Those Silicon Valley geniuses have done it again!
Next week- “it’s like the subway, but with AI!”
This is what happens when you believe the private sector is the answer to everything. We reinvent the wheel one hundred times, and each time its more square than before.
Yet somehow more expensive.
Which makes it better than a bus because then I don’t have to sit next to poor people /s
They didn’t reinvent anything, private small scale shuttle buses have existed since forever. If you don’t have them in your city it doesn’t mean that’s a brand new thing.
whooosh
NOW INTRODUCING: Public transports! But private! And dIsRuPTiVe!
When public transportation was first introduced in most places, it was run by private companies for profit. This changed mostly because it wasn’t profitable to compete with cars when those became popular.
Of course there still are private companies running public transport: long distance buses and trains in many places, and commercial aviation is really also a form of public transportation.
So there is nothing novel about buses being run by private companies for profit.
For me it’s the marketing that makes me roll my eyes. Shuttle instead of bus when in the United States. (Curiously, in other countries it’s called bus by Uber.)
The only time I hear shuttle used is for a thing that transports between two locations specifically. A “shuttle” from the airport to a hotel or whatever, for example. This seems to match the definition of shuttle also, so I think it’s correct. It has nothing to do with marketing, rather actually using the proper term.
Not to add a wrinkle but a bus also goes between two points.
A bus goes between many points usually.
Good? We need more bus routes
We need more public transportation, not privatized bus routes
do we get more public transportation if we ban uber from this?
Look at any of these tech companies’ history. They corner the market by operating at massive losses that VCs can foot for, like, a decade. And then when they’ve driven out other options, they abuse the fuck out of customers. They “disrupt” by obliterating, and that’s when they move for the kill shot: ever-expanding profits.
This is not a good thing. Even in NYC, where the MTA is a massive chunk of money, we have one of the slowest bus systems in the world. That’s through no fault of the busses, mind, this is the cars fault. And, kinda Uber’s fault. The traffic is so bad, even where busses have their own lanes, the traffic slows that shit down like crazy.
Depending on the govt (Adams would probably jump at this, whoever his successor will be will obviously determine how it’d go), the city sees $$$ and sacrifices the long term well-being of the city for their own “successes” while in office. And money/budget is always a crunch, no matter the place. So if Uber wanted to “disrupt” NYC by basically taking over busses or getting a contract to use the bus stops and bus lanes, the govt saves money while generating revenue because those VCs are eyeing the long term where they can ultimately make the city reliant on their services and force people to contribute to their bottom line. Our trains are great, but they don’t go everywhere, sometimes busses are necessary, especially for outerborough people and historically poorer neighborhoods. You can see those areas on the train map, because trains basically avoid them.
Trusting vampiric capitalists with any public good is a fuckin stupid thing to do. Look at healthcare. How we have privatized healthcare is beyond me, but look at the state of it. Now, this is more expanding on the conversation than actually replying directly to your question, but it sort of does get at the heart of it. For a time, we would get more transportation. It wouldn’t be public, it’d be private. But it wouldn’t solve the issues. It’d just create new ones.
This is not a good thing. Even in NYC, where the MTA is a massive chunk of money, we have one of the slowest bus systems in the world. That’s through no fault of the busses, mind, this is the cars fault. And, kinda Uber’s fault. The traffic is so bad, even where busses have their own lanes, the traffic slows that shit down like crazy.
Im with you that cars are the problem, thats why im defending this proposal for more bus service. Also in the same boat of venture capitalist tech companies are all those bike sharing businesses that popped up over the years. I still see them as positive, they’ve become integrated into many european pedestrian friendly cities id like for American cities to imitate.
Yeah…but busses exist right now. Cars are still the problem. A private company getting involved bus routes won’t do shit for that problem. We have one of the best transit systems in the world in nyc. But people can’t give up their cars. Letting Uber muscle into public transit won’t change that. If anything, it’ll drive up the cost of busses and make even fewer people rely on busses.
We have citibikes in nyc. The traffic problem is still awful. As a bike rider myself, I can tell you that riding a bike here is not for everyone. I know plenty of able-bodied people terrified away from riding bikes. But say the city into the bike sharing service. It wouldn’t be $15. It would be…I dunno, $5. Then more people would use them. See what I’m saying?
The way to spread anything good is to make a cost, not a profit maker. Bringing business into the public service game is a horrible idea. There’s no way this does anything good for anyone but Uber. That’s how businesses operate. There might be a time where it seems things are getting better, but that’s just the phase where they’re willing to operate at a loss to corner the market. This phase is ending right now with Amazon: they drove out so many businesses by becoming so reliable, quick, and convenient. Now, they’re starting to scale back free returns. This happened not too long ago with Uber and Lyft. The money behind it finally said, “alright, play time is over. We won’t operate at a loss for much longer, we’ve cornered the rideshare market, now it’s time for prices to creep up to the point where we profit more and more.”
It’s their business model. It’s vampiric and destructive. Not helpful. Trusting them with a public service is so, so, so foolish.
We don’t need to make them Uber chartered bus routes.
Why not? The more the merrier, and you, the customer, have a choice.
Until the city decides to get rid of the subsidized bus system because “Uber is a better service and covers the routes anyway” and then they jack the price sky-high.
Exactly. How people haven’t realized this yet is fuckin inconceivable. Trusting a for-profit company—with a history of the exact problematic behavior we’re worried about—is beyond stupid. They can operate at a loss for a long time. Just to fuck other businesses out of the market so they can charge as much as they want. It’s literally their business model.
What if you, the customer, are a poor person? Is Uber going to subsidize a bus pass for you to charter one of Uber’s buses to their job?
Reducing public transportation is not a solution to fight poverty.
Uber is not public transportation.
And that is the problem with this idea.
Why? Most of our businesses are private. The stores you go are private, the taxi you take are private, the cinema, the airlines, hell even electric and water companies are private. What so special about Uber that it has to be publicly owned? We do have public busses, this will be on top of that.
It is. Just like taxi.
From my own experience, if you’re poor, you use a regular bus. If you want to get somewhere faster, you pay more and catch a shuttle. If you want comfort, you pay even more and get a taxi. And all modes of transport are always full to the brim. The more the merrier, always.
But…that’s our point. Uber taking over bus routes would ultimately void that choice. Public transportation is a public service. Letting a VC-funded for-profit company weasel their way into that space is never going to not fuck poor people. It’ll fuck everyone, but it’ll make “public transportation” unaffordable. And, really, when you’re poor, “if you want to get somewhere faster” isn’t really an option. That’s…the thing with being poor. You don’t have the extra money to spend to catch a shuttle and you don’t have the luxury of paying for comfort. Not to mention, even in the best case scenario, where busses would keep their existing schedule and routes (though the likelihood of this happening is slim) and we’d just get more busses? It’d clog the system, ultimately slowing bus routes.
So, no. Not “the more the merrier” when it comes to private companies elbowing their way into public service, and especially not when we’re talking about fuckin traffic.
It works just fine elsewhere.
Like where? Kids school lunches? Oh, no…wait…a bunch of literal children have school lunch debt. Well, maybe family visits for prisoners? Oh, no, they’ve now barred people from visiting inmates and a private company now forces them to pay to do a shitty video chat. Okay, well maybe the American healthcare system? Nope. I guess that one’s killing a whole bunch of people and drowning families in debt for simple procedures and charging people $80 for a Tylenol and charging mothers for letting them hold their own fucking child.
I’m sure there’s a great example where a private company is doling out their services at a loss as a public good, right?
Do people consider shuttles and buses the same thing? Because this sounds like a shuttle, which as far as I’m aware is completely different from a bus. I take a shuttle to the airport, which requires a reservation and ~$50 whereas I take a bus to get around town and it’s typically free.
Essentially it sounds like they are trying to dip into the shuttle market, not the inner-city bus market. Though maybe both?
Whatever you have to tell yourself to avoid sounding like you’re using the same transportation method as the commoners.
… the reading comprehension level of the average Lemmy user scares me
I literally said that I take the bus. And the shuttle.
Muricans don’t understand public transport, give them some slack.
I think the point is, unlike buses with fixed routes, such shuttles could deliver people to places that face temporary massive traffic - like concert venues or whatnot.
There is no need to constantly run huge amounts of buses there, but at some point of time there’s a lot of people willing to go - and such shuttles, flexible in their routes, may be the solution.
Because nobody in any public transit board has ever implemented such a thing?
In North Carolina, park and ride busses for the state fair have long been a thing, among a litany of several other examples.
There’s a bus stop at our local sports arena, and they do a dynamic scheduling thing for events, so no it’s exactly like our bus system
