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Comment by dangjc | Hacker News Reader

"Via’s cost per ride to the operator is about $10."

This doesn't sound sustainable. I wonder how much of this can be reduced.

Lot more expensive to build big parking garages that we all drive our cars to, to get on the bus. These feeder vans should cost way less per passenger than buses, if they can get a reasonable number of passengers.

> These feeder vans should cost way less per passenger than buses, if they can get a reasonable number of passengers.

I'm curious why this would be the case - I'm under the impression the vast majority of the cost of operating a van/shuttle/bus is the cost of the driver.

You have a less skilled driver in the van. The one I often drive is just a 3 seat van. The driver is making $12 an hour I think they told me. It's a 6 month experiment.

I don’t want to say less skilled, but you need less training which probably lowers costs.

However in terms of passengers, shorter trips means it’s better to compare passengers per hour rather than the number in a bus at any one time. If they can average 8 passengers per hour the service would be making money on it’s own and 4+ could probably be worthwhile as part of a larger network.

> This doesn't sound sustainable.

That's why we have taxes...

Of course, the program should be efficient, and there's a discussion to be had about whether it's worth having at all, but it's not a requirement that it be self-sustaining. I guess ultimately it's up to the voters to decide if it's worth subsidizing.

^ This: it's not because something is subsidized by central plan, that doing the same thing physically would not survive in a hypothetical free market: one should not look only at the subsidy in one direction, but also in the other: taxation on the organisation and the employees involved results in a large subsidy towards the central plan. So one should invest towards the goal of expected "(taxes paid and alternative environmental externalities avoided) minus (subsidies received and environmental externalities caused)" instead of neurotically focussing on the subsidies

That's actually not that far off from what many cities end up spending per-ride for lesser-used bus service

The best way to reduce costs is likely to get more people to use the service, which will result in more trips being shared with more passengers. They could also look at usage data and consider developing fixed, regular routes which if done right will congregate more people into fewer vehicles

They could also develop trips with a fixed time-table(to help people coordinate) from general area X to Y and a variable on-demand route(to shorten the trip).

I don't know about Seattle, but in NYC that would probably be more expensive than your average taxi or Uber ride without any bulk discount or subsidy. I know that in this case the city is eating most of the cost, but it sounds outrageously high.

Not that a service like this is needed in NYC, since you're never more than 10 feet from a subway or bus stop.

Per ride or per rider because that’s a significant difference.

Per rider

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