[sustran] Re: Thinking Outside the Bus

[Jonathan Richmond]

I wrote a book, "The Private Provision of Public Transport" about 
alternative ways of offering transit services, that included case-studies 
of both the New York and Miami jitney services and I agree with the 
brilliantly-written New York Times article. It is not misleading at all, 
but dead on target.

I disagree about the advantage of a "connective network" in locations 
where there is low demand. Such a system runs empty buses all day and 
forces people to make unnecessary changes along their route. The Brunswick 
example shows imagination in instead creating a service that has both 
fixed characteristics that cater to primary demands (the route may be 
circuitous, but it hits all major points people without cars need to go 
to) but also offers flexibility.

As to the jitneys, they are an example of the advantages of private 
enterprise. The drivers are offering this service because they are able to 
earn more than in alternative occupations available to them. Certainly, 
they are making less than in regular transit jobs, but that is not the 
point. They are might not qualify to be regular bus drivers -- and they 
might even prefer to do small-scale community oriented enterprise. The 
service provided is terrific and meets local needs far better than the 
conventional transit alternative.

                                        --Jonathan

On Tue, 29 May 2012, Paul Barter wrote:

> 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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-----
Jonathan Richmond
+1 617 395-4360
e-mail: richmond at alum.mit.edu
http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/