[sustran] More about Thinking Outside the Bus

bruun at seas.upenn.edu bruun at seas.upenn.edu
Wed May 30 23:53:19 JST 2012


The Brunswick service is not a "radical idea". Lots of people have this idea.
The problem was and is institutional barriers where funds can't be  
co-mingled. The
US Federal Transit Administration started a program called United We  
Ride about
10 years back that was supposed to remove the barriers to pooling  
between social
service, medical and public transport agencies, but I haven't kept up  
with what
has happened. if this Brunswick service is so rare, then I guess it means that
it fizzled out....

Also, this statistic about 1.2 percent is pure nonsense. It is a  
meaningless average
between urban and rural and doesn't include nonmotorized trips, which  
can be a large
percentage in cities. There is indeed some bias in this article when  
there is a claim
that including cities "distorts" the statistics. Why doesn't including  
rural areas
"distort" the city statistics?

Eric Bruun


Quoting bruun at seas.upenn.edu:

>
> 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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>>
>> ================================================================
>> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,
>> equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing
>> countries (the 'Global South').
>>
>>
>
>
>
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>
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> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,  
> equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing  
> countries (the 'Global South').
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