this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Good? We need more bus routes
We don't need to make them Uber chartered bus routes.
Why not? The more the merrier, and you, the customer, have a choice.
Until the city decides to get rid of the subsidized bus system because "Uber is a better service and covers the routes anyway" and then they jack the price sky-high.
Exactly. How people haven’t realized this yet is fuckin inconceivable. Trusting a for-profit company—with a history of the exact problematic behavior we’re worried about—is beyond stupid. They can operate at a loss for a long time. Just to fuck other businesses out of the market so they can charge as much as they want. It’s literally their business model.
What if you, the customer, are a poor person? Is Uber going to subsidize a bus pass for you to charter one of Uber's buses to their job?
From my own experience, if you're poor, you use a regular bus. If you want to get somewhere faster, you pay more and catch a shuttle. If you want comfort, you pay even more and get a taxi. And all modes of transport are always full to the brim. The more the merrier, always.
But…that’s our point. Uber taking over bus routes would ultimately void that choice. Public transportation is a public service. Letting a VC-funded for-profit company weasel their way into that space is never going to not fuck poor people. It’ll fuck everyone, but it’ll make “public transportation” unaffordable. And, really, when you’re poor, “if you want to get somewhere faster” isn’t really an option. That’s…the thing with being poor. You don’t have the extra money to spend to catch a shuttle and you don’t have the luxury of paying for comfort. Not to mention, even in the best case scenario, where busses would keep their existing schedule and routes (though the likelihood of this happening is slim) and we’d just get more busses? It’d clog the system, ultimately slowing bus routes.
So, no. Not “the more the merrier” when it comes to private companies elbowing their way into public service, and especially not when we’re talking about fuckin traffic.
It works just fine elsewhere.
Like where? Kids school lunches? Oh, no…wait…a bunch of literal children have school lunch debt. Well, maybe family visits for prisoners? Oh, no, they’ve now barred people from visiting inmates and a private company now forces them to pay to do a shitty video chat. Okay, well maybe the American healthcare system? Nope. I guess that one’s killing a whole bunch of people and drowning families in debt for simple procedures and charging people $80 for a Tylenol and charging mothers for letting them hold their own fucking child.
I’m sure there’s a great example where a private company is doling out their services at a loss as a public good, right?
Are you high?
Hell yeah, bruv.
But you didn’t answer my question. In what instance has a private, for-profit company gotten involved in a public good, and operated at a loss to keep that public service affordable and accessible to all? You said it’s worked before, I’m genuinely curious.
You see, I'm originally from Latvia. And back there only major bus and train routes are operated by the state. All the smaller and inter city routes are operated by private companies, sometimes at a loss. And sometimes cheaper than tax funded services.
But there's another example - private train companies across the EU. Just check some basic routes like Verona to Venezia or Barcelona to Madrid and you'll see that all the cheaper options are from private companies.
The state-run services are never cheap (even when tax funded), never modern and never reliable. It's just the way public transport works.
That’s…not a very good example.
The EU has the Public Service Obligation law. So it’s an agreement to keep the rail routes that went private under obligation to be a public good, where, yes they do give private companies a monopoly on a certain route, but often the lines and sometimes even cars are owned by the government. But they impose regulations and price caps.
So, again, it’s the state shoveling off the cost of running the day to day operations, while empowering a company to take the reins under pretty strict guidelines because the service is public. They’re given subsidies to operate and it still saves the government money, as well as assuring the lines that aren’t profitable enough for the state to run on their own are still running under government contract with private companies.
So…not the same at all.
There's no monopoly on the route, what are you talking about?
lol because that’s what this conversation is about. Excuse my omission of the word “could,” but the point remains. It’s not a good example. If anything, you’re kinda proving my point. It takes a special case, heavily regulated, in-the-public’s-best-interest situation for the government to dump off a money losing route onto a contractor instead of losing the route entirely—as long as you cap the price and force the private company to operate entirely on your terms, often with your equipment. But Uber doesn’t even operate with their equipment or the government’s. It’s the driver’s. I would assume Uber would provide the busses here, which goes against their business model. So I can’t see them investing in busses, and then operating nice and cheap so everyone can afford to ride.
Two studies showing ride sharing companies contribute to the struggling of public transportation systems in a given city.
But, look. I can understand where our difference in trust levels is coming from. I’m from the US. Where private companies never don’t fuck you over the worst they possibly can. It must be nice to come from a place where you can have faith that some guardrails have been put in place on private greed. But looking at the places Uber (a notoriously shitty company) has chosen to implement these “Uber shuttles,” they seem to be avoiding places where the government has that power (or desire). Uber’s entire existence is a ‘fuck you’ to poor people. “Oh you need a job? Well…you got a car? ‘Cause do we have the job for you. [evil laughter].” Their big “disruption” in transportation was getting drivers to foot the bill on the transportation costs. How…revolutionary.
My point is, where they’re doing this, their entire company history, their business model, all point to the fact that this will not be good for people. It will cost the drivers and trick them into paying for their own job, it will hurt the rider and the public transportation system. There is not a single trusting bone in my body when it comes to a tech company trying to “disrupt” some new facet of our lives.
What are you talking about? Have you ever been to Europe? Do you understand that your studies and wall texts are irrelevant?
You’re really trying to divert this conversation away from the actual topic. Reread what I said, I edited it trying to strike a more conciliatory tone and explain that I see where our difference in opinion is coming from. I really don’t feel like arguing further about this.
No, you're trying to divert. My point was that private public transport works and it works well and there's proof for that. Everything you say is irrelevant to the topic.
lol k
We need more public transportation, not privatized bus routes
do we get more public transportation if we ban uber from this?
Look at any of these tech companies’ history. They corner the market by operating at massive losses that VCs can foot for, like, a decade. And then when they’ve driven out other options, they abuse the fuck out of customers. They “disrupt” by obliterating, and that’s when they move for the kill shot: ever-expanding profits.
This is not a good thing. Even in NYC, where the MTA is a massive chunk of money, we have one of the slowest bus systems in the world. That’s through no fault of the busses, mind, this is the cars fault. And, kinda Uber’s fault. The traffic is so bad, even where busses have their own lanes, the traffic slows that shit down like crazy.
Depending on the govt (Adams would probably jump at this, whoever his successor will be will obviously determine how it’d go), the city sees $$$ and sacrifices the long term well-being of the city for their own “successes” while in office. And money/budget is always a crunch, no matter the place. So if Uber wanted to “disrupt” NYC by basically taking over busses or getting a contract to use the bus stops and bus lanes, the govt saves money while generating revenue because those VCs are eyeing the long term where they can ultimately make the city reliant on their services and force people to contribute to their bottom line. Our trains are great, but they don’t go everywhere, sometimes busses are necessary, especially for outerborough people and historically poorer neighborhoods. You can see those areas on the train map, because trains basically avoid them.
Trusting vampiric capitalists with any public good is a fuckin stupid thing to do. Look at healthcare. How we have privatized healthcare is beyond me, but look at the state of it. Now, this is more expanding on the conversation than actually replying directly to your question, but it sort of does get at the heart of it. For a time, we would get more transportation. It wouldn’t be public, it’d be private. But it wouldn’t solve the issues. It’d just create new ones.
Im with you that cars are the problem, thats why im defending this proposal for more bus service. Also in the same boat of venture capitalist tech companies are all those bike sharing businesses that popped up over the years. I still see them as positive, they've become integrated into many european pedestrian friendly cities id like for American cities to imitate.
Yeah…but busses exist right now. Cars are still the problem. A private company getting involved bus routes won’t do shit for that problem. We have one of the best transit systems in the world in nyc. But people can’t give up their cars. Letting Uber muscle into public transit won’t change that. If anything, it’ll drive up the cost of busses and make even fewer people rely on busses.
We have citibikes in nyc. The traffic problem is still awful. As a bike rider myself, I can tell you that riding a bike here is not for everyone. I know plenty of able-bodied people terrified away from riding bikes. But say the city into the bike sharing service. It wouldn’t be $15. It would be..I dunno, $5. Then more people would use them. See what I’m saying?
The way to spread anything good is to make a cost, not a profit maker. Bringing business into the public service game is a horrible idea. There’s no way this does anything good for anyone but Uber. That’s how businesses operate. There might be a time where it seems things are getting better, but that’s just the phase where they’re willing to operate at a loss to corner the market. This phase is ending right now with Amazon: they drove out so many businesses by becoming so reliable, quick, and convenient. Now, they’re starting to scale back free returns. This happened not too long ago with Uber and Lyft. The money behind it finally said, “alright, play time is over. We won’t operate at a loss for much longer, we’ve cornered the rideshare market, now it’s time for prices to creep up to the point where we profit more and more.”
It’s their business model. It’s vampiric and destructive. Not helpful. Trusting them with a public service is so, so, so foolish.