8 ms·

New York’s Shadow Transit

239 points by philers 12y ago

dang 12y ago
Url changed from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/interactive-new-yorks-shadow-transit-system.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/inter..., which points to this.
Mandatum 12y ago
Interesting, I've never heard of these operating in New Zealand or Australia. I've heard of people operating illegal taxis but they're very far and few. It could be a fair opportunity given the current state of public transport in Auckland, NZ.
jgiger2014 12y ago
It seems *similar unlicensed busses are gone now: http://www.fastcompany.com/1839333/business-lessons-chinatown-buses http://www.fastcompany.com/1839333/business-lessons-chinatow...
- msie 12y ago
  These are vans operating in the city, not the buses of the fastcompany article.
- CanSpice 12y ago
  The buses in your story are between different cities and are proper buses. The buses in the original story are within New York (and out to New Jersey), and are mainly vans. Different people and services.
- Blackthorn 12y ago
  I never understood how those unlicensed "Chinatown buses" managed to survive anyway. Their fares weren't any cheaper than their licensed (and FAR safer) brethren in Megabus.
  - lazerwalker 12y ago
    The likes of Megabus and BoltBus didn't exist before the Chinatown busses became popular. They were all spun up by the big old-fashioned bus companies as competition after they realized there was a market there. BoltBus, for example, is run by Peter Pan and Greyhound.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    Megabus is cheap because of Chinatown buses. When the DOT moved in and shut down a whole slew of buses (for good reason, mind you), Megabus raised their rates dramatically. There's a weird pricing symbiosis between the two sides.
  - cowsandmilk 12y ago
    between boston and nyc was generally more expensive unless you were booking far in advance, especially for a busy time. If I wanted to visit NYC for a weekend, megabus would require booking weeks in advance for a specific time in both directions. Chinatown buses, you got off work, show up at the bus terminal, wait half an hour and you're on a bus. Massive convenience factor. And they drop you off and pick you up in chinatown, which is much more convenient than the stops for megabus in NYC.
- akgerber 12y ago
  Chinatown busses definitely aren't gone. There's a couple blocking the bike lane on my commute home every night.
bennstancil 12y ago
It's not just that the immigrant and minority communities served by shadow transit lack access to public transportation - those areas are also severely underserved by cabs. http://blog.modeanalytics.com/taxi-drivers/ http://blog.modeanalytics.com/taxi-drivers/
- jrockway 12y ago
  I don't think that's racism, I think that's business. Taking someone from Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal is pure profit, because it's fast and you're guaranteed a fare once you get to Grand Central. Taking someone from low-density area A to low-density area B is less profitable, so you don't see many cabs in these low-density areas. I see this in action all the time, because I tend to bike late at night when bars are closing and people need cabs. If a cab does end up in Brooklyn, because they were required by law to take someone from Manhattan there, they tend to beeline it back to Manhattan, avoiding streets where they might encounter a fare. Smith St. / Clinton St. is one pair like this. Clinton St. is a residential street that leads to the Brooklyn Bridge. Nobody naturally wants a cab there[1]. Smith St. is one street over going the same direction, and it's all bars and restaurants. It also leads directly to the Brooklyn Bridge (actually, the Manhattan Bridge; they're very close). But you see most cabs opting for Clinton instead of Smith, so they don't get stuck picking up someone in Brooklyn that wants to go even deeper into Brooklyn. Instead, they try to get back to the highly-profitable Manhattan as quickly as possible, even if it means going empty. That's not racism, that's just the reality of how you make money as a cab driver. (The cabs that can't pick up passengers in Manhattan all take Smith St.) [1] Except people like me that have noticed this pattern. I do see cabs stopping for fares on Clinton, since they have to if flagged down.
  - rahimnathwani 12y ago
    since they have to if flagged down Do they abide by this rule 100%? How is it monitored or enforced?
    - avn2109 12y ago
      >> "since they have to if flagged down" hahahahah. They don't; not even close.
ebiester 12y ago
I don't know how the regulations worked in Istanbul, but they were very common even with the other transit options, and worked very well. I'd go from Kadikoy to Taksim and back late at night and walk or take the taxi for the rest. For 3 bucks (6 lira) they would leave when full, approximately every 5 minutes, and were pretty organized. This is one of the areas where we could use a better public-private partnership in our cities.
- eru 12y ago
  For westerners the most baffling experience is paying in a dolmus: your money goes via the persons in front of you to the driver, and change gets handed back the same way in the opposite direction.
  - JackFr 12y ago
    You've never bought a hot dog at a ballgame?
    - eru 12y ago
      No. I guess that's a US custom? Interesting!
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Similar to a Thai Jeepney.
- azernik 12y ago
  Yup - dolmus in Turkey, sherut in Israel, servees in Jordan/Egypt - these are common throughout the Middle East, usually using very similar models of vans. A common experience I've had in all three countries is waiting near the start of a route for enough people to arrive to make it worth the driver's gas to head off.
shiftyrussian 12y ago
Very common in Russia also, the vans usually put the number of the official route on the window, so you'd know exactly the route that's going to be taken. Wish they had this Sydney, but the government is anal on taxing and regulating people. So no micro businesses for Sydney :(
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pzaich 12y ago
This sounds very similar to what Chariot (https://chariotsf.com/ https://chariotsf.com/) is trying to do in SF. Filling a gap between MUNI and taxi/uber/lyft?
WildUtah 12y ago
This is a great story. It's a look at how people really live in a modern city and the border between formal and informal commerce. One of the key research targets in modern sociology and economics and political science is the emergence of institutions like dollar vans. It's very difficult to get a public system to cover every route and part of the city that needs transit, but most city authorities are reluctant to license cheap private jitneys. The public system employees are usually well paid and organized to oppose competition and private taxi companies charge much higher than market rates and are very well positioned to spend some profits defending their oligopolies. There are eight first world megacities -- cities over ten million population. I wonder if they each have an emerging institution like this. I understand that in Los Angeles, where the busses are awful and the infrastructure is laser focused on exclusive use of private motorcars, has dollar vans in the Spanish-speaking communities. I'd be interested to learn if the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean speakers use those or if they have their own. In Mexico City, the city has simply licensed dollar vans with just the minimal oversight necessary for public safety. They've all painted themselves green and white and the informal routes have firmed up but there is still -- decades later -- no map, public or private, of the routes of the most common form of transit in this modern city of 22 million. The routes are set and reliable; there's just no central authority to collect information. Tokyo has built the most extensive rail system in the world by far. I don't know if that has been enough to pre-empt the emergence of informal vans. Seoul has been building fast to catch up building a similarly extensive network. I wonder about London, Paris, and Osaka.
- lovemenot 12y ago
  There's no equivalent in Tokyo.
- slapshot 12y ago
  > I understand that in Los Angeles, where the busses are awful... This seems to be a common refrain, but it's also outdated. Both the bus and subway networks in LA are massively larger than in San Francisco (which, by the way, has the world's slowest bus fleet at 8.1 mph [1]). LA County is massively larger than San Francisco (including the equivalents of the entire Peninsula, Oakland, and Marin) and has sections of very dense bus service (any of the numbered streets plus Wilshire going west from downtown) and sections of very sparse bus service (Malibu). And it's all 25% cheaper than Muni too (with fewer strikes and many fewer naked people). There are 13 subway stops under construction in LA and the LAX airport connector finally got approved with an actual train stop directly at LAX. I'm not saying there aren't holes in the LA transport network, but it's better than many visitors realize. [1] http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death-spiral/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death-spira...
sparkman55 12y ago
San Francisco has a "Jitney Bus" that attempts to correct the horrendous hole in transit between the Caltrain commuter rail and downtown. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-One-Man-Traffic-Buster-Jitney-makes-quick-2832137.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-One-Man-Traffic-Buster-... There is also a startup called Chariot that is building a private bus line to downtown SF; this one has a surprisingly different appeal than the ones in the article in NYC: the existing public Muni bus line from the Marina to downtown is notoriously slow and crowded, so perhaps commuting professionals would be willing to pay a little more...
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  'horrendous hole'? Do you mean the 10-15 minute walk from Market Street to the Caltrain station?
  - zem 12y ago
    not everyone finds it easy to walk that distance, or would like to do so at 11 in the night.
  - shiven 12y ago
    Does it still take 10-15 mins when one is running a fever of 102? Or when walking on crutches? Or carrying a weekly load of groceries? Just because you can walk does not mean everyone else should as well. There is nothing wrong with choice, public transport would be a welcome addition to almost every stretch of urban destinations, that does not curtail walking in any way, shape or form. In short: Walk all you want, just gimme mah ride, is all.
  - sparkman55 12y ago
    Yep, that's the gap. It's about a mile from the commuter rail to downtown, and the public transit options between are quite slow. It's no wonder that private transportation startups abound in San Francisco. I guess I'm spoiled by the well-interconnected transit systems in many international cities; step off the (high-speed) intercity rail and downstairs into the core of a robust subway system, or walk to the bus terminal next door. San Francisco once had such an intermodal transit hub in the Transbay Terminal; the city is seeking $2.5 Billion to rebuild it. Until then, we'll have to rely on private transportation like the 'dollar cabs' described in the article, or San Francisco's very own Lyft and Uber.
prawn 12y ago
This sort of thing will be handled by autonomous vehicles in the future, potentially plotting an efficient route based on people needing a ride and their respective destinations. With an app and even 1-2 of the right vehicles, someone could effectively enter the public transport space whereas doing so now would require a salaried driver on top of that and bring pricing that would be too high for ride-sharing.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Did you even read the article? Half of the dollar van experience is the opportunity to connect with your own immigrant community and speak your native language. It's a social experience that silly technogadgets can't replace.
  - prawn 12y ago
    Yes, of course I did but I think it's as much about convenience and filling gaps in official routes as it is about the social experience. Awareness (in the absence of formal route maps and schedules) comes from the community but not only because of it. If you arrived in a country and someone said "Check out this app, it's available in your language on most phones, the vehicles can go where you want to go and you'll never have trouble with language issues," it's not as though a majority will ignore that. We'll see high traffic lines operated much as they are (trains and larger buses) but I definitely think we'll eventually see automated vans operated within the gaps as these vans do.
philsnow 12y ago
The tails on those "Q"s though...... font-family is "caslon". Looks great, going to have to use that.
jmorphy88 12y ago
America's effortless transition into a Third-World country continues.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  This is a 35 year old system. Also, the US can't be third-world by definition. Third-world just means not aligned with the US or Russia, and is an anachronism.
  - buyx 12y ago
    Everyone knows third-world pretty much means "developing world" nowadays.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      Considering the "developed"/"developing" dichotomy is really just "First or Second World"/"Third World", um, duh?
comrh 12y ago
My team for the National Day of Civic Hacking worked on similar data. One of the things we came across was the lack of reliable schedules and a lack of info in Spanish which is the language of a large number of people who use this system.
sheltgor 12y ago
"During the 2013 fiscal year, the Taxi and Limousine Commission impounded more than six hundred illegal vans, two hundred and forty of them in Brooklyn." Imagine the uproar on HN if this were to happen to, say, Uber drivers...
- buyx 12y ago
  As someone who watches unregulated taxis brazenly evade flat-footed police on a daily basis, take my word for it: you're better off with the government having an iron fist in this case.
Spooky23 12y ago
It kind of glossed over the safety issuers associated with these forms of transit. Life is good until there's an accident. My brother inspects commercial vehicles. These vans and Chinatown busses are often unmaintained and owned by shell companies. IIRC, he takes half of the vans off the road for serious safety violations, and 75% of the busses. Traditional busses and licensed vans almost never have that happen.
cpursley 12y ago
I'm currently visiting Russia where Marshrutka's (minibuses) are commonplace. Coming from the US where one has to drive everywhere, it's quite convenient to pay a dollar or so and get anywhere you need to be. It's a very low-capital and safe way to solve transportation issues and requires no major infrastructure overalls. It makes you wonder if the US national and local political situation is actually interested in the needs of the people or simply protecting their benefactors (taxi unions, etc). After seeing the efficiency of private transit, I'd be willing to accept gray markets then an overbearing police state if it means reasonable solutions.
dcposch 12y ago
> “Back in the day, officers used to harass us day and night: throw van keys on the roof, throw them in the garbage, bring us into the station just for driving a van.” An N.Y.P.D. spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment The sad thing is that stories like those don't even seem to elicit surprise. We need a way to refocus our police on their mission, to "protect and serve". We need to demand more professionalism from them. It's a difficult challenge. By nature, the job attracts a lot of bad applicants along with the good. "officers used to [...] throw van keys on the roof, throw them in the garbage" Why do we tolerate people walking our cities with guns and tasers who behave like schoolyard bullies?
- cooper12 12y ago
  The person said "back in the day". While yes, the article does say that police still harass these commuter vans, I doubt they still resort to such tactics. The article says that they mainly just ticket them. And in response to your point about needing to refocus the police: >“It’s about safety, and I field a lot of community complaints about how these vans drive aggressively. We’re not trying to hurt the honest guys making a living, but if you do something illegal, if you’re picking up a hail or picking up on a bus stop, I don’t care if you’re accredited with signage on the side of your van—you’re gonna get a ticket.” I argue that the police are doing their jobs. They are stopping illegal commuter vans that are endangering their passengers and other drivers while harming public transportation and legal Taxi services.
- saraid216 12y ago
  I don't know. I've always been confused by open carry activists.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
netcan 12y ago
It's fascinating that in 2014, transportation is still such a big hairy problem. Everything from local cycling routes to taxis to fights is complicated, big & hairy.
buyx 12y ago
I've commented before on HN with this important cautionary tale from South Africa: In the late 1980's the apartheid government (which was taking very tentative steps towards reform) decided to cheaply "solve" the problem of public transport in poor, black areas, while encouraging small business. Thus was born the unregulated minibus taxi industry. It all started off well, but soon, instead of a Free Enterprise utopia of owner-operators looking after their vehicles, as was envisaged, owners bought fleets of taxis and "the miracle of the 80's became the nightmare of the 90's" as they engaged in brutal "taxi wars" over routes. As far as I know, drivers pay "rent" to the owners, and then keep the remainder of the takings for the day, incentivising extreme recklessness and lawlessness as they try to complete as many trips as possible (there are some South African libertarian types who claim minubus taxis are safe, but the road safety figures they cite are certainly incomplete and probably wrong). Attempts to re-regulate have to a large extent, failed, and when Bus-Rapid-Transit was started in Johannesburg, taxi owners got a cut (with the implicit threat that drivers/passengers would be killed if they didn't). Yes, there was a general breakdown in law and order during the transitional period in South Africa during the 1990's that wouldn't happen in other countries, but it is a reminder that this sort of business needs to be kept well regulated. EDIT: There was also an epidemic of violence on trains (an old and decrepit network serving the larger black townships) during the chaos of the early 1990's. As far as I know, the perpetrators were never found, even though elements of the apartheid regime were suspected at the time. The taxi industry had as strong a motive to carry out the attacks as any.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  There's one data point. One with many special conditions. Calling this a failure of Free Enterprise is to ignore the conditions you are describing -- people weren't free! Violence, other strong-arm tactics, and lack of liability are the opposite of freedom. Of course Free Enterprise doesn't work when basic rights (life, liberty, property, speech, conscience) aren't protected. And for a counter example, New York is very stingy with its medallions, which has created powerful special interest groups, and a system that serves drivers and passengers poorly in many respects.
  - andylei 12y ago
davidf18 12y ago
NYC has been making great efforts to improve bus service. They are adding more buses to routes, but they also have a system where you purchase ticket receipts from machines off the busses and can enter through both front and back doors. If you're caught without a receipt, you get a substantial fine.
- gk1 12y ago
  > "... a system where you purchase ticket receipts from machines off the busses and can enter through both front and back doors." For anyone curious, the point is that this greatly reduces the time spent at each stop. On regular buses, passengers must enter through one door and, one by one, make their payment (with either a Metrocard or cash).
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    Bus passes? In most UK cities you can buy a photo-id pass for a week or a month and just get on. Most regular users have them.
rwhitman 12y ago
One could argue the hipster-friendly beach buses that go from Brooklyn and LES to the Rockaways in summertime are yuppie shadow transit There are also a large number of better sanctioned private bus lines that go from Port Authority to various points in a 100 mile radius. I take one to get to my parents in PA on a regular basis, where there is jack squat for public transit
incision 12y ago
It's funny, I somehow expected this would be about anything but dollar cabs - they're just a mundane part of life throughout the mid-Atlantic. Where I grew up they were the cabs and delivery service since the 'legit' equivalents refused to come into the neighborhood.
- saraid216 12y ago
  Define "mid-Atlantic"? I could imagine that covering everywhere from Spain to Africa to the West Indies to the American South.
  - incision 12y ago
    In the US it refers to a section of the East Coast [1]. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_states
abalashov 12y ago
This is almost exactly how the "marshrutkas" (see Wikipedia entry) of the former Soviet bloc, which continue to operate in a most or all CIS countries, came to be.

239 points by philers 12y ago

dang 12y ago

Url changed from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/interactive-new-yorks-shadow-transit-system.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/inter..., which points to this.

Mandatum 12y ago

Interesting, I've never heard of these operating in New Zealand or Australia. I've heard of people operating illegal taxis but they're very far and few. It could be a fair opportunity given the current state of public transport in Auckland, NZ.

jgiger2014 12y ago

It seems *similar unlicensed busses are gone now: http://www.fastcompany.com/1839333/business-lessons-chinatown-buses http://www.fastcompany.com/1839333/business-lessons-chinatow...

msie 12y ago
These are vans operating in the city, not the buses of the fastcompany article.
CanSpice 12y ago
The buses in your story are between different cities and are proper buses. The buses in the original story are within New York (and out to New Jersey), and are mainly vans. Different people and services.
Blackthorn 12y ago
I never understood how those unlicensed "Chinatown buses" managed to survive anyway. Their fares weren't any cheaper than their licensed (and FAR safer) brethren in Megabus.
- lazerwalker 12y ago
  The likes of Megabus and BoltBus didn't exist before the Chinatown busses became popular. They were all spun up by the big old-fashioned bus companies as competition after they realized there was a market there. BoltBus, for example, is run by Peter Pan and Greyhound.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Megabus is cheap because of Chinatown buses. When the DOT moved in and shut down a whole slew of buses (for good reason, mind you), Megabus raised their rates dramatically. There's a weird pricing symbiosis between the two sides.
- cowsandmilk 12y ago
  between boston and nyc was generally more expensive unless you were booking far in advance, especially for a busy time. If I wanted to visit NYC for a weekend, megabus would require booking weeks in advance for a specific time in both directions. Chinatown buses, you got off work, show up at the bus terminal, wait half an hour and you're on a bus. Massive convenience factor. And they drop you off and pick you up in chinatown, which is much more convenient than the stops for megabus in NYC.
akgerber 12y ago
Chinatown busses definitely aren't gone. There's a couple blocking the bike lane on my commute home every night.

bennstancil 12y ago

It's not just that the immigrant and minority communities served by shadow transit lack access to public transportation - those areas are also severely underserved by cabs. http://blog.modeanalytics.com/taxi-drivers/ http://blog.modeanalytics.com/taxi-drivers/

jrockway 12y ago
I don't think that's racism, I think that's business. Taking someone from Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal is pure profit, because it's fast and you're guaranteed a fare once you get to Grand Central. Taking someone from low-density area A to low-density area B is less profitable, so you don't see many cabs in these low-density areas. I see this in action all the time, because I tend to bike late at night when bars are closing and people need cabs. If a cab does end up in Brooklyn, because they were required by law to take someone from Manhattan there, they tend to beeline it back to Manhattan, avoiding streets where they might encounter a fare. Smith St. / Clinton St. is one pair like this. Clinton St. is a residential street that leads to the Brooklyn Bridge. Nobody naturally wants a cab there[1]. Smith St. is one street over going the same direction, and it's all bars and restaurants. It also leads directly to the Brooklyn Bridge (actually, the Manhattan Bridge; they're very close). But you see most cabs opting for Clinton instead of Smith, so they don't get stuck picking up someone in Brooklyn that wants to go even deeper into Brooklyn. Instead, they try to get back to the highly-profitable Manhattan as quickly as possible, even if it means going empty. That's not racism, that's just the reality of how you make money as a cab driver. (The cabs that can't pick up passengers in Manhattan all take Smith St.) [1] Except people like me that have noticed this pattern. I do see cabs stopping for fares on Clinton, since they have to if flagged down.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  since they have to if flagged down Do they abide by this rule 100%? How is it monitored or enforced?
  - avn2109 12y ago
    >> "since they have to if flagged down" hahahahah. They don't; not even close.

ebiester 12y ago

I don't know how the regulations worked in Istanbul, but they were very common even with the other transit options, and worked very well. I'd go from Kadikoy to Taksim and back late at night and walk or take the taxi for the rest. For 3 bucks (6 lira) they would leave when full, approximately every 5 minutes, and were pretty organized. This is one of the areas where we could use a better public-private partnership in our cities.

eru 12y ago
For westerners the most baffling experience is paying in a dolmus: your money goes via the persons in front of you to the driver, and change gets handed back the same way in the opposite direction.
- JackFr 12y ago
  You've never bought a hot dog at a ballgame?
  - eru 12y ago
    No. I guess that's a US custom? Interesting!
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Similar to a Thai Jeepney.
azernik 12y ago
Yup - dolmus in Turkey, sherut in Israel, servees in Jordan/Egypt - these are common throughout the Middle East, usually using very similar models of vans. A common experience I've had in all three countries is waiting near the start of a route for enough people to arrive to make it worth the driver's gas to head off.

shiftyrussian 12y ago

Very common in Russia also, the vans usually put the number of the official route on the window, so you'd know exactly the route that's going to be taken. Wish they had this Sydney, but the government is anal on taxing and regulating people. So no micro businesses for Sydney :(

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pzaich 12y ago

This sounds very similar to what Chariot (https://chariotsf.com/ https://chariotsf.com/) is trying to do in SF. Filling a gap between MUNI and taxi/uber/lyft?

WildUtah 12y ago

This is a great story. It's a look at how people really live in a modern city and the border between formal and informal commerce. One of the key research targets in modern sociology and economics and political science is the emergence of institutions like dollar vans. It's very difficult to get a public system to cover every route and part of the city that needs transit, but most city authorities are reluctant to license cheap private jitneys. The public system employees are usually well paid and organized to oppose competition and private taxi companies charge much higher than market rates and are very well positioned to spend some profits defending their oligopolies. There are eight first world megacities -- cities over ten million population. I wonder if they each have an emerging institution like this. I understand that in Los Angeles, where the busses are awful and the infrastructure is laser focused on exclusive use of private motorcars, has dollar vans in the Spanish-speaking communities. I'd be interested to learn if the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean speakers use those or if they have their own. In Mexico City, the city has simply licensed dollar vans with just the minimal oversight necessary for public safety. They've all painted themselves green and white and the informal routes have firmed up but there is still -- decades later -- no map, public or private, of the routes of the most common form of transit in this modern city of 22 million. The routes are set and reliable; there's just no central authority to collect information. Tokyo has built the most extensive rail system in the world by far. I don't know if that has been enough to pre-empt the emergence of informal vans. Seoul has been building fast to catch up building a similarly extensive network. I wonder about London, Paris, and Osaka.

lovemenot 12y ago
There's no equivalent in Tokyo.
slapshot 12y ago
> I understand that in Los Angeles, where the busses are awful... This seems to be a common refrain, but it's also outdated. Both the bus and subway networks in LA are massively larger than in San Francisco (which, by the way, has the world's slowest bus fleet at 8.1 mph [1]). LA County is massively larger than San Francisco (including the equivalents of the entire Peninsula, Oakland, and Marin) and has sections of very dense bus service (any of the numbered streets plus Wilshire going west from downtown) and sections of very sparse bus service (Malibu). And it's all 25% cheaper than Muni too (with fewer strikes and many fewer naked people). There are 13 subway stops under construction in LA and the LAX airport connector finally got approved with an actual train stop directly at LAX. I'm not saying there aren't holes in the LA transport network, but it's better than many visitors realize. [1] http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death-spiral/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death-spira...

sparkman55 12y ago

San Francisco has a "Jitney Bus" that attempts to correct the horrendous hole in transit between the Caltrain commuter rail and downtown. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-One-Man-Traffic-Buster-Jitney-makes-quick-2832137.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-One-Man-Traffic-Buster-... There is also a startup called Chariot that is building a private bus line to downtown SF; this one has a surprisingly different appeal than the ones in the article in NYC: the existing public Muni bus line from the Marina to downtown is notoriously slow and crowded, so perhaps commuting professionals would be willing to pay a little more...

chrisseaton 12y ago
'horrendous hole'? Do you mean the 10-15 minute walk from Market Street to the Caltrain station?
- zem 12y ago
  not everyone finds it easy to walk that distance, or would like to do so at 11 in the night.
- shiven 12y ago
  Does it still take 10-15 mins when one is running a fever of 102? Or when walking on crutches? Or carrying a weekly load of groceries? Just because you can walk does not mean everyone else should as well. There is nothing wrong with choice, public transport would be a welcome addition to almost every stretch of urban destinations, that does not curtail walking in any way, shape or form. In short: Walk all you want, just gimme mah ride, is all.
- sparkman55 12y ago
  Yep, that's the gap. It's about a mile from the commuter rail to downtown, and the public transit options between are quite slow. It's no wonder that private transportation startups abound in San Francisco. I guess I'm spoiled by the well-interconnected transit systems in many international cities; step off the (high-speed) intercity rail and downstairs into the core of a robust subway system, or walk to the bus terminal next door. San Francisco once had such an intermodal transit hub in the Transbay Terminal; the city is seeking $2.5 Billion to rebuild it. Until then, we'll have to rely on private transportation like the 'dollar cabs' described in the article, or San Francisco's very own Lyft and Uber.

prawn 12y ago

This sort of thing will be handled by autonomous vehicles in the future, potentially plotting an efficient route based on people needing a ride and their respective destinations. With an app and even 1-2 of the right vehicles, someone could effectively enter the public transport space whereas doing so now would require a salaried driver on top of that and bring pricing that would be too high for ride-sharing.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Did you even read the article? Half of the dollar van experience is the opportunity to connect with your own immigrant community and speak your native language. It's a social experience that silly technogadgets can't replace.
- prawn 12y ago
  Yes, of course I did but I think it's as much about convenience and filling gaps in official routes as it is about the social experience. Awareness (in the absence of formal route maps and schedules) comes from the community but not only because of it. If you arrived in a country and someone said "Check out this app, it's available in your language on most phones, the vehicles can go where you want to go and you'll never have trouble with language issues," it's not as though a majority will ignore that. We'll see high traffic lines operated much as they are (trains and larger buses) but I definitely think we'll eventually see automated vans operated within the gaps as these vans do.

philsnow 12y ago

The tails on those "Q"s though...... font-family is "caslon". Looks great, going to have to use that.

jmorphy88 12y ago

America's effortless transition into a Third-World country continues.

pessimizer 12y ago
This is a 35 year old system. Also, the US can't be third-world by definition. Third-world just means not aligned with the US or Russia, and is an anachronism.
- buyx 12y ago
  Everyone knows third-world pretty much means "developing world" nowadays.
  - saraid216 12y ago
    Considering the "developed"/"developing" dichotomy is really just "First or Second World"/"Third World", um, duh?

comrh 12y ago

My team for the National Day of Civic Hacking worked on similar data. One of the things we came across was the lack of reliable schedules and a lack of info in Spanish which is the language of a large number of people who use this system.

sheltgor 12y ago

"During the 2013 fiscal year, the Taxi and Limousine Commission impounded more than six hundred illegal vans, two hundred and forty of them in Brooklyn." Imagine the uproar on HN if this were to happen to, say, Uber drivers...

buyx 12y ago
As someone who watches unregulated taxis brazenly evade flat-footed police on a daily basis, take my word for it: you're better off with the government having an iron fist in this case.

Spooky23 12y ago

It kind of glossed over the safety issuers associated with these forms of transit. Life is good until there's an accident. My brother inspects commercial vehicles. These vans and Chinatown busses are often unmaintained and owned by shell companies. IIRC, he takes half of the vans off the road for serious safety violations, and 75% of the busses. Traditional busses and licensed vans almost never have that happen.

cpursley 12y ago

I'm currently visiting Russia where Marshrutka's (minibuses) are commonplace. Coming from the US where one has to drive everywhere, it's quite convenient to pay a dollar or so and get anywhere you need to be. It's a very low-capital and safe way to solve transportation issues and requires no major infrastructure overalls. It makes you wonder if the US national and local political situation is actually interested in the needs of the people or simply protecting their benefactors (taxi unions, etc). After seeing the efficiency of private transit, I'd be willing to accept gray markets then an overbearing police state if it means reasonable solutions.

dcposch 12y ago

> “Back in the day, officers used to harass us day and night: throw van keys on the roof, throw them in the garbage, bring us into the station just for driving a van.” An N.Y.P.D. spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment The sad thing is that stories like those don't even seem to elicit surprise. We need a way to refocus our police on their mission, to "protect and serve". We need to demand more professionalism from them. It's a difficult challenge. By nature, the job attracts a lot of bad applicants along with the good. "officers used to [...] throw van keys on the roof, throw them in the garbage" Why do we tolerate people walking our cities with guns and tasers who behave like schoolyard bullies?

cooper12 12y ago
The person said "back in the day". While yes, the article does say that police still harass these commuter vans, I doubt they still resort to such tactics. The article says that they mainly just ticket them. And in response to your point about needing to refocus the police: >“It’s about safety, and I field a lot of community complaints about how these vans drive aggressively. We’re not trying to hurt the honest guys making a living, but if you do something illegal, if you’re picking up a hail or picking up on a bus stop, I don’t care if you’re accredited with signage on the side of your van—you’re gonna get a ticket.” I argue that the police are doing their jobs. They are stopping illegal commuter vans that are endangering their passengers and other drivers while harming public transportation and legal Taxi services.
saraid216 12y ago
I don't know. I've always been confused by open carry activists.

deleted 12y ago

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netcan 12y ago

It's fascinating that in 2014, transportation is still such a big hairy problem. Everything from local cycling routes to taxis to fights is complicated, big & hairy.

buyx 12y ago

I've commented before on HN with this important cautionary tale from South Africa: In the late 1980's the apartheid government (which was taking very tentative steps towards reform) decided to cheaply "solve" the problem of public transport in poor, black areas, while encouraging small business. Thus was born the unregulated minibus taxi industry. It all started off well, but soon, instead of a Free Enterprise utopia of owner-operators looking after their vehicles, as was envisaged, owners bought fleets of taxis and "the miracle of the 80's became the nightmare of the 90's" as they engaged in brutal "taxi wars" over routes. As far as I know, drivers pay "rent" to the owners, and then keep the remainder of the takings for the day, incentivising extreme recklessness and lawlessness as they try to complete as many trips as possible (there are some South African libertarian types who claim minubus taxis are safe, but the road safety figures they cite are certainly incomplete and probably wrong). Attempts to re-regulate have to a large extent, failed, and when Bus-Rapid-Transit was started in Johannesburg, taxi owners got a cut (with the implicit threat that drivers/passengers would be killed if they didn't). Yes, there was a general breakdown in law and order during the transitional period in South Africa during the 1990's that wouldn't happen in other countries, but it is a reminder that this sort of business needs to be kept well regulated. EDIT: There was also an epidemic of violence on trains (an old and decrepit network serving the larger black townships) during the chaos of the early 1990's. As far as I know, the perpetrators were never found, even though elements of the apartheid regime were suspected at the time. The taxi industry had as strong a motive to carry out the attacks as any.

humanrebar 12y ago
There's one data point. One with many special conditions. Calling this a failure of Free Enterprise is to ignore the conditions you are describing -- people weren't free! Violence, other strong-arm tactics, and lack of liability are the opposite of freedom. Of course Free Enterprise doesn't work when basic rights (life, liberty, property, speech, conscience) aren't protected. And for a counter example, New York is very stingy with its medallions, which has created powerful special interest groups, and a system that serves drivers and passengers poorly in many respects.
- andylei 12y ago

davidf18 12y ago

NYC has been making great efforts to improve bus service. They are adding more buses to routes, but they also have a system where you purchase ticket receipts from machines off the busses and can enter through both front and back doors. If you're caught without a receipt, you get a substantial fine.

gk1 12y ago
> "... a system where you purchase ticket receipts from machines off the busses and can enter through both front and back doors." For anyone curious, the point is that this greatly reduces the time spent at each stop. On regular buses, passengers must enter through one door and, one by one, make their payment (with either a Metrocard or cash).
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Bus passes? In most UK cities you can buy a photo-id pass for a week or a month and just get on. Most regular users have them.

rwhitman 12y ago

One could argue the hipster-friendly beach buses that go from Brooklyn and LES to the Rockaways in summertime are yuppie shadow transit There are also a large number of better sanctioned private bus lines that go from Port Authority to various points in a 100 mile radius. I take one to get to my parents in PA on a regular basis, where there is jack squat for public transit

incision 12y ago

It's funny, I somehow expected this would be about anything but dollar cabs - they're just a mundane part of life throughout the mid-Atlantic. Where I grew up they were the cabs and delivery service since the 'legit' equivalents refused to come into the neighborhood.

saraid216 12y ago
Define "mid-Atlantic"? I could imagine that covering everywhere from Spain to Africa to the West Indies to the American South.
- incision 12y ago
  In the US it refers to a section of the East Coast [1]. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_states

abalashov 12y ago

This is almost exactly how the "marshrutkas" (see Wikipedia entry) of the former Soviet bloc, which continue to operate in a most or all CIS countries, came to be.