Using Uber/Lyft to replace Off Peak Feeder routes

[Tesladom]

True Driverless cars are coming - operating in Phoenix and now approved in San Francisco

GM Cruise announced that it received the greenlight from the California DMV to operate a fleet of true driverless Chevy Bolt EVs.



Over the last few years, GM’s Cruise self-driving division has been operating a fleet of autonomous Chevy Bolt EVs in San Francisco.

The test program is regulated by the California DMV and now the agency has given them permission to operate vehicles without a backup driver.

GM Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said that he believes they will be the first to test a truly driverless system in a major US city:

“Today, Cruise received a permit from the California DMV to remove the human backup drivers from our self-driving cars. We’re not the first company to receive this permit, but we’re going to be the first to put it to use on the streets of a major U.S. city.”

The news come after Waymo launched its own driverless ride-hailing service to the public in Phoenix.

However, the streets of San Francisco are notoriously more difficult to navigate than Phoenix streets.

Ammann added:

But even without a literal launch into the sky, this is our moonshot. And the chaotic, gritty streets of SF are our launchpad. This is where years of blood, sweat, and tears have been poured out by everyone on the Cruise mission. And it’s where over two million miles of city testing will truly hit the road for the first time: an electric car, driving by itself, navigating one of the most difficult driving cities in the world.

The company said that the driverless testing will start later this year:

“Before the end of the year, we’ll be sending cars out onto the streets of SF — without gasoline and without anyone at the wheel. Because safely removing the driver is the true benchmark of a self-driving car, and because burning fossil fuels is no way to build the future of transportation.”

A few years ago, GM unveiled an autonomous Bolt EV without a steering wheel.

https://electrek.co/2020/10/15/gm-cruise-greenligh-true-driverless-chevy-bolt-evs/

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Acajack

As a fan of transit I am quite happy that there are projects like the various Ottawa LRT extensions and the REM in Montreal that are well enough along.

Because with the changes that COVID will likely bring to society and a likely financial crunch in the near-future, I don't have much hope for anything that doesn't already have shovels deep in the ground.

That means the tramway project for Plateau-Aylmer in Gatineau, unfortunately.

I don't think COVID is really going to hurt transit that much in the long run. Widespread working and studying from home for both office workers and university students was fun at first but it has serious drawbacks.

The WFH model is not good for socialization, company bonding/morale, or for networking/setting up a career. There's also very real security concerns with WFH - for this reason, I think the federal government especially will pivot back hard to in-person office attendance.

Post-secondary institutions, too. It's becoming very clear that Zoom webinars are not even remotely close to a proper substitute for in-person attendance for universities. I'd argue that for a university, actually being there and being immersed in the environment is way more important than the actual academics, and with the class-from-home model, you're missing all of that. "virtual coffee meetups" are no substitute for actual human interaction.

After this is all over, I think we'll see a strong cultural reaction against the idea of remote-everything, and doing things "for real" will become the cool thing to do. 2020s popular culture will be all about tangible things you can see with your own eyes, and feel with your own hands. We're seeing a preview of this with the growing interest in things like breadmaking, camping, etc. Physical distancing will be a thing of the past and will not be something people will want to keep up.

That said, I do think there will be a higher rates of telecommuting than in the old times, as some people really do enjoy it. For this reason I do think peak-period transit ridership may indeed take a longer term hit, possibly taking as long as 10-15 years to return to 2019 levels. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - peak period surge capacity can be expensive to accommodate for transit agencies. If anything, smoothing out demand peaks at rush hour would improve the economics of transit.

In Ottawa's case, this does call into question whether LRT investment was worthwhile, as the old Transitway system worked well enough outside of rush hours. Not to say that the Confederation Line isn't an improvement - the user experience overall is far superior IMO - but the necessity of it as an upgrade is questionable if we don't have such a large peak-period ridership surge. The Kanata and Barrhaven extensions are probably dead - they were already on shaky ground. If it wasn't already under construction, the Orleans extension would be too.

[J.OT13]

I hope you're right about remote working/education will be largely rejected after this. That is the biggest threat to local economies IMO.

As for the rail upgrade, I think that, up to Stage 2 and maybe the Aylmer-Ottawa tram, will be worth it. Yes, the Transitway worked fine, but I feel like people are more willing to take rail-based transit regularly for day-to-day activates than buses. I agree that extensions to Kanata and Barrhaven, which are almost exclusively commuter focused, should be shelved, but I don't think they will; transit expansion seems far more politicly driven than they are about what's logical or needed.

[Tesladom]

Before the pandemic, I was hybrid Work From Home - Work from Office.
Now strictly from home, but I foresee many people who did work exclusively from the Office have more options to work from Home for part of the time anyway. For me, the flexibility is one of my main drivers of productivity and positive attitude. I agree however that after 6 months of this (especially now that summer is done), I've had enough of WFH

That being said, if there is more flexibility to WFH, this will reduce usage and dependence of transit, at least in the feeder routes.
Feeder routes are loss leaders (and there for compliance to rules), but using the airline model, they typically lose money on small feeder routes but they profit from the traffic they generate on mainline routes.
For LRT to be effective, we need more convenient and quick access to the stations, not a put-put routes through winding street of suburbia

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Tesladom

True Driverless cars are coming - operating in Phoenix and now approved in San Francisco

Maybe. I work in software but I'm very skeptical that "true" driverless vehicle technology (level 5 automation) is anywhere close. It is likely a decade away or more.

But assuming driverless vehicles will someday exist, then driverless buses will be every bit as possible as driverless cars. Driverless buses on fixed routes would have all the advantages of buses (ability to carry a large number of people per hour at low cost per passenger). But they would also remove the largest component of the cost of transit (driver labour).

So even with automation, I don't see how point-to-point service using cars could be more efficient or effective than buses.

[Richard Eade]

Very good point about autonimous buses, Brad.

Actually, since Ottawa wants to claim that it is an advanced centre for the development of autonomous vehicles, I would really like to see Ottawa pilot autonomous buses along the new Baseline BRT. The vehicles could, during development, have a driver/back-up driver, but would, eventually, be completely driver-less.

These buses could run east from Baseline/Algonquin Station through the College, along Baseline/Heron in their own lanes, go through Billings Bridge Station, and along the Transitway to Hurdman Station. Ideally, these buses would also be electrically powered with batteries or super-capacitors.

[Tesladom]

It's the whole milk run aspect of the big empty bus that is the problem, perhaps smaller automated micro pod buses like this would work better.
Convenience of have a service to your door and more or less direct access route - POD may pick up or drop off a couple of people along the way as well.
The issue of passenger security is probably the biggest issue I see.

Which ever company figures this out will be next trillion$ company, maybe $10 Trillion - this is massive disruption, and when the nay-sayers are all going on about how this can't be done, someone will make it happen, you watch

[Kitchissippi]

PRT lives again! What ever happened to Franky?

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Tesladom

It's the whole milk run aspect of the big empty bus that is the problem, perhaps smaller automated micro pod buses like this would work better.

Maybe, but if there is heavier demand at some times of the day (e.g. rush hour and kids heading to/from school) then it is cheaper and more efficient to use a large vehicle all day.

Convenience of have a service to your door and more or less direct access route - POD may pick up or drop off a couple of people along the way as well.

"Driving down crescents and cul-de-sacs to people's doors" and "direct access route" seem to be things that are in opposition to one another.

Which ever company figures this out will be next trillion$ company, maybe $10 Trillion - this is massive disruption, and when the nay-sayers are all going on about how this can't be done, someone will make it happen, you watch

Uber and many other companies are certainly trying, but this is a geometry problem. "Uber Pool" tries to match rides and make the trips more direct by asking people to walk to common pickup points. Sounds strangely similar to a bus?

I'm not opposed any experimentation with on-demand transit. I've brought up the example of Belleville. They replaced their fixed route evening bus with a bus that runs on an on-demand service. (Based on a platform developed by Ontario-based company Pantonium). Customers can request trips on an app or can also just flag the bus down. But the bus doesn't go door-to-door: it only stops at regular transit stops that are served by regular fixed routes during the day.

This fall, Belleville re-introduced 2 fixed evening routes on the most popular corridors of the on-demand service. They retained the on-demand service for the rest of the city, but if you are travelling between 2 points on the fixed route, you need to use the fixed route. This goes to show that on-demand transit doesn't scale: once it becomes too popular, it works better as a fixed route.

[Mille Sabords]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Maybe. I work in software but I'm very skeptical that "true" driverless vehicle technology (level 5 automation) is anywhere close. It is likely a decade away or more.

But assuming driverless vehicles will someday exist, then driverless buses will be every bit as possible as driverless cars. Driverless buses on fixed routes would have all the advantages of buses (ability to carry a large number of people per hour at low cost per passenger). But they would also remove the largest component of the cost of transit (driver labour).

So even with automation, I don't see how point-to-point service using cars could be more efficient or effective than buses.

Completely agree.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Tesladom

It's the whole milk run aspect of the big empty bus that is the problem, perhaps smaller automated micro pod buses like this would work better.

I hadn't heard about this before, but they are planning on doing a pilot project of an automated shuttle vehicle in Toronto: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments...-pilot-projects/automated-shuttle-trial/

It looks like the pilot is planned for next spring. They appear to be planning that the vehicle would operate on a fixed route in a specific neighbourhood.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

I hadn't heard about this before, but they are planning on doing a pilot project of an automated shuttle vehicle in Toronto: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments...-pilot-projects/automated-shuttle-trial/

It looks like the pilot is planned for next spring. They appear to be planning that the vehicle would operate on a fixed route in a specific neighbourhood.

COVID party