Quote:
Originally Posted by bodaggin
Understandable criticism. But I could also point to a Portage bus incident with Mr Vince Li to the contrary. And the City of Winnipeg busses with crack heads and stabbings left and right. Bad stuff happens when you put random people together. There's no way completely around it. Publicly operated has 0 bearing on this.
At least with ridesharing you can vet your co-occupant. Females can go with females only, and avoid drivers with sketchy reviews or no history. I mean, people use Uber without issue, rideshare is no different.
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I had never heard of Poparide until you mentioned it earlier in this thread. Given how new it is and how so few drivers have ratings, I would be apprehensive to use the service until it is more established, even as a white male. Although I am a late adopter of things like Amazon, Uber.
I agree with your sentiment that whether it is government run or through a rideshare, or privately owned like taxis, there's going to be some issues. It's the problems that the media latch on to that can help make or break a certain service unfortunately.
I remember the spate of articles around assaults or poor service from taxi drivers prior to Uber's arrival. I think that might have helped propel their service in the city. Regardless, shitty people will be able to get past most systems designed to filter them out, especially if they are being deliberate in their actions. You can find negative press on basically any mode of transportation because humans are humans.
As for the general theme of this conversation, I feel the prairies in particular are not currently ready for publicly funded inter-city public transport. Too little density, too spread out, and too established culture of car ownership.
To get people out of their cars and into busses, you need to make the pros outweigh the cons in their mind. So you would need fairly frequent and reliable service that doesn't cost more than operating a vehicle. If you only have an 8 am and a 5 pm bus servicing Niverville, people aren't going to structure their entire lives around that bus schedule and hope that it's never canceled or they miss it because a meeting went late. Or you have your nephew's dance recital after work and now you have to find a ride back to your exurb community because you missed the last bus. At least in the city, bus service runs later, a cab/uber isn't prohibitively expensive for the odd night out, or the odds of a friend/family member being able to drop you off on the way home are way higher.
You would need immense upfront funding with the understanding that there will be many years of little ridership before people start mode shifting outside the city. I know my example above was more commuter focused, but the same would apply to inter-city travel.
I do like your thoughts Bodaggin on the underused capacity of the cars on the road. Blabla car seems decently popular in Europe, so if Poparide takes off then maybe that can help alleviate some of the issues car-free individuals have with inter-city travel.
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