Comment by scottfr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottfr | Hacker News Reader

I few years back I was thinking of running for the board of AC Transit in the bay area.

I did some research: the cost per mile to move a person on AC Transit was ~ $1.50 (total cost including subsidies, not what you pay). Compare that to a cost to pay for a cab to take you one mile of ~ $3.00.

So if you have two people in a cab, that cab is just as economically efficient as a bus. Literally, a car that waits for your call, comes right to your door, and chauffeurs you around, is as economically efficient as our bus system. This is crazy! We could replace AC Transit with a fleet of cabs.

Also, I've heard that the "Nextbus" system which makes those predictions for when the next bus is arriving makes most of their money fixing the next bus sensors. The reason the sensors are broken is AC Transit employees continually sabotage them because they hate being tracked.

Truly, it is an incredibly screwed up system. Anyways, I was too busy to run for the board of directors, but someone really need to fix AC Transit!

Literally, a car that waits for your call, comes right to your door, and chauffeurs you around, is as economically efficient as our bus system. This is crazy!

I recall that when San Francisco retrofitted its city buses so that all are accessible to people using wheelchairs, an economic analysis showed it would be cheaper for the city taxpayers simply to provide free taxi service to all wheelchair users. The reason for putting people who use wheelchairs on city buses seems to have been wholly political--to mainstream such persons into a form of transportation that makes them more visible to other members of the public (at least, the members of the public who use buses).

I have both an emotional reaction and a rational reaction to this policy trade-off. On the one hand, my own late father was confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic (after a slip-and-fall accident on an icy parking lot here in Minnesota) for the last six years of his life. So I totally get why friends and relatives of persons who use wheelchairs want public places, and by extension public transportation, to be accessible to persons who use wheelchairs. That allows many more family outings with grandparents and their grandchildren than might otherwise be possible, for example. But my rational reaction is still that we all have to work hard to pay our taxes, so "public" money (money derived from taxation) should still be spent responsibly. If devoting taxi service (and, I hope, someday a self-driving car service) with public subsidies helps needy members of the population more than bus service, so be it. Spend the least money to get the positive externality is generally the way to go in public policy.

Dealing with disabilities is definitely an issue for the bus system. Does society need a public financed transportation system for disabled people. I would say absolutely.

However, I don't think that should be the general bus system. Loading/unloading a wheelchair can take several minutes each way throwing the bus off schedule. Furthermore, to accomodate the disabled you need more stops. So you have stops ridiculously close together (like 40 meters in some cases). This further slows down the buses a lot.

I think we need some sort of parallel taxi/bus service for the disabled and to focus on making the main bus service fast and on time. How to fund this though or make it work. I don't know.

In my location, those sorts of disabled facilities have more than one use, so if there's no disabled person taking the space, then parents with prams or buggies use them, if there's no parents, then standard passengers use them (they have more leg room and are close to the door). They are always busy spaces, so not sure why they'd be a problem.

> If devoting taxi service (and, I hope, someday a self-driving car service)

I think the idea is not to make disabled people go from point A to point B, but to integrate them into society. There is nothing worse for an injured/disabled person than to be isolated, they will get clinically depressed. It's not one of those "man up and tough it out, soldier" situations - societal acceptance is crucial to mental health. Yes, we should spend money responsibly and not spend more than needed to reach the goal, but the goal must be stated inclusively.

A self-driving car is the exact opposite of what is needed.

I find it odd to place the priority on having people in the car rather than people at the destination. Wouldn't you rather socialize with people of your choice at your party/book club/sewing group/whatever than with the weird and awkward people who happen to be on the bus? I know I would. Especially if the former situation is more efficient, so I get to go more places.

Put another way, the city I live in (Denver) has what is essentially a taxi service for disabled folks (http://www3.rtd-denver.com/elbert/accessARide). I know a couple of folks in wheel chairs -- and they use it a lot! I've never once heard them say they felt isolated because they weren't standard bus routes full of people. On the contrary, not being able to go where their friends were going is what would be isolating.

People tend to have fewer friends and become less able as they get older, and even incidental interaction is still vastly better than none. If we had a way to make sure disabled people always have company and no one is left behind, I might agree to the idea of taking them off the busses and giving the (semi)private rides. But we shouldn't assume they all have friends to go see just because you always had such friends.

And then, spatial mobility is also very important. For example, I felt absolutely trapped by my relatively benign broken foot problem.

I find a depressing scene whenever I get on a bus. This isn't a joke. At least here in SF, busses tend to be filled with trash and mean/ugly/crazy people. I don't think putting anyone on a bus in the US will have a positive impact on their mental health.

I have not found this to be the case in major cities outside the US (eg Mexico City, Prague, Amsterdam). I do not know why.

More or less free taxi for people with disabilities? Sounds awefully lot like the system we have here in Sweden.

http://www.fardtjansten.sll.se/sv/Information/Information-pa...

So if you have two people in a cab, that cab is just as economically efficient as a bus. [..] We could replace AC Transit with a fleet of cabs.

Does that include the cost of increased congestion from the increased traffic?

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