What if you, the customer, are a poor person? Is Uber going to subsidize a bus pass for you to charter one of Uber’s buses to their job?
Comment on Uber's new shuttle service sounds a lot like a bus route
MxM111@kbin.social 4 months agoWhy not? The more the merrier, and you, the customer, have a choice.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 months ago
MxM111@kbin.social 4 months ago
Reducing public transportation is not a solution to fight poverty.
catloaf@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Uber is not public transportation.
Jajcus@kbin.social 4 months ago
And that is the problem with this idea.
MxM111@kbin.social 4 months ago
It is privately owned public transportation. Same as taxi. Same as supermarkets and malls being privately owned public places. And some Muslims and parks.
Aux@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It is. Just like taxi.
blazera@lemmy.world 4 months ago
no bus company subsidizes passes, local governments do
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Local governments… you mean the thing Uber hates and does everything they can to defy?
blazera@lemmy.world 4 months ago
oh yeah they would hate for local governments to give them money
Aux@lemmy.world 4 months ago
From my own experience, if you’re poor, you use a regular bus. If you want to get somewhere faster, you pay more and catch a shuttle. If you want comfort, you pay even more and get a taxi. And all modes of transport are always full to the brim. The more the merrier, always.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 4 months ago
But…that’s our point. Uber taking over bus routes would ultimately void that choice. Public transportation is a public service. Letting a VC-funded for-profit company weasel their way into that space is never going to not fuck poor people. It’ll fuck everyone, but it’ll make “public transportation” unaffordable. And, really, when you’re poor, “if you want to get somewhere faster” isn’t really an option. That’s…the thing with being poor. You don’t have the extra money to spend to catch a shuttle and you don’t have the luxury of paying for comfort. Not to mention, even in the best case scenario, where busses would keep their existing schedule and routes (though the likelihood of this happening is slim) and we’d just get more busses? It’d clog the system, ultimately slowing bus routes.
So, no. Not “the more the merrier” when it comes to private companies elbowing their way into public service, and especially not when we’re talking about fuckin traffic.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I’m hiring your job would be the one to do that. A lot of companies subsidize transit passes, the problem is usually there aren’t enough routes, so employees don’t use them.
lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
The hospitals in my nearby city have their own BRT which is open to public use, and joined to the city’s ticketing system. It shuttles between them and various key locations, and is of course wholly subsidized for the intended users.
Despite being the only BRT here it pretty much goes everywhere it should, skipping the usual traffic, and as a result gets a lot of use.
If the users were limited to the regular transportation I think they would just all drive - while there are a lot of routes here they’re not entirely pleasant to use IMO and almost always get stuck in traffic
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Exactly. Mass transit responds to what people say they want (wider roads), whereas hospitals and large companies respond to costs (i.e. cost of more parking vs a shuttle). I’m not saying transit should be privatized, I’m saying private transit filling in the gaps of mass transit is generally a good thing.
yildolw@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The private sector takes the profitable popular routes first, which the public system is already serving, meaning the public system would not longer be able to use the fare revenue from the popular routes to subsidize the geographical coverage unpopular ones which are nevertheless needed to get the full network effect
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Until the city decides to get rid of the subsidized bus system because “Uber is a better service and covers the routes anyway” and then they jack the price sky-high.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Exactly. How people haven’t realized this yet is fuckin unconceivable. Trusting a for-profit company—with a history of the exact problematic behavior we’re worried about—is beyond stupid. They can operate at a loss for a long time. Just to fuck other businesses out of the market so they can charge as much as they want. It’s literally their business model.