Brad Ideas - The end of public transit - Comments

The end of public transit

Jason Goodburn-Moffitt — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:21:47 -0700

Two years after I wrote that comment, Oakville has switched to primarily a fixed-route grid system. C'est la vie. My wife and I now use electric bikes for anything local.

Found your site again in the top three hits after searching "round-the-world" while looking for a RTW plane ticket for my wife and I. I noted you have an entry about robo-cars - interesting stuff, and I would like to read more of your thoughts on the future of transportation.

Sadly, I live in Ontario, which is one of the least progressive jurisdictions w.r.t. electric vehicles. ZENN has their head office here, but cannot sell their cars here. Government never ceases to cause me wonder.

How is the e-vehicle situation in S.F.? E-bikes?

Re: Your comment on growing up in Clarkson - I remember your name well, though you may not remember me. I ran "The Void BBS" off a C64 in Scarborough back in the early-to-mid '80s.

I enjoy reading your blog.

Cheers,

45 minutes

brad — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:15:53 -0700

This is a good start, but 45 minutes is obviously too long a wait for certain applications, and just fine for others. There are many times when you decide you're going to leave at pretty much exactly the time you leave.

One could build a system to do it better, but there are inherent limits since you obviously want multiple people on the shuttles. A jitney service may make more sense though might not be quite as efficient.

Of course, in some cities, you can wait 45 minutes for a cab. Due to bizarre regulations, the taxi companies in San Francisco can not guarantee you will get a cab. They are required to treat the drivers as independent contractors and though they might call a driver to come to your house, the driver is allowed to bug off and you can't do anything about it, as you have no contract with anybody until you get into the cab.

Oakville of course is very suburban. I know, I grew up in Clarkson.

Public Transit inefficient after-hours

jason goodburn-moffitt — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:28:42 -0700

Brad,

While I agree that running fixed route, fixed scheduled service is an inefficient means to run transit services after-hours, with a certain amount of flexibility, one can achieve the same or better level of service levels with fewer resources.

A case in point, Oakville Transit, which operates transit services for the town of Oakville, Ontario - 30 minutes west of Toronto - uses a number of small airport-style shuttles for off-hours service. Their is no fixed schedule, nor are there any fixed routes. All routes are created on-the-fly by the drivers.

One need call only 45 minutes in advance of when they need the bus. The dispatcher will call you back with the exact time to be at the bus-stop.

The result is a very efficient system with utilization of available seats near 100%. There is less of a wait than with the fixed-route/fixed-schedule approach.

A city of 150,000 can be served by four mini-buses this way.

As a result of this service, I have been able to give up my use of a car, which I think is an excellent result.

Cheers.

The end of public transit

brad — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:05:54 -0700

I’ve been writing a lot about self-driving cars which have automatic accident avoidance and how they will change our cities. I was recently talking again with Robin Chase, whose new company, goloco attempts to set people up for ad-hoc carpools and got into the issues again. She believes we should use more transit in cities and there’s a lot of merit to that case.

However, in the wealthy USA, we don’t, outside of New York City. We love our cars, and we can afford their much higher cost, so they still dominate, and even in New York many people of means rely strictly on taxis and car services.

Transit is, at first glance, more energy efficient. When it shares right of way with cars it reduces congestion. Private right of way transit also reduces congestion but only when you don’t consider the cost of the private right-of-way, where the balance is harder to decide. (The land only has a many-person vehicle on it a small fraction of the time compared to 1-3 passenger vehicles almost all the time on ordinary roads.)

However, my new realization is that transit may not be as energy efficient as we hope. During rush hour, packed transit vehicles are very efficient, especially if they have regenerative braking. But outside those hours it can be quite wasteful to have a large bus or train with minimal ridership. However, in order to give transit users flexibility, good service outside of rush-hour is important.