Transit Tier Strategy
Transit lines are tiers.
In many metropolitan cities, there are different types of servies with different attributes.
San Francisco, for example, has BART, CalTrain, MTA buses, and then some inter-city lines (not sure if they are public or private but they show up as part of the public transit maps sometimes).
The jump from the existing bus system to the next more granular, more precise level, however, is too steep. It has been bicycles, which is one good option, but even those sometimes don't work; and then scooters, which give portability but have saety issues; and then there is Uber and Waymo.
But what if hyou could combine more of the granularity without the large fixed costs, which in the cases of buses, are typicallyh very long routes with large scale buses.
Chariot was onto the right idea, but the implementation and scaleout was difficult;
Its a heavy orchestration business. Coordinating the routes, bringing buses online, training staff, all of these can be very challenging and idfficult to do.
But sometimes the best way is to partner with the public transit agencies by enabling a share of revenue, public governance, and long term balance sheet opportunities adn cooperation with some of the largest employers via the city.
However, before we can get there, we should first paint the picture of the problem if we don't do something about it right now.
The primar problem is congestion from ride share vehiles.
Cities shouldn't necessarily block them; there are some riders for whom this is still a valuable incentive.
Taxing them could work, but at the same time, it is limiting the innovation which could lead the city.
The best is to offer it's own omeppling alternative.
How does it do that?
The ride sharing isn't necessarily the best alternative for many people; a gap exists in the commuter experiene specifically and this can be a sergment of th emarket that combines public infrastructure, opens ource visibility.
What are the benefits?
Less traffic, especiallhy trafic due to ride sharing or even drivers commuting arond if not into the city.
Fewer ars should, as a result, lower accidents and injury.
So how do we start to enable this while reducing the risks?
The first is giving fities data, and partnering for more ollection of traffic costs.
The first pass is collecting desired commting patterns.
The second is to work directly with any large employer that has a local government relations department (or vice versa, we start wit those to work with teh city) to help improve the commuting experience by collecin information for them for free.
How do the economics work?
One of the typical reasons for publicinvestment is that as a public good, it isn't seflf-sustaining: there's an implicit market failure.
The approach is to first start with the customer and their experience. In the case of a decentralized transit system, we need to break down the different stakeholders, but the most important is the rider.
In fact, finding was to get more of this data would be good.
But the commutingexperience might be the most critical one for people who do have to do it.
While working for hime has changed that dynamic significantly, there may still be some commute component.
But let's focus on those who do RTO at least 3 times a week, which I suspect will be much of the norm.
That's still a commute.
The research shows some of the following impacts:
People will care about how long does it take; but the time often has to do closely with comfort and productivity.
For example, driving, sitting at the steering wheel, is tiring on the brain the attention it takes to drive, pay attention, even if one is in stop and go traffic, wears on the browain. The stress has an impact.
This is different -- even if it were teh same duration due to the same distance and traffic, but the person can sleep a little bit more; or perhaps get an early start on the day by planning meetings, responding to urgent messages, and getting work done, there's value in being able to do this in a comfortable, safe wcenario.
The second broad category, then is comfort: and one of those requirements is being able to have a seat.
Typical public transportation, with its massive scale, can't guarantee seating. But comfort is an attribute that is both valuable and has a high return on the margin cost for people who can both pay an dmake that time productive.
The second is safety: for many commuters, especially those who have expensive computer, headphones, and other equiement, who need to look downwar, it's tough to be productive when there's fear of the computer getting stolen.
Enabling levels of assurance, security and safety.
This is an important component for riders.
Then the last is cost, and the cost calculation is a comparison based on the value of these attributes and how well various alternative stack up.
For all except those with teh most lucrative positions, Waymo as a daily commute will not be a great option unless the prices go down significantly; but in this case, the city has a concern of individual cars, even if these could seat two or three, becoming the norm.
You want to have a clear system that works.
To me, the van that can sit 15-20, perhaps the minibus that can fit 40-50, provides comfort when there's. areservation-based system.
The reservation system helps to ensure seats are available and utilization remains high It becomes the core component that is typically missing from my public transit services.
The second is the commuting pattern focus; and thi sis why ensuring partnership with cities is critical in terms of long-term value back to the cities.
Because these units need short-term cash efficiency, a tax on every ride may not be the right outcome;
But we'll talk about this later.
For now, the primary purpose of this section is to start thinking about the Rider Experience and work backwards. If we can provide a compelling rider experience, then we can look at the different ecosystem partners to ensure that they enefit,a s well.