The last five installments of this series in NATIONAL BUS TRADER documented the recent impacts of robots on U.S. public transportation. Much of this picture is not pretty. Some things get worse by the day. One can prepare for “worse.” One cannot prepare for anything if not informed. As I have written many times in NATIONAL BUS TRADER installments, many things lie beyond the control of those in the a particular field. Public transportation is one of these fields. The consequences of robots provide a stark contrast to the glistening, beautifully designed, brilliantly engineered, clean fuel-burning, energy-efficient vehicles displayed on
Drivers v. Robots, Part 5: The Consolidation of Demand-Responsive Services
Demand-responsive service began a century ago with curb-to-curb taxi service. Shortly after, only a single significant exclusive-ride mode was added to the mix: Limousine service. Most of the remaining changes occurred in service delivery concepts (pre-scheduling, dispatching, cruising, posting) and technology (radios, mobile data terminals, automatic vehicle locators, cell phones, navigators, GPS, and more-advanced, safer vehicles). The recent emergence of transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft tweaked the exclusive ride landscape. These offsprings triggered changes in the efficiency and survival of competing modes. They shifted the full-time employment of professional drivers to part-time non-professional drivers. And they grew and
Drivers v. Robots, Part 4: Consolidation of Fixed Route Services
One does not need a crystal ball to see many things coming. By the end of 2014, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick noted that “drivers are a temporary nuisance” (Vanity Fair, December, 2014). Less than two years later (September, 2016), 80 driverless Volvos were introduced into the general traffic stream in Pittsburgh. Well before this current installment of National Bus Trader, Uber had decimated taxi systems across the country. With ridership declining, the New York City Transit Authority is selling bus and subway passes through the Uber app. The City’s proposal for a congestion pricing zone in Manhattan will fine
Drivers v. Robots, Part 3: Defensive Driving in the Age of Entitlement
One can begin a speech on any subject by claiming that, “It was a period of great change.” Often, the problem with change is not change. It is the failure to adjust to it. This has been less true in the last five decades. It is unfair to compare today’s America with America 50 years ago. Genuine unemployment was rare. Disparities in income were moderate. Staff were everywhere. Businesses and public agencies got the phone. America sent Care Packages around the World. World population was dramatically less. Nearly 100% of the coral was alive. The oceans were not overfished. Species
Drivers v. Robots, Part 2: The Nature of Modern Travel
We are only a few years away from the complete consolidation of fixed route transportation (transit, motorcoach and schoolbus) and the complete consolidation of demand-responsive transportation (paratransit, taxi, limousine, NEMT and special education). Future installments in this series will explain why. This installment will lay the groundwork by comparing modern travel to travel 30 years ago. The opportunities for motorcoach operators to benefit from these changes are once-in-a-lifetime. Travel in Yesteryear Thirty years ago, I coordinated intercontinental travel from several U.S. cities to Slovenia with a handful of one-sentence-long faxes: “Meet me in Maribor next Tuesday.” The various consultants simply
Drivers v. Robots, Part 1
In 2017, I wrote nine installments for National Bus Trader about the replacement of drivers with robots. That series was titled, “Autonomous and Inevitable.” At great length, I examined the dynamics of driverless vehicles (or “highly automated vehicles” as politicallycorrect USDOT officials like to call them) and the socio-economic, political and institutional forces which make them unavoidable. This series of installments, which shall appear periodically, will examine some likely reactions to the robots by drivers. Early Roots of Discord Long before GPS-based navigators directed drivers through less-well-known portions of the service area, an important driver’s skill was “service area familiarity.”
Tight Schedules, Part 6: Schoolbus Service
Routing for general education schoolbus service has been increasingly performed by robots for 25 years now. Yet general education schoolbus schedules are not nearly as tight as those of fixed route transit. One obvious reason is that schoolbus passengers cannot continuously be late to their destinations. If their bus schedules are the cause of it, they are eventually adjusted. In the wildly-unplanned schoolbus sector, these adjustments are most often made during the “shake-out” period during the first few weeks of the school year. But they are adjusted. When they are tight, it usually reflects weather, traffic, detours, parades, maintenance problems
Tight Schedules, Part 5: Motorcoach Service
National Bus Trader readers were treated (or subjected) to three brutal installments about tight schedules in the transit, non-emergency medical and paratransit sectors. Apart from motorcoaches deployed in transit service, tight schedules are a problem in only a handful of motorcoach scenarios. Still, coping with them is challenging in Today’s economic and operating environments. Geography, Regulations and Inflexibility In the August, 2003 National Bus Trader article titled “Pi R Squared,” I argued for doubling the size of a single vehicle’s service area by simply expanding the hours-of-service to 12 hours on-duty, an 18-hour span and, most importantly, verification of a
Tight Schedules, Part 4: Complementary Paratransit Service
Most motorcoach companies do not provide paratransit service. So learning the nuances of this mode is often limited. But much can be learned from this rarely-creative, inefficient and often dangerous service. Paratransit’s tight schedules, and the reasons for them, provide important lessons for any mode of transportation. In contrast to motorcoach operators, transit agencies have a formal responsibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide complementary paratransit service. Most transit agencies contract out these services to private companies. Either way, tight schedules trigger safety compromises. If the victim has an effective attorney, tight schedules are a liability. Ingenuity
Tight Schedules, Part 3: Fixed Route Transit Service
For reasons different than those of other modes, transit schedules are often tight. In many urban systems, all or most schedules are tight. When schedules are tight, drivers compromise passenger, pedestrian and motorist safety to comply with them. A number of common safety compromises are summarized below. A deeper treatment of those compromises typical of fixed route transit service may be found on safetycompromises.com., and in the 12 National Bus Trader articles published on this subject in September through December, 2017 and April through December, 2018 issues. That series was organized by type of safety compromise. This series, organized mode