[bit_logic]

Here's a radical idea: disband and shutdown the public bus system. Before you reply with an angry post, read the rest of the plan. These systems take hundreds of millions of public funds and are completely ineffective in suburban areas (most of the country). Take that money and give a "rideshare card" with funds automatically filled every month (lower income will get more free funds). Either work with Uber/Lyft or start a similar government rideshare service. Something like this will actually get people to consider giving up their cars.

After a while, certain high usage routes will be noticed in the rideshare data. It will become obvious which streets and destinations could be optimally served with high capacity buses. Now is the time to bring in bus routes. Setup these bus routes and offer a discount for using them.

The current system isn't working, we need to try something different.

[citrate05]

I don't think the problem is that we can't identify routes that would get a lot of use. It's that people running public transit have been charged with balancing those high-usage routes with service that's meant to serve as a social safety net, so that people aren't left completely without any transit. These are very different goals, and because transit agencies are not typically funded well enough to do both well, they are often in tension.

Jarett Walker writes well about this coverage vs. ridership tradeoff: https://humantransit.org/2018/02/basics-the-ridership-covera...

[bit_logic]

That's a great article and shows exactly the issue. The bus system has become the transportation of last resort. It's not meant for this and isn't good at this. It's only good at highly used routes that can maximize bus capacity. Let rideshare handle these social safety net transportation issues. Ask a low income rider using the bus system, would they prefer to continue using it or get a free rideshare card with a few hundred dollars in it every month? Most would probably very enthusiastically go for the rideshare card.

And I know rideshare has a bad reputation because of Uber/Lyft. But government can create rules they must follow to accept these funds. They can either accept those rules or some other company will. Or maybe a government rideshare service is a better option. This is a classic free market vs government service question and there's many options here. But the important point is allowing everyone to use rideshare as a transportation option.

[ako]

By what metrics do you determine public bus system isn’t working, and how would you expect these metrics to change in your proposal?

As far as I can tell many people are using public transport, including buses, so it seems to work to some extend.

[bit_logic]

This whole thread exists because the public bus system is a failure in the US. How many threads on car dependence has there been on HN? The bus system is used only by the lowest income members of society who can't afford a car. They suffer long transit times, lack of point-to-point mobility, and delays. Sure that "works" to some extent for those who have no other options. And this leads to other effects like decreased health and social mobility. Want to go to college after work to improve your life? Can't because the bus routes take 2x or 3x the time it would in a car to get there. Want to get a checkup for that cough? Again riding the bus takes too much time.

You can't force a top-down solution for public transit with the road system in the US. The great strength of the US road system is point-to-point transportation. Let everyone benefit from that instead of running buses that only the poorest use. Publicly funded rideshare is the way to do this. After a while, the bus routes will naturally appear in the data. This is the bottom-up way to build a bus system.

[bombcar]

Take a look at https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10311 - busses are not full enough on average to really pull their "weight" - light trucks do better!

Rail does much better because it's usually only built where it can be filled, and is electrified.

[sjducb]

Solutions that make things worse before they make things better usually just make things worse.

Probably what would happen is the busses would get shut down, the Ubers would be underfunded, then no new busses would be started.