I stole a bike to get to the dentist. Millions of Americans skip care because they can't get there. For low-income people without a car, rideshare costs matter a lot.
Excellent. So much medical care is missed by people who cannot get to their appointments. This is especially painful for those struggling with overcoming drug abuse, because they have to travel almost daily to get the meds to help them.
It varies. The agencies don't want to distribute too many pills at once, they are afraid people might sell them instead of taking them. But the alternative is that they don't get them most of the time. At least in rural areas, or in places with very few clinics.
Rideshare (odd name for Uber/Lyft/Waymo-like services) would be more conveninet for customerrs and alower cost to the system way for public trnsit to meet its ADA committents.
I've always felt that private rideshare would be a solid business model ie. like the owner operated matatus in Africa and I think also mexico city (no doubt elsewhere) which are smaller vans which can take many fewer people but which therefore would permit less travelled routes. And more of them.
One of the very odd parameters of this debate has always been the assertion by policymakers and activists that drivers are de facto oppressed. I suspect (but cannot prove obviously) that one animating reason is that for many in the ‘elite class,’ whatever that means, interactions with drivers constitute a great disproportionate percentage of their total interactions with working people. So as with air travel, it constitutes outsize mindshare relative to its overall salience.
Thanks for helping keep riders at the center of the discussion about mobility. Our roads should not be a means of extracting rents by incumbant wealth, even if the wealth is in the form of an old car and smart phone with an incumbant app.
Are there options for municipal insurance systems to cover drivers who keep costs down and/ or provide rides to supplement overwhelmed transport services for disabled riders? They would probably need to drive more carefully than typical Uber/Lyft drivers to keep their collision rates down, and so higher cost services could sell higher speeds and shorter wait times. But at least there would be competition.
Interesting! Do you know who was involved in that debate? There might be a way to get some other groups involved if it could be tied to monitoring vehicles for safer driving or used to help justify removing street parking in favor of subsidized rides.
Totally agree! Microtransit could really improve public transportation in smaller, less dense cities. In those places, commutes on traditional busses can take hours and involve a lot of walking because bus stops are unlikely to be exactly where you want to go. This is why the city of Wilson, North Carolina replaced its bus system with a microtransit system. Average wait times fell from 45min to 15min and customers only pay a flat fee of $2.50 per trip. Would be great if more smaller cities took this approach. Craig Richardson at WSSU has good video on the Wilson experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW171dxnrfg
Great point about rideshare as an enabler of public transit. This is already very common in the context of airports, and must also apply to Greyhound and Bustang (Colorado-specific long range bus).
EDIT: Related, I took an Uber a few weeks ago and the driver happened to be a guy who had been driving taxis and limos for decades. We lamented the fact that the Ford panther platform no longer exists. The panther platform was the base of the Crown Victoria and Lincoln Towncar that were legendary as taxis, police cars, limos, and so on. The platform was popular for these uses because it was extremely rugged, reliable, and comfortable: body-on-frame construction, time-tested engine and transmission, massive seats. It was discontinued in 2012, apparently fuel economy and lack of electronic stability were major factors.
It's surprising that we haven't seen something like this re-emerge in the era of rideshare. Perhaps it's just that cars in general are extremely reliable now and it's common for a modern Corolla to do 300,000 miles. I feel that a car designed from the ground-up to be an effective rideshare vehicle would be popular.
Perhaps autonomous rideshare will lead to the re-emergence of a vehicle like the Crown Vic, Zoox seems to be trying. I suspect one feature we'll see is some kind of partitions on the inside of the vehicle so each rider is in their own compartment, which would make it more palatable to have multiple strangers in one car.
Excellent. So much medical care is missed by people who cannot get to their appointments. This is especially painful for those struggling with overcoming drug abuse, because they have to travel almost daily to get the meds to help them.
Oh whoa :o I didn’t realize that. I always envisioned appointments as once every 2 weeks or so - that’s tough!
It varies. The agencies don't want to distribute too many pills at once, they are afraid people might sell them instead of taking them. But the alternative is that they don't get them most of the time. At least in rural areas, or in places with very few clinics.
Rideshare (odd name for Uber/Lyft/Waymo-like services) would be more conveninet for customerrs and alower cost to the system way for public trnsit to meet its ADA committents.
Yes true, I realize it’s not technically much different than taxis. :) Very true, thank you!
I've always felt that private rideshare would be a solid business model ie. like the owner operated matatus in Africa and I think also mexico city (no doubt elsewhere) which are smaller vans which can take many fewer people but which therefore would permit less travelled routes. And more of them.
One of the very odd parameters of this debate has always been the assertion by policymakers and activists that drivers are de facto oppressed. I suspect (but cannot prove obviously) that one animating reason is that for many in the ‘elite class,’ whatever that means, interactions with drivers constitute a great disproportionate percentage of their total interactions with working people. So as with air travel, it constitutes outsize mindshare relative to its overall salience.
I had the exact same thought. To people in the bottom quintiles who aspire to have a function new-ish working class, Uber drivers are pretty lucky (https://abio.substack.com/p/how-working-class-people-talk-about). I came to the conclusion that we criticize Uber because it made one sliver of low wage work more visible, and people aren't aware that that's the nature of much low wage: https://abio.substack.com/p/we-scrutinize-uber-because-weve-heard
Thanks for helping keep riders at the center of the discussion about mobility. Our roads should not be a means of extracting rents by incumbant wealth, even if the wealth is in the form of an old car and smart phone with an incumbant app.
Are there options for municipal insurance systems to cover drivers who keep costs down and/ or provide rides to supplement overwhelmed transport services for disabled riders? They would probably need to drive more carefully than typical Uber/Lyft drivers to keep their collision rates down, and so higher cost services could sell higher speeds and shorter wait times. But at least there would be competition.
Thanks Tom! Oh interesting. I can imagine subsidies or potentially even a pooled-fund-for-insurance perhaps. I know that's been floated here in DC.
Interesting! Do you know who was involved in that debate? There might be a way to get some other groups involved if it could be tied to monitoring vehicles for safer driving or used to help justify removing street parking in favor of subsidized rides.
Oh fascinating. It was Empower putting forward the pooled-fund-for-insurance!
Totally agree! Microtransit could really improve public transportation in smaller, less dense cities. In those places, commutes on traditional busses can take hours and involve a lot of walking because bus stops are unlikely to be exactly where you want to go. This is why the city of Wilson, North Carolina replaced its bus system with a microtransit system. Average wait times fell from 45min to 15min and customers only pay a flat fee of $2.50 per trip. Would be great if more smaller cities took this approach. Craig Richardson at WSSU has good video on the Wilson experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW171dxnrfg
Oh whoa, I've not heard of this before. Thanks so much for flagging. This is very cool
Great point about rideshare as an enabler of public transit. This is already very common in the context of airports, and must also apply to Greyhound and Bustang (Colorado-specific long range bus).
EDIT: Related, I took an Uber a few weeks ago and the driver happened to be a guy who had been driving taxis and limos for decades. We lamented the fact that the Ford panther platform no longer exists. The panther platform was the base of the Crown Victoria and Lincoln Towncar that were legendary as taxis, police cars, limos, and so on. The platform was popular for these uses because it was extremely rugged, reliable, and comfortable: body-on-frame construction, time-tested engine and transmission, massive seats. It was discontinued in 2012, apparently fuel economy and lack of electronic stability were major factors.
It's surprising that we haven't seen something like this re-emerge in the era of rideshare. Perhaps it's just that cars in general are extremely reliable now and it's common for a modern Corolla to do 300,000 miles. I feel that a car designed from the ground-up to be an effective rideshare vehicle would be popular.
Perhaps autonomous rideshare will lead to the re-emergence of a vehicle like the Crown Vic, Zoox seems to be trying. I suspect one feature we'll see is some kind of partitions on the inside of the vehicle so each rider is in their own compartment, which would make it more palatable to have multiple strangers in one car.
Oh fascinating. I didn't know that about Lincolns nor was I aware of that platform. I wonder if it's that cars are more reliable now?
I do expect that autonomous rideshare will be set up to allow people to split rides. Partitions would be much easier!
Great stuff. Also important is what rideshare provides to the disabled community. This podcast has a slightly different frame, but overall good, IMO.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-a-driverless-world-who-loses-and-who-wins/