This is one of those “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situations. You rarely see solutions like these in transit havens such as Denmark, Switzerland or the Netherlands but because Americans drive cars and have next to no concept of what good transit is actually like the try to propose solutions from a car-centric point of view instead of consulting urbanists or transit advocates to create a solution from their point of view. Fixed route transit is fine, we just need more of it in the form of higher frequency, more subways, more LRT/BRT, etc. Not solutions proposed be people who may have never taken transit in their lives.
In the UK we have some demand response in Rural areas, with mixed results (some require booking the day before, others at least 30 mins before travel - guess which is generally more successful). The VIA style app based shuttles have popped up in a few places here as well in addition to normal transit and have generally done terribly.
North American transit systems are arguably broke in many places, at least from what I can see. Although, buying everyone a car is not the solution. That, and that you can't walk anywhere without serious risk of bodily harm due to poor road/urban planning.
We have on-demand response transport for old and/or invalid people in the Netherlands. Both my mom and my aunt use it. When it works, and you don't mind spending some extra time because they won't take the most optimal route for you, then it's okay. But they both have been waiting for hours because of a shortage of drivers. They also both have experienced being 2 streets away from their house, but the driver wouldn't or couldn't adjust his schedule, so they had to wait to get another person home first and then drive back to their house. Also, there is an entirely different atmosphere in those minivans. People are always talking to each other, contrary to regular public transport where everyone minds his own business. This is incredibly stressful for my aunt.
It is not because Americans “don’t know what good transit is” just go to any city in the northeast. It’s just that these companies offer one stop solutions for an entire transit network and Americans are obsessed with anything technology novel. And it’s even to do with the fact that a vast majority of Americans actually can afford to drive so people narcissistically think that the only people who don’t want to must be poor. In any country in Europe except for Switzerland, Norway, Monaco etc a majority of the population can simply not afford to drive everywhere so the public can’t develop this skewed perception.
As an European currently living in France but from Poland which is one of the most car centric countries in EU and currently has the highest rate of cars to population I really don't this idea and what these ceos are talking about. All over the place ridership is increasing as it was never and ofc cost of living crisis is one of the reason. But the issue is not only money, huge problem are emissions from personal vehicles and vans are not a solution. this is why more cities are building tram or metro extensions and regions providing more frequent regional train service, especially point that you have wait for other bus is out of place where I almost never wait more 5min and even in smaller town where I work busses are mostly going every 25 min. So I really don't get how stupid must be people buying these ideas and investing in them
Polish expat living in Switzerland here. I hate growing car dependence. Having two cars per family in Warsaw for ppl who commute to office and back is stupid. Living in Switzerland car free in a small town made me aware how damaged transit is in Poland. Mentality is worse. Car is just a way to get from point A to B and not for everyone.
@@Erintii They argument is "I take my child to school and then I go to the office". Not hust bikes had video and people to conference about public transport went by cars..... You cannot change mentality
@@PiotrPavel I am not sure it is impossible but hard. The idea that car dependence is a freedom was implemented by automotive industry. They simply wanted to sell as many cars as possible and public transit was obstacle to them. US cities used to have good public transit and country was build on railway network, all changed after WW2. Surely there are car enthusiasts who simply loved cars and driving them but many ppl drive as they had to or were told they need to grew up and get a car. Sure car can be great but is not always superior and public transit is more efficient to move larger group of ppl.
Thank you for making this video, my city of Ottawa Canada has been starting a pilot project for “on-demand transit”, and my techno-bro warning lights were already going off. They’re claiming the same things from your examples: reduced operating costs, shorter wait and travel times, etc. Will be taking a closer look at it as it launches this fall
@@erickpalacios8904 The transit agency is OC Transpo, their tech partner is Pantonium. It hasn’t launched yet, so waiting to see how they’ll try and spin it to riders
I don’t think it has to be a bad thing. On-demand transit is completely fine as a supplement service to an existing transit system, just not as a replacement. Taxis have been running door to door services alongside transit forever, just at a significantly higher pricepoint. Having a middle ground solution to serve journeys not well served by the current routes, but at a price point not just viable for business travelers and rich people is a good thing, if you want people to rely on the system. My city has been running an on demand service during certain times for around a year now, especially on weekends and nights where regular service is less frequent and some routes stop. It’s priced at the same price as a regular one way fare, but it’s not included in monthly passes or discount passes as far as I understand. I haven’t used it so far, because I am well enough served by the scheduled services to not have a regular need for this service. But it’s great to know I would have the option to use this, if I needed to do a badly served journey without paying like 20x the single fare for a taxi.
And here in Europe as usual we are years ahead. Changing cities to keep cars out. Cheap and regular public transport. High speed railways. Cycle paths linking suburbs and villages. All very much better, I think, than cluttering everywhere with endless damn cars.
You keep letting in all those illegals, and your transit systems won’t be as safe and efficient as they are now. Look at the violence over in the US which hampers the growth and desirability of public transit.
@@Clyde-2055 they had to. Locals are having fewer and fewer children. They need cheap labor to maintain their standard of living I guess. Same case in the US. Were it not for constant immigration, the country would have fallen into demographic decline decades ago.
@@ianhomerpura8937 - Regardless of the reason, the idyllic European lifestyle will change with the introduction of these culturally diverse immigrants.
People should stop arguing that transit should only be implemented if it is profitable, cars aren't profitable. Maybe we should increase the gas tax until it pays for all of the expenses related to maintaining road systems, maybe then people will start to use and vote for public transportation.
Cars are insanely profitable... to the companies that build, fix, and fuel then. As well as those who construct and maintain the infrastructure needed for a car-centric society.
Are people making that argument? Thats wild. Thats like saying water treatment or sewage plants should make profit smh. People don’t think. Plus for the car centric people, less cars on the road is a win for drivers too.
@@kaymillerfromTX Yep people frequently do. Yep, car centric people should be the biggest advocates for more public transit, because they don't have to deal with anyone being forced to drive getting in their way. Many politicians on both sides make that argument, and many people on the internet make that argument, they are convinced they won't be able to leave their house or do whatever they want, because transit doesn't always run 24/7. They don't realize that cars are the reason everything is so far away in the first place, and with less cars and less parking everything would be so much closer together.
"Micro Transit" is just minibuses. In Hong Kong, they have fixed stops for boarding (usually start and end in different train stations/bus hubs, travelling through residential/ commercial areas), but passengers can request to stop anywhere along the route (on any streets, not on highways obviously), so there are more "stops" than buses for people to get off "on demand". We think of them like a shared-route taxi. Their smaller size also allows them to accelerate faster and turn corners without slowing down much. Although they carry less passengers (19 people max), this is more than enough for low-capacity bus routes since they can make more round trips, and the high frequency naturally attracts riders. The drivers are paid per trip so they are seldom late (although this causes over-speeding). They also serve as an important feeder (last-mile delivery of people) for double-decker buses, which travel on longer routes between towns.
there's also the problem of riders who are either legally (minors) or mentally (anxiety, dissociation, severe adhd, ect) unable to drive but can take transit very easily. you'd need to expand paratrans a LOT to cover all of the second group and the first group would be essentially stranded until they hit the age where they can get a driver's liscence.
When I lived in suburban Maryland (albeit near to a WMATA metro stop), I downloaded Via to see if it was cheaper and more useful than Uber and Lyft. Whatever personal values-based objections I had to Uber or Lyft were secondary to the fact that sometimes I had to go somewhere deep in the suburbs where one bus passed every 90 minutes. To my knowledge, Via wasn't subsidized in my county. I didn't end up using it once. If I needed to make an on-demand trip, Uber or Lyft was the better option. If I wasn't pressed for time or needing to transport something cumbersome, I'd get an Uber Share and just wait. For everything else, public transit was much better. Uber and Lyft are just cabs with an app (that lose a ton of investor money). Cabs and transit serve two different transport needs and coexisted without competing for most of the 20th century. If you try and blend both, you get something that's not as good as either. This is also why Uber's reported plan to replace public transit is completely futile.
Excellent video! I think micro-transit is GREAT for sparely populated rural areas and still important for the elderley and disabled. My grandpa is no longer able to drive and the city's dial-a-ride service is slow and unreliable. We end up calling ubers for him when he wants to go somewhere. The neighborhood is entirely large single family homes and lacks sidewalks on most streets. I'm not even sure where to start in terms of walkability and density.
I became radicalized by urbanism after having to search for parking in the downtown of my city. We need more public transit options so that there will be more open street parking!
I live in a city with buses (and trains) and Via service. The Via service is next to worthless with ridiculous wait times, etc, whereas the bus is way faster and more predictable. I prefer the bus over stupid via. I would rather just take my car than deal with Via.
I used to ride the bus system in Denver. It was often late, but normally not by more than 5 minutes. It was on a very predictable schedule that allowed me to plan my daily commute. I'd basically take it straight down the road to the light rail station where I'd transfer. Luckily my company provided me with monthly transit passes so it was actually free to me as well. If I had to wait somewhere between 15 minutes and a half hour every morning for some van that's going to meander off down side streets before it gets to the light rail, I'd honestly just walk. It'd actually be faster. (Nowadays I have an electric scooter and don't take the light rail as much since I live next to one of the multi-use trails)
As a European I can't gelp but think: the problem isn't just mobility. With dense urban planning, all people are in one spot, and everything sorts itself out. People travel short distances, and public transport is economical. Like in Manhattan. Poor people who can't afford a car shouldn't be living in a suburb.
For those areas that are "too rural, too unwalkable", one option to consider is having busbots pick people up and simply take them to/from the closest transit bus station. And simultaneously put in some damn sidewalks and protected bike lanes.
Rural generally implies that there are miles of vacant land between buildings. Nobody is going to want to walk that. Also, as somebody that has lived rural and is currently in the suburbs, but still knows rural people, we don't like or trust robotic-technology as a general rule to risk getting on a busbot.
I moved from Minneapolis to a town near Austin for a while and I was horrified. You can't tell the difference between the city and suburbs; when cars REALLY consume infrastructure, entire cities become giant horrific suburbs. It's crippling in lifestyle. People were trapped and isolated severely. Austin and the Twin Cities have almost the same population, but Austin is THREE TIMES the size. The roads were so huge they looked like football fields covering the land. It was disastrous, hostile, anti-human design that kept me in poverty with a very limited range of low end jobs, despite having a good work background. When I got a second job in the city, it was easier to sleep outside and be homeless than try biking home the 18 miles to do it again the next day. Even if I took the bus as far as it would go, I still had to bike 6 miles. Walking would be 2 hrs.
I live in medium size city in Brazil called "Camaçari" (can be translated to the tree that cry's, and boy, we cry a lot.) For the last 3 years and a half we din't have any bus in the city cause the mayor tough that they were to expansive to be afford, and would not have enough people to make it viable, so he just fired the 2 companies that did the job. During this years, the entire population was using Uber, the Chinese 99pop and a clandestine system called "Ligeirinho" (little fast in a free translation"), made by small cars using the old bus routes. After a lot of political and social pressure, the mayor have agreed to bring the buses back but still sabotage them in order to make cars as a more attractive option. (For context, we was the last city in Brazil with a ford factory and now we are the only city to have a BYD factory, so the automotive market is a really important sourcer of income to the city and by so, the mayor) Tha'ts a real shame, we have the perfect conditions for a car-free city and we still having traffic jams everyday.
Micro transit has a very specialized purpose. It has no place in big cities. Small towns and suburban locations…maybe feeding park-and-ride stations? Example: I live too far from the main roads in my development, that if I want to take the train into Philadelphia, I’m just going to drive to the station. (Free parking is also a big influence in this decision). I would never expect a 40’ bus to come lumbering down my street. But using technology for good to group people going in the same general direction would help get cars off the road.
I used to work for one of the microtransit companies you discussed in this video, but I quit to work for a company that makes route planning and trip scheduling software for fixed-route buses because I struggled to want to sell a product I honestly believed was mostly unnecessary. I couldn't have my heart in in it at work when I was selling some frivolous startup nonsense to people who didn't need it, when now I feel like what I do actually helps buses to run on time, designs bus routes more useable for actual riders, and makes driving a bus a much better job for drivers by eliminating split shifts, making sure breaks are scheduled properly for human beings who need to use the washroom and eat food sometimes etc. It's like the difference between someone offering to sell you a more powerful vacuum cleaner for the carpets you already have all over your house VS. someone selling you some "supercleaner" that's high tech and can also polish floors and mop them as well as vacuum, and there's a model that can steer itself around your house even! Oh, but one little catch, they'll need to first install carpet and hardwood all over your house (on your dollar) because right now it's linoleum. oh, and the supercleaner uses way more KWH so your electricity bill is also going top be way higher now. But come on, this is the future!!
Depends on your goal. If you are trying to get suburban drivers off the road, traditional transit fails. I think you underestimate how far from the nearest bus stop most suburban households are. Most suburbanites have to use a car to get to a park-and-ride lot, and at that point might as well just keep driving (unless you are commuting downtown where parking is a premium). Walking or biking to the bus is great for young fit adults with plenty of spare time when weather is nice, but not practical for families with small children or the elderly. Except for individual commuters, a car is also generally cheaper when there is more than one person traveling, such as families, couples, or groups of friends which represents the bulk of my trips. In comparing the cost per ride, was it taken into account that when someone orders a ride share often multiple people tag along for the same price? I have lived in Europe and Mexico without a car, and found that for 2 people unsubsidized ride share was cost competitive with transit and MUCH more convenient. Public transit in Europe is quite overrated, and even there anyone who can afford a car still prefers driving (outside of city centers). In Mexico they have minibuses (combis/colectivos) that serve outlying areas and generally will drop you off wherever you want on their route for 50 cents / person, much more convenient than major fixed bus lines, but when an Uber for 2 costs $3 door-to-door with no waiting around wondering if a colectivo is coming ride share still wins. Let’s be clear, not owning a car at all is not practical for a homeowner with a family in suburban America (or even in suburban Europe) so transit isn’t competing with the full cost of car ownership but rather with the marginal trip cost. Subsidized on-demand door-to-door would motivate many more suburbanites to leave their car at home. But something else that would help would be giving them family passes for public transit so that they can travel as a group without buying multiple tickets. Considering that transit is paid for by the people who use it least (property and car owners via taxes & license fees), why not just give these people vouchers? They tend to live in areas with light ridership anyway so cost of operating the routes would hardly be impacted. A more convenient on-demand service might cost more per ride, but since the current system offers little value to the taxpayers footing the bill a system that they might actually use might be worth it to them. As it is, public transit offers insufficient cost or convenience benefits over cars for any suburbanite that has the choice.
I live in a suburban county in Florida, we have both a fixed-route bus system and a Via-powered on demand van system. The on demand vans do not go to my college (it is between the 2 different Via coverage zones covering 2 cities in the county), and it is regularly hard to get one within a reasonable time. It's nice when it's available (far cheaper than Uber as it's only $2 within the entire coverage zone), but it is undependable. Often i am left either spending the money on an Uber, or waiting 30-45 minutes for one to arrive. The route covering my the 2 cities that stretch out in the county (the main city in my county has an actual bus route system, with multple routes going all over the city. The other 2 are more suburban and are covered by a single route that goes along the main roads before terminating on one end, and transferring to a different line going to the afforementioned larger city) is always dependable. It has low ridership, but at least it's always there when it's supposed to be, is more dependable for getting where i need to go personally, and despite it's problems (why only one shared line for a city of 80,000 people and another of 26,000??? over 100,000 people in a rapidly-growing area filled with elderly people who would really benefit from a robust public transit system being served by a single bus line is really annoying... i live in the largest city in my county (although, less urban then the county seat) and it has the worst bus service in the county...)
Certainly, giving everyone a car might be the only option in rural areas. Here in western Canada, inter city transit has disappeared to a very large extent; transportation by private automobile is increasingly the only option.
High speed electric rail between major cities and eventually connecting to smaller cities would be great for intercity travel. When I was in Thailand their trains connected tons of cites to the rest of the country, it was fantastic riding in comfort across the entire country for only $30, and it wasn’t even high speed, here in the richest countries on earth we could do so much better
@@logans3365 The important thing is to lineify the country. encourage people to move onto a small selection of rail corridors (within walking distance of stations), and improve service as demand increases. Eventually we can use high speed rail as an oversized province/ state wide metro system, the same way we use interstates as basically an oversized main street.
There’s no such thing as a town, suburb or area too small for fixed route. They make tiny buses and replacing transit with cars is literally working backingwards even if it has a phone tree.
Fresh out of college used to take the 84 to and from journal square and then the path to Newark. Now I’m in the greater Philly area and def see Septa. If we as a country could drop our obsession with privatization, and just fund public transportation our country would be so much better for it. Public transportation in our denses areas is amazing
Probably has to do with the density in Europe compared to the USA. Looking at some of the statistics online: The rural areas in the EU have a population of around 25%. The rural areas in the USA have a population of around 14%. For suburban populations: In the EU, it is about 36%; and in the USA, it is about 52%. The rest is urban, of course. Most US folks in the rural areas and the suburban areas have cars. So, transportation from the rural and suburban areas in the USA will naturally not have many riders.
This type pf transportation will never work in any asian countries for example my country the Philippines even with busses and jeepneys full to the the brim and there's still insane traffic to solve this you need to improve public transport make people less likely to use their cars to work to reduce congestion.
I'd add that by adding thousands of cars to the roads of every American city (by buying cars for transit riders), we would need to substantially increase tax revenue in order to pay for the additional lane miles and maintenance needed for that kind of expansion. This tax cost would offset some or all of the "savings" that left transit funding and went toward car purchases.
i think the on demand services have a MAJORLY fatal flaw and that is the major lack of accessibility for elderly, children, and the homeless. people who don't have smart phones won't be able to get a ride anywhere and it will alienate us even more than this country already does... 😢
@@Clyde-2055 i hope you choke on your spare change. i've been homeless and i still managed to find a place to sleep every night, keep up with my hygiene, and hold down a job. homelessness isn't just people without any money, jobs, a place to live, friends to call, or whatever the fuck you think it might look like. they are everyday people just like you, just trying to make it. and if you have a problem with that, maybe you should vote for someone who will do something about it, rather than make the problem worse with strict zoning laws, DEFUNDING PUBLIC TRANSIT, or just completely ignoring the problem all together, like most people do. anyone can become homeless. i happened to be because i was in a relationship that my family didn't support. i was 18, fresh out of highschool in the middle of the covid pandemic, worrying about where i was gonna put my head down at night, working my ass off, saving every penny, never asking for a hand out, and trying to figure out how to function as an adult in the world for the first time with no car, no savings, and no family at the time to help me. do you think that i should've just suffered the consequences of that and submit to that? wtf is your logic man? i do not understand how this comment was necessary like at all lmfao
Probably they know about text messaging, sending a message via text to the local transit company/ association. This was what we usually do across Southeast Asia before the advent of ride hailing apps like Grab, GoJek, and Angkas. Some still do it today.
You also need to figure in the cost of road maintenance. High volume traffic from cars is the main reason roads in US wear down so quickly, and the cost to maintain these roads is astronomically higher than the cost of public transit.
The problem is that bus are too expensive on small village because there are not enough people who take transit to pay employee and vehicule maintenance
Just watched the intro, really interesting topic looking forward to your opinion. I'm guessing the biggest hurdle is density & the costs associated with maintaining car infrastructure
It's kind of a funny argument about the undesirability of fixed point transit systems like a bus or a street car because arguably the most successful implementation of mass transit in the United States is our interstate system, which has fixed, controlled access points (on/off ramps).
Motorbike taxi ,cheap and fast , public transport should be flexible by using mini bus ,normal bus, double decker and so on , it can lower cost to improve its finances.
1:10 As for the initial question: yes and no. Public transit simply solve the issues that having a private car solves. And requirements for a private car make them unfit for some important usecases. So the proper solution is to remove subsidies and deregulate as far as reasonably possible, and stick to mixture of free market driven public transport and private ownership of vast variation of cars. In near future public transport should be able to be improved by using autonomous taxis which will be the best solution for medium-density cities.
I appreciate the Septa Route 92 hate. I used to rely on that when I lived out in Malvern. I'm thankful for it (and will miss it when the "bus revolution" or whatever hits), but it was such a pain. There was one cool guy who made chainmail items on the bus in the mornings, though. Really, though. I'm antsy about the "microtransit zones" introduced by the bus revolution plans. It honestly sounds way less convenient for commuters, while it may be a bit more convenient for planned, one-off trips.
I am curious how system of route taxis might work in some places. When I lived in Moscow, the route taxis were minivans that followed the routes of bus and/or trolley lines. So, for example, if you have a bus route number SEPTA 31 you would have a route taxi with the same number. It works as a hybrid between a bus and an on-demand service. Generally, the minibusses line up at bus stops at a transit hub, such as the end of a subway line, and when the van fills with passengers, off it goes. People can also flag them at bus stops to board or aske to get off. I thought it a pretty efficient system.
It's not efficient at all, it was made only for profit (no tax dirty money kind of profit btw). These "route taxis" were sucking the money off from the official city public transit, stopping it from developing. That's why Moscow got rid of them, and many other cities like St. Petersburg.
@@РоманИванов-с4о3р it can work, especially in cases when the main transit lines break down and people need alternatives. So far this has been the situation here in Manila for a decade now.
Advanced reservations can be an advantage. If you need to be somewhere at a set time its nice to have a shuttle show up at the right time and not randomly 15 minutes early or late.
Remember, these people know exactly what they are doing. They don't think it will actually save the public money, they want to find another way to extract money from the public. Car ownership is a great way to do that. These are very sensible rebuttals, but good luck getting someone who is being paid to be a mouthpiece for private corporations to say anything other than their prescripted lines or singing praise for their corporate overlords. I used to think "Don't attribute to malice what can simply be attributed to ignorance" but these days I think we can add "Though if money is likely to have exchanged hands, it's likely malice" Another thing to mention is that if the government is not in charge of a service and pays for it, that's your tax money being spent on a private corporation. While it might be a common good, publicly owned infrastructure usually is a lot more affordable than privately owned infrastructure since there isn't that giant CEO and shareholder tax you get from private corporations.
These people need to see that mass transit has increasing returns to scale as a city's population grows and becomes more dense. Heck, cities like Tokyo (despite being more populous than Los Angeles) is able to transport more people effectively.
Micro-transit sounds like a valid method to allow transit service for ridiculously low trip-density areas. Calgary had no service in the outer suburbs on sundays. Microtransit would be better than nothing. Of course, only for short trips or feeding in to rapid transit routes. And only for right now, because fixing our cities will take a long time.
The elephant in the room is giving everyone an e bike. We can absolutely afford to do this and it would make bikes mainstream overnight. Every road is a de facto bike lane when 90% of traffic is bikes. Intra-city transit as we know it would be utterly uncompetitive compared to point to point on demand service at 15mph. As people go carless and rely more on bikes, demand for longer distance inter-city transit will increase
Nice vid, it takes about 10 times the costs (including the driver) to operate a bus to a car. In most cars there is just 1 person, most of the times. If a bus transports 10 people or more it is more efficient. But a city saves a lot by not having to build 10 times the amout of street lanes and not 10 times the amount of parking lots. If in evening time or early in the morning, or in less densely populated areas, well then just use smaller buses where operating costs are lower. If ridership is even lower then use taxis. The city should pay a subsidy to the bus and taxi drivers to lower the average price of a ride. But let the people figure out what mix of these options works best for them. And the city government has to make access to public transport save for everybody use.
I can still not get over my gut response of seeing American cities and towns like how can you live somewhere without being able to walk 5 minutes to a store yeah I think you are righting rebuilding these places so that a car isn't essential to go everywhere should be the priority
Why would you need to walk to a store? We buy our groceries once a week or once every two weeks. We bulk buy. We couldn't carry our groceries home even if we lived next to the store. It takes multiple trips to get the goods from our vehicle into our home. We keep at least a month's supply of food in our home. During the Pandemic, we had no shortage of supplies. We have a large refrigerator and a large deep freezer. We have two shelving systems (5 shelves each) of canned goods as well as toiletries.
I loved this video! I’ve been following people like Randall o toole for years now and the argument of just buy everyone a used Toyota Prius just doesn’t work because of problems you illustrated here as well as the fact that low capacity transit just takes up too much space! One of the biggest problems facing transit is that most buses are built on systems that get stuck in traffic with all the other cars. This could be fixed if one lane was a high capacity toll lane where low capacity riders pay congestion pricing to eliminate traffic on that lane while buses can use them for free. Usage would dramatically increase while allowing for future density (because most land use regulations are based on traffic and parking consequences). Also the light rail and subway systems have been fighting the fact cities have no kept existing right of ways for future projects and are now extremely expensive to build. And even when they do get built, the land usage around the stations is horrible! There is no future technology where electric vehicle or self driving car that will fix these problems. There is a proven system that works already. Allow high density development everywhere and keeps existing right of ways for subways, buses lanes, elevated rail, to be built to accommodate the transportation demand from the new development
Driving is NOT a right. It is a privilege that must be earned. Many, such as myself, no longer wish to drive for whatever reason. Many, such as myself, are not interested in maintaining an automobile even if we do maintain a driver’s license. Many, such as myself, are not interested in investing in a depreciating asset.
In Montréal the STM the major public transit provider racked up a big deficit during the pandemic and the provincial government is very pro car and doesn't wana pay the bill so the service hours are gonna be back at 1994 level if nothing is done. They also putnso much resistance to every public transit project so we are losing the federal subsidies for public transit to English Canada
Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes have done many videos on the subject of transit systems. The current model of car dependent suburbia is bankrupting cities all over North America, while making everyone more vulnerable.
If there's people complaining about the wait time on the bus, I wonder how much their blood pressure rises during traffic or god forbid a red light at an intersection.
it sounds like most people quoted in this video just have a problem with public transit because of how infrequent it is. making public transit more frequent sounds like a better solution
Homes are so expensive we need to build more homes. Build new homes by the transit stops and stations, building riders in to the network. This will keep traffic down, provide homes, create jobs building homes, create compact neighborhoods than can sustain businesses, and generate fares for the transit.
Honestly, i support this voucher program. I support personal vehicle use and public transport. Lets supplement them both, not supplant one or the other. Also, there is nothing inherently wrong with paternalism. Its rather beneficial more often than not. Hell, public transit at the expense of personal vehicles is the definition of paternalism. Buses are awful. Few people actually like riding the bus. Its miserable. Uber and/taxi vouchers are much better because it has less infrastructure costs and allows more wiggle room for riders. No bus stop, no bus schedule. You just call a ride, they pick you up and then take you to your destination. All in the safety of being largely by yourself. If anything, its the driver who is in the most danger.
10:54 This is why I don't always like public transportation and I think a system like that would serve well on slower routes. Metro I like because it's usually faster. But metro + bus is already three times longer than a car journey. And I think it needs enough vans and users to work without having to wait for too long or for the van to drive long routes searching for customers.
I'm a bus driver in Halifax. Our ridership has already bounced back to pre covid levels and we have the issue where the busses get full too quickly on many routes. I laugh at all these people talking about how transit is dying and less people are using it.
Mass transit is a leftover from the days when there was not enough supply to provide a car for everyone. All what mass transit should do today is carry the elderly and the children, and eventually intercontinental/intercity services. Of course the roads need to be multiple layered stacks by now. We've built our buildings into skyscrapers, but our roads are still one layer, two at best if you count over- and underpasses. Pedestrian infrastructure should also be built into their own layer, not crossing with roads. Parkings of course should also be mandatorily multilayered unless it's your small town gravel parking for 5 cars.
Go ahead. Imagine it. Tell me. Other than the issue of space, I don't see a problem with allowing everyone access to their own personal vehicle to get from place to place they desire to go to. No schedule. No fees. Just get in and go.
I find it absolutely funny that people like Kevin O Leary is like yeah avoid buying a car if you want to save money, something the poor can't do if they aren't homeless yet. Then these mfers are like yeah give everyone cars the fuck. They know cars are like being chained to an iron ball. You're moving but hardly anywhere.
Oy, a 12 min video to make one good point...right at the end. Transit will never replace cars and it hasn't in Europe or Asia either. Transit can work in areas not aligned around roads. And for clarity, I live in an affluent neighborhood with a micro-transit service. We love it, don't care about cost-per-ride because our town can definitely afford it and waiting for a door-to-door is way better then waiting for a bus.
Forget the initial cost. Gas, maintenance, and insurance on a car will come to more than people typically spend on transit. And we really don't want more cars on our city streets anyway.
The problem is last mile issues. Via exists because of sprawl and because poor people have to live in areas that are hard to get to. If you've ever been broke, you know that the last mile can take you several hours to get to transit because of where your home is located.
And I'm watching this sitting on a bus for my commute to work. I'm in the UK and transit is everywhere, affordable and frequent. I know it's a different story in the USA but we are still good.
I tested a on demand system in my state in Germany, it worked wonderfully for my first trip but then I took a regional bus somewhere and got stranded until the next regional bus came 1,5 hours later because there were to little vehicles for the area it covered. Its definitly a good idea in that region because its rural and bus coverage is poor(for German standards) but the problems are there
Cars costing up to 30 grand, insurance companies being for profit and unfair taxation with infrastructure covering only a few decades of future when designed, is what need to be thrown out of the window, not cars and the personal space and comfort that they offer. I will drive for the rest of my life, I have absolutely no regrets for optimizing my travel to my liking. In fact, my garage only grows, I don't even sell my old vehicles.
I took public transit in Spokane, WA for over a year. My work paid for my bus pass. They cut back on service. My walk to a bus stop from home went from 8 minutes to over 25 minutes. I bought a car.
Do these “Buy everyone a car?” sophists ever also offer to pay for all the gas, the maintenance, the licensing and permitting and sticker fees, the parking costs, and all the property damage and hospital bills accruing from accidents, arising from distributing all of these cars?
Exactly, cars are a damn black hole for money. Even if they got the car itself for free, the insurance, maintenance, and gas would ruin anyone who's already struggling.
Do transits authorities pay all the medical bills, property lose and burial and funeral fees for all the people mugged, beaten and murdered while on or traveling to public transit ?
@Clyde-2055 No, and they don't do so for people in parking lots and parking garages either. But you make an interesting point! Not only should the government provide transit services and medical services to all, they should also provide public funeral services and other forms of emergency compensation, and job protections to those who are out of work temporarily for these reasons. These sorts of incidents often involve high costs and/or long outages from work, which the poor can't easily afford - or force them to keep working through things they shouldn't have to, since they also can't afford not to. There are sure to be economic and mental health benefits to shifting these burdens away from individuals and families.
@@Clyde-2055 That's insane you even assume such issues are even a major problem. The probability of that mishap should be very tiny in a functional transit system. Safety should be a feature of well used transit system, not a problem. That problem should not exist.
This channel has some of the greatest storytelling about transit. Truly quality before quantity!
Hearing the words "Micro-Transit" always triggers me into a fight response. Great video thats useful for a rebuttal against common talking points
Suburb officials: Let's do microtransit-
Alan in a Peter Griffin voice: *I just wanna talk to him*
Now we just need somebody to go tell Randal O'Toole that he can finally stop talking.
he's bonkers @@alexwithclipboard
Expect a video on you in a few weeks time about your "idea"
microtransit a big no, micromobility a big yes :)
This is one of those “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situations.
You rarely see solutions like these in transit havens such as Denmark, Switzerland or the Netherlands but because Americans drive cars and have next to no concept of what good transit is actually like the try to propose solutions from a car-centric point of view instead of consulting urbanists or transit advocates to create a solution from their point of view.
Fixed route transit is fine, we just need more of it in the form of higher frequency, more subways, more LRT/BRT, etc. Not solutions proposed be people who may have never taken transit in their lives.
In the UK we have some demand response in Rural areas, with mixed results (some require booking the day before, others at least 30 mins before travel - guess which is generally more successful). The VIA style app based shuttles have popped up in a few places here as well in addition to normal transit and have generally done terribly.
North American transit systems are arguably broke in many places, at least from what I can see. Although, buying everyone a car is not the solution. That, and that you can't walk anywhere without serious risk of bodily harm due to poor road/urban planning.
We have on-demand response transport for old and/or invalid people in the Netherlands. Both my mom and my aunt use it. When it works, and you don't mind spending some extra time because they won't take the most optimal route for you, then it's okay. But they both have been waiting for hours because of a shortage of drivers. They also both have experienced being 2 streets away from their house, but the driver wouldn't or couldn't adjust his schedule, so they had to wait to get another person home first and then drive back to their house.
Also, there is an entirely different atmosphere in those minivans. People are always talking to each other, contrary to regular public transport where everyone minds his own business. This is incredibly stressful for my aunt.
It is not because Americans “don’t know what good transit is” just go to any city in the northeast. It’s just that these companies offer one stop solutions for an entire transit network and Americans are obsessed with anything technology novel. And it’s even to do with the fact that a vast majority of Americans actually can afford to drive so people narcissistically think that the only people who don’t want to must be poor. In any country in Europe except for Switzerland, Norway, Monaco etc a majority of the population can simply not afford to drive everywhere so the public can’t develop this skewed perception.
Americans will do anything to avoid building trains.
Or even just sticking a piece of paper with the words "bus stop" to a utility pole
we tore down our streetcar systems and build highways through city neighborhoods because it became illegal to openly segregate
As an European currently living in France but from Poland which is one of the most car centric countries in EU and currently has the highest rate of cars to population I really don't this idea and what these ceos are talking about. All over the place ridership is increasing as it was never and ofc cost of living crisis is one of the reason. But the issue is not only money, huge problem are emissions from personal vehicles and vans are not a solution. this is why more cities are building tram or metro extensions and regions providing more frequent regional train service, especially point that you have wait for other bus is out of place where I almost never wait more 5min and even in smaller town where I work busses are mostly going every 25 min. So I really don't get how stupid must be people buying these ideas and investing in them
I don't get why this is the case. Curious how the tram systems are working there, as well as PKP.
Polish expat living in Switzerland here. I hate growing car dependence. Having two cars per family in Warsaw for ppl who commute to office and back is stupid. Living in Switzerland car free in a small town made me aware how damaged transit is in Poland. Mentality is worse. Car is just a way to get from point A to B and not for everyone.
@@ianhomerpura8937 PKP is expensive, I have many friends that are going full car and is much chezper than buying 4 or 5 tickets.
@@Erintii They argument is "I take my child to school and then I go to the office". Not hust bikes had video and people to conference about public transport went by cars..... You cannot change mentality
@@PiotrPavel I am not sure it is impossible but hard. The idea that car dependence is a freedom was implemented by automotive industry. They simply wanted to sell as many cars as possible and public transit was obstacle to them. US cities used to have good public transit and country was build on railway network, all changed after WW2.
Surely there are car enthusiasts who simply loved cars and driving them but many ppl drive as they had to or were told they need to grew up and get a car. Sure car can be great but is not always superior and public transit is more efficient to move larger group of ppl.
Thank you for making this video, my city of Ottawa Canada has been starting a pilot project for “on-demand transit”, and my techno-bro warning lights were already going off. They’re claiming the same things from your examples: reduced operating costs, shorter wait and travel times, etc. Will be taking a closer look at it as it launches this fall
Well that's depressing. What's the name of the service?
@@erickpalacios8904 The transit agency is OC Transpo, their tech partner is Pantonium. It hasn’t launched yet, so waiting to see how they’ll try and spin it to riders
As a senior, I’d prefer on-demand transit picking me up at home over having to walk 500-2k meters to a bus stop.
I don’t think it has to be a bad thing. On-demand transit is completely fine as a supplement service to an existing transit system, just not as a replacement. Taxis have been running door to door services alongside transit forever, just at a significantly higher pricepoint. Having a middle ground solution to serve journeys not well served by the current routes, but at a price point not just viable for business travelers and rich people is a good thing, if you want people to rely on the system.
My city has been running an on demand service during certain times for around a year now, especially on weekends and nights where regular service is less frequent and some routes stop. It’s priced at the same price as a regular one way fare, but it’s not included in monthly passes or discount passes as far as I understand. I haven’t used it so far, because I am well enough served by the scheduled services to not have a regular need for this service. But it’s great to know I would have the option to use this, if I needed to do a badly served journey without paying like 20x the single fare for a taxi.
@@Clyde-2055thats called a taxi
thinking critically for beginners: step 1: ask why.
Why do these people *need* cars? step 2: keep asking why until you get to the actual problem
And here in Europe as usual we are years ahead. Changing cities to keep cars out. Cheap and regular public transport. High speed railways. Cycle paths linking suburbs and villages. All very much better, I think, than cluttering everywhere with endless damn cars.
You keep letting in all those illegals, and your transit systems won’t be as safe and efficient as they are now. Look at the violence over in the US which hampers the growth and desirability of public transit.
@@Clyde-2055 they had to. Locals are having fewer and fewer children. They need cheap labor to maintain their standard of living I guess.
Same case in the US. Were it not for constant immigration, the country would have fallen into demographic decline decades ago.
@@ianhomerpura8937 - Regardless of the reason, the idyllic European lifestyle will change with the introduction of these culturally diverse immigrants.
@@Clyde-2055 yes thats how culture works. It changes.
People should stop arguing that transit should only be implemented if it is profitable, cars aren't profitable. Maybe we should increase the gas tax until it pays for all of the expenses related to maintaining road systems, maybe then people will start to use and vote for public transportation.
Cars are insanely profitable... to the companies that build, fix, and fuel then. As well as those who construct and maintain the infrastructure needed for a car-centric society.
@@sigmascrub Cars are very profitable to those who sell them, but the gas tax does not pay for roads, property tax does.
@@MegaLokopo plus the federal gas tax has not been raised since 1993, and some states haven't for even longer than that.
Are people making that argument? Thats wild. Thats like saying water treatment or sewage plants should make profit smh. People don’t think. Plus for the car centric people, less cars on the road is a win for drivers too.
@@kaymillerfromTX Yep people frequently do. Yep, car centric people should be the biggest advocates for more public transit, because they don't have to deal with anyone being forced to drive getting in their way.
Many politicians on both sides make that argument, and many people on the internet make that argument, they are convinced they won't be able to leave their house or do whatever they want, because transit doesn't always run 24/7. They don't realize that cars are the reason everything is so far away in the first place, and with less cars and less parking everything would be so much closer together.
smoothest writing in the transit videos space. soon he will topple the big guys.
Agreed, the quality is deep - 15 storeys deep \m/
"Micro Transit" is just minibuses.
In Hong Kong, they have fixed stops for boarding (usually start and end in different train stations/bus hubs, travelling through residential/ commercial areas), but passengers can request to stop anywhere along the route (on any streets, not on highways obviously), so there are more "stops" than buses for people to get off "on demand". We think of them like a shared-route taxi.
Their smaller size also allows them to accelerate faster and turn corners without slowing down much. Although they carry less passengers (19 people max), this is more than enough for low-capacity bus routes since they can make more round trips, and the high frequency naturally attracts riders. The drivers are paid per trip so they are seldom late (although this causes over-speeding). They also serve as an important feeder (last-mile delivery of people) for double-decker buses, which travel on longer routes between towns.
there's also the problem of riders who are either legally (minors) or mentally (anxiety, dissociation, severe adhd, ect) unable to drive but can take transit very easily. you'd need to expand paratrans a LOT to cover all of the second group and the first group would be essentially stranded until they hit the age where they can get a driver's liscence.
Great video! I love the way you wrapped it up, most of our problems can be traced back to car oriented city planning, that needs to change
Most problems come from annoying repetitive people pushing more harassment and waste of money and time.
As a Bucks resident, I think you summarized this issue really well! Love your dedication to quality content
Have these tech bros and public officials ever experience traffic??? More cars means more traffic, you gotta be kidding me!
When I lived in suburban Maryland (albeit near to a WMATA metro stop), I downloaded Via to see if it was cheaper and more useful than Uber and Lyft. Whatever personal values-based objections I had to Uber or Lyft were secondary to the fact that sometimes I had to go somewhere deep in the suburbs where one bus passed every 90 minutes. To my knowledge, Via wasn't subsidized in my county.
I didn't end up using it once. If I needed to make an on-demand trip, Uber or Lyft was the better option. If I wasn't pressed for time or needing to transport something cumbersome, I'd get an Uber Share and just wait. For everything else, public transit was much better.
Uber and Lyft are just cabs with an app (that lose a ton of investor money). Cabs and transit serve two different transport needs and coexisted without competing for most of the 20th century. If you try and blend both, you get something that's not as good as either. This is also why Uber's reported plan to replace public transit is completely futile.
Excellent video! I think micro-transit is GREAT for sparely populated rural areas and still important for the elderley and disabled. My grandpa is no longer able to drive and the city's dial-a-ride service is slow and unreliable. We end up calling ubers for him when he wants to go somewhere. The neighborhood is entirely large single family homes and lacks sidewalks on most streets. I'm not even sure where to start in terms of walkability and density.
I became radicalized by urbanism after having to search for parking in the downtown of my city. We need more public transit options so that there will be more open street parking!
UA-cam recommend this channel to me and after watching this video I think you have a very bright future ahead of you. :)
I live in a city with buses (and trains) and Via service. The Via service is next to worthless with ridiculous wait times, etc, whereas the bus is way faster and more predictable. I prefer the bus over stupid via. I would rather just take my car than deal with Via.
I used to ride the bus system in Denver. It was often late, but normally not by more than 5 minutes. It was on a very predictable schedule that allowed me to plan my daily commute. I'd basically take it straight down the road to the light rail station where I'd transfer. Luckily my company provided me with monthly transit passes so it was actually free to me as well.
If I had to wait somewhere between 15 minutes and a half hour every morning for some van that's going to meander off down side streets before it gets to the light rail, I'd honestly just walk. It'd actually be faster.
(Nowadays I have an electric scooter and don't take the light rail as much since I live next to one of the multi-use trails)
As a European I can't gelp but think: the problem isn't just mobility. With dense urban planning, all people are in one spot, and everything sorts itself out. People travel short distances, and public transport is economical. Like in Manhattan. Poor people who can't afford a car shouldn't be living in a suburb.
ngl dude you look and sound like a younger city beautiful lol. Good video
For those areas that are "too rural, too unwalkable", one option to consider is having busbots pick people up and simply take them to/from the closest transit bus station. And simultaneously put in some damn sidewalks and protected bike lanes.
Rural generally implies that there are miles of vacant land between buildings. Nobody is going to want to walk that. Also, as somebody that has lived rural and is currently in the suburbs, but still knows rural people, we don't like or trust robotic-technology as a general rule to risk getting on a busbot.
I moved from Minneapolis to a town near Austin for a while and I was horrified. You can't tell the difference between the city and suburbs; when cars REALLY consume infrastructure, entire cities become giant horrific suburbs. It's crippling in lifestyle. People were trapped and isolated severely. Austin and the Twin Cities have almost the same population, but Austin is THREE TIMES the size. The roads were so huge they looked like football fields covering the land. It was disastrous, hostile, anti-human design that kept me in poverty with a very limited range of low end jobs, despite having a good work background. When I got a second job in the city, it was easier to sleep outside and be homeless than try biking home the 18 miles to do it again the next day. Even if I took the bus as far as it would go, I still had to bike 6 miles. Walking would be 2 hrs.
The shock when I begun this video and realized it started in my local area
Really nice, Alex! I just tripped over you video and it’s an instant follow. Greetings from a fellow urbanist.
Ever since I settled down in Prague, I never felt the need to drive anymore and it's a lot more relaxing.
I live in medium size city in Brazil called "Camaçari" (can be translated to the tree that cry's, and boy, we cry a lot.)
For the last 3 years and a half we din't have any bus in the city cause the mayor tough that they were to expansive to be afford, and would not have enough people to make it viable, so he just fired the 2 companies that did the job. During this years, the entire population was using Uber, the Chinese 99pop and a clandestine system called "Ligeirinho" (little fast in a free translation"), made by small cars using the old bus routes. After a lot of political and social pressure, the mayor have agreed to bring the buses back but still sabotage them in order to make cars as a more attractive option. (For context, we was the last city in Brazil with a ford factory and now we are the only city to have a BYD factory, so the automotive market is a really important sourcer of income to the city and by so, the mayor)
Tha'ts a real shame, we have the perfect conditions for a car-free city and we still having traffic jams everyday.
Anyone who complains about buses and scheduling has clearly never ever seen an efficient system like Singapore's.
Yes I agree
Micro transit has a very specialized purpose. It has no place in big cities. Small towns and suburban locations…maybe feeding park-and-ride stations? Example: I live too far from the main roads in my development, that if I want to take the train into Philadelphia, I’m just going to drive to the station. (Free parking is also a big influence in this decision). I would never expect a 40’ bus to come lumbering down my street. But using technology for good to group people going in the same general direction would help get cars off the road.
The Netherlands is a good example of an integrated transport system,which was originally geared towards car ownership back in the 1970's.
10:46 dude went to the Elon Musk school of fake statistics.
I used to work for one of the microtransit companies you discussed in this video, but I quit to work for a company that makes route planning and trip scheduling software for fixed-route buses because I struggled to want to sell a product I honestly believed was mostly unnecessary. I couldn't have my heart in in it at work when I was selling some frivolous startup nonsense to people who didn't need it, when now I feel like what I do actually helps buses to run on time, designs bus routes more useable for actual riders, and makes driving a bus a much better job for drivers by eliminating split shifts, making sure breaks are scheduled properly for human beings who need to use the washroom and eat food sometimes etc. It's like the difference between someone offering to sell you a more powerful vacuum cleaner for the carpets you already have all over your house VS. someone selling you some "supercleaner" that's high tech and can also polish floors and mop them as well as vacuum, and there's a model that can steer itself around your house even! Oh, but one little catch, they'll need to first install carpet and hardwood all over your house (on your dollar) because right now it's linoleum. oh, and the supercleaner uses way more KWH so your electricity bill is also going top be way higher now. But come on, this is the future!!
Depends on your goal. If you are trying to get suburban drivers off the road, traditional transit fails. I think you underestimate how far from the nearest bus stop most suburban households are. Most suburbanites have to use a car to get to a park-and-ride lot, and at that point might as well just keep driving (unless you are commuting downtown where parking is a premium). Walking or biking to the bus is great for young fit adults with plenty of spare time when weather is nice, but not practical for families with small children or the elderly. Except for individual commuters, a car is also generally cheaper when there is more than one person traveling, such as families, couples, or groups of friends which represents the bulk of my trips. In comparing the cost per ride, was it taken into account that when someone orders a ride share often multiple people tag along for the same price? I have lived in Europe and Mexico without a car, and found that for 2 people unsubsidized ride share was cost competitive with transit and MUCH more convenient. Public transit in Europe is quite overrated, and even there anyone who can afford a car still prefers driving (outside of city centers). In Mexico they have minibuses (combis/colectivos) that serve outlying areas and generally will drop you off wherever you want on their route for 50 cents / person, much more convenient than major fixed bus lines, but when an Uber for 2 costs $3 door-to-door with no waiting around wondering if a colectivo is coming ride share still wins. Let’s be clear, not owning a car at all is not practical for a homeowner with a family in suburban America (or even in suburban Europe) so transit isn’t competing with the full cost of car ownership but rather with the marginal trip cost. Subsidized on-demand door-to-door would motivate many more suburbanites to leave their car at home. But something else that would help would be giving them family passes for public transit so that they can travel as a group without buying multiple tickets. Considering that transit is paid for by the people who use it least (property and car owners via taxes & license fees), why not just give these people vouchers? They tend to live in areas with light ridership anyway so cost of operating the routes would hardly be impacted. A more convenient on-demand service might cost more per ride, but since the current system offers little value to the taxpayers footing the bill a system that they might actually use might be worth it to them. As it is, public transit offers insufficient cost or convenience benefits over cars for any suburbanite that has the choice.
I live in a suburban county in Florida, we have both a fixed-route bus system and a Via-powered on demand van system. The on demand vans do not go to my college (it is between the 2 different Via coverage zones covering 2 cities in the county), and it is regularly hard to get one within a reasonable time. It's nice when it's available (far cheaper than Uber as it's only $2 within the entire coverage zone), but it is undependable. Often i am left either spending the money on an Uber, or waiting 30-45 minutes for one to arrive. The route covering my the 2 cities that stretch out in the county (the main city in my county has an actual bus route system, with multple routes going all over the city. The other 2 are more suburban and are covered by a single route that goes along the main roads before terminating on one end, and transferring to a different line going to the afforementioned larger city) is always dependable. It has low ridership, but at least it's always there when it's supposed to be, is more dependable for getting where i need to go personally, and despite it's problems (why only one shared line for a city of 80,000 people and another of 26,000??? over 100,000 people in a rapidly-growing area filled with elderly people who would really benefit from a robust public transit system being served by a single bus line is really annoying... i live in the largest city in my county (although, less urban then the county seat) and it has the worst bus service in the county...)
As an old person, we don’t benefit from having to walk a kilometer in the Florida heat to catch a bus. Please stop telling us what we prefer …
Certainly, giving everyone a car might be the only option in rural areas. Here in western Canada, inter city transit has disappeared to a very large extent; transportation by private automobile is increasingly the only option.
High speed electric rail between major cities and eventually connecting to smaller cities would be great for intercity travel.
When I was in Thailand their trains connected tons of cites to the rest of the country, it was fantastic riding in comfort across the entire country for only $30, and it wasn’t even high speed, here in the richest countries on earth we could do so much better
@@logans3365 The important thing is to lineify the country. encourage people to move onto a small selection of rail corridors (within walking distance of stations), and improve service as demand increases. Eventually we can use high speed rail as an oversized province/ state wide metro system, the same way we use interstates as basically an oversized main street.
Oh thank god, for a second I thought you were advocating for adding *more* cars to the road. Glad that wasn't the case
There’s no such thing as a town, suburb or area too small for fixed route. They make tiny buses and replacing transit with cars is literally working backingwards even if it has a phone tree.
Fresh out of college used to take the 84 to and from journal square and then the path to Newark. Now I’m in the greater Philly area and def see Septa.
If we as a country could drop our obsession with privatization, and just fund public transportation our country would be so much better for it. Public transportation in our denses areas is amazing
This is awesome! Didn't realize there were so many people advocating against transit :/ great video!
maybe this happens in the US but in Europe public modes of transportation are almost always full of people
Probably has to do with the density in Europe compared to the USA. Looking at some of the statistics online: The rural areas in the EU have a population of around 25%. The rural areas in the USA have a population of around 14%. For suburban populations: In the EU, it is about 36%; and in the USA, it is about 52%. The rest is urban, of course. Most US folks in the rural areas and the suburban areas have cars. So, transportation from the rural and suburban areas in the USA will naturally not have many riders.
This type pf transportation will never work in any asian countries for example my country the Philippines even with busses and jeepneys full to the the brim and there's still insane traffic to solve this you need to improve public transport make people less likely to use their cars to work to reduce congestion.
if we just shackled poor people with paying for fuel and personalized vehicle maintenance, they wouldn't be poor!
I'd add that by adding thousands of cars to the roads of every American city (by buying cars for transit riders), we would need to substantially increase tax revenue in order to pay for the additional lane miles and maintenance needed for that kind of expansion. This tax cost would offset some or all of the "savings" that left transit funding and went toward car purchases.
i think the on demand services have a MAJORLY fatal flaw and that is the major lack of accessibility for elderly, children, and the homeless. people who don't have smart phones won't be able to get a ride anywhere and it will alienate us even more than this country already does... 😢
If the homeless stink up Ubers like they stink up buses, I don’t imagine the Uber drivers would want them riding anyway …
@@Clyde-2055 i hope you choke on your spare change. i've been homeless and i still managed to find a place to sleep every night, keep up with my hygiene, and hold down a job. homelessness isn't just people without any money, jobs, a place to live, friends to call, or whatever the fuck you think it might look like. they are everyday people just like you, just trying to make it. and if you have a problem with that, maybe you should vote for someone who will do something about it, rather than make the problem worse with strict zoning laws, DEFUNDING PUBLIC TRANSIT, or just completely ignoring the problem all together, like most people do. anyone can become homeless. i happened to be because i was in a relationship that my family didn't support. i was 18, fresh out of highschool in the middle of the covid pandemic, worrying about where i was gonna put my head down at night, working my ass off, saving every penny, never asking for a hand out, and trying to figure out how to function as an adult in the world for the first time with no car, no savings, and no family at the time to help me. do you think that i should've just suffered the consequences of that and submit to that? wtf is your logic man? i do not understand how this comment was necessary like at all lmfao
Probably they know about text messaging, sending a message via text to the local transit company/ association. This was what we usually do across Southeast Asia before the advent of ride hailing apps like Grab, GoJek, and Angkas. Some still do it today.
You also need to figure in the cost of road maintenance. High volume traffic from cars is the main reason roads in US wear down so quickly, and the cost to maintain these roads is astronomically higher than the cost of public transit.
Wait you actually posted
The problem is that bus are too expensive on small village because there are not enough people who take transit to pay employee and vehicule maintenance
Just watched the intro, really interesting topic looking forward to your opinion. I'm guessing the biggest hurdle is density & the costs associated with maintaining car infrastructure
It's kind of a funny argument about the undesirability of fixed point transit systems like a bus or a street car because arguably the most successful implementation of mass transit in the United States is our interstate system, which has fixed, controlled access points (on/off ramps).
Motorbike taxi ,cheap and fast , public transport should be flexible by using mini bus ,normal bus, double decker and so on , it can lower cost to improve its finances.
OMG he said "where would all those cars fit not at ground zero." *fucking dead lol*
1:10 As for the initial question: yes and no. Public transit simply solve the issues that having a private car solves. And requirements for a private car make them unfit for some important usecases. So the proper solution is to remove subsidies and deregulate as far as reasonably possible, and stick to mixture of free market driven public transport and private ownership of vast variation of cars. In near future public transport should be able to be improved by using autonomous taxis which will be the best solution for medium-density cities.
I appreciate the Septa Route 92 hate. I used to rely on that when I lived out in Malvern. I'm thankful for it (and will miss it when the "bus revolution" or whatever hits), but it was such a pain. There was one cool guy who made chainmail items on the bus in the mornings, though.
Really, though. I'm antsy about the "microtransit zones" introduced by the bus revolution plans. It honestly sounds way less convenient for commuters, while it may be a bit more convenient for planned, one-off trips.
I am curious how system of route taxis might work in some places. When I lived in Moscow, the route taxis were minivans that followed the routes of bus and/or trolley lines. So, for example, if you have a bus route number SEPTA 31 you would have a route taxi with the same number. It works as a hybrid between a bus and an on-demand service. Generally, the minibusses line up at bus stops at a transit hub, such as the end of a subway line, and when the van fills with passengers, off it goes. People can also flag them at bus stops to board or aske to get off. I thought it a pretty efficient system.
It's not efficient at all, it was made only for profit (no tax dirty money kind of profit btw). These "route taxis" were sucking the money off from the official city public transit, stopping it from developing.
That's why Moscow got rid of them, and many other cities like St. Petersburg.
So SEPTA ran the bus line in Moscow ?
@@РоманИванов-с4о3р it can work, especially in cases when the main transit lines break down and people need alternatives. So far this has been the situation here in Manila for a decade now.
@@Clyde-2055 don’t be thick. It was an example of how route taxis work.
We could consider providing them with a Honda Super Cub mini motorcycle as an option. BASE MSRP: $3,899
Dynamically created schedules sounds like a Javascript coder tried to fix transit.
(I'm a software dev)
Sure doesn't seem like it should be legal for paratransit to require advance reservations if the fixed-route transit it's supplementing does not.
Advanced reservations can be an advantage. If you need to be somewhere at a set time its nice to have a shuttle show up at the right time and not randomly 15 minutes early or late.
@@emptyshirt there's a big difference between allowing trips to be reserved and _requiring_ trips to be reserved at least a day in advance
Remember, these people know exactly what they are doing. They don't think it will actually save the public money, they want to find another way to extract money from the public. Car ownership is a great way to do that. These are very sensible rebuttals, but good luck getting someone who is being paid to be a mouthpiece for private corporations to say anything other than their prescripted lines or singing praise for their corporate overlords. I used to think "Don't attribute to malice what can simply be attributed to ignorance" but these days I think we can add "Though if money is likely to have exchanged hands, it's likely malice"
Another thing to mention is that if the government is not in charge of a service and pays for it, that's your tax money being spent on a private corporation. While it might be a common good, publicly owned infrastructure usually is a lot more affordable than privately owned infrastructure since there isn't that giant CEO and shareholder tax you get from private corporations.
These people need to see that mass transit has increasing returns to scale as a city's population grows and becomes more dense.
Heck, cities like Tokyo (despite being more populous than Los Angeles) is able to transport more people effectively.
Thank you for doing the math so I don't have to. Great job!
And as Oprah says.. "you get a car, you get a car". NIce job nephew.
Micro-transit sounds like a valid method to allow transit service for ridiculously low trip-density areas. Calgary had no service in the outer suburbs on sundays. Microtransit would be better than nothing.
Of course, only for short trips or feeding in to rapid transit routes. And only for right now, because fixing our cities will take a long time.
The elephant in the room is giving everyone an e bike. We can absolutely afford to do this and it would make bikes mainstream overnight. Every road is a de facto bike lane when 90% of traffic is bikes. Intra-city transit as we know it would be utterly uncompetitive compared to point to point on demand service at 15mph. As people go carless and rely more on bikes, demand for longer distance inter-city transit will increase
Nice vid,
it takes about 10 times the costs (including the driver) to operate a bus to a car.
In most cars there is just 1 person, most of the times.
If a bus transports 10 people or more it is more efficient.
But a city saves a lot by not having to build 10 times the amout of street lanes and not 10 times the amount of parking lots.
If in evening time or early in the morning, or in less densely populated areas, well then just use smaller buses where operating costs are lower.
If ridership is even lower then use taxis.
The city should pay a subsidy to the bus and taxi drivers to lower the average price of a ride.
But let the people figure out what mix of these options works best for them.
And the city government has to make access to public transport save for everybody use.
I can still not get over my gut response of seeing American cities and towns
like how can you live somewhere without being able to walk 5 minutes to a store
yeah I think you are righting rebuilding these places so that a car isn't essential to go everywhere should be the priority
Why would you need to walk to a store? We buy our groceries once a week or once every two weeks. We bulk buy. We couldn't carry our groceries home even if we lived next to the store. It takes multiple trips to get the goods from our vehicle into our home. We keep at least a month's supply of food in our home. During the Pandemic, we had no shortage of supplies. We have a large refrigerator and a large deep freezer. We have two shelving systems (5 shelves each) of canned goods as well as toiletries.
I loved this video!
I’ve been following people like Randall o toole for years now and the argument of just buy everyone a used Toyota Prius just doesn’t work because of problems you illustrated here as well as the fact that low capacity transit just takes up too much space!
One of the biggest problems facing transit is that most buses are built on systems that get stuck in traffic with all the other cars. This could be fixed if one lane was a high capacity toll lane where low capacity riders pay congestion pricing to eliminate traffic on that lane while buses can use them for free. Usage would dramatically increase while allowing for future density (because most land use regulations are based on traffic and parking consequences).
Also the light rail and subway systems have been fighting the fact cities have no kept existing right of ways for future projects and are now extremely expensive to build. And even when they do get built, the land usage around the stations is horrible!
There is no future technology where electric vehicle or self driving car that will fix these problems. There is a proven system that works already. Allow high density development everywhere and keeps existing right of ways for subways, buses lanes, elevated rail, to be built to accommodate the transportation demand from the new development
Driving is NOT a right. It is a privilege that must be earned.
Many, such as myself, no longer wish to drive for whatever reason.
Many, such as myself, are not interested in maintaining an automobile even if we do maintain a driver’s license.
Many, such as myself, are not interested in investing in a depreciating asset.
In Montréal the STM the major public transit provider racked up a big deficit during the pandemic and the provincial government is very pro car and doesn't wana pay the bill so the service hours are gonna be back at 1994 level if nothing is done. They also putnso much resistance to every public transit project so we are losing the federal subsidies for public transit to English Canada
93 dollars a month on transit... vs gas an insurance? keep calling me poor... i love it
Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes have done many videos on the subject of transit systems. The current model of car dependent suburbia is bankrupting cities all over North America, while making everyone more vulnerable.
If there's people complaining about the wait time on the bus, I wonder how much their blood pressure rises during traffic or god forbid a red light at an intersection.
even better than busses are trams and metro-systems. especially metros, because they don't have to deal with streets overcrowded by cars
it sounds like most people quoted in this video just have a problem with public transit because of how infrequent it is. making public transit more frequent sounds like a better solution
I’m 5’0” and have knee problems. I struggle to climb into some Ubers
And you have no problem, climbing the stairs to get in a bus?
@@Clyde-2055 good buses have level entrences how else would they be useful for wheelchair bound people?
Great analysis! Keep it up my man.
Love your content I'd love to see more of it
Building human scale cities sounds like a good idea! Love your thesis!
Homes are so expensive we need to build more homes. Build new homes by the transit stops and stations, building riders in to the network. This will keep traffic down, provide homes, create jobs building homes, create compact neighborhoods than can sustain businesses, and generate fares for the transit.
i found your account a few mere weeks ago and hit subscribe in the hopes that one day you'd be back. did not think it would be so soon!
Honestly, i support this voucher program. I support personal vehicle use and public transport. Lets supplement them both, not supplant one or the other.
Also, there is nothing inherently wrong with paternalism. Its rather beneficial more often than not. Hell, public transit at the expense of personal vehicles is the definition of paternalism.
Buses are awful. Few people actually like riding the bus. Its miserable. Uber and/taxi vouchers are much better because it has less infrastructure costs and allows more wiggle room for riders. No bus stop, no bus schedule. You just call a ride, they pick you up and then take you to your destination. All in the safety of being largely by yourself. If anything, its the driver who is in the most danger.
My favourite part of this is when you put the train in the container and made it airtight.
10:54 This is why I don't always like public transportation and I think a system like that would serve well on slower routes. Metro I like because it's usually faster. But metro + bus is already three times longer than a car journey. And I think it needs enough vans and users to work without having to wait for too long or for the van to drive long routes searching for customers.
I'm a bus driver in Halifax. Our ridership has already bounced back to pre covid levels and we have the issue where the busses get full too quickly on many routes. I laugh at all these people talking about how transit is dying and less people are using it.
Mass transit is a leftover from the days when there was not enough supply to provide a car for everyone. All what mass transit should do today is carry the elderly and the children, and eventually intercontinental/intercity services. Of course the roads need to be multiple layered stacks by now. We've built our buildings into skyscrapers, but our roads are still one layer, two at best if you count over- and underpasses. Pedestrian infrastructure should also be built into their own layer, not crossing with roads. Parkings of course should also be mandatorily multilayered unless it's your small town gravel parking for 5 cars.
Imagine having to explain to someone why giving everyone a car is a bad idea
Go ahead. Imagine it. Tell me. Other than the issue of space, I don't see a problem with allowing everyone access to their own personal vehicle to get from place to place they desire to go to. No schedule. No fees. Just get in and go.
@@RextheRebel The space is the issue, dude.
I find it absolutely funny that people like Kevin O Leary is like yeah avoid buying a car if you want to save money, something the poor can't do if they aren't homeless yet. Then these mfers are like yeah give everyone cars the fuck. They know cars are like being chained to an iron ball. You're moving but hardly anywhere.
Oy, a 12 min video to make one good point...right at the end. Transit will never replace cars and it hasn't in Europe or Asia either. Transit can work in areas not aligned around roads.
And for clarity, I live in an affluent neighborhood with a micro-transit service. We love it, don't care about cost-per-ride because our town can definitely afford it and waiting for a door-to-door is way better then waiting for a bus.
Forget the initial cost. Gas, maintenance, and insurance on a car will come to more than people typically spend on transit. And we really don't want more cars on our city streets anyway.
The problem is last mile issues. Via exists because of sprawl and because poor people have to live in areas that are hard to get to. If you've ever been broke, you know that the last mile can take you several hours to get to transit because of where your home is located.
Great attention to detail and information! I hope this video gets lots of exposure.
Low density buses also exist, that are cheaper to run for low density routes. They are called Midi buses. They exist all over the world.
To be fair, i think the Dallas microstransit service works really well, at keast as a rider.
And I'm watching this sitting on a bus for my commute to work. I'm in the UK and transit is everywhere, affordable and frequent. I know it's a different story in the USA but we are still good.
I tested a on demand system in my state in Germany, it worked wonderfully for my first trip but then I took a regional bus somewhere and got stranded until the next regional bus came 1,5 hours later because there were to little vehicles for the area it covered. Its definitly a good idea in that region because its rural and bus coverage is poor(for German standards) but the problems are there
great work alex! i could see this channel blowing up in the near future given your cost effective production values and smooth script delivery.
Cars costing up to 30 grand, insurance companies being for profit and unfair taxation with infrastructure covering only a few decades of future when designed, is what need to be thrown out of the window, not cars and the personal space and comfort that they offer. I will drive for the rest of my life, I have absolutely no regrets for optimizing my travel to my liking. In fact, my garage only grows, I don't even sell my old vehicles.
I took public transit in Spokane, WA for over a year. My work paid for my bus pass.
They cut back on service.
My walk to a bus stop from home went from 8 minutes to over 25 minutes.
I bought a car.
Do these “Buy everyone a car?” sophists ever also offer to pay for all the gas, the maintenance, the licensing and permitting and sticker fees, the parking costs, and all the property damage and hospital bills accruing from accidents, arising from distributing all of these cars?
Exactly, cars are a damn black hole for money. Even if they got the car itself for free, the insurance, maintenance, and gas would ruin anyone who's already struggling.
Do transits authorities pay all the medical bills, property lose and burial and funeral fees for all the people mugged, beaten and murdered while on or traveling to public transit ?
@Clyde-2055 No, and they don't do so for people in parking lots and parking garages either. But you make an interesting point! Not only should the government provide transit services and medical services to all, they should also provide public funeral services and other forms of emergency compensation, and job protections to those who are out of work temporarily for these reasons. These sorts of incidents often involve high costs and/or long outages from work, which the poor can't easily afford - or force them to keep working through things they shouldn't have to, since they also can't afford not to. There are sure to be economic and mental health benefits to shifting these burdens away from individuals and families.
@@Clyde-2055 That's insane you even assume such issues are even a major problem. The probability of that mishap should be very tiny in a functional transit system. Safety should be a feature of well used transit system, not a problem. That problem should not exist.
@@Clyde-2055 Interesting, blank burner account created "Sep 10, 2023".