[sustran] Re: Thinking Outside the Bus

bruun at seas.upenn.edu bruun at seas.upenn.edu
Tue May 29 21:46:57 JST 2012


Going further with this idea, I have two points:

1) Even when pay is low, minibuses are only a good idea when they are  
relatively sparse. When
the numbers get large they start to be a major source of congestion  
and pollution in themselves. And
if drivers are paid by the passenger, they can be unsafe, as they will  
race each other for passengers.

2) To refer to Jarrett Walker's comment, if supporting lower pay for  
driving smaller buses is union
busting then I am perhaps a union buster. Big city unions have stifled  
attempts to serve people and communities that need more or better  
service. They can be very selfish, and I think even misguided. If they  
wouldn't oppose somewhat lower pay, PT systems could be expanded. It  
would increase employment and create a career ladder, but they seem to  
fear that it would lead to them being fired.

Eric Bruun


Quoting Paul Barter <paulbarter at reinventingtransport.org>:

> On 29 May 2012 14:26, Sujit Patwardhan <patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Conventional wisdom says that the way to create or improve public transit
>> is to invest billions to engineer rails, trains and buses. But the
>> Brunswick Explorer is one of many innovators that are seeing transit as
>> more than an engineering problem and trying to  build transit that meets
>> the needs of its residents.
>> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/thinking-outside-the-bus/
>> ...
>
>
> Yes, it is an interesting item. But be careful! It is misleading (at least
> for places with high labour costs).
>
> See http://www.humantransit.org/2011/11/new-york-times-how-to-be-co
> nfused-about-transit.html for a thoughtful critique of this NYT article.
> Jarrett Walker writes:
>
> "Brunswick's local buses, in short, are geared to people with special
> needs, as small-town transit systems often are. ... These systems are
> absolutely laudable. ... But they are intrinsically inefficient, in terms
> of passengers service per unit of public cost... Serving special needs is a
> good thing to do, but it requires lots of staff time per passenger, so it
> will always have a very high cost per passenger.
>
> Unless ... you pay the drivers less. Margonelli's next story is about the
> emerging minibuses of New York, an important private sector initiative ...
> The genius of these buses is that they tolerate lower ridership (mandated
> in fact by their small size) but they can do this because the drivers make
> much less than unionized transit agency labor. ...
>
> So is Margonelli really a ferocious right-wing union-busting capitalist?
> No, she's just unclear on transit's basic geometry and economics."
>
>> From the same source (Human Transit blog) here is a better example of how
> to do surprisingly well with public transport even in a very
> transit-unfriendly suburban environment with high labour costs (
> http://www.humantransit.org/2012/05/fort-lauderdale-yet-another-triumph-for-multi-destinational-networks.html).
> The key is a 'connective network' with regular service in a grid (for
> example) and making connections between services attractive and easy.
>
> Paul
> --
> Working to make urban transport and parking enrich our lives more and harm
> us all less.
> paulbarter at reinventingtransport.org
> http://www.reinventingtransport.org  http://www.reinventingparking.org
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