Dahon.Steve

I watched this You-tube video from TED called The Future of Human Driven Transportation. It was a historical lesson on the Jitney bus which made it's appearance about 100 years ago in 1914. Shortly after their introduction, they were providing 150,000 rides per day! However, regulation soon made it difficult to operate and many cities outright banned them thanks in large part to the trolley companies.

If the Jitney bus was never over-regulated out of existence, there would have been no need to own personal motor transport since vehicle sharing would have been cheap and abundant. This desire and need to buy a car was a direct result of the collapse jitney bus industry! I know this sounds like spin but it does hold some merit.

When you think about it, the old Jitney bus was very similar to the Uber model today. Here's where I differ from the speaker in that we don't really need Uber to satisfy the public's need for hyper mobility. Uber cars are expensive to operate with very limited seating for 2 or 3 passengers making it impossible to offer reduced fares that match a city bus.

Here's a crazy idea but why not bring back the independent Jitney bus?? The same legislation that drove them out of business 100 years ago can and should be reversed! I know Mexicans will be driving them but this is preferable than having to buy a car any day of the week. We can have Jitney's picking up passengers along any avenue and providing door to door service. You would even have a App where they would pick you up just like Uber. The old Jitney bus was a carfree solution that should never have died.

Mobile 155

Sounds a bit like you have read comments by Uber's Travis Kalanic.

Dahon.Steve

I've said it on another post, the independent trolley business in the 1880's was similar to Uber when the technology was first introduced. Unfortunately, local governments controlled the fare box and added regulations forcing the independent out of business. The jitney bus didn't have a chance since by the time they arrived, most local government now controlled the revenue from the trolley business.

I think ride sharing if it's ever going to take off, should adopt the jitney bus or vans instead of cars. As someone said, ride sharing today is nothing more the a gypsy cab business tethered to the internet. If we want to make more people carfree, the vehicles have to carry more passengers.

Ekdog

When my wife and I were in Mexico recently, we made use of colectivos, which are cars or vans that function as taxis do, except that they follow a route. To start the trip, they require a certain number of passengers, and then they pick up more as they go along. We found them to be very economical and efficient.

Dave Cutter

I am all for deregulation!!!!! If that is what you're really posting here?!?!?

Everyone wants regulations (or lack of) that favor their personal ideas... not across-the-board deregulation. Which really means... they want the same argumentative regulation (which the lawyers love) that we have right now.

So should we deregulate the zoning and building codes that have made our cities so pricey (and short of parking spaces)? AND... the regulations that make cars, gasoline, and highways expensive? How about restrictive regulations of healthcare, dentistry, Television, chemicals, genetic engineering, energy, sex workers... and so on.... and so forth.

Free markets (and freedom in general) always work best... when looked at individually. But when grouped together and the idea of letting free markets (and free people) rule themselves is presented..... most people get scared.

Here is some other... TED style Jitney ideas:
Jitney housing
Jitney doctors
Jitney hospitals
Jitney houses
Jitney apartments
Jitney Cities (no regulations, no taxes, no services)
Jitney jobs (day/week/month/season/year, labor?)
Jitney marriages
Jitney military (bring back the draft and treat most as little more than cannon fodder)

wolfchild

LCF people on this forum just keep missing the point time and time again...None of your alternatives which you advocate provide the freedom, independence and convenience of private vehicle ownership.

denis123

You don't need to own a car if you live in a proper location, you can rent one when you need. It will then be more convenient than owning one. It will also be cheaper, which also matters very much.

Dave Cutter

The think some of the LCF miss the exact ONE same point almost all people miss.

There are no psychics. No one knows what the future will be. Or what route will be traveled to arrive there.

The past is always open to interpretation and creative rewriting. Discussing the events of what happen in the past... is also called an argument. And it is a pointless argument as well.

All we have is the now. We certainly will never be alive at any other time... than the present. The idea of altering any other time by actions that occur at any time other the current time.... is the matter of which day dreams are made.

Walter S

No maintenance, repair, down payments and finance, etc. Enterprise will deliver a car to my house and then come get it when I'm done.

Seems a lot like freedom, independence, and convenience to me. Somehow one that I keep not needing. One day I'm sure I'll rent a car. I almost did a couple weeks ago and then ended up cancelling. It's there if I need it.

tandempower

The only reason I ever became interested in ride-sharing apps was because it was a real-world application of a fundamental concept, which is to arrange ride-sharing via internet with efficiency instead of by people posting person-to-person ads a la Craiglist.

My assumption was that as ride-sharing grew in popularity, price-level differentiation would occur, the way it does in any other business. So just as discount shopping has differentiated into Walmart, Dollar General, Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and some other affordably-priced stores, ride-sharing should differentiate into services with slightly different offerings.

The thing that would make ride-sharing more affordable and efficient would be the ability to coordinate a series of rides by changing to vehicles whose drivers don't have to diverge from their already-planned trip. I.e. if the app tells you that vehicle x has a habitual M-F commute between 8 and 830, you can catch a ride for a portion of that vehicle's route and then get out and catch another ride. In this way, you might hitch a ride with two or three different vehicle to get to your destination, but the rides would be automatically routed by the computer based on estimates of people's commuting habits.

With a ride-sharing system like this, people could offer rides for ultra-low prices because they would not be deviating from the route they'd be driving anyway. The problem is many people wouldn't want to have a stranger in their car for a little extra money, but of course that changes during a recession when people are desperate for even a few extra dollars a week for gas money.

Then, of course, when enough people are accustomed to using such apps to seek rides, the demand is present to stimulate an owner/operator of a larger van to pick up multiple passengers along a route, and you end up with emergent transit routing stimulated by demand. For this to happen, though, there has to be a pathway to growing demand; and the present market obstructs that in many ways by the fact that people and drivers are will to pay more or drive out of their way for more money or other reasons. As long as other factors besides efficiency motivate the choices of drivers and passengers, it's hard for inefficient personal motor-transportation to evolve into more efficient public transportation.

prathmann

Private car ownership provides the benefits you list in some respects, but is very restrictive, inconvenient, and costly in others. There are extended periods where I have no need or use for one or more of my vehicles but they still end up wasting space on my property, cost me insurance premiums even when idle, and deteriorate with resulting maintenance costs. And frequently I would be better served by a somewhat different type of vehicle (say a truck or a van) that what I happen to have available. Furthermore it is certainly not enhancing my freedom, independence, or convenience when one of my private vehicles breaks down while in use and I have to immediately rearrange my schedule to deal with the problem.

If an extended Uber service, or preferably an autonomous vehicle service, could guarantee that within a few minutes of selecting a vehicle it would appear at my door ready to take me to my destination at a reasonable cost with no concern about having to find parking and that any mechanical problem would be dealt with by having a substitute vehicle show up within minutes that would greatly increase my freedom, independence, and convenience over the current situation.

Mobile 155

I like the idea of an autonomous car service that shows up on demand and takes me where I need to go and picks me up again. I am not big on sharing a ride to stop by somewhere I don't want to go with someone else.

Dahon.Steve

+1

From experience, we can have deregulation bring back the Jitney bus and it can work in conjunction with the regular city bus. However, the Jitney will cause a shortfall in revenue for the city bus which means your town may have to pay more to subsidize bus company. This happened in my town and those that allowed Jitneys to thrive. However, it works out well because we get more public transit especially during the weekends and snow storms that shut down the bus companies.

You'll find out that most towns have regulations on file preventing the Jitney bus or gypsy cab from operating. As for deregulation all the other topics, those are different discussions.

Dahon.Steve

Dave:

The past continues to return and it's not pointless.

Urber is a another version of a prior transport model that was eliminated 100 years ago not because it was unprofitable or ineffective. It was destroyed because political powers did not want to see an end to their revenue stream. Urber is having the same problems but will succeed because they have hundreds of millions in funding and an army of lawyers.

Public transit was always a private industry starting with the stage coach. It's only in the past 100 years that government took control but now we have the technology to take it back and in the process make millions more carfree.

History has a way of repeating itself and we are now watching it.

Dave Cutter

The past has already happened... of course it is pointless. We don't need antique maps to chart a path today.

I can tell you are not a real fan of history! You think the privately owned roads (yes even the roads were privately owned 200 years ago in America) didn't have lawyers?!?! Money and lawyers can't stop what is happening.


Corruption, and dependence on an ever enlarging government... is greater now than at any point in history. Technology and bicycles can have no effect against an ever encompassing state of regulation.

Thomas Jefferson would be a good read.... if you really think the solutions can be found in history. He foresaw the natural advancement of government... and resulting tyranny... and he offered his own flavor of solutions as well.

SHBR

Uber and other ride sharing platforms are just a stepping stone to fully automated transportation.

Private ownership of motor vehicles will be deemed a luxury, not suitable for the average working class person in the future.

Most of the population will be forced into large cities, making it all to easy to regulate almost every aspect of human existence.

This is called development, mass media has made many false promises about technology in the past, reality is often quite different.

Walter S

Private ownership of motor vehicles will be deemed a luxury, no longer very necessary for the average person in the future.

The trend for most of the population to be attracted by large cities will continue.

Does it have to be so big-brother? These are changes most of the world will make for their own good in light of what we continue to discover as best for a modern world with a large population to support.

Dave Cutter

One small point that knowledge of history reminds us of over and over is..... NOTHING "continues". The popularity of cities (coastal cities in this era) will rise to a point........ and then fall into complete disfavor. Centralized populations no longer fill a need. And currently... population growth trends show global migration to mostly rural areas.

tandempower

"Big-brother" is a cultural paradigm of social-critique against change that we have to deal with now whenever we consider such changes as being potentially beneficial. You can notice it in the way posters like ILTB and Mobile155 respond to the idea of LCF making the world better and more sustainable. Basically, people are watching each other and when some of us get inspired to pursue social change for the better, big-brother is there to spew out discouragement.

We used to have a culture of innovation and curiosity for future developments. That has been replaced by an anti-Utopian big-brotherism that is more similar to old-world superstitions against change than anything American. It's just that since the growth of industrialism in the last two-centuries, regimes of industries and their workers have adopted that old-world mentality of protectionism against changes that would rattle their industries. Hence their interest in policing culture against progress and change.

Walter S

When the immediate future is like the immediate past many of us call that "continuing".

Maybe so. I made no claim about coastal specifically.

Check your facts. In the United States as well as worldwide the trend is urban vs rural.

World?s population increasingly urban with more than half living in urban areas | UN DESA | United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Mobile 155

In old world terminology, puffel and balderdash. The one insistent voice for returning to pre industrial life more like the Middle Ages is made by only one poster and that poster is anti capitalist to a fault. Which is fine in itself except there is an unwillingness to admit a lack of ambition and a slight case of Luddite taints the reasoning about what constitutes change.

Much of the world is already LCF or do you disagree? Because they are LCF it would be very simple for someone that didn't want to work full time or take part in the western advances in this economy to move to and join in a real LCF lifestyle. But no some would rather live and garner the economic benefits offered by this system and complain about how unfair it is.

The question was what is the future of Human "Driven" Transportation and most have tried to stay on topic. I have often envisioned automated transportation pods but I may never live to see them. Some are talking about Jitney's but no one is talking about going backwards and calling it new.

mconlonx

I tried a ride-sharing jitney style cooperative van service. It operated out of the Portsmouth NH rideshare parking lot associated with a subsidized bus line. It was cheaper than even bus commuting to Boston, and was by far more economical than an individual car. But limited ride times meant that if you wanted to go in early or leave late, it quickly became less a deal. As a result, I only tried it for a couple months and then went back to the bus, with much more convenient ride times... and eventually relocated to the city, at first temporarily and then permanently for a very much more car-lite/LDF lifestyle.

Is van-pool more or less what you're talking about regarding jitney service? Because if it is some kind of on-call kind of thing, not sure the difference between jitney and limousine/cab/pirate cab/rideshare service...

Walter S

Once driverless cars are around you won't need to own one to ride them frequently and economically, at least if you're in a moderately populated area. You could also get discounts based on the number of other riders. You ride with others that are going to destinations on about the same route.

Or you could pay more and dedicate the car to yourself for a few hours or days etc.

I think they're 20 years into the future though.

Mobile 155

I could hope for sooner but you might be correct. I like the call up single vehicle service because it would give the same benefits as owning my own car. Leave when I want stop where I want and come back when I want. That is sort of what I meant about a transportation pod. If it were automated you would be just as free to read or rest as you could with mass transit but at your own schedule.

Walter S

Plus door to door. As to "come back when I want" what do you have in mind? I'm thinking the pod is not dedicated to you, waiting till you want to leave. That would require another wait - hopefully normally quick. Of course there are lots of possibilities and they don't exclude each other. For example a shared pod or a dedicated pod for more cash.

How it changes work-commuting is interesting. Computers figure out who should pod-pool because they have closely aligned starting and ending places and times and thereby keeps the total vehicle count manageable while keeping the time waisted on other people/stops down. In the end it's a trade off of resources that are balanced against one another without meeting a goal of total convenience. A lot of people may choose to own a dedicated driverless vehicle that they don't have to share at all. They can leave the office the moment they get ready etc.