Comment by dgregd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dgregd | Hacker News Reader

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That's why I would like to see a hybrid of a electric van and Uber as a new city bus. The bus should have 6 doors and separated passenger space. So each passenger would have its own private space. Travel time should be much shorter due to using fast lanes and low number of bus stops. During rush hours the bus should take 5 passengers (6 with self-driving technology). Because of small size it should economic enough to use the bus only for one passenger, even in suburbs. Uber like software should be used for costs optimization, for example you could wait for the bus in front of your house or walk 500 meters closer to the main road to save $5. All needed technology already exists. No need to dig tunnels.

PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

PS2. I don't want to discuss how many days per year someone can ride an e-bike to work. Some sort of public / car transport is and will be needed. There is no much innovation in public bus transport therefore I described the idea about electric van / Uber hybrid.

> PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

I lived in southern Sweden and while bike ridership did go down in winter, it was still very high. My city even prioritized snow-clearing/sanding of bike paths (they have special mini bulldozers).

edit: the numbers I found were that in Sweden 30-40% of trips on a bicycle were done in the winter half of the year, so about 30% lower ridership than in the summer[0]

[0] http://www.trafa.se/globalassets/rapporter/rapport-2015_14-c...

I live in the south of Germany (that's central Europe) and cycle to work year-round. Cycle paths are cleared of snow just like roads. All you need is a winter jacket, a beanie that goes beneath your helmet, and a pair of (leather) gloves against the wind. That's just standard winter gear, nothing specific to cycling. Rain pants are a good idea when it's snowing or as an extra layer of insulation, and every serious cycle commuter has a pair anyway.

In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

I live in southern Sweden and not only is April-October (7 month) perfectly bikable for everybody, a whole lot of people happily bike year round. In areas that get more snow/ice people can get studded tired for their bikes.

> 6 doors and separated passenger space

> small size

These are conflicting requirements. The minimum size for 6 doors is probably about the size of a long-wheelbase Transit van, only a little smaller than a normal bus.

I'd love to see someone try the commuter multi-drop-mini-bus system; it's implemented informally in various ways already that don't have multinational branding. Won't help in really dense cities like London where traffic is at walking pace, but potentially useful in other places.

> The minimum size for 6 doors is probably about the size of a long-wheelbase Transit van

Depends on the mini-bus layout. 7-seater VW Touran (4527 mm long) has 5 doors. So maybe it possible to build 5 m long van with 6 doors, with 2 on the back.

> Won't help in really dense cities like London where traffic is at walking pace

Dedicated lanes and some regulations will be needed. For example mini-bus shouldn't be allowed to enter crowded routes unless it has 3 passengers. So two people would have to wait 5 min for the third passenger and so on. Or it can be used to transport people from suburbs to subway stations in cities like London.

    PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are 
    only useful for 4 months a year.

I live in Berlin and you definitely see lots of people on bikes between march and october (8 months of the year). Not much different in Amsterdam or Copenhagen I believe (quite possibly better).

Maybe such service is possible, surely ridewithvia and ford's chariot are doing something similar, and it looks successful, altough it may take a long time to scale.

But

1. How do you solve the personal space problem of a vehicle(a cost effective) and convince a big car company to make you vehicles ? that's not an easy problem.

2. I haven't yet seen such shuttle powered by electricity - not sure the tradeoffs(charge time, ride time, vehicle cost) are attractive enough for shuttle drivers.

They have special machines in Belgium that clean the snow off all of the bike paths - and yes, then people do cycle.

I cycle to work in New York, colder than much of Central and Northern Europe, year-round. The main issue is that the city doesn't do a great job of clearing its many new bike lanes of snow.

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