My town has a bus system called “SunTran”. You see the empty buses around town. Rarely, a passenger, although you do see more now that the economy is bad.
It sends buses around four routes roughly covering the major transportation routes in our town:
But if you miss the bus, the next one won’t come for 40 minutes.
Given it is 115 or hotter in the summer, I’m not too keen on waiting 40 minutes and then walking an additional mile to my actual destination. At $2.50 it is about what gas costs to run me somewhere in town, at a much more expensive time cost.
The city spends $2.4 million dollars a year for this. And that bugs me. That is a lot of money for a town our size. And a lot to pay for 1 hour service. It would be better spent incentivizing private services to build up that would provide faster, more personalized group riding with dozens of vehicles instead of one bus a route. After citizens learn the new, private, system can get them where they are going fast and out of the heat, the city could cut back on the subsidy, eventually eliminating it.
Alas, this will not happen. It makes too much sense for the people, but not a lick for city bureaucrats.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:41 am
http://www.jstor.org/pss/20052600
Minibuses are overrated according to this account and the third world local transport is hapahzard to say the least.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:45 am
What we have now is predictably slow and costs $2.5 million. I’d take haphazard and free.
And that study seems skewed by mid 70′s high inflation making capital costs of the minibuses high.
January 12th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
I would say that transportation funded by government might be approriate for the disabled, and maybe the elderly who are no longer safe on the road, but everyone else needs to find their own way around.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Big cities could not function without mass transport and private services do not seem to be profitable enough to attract a supply. Workers and residents have to get around and parking all the cars, much less finding road space for them, is not practicable. Once the population density reaches a threshold (although I don’t know the number) public services become necessary for everyday functioning. The poor workers also cannot afford the cars and the parking. In many places, employers provide a subsidy for worker public transport. The low density of St George probably doesn’t cross the threshold for economic public transport. Ontario CA maybe not either. But that says nothing about whether public transport is the best option for Chicago.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
The public need only get involved if, in a last case, emminent domain is needed.
Barring that, I see no reason why using existing roads/rails can’t be done privately, in any size city.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Do you know of any place where private firms provide public transport? Private transport is fine in principle but impractical. London has private firms compete to operate bus routes but the city determines the routes and the hours and the frequency and number of seats. I can’t imagine how a private firm could show an adequate profit as a purely private enterprise. We do have one form of private transport – taxis – but the price per passenger mile is far higher than the mass transport.
January 13th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Southwest Airlines – I’m free to move about the nation.
First off… if the government would get out of the way all sorts of options would come up.