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Canadian Town Picks Uber For Public Transit (cnet.com)
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."
What telephone number do I dial to hail an "Uber" ? I do not have a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone".
Depends. What was the baseline cost of riding the city bus? If it was anywhere close to that amount, the net result is faster travel for the same user cost, with a massively lower cost to the city.
If it takes off, this may create a stream of side income for a lot of people with working used cars - instead of a bus factory far, far away.
Innisfil, population 32,727 as of 2014
Is anybody else weirdly disappointed that the town does not have 41 more people?
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.
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.
The fares for the neighbouring city of Barrie are $3 for a single zone and $6 for two zones on route 90.
For York Region (just south of Innisfil), the regular fare is $3-4.50.
In Toronto the regular fare is $3.25 nominal, $3 if paid by token or card.
In Baltimore, it's US $3.60 for a round-trip, US $1.80 for a one-way, and US $3.95 for a day pass on all public transit.
Here's the thing: generally, public transit is slow and limited. The light rail is on a rail, and takes three times as long as driving if you include the 15-45 minute wait (sometimes trains come 40 minutes in between--and, hell, sometimes they alternate so every other train goes all the way, so the next train may stop short of your destination and require you to get off and wait another 25 minutes to continue). Buses can take 3 hours to make a 25-minute car trip.
Think about the lost wages and lost productivity riding around for 3 hours when you could drive for 20 minutes.
Now imagine if, for lower tax costs, you could just get a single-rider, direct transport to your destination. A car ride. My ride from home to work is 49 minutes by light rail, right now, for $1.80; it's $17-$23 by Uber or Lyft, and only 17 minutes. The east-west Light Rail Red Line is estimated at $2.1 trillion installation cost, and so was to be installed in segments over 20 years, with the cheap parts (on-grade, rather than underground tunnels or above-grade rail) built first to start generating economic benefit on a hundred billion or so per year; we couldn't get the Federal funding.
So Canada thinks they can spend $75,000 per year of money they take out of your income so you can further pay $3.50 for a one-way trip that takes 20 minutes, instead of paying $20 for that same trip. Their alternative is spending several billions for a bus system or hundreds of billions for a rail system with long transit times. Seems legit.
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In the U.S., a city that size likely would not have any public transit save school buses or the senior trolley. The only exception would be if it were a suburb of a larger city in which case the city's buses would extend out to the suburb. I am not sure if Innisfil is some isolated community or near a larger city, but either way this seems like a strange solution. It also seems strange that two buses are more than double the cost of one.
Seems like Innisfil tailored the contract for Uber. Does Lyft work in Canada?
Anyway, since Uber drivers bear almost all of the costs how will Uber fulfill the contract if drivers can not profit?
Who do you sue when the Uber driver is exhausted from doing 20 fares that day and has an accident and his insurance refuses to cover anything since they found out he was operating the vehicle as a taxi.
I suppose it ought to be Innisfil for picking this evil company.
I have to say, I'm unbelievably happy to see this. The effects of a program like this are far greater reaching than the article mentions. First of all, it creates income opportunities for more people than just the couple of drivers of a bus. Second it eliminates the need for the town to cover the maintenance costs for large investments like that, but drives more opportunities for local automotive maintenance businesses (usually smaller family owned establishments). Third, they are putting money into the service, not buying an expensive "thing". What will they do with a bus in 5-6 years when it's worn out and needs to be replaced? Buying large items like that doesn't solve the need, but subsidising a service industry that does solve the need it really smart.
In the current economy where cities are constantly fighting against service based businesses like Uber, AirBnB and others that don't pay their premiums for cab medallions and hotel licenses, this is a real win, not only for the local population, but for local businesses to improve their individual opportunities. I'm not in the industry, but so far as I can tell, this is an all around win that doesn't require the local government to establish more rules and regulation, more people to enforce those rules and more time to be wasted in council meetings discussing all of the "what-if" scenarios. For those, like me, that favor smaller government that still works for the people, this is a great example that I hope to see replicated all over.
I'll use my personal "commute" as an example of how this works with, not against, other larger public transit systems.
My typical work day is as follows:
1. Drive to my local train station (about 4 miles from home so let's say $2 in gas and averaged maintenance costs).
2. Pay $1.50 to park at the train station (large lot with about 300 spaces for commuters).
3. Take a train to the city $200 monthly (I'm in the suburbs).
4. Take the train back to my local station.
5. Drive home (another $2 in gas/maintenance).
The public transportation in the large municipal area where I live is very good, but locally in my town, there are no bus options for getting to the train.
IF we implemented something like this in our town, I would pay my $4 a day to an Uber driver that would drive me too and from the train station. Now, maybe that doesn't save me any money, but it doesn't cost anything more. The local town, on the other hand, can take that huge space for parking, where the cost of maintaining the lot is barely covered by the parking fees, and create a great new "downtown" business space where a coffee shop and other commuter conveniences would be right at the train station.
Here are the big wins in my mind:
New local businesses generate more local tax revenues for an overall increase in local government revenues.
Environmental improvements with fewer greenhouse emissions from cars.
Less traffic in the downtown suburb.
Local folks that are looking for a "side hustle" to make ends meet have another opportunity!
Here's the really interesting thing. My wife and I probably only need one car! That's at least $5,000 a year back in my pocket.
Honestly, I don't see the downside in suburban areas like this. Would it work in a larger metropolitan city? Probably not since busses and subways really do a good job to alleviate the traffic that would be caused by a bunch of extra cars that only hold 3-4 people at a time, but I really think that more smaller towns, like mine, can benefit from this in a big way.
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
So Canada thinks they can spend $75,000 per year of money they take out of your income so you can further pay $3.50 for a one-way trip that takes 20 minutes, instead of paying $20 for that same trip. Their alternative is spending several billions for a bus system or hundreds of billions for a rail system with long transit times. Seems legit.
Well public transit is usually slow and limited because one driver can transport many passengers. What's the efficiency of Uber over, well, Uber? Basically it seems like a scheme to pay taxes to pay Uber instead of paying Uber to provide the exact same taxi service. Unless it's used as some quasi-bus service, I know we have that certain rural areas here in Norway. Essentially you can order transport to/from where the regular public transport ends in advance and you get that at a heavily discounted/subsidized rate because they can plan a pickup/drop-off route, for you it's a fixed price offer even if you happen to be the only one so you don't have to coordinate with anyone. I know they also organize something similar for the elderly to go shopping at a discounted rate to fill dead hours. It's door to door, but not really ordinary taxi service.
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Does uber gaurentee that a certain percentage of their fleet will be handicapped or disabled accessible? I know that this is always a consideration when designing "public" transportation systems, what promises of accessibility could uber possibly make about cars that they don't own?