home and drop you off at an address, etc. I remember when the price jumped from 10 cents to 25 cents per ride. Prank calls were a thing unfortunately.
I've often calculated how long I'd have to spend on mass transit to get to some desireable event and back - and decided, reluctantly, to skip it. Because the waits+rides would take longer than the event lasted.
The option to use microtransit once a week would be well worth paying twice as much.
> Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up to six people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone, able to provide point-to-point service according to the passengers' needs, and supplemented by a computer system which guarantees minimum detours, and minimum waiting times. Make bus stops for the mini-buses every 600 feet in each direction, and equip these bus stops with a phone for dialing a bus.
Why does no one talk about the private bus companies and the colectivos that are found throughout Central and South America? The system is amazing for anyone who has used it, compared to alternatives.
Perhaps tell us why it’s amazing and the road to where it is today.
I think most can surmise that all forms of transit have been repeatedly tried all over the world. Sharing details and their applicability to other other municipalities are what will advance transit.
in Hong Kong - especially in the New Territories - the mini-van is basically the main mode of semi-public transport.
The '小巴' basically operate fixed routes, seats about 13, pick up and move per stop, but don't stop on empty stops unless called to do so via open outcry from a passenger who wants to get off at that spot.
Somewhere in between taxi (entirely private, no fixed route) and bus (entirely public, fixed route). They're great, and generally missing from transportation systems in the Western world
Berlin had an on demand ride sharing shuttle service, called BerlKönig, that has been run by Berlin's public transport provider BVG. Unfortunately it was recently discontinued, but apparently the BVG is planning a new on demand service.
BerlKönig was automatically following routes that would optimize for a higher load factor.
For me it was the best option for certain scenarios.
Cities have the demand to support real transit which is vastly more cost and energy efficient. They have congestion which isn't helped much by shuttles compared to a bus or other high capacity transit. Congestion also slows the shuttle down so you need more shuttles and more depots. They also have more destinations at cyclable distances.
Paratransit is for mobility for theose who can't drive in areas that can't justify a train or enough buses for a <1hr max wait time. It needs a larger per km subsidy to be affordable.
whatever1|3 years ago
I have wasted thousands of hours waiting for the bus that either came early, or is late, under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms. Add to that the <10mph average speed that a typical bus that stops every 2 minutes achieves, and a 2mile commute can last easily 45 minutes.
I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations.
Since I got a car and live in the suburbs, I pay much lower housing costs, I start exactly 20’ before my punch in time, I park under my office building and I am never late (maybe 1/300 due to an accident). Oh and I always arrive dry.
Commuting in general is bad. Commuting by bus is one of the worst things that us peasants have to deal with on a daily basis.
woodruffw|3 years ago
NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is all in contrast to how many bus networks in the US operate: they pick you up on the side of the highway, drive with the rest of traffic, and drop you off on either the highway or in a bus depot in the middle of nowhere.
topkai22|3 years ago
When I moved to a subway-oriented city the trains were a bit more frequent and not subject to street traffic, but they were more crowded, the internet/phone service regularly failed; and when things went wrong, they REALLY went wrong, which occurred monthly. A 15 minute ride turning into hot crowded 1h+ mess was not uncommon. And the regular track and station closures created all sorts of chaos that I never dealt with on the bus.
Bus rapid transit is one of the most underrated modes of transportation and light rail easily the most overrated, IMO. It's not bad, but it has captured the public's attention in an unhealthy way.
Of course, now I work from home and walk to about 50% of the places I need to go, even in the deep suburbs.
kevincox|3 years ago
Subways on rail are often faster than driving so they tend to be incredibly popular and greatly reduce traffic on the road. But subways on rails are not the only way to ensure that public transit is fast.
simonebrunozzi|3 years ago
at 10mph average, which includes stops, I doubt a 2 mile commute could take 45 minutes. It should take... 12 minutes. Let's call it 15.
> I have walked thousands of miles because the bus stops do not align with my destinations.
It's probably good for your health.
Seriously, now: I get your point. The
> under 100 degrees of sun and under snowstorms
is the worst part, I guess.
I commuted by bus only occasionally in my life, and I've luckily been telecommuting for the past ~15 years or so. But I can relate.
rockinghigh|3 years ago
Are you talking about the US? I found buses to work quite well in France, Japan, London, Switzerland. Even in the US, they work fine in dense areas.
deepsun|3 years ago
fennecfoxen|3 years ago
Bus Rapid Transit called. It promised 95% of the raw speed and 4x the service frequency at 25% of the cost.
Thrymr|3 years ago
ahoy|3 years ago
You could, of course, run the bus in a dedicated, separate right-of-way to solve that problem. But like you said, just build rail at that point
sdrwefgfvb|3 years ago
xhkkffbf|3 years ago
In general, public transportation is just pretty inconvenient. (Now, I like walking so it's a bonus for me, but I can see how it's not for everyone.)
jxramos|3 years ago
martopix|3 years ago
dvfjsdhgfv|3 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
newaccount2021|3 years ago
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Wowfunhappy|3 years ago
Perhaps in some limited cases, multiple people going the same way at the same time can share a vehicle, but how often will that work out in practice? I basically never end up sharing an Uber/Lyft with anyone else despite selecting the pool option.
Am I missing anything?
VyseofArcadia|3 years ago
Definitely not the point of these. In larger cities, bus transit is for reducing congestion without massive infrastructure investment. In smaller cities, bus transit is purely for helping people who can't/don't drive get to where they need to be.
The problem is, there is not enough ridership in smaller cities for a bus to be frequent or cover a wide area. This solves that problem, but it only works since congestion isn't a problem.
As soon as there enough people to worry about congestion, bus transit is better.
pif|3 years ago
So what? The first and only point of a public transport system is, you know, transporting people. Limiting congestion and pollution comes very far in terms of priority, and only once the core mission is fulfilled.
CuriouslyC|3 years ago
phphphphp|3 years ago
jimkleiber|3 years ago
Yes, they seem like subsidized taxis but with more capacity than normal taxis and maybe less direct routes than normal taxis. If people have more time than money, I think this can help.
In terms of pollution and congestion, if they increase the density of people traveling more than they increase the total distance traveled, then I would assume they help reduce both.
Symmetry|3 years ago
ahazred8ta|3 years ago
What congestion? Most of the US doesn't even HAVE congestion.
ilauuk|3 years ago
0xbadcafebee|3 years ago
I think this van service combined with an "Uber Pool" model enables highly efficient trips that can supplement mass-transit. Within the planning of bus routes, there are always routes that will take a lot longer or require transfers, but are rarely taken; vans that can "go anywhere" would fill those gaps, without the need for profit-making (and without the discrimination and exploitation of taxis).
From the article, here's why van supplementation can work: "For $1.6 million, we're providing well over twice as many trips and covering 100 percent of the city with a system that picks you up within 15 to 20 minutes of your request, versus a bus that was only running once an hour." It's more expensive [to the city] but it provides much greater mobility and time-saving for citizens.
When you're a single mom and groceries are an hour ride one-way, and the bus only comes once an hour, and you work late, just getting food is a nightmare that takes 3+ hours at the end of a long day. Because of that, she may have to spend $25-50 on taxis (many grocery stores aren't open late), which further reduces her already stretched income. Supplemental transportation methods can solve this problem and transform quality of life for disadvantaged people in society.
helloooooooo|3 years ago
semi-extrinsic|3 years ago
reidacdc|3 years ago
It was semi-on-demand, and not door-to-door.
The scheme was, you called the DART line (from your land-line, obviously) and gave your address, and there was a mini-bus that made the rounds of the residential neighborhood, which would come to your address on its next round. It would then take you to the local transit junction point, a nearby shopping mall with several bus bays where a number of regular bus routes converged, and you would make your connection and complete your journey in the regular way.
It seemed to me to be a reasonable way of efficiently delivering infrequent transit service to a large area, although I personally only used it a couple of times to visiit a friend.
jmpman|3 years ago
dredmorbius|3 years ago
- 15 vans.
- 37,000 trips / week (6-day service). I suspect most are on weekdays.
- 6,170 trips/day
- 13.5 hour operation (5:30 am - 7 pm)
- ~457 trips / hour
- ~30 trips / van-hour
I'm not sure how many seats per van, though I suspect 6--9 (3 rows of 3 seats). If a trip is 15 minutes, then that's an average of 7.5 passengers/trip.
Keep in mind that net trips includes the deadhead (no passenger) portion.
The ridership numbers seem unusually high to me. I'd be interested in seeing trip profiles.
By comparison, BART in the SF Bay Area has an annual ridership of over 20 million, and over 104,000 weekday riders. (I also suspect a Bart rider is two trips.) Bart moves 3x what Wilson are claiming for weekly numbers, and roughly as many people in an hour as Wilson does in a day. The Transbay Tunnel can accommodate 24 ten-car trainsets per hour. Each car can carry more than 200 passengers at crush load, or 48,000 passengers/hour for the tube as a whole.
https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/corecapacity
https://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars
Put another way, microtransit is trying to shoehorn transit into a sprawl- and car-centric urban landscape. Dense development and well-travelled routes are what make transit efficient and viable.
woodruffw|3 years ago
It is depressing and frustrating to see public authorities attempt to recreate the successes of public transport on fundamentally inefficient, commons-hostile substrates.
[1]: https://www.ourstate.com/history-of-north-carolina-streetcar...
chrismartin|3 years ago
1. It shares busy streets with cars yet has zero ability to maneuver in traffic. If just one car is parked a few inches beyond the edge of the parking lane, the entire streetcar route is blocked.
2. The tracks trap bicycle tires and cause many bicycle crashes. This happened to colleague of mine, fortunately at low speed. There have been dozens of crashes and at least one death.
Electric bus service is cheaper to install and has neither of these disadvantages.
erjiang|3 years ago
What this article doesn’t say:
* Many, many cities have something similar already, but only for riders with disabilities. (“paratransit”) You need to schedule your ride the day before, but they will take you from door to door.
* The cost per ride is quite high: more than $20 per ride, often. This cost is borne by the city, while riders pay little to nothing. In very few cases does it make financial sense - most places aren’t replacing their buses with microtransit.
* The best utilization I’ve seen is on campuses, where there are a fixed set of stops in a small region, and a large population of people who can’t or don’t want to drive (maybe due to limited parking).
anyoneworks|3 years ago
nicwolff|3 years ago
Are "trips" different from "rides" in some way that makes this arithmetic correct?
bombcar|3 years ago
bluGill|3 years ago
vel0city|3 years ago
From your own article. Flexible/microtransit/whatever you want to call it can be a good idea, and it can be done right. Its not a replacement for a bus route with any level of decent ridership, its for the areas where there literally aren't enough people interested in riding a bus to make the bus practical. Once ridership numbers get high enough, the transit groups should absolutely upgrade those areas to actual bus lines, but until then it is an option to serve places that otherwise wouldn't be able to be effectively served by decent bus service economically.
chaos_emergent|3 years ago
Even the NPR article says that larger cities are experimenting with micro transit but only for harder-to-reach areas.
It has a place as a complement to fixed route transit, not as a replacement.
HonestOp001|3 years ago
His thesis that the vehicles meander and no technology will fix that is refutable in that technology can identify opportunities to minimize inefficiencies. A good algorithm will create efficient routes for the flexible transit.
Finally, the author is a public transit consultant. He is not going to be good for a reference when he is on one side of an item. He may be a subject matter expert, but he is blinded to what can be accomplished. Judging from other people’s comments from other countries, my thesis is more accurate.
zeroth32|3 years ago
Loughla|3 years ago
You call the company, they send a van. Usually you get picked up with two or three other people and it might take an hour to get where you're going (when a car could do it in 30-45 minutes in a direct route). Or you schedule a regular pick up, and they coordinate to have you ride with 10 or so other people, but the ride is a lot shorter.
And it's 100% free. The large employers pay to subsidize its use for the entire area because they get such a value from it. You can get the shuttle to take you anywhere.
AlbertoGP|3 years ago
pif|3 years ago
> In Asia it is called ...
So a few billions of people, speaking a multitude of languages, all use the same name for a concept? How nice!
selimthegrim|3 years ago
midislack|3 years ago
moviewise|3 years ago
Tagbert|3 years ago
It picks up people and takes them to the closest light rail station or takes them home from the station. It has a fixed radius of operation and typically there are 2-5 people in the van. It is a feeder system to bring riders to light rail trains.
moviewise|3 years ago
patch_collector|3 years ago
It was great.
SeanLuke|3 years ago
It is great, you are right.
kyletns|3 years ago
RF_Savage|3 years ago
The-Bus|3 years ago
Hong Kong has Public Light Buses that carry 1M passengers a day: https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_trans...
Dollar vans effectively do this currently, but it's cheaper than any light rail or other solution, especially for outer borough transportation.
woodruffw|3 years ago
[1]: https://new.mta.info/map/5261
Overtonwindow|3 years ago
I think about Berlin and how you can get just about anywhere on the tram system, and if you are well behaved your trip could be, well, free.. [0]
[0] https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/public-transport-in-berl....
Animats|3 years ago
The trouble is, there have to be a lot of people wanting roughly the same trip for mini-buses to work. Otherwise you're just running a taxi service with an oversized vehicle.
It works when there's a common source or destination, such as an airport or a downtown area or a school. It doesn't work in a big diffuse area, where everybody wants a different trip.
[1] https://trid.trb.org/view/52882
midislack|3 years ago
It also seems very European. All the big cities already have buses and trains in the US. Outside these places it’s not only not practical, it’s totally infeasible. So who is making this push? WEF? Mayor Pete?
kevinpet|3 years ago
karmakaze|3 years ago
8bitsrule|3 years ago
The option to use microtransit once a week would be well worth paying twice as much.
riffic|3 years ago
https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl020.htm
> Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up to six people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone, able to provide point-to-point service according to the passengers' needs, and supplemented by a computer system which guarantees minimum detours, and minimum waiting times. Make bus stops for the mini-buses every 600 feet in each direction, and equip these bus stops with a phone for dialing a bus.
ZeroGravitas|3 years ago
Including a few free rides on this service with a season ticket for a bus makes it much easier for people to go carless.
hammock|3 years ago
1123581321|3 years ago
I think most can surmise that all forms of transit have been repeatedly tried all over the world. Sharing details and their applicability to other other municipalities are what will advance transit.
slackfan|3 years ago
hunglee2|3 years ago
The '小巴' basically operate fixed routes, seats about 13, pick up and move per stop, but don't stop on empty stops unless called to do so via open outcry from a passenger who wants to get off at that spot.
Somewhere in between taxi (entirely private, no fixed route) and bus (entirely public, fixed route). They're great, and generally missing from transportation systems in the Western world
bdcravens|3 years ago
kderbyma|3 years ago
ls15|3 years ago
BerlKönig was automatically following routes that would optimize for a higher load factor.
For me it was the best option for certain scenarios.
Schroedingersat|3 years ago
Paratransit is for mobility for theose who can't drive in areas that can't justify a train or enough buses for a <1hr max wait time. It needs a larger per km subsidy to be affordable.
Edit: apologies, responded to the wrong comment
tremon|3 years ago
Proven|3 years ago
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