"Public Services are associated with a social consensus that is usually expressed through democratic elections. If they are public it’s because we consider that they should be available to all, regardless of income, physical ability and/or mental acuity. Of course, there is nothing new with Public Services being provided by private companies. But then, they are usually subject to some regulation."
Except for buses.
Buses are a cheap, quick way to pretend like you care about public transportation and check off a few boxes on your development list while providing the absolute worst transit option possible.
The users of transit get shafted with soul-crushing scheduling and performance. The opponents of transit get a convenient "example" of why it's a bad investment. Innocent bystanders like me get an urban environment polluted by big dirty, hulking (and usually empty) buses bonking their way around the city streets.
What? Arguably, a bus is the most flexible and cheapest way of transporting people in groups over 10 while simultaneously maximizing the use of existing infrastructure.
I think that's 100% true in places with a critical mass of population density, in fact "groups over 10" sounds about right. But in some places, it's going to be an hour between trips if you're trying to get 10 people onto the bus. Innisfil is not shutting down an existing transit system to replace it with Uber, they're declining to buy 2 buses.
one reason that buses seem so unpleasant in the US is the current system of laws governing the use of streets/roads. it's not hard to imagine different laws which would improve the experience of bus riders:
what if cars were only allowed to use streets during non rush hour times?
what if two out of the four lanes on every freeway were dedicated to buses and only buses 24/7?
what if individual car registrations were simply capped at a small number?
what if car registration fees/taxes were increased significantly because, per passenger mile, cars wear the roads down and take up more road space than buses?
what if through a combination of better policing, more surveillance, more robust passenger identification, and so on, buses could be made cleaner, safer and more pleasant?
these things sound draconian and anti-democratic, to be sure, but the technology of buses could be far more efficient than they are today if the laws were tilted heavily in their favor. but right now, individual cars rule the road.
These are all petty optimizations that we've been conditioned to accept, and work with, because of the anti-transit politics of a car-centric US culture.
What we need are trains and subways - with service levels and cleanliness acceptable to all classes - not new and interesting ways to stockpile poor people into shitty buses.
Not op but I think the shitty buses comment goes like this. No way any middle class person(wealthy,etc) with a car is going to suffer through a bus ride. Unless we has a 10x improvement with a so called Tesla of buses. With government today I really don't see it.
In places in the US where I've used buses, none of that would make much of a difference. The main reason the buses I've used sucked are because they run infrequently and make stops absurdly often.
Infrequent buses mean you need a lot of planning, transfers often take forever, and you need to plan to arrive early so you're not screwed if you're delayed. This is easy to fix, but costly.
Stopping absurdly often makes the buses extremely slow. Bus journeys can take an order of magnitude longer than the same journey would take by car, because the bus spends most of its time winding through neighborhoods and stopping every two blocks to take on or discharge passengers. Fixing this would probably require more bus routes, and also some willingness for people to walk a little farther to get to the bus stop.
On a bit of a tangent: do buses really wear the roads less than cars? Road damage is approximately proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight, so I would expect that concentrating people in buses would make things worse, not better, compared to lots of individual cars. Not that this alone is a reason to stick with cars.
I love the idea of small buses running more often. Tear up the roads less, produce less noise, better schedules, win all around except for cost. Maybe autonomous vehicles can solve that. Elon Musk has talked about doing this with Tesla. I wonder how much easier it would be to program a small autonomous bus to follow a single route, compared to solving the problem of autonomous driving in general.
Except for buses.
Buses are a cheap, quick way to pretend like you care about public transportation and check off a few boxes on your development list while providing the absolute worst transit option possible.
The users of transit get shafted with soul-crushing scheduling and performance. The opponents of transit get a convenient "example" of why it's a bad investment. Innocent bystanders like me get an urban environment polluted by big dirty, hulking (and usually empty) buses bonking their way around the city streets.
Anything is better than bus transit in the US.