The Tiny Alaskan Town with the US’ Highest Taxicab Density
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
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Video written by Amy Muller
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If the cab mostly just goes in a circle.... and you share the ride with others.... and it comes back to set spots at regular intervals... My guy, that's just a bus.
With government-regulated prices and all too
Yep, a small, five-seat bus.
the graphics make it looks like it's just running a circle track... but what you don't see is that the taxi takes you exactly where you want to go. It uses the loop road to get around town, and then takes the side roads to get you to your actual destination. A bus can't/won't do that.
There are 8 seat busses. Might be a good option for this town since it's fast to get in and out and more space so you can easily bring grocery bags.
@@notmyname9876 Technicaly nothing is stoping a small bus to do the same.
Sam is not kidding about requesting car shipping ruining your phone. I did that once and it was mistake. My phone did not quit ringing for several days. Ends up they just get your phone number and then sell it to every broker on the planet.
it must have something to do with being such a niche and high price service- I know I have never considered getting a car shipped anywhere, if I move it gets towed behind a truck
@@pizzaivlife It isn't just car shipping though. I once requested a quote for a cross-country move (just a regular move, for apartment stuff) for a friend so he could see how much it would cost to move somewhere else.
They did not stop calling for weeks, sometimes a couple times a day. It got to the point where I had to scream at multiple agents that _I_ was not the one who was even looking to move, and they were wasting their time, before it finally stopped.
Happens with a lot of services. If you start shopping around for car insurance, suddenly your inbox and voicemail are flooded with insurance quotes. If you get a new card, a bunch of other banks will mysteriously start preapproving you for cards with suspiciously accurate guesses about your income.
Oh my god it's so annoying. It does stop if you just don't answer any of them, but wow the spam.
Try life insurance...
4:19 Ferry: used by 2, Margin of error +-3. by that logic there is between -1 and 5 people using a ferry
It's -1 when the captain falls off the empty ferry.
I can confirm that there is no ferry in bethel
@@rory9723 0 is within the margin of error, so no issues there
Bicycle can go as low as -7
@@antipoti Either they have 7 self-riding bike going around delivering stuff or 7 people just vanish upon sitting on their bike
As someone from bethel, I can confirm we have so many cabs. It’s really interesting that almost all of the cab drivers are Korean or Albanian
That's the nationality of people who own Italian restaurants in Ireland
Really? I was there a lot 15-20 years ago and they were mostly Russians back then.
@@markbothum4338yes, there’s almost no Russians in town nowadays
I went to some weird online class and I remember a girl being from bethel there
can you send some down to Sitka? we have like 2 for 9000 people.
I actually live in Bethel. Also sam you said kuskokwim wrong. Our river is actually a state highway in the winter when it freezes. And milk is now $13 not 8. One last thing one of the roads that you put on your map is completely useless, and can only be used by four wheeler unless you want to completely destroy your vehicle.
Would snow mobiles skew the counts as taxi’s, motorcycles are also counted in that count they used.
@@Chessie1977 Not really they aren't used daily by anyone, besides kids that wouldn't be in the census
@@nedpeters1657 gotcha!
Do you even have a regular internet connection there?
Most people here have started using star link which is Elon musks satellite internet@@TheRavenir
Fun fact : Petrol in Denmark is still more expensive than petrol in this tiny alaskan town.
A gallon in Denmark will cost you $ with the current prices 7.57
That's pretty cheap. In the Netherlands it's currently $10.41
Anytime I think about complaining about gas prices where I live (currently at $2.75/gal), I remember that Europeans pay so much more than I do.
@@sgtleobellamost of them are far less dependent on cars though, tbf
@@sgtleobella ouch, we pay that per litre.
But I guess our dollars are worth less and we earn more of them for the same 'value'.
However you don't need to worry about it as much since you guys have great public transit, higher wages, a culture of cycling, and walkable cities and towns
The "group" taxi system in Bethel sounds a good bit like that in Cayman... except in Cayman they won't come back to pick you up from the fishin' spot, they're on island time
I lived in Cayman for two years and wasn’t aware of this, would’ve been horrified given how expensive they were
Lol, I am coincidentally wearing a t-shirt that says "You're on Island Time Now" while writing this (I got while working at Tropical Smoothie Cafe a few years ago).
In Jamaica, not only will the cabs come back whenever you want, but they won't charge you until the return trip.
@@ZanHecht Oh wow, that sounds awesome! Are they cheap?
It’s called stoned time
Your delivery on "destroy your writer's phone for three days" was immaculate.
I love the statistic for the bus; 2 with a margin of error of +/- 3, so the actual number could be -1. 😆
I think -1 would imply that a ferry commutes to work on the back of a person.
The actual number is 0, there is no ferry
@@rory9723 - Harry Houdini after an exhausting conversation with Arthur Conan Doyle
It has a capacity of exactly one ghost
@@Pablo360ablelol - Points!
Word of advice with any type of car quote done online, use a google voice number. Your number gets added to SOOO many spam lists or the quick quote becomes 20 attempted phone calls. Like car insurance quotes. Use the disposable number and if it starts blowing up, cancel the number and get a new one. Then start over from there.
Really, they need to add 2 digits to the end of all phone numbers that the user can change entirely on their own device so that you can literally just change from one of 100 numbers to avoid unwanted calls.
Great video, one thing that unfortunately was skipped over is the high number of snow machines/ snowmobile/ skidoos. Half the year has snow and these light vehicles are the most practical way to get around on and off road.
Thanks for using my article in this and featuring our quirky little town! You did a really good job covering the many layers of complication that come with our transportation.
I love that you did a video about Bethel. There are plenty more share-worthy stories about the absurdities of this south-western Alaska hub so we'll forgive your ludicrously unrelated stock footage for the fact you brought attention to the realities of rural Alaska.
So much weird stuff: "Birthdays" the daily birthday read outs on the radio.
Ordering your pizza by airplane to the local villages.
The ice highway
Or for a much more HAI thing: medical logistics. Since Bethel is the medical hub everyone who needs to go to a real doctor in the spoke villages all have to come to Bethel
Whoever wrote this script did an incredible job.
Besides forgetting that snowmobiles exist
@@colinhennessey5076 what da heck is a snowmobile?
Amy Muller
@@bhambholeen.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmobile
@@bhambhole I'm not sure if this is an actual question, but I'll answer it anyways: It's basically a tracked ATV with skids in the front that are primarily used for snow travel. It's a very common mode of transport in Alaska.
Per *cabita* was right there 😭
Aside, Ridgecrest California, having banned them under a bylaw, is a strong contender for fewest cabs per... well, you know.
What? When did that happen?
@@FayeVert It was like that the last time I visited. Things may have changed since.
@@jimsvideos7201 I knew someone there who worked as a cab driver a few years ago, but maybe they drove in another city? I'm just wondering what kind of shenanigans led to the ban.
FYI = the "kust" in "kuskokwim" is pronounced like "cuss" (as in "a bad word"), not "ku" as a regime change.
Not sure where you got the Mississippi River Delta population is 8 million. Louisiana's population is 4.5 million. The population of what you showed is probably about 2 million at most.
Considering half of the south can’t read and the other half aren’t US cits, ~2mil undocumented is a fair assumption lol
I think Sam's population included swamp monsters
8 million ants perhaps
I think the reason for that difference is because the Delta Regional Authority governs a lot more than just the geographic region known as the Mississippi River Delta. On the DRA's website, 8 states are listed as part of their authority, which includes parts of Alabama, Illinois and Missouri.
Its 2.3 not 8.3
It is evidently the inspirstion from Utkjavik in Jet Lag The Game, where they pointed out the huge cab service a few times.
I feel the ad transition kind of failed there, as people in Bethel, AK probably can’t get Factor meals since the shipping time would probably mean they can’t be good by the time they get there.
We can't get any meal services anywhere in Alaska.
The fuel is expensive at $6 a gallon? That works out £1 a litre! We are enjoying the fact it is only about £1.40 a litre at the moment in Britain
Fuel in the US is quite cheap compared to much of the world, in part because we produce and refine it domestically.
We have a lot of fuel guzzling vehicles over here because rednecks and lack of regulation, and most of the country is completely dependent on cars to get around. When you average it out, I assume that we in the US probably spend more per year to get around than people in the UK do. I'm envious of your public transport system over there.
@@impossible_planet Not really, it's mostly because the federal government subsidizes gas extremely heavily, and also subsidizes oil production extremely heavily on top of that. The US government is somewhat unique in how heavily it subsidizes consumer goods.
If the whole town is one circle that all the cabs loop around anyways, why can't they just run a few busses continuously along the loop?
That would be communism, and is therefore illegal.
It’s not actually a loop
Busses are even heavier than cars and they don’t need that much capacity anyway.
wait........ you got a point....
Because freedom
stock skating footage at 0:21 is Gap Lake, Alberta, Canada
2:21 as a mobility aid user I feel so happy to be acknowledged as just a regular part of life
That cost to ship a car to Bethel is way wrong. Cost to get a car from Seattle to just Anchorage is over $2,000. To get to Bethel you can expect way higher. And the scheduling will be when the barges can get in from mid summer to freeze up. If you have money you can get your car flown in. I’ve seen more than one being forklifted into the front of a 737.
I work at Everts air cargo. We ship a lot of mail and freight to Bethel.
As someone who was born ans raised in Bethel, I can say that other then some mispronounced words this script is pretty on point.
All my family still lives out there and Im still in Alaska, just the "city" Anchorage.
I'm really greatful I got to grow up in such a unique place. Most americans have would never guess a place like this is in the US.
Also we used to egg the cabs all the time when we were kids too.
What they need is a monorail, monorail, MONORAIL
AGREED! Has the same likelihood as the bridge linking to Siberia, but AGREED!
Not viable. Basically impossible to maintain rails in areas that cold
@@flakgun153 MONORAIL
@@BrandanTheBroker MONORAIL
Yeah, that would be a hell of a ride over the tundra along with the permafrost.
2:46 this is the 3rd time in my life ive heard the phrase mea culpa, the 1st time being from the withcer 3, and the 2nd time being from my audio teacher abt 4 months ago
It's a Latin phrase from the Catholic church. It means: "it's my fault"
@@hectorquinones5579 ik i speak italian
The main reason I know it is because that's the name of Michael Cohen's podcast
@@User31129 lol
These taxis seem closer to a "collectivo" than to a traditional taxi.
Exactly lol.
Government preset prices? ✅
Steady routes? ✅
Takes other people while you're riding? ✅
If you told me this was small town in Mexico and didn't show me snow, I wouldn't be surprised by this system at all. The only difference was extra charge per stop.
As someone who used to live in the YK Delta region, traveling to Bethel first to go to Anchorage meant a couple-hour (or longer based on weather) stopover and a trip by cab to one of the few restaurants or stores. It was always insane how many cabs were at the airport and driving around town. I’ll never forget it. Thanks for the throwback!
3:25 The cost to ship your car is between $1600 and $2600, unless you go with Colibri, in which case you only pay $1 total, no additional fees! Sounds like a good deal to me, no red flags there whatsoever.
Keep up the great work,Sam.
I work for Lower Yukon School District and have flown through Bethel many times. There are far more taxis in this small community than I expected!
Lovely people and community, beautiful, and wonderfully remote. Almost moved there when my wife was offered a good job at the university.
Getting anything big and heavy there, like a standby generator, your truck or a container with your stuff is pricy, but only a bit more than it cost to move/ship from coast to coast in the lower 48. I worked up all the logistics for moving us there with everything we wanted to be comfortable and, really, it wasn’t that bad.
Amazon and most others deliver, and while it’ll sometimes take 2 weeks, it often gets there faster. But fresh foods do come with a sticker shock.
Things in general are more expensive, but many of the jobs that’ll bring your there, like doctors, nurses, educators, also pay rather well which offsets this impact.
It’s a road not taken for us, and as much as we enjoy where we are and our life as it is, we still think about the life that could have been in Bethel. 😊
I don't understand why anyone would want to live somewhere so harsh and secluded. Apart from your wife's job, what exactly would you gain?
Kuscos cab, the cab for Kusco, the cab specifically intended for Kusco
My city in England (Wolverhampton) has ~36,000 taxis registered for a population of 260,000, or roughly 13% of its population. It's because the local council made the process efficient and therefore cheaper, meaning that cab drivers from around the country register here instead of their home towns.
So, Wolverhampton has become for UK taxi registry that Panama & Liberia have been for global ship registry? :)
That other category would include stuff like snowmobiles (which seems like it would be a huge source of commuting for locals for at least part of the year).
And motorcycles are less heavy to ship, can be pretty good fuel economy wise, store in a smaller place, are often simpler to maintain and are generally cheaper than cars... added to less busy roads to make them less dangerous and a smart but independent minded person is putting a bike and a snowmobile in the garage, rather than a car.
The Wikipedia article confirms that there are a lot of people using snowmobiles. But it does say it's the highest per-capita cab use too.
@@Aima952 I mean motorcycles will always be better fuel economy wise since they a lot lighter than cars. I guess unless you count electric cars but there are electric scooters as well.
This video just makes me appreciative and grateful that I live in a city and country where there are paved roads everywhere and owning and maintaining a car is, for the most part, hassle free. These are things I take for granted most days, and I’m sure most people not living in winter areas do as well.
Its like that in most of the bigger towns in the bush. You also forgot to mention that some people keep an open tab and pay it off every now and again.
I chuckled at 1:55. That's the town hall in Bethel, CT.
!! My sister lives in Bethal!!! She's a pharmacist up there!
At the beginning, they talk about taxis per capita, but show persons per taxi.
A decent amount of the “other” is likely snowmobiles
so the taxis are just very small busses
I'm from Alaska! Loved the camry shoutout 😂 I have a "perfect" 2011 camry, best car ever!😂
I'm curious as to where the 8.3 Million population figure for the Mississippi River Delta came from. The 3 main cities within that area (NOLA, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette) comprise about 730,000ish people combined. Estimates of the area seem to put it around 2 Million, still well short of 8.3 Million.
They were counting all the gators!
I’m guessing that was an error
Bethel, I grew up there from age 10 to 18. Good times!! They have the best pizza in Bethel.
Same! I was born and raised in Bethel. The pizza was phenomenal!
This is about the same as it is in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. I lived there for 4 months and cabs are very common there for pretty well the exact same reasons. regional hub, above the treeline, isolated, expensive everything. Cabs are $6 CAD there.
Basically, Bethel is the most populated settlement in the Alaskan Bush. That is the area outside the three main metropolitan areas: Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau.
Very interesting transport solution there in Bethel.
Thank you Sam for all your hard work!
Anthony
I love these videos!
You should follow this up with a video about Rawtenstall in England. This town also has a huge number of taxi drivers per head, but for a different resson entirely.
Shoutout to the two people riding that ferry, thats hilarious
as someone who lives ~20 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska, I can safely say that 2 week shipping is a pretty good amount of time. Half the time shipping isn't even available here.
The thing is, them picking up other passengers is not that surprising, even if gas was not expensive. Because in that size of town everyone already knows everyone.
Would be absolute hell if you don’t like said people
They also have a ton of pizza joints: Baba's, Fili's, and UnCommon Pizza 49 among others. I mean, it's essentially the exact same as New York.
0:21 that frozen lake stock footage is NOT in Bethel, Alaska. It's Gap Lake in Canmore, Alberta!
Inuvik in the Northwest Territories had a similar scenario. At one time there was near on 50 taxis for 3000 people. Bethel is not.alone in its logistics - many northern communities across Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Alaska share similar logistics
Those taxis sure are tough. Couldn't imagine myself being trapped in harsh freezing temperatures all the time.
Alaskan here. Travelled to and through Bethel many times, and in summer you'll be trapped in clouds of mosquitos and gnats instead. Winter is a BLESSING.
5:22 I think you should have Amy try to have different yellow taxis come to pick her up in three hours from fishing spots
Love your videos
I clicked, certain the town was Utqiagvik/Barrow. I was there in December and there's a half-dozen taxi companies for a town of 4,300.
Next time someone tries to drag my 2007 Toyota Camry I'm pointing them to this video as evidence that it's both classic and perfect. Thank you Amy 💜 (and sorry about your phone)
half as videos 👍
When it says “taxi cab or other means” does that include snowmobiles? I don’t live up there but I feel like that would be an obvious solution to transportation issues in winter without a car
"drop me of at the lake and come back in 3 hours"
if it includes other there's probably a fair amount of ATVs involved too. They're pretty popular in the bush
Wendover/HAI merch when?? I just want to buy hats with trains on them and support my favorite creator
That many cabs on one single paved road is like… shockingly similar to a really weird light rail system haha
I worked in bethel for almost a year, taxi cabs are used primarily by drunk people sitting outside the store and drunk people leaving the bar. Albanian and Korean companies, the Albanians will also sell bootleg liquor and the Koreans have a casino
There is some sort of bush whacker or harvester machine that flashes by at 1:33, does anyone know what it's called please??
So the taxi drives around in an oval, like NASCAR, but it's better run than NASCAR itself…
Great video.
Another half is interesting video in four days let’s go
I have been to Bethole, l think there are even more taxis in Sharm El-Sheikh.
You should've sent Amy to Alaska!
A large part of the "other" part of travel is snowmobile in the winter.
you should make a video on how to get the max amount of permanent residencies possible. That would be so cool!
3:25 wait wait wait I gotta know more about why one of those texts claims to do the job for $1 lol
"Very TundraCore" 😂
I think they were using Mercator and not correcting for it to show the relative size of Bangladesh. A Quick pop over to ‘true size’ shows it’s still big, but not *that* big.
I wonder if Bethel has higher gas prices than Yulara, NT, Australia? In the town outside Uluru, in the middle of the Australian outback, were some of the highest gas prices I've ever seen. IIRC when I was there, it was close to $5 AUD/litre, or roughly ~$12 USD/gallon.
For future reference, the "Kusk" of Kuskokwim rhymes with "tusk".
I have family in Bethel, and you'll be happy to know they loved this video. They were surprised anyone outside of Bethel knew about the rock throwing incident, which was indeed a very big deal there.
The only nit they had to pick is that Kusko is pronounced K-uh-sko.
Seems normal enough for a HAI video
HAI video editors were on point for this one. Poor Amy I hope her phone is OK until Sam sends her on another sorta interesting assignment.
I wish I knew the highest density of bricks!
Their cabs work like a dial-a-bus system.
Definitely needs a busline holy shit.
In Ukraine and Russia there exists very similar service to that, but in all country, even including crossing borders. it's called "marshrutka", you can read about it on english wikipedia. Marsrutkas drive on routes, but they can pick you up and take you to an exact address along the route.
Oh right, the rocks. The rocks for Kusko. The rocks specifically for throwing at Kusko, Kusko's rocks.
At 1:25 how are you getting 8.3 million people in the Mississippi River Delta!? The map you use only shows it as being a small portion of the state of Louisiana, which has a total population of less than 4.6 million, while the area highlighted has less than half that number! Also, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta extends into India and is even bigger than shown.
thats honestly a huge (physically) town for 6.5k people. i live in a 8k person town and its a mile square
As much as I adore the aesthetics and perseverence of small-town logistics, I can't help but to imagine how sad it must be to live there. I grew up in a place that was probably 5x the population of Bethel and the surrounding areas, and it still felt like a dark pit of nothingness
I live in a remote Alaskan town and as a white person I totally understand this sentiment, but indigenous peoples are often very tied to the land as their people and their cultures have existed in the same place since time immemorial.
What about Majuro? I can imagine the cab:private car ratio is similar.
3 people commute by bike? Yikes that's one cold bike ride!
My dream is to do a Half as Interesting video style video about André da Rocha in Brazil
Homeboy forgot most people in the bush usually get around by four wheeler or snowmachines
Small scale buses
this sounds very similar to how a lot of taxis work in Ghana. Funnily enough.