SF people, you are hypocrites using services like Uber and Lyft
fesja.me> really good public transportation with buses and trains. I'm completely sure private cars or taxies would be discarted.
Wow. Talk about thinking everyone is exactly like you, and only your transportation needs need to be met.
What about the elderly? (Who can't walk the last mile from the bus.)
Or young children? What about a large family that needs a full car load of groceries - you're going to put that on a bus? And somehow carry it home?
Inevitably every single person who writes about public transportation is young and single, or at least no kids, and they think: No more cars, problem solved.
News flash: The entire world is not like you. Getting rid of cars is a complete non-starter for a HUGE segment of the population.
At the expense of sounding like a complete a-hole, I suggest you travel and see how other families/people live with public transport as their only transportation option. Don't get me wrong, I think Uber/Hailo/others are a great idea. Mix that with AVs and it will be a true disruptive technology.
Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogota said that "An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport", and imho he is completely spot on with the issue of transportation. The transportation problem in the US is a city/urban planning problem, and not one solved by building more roads and putting more cars on them.
I suggest you watch his TED presentation http://www.ted.com/talks/enrique_penalosa_why_buses_represen...
Another worth watching is that by Bill Ford, of the Ford Motor Company: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_...
> I suggest you travel and see how other families/people live with public transport as their only transportation option.
I have actually.
And it works perfectly in huge cities, and it doesn't work in the smaller ones.
> The transportation problem in the US is city/urban planning, and not one solved by building more roads and putting more cars on them.
No, the transportation problem in the US is that it is very large, and the majority of the cities are medium/small and public transport simply doesn't work in those sized cities (just not enough demand for continuous service).
It's not the size of the city per se. that's the problem in the US, but that very few people live and work actually in the centers of those cities. They're all dispersed out in the suburbs. Take an avg 50-80k population city in the US and draw a circle, centered in the middle of town, that encompasses say 60% of the cities population, now do the same with a European city of the same size. The circle for the European city will almost always be much smaller, meaning it's much easier to cover a significant proportion of the population with a reasonable public transportation network.
In Europe 'cities are medium/small' and public transport works. Ignoring how cities evolve, grow, develop, from a planning perspective is the US biggest problem, and the solution its biggest challenge. Bad city planning affects transportation, energy, health, efficiency, etc.
Europe is very different to SF. In Europe the term city planning is somewhat different. Most cities were built for horses and carts at best.
Berlin has a fantastic public transport system, but 70% of is less than 70 years old. Istanbul's public transport system is truly terrible, but it's a nearly 3,000 year old city that gets nearly a +/- 50 degree C temperature range over a year.
Paris has an ok metro, but in general public transport isn't that great compared to say, Berlin, London or Barcelona.
London has a ridiculously overdeveloped public transport system that will get you from a to b but it's massively oversubscribed and the roads are rammed most of the time. To be fair, London is generally oversubscribed and rammed most of the time.
I disagree. Berlins transport system is nice, but it is far from perfect. Ever have been there in the winter, or try to get on a bus when you are the only one waiting on a bus station? Berlin is famous for having many problems with their transportation system, some result form bad planning and technical and financial debt, some are cultural (people are unfriendly).
The metro in Paris is way nicer to use - more reliable, cheaper, drives very often and has a far reach. Same goes for Vienna and Hamburg.
I even prefer smaller middle sized cities systems, in France and Germany, at least on the day when they are working - and if they are not completely stupid, like causing themselves to be always late by letting the bus driver control the bus ticket. But I disliked Berlin in general.
I think if I went to Germany having only been to Western Europe I'd have found people in Berlin unfriendly, but having lived in London, spent time in Budapest, Vienna, across Germany and Prague (the home of poor service) I can honestly say that yes people are unfriendly in Berlin, but less unfriendly than in some other parts of Germany and Eastern Europe.
When have you been in Istanbul last? They've been expanding the public transport system a lot in the last few years (new subways, metros, a train running the marmara sea). I was there just a few weeks ago and had no problem getting around.
To be fair it's been too long, about two years. I'm hoping to go back later this year though.
Exactly, the US transport issue is primarily urban sprawl, a planning problem: http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/you-cant-set-shop-sid...
> urban sprawl, a planning problem
No, it's not a planning problem, it's a "people don't want to live there" problem.
In the US people are simply not interested in living in a high density low population city.
They want either high density, high population, or low density, low population.
They would love low density, high population, but those don't exist much, so urban sprawl is the next best thing.
Not all Americans want to live here http://www.fritzmuellerphoto.com/data/photos/545_1Muellerf_2...
But let's agree to disagree.
No, [some] Americans don't want other people to live there, but they most definitely do want to live there - that's why they keep making them.
(Obviously "Not all" - some like to live in big cities.)
I think this is one of those things that people seem to "want", but has really been dictated to them by forces outside their control and outside of their immediate impact.
- Do people really "want" to drive 10/15 minutes to pick up the milk they forgot last time they went to the store?
- Do people really "want" to spend huge amounts of money on a car, insurance, gas.
- Do people really "want" to spend huge amounts of time in traffic on their way to and from work every day?
I could go on, but I think the answer is generally "no" to all those questions. And that's leaving out all the deleterious health effects we know commuting and the suburban lifestyle can cause.
What people really want is safe places, good schools, short commutes, good shopping/food choices, outdoor spaces, etc. We've been sold a bill of goods since Levittown on the "american dream" that offers the solution to all the problems of cities by creating an entirely different (and I'd say overall significantly greater) set of problems. It's treating the symptoms instead of the disease.
I don't "want" any of those things... but I don't "want" to live in a crowded city even more. So it is a trade off.
- Do people really "want" to pay twice as much for half the living space?
- Do people really "want" to share walls on all sides and have a person above and below them?
- Do people really "want" to step out their door and have a major roadway packed with cars (or buses if we're ditching cars) right there?
I think the answer is generally "no" to all those questions, too.
> No, the transportation problem in the US is that it is very large, and the majority of the cities are medium/small and public transport simply doesn't work in those sized cities (just not enough demand for continuous service).
Well, it does not work in bigger cities as well except NYC, Chicago and to some extent Boston. Also, OP talks about SF, which for it's size and population can have a good public transport system.
Actually the problem is that PT (there is even the word public in it) should be owned by the state and not by a company trying to make profit out of transportation.
Take a look in other cities around the world. It works pretty well also for the kids, the elderly. Especially the elder, when they have problems using the car, because of their slow reaction times and bad sight. Especially, for the kids, as they are to young to drive a car.
I see here in Germany every day people (of every age), which can do their shopping with public transport. I've done it also in the past. Currently, my car is waiting in the garage 6 out of 7 day a week. I just use it sometimes, because its there. I can't use my car downtown anyway, because finding a parking spot is like playing a lottery and is expansive. It is more easy and cheaper to use public transport, or my bike, or my legs.
The only reason you are arguing this way is: you love your car. I've done that my self in the past. But I changed, and you can it too.
Just look at SF, in Chinatown the buses at packed with the elderly and their pushcarts full of groceries.
While you make a good point, the author isn't talking to everyone - instead, despite an inflammatory headline, he seems to be talking to many of the young tech crowd, whom he seems to actually resemble.
Wow, what an ignorant comment. Yes, I say ignorant because it ignores the reality of places where people do all the described things using public transport. These places actually exist. In many places in Europe, public transport is not only good, but faster and more convenient than private cars.
I live in Vienna, Austria where elderly and families with many children use public transport and carry whatever they need to carry. Bus and tram stations are not miles away, they are 150m away, and came at 3-10minutes intervals In the metros you can even carry large items easily, like bikes, for free.
Also in Europe we have supermarkets at every block, we don't have to do our groceries miles away.
Right. These places do exist. San Francisco isn't one of them. Most cities in the US aren't like that. Let's stop comparing apples to oranges. When SF gets a reliable public transport system with supermarkets on every corner and bus stops that are 150m away, then you'll have an argument. Right now, you're just proving the point you're calling 'ignorant'.
Yes, I'm sure San Francisco is not one of them, otherwise we wouldn't have this argument, and this thread wouldn't exist.
But I didn't comment whether San Francisco is like this or not, I commented on the idea that this places can't possible exist.
> I commented on the idea that this places can't possible exist.
Which was not an idea anyone (except maybe you) had.
I live in Europe, and the reason I use public transportation 95% of the times is because there's a healthy network of taxis (which is essentially what Uber is) when I need something that falls outside of the daily routine.
> ignores the reality of places where people do
Only in the largest cities. And it's the same in the US.
But now look at the medium sized cities in Europe.
> Vienna, Austria
By the standards of the US Vienna is incredibly dense. There are only about 15 US cites that have similar population density.
Plus it's huge - over a million people. In NY the public transport is also that good. But there are only 10 cities that large in the US.
Moving goalposts, are we? First of all, this article is about San Francisco, and second of all, you complained that the described world can't possibly function in real world. The described world does exist, as mentioned by myself and other people in this sub-thread. Whether it exists everywhere or not is inconsequential. A single instance is sufficient to prove that your statement was in false. I gave one example, other people gave their own examples, in reality in Europe you can pretty much chose any German or Austrian city to pick your examples (I'm sure it's good in other western countries too, I just pick on what I know).
Second, you are wrong. Medium cities are just like the big cities except without the metro system. Trams and busses are just as good and effective, and the metro is not needed (I hope the reason why not is obvious). Also, here in Austria at least, the trains are really good, really fast, and really, really frequent, and you can just take the metro to the big city center with the same ticket (something you can't do with cars, because cars are not allowed in the center).
Very small towns and don't need public transport because it takes 10 minute to cross them by foot.
This notion that you need a car to move around town or buy groceries is an american concept and seems preposterous to us, europeans. Cars have their uses, obviously, but these are not their primary use here.
> First of all, this article is about San Francisco
My comment wasn't. These rants about getting rid of cars are evergreen, and they always ignore the same issues.
NY for example is exactly like your comment - you can do just fine there without a car. But there are only about 10-15 cities like that in the US.
> Medium cities are just like the big cities except without the metro system. Trams and busses are just as good and effective
Only if the population density is high. Otherwise there is not enough demand for constant service.
> Very small towns and don't need public transport because it takes 10 minute to cross them by foot.
Have you ever been in the US? It can take 20 minutes by car to cross a small city because they are very spread out.
The whole reason to live in a small city is so you get a lot of land. No one is interested in living in a small village type city which is small (in population) but you only get small piece of land - cities like that are dying constantly in the US because people don't want to live there.
What's medium sized? In Austria nearly all cities are connected to good PT, it's not a big-city only feature, even ~500 inhabitants villages are connected to PT. Of course it is not perfect, but it's there and it works reasonable well.
I only agree in case of disabled people, but if you live in a modern city with good PT (so not in the US ;), you have no need for a car.
Young children? They can use PT. It's a normal thing to do in my city (Austria). What about grocery shop? I mean, surely you have groceries around you so you can just ... walk there? go there by bike?
People who can not think of a no-car life just have never enjoyed good public transport.
What about grocery shop? I mean, surely you have groceries around you so you can just ... walk there? go there by bike?
Or if you have a reasonably large family and prefer to grocery shop once a week or so ... of course you could walk there and back five times instead of one ride and waste some time.
Or what if the place with the best prices and the best choice is too far to walk, maybe even too far to bike comfortably? Tends to happen in some places.
Young children and the infirm can be served pretty well by specialized public transport for them. Eg. my small city has school buses for kids who live far from schools, and minibus service that will pick up and drop off the elderly from doorstep.
But of course public transport can't serve everybody's needs. But it can servve most people's needs, and if most people used it, it would be much better.
If your remaining need the car was commonly groceries, it's easy to imagine effective solutions for that. (Deliveries, cheap neigbourhood car rental or co-owning, bike trailer, uber, etc).
> my small city has school buses for kids who live far from schools
Lovely word there "far". And what about the 4 year old who lives not "far"? Is he going to walk to school by himself?
And what about when it's not school? Or are young kids expected to never go anywhere?
> and minibus service that will pick up and drop off the elderly from doorstep.
Yah, I've seen those in a few cities, and you have to wait hours for your ride.
> But it can servve most people's needs
Only in extremely large cities (where you have enough people for constant 24/7 service), in smaller cities there is just not enough demand so you run fewer buses and it no longer works for most people.
> Deliveries
That only works if you know what you want, but not if you are comparing prices, looking for specials, what's fresh etc.
> cheap neigbourhood car rental or co-owning
You mean like the car service the author is ranting about?
> bike trailer
And there you go, you too can't seem to imagine the entire world is not like you.
Someone with a large family is going to take some of them with them when they go shopping. So you expect to have 4 kids under 6, plus a car load of groceries, on a bike trailer?
Stuffed full of people 1 adult and 4 kids a car is a totally reasonable option in my book. I have two children and no car we use one of these Dutch bikes with space for 4 kids in front. But most cars I zip past on my way to work have 1 person inside.
> And what about when it's not school? Or are young kids expected to never go anywhere?
My dad was too lazy to drive me anywhere so he bought me some bus tickets and a bike. Problem solved.
When you were 4?
This. A thousand times.
My work gives me a (hybrid) car. Almost (~95%) every day I let it home and take the train to get to work.
But I have three kids and my wife is pregnant, so there's no way she could do almost anything without having a car.
But, having chosen to live in a world built primarily for the car, how do your kids get around when they don't have you to drive them? How will you get around when you're old and no longer able to drive?
Building our cities such that you believe you need a car was the original sin. Everything else follows from that "logically".
Sure, it is harder without a car, but it not impossible. Somehow we have survived for a long time before cars.
We have also survived without electricity for a long time, so I'm not sure it's a convincing argument.
Yes, but one has lots of environmental and societal costs, while the other doesn't. If electricity were bad overall for society, his argument would apply to it too.
Isn't most of electricity these days obtained by burning coal? I remember figures around couple hundred thousand yearly just from that. Here is one of the sources
https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/...
There is "no way"? Millions of poor figure out a way every day. That the privilidged spend their dollars (and everyone else's dollars when you take into account the economic externalities of driving a car) widens and perpetuates the convenience gap between cars and public transit, which in turn deepens and perpetuates all other gaps between the rich and the poor.
> young and single, or at least no kids.
I'd say that was exactly who he was picturing...as people who use Uber & Lyft.
I think the point he is making isn't that cities can get rid of cars. It's that the majority of people who use these new services can _probably_ just use public transport.
that's right. But in Madrid families also use buses and trains to go to the center because it's faster and more convenient than car+parking. In Tokyo too. It's just a matter of investing in public transportation, and wanting a cleaner city.
> What about a large family that needs a full car load of groceries - you're going to put that on a bus? And somehow carry it home?
I come from a large family and we never bought more groceries than we could carry. How large does a family need to be in order to be unable to carry its own groceries?
I see quite a lot of elderly people on buses here in the UK. Not really surprising given that free bus travel comes with the pension.
Quite a few rely on the bus as it's easier and safer than driving. Quite a few of them make an issue of it at local council elections.
I've also noticed here in Edinburgh that parents are relaxed about letting even fairly young children (under 10) travel the bus by themselves.
Bullshit.
Every example you give is just laziness.
Many many people in this world use public transport who are elderly, have kids, do the shopping.
Why can't the elderly walk to the bus? Have their legs fell off?
Perhaps people with certain disabilities might have issues that public transport can't solve, but they are not a large part of the population.
Every example you give is just laziness.
"Laziness" is a term we use to describe situations where people are unwilling to put in the amount of work necessary to accomplish something that we could do if we were in their situation. The problem with that is that you really have to understand their situation properly first. If you're not a parent then describing someone who drives instead of taking the bus when they're out with their kids as "lazy" is just a show of ignorance. Even if you are a parent, you still don't really know what their kids are like.
Many people do use public transport, and that's great, but I'd hazard a guess that it's largely because they don't have an alternative option rather than because they think it's the best choice. Wrangling kids on buses is really, really hard work. Plus, if you have more than one, it's usually a lot more expensive than driving.
It's not "lazy" to use the most appropriate form of transport.
>Why can't the elderly walk to the bus? Have their legs fell off?
Please tone down a bit? They sure may have problem in walking maybe a mile or so to reach their destination. Buses aren't dropping them right in front of home.
I agree the parents tone was pretty bad but I agree with him to an extent. Most elderly people are fitter than you'd realise. I think the grand parent comment was wrong to stereotype them all as unable to walk 1 mile. e.g. surely an elderly person going to the mall to walk around shops can walk 1 mile to a bus stop?
> Let's be serious, people are paying $12-25 for taking a Uber or Lyft when they could be paying just $2.25. Does it take longer? Yes. So much longer that you willing to pay 4-11x? I don't think so. People are wasting money.
Disclaimer: I don't live in SF.
Yes, a million times yes it is worth it. The bus system where is I am from is far worse than SF but still, google map from location A to B and toggle between car and bus options. I can get there in less than 15min by car but unless I time it perfectly (and the bus is on time) it will take over an hour to get there by public transit.
Not to mention there are times when the busses do not run where I live. The author seems to think it's: busses or lyft/uber (and again that might be the case in SF) but where I am from your options after 11pm is taxis or lyft and I will easily pay more (though the rides so far have been nearly the exact same as the taxis I've taken) for a ride that I know is coming, I don't have to give turn by turn directions to, and I can pay by CC (completely impossible with taxis in my town).
So the author's argument of "Lyft/Uber sucks because busses" seems quite BS to me...
The central assumption of his whole argument:
> If you had to think what the transport systems would be on a sustainable modern city, I'm sure you would think that the solution would be a really good public transportation with buses and trains. I'm completely sure private cars or taxies would be discarted. (my emphasis)
is mere opinion. I like libraries and think the are great, but I still want my own books. There's no contradiction there.
Additionally, the title is inflammatory by calling people hypocrites instead of trying to understand why people use the services mentioned.
All of this depends on the "size" of the picture we're looking at.
Certainly we're free to act in an individualist way, but we need to take into account the social and environmental factors, and especially the latter gets more and more stringent.
If you use a car, you're polluting my lungs and the environment. If in 50 years from now, cars will be emission free, well, great, but the situation now is what it is.
If you use a car, you're contributing to putting at risk bike users and children.
If you use a car, you are traffic.
So again, you're certainly free to do whatever you want, but we should extend the analogy with books, to a world where, say, paper is limited, and books wrappings are thrown into my private garden.
I understand the blogger concern, even if it's difficult to agree with such statements. It could be translated less angrily that it's disappointing that SF people are failing to take into account communal factors when thinking transportation, under the assumption (that he makes) that people in SF is supposed to be culturally more aware of them.
From another article on the front page of HN today[1]:
"I believe our unfortunate heritage with capitalism, and our steadily decreasing trust in other Americans, is exactly how we end up with these intractable tragedy of the commons-type situations, where no individual party is willing to be vulnerable enough to move toward cooperative solutions in lieu of safe, selfish solutions. The longer this cultural feedback loop persists, the harder it becomes for any one party to make any meaningful move toward a Pareto optimal solution without inviting an equal-but-opposite increase in skepticism toward the first mover. And it's been persisting in this direction for quite some time. This explains, at the very least, why rampant partisanship is an inevitability in a large Democracy, despite it being worse off for everybody (including politicians themselves).
Essentially Uber and Lyft are moves toward a Nash Equilibrium solution, each person cynically and selfishly optimizing on the assumption that everyone else is cynically and selfishly optimizing.
--
[1] http://cjohnson.io/2014/tesla. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7886266.
I agree. I share the author's sentiment that public transit needs to be improved. And, my view is more radical that private vehicles need to be all but abolished (except for conducting work, like carpenters, delivery people, etc.). And, Uber and Lyft are deeply problematic organizations, built on an ask-later "disruption" model that bakes in all kinds of shoddy assumptions about safety, working conditions, and so on.
Yet, the author's view that Uber/Lyft = taxi is just plain false. The author asks us to "imagine" the future, and suggests that there will be no taxis. Not in my future! Insofar as there are still roads (perhaps this is 100 years in the future, not 1000 years), I would like to see no private cars (again, other than for work), but having vehicles for hire makes a lot of sense. The environmental savings of having occasional taxi use with predominant transit, bike, and pedestrian traffic would be immense.
Matthew Yglesias agrees with you:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/03/uber_and_lyft...
"If you could wipe the slate clean and make cabs and cab-like services cheaper and more broadly available in your Bostons and San Franciscos and Portlands and DCs and such, then you could imagine many more middle class people relying on Ubers and Zipcars for when they really need a car, while walking, biking, or riding transit the rest of the time. Which is to say that basically all alternatives to the dominant mode of private transportation—the one car per adult, drive yourself everwhere mode—are complements to one another. Uber makes much more sense in a city where lots of people don't own cars than in a city where everyone owns one. And not owning a car makes more sense if your city has some walkable neighborhoods and good transit lines. But conversely, the availability of private-cars-for-hire on demand makes it much more plausible to imagine not making the large up-front investment in a car that would lead you to rely on a car for your baseline transportation needs."
I'm confused. I agree it makes sense to have taxis available for hire occasionally, preferring them to private vehicles. How does this fact make Uber or Lyft unlike a taxi?
Unless, perhaps, your argument is that Uber is worse than a taxi, since the vehicle is still ultimately private?
Not everyone wants to ride in a bus. In fact, in my country people are stopping using buses, and doing some kind of car sharing, because it's much more convenient (available when you need it), they charge the same, and even though it's not much better space wise, a lot of people prefer riding with 3 others, than 20 others. This has been a growing trend, and I think it's inevitable that it will happen everywhere in the world.
Also, this is exactly the kind of service self-driving cars would offer in the future.
The funny thing is opinions like this are basically just fashion, they tend to change pretty quickly. For example, just fifty years ago in the US the new buses were viewed as a high-class affair and train travel was left for the lower classes. That position is basically completely reversed now.
Also, I find it hard to believe that a vehicle for hire could possibly charge the same as mass transit for a comparable journey. I don't know which country you live in but that's certainly not the case anywhere I've been.
Not as same, but relatively close:
> Not everyone wants to ride in a bus.
Is this an example of society finding the Nash Equilibrium at the expense of finding the "Pareto optimal" solution?
Terminology quibble, but not all Nash equilibria are prisoner's dilemmas. Indeed, some Nash equilibria are also Pareto efficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Nash_equilibrium).
Agreed. My statement ("at the expense of") assumes this not to be the case with respect to cars vs mass transit, at least if use of the former undermines development of the latter. I'm sure the ideal global solution is some hybrid, but I'm pretty sure the dynamics of individuals making locally optimal decisions results at best in a hybrid solution sub-optimally skewed toward cars. And that's only considering the economy and the environment. It best worse if you consider society and consider it a cost if it increases social stratification of the haves and have nots.
Car sharing is not always convenient. what if nobody wants to drive where you want right now? Buses have schedule where you can be fairly sure it will show up.
(If it doesn't, just raise your hand, gets you ad-hoc car sharihg :)
> in my country people are stopping using buses, and doing some kind of car sharing
can you share more details? it's interesting.
The author has a point: some companies affirm themselves as society problem solvers that will disrupt the (harmful) status quo. But most of the times they don't solve the core problems (in this particular case, public transportation), they only solve where there is a profit to be made. This is capitalism, for the good and for the bad.
The author probably is inflammed because of his (South) European point of view, he is Spanish as I can understand, where there is a soft Capitalism that sometimes (or most of the time) shock with the raw capitalism he found in US. Our politics are left wing oriented (I'm also south European): US Center-Left (Democrats) are equivalent to Center-Right in Portugal for example.
The problem with the title is much bigger than simply being inflammatory. The title makes a claim that is never established in the text. Nowhere in the text does the author make the case that people in SF engage in an activity that they criticize others for engaging in and/or engage in an activity that is counter to the espoused moral code of SF citizens.
The "classic 'white rich man'" sentence is truly bizarre.
At least he forgot "straight".
The title is a blaming statement, which are usually caused by someone in cognitive dissonance. You can think of cognitive dissonance as an argument between various agents in someone's brain. Arguing with yourself isn't fun. Occasionally bits of the brain attempt to resolve the argument by looping in other people's feelings. The fastest way to do this is for someone to accuse another of something they themselves feel partially guilty about. which then (hopefully) elicits a strong emotional response.
There's ALWAYS a reason someone make blaming statements. The trick is figuring out exactly why they are doing it.
Do you have anywhere that I could read up more on this? It sounds interesting.
Totally. You can start with non-violent communications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication, and then check out the HBR slick they just put out on Emotional Intellegence. Basically you listen to people, repeat what they said, repeat how they felt about it (only if they actually told you verbally or non-verbally), and tell them you hear them.
Notice the vote down I got. Heaven forbid anyone bring up emotions here. <--- blaming statement.
Examples: Most online discussions involving race, religion, politics, morality.
"I'm a young master engineer"
I'm an old engineer (electronics and software), and as I age and gain experience I realize I still have a lot to learn. I don't think you can be a "young engineer" and a "master engineer" at the same time - and I think those who truly master engineering have become MORE adept at questioning their abilities.
I think the attitude conveyed by his tag-line is repeated (several times) in the article's body ... one mind-set, one "best" and everyone else must be wrong. His ideal seems to be centered around Madrid's transportation systems, but if your (singular) goal is what's good for the environment, I've seen many Asian cities that easily beat buses and trains (with walking and bicycling).
If you're living an unhurried continental life, walking to the local market and carrying home your fresh-picked vegetables might be an alternatively to taking the bus/train to a larger grocery store. If you're a hurried SF-based founder, a door-to-door service is optimizing for a limited amount of time. Why does there have to be just one "best"?
Here's an example ... suppose Elon Musk flies around the country in a corporate jet while working to promote solar energy at prices that will ultimately lead to a significant decrease in emissions. Should he instead bike across the country so his jet isn't polluting the skies? Or would the duration of each trip simply make it impossible to accomplish his goals?
> Is $2.25 for a single ride expensive? Is $76 for the monthly cost of the BART and bus expensive? If you take into account what tech people earn is a ridicoulus price. So price is not a problem for tech people.
> Let's be serious, people are paying $12-25 for taking a Uber or Lyft when they could be paying just $2.25. Does it take longer? Yes. So much longer that you willing to pay 4-11x? I don't think so. People are wasting money.
Regardless of whether you believe public transit is the solution, the statement that people "are wasting money" is entirely subjective and dependent on what they perceive value to be. In fact, if tech people are indeed earning so much money (as is implied by the first sentence) then the higher they earn, the less of a "waste" the extra cost of private transportation would be be due to the factored in time-savings.
That's how I feel in Boston. I pay $75/mo for an MBTA pass, but usually take Uber/Lyft once or twice a week. To get from Allston to Jamaica Plain, at night, I either need to: take a train into the city, and then a different train out of the city (well over an hour), or, wait up to 15m for one bus, then wait up to 15m for another bus, which means it will take anywhere from 30-60m to get home. In the meantime, I can have a cab reliably get me home in 15 minutes for all of $12. It's quite lucrative when one has work the next day..
"I'm sure you would think that the solution would be a really good public transportation with buses and trains. I'm completely sure private cars or taxies would be discarted."
This is something I always wondered, WHY? Have you calculated the numbers yourself? I don't believe so.
In Europe most people repeat this phrase, without knowing why, or just looking at the numbers.
I was born in Madrid, It looks to me like government propaganda too. You find ads on TV that tells you something like "a bus could carry 50 people, if everybody used buses we will be saving that much".
But most of the assumptions are wrong, E.g Most of the time the buses or subway are less than half empty.
And when they are full, people don't want to use the services. In Madrid, subway trains are designed for 4people per square meter!!!
Politicians want people to use public services(while not a single of them uses them). They want to raise taxes, people not being able to buy private cars, but giving the money to politicians in order to make big public works(and enrich themselves by the way, the bigger the amount of money they handle, the easier it is).
On the other hand, moving 2 tons for every 0.1 tons person does not make sense. We need individual alternatives like electric motorbikes or something.
Yes, but public transport is going to have to cope with elastic demand, so you can't base carriage sizes on the average number of passengers.
Here in Barcelona, it seems that the metro starts off quiet at the ends of the line (easy to get a seat), then as you approach the city centre it fills up (difficult to get a seat near these stations). Then it starts to empty on the way back out.
Electric bikes makes sense though.
As someone who lived in SF for a while, I found that SF public transit was utter shit. Muni delays could be as bad as 20 minutes in the tunnel between two stop or a line showing up 45 minutes late. Or even catching everything on time getting from the middle of the Sunset to the middle of the Richmond took over an hour.
On the other hand, I've never had Bart break on me or be delayed (in SF itself).
So yes, when people have be money and want to take a cab, it's usually a better bet.
If you've never had Bart break on you or be delayed, then you weren't taking it enough.
SF public transportation is limited in its geographic coverage and the fact that it's not 24 hours. And that sucks. But San Francisco is also a much smaller city then Madrid, New York, Chicago, and the other places listed. Add a couple more million people to SF, South SF, and East Bay, and you can bet that public transportation will improve.
Sorry, but that is BS. SF too small? Really.
Go and visit other countries in the world. Public transportation works pretty well also in smaller cities with a couple 100.000 people. Go look to Nuremberg, Germany with about 500.000 people. Go look to Jena, Germany with about 100.000 people. Cities in France or Spain or Estland or Lithuania. Look in Denmark or Sweden.
The reason in the US is simple: you love cars.
We love cars simply because of the fact we could fit all of Europe INSIDE the US and still have room left over for Japan, the Philippines and a few other Asian countries.
It's about the only way to get around if you are traveling from one state to another - which we frequently do. Also, ~330M people.
You are traveling cross country with your car? o.O
Yes, a road trip in the US is cool, but I would never ever do it for just getting somewhere.
There is another nice public transport system called airplanes. Works pretty well, is comfortable, and is fast. It works also pretty well in the US. I used it several times as my frequent millage card tells me.
BTW: The US aren't that big compared to Europe. Don't mix up US and Russia, which interestingly many Amercians do, as they believe that the US is the biggest country in the world. Actually, Russia is the biggest country in the world, size wise.
That's kind of odd as Europe (the Continent - 10,180,000 km2) is actually larger in area than the United States (the Country - 9,826,675 km2).
I take it you mean the EU - which covers less than half the area of Europe?
Yes, you are correct. I pulled up a map off Google that overlayed 'europe' over the continental US. That map omitted Ukraine and Turkey, which are included in Europe (among other non-EU countries).
Only a small part of Turkey is in Europe - making Istanbul one of the few transcontinental cities :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_spanning_more_th...
Of course this article is a lot of hyperbole, and whether you agree or not depends on your worldview. But one bit I couldn't agree more. Uber and Lyft are NOT examples of the sharing economy. Just adding an element of technology to good old fashioned capitalism does not a sharing economy make.
Think of it in terms of resource utilization. In the old model, there's tons cars that need to be parked somewhere within SF while completely unused. In the Uber/Lyft model, these cars usually enter the city while they're actively transporting people, then they go back to the suburbs when they need to be parked.
Sure, one could easily argue that parking spaces aren't the most pressing resource shortage, but the point is that these types of changes do create value by sharing resources. The same concepts can be applied to more pressing domains as well.
>> "Think of it in terms of resource utilization. In the old model, there's tons cars that need to be parked somewhere within SF while completely unused. In the Uber/Lyft model, these cars usually enter the city while they're actively transporting people, then they go back to the suburbs when they need to be parked."
Didn't we already solve this problem with taxis more than 50 years ago? It was already a 'sharing economy'. Uber/Lyft just made it more convenient.
Sure, the same resource is being utilized by many people. But that's not sharing, as sharing implies either co-ownership or free-use to others other than the owner.
It's renting utility of a resource for a fix period of time. Not sharing, or part of a "share-economy". Though I can understand calling it a "share-economy" in order to combat the massive propaganda movement by entrenched taxi lobbies/industries/groups that seem to want to vilify services such as uber/lyft/etc.
So following the same thinking, we should burn the restaurants to the ground, because we can all cook, and we pay 10x more. Waste of money.
We should also stop buying clothes at more expensive brands, because Primark clothes are also wearable and will keep you warm. What else can we downgrade?
Dear OP, people do things because they like conveniences, coolness and everything. If it works that way for you - great! But it doesn't mean everyone has to be the same, have the same values and attitude :)
EDIT: Am I saying that because of the tone of the post? maybe. Because, like other people are saying, I don't like tone of this post :)
Hypocrite isn't the word the author is after, but even if it were, effectively just insulting people you disagree with will not bring them around to your view point.
Uber and Lyft may well be 10 times the price public transport, but the services are otherwise barely comparable. It absolutely is worth $20 to me versus $2 to get where I'm going in a fast, comfortable, and private manner, in exactly the same way as I don't baulk at a $3 Starbucks, despite being able to brew a coffee myself for 1/20th that price.
Public transport is never going to win simply by being a cheaper option, you have to appeal to other motivators, such as sense of social responsibility.
As an aside, my "future city" vision of public transport would be publicly available, self-driving, electric "cars" recharged with renewable energy. Not mass-transit. I don't want to be forced into a shared space with strangers, if I can avoid it, thanks.
Public transport is never going to win simply by being a cheaper option, you have to appeal to other motivators, such as sense of social responsibility.
Yes, that's what the author is doing: "If we want to live in a walkable and clean city, we have to start acting the same way we think. And in this case is by taking public transportation."
My argument is that the author should have made that his leading premise, not a secondary point.
Public transport win by costing the same price, for a much better experience and that's where uber is going:
The tone of the article is not relaxed, however I'm a bit perplexed of reading here that many don't believe that the author main argument is right, which is: sustainable transportation for the future needs to be, mostly, public. I don't mean public as necessarily "provided by gov/city", but in which the common routes are handled by busses or trams or similar systems where, unlike cars, the weight of the moved people is not minimal compared to the weight of the moved vehicle.
Taxies have their place of course, you can't serve everything via public transports. Also one thing is normal people moving inside SF, another thing is arriving at the SF airport with a business meeting 45 minutes later. But the bulk of how people move, should be, mass-transport systems.
> sustainable transportation for the future needs to be, mostly, public.
As I bike owner I would disagree with that.
Bikes can be public too. I've been recently to Budapest, and their public bike networks that was about to open seems excellent. Cheap, with stations everywhere around the city and renting bikes with just a cellphone.
If you live in a small place, and you just bike around the city, I'm not sure it's worth buying your own.
We have a public bike network here in Barcelona (I think it was one of the first).
Sure public bikes will do, but for me its kind of like the difference between my car and a bus. You have to wait for stations to become free a lot (usually commuting from my house to my work involved getting up half an hour before the crowds took the bikes). The bikes often have slight problems (loose breaks, squeaking, won't go into gear). Most people don't seem too bothered, but as somewhat of a bike enthusiast, I find it frustrating to know that its like just a spanner turn or two (end the bolts are usually non standard to prevent theft).
Its a great idea, but not without problems.
Author misses the point that transportation in SF/Bay area sucks for two reasons:
1) Mismanagement of the infrastructure. MUNI couldn't manage its way out of a wet paper bag, AC Transit tackles increasing ridership by replacing transbay buses with smaller capacity local buses. To get anything done you have to organize across 30+ agencies. Lack of investment in the public infrastructure verses the increasing population. The list goes on...
2) People want public transit just not in their back yard. Witness the central subway debacle of it not going all the way to North Beach/Fisherman's Wharf. Witness Marin voting not to extend BART to their cities. Witness the Marin SMART line first phase not ending at the Larkspur ferry terminal. Witness the high speed rail link mess and the fact that it's impossible to take a train from San Francisco to Sacramento without having to transit through about 3 different systems.
So it's no wonder that companies are running their own buses or people are looking to alternative services like Uber or Lyft because it's their only option for getting around, and as a wise man once said "There ain't no getting 'round getting 'round"
This article is misguided. Using a taxi is good for the environment exactly because it is expensive. You use a taxi first of all because you don't have a car. You don't have a car because you either ride public transport or you walk/cycle.
Don't get mad at people who use taxis a few times per week for short distances. Get mad at people who clog highways with their polluting owned cars.
With enough income, riding taxis daily becomes feasible. I think the question is distinguishing the two, instead of accusing everyone who uses them.
get a bike
I seem to recall reading that the city of SF (or another municipality?) had conducted a study that found, perhaps counterintuitively, that improving taxi service would actually end up increasing transit ridership and decreasing overall vehicle miles traveled. Improved cab service, it was claimed, would let people get rid of their own cars and begin using more convenient, more sustainable modes of transit for most things, resorting to a now more reliable taxi service as a crutch when necessary.
Taxi industry bullshit? I don’t know, because unfortunately I can’t find reference to this study at the moment—does this ring a bell with anyone?
> You may have to leave your home 10 min earlier, or arrive your home 20 min later; but it's a small price to pay to build the city we want to live in.
Given that most people will not take a job that is further than 30 min away[0], that actually makes a big difference
[0]http://www.citynews.ca/2013/12/03/commuting-times-key-factor...
This guy gets the wrong impression because he doesn't understand that uber is growing to something totally different:
1.Uber recently started to offer it's uberxl suv service, which carries upto 6 passengers and in sf costs $5 base fare + the lowest of ($0.45/minute or $2.15/mile)[1].
2.Given enough demand, uber can offer a highly efficient personalized route service, which builds optimal routes needed to transport 6 people. Let's assume such routes can be only 25% longer than normal routes , on average[2].
Combine both of those, we can replace 6X30 minutes car trips , with a single 37.5 minute suv trip, which will be charged $21.87 for 6 passengers, or $3.64 per person.
If we wanted to have a similar trip in public transportation, it would probably take around 1.5-2 hours , but might cost $2.
And if we compare this to a normal car trip, the uber experience could be much better - you could watch a tv episode on your tablet after a long work day and unwind, instead of the stress of fighting traffic. And it's priced pretty closed to the cost of personal transportation.
And the secondary effects from shifting so much traffic to highly efficient forms would greatly decrease traffic jams and further increase speed.
TL;DR - with it's new offering uber is evolving to be a much better, new mode of public transportation, both cost effective and a great experience.
[1]https://www.uber.com/cities/san-francisco
[2]research of "demand responsive transportation" talks about similar efficiencies.
This is a well-reasoned analysis but there are a few weaknesses:
- Are those 6 people travelling together (relatively unlikely), or are they being stuck in a shared vehicle with strangers? If it's the latter it seems likely to be much less comfortable than a bus, where there's usually a potential to move around a bit and you go into it expecting to make intermediate stops (and knowing where/when they are!).
- After taking plenty of effort to get the dollars right you gloss over the most important issue: routefinding. Mentioning some hypothetical "similar trip" is not all that meaningful. If you live near one stop and work near another on the same line it might be much faster to take transit. If you live in a world built primarily for cars with no regard for other modes, you may find it difficult to find any public transit option for your route.
- And a shift in traffic is laudable only if it doesn't serve to induce further demand [0].
True , some of those points i didn't take into account, but:
> Similar trip
I once read a research paper about "demand responsive transportation" that simulated such route aggregation in realistic traffic over a large part of a city(probably in finland), and got similar results with regards to route efficiency, as far as i can remember. Can't seem to find the paper , will look later again.
> induced demand
It's really hard to predict how much induced demand this will cause ,because:
1.Big efficiencies - hard to imagine all we be "eaten".
2.It lengthens trip time.
3.Once it's running, we have a software layer on top of transportation, which might be a powerful new tool for transportation management - which might greatly affect demand.
> comfort
You might be right on that, although for bus riders the decreased travel time will surely be worth the extra inconvenience.
http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/can-you-hear-the-...
> Perceptivity: [...] Adults gifted in this way detect and dislike falsehood and hypocrisy.
Having issues with hypocrisy (outward or inward) is something that "gifted" people typically have an issue with. Extreme intelligence (which is an indicator of being "gifted") is something that pervades our industry - hence our industry generally has a strong reaction to hypocrisy.
Don't believe for one second that the average person (or SFer) cares how hypocritical they are being, don't think for one second that pointing that out to them will change anything.
The only way to change their behavior is to the remove or resolve the problem that causes their hypocritical behavior.
I live in New York where the subway and bus system is pretty extensive, and taxi and livery cabs are relatively plentiful in Manhattan. I take public transit every day, but I still take cabs and own a car as well. Subways get me to work and home every day. Taxis are nice for me and my wife to have a pleasant evening together. I've even used a Uber on days when the subways are failing me so I can get back home in time to relive my babysitter. The car is nice so my wife and kids can go shopping or take trips out of the city. These are all valid use cases equally applicable to living in San Francisco (where I've lived as well.) I see no hypocrisy here, nor any room for someone else's judgment that I'm a hypocrite.
> Public transportation in San Francisco doesn't suck.
Moments later...
> The BART sucks.
That's a bit of cognitive dissonance right there. It's understandable given utopian transportation won't arrive overnight, ESPECIALLY in San Francisco. When I first moved here, I was totally blown away by the lack of a major highway connecting the North Bay to the South Bay. Yup, you gotta take Van Ness!
The fact there is massive inertia on infrastructure change in San Francisco is part of our moral system here, like it or not. That doesn't make me, or others like me, hypocrites, nor does it mean others aren't working on solving the problem. Personally, I'm working on implementing morality in other systems in which I have experience.
I don't think I've seen anyone suggest that Uber is cleaner compared to other forms of transport, just merely more convenient than normal taxi services. I also don't think switching to pure public transportation is a viable solution in a lot of circumstances. Yes it can be very good when you're travelling between common destinations, but once your destination is more than 10 minutes walk from the train/bus station, the journey time quickly starts becoming burdensome. It's also nice to have a redundant system in place for the rare occasion that the public transport network fails (line upgrades, malfunction, bomb scares, etc).
Did he ever travel to the South Bay from San Francisco? I have to doubt it, because I never saw the word "Caltrain."
By US standards, yes, SF has good public transit, but its incredibly shitty by the standards of the civilized world. I'm as progressive as you can get, have relied on Bay Area (VTA, Caltrain, MUNI, BART) public transit since 2008, and I'm the first to admit there are major problems with it. I don't think he's lived in SF (or the Bay Area in general) long enough.
Public transport?! European Communist!
I was in SF recently. BART is awful.
BART to a restaurant took over an hour. 9 minute walk to the stop, 12 minute wait for the train, 30 minute train ride, 15 minute walk. Even in the best case scenario of 0 train time, that's 19 minutes of walking.
The restaurant had a huge wait, so I used Uber to get back to where I was staying. 1 minute wait, 19 minute drive.
The Uber trip cost $10 more than BART for two people. I don't know how you value your time, but $10 for 50 minutes of time for two people is always worth it.
Really? You can't walk a few minutes, so BART sucks?
BART does suck, but for entirely different reasons. Its dirty, worn, loud, pretty much like riding in a cattle car with extra smells.
You're assuming that not getting to your destination on time is an option when taking public transportation around and especially in SF. At any point a MUNI bus/train can stop for extended periods of time with no explanation. Other times, there is an explanation like agents checking tickets and other idiocies. Either way, there's a great chance you're not making that 9am meeting with the VCs to secure funding.
One case where I use Uber/Lyft over a regular taxi is when I am at places/times where/when taxis are not readily available..Uber/Lyft works well in those situations as the drivers know the exact coordinates to show up at and do so relatively fast.
I thought the argument was going to be something like "SF supports restrictive practices in house building and rents, and therefore you should support restrictive practices in taxi service". Instead, it was even more dumb than that argument.
I used to live in Los Angeles (talk about Carmageddon) and I moved to New York 4 years ago. Since then I've sold my car and use subways, trains and my legs to get me to almost everywhere I need and once in a while I use a taxi or car service to get luggage somewhere or if it's late and I just need to get home without subway hassle.
I'm deeply considering moving to the Bay Area for reasons I won't go into here but I am really concerned that I will need to buy a car to survive. I spent 10 days there recently and I clocked almost 4 hours a day on the road to various places. In all fairness I had to commute in from up north (think Santa Rosa) for family reasons but I still had flash backs to my life in Los Angeles and the absolute necessity of having a car.
I’m doubtful that if I do move that I can find a commute to work as sweet as my current job. I walk (by choice) about 9 blocks and subway 9 more and can make the entire trip in 22 minutes anytime of day I like regardless of other commuters. In SF you have to consider traffic, bus overloading, being in just the right place at the right time to optimize your commute, or just buy a car or just use Uber and get there when you want on your schedule (still fighting traffic but that's the driver's problem).
Having grown up in Los Angeles I used to think SF public transportation was pretty advanced, but having lived in New York and the area here I realize trains, subways and the like are just much more effective here. My uninformed guess is because trains where ingrained in the local culture investments in subway, commuter trains and the like where easier to justify. In California the car was able to take hold early because of the sprawling nature of population distribution and since then it’s been near impossible to convince tax payers to build public transportation in face of all the other priorities for public tax dollars.
I think the “advent” of the electric car has made people feel they’re “doing the right thing” meanwhile it will not solve traffic issues and will only stall investment in public transportation by another fifty years.
I acknowledge the fact that many factors feed into transportation choices (Children, Luggage, Time, Schedules, Costs) but I also think underlying issues in a locality have a greater impact then individual choices. Walt Disney and Ray Bradbury both tried to fight the “good fight” for years in Los Angeles proposing Monorail systems and you can see where they managed to get.
To condemn individuals who use Uber and Lyft is like treating the symptom rather then curing the disease. Until we have real plans to make better transportation options available to the public they will continue to solve their daily problems using their own resources however they feel meets their needs. If you doubt this consider how many people ride horses to work these days…
I appreciate the sentiment of the post, but cannot quite relate it to the Silicon Valley ethos. Isn't it the natural progression that we are seeing here?
Sure Madrid has pretty good public transportation. But it also has an almost mysterious lack of bicycles. I have maybe seen a handful of them outside of parks. Not that I needed one myself, but it was just surprising to me.
finally they are coming in 10 days! You can see some photos of the electric bikes we will have https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1...