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The Bay Area has reliable, clean, consistent public transit right now, it's just not evenly distributed

> The program applies to all 27 San Francisco Bay Area transit agencies that accept contactless Visa tap-to-pay.

Probably has something to do with that. Why on Earth are there 27 different transit agencies in the Bay Area? Probably should be a single digit, no?

They haven't created AGI either, they're just applying the CADT development model to money.

One of these doesn't require a multi-decade approval process for good reason. (Figuring out the logistics and civil engineering planning is a real thing and building it out isn't trivial) . Of course this could change

It is a plain fact that there would be more interest in public transit if it was as clean, as safe, and as reliable (if not cleaner, safer, and more reliable) than driving using personal vehicles.

> The reason there's not more public transit is because the economics are terrible.

The reason we don't have roads is because the economics are terrible. The government gets $0 per trip [1], but it costs billions of dollars a year in operating expenses.

Wait, that's not how it works.

[1] Federal gas taxes don't count, because those go to the Highway Trust Fund which funds road construction, which is not an operating expense. State gas taxes may vary. Although toll roads also properly charge people user fees, although for some reason, lots of drivers complain about how expensive tolls are...

Infrastructure for cars is massively subsidised too. Since tansport is infrastructure it it interacts with everything else (eg less cars in the city => less spending on car infra) and has a lot of positive externalities. The investment pays back in positive outcomes which can also be quantified in terms of money of you like. It's like you've got a balance sheet but you're filtering it to only look at two items.

Yes, but public transit does create value - the question is who captures it.

BART likely created huge profits for people who owned land in the areas it services - house prices and rents would have increased substantially. Public investment, private profits. Subsidies in the form of low-cost fares like this are just further welfare for the landowners.

Interestingly, about a third of BART's cost was acquiring land - if/when that same land is cleared and sold on market, the project would have operated at an enormous profit. Certainly, BART's current assets would far exceed 'total fares collected'.

Cars are also subsidized (roads) - isn't that what taxes are for?

If we could go back to pre-pandemic ridership levels, the subsidy rate would be inverted (fares covered 70% versus 30% now). Public Transit struggles with low utilization. It'll take 10+ years to get back to that ridership level though.

iirc the NYC subway is only about 40% subsidized by fares. I’m happy to pay more in taxis for it to exist and subsidize lower income residents. There are huge economic benefits to the city that you’re not factoring in.

Not everything has to be directly money making.

If anything, the Bay Area needs significantly more public transit. BART in particular is mostly useful between cities, in my experience. You can’t go from the mission to cow hollow or dog patch to north beach, let alone anywhere to the ocean.

Also, subways don’t have much (if any) marginal cost per passenger. The issue isn’t cost but ridership. Ridership will increase with utility, which requires political will, which does not exist.

SF could be so much more.

For another comparison, Moscow Central Diameters system (electric trains traveling from Moscow to nearby small towns) has 4 lines, 137 stations, 188 miles total length. It uses united fare payment system with buses and subway and transfer from a train to the subway is free of charge. Fare is about $1-$3 depending on the route. To be fair, it goes through Moscow at a slow speed and takes an eternity to get anywhere, and its range is limited [1].

Moscow subway [2] has 17 lines and 309 stations. In newer cars, 2 USB-A sockets are available near every seat, ready for robots.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Central_Diameters

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Metro

You are completely ignoring the MASSIVE benefit the transit provides to the city. It allows densification. It allows people to get places without driving (and thus without parking). It frees up roads/traffic for those who do decide to drive.

But the Bay Area’s highway networks are at saturation during peak hours. 101 and 280 are at least as bad as before the pandemic.

We have under-utilized transit corridors that could alleviate much of this strain if they weren’t so damn far away from where the people sitting in traffic want to go.

If you think that's bad, you should look at the financial returns on highways and roads! A much grimmer picture

What is the amortized cost of all the cars, car infrastructure, driver monitoring and enforcement, parking easements and lots, gasoline, insurance, harm to people inflicted by uninsured drivers?

What would be the cost of turning all those transit trips into car trips? Would rush hour start at 5 am and end at 10 pm?

Are you arguing that specific past bad economics are somehow indicative of a theoretical hard ceiling for any potential future performance? If so, how are other places in the world then regularly above that ceiling?

Yeah but the cost per passenger is in the hundreds due to private car ownership

Are you factoring in fixed costs to that estimate? That may be partially misleading if so.

I mean my own PERSONAL per mile cost for a car is around $1/mi/yr, and it has a low interest rate loan and well below average monthly payment. Accounting for car insurance, gas, and maintenance.

And that’s not even counting for however much I’m subsidized on the highway and road systems I don’t pay anything to use.

Public transit is definitely expensive, but the alternative is also very costly and also regressive. The goal with public transit is to provide a low-cost, high-density way to move people around the city. It’s a public service, it shouldn’t be making profit. Car ownership is more expensive in total and very space-inefficient. Cities don’t have room for space inefficiency.

And how much do people spend on cars, gas, maintenance, insurance, parking, etc.?

This is the sad truth.

A lot of people are commenting about "externalities". That's just handwaving.

The real solution is to increase the ridership and the frequency. Public transit must be _reliable_. I live in SF and experience Muni's unreliability first hand.

The reason a person would prefer to drive over taking the Muni is a simple one: she knows the car will be there when she's ready to head back. Muni, on the other hand: one never knows when the next bus will come or if it will come at all. And then the City hands out Muni passes to all homeless people, regardless of behavior. Yesterday I sat down in a Muni train and guess what? A used piece of TP (about a foot long) was blowing around on the floor and everybody was playing dodge-the-TP, trying to jump out of its way. Buses and trains are often not cleaned at the end of the day.

Question is: why doesn't the City subsidize Uber/Waymo etc. also to the tune of $6.37/trip (inside SF)?

Looking at the financials outside the US might also be relevant. There are no reasons for the US to be special here in my opinion.

Blew my mind when I learned that about Caltrain. I thought tickets felt a little expensive, then I learned what it really should cost.

You know subsidy per train passenger mile?

it's almost like public transport is a service and not a for profit business

> unning mostly empty busses.

I always like being the person that points out that cars have on avg 1.5 passangers.

Meaning a bus (avg size of 2 medium cars) with just 4 people is already a better use of space on the road.

So while well utilised infrastructure might look prettier, the current misuse of infra is so vast that even minor use of public transit would already bring benefits.

The best formula for public transit is the Rail plus Property business model. In Hong Kong, the MTR Corporation buys up land adjacent to a planned future station, then builds the station afterwards. Then makes money from renting out the properties adjacent to the station.

JR East in Japan operates in the same way: it makes the majority of its profit from the real estate, malls, and hotels it operates adjacent to its train stations.

This is why the main train company in the Netherlands has dirt cheap bike rentals at most train stations. Saves a bunch of last-mile headaches, as a traveller.

The problem is that personal vehicles inevitably leads to unsustainable traffic. Now, for low traffic areas, driverless cars might be an acceptable solution. But for busy areas, the geometry of transporting 1M people in cars vs buses is simply inescapable.

Taxis are not efficient or cost-effective for short trips, so they’re not an ideal last-mile solution. I’d rather rent a scooter, personally.

However, if I need to make an appointment on time, or just reduce morning hassles, I take a Waymo, but afterwards, I may be inclined to take public transit in the return direction. Same distance, similar route, but distinct criteria for budgeting time, money, and mental health.

Indeed. Most people travelling around by taxi or public transport could be considered gratuitous anyway. You're probably not carrying a load of tools to do any work. You're more likely going to a bullshit job, going to meet friends, going to a concert or buying shit you don't need etc.

The NL and other transbay buses are so fantastic. They do get stuck in bridge traffic though.

Yeah but then you're on a bus...

It sounds like Visa is coordinating the transfer data between agencies, and Waymo has just signed up to the existing program as if it were a transit agency.

What would they be able to get by linking the card? I thought that would just facilitate immediate charges/refunds to the card since the card is stored.

The target audience of this offer presumably takes Waymo at least occasionally, so how is a Waymo credit "not real money"? And what does transaction data have to do with this?

They want to reduce the friction for next time: then you'll already have a card linked.

OR, if it's Visa only, it's a comarketing stunt.

Company scrib for the 3rd millennium - now with mandatory expiration!

Google probably has the most credit card data already. Maybe even more than Visa since they work with multiple payment networks.

Oh, I think it's a great idea to reward people for taking transit because it will help reduce traffic on the road and allow the Waymos to operate in tighter loops, increasing availability to other passengers, and possibly even bringing costs down as a result.

My selfish trip all the way across the city instead of to the nearest convenient transit station makes things worse for everyone except for me :)

To make it more clear why this would be the case, imagine that everyone in the city behaved as I did, all taking Waymos to this same train station, even if it was far out of their way. Almost all the Waymos would start at that train station after dropping other people off, and they would have to drive to get the next person, so you can think of each trip as a loop. Some of the loops would be very small and fast, for people who happen to be close to that train station, while others would be very long, for the people who started all the way across town. Less cars are needed to accommodate the short loop trips than to accommodate the long loop trips, and since there are a limited amount of cars, people will have to wait longer to complete their trips.

If instead you imagine that each Waymo that's driving around initializes on a grid around the city, with, idk, 10 blocks between each of them, and the people who want a ride, also equally distributed, all instead get a ride to their nearest transit station, the loops are shorter, which means more people can receive service.

Make traffic for everyone else worse with this one simple trick

Maybe just an artifact of where I live (Los Angeles), but whenever Ive considered taking Waymo to the train station, it's usually easier and often cheaper to take it all the way to my destination. eg right now a Waymo to the train station is $16, then you wait 0-15 minutes to hop on the train, paying an additional $3.50 round trip. I'm pretty pro-transit, but I can't deny that the ipace is a much more pleasant experience than the train (I can play my music, don't have to listen to other people, guaranteed seating, guaranteed AC, fewer undesired encounters with strangers).

Meanwhile, a waymo to a stadium on that same train line is $26. If you're with 1-3 other people, taking Waymo all the way is a no-brainer.

Probably because of UX?

At least in the US, the traditional taxis were terrible - only way to order is via phone call, you have no idea when your car will arrive, nor how much your trip will cost, there is no easy way to send feedback to driver, and there was a good chance for an generally unpleasant experience...

Uber/Lyft changed this all and actually made the car-for-hire services usable. In my circles, this was the real reason why everyone simply stopped using taxis completely the moment any alternatives appeared.

And Waymo has a nice app and clean experience, and won't take you long way so it can charge you more, hence people group it with rideshares, despite it technically being closer to taxi.

(I understand that in other countries, taxis were much better. Before Lyft, I always felt envious while reading about their taxi systems)

waymo, uber, lyft, etc. are akin to a classic black cab service where you call a number to make a sort of ride appointment. these never needed taxi licenses, as taxis are specifically hailable from the street at will rather than prebooked.

I think calling them "rideshare" was always a legal euphemism.

"rideshare" means "taxis" now

> But an "AV lane" will very quickly converge on the traffic characteristics of a regular road.

A regular road loses capacity with increased speed due to increased distances between cars, braking ripple effects etc.

At 75 mph/120 km/h, two seconds distance is 33 meters, likely enough to fit three more autonomous cars into the same lane.

They absolutely will. Zipline (drone delivery) is already successfully operating with FAA approval, and is actively fulfilling daily deliveries in multiple metro areas. They just announced a partnership with Uber Eats, who, according to a podcast with the Zipline CEO, wanted all of their current and near-future planned capacity.

Yeah. For example, if I lived in Cupertino, have it manage:

Home -> waymo -> Caltrain -> Waymo -> sf concert venue

For me smoothly

I'm also a fan of dedicated stored-value cards (they're generally much more robust during network or backend system outages), but I can really see the point of offering both in cities like New York or San Francisco.

Tourists trying to tap their credit or debit card and then arguing with the bus driver for a while, holding everyone up, used to be a quite common sight in SF.

I do use a contactless Clipper card, on my phone. I don't think this bit is relevant: getting Visa to correlate transactions is probably a lot easier for Waymo to get done than integrating with Clipper to see if you've ridden transit in the past two hours. That's the same if you use a physical card or one on your phone.

Daily and monthly passes are only available on Clipper. Credit cards can only be used for full fare single rides.

https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/muni/fares

Habit, mostly. I also have several hundred dollars of pre-tax transit money on my Clipper card from when I had that benefit at a previous job (and set the paycheck deduction way higher than I should have at the time), and I still haven't used it up. I assume there's rightly no way to get cash back for this, since then I could keep the tax deduction and spend it on anything. (And even if I could get the cash back, likely it wouldn't be worth the hassle vs. just continuing to use the Clipper card. The card is on my phone, so it's not like the experience would be any different.)

Also I don't mind saving SFMTA a bit on transaction fees. I'm sure the total transaction fees are lower with me periodically topping up my Clipper card, than if I used a credit card for every ride. I expect me doing this is probably only saving a few dollars per year at most, but it makes me feel good to support my local transit authority even in a tiny way like that.

The point still stands. Regular transit users generally don't pay per ride, they use monthly passes. Or aren't those a thing in San Francisco?

Last time I used BART, I had no idea you could use a credit card at the turnstyles. They've changed how this works like 20 times, and it never worked well.

I mean it does save the public transit utility a lot of money in transaction fees so I'm happy to deal with it for that. But the main benefit is pre-tax transit benefits if your company offers it. It can go into a clipper card easily.

Yep. I live in SOMA, near both the freeway and a BART station.

Without traffic, a car has me (and a friend) curbside in 12 minutes for $30. Even during rush hour, the southbound traffic between the 7th St onramp and the SFO exit is almost never very slow (while NB is always a standstill).

BART is 30 minutes on the train + however long it takes to walk to the station + the transfer from BART to SFO AirTrain to get to the terminal. Minimum 1 hour. Easily another 30 min if you're unlucky with train arrivals. And by getting off BART at the airport stop, you pay a premium fare of $11.80 per person.

I simply don't bother taking the train.