Americans will do anything but build consistent public transport.
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
111 points (83.2% liked)
Technology
60112 readers
1856 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Short gain compared to long term investment right here.
This is akin to discovering that you can hire freelance developers from developing nations for 1/10 of the cost, but then after 3 years... your whole system is a spaghetti mess and the rebuild cost many times that.
Because they're now having to switch back over to buses anyways.
I think on-demand transit makes sense in many areas but for a town of this size, it seems like it would be better as a supplement to a traditional bus system than a full replacement. 50,000 is not exactly rural though I'm not sure what the density looks like.
I think 50k is definitely on the low end of what you might consider a "city". And you're right, it would depend on density. IMO a city with that population can't really sustain a bus system if it's spread out too much.
I lived in a town with 50k back in the 90s. I don't remember there ever being a bus service except for the school buses.
The town was pretty massive though. Half the town was on a plateau as well so you had to walk up a pretty huge hill to get to half of it.
There was quite a few taxi's driving people around.
Maybe there was a bus that I never used and can't remember. As a kid I rode everywhere. That hill was a son of a bitch though.
Pro-move: hire even more contractors to refactor.
This isn't a solution. This is a small city making a choice that's hostile to the environment and, if anything, intentionally laying the groundwork to privatize the local public transit options to invite surge pricing and other unethical price gouging that have no place in public services.
LA Metro is doing a similar service as an additional option with their transit. It's designed as an option to fill in the gaps. More need to look to LA Metro. They're doing a lot right.
Long wait times made the bus route almost unusable for David Bunn, even when his car broke down and he couldn’t afford to replace it. Instead, Bunn, who has two broken discs in his back, would take a 5-mile (8-kilometer) roundtrip walk to pick up groceries.
"A small city"
The city of less than 50,000 people
Very small, yes.
I dont know if you understand. In Europe if grocery shop isnt in your village, its probably 2-3km away in the neighboring village. Calling something "a city" indicates that everything is denser. So I find it funny when American "cities" are less dense than European "villages separated by farmland"
I'm European. Tiny cities exist here too. As do food deserts. When most people drive, local shops and bus services disappear, and people without cars get stranded.
The point of transit is not to have a bus. The point of transit is getting people where they need to be.
This is definition of transportation, not transit
as many as 3 in 10 residents lacked access to a car to get to work
Because people need a car to get from point A to point B. Enough of this bs. Stopped reading there
i thought it waa somethings revolutionary, like, for ex, those who already have cars would pickup those without one, and get some gratification. Like we already have thousands of most-empty cars, let's fill them up!
But no, they just have city-paid taxi lol huhu such revolution, much thought process, very innovative
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Milton Barnes used to oversee packed subway stations in Washington, D.C., a far cry from the sparsely filled buses he drove after moving to Wilson, North Carolina, to care for his elderly parents.
Wilson landed federal and state infrastructure grants to support the shared, public rides residents summon — usually within 15 minutes — through a service operating like Uber and Lyft, but at a fraction of the cost to riders.
These smaller-scale, tech-based solutions to public transportation problems, known broadly as microtransit, have emerged as a great equalizer in the battle for infrastructure dollars that has traditionally pit the bus, train and subway needs of urban areas against the road construction projects sought by rural communities.
Via started operations seven years earlier with what was then a consumer service offering shared van rides in parts of Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the New York City subway didn’t go.
Even Wilson won’t be able to operate under its microtransit pilot program forever without finding new ways to pay for it, said Kai Monast, associate director of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University.
Monast predicts that although Wilson will remain committed to microtransit, the community eventually will return in part to a fixed-route system, adjusted heavily from the data gathered through years of on-demand van rides.
The original article contains 1,146 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
He got cool T-Shirt.
Reminds me of those rubber, neon-colored, palm-sized sports balls.
Wait what ?
Columbus Ohio does both that and buses. Unfortunately the area covered is much smaller than it ought to be
Seems like a really good solution for small cities
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, access to transit is great. On the other hand, I feel like the greenhouse gas reductions would be minimal.
Imho a bit comparable to the tricycles, racals and jeepny's in the Philippines tbh... It works, prices are cheaper than taxi's, comfort goes down as cost, but at least many lowerclasses can get places without having to own a car...