The way i see it, Uber is half price because it is sustained by VC money and ever-decreasing pay for drivers. Taxis or Ubers are in theory your own private vehicle or limo. It should be special occasions. Because you're late to the meeting. Or have to go the airport. Or because you had a drink too much. Having a private vehicle for everyday transport is a luxury and it shouldn't be an easy or sustainable option. Unless you are wealthy.
I've been to 20 out of 30 world's mega cities. None that I've seen has a "reliable public transportation" that covers all the edge cases like what OP raised and yet have more than decent availability and punctuation. NYC's the closest and best of the bunch with 24/7 MTA subway/bus services together with LIRR/Metro North rail services. However, there are tons of pockets of places where public transit doesn't reach or VERY inconvenient to get to. This is true for tourists and visitors as well as regular commuters.
I've been a commuter riding America's third largest public transit system NJ Transit bus/rail for almost 14 years. And I have many many stories to tell you that public transit is far from perfect and it NEVER WILL BE. But for the 80% of the time when it functions well and punctuate it gets the job done. When it doesn't, I picked the lowest fair of ride for hail service, be it Uber or Lyft or anyone else who can help me get my commute's last-mile problem done. That's the consumer's perspective.
I found that the public transportation in most of Japan was well enough, such that I never thought to myself "If only I had a car/rental right now..."
Not to mention how punctual the transportation is. Compared to where I live, where delays of 10-45+ minutes are expected, the trains in Japan would apologize for being even a single minute late. The three weeks I took the JP Rail I never had a single train be late.
On the Yamanote Line, the longest I had to wait to catch a train to another part of town was 4 minutes. To me, that's absurd. My local station only runs a train once every few hours and if you miss your train you're waiting 3-4 hours for the next one to arrive. Missing a train in Tokyo is a mild inconvenience instead of a waste of most of your day.
Which made me wonder whether that kind of loss is OK and can be waived off as a govt. benefit in lieu of private car ownership. I don't know how the economics would work out, but it would be interesting to see how they compare.
It also happens to be the case that the lines with "that kind of schedule" are the most profitable lines. That's why they run so often.
JR East (All of Japan above Kanto) finances: http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/ar/2016/pdf/ar_2016-02.pd...
According to Wikipedia Tokyo Metro made ¥63 billion in 2009.
Tokyo also has the biggest Taxi economy in the world, but as a parent said, they're more for special occasions, and cost about as much as you'd expect to pay someone to be your personal driver.
They shouldn't lose too much money or be too expensive to run, but that's the conversation to have, not how much profit they generate.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
And with how much Japan has innovated and improved their railways over the years I don't think this really applies to them. Maybe more of an American thing where we've spent $400,000,000,000 (and expected to spend $1,500,000,000,000) on a "one size fits all" fighter jet for our military that's been a complete failure in nearly every regard.
There are myriad reasons why Tokyo's metro outpaces (for one example) NYC in reliability and sanitation, but not having a 24/7 schedule is a big one.
NYC subway is actually amazingly convenient despite being run down and disgusting. There's no reason to take an Uber in NYC unless you're drunk late at night, want to feel fancy, or are going to the airport.
The Airport is the Train Station so you catch the airport shuttle to there!
Also, Uber is a just a taxi hailing app in Tokyo... so what are you trying to say? They are $4/min, which is an outrageous $300 to Tokyo...
This is called a car and the vast majority have one.
Ride-sharing is actually less luxurious than your own car. It's still shared transit, designed to lower costs and increase affordability by pooling resources and increasing total utilization. It is not meant for only the wealthy.
Not if the vast majority don't live in the USA.
I got by with taxis for the last 9 years before moving back to the states.
What? There are plenty of people living in the suburbs (in the US) that own a car (even 2) and use it for daily commuting and they are not 'wealthy'. And public transportation isn't even an option in those places.
For instance "I want to get from A to B when I want and in comfort" is not one of those problems in a large number of cases.
Public and private transport have different tradeoffs. I use both when the venn diagram of my requirements and the provision of the transport variety overlaps most.
Eg.
Car to the next town because a bus would be too slow/costly (once you own a car in the NW England busses cost a lot)
Train when I go to Manchester (faster, parking is a problem)
Train when I go to London (faster, though perhaps more expensive, comfortable, parking again)
Car when I go climbing. I don't have much gear, but I do tend to not know in advance exactly when I want to go.
Taxi when I stay out past my last train in Manchester.
You can make public transport better, but it's going to be very hard to make it on-demand, or with the same comfort level as a private car.
Except, you know. Less drunk driving, less traffic, less pollution, fewer road fatalities, and less tax money spent on road maintenance. Those little things.
And what "many millions of people?" Public transit is mostly paid for by municipal taxes, not federal. Federal taxes paid for a bloated highway system that negatively impacts many people even though we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns on more highway infrastructure.
How do people who are not served by public transit feel any of these effects?
> And what "many millions of people?" Public transit is mostly paid for by municipal taxes, not federal.
My point exactly, this is how it should be but municipalities are rather cash strapped at the moment so you likely won't see increased spending on anything. Thus "more public transit" isn't really possible without federal intervention.
> Federal taxes paid for a bloated highway system that negatively impacts many people even though we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns on more highway infrastructure.
This ignores the positive impacts. If only local roads existed very little trade would be able to take place vastly lowering GDP. Can the system be run in a more cost effective manner, certainly but that would require pushing out the public sector unions that demand unrealistic wages. Pick your poison.
Multi billion dollar subsides subsidies. Markets are only rational when left alone, toss more than $425 billion dollars just to build something and then maintain it with government funds and efficiency takes a back seat.
FYI: a great deal of the funds for highways come in the form of tolls or gasoline taxes. A great deal of the cost of public transit on the other hand is subsidized by state and local sales taxes and income taxes. It is public transit that is subsidized in the real world not the other way around.
Anyway, public transit is not what I am talking about, the US rail system continues to exist due to efficiency not subsides. Passenger rail is currently a tiny and largely ignored minority of overall traffic.
Exactly. Why do you assume it can scale to the point that it can replace all other forms of transportation? Rail is only cheap and efficient because those are the markets they selected to service, it won't scale up.
If it can why not get some investors and prove everyone else wrong?
What? You realize air tends to circulate right? And people tend to know other people in their lives who get hurt by accidents? And less traffic on roads is an externality that benefits people who drive. As does giving drunks a safe way to get home.
>My point exactly, this is how it should be but municipalities are rather cash strapped at the moment so you likely won't see increased spending on anything. Thus "more public transit" isn't really possible without federal intervention.
Road infrastructure and sprawling development are the reasons they're cash strapped. If they had adopted more transit-centric development patterns they would have raised their tax base to pay for it rather than exporting the people who use their infrastructure to unincorporated 'bedroom communities' where they don't pay into anything.
If we subsidized transit to the extent that we subsidize sprawl this wouldn't be a problem.
>This ignores the positive impacts. If only local roads existed very little trade would be able to take place vastly lowering GDP. Can the system be run in a more cost effective manner, certainly but that would require pushing out the public sector unions that demand unrealistic wages. Pick your poison.
Please review what I wrote. I didn't say not to have highways. I said we hit the point of diminishing returns long ago and additional spending in this direction is no longer beneficial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...