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Canadian Town Picks Uber For Public Transit (cnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the car-hailing-services dept.

Stephen Shankland reports via CNET: Innisfil, population 32,727 as of 2014, concluded in a March council meeting that subsidizing the car-hailing service was a better deal than paying for a bus line. The city plans to pay 100,000 Canadian dollars (about $75,000) for a first stage of the program and CA$125,000 for a second round about 6 to 9 months in. That compares to CA$270,000 annually for one bus and CA$610,000 for two, the town said. The town evaluated on-demand transit proposals as an alternative to buses. "Uber emerged as the only company with an app-based platform (i.e. UberPool) that would facilitate ridesharing and the matching of two or more passengers on trips across the entire town," the town said in its explanation of the move. Innisfil will subsidize Uber trips so citizens pay between CA$3 and CA$5 themselves, depending on the destination, the town said. "You can't have taxpayers pay for a transit system which they cannot use," Innisfil Mayor Gord Wauchope told The Toronto Star. "And this was a transit system that people can get from anywhere in the town of Innisfil, and use it for a reasonable price."

7 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Can't use by jabberw0k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".

    1. Re:Can't use by kaka.mala.vachva · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A one person call center that receives requests and books rides for people? Free public phones/tablets at multiple locations to allow users to call and request a cab? There are multiple ways to solve that - for a town of 32k people, this may indeed work out well. In my town of 56k people, here in California, public transport is not useful - the closest bus stop is 3/4 mile away from my place (and I live close to down town). We use Uber for any travel where we cannot/don't want to take our car - a subsidized Uber would be really useful.

    2. Re:Can't use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's a long way to miss a bus that passes every hour. "Go earlier" I ear you say, well, there lies the problem.

    3. Re:Can't use by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The concept might make a lot of sense, but the implementation weirds me out.

      A Canadian town will subsidise an American corporation to provide a public service. I can appreciate that the costs to provide public transit to such a small town might be prohibitively high but you could have run your own public taxi service instead and get some return on the tax money being spent.

      Well, most public transportation companies are really private companies that are owned by the taxpayers. Or in some places, it's a few private companies contracted to provide service (especially local interurban buses).

      So it's not really that unusual, other than it's Uber. Here they're relying more on the experience of Uber to be able to provide the right amount of service - otherwise if they had to provide their own taxi service, then they lack all the analytics and information needed to properly provide service. (Plus, unlike a taxi service, UberPool does allow pickup/dropoff of other people going the same way).

  2. Good short term, bad long term by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Great for the town budget now, but lousy for long term social stability. They're encouraging part-time under-employment.

    It would have been better to launch a town-owned cab company. Probably with somewhat worse service, but with full employment for a couple of people. (Innisfil only has a population of 36K). And with city-owned, electric vehicles.

    Even better would have been to escalate this to the county level, and let Simcoe build a region-wide transit system based on the taxi model. By scaling up they could have some inter-city links and a few handicap/accessible vans. Simcoe county is about 5K square kilometers and has four or five decent-sized urban centers in it.

  3. Not what personal computers are for by jabberw0k · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I am no Luddite. I am all for modern technology. I started programming in 1977. Any techie with a few brain cells would never pay for the privilege of using a locked-down dumbed-down toy spy computer. Did you not read "1984" ? These so-called "smart" devices are telescreens. Or are you so hoodwinked by the groupthink you can't see that?

  4. Good idea, except by fred6666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good idea, except that they will be giving 20% of that money to Uber. Have they used their own application, they could end up saving a lot.