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Comment by fotta | Hacker News Reader

Another group caught in the collateral damage is people in wheelchairs. Paratransit sucks in most places and where wheelchair accessible Uber/Lyft is available they provide a much better service. This is an especially vulnerable population because it's not like a wheelchair user can just find a friend with an accessible vehicle to take them to appointments, etc.

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A while ago — and I have no citations for this — I read it was easier to just pay for private rides for every accessible person than to make NYC and SF's public transportation accessible. Yes, in perpetuity. Considerably cheaper, too.

Why then, go through the effort? Because they should be integrated into society like all others. I firmly believe public transportation has benefits beyond efficiency.

Something about a billionaire on the 6 train next to a restaurant worker and a wheelchair-bound piano tuner[1] strikes me as poetic and noble. Whatever the costs.

[1] Headed to my place.

yes let’s make all public policy based on your sense of poetic justice. and not numbers.

i know cost is just a number to you but that’s other people’s money you’re spending

Believe me, I'm very fiscally skeptical with government spending.

Moreover, public transportation costs in the US are outrageous. Each elevator in the tens of millions for an NYC subway station. It's a racket and unacceptably corrupt.

But we can tackle both problems, and should.

Even with hyper efficient spending, there's an external benefit that is hard to measure and value beyond the cold, hard cash needed for the infrastructure vs government-paid private rides.

I've been laterally involved in frivolous ADA lawsuits for websites before, so I also understand how even noble goals can become corrupted.

Well, not based on one person, but sometimes making uneconomic decisions based on human decency? That’s the society I’d rather live in.

I mean, if numbers are all that matter, I’m fairly sure someone could come up with a model to deprioritise and disenfranchise almost anyone - the disabled, the elderly, the retired...

Is forcing wheelchair users to use subway human decency to you? We're talking about a situation where it's cheaper to let them use taxi service, and it's a better experience.

My uncle lives in a wheelchair by the way. The horror of imagining him having to use the subway...

yeah the proposal from the original comment also seems more designed to “teach” the billionaire by making him sit next to a disabled person instead of helping the wheelchair bound person. all out of some sort of sense of justice

That’s not the situation. In the absence of Uber/Lyft (they being positive for disabled mobility) there appears to be no choice: it’s bad slow disabled-specific transport vs... nothing. And the argument was to not do things for disabled people that were uneconomic.

So yes, I’d like to give disabled users the option of using all public transport, if they choose. (Having lived in London, many underground stations are actually pretty good - and certainly not below ‘human decency’.)

But I’d also like that disabled people have other options, including reasonably-priced taxis.

I 100% agree, for that reason and more. But I also don't know that I see accessible public transit as being a something to set against accessible point-to-point transportation. One needs both. For the same reasons that everyone needs both.

What about the wheelchair users? What do they prefer?

If it were both cheaper and best for the users (as I believe it would be) to pay for private rides, I would support that wholeheartedly. If one option were cheaper, and the other is preferred, it would seem that you'd have to engage in some type of cost-benefit analysis.

I don't see why able-bodied people should impose their view of 'social integration' on minorities at great cost, without additional justification.

You have a good point.

But I think taken to the extreme: who wouldn't prefer a private air-conditioned taxi over 100 ˚F subway platforms?

In this hypothetical: we're assuming the facilities are good enough that the experience for the disabled is within reasonable parity.

On the other hand, if it means having to go 40 blocks uptown, just to find an elevator then head back downtown, the system is inadequate and my narrative doesn't hold.

If wheelchair users prefer to take private rides, and it's cheaper than adapting public transit to their needs, I really don't see why we need to worry about this kind of issue. Most people view mass transit as generally undesirable, so they're okay with 'missing out' on it, and I don't think the disabled population is large enough to significantly contribute to urban congestion. I suppose that mass transit ridership will appear less diverse, but I'd rather not force people to use public transit just to make it more diverse.

Don't get me wrong; I'd love for everyone to be able to do everything, but trying to make everything work for everyone all the time can get Procrustean.

Just a question - why build public transport at all if it's undesirable? That just pushes everyone who can afford NOT to take it out, which leads to pollution, but worse, the effect that the populace using the public transportation are probably seen by others as 'more undesirable', leading to a snowball effect of people not using it until it's fully subsidized and terrible. That's what basically happened to busses in my old city. Even the less well off people would tell you not to ride one because it's full of crazies/homeless/beggars/etc. We're like, worse off than if they'd never have built it at all.

If we're serious about modernizing and reducing our carbon footprint, we should provide reliable, safe, comfortable transportation that people want to take. Not relegate it as a public service for the needy. (though the both can work together)

If you take a look at surveys on the subject, nobody likes buses, and everyone loves the idea of trains, though they have more mixed feelings on the implementations. Buses are generally viewed as transportation for the poor and the young; I don't see how we can change that.

I think the 'solution' is to replace buses with smaller and more efficient urban mobility solutions; buses are not that efficient (as they spend most of their time driving around almost empty), so this is the lowest-hanging fruit anyway. If I knew how to create these solutions, I would be working on them right now, but I think some combination(s) of car-sharing, high efficiency vehicles, self-driving technologies, and electric bicycles will eventually replace buses.

You're right about buses, but I don't think that's inherent to buses, just how we've implemented them. In other countries, buses are comfortable and air conditioned and basically anyone and everyone rides them. If we could figure out how to make them safe, clean, and comfortable, then of course they wouldn't be empty most of the time, and would run at capacity(which would be a good problem to have).

Rail I think is obviously preferred long term, but setting up a fleet of electric buses could be done in a matter of months, vs a simple limited rail that takes many years.

Buses almost always run at less than 50% capacity, as people are going to or from school or work, but not both (i.e. morning rush is in the opposite direction of evening rush). The other unsolvable problems for buses is that they necessarily increase commute distance and time, as people must take a more indirect route to use buses (as opposed to individual transportation), and they are not flexible (i.e. they have limited peak capacity and fixed schedules).

I don't like buses, and I vastly prefer trains over them.

However, I've taken some really, really bad buses (SF), some middle-of-the-road buses (Seattle), and some rather good buses (Vancouver).

If you want to improve bus efficiency, the lowest-hanging fruit is switching the less-used lines to 24-person shuttle-buses. Vancouver uses that model heavily.

The next lowest-hanging fruit would be actually getting people to use the bus. If the reason they don't use the bus is 'it doesn't take me where I need to go', you can fix that. If the reason they don't use the bus is 'only crazies and poor people take the bus', you can fix that too. Transit systems that are used by everyone, as opposed to just 'undesirables' tend to run a lot better.

Also, keep in mind that most cars on the road are $20-50,000 vehicles that drive 75% empty, and spend 95% of their lives sitting in parking lots. That's a damn low bar for 'efficiency' that even a mostly-empty bus can match. Likewise, taxis are vehicles that spend ~30% of their time driving empty, and only transporting 1 person the vast majority of the remaining time. (While costing ~$30/hour to operate.)

> who wouldn't prefer a private air-conditioned taxi over 100 ˚F subway platforms?

When it's prohibitively expensive to take private air-conditioned taxi.

If taxi is, as you said, both cheaper and provides a better experience, why not? Are we torturing people just for your poetic justice?

That's fair, if it's cheaper including externalities.

In Sweden if you're disabled, the government will pay for taxis for you. There's limits on how often et c and they don't come as fast as a normal taxi booking and you can only bring one other person with you, but it's a great option for when public transit doesn't cut it.

Well, I don't have a wheelchair-bound piano tuner handy to ask, so I'll have to model this person based on other wheelchair users I've been acquainted with over the years.

So let's ask this imaginary person: Would you rather get free rides everywhere you need to go, or have to wait in the rain/snow/heat for the bus, feeling the stress of inconveniencing others with the ramp, and having to wheel yourself the rest of the distance to your destination?

That's if the bus arrives on time, which it won't. But keep in mind! silviogutierrez will feel better about themself if you take the bus! "poetic and noble" were the exact words.

> Would you rather get free rides everywhere you need to go or have to wait in the rain/snow/heat for the bus

At least in Toronto, the para-transit fares are the same as the regular transit system fares.

Sometimes they send you a taxi, but other times they send around a mini-bus that operates like an UberPool and may not save you any time.

Even if a Lyft/Uber would be cheaper, if the gov is subsidizing it, they’ll pay for the lowest priority to save 3 cents.

I think that's somewhat uncharitable of a take. But fundamentally, I agree with you.

See my other comment. In this ideal, the experience for the wheelchair-bound is comparable to others. Not the current embarrassment we have in New York, for example.

I'll grant you my take was a bit over-the-top.

The thing is, there are a few reasons why the able-bodied tend to prefer the experience of a ride-hailing app over public transit.

- it comes to where you are, and drops you off exactly where you're going

- you get a ride when you're ready to go, and not whenever the transit is running

- higher chances of getting rides at weird hours

- no risk of interacting with aggressive panhandlers, people high on drugs, the mentally ill, or people with bad personal hygiene

Public transit has significant advantages, as well: biggest among them, it avoids the tragedy of the commons, particularly road congestion and carbon emissions. It has salubrious effects on urban planning. Places with good public transit are nice places to live.

What I want to point out is that, every one of the advantages for the able-bodied are significantly exaggerated for wheelchair users.

I don't think it's possible to offer a comparable experience, due to the very nature of the disability. So if it's more expensive to offer the less desirable option, well, we shouldn't do that.

More expensive public transit means picking from the following buckets: less transit, more expensive tickets, less pay for workers, starving other municipal programs, or kicking the problem down the road with municipal debt. None of those are great; they can be worth it for a better experience (replacing old worn-down cars for example), but not for a worse one.

That's such a false dichotomy, public transportation can be comfortable and efficient. And It is in a lot of places around the world.

> A while ago — and I have no citations for this — I read it was easier to just pay for private rides for every accessible person than to make NYC and SF's public transportation accessible. Yes, in perpetuity. Considerably cheaper, too.

1. Accessibility doesn't just benefit wheel-chair bound people. Accessibility benefits just about anyone who has temporary difficulty walking, is carrying heavy or bulky things, is out with children, is not fully sober, etc, etc, etc.

2. NYC may indeed be a special case, because of the poor design of existing subway stations, and the difficulty of rebuilding them in the middle of Manhattan. I don't think this sort of thing would generalize to other locales.

I firmly agree on #1. In fact, my piano tuner is not wheelchair-bound and that was a white lie. My apologies. He was born blind.

#2: Normally I would strongly disagree. It's a NYC trope to say our subway is in shambles because pick one of: the city is old, the city is dense, the subway runs 24/7, and so on. And yet Paris, London, and other ancient subways run better and make cheaper and faster improvements.

But looking around, it seems like accessibility is very poor for London and Paris too. So you're right. They all have this in common. In fact, NYC may even be ahead[1]

However, going on a real tangent here, with the crazy amounts of money we spend or even with quantitative easing[2], I feel like we could try novel concepts like shutting down entire city blocks for months at a time and compensate everyone involved. Yes, crazy prices, but who knows?

[1] https://www.citymetric.com/transport/what-paris-metro-map-lo...

[2] Instead of propping up bonds and equities, prop up infrastructure?

There are many different ways to be disabled. Some people get around in wheelchairs and will be fine wherever there are elevators. Other people (including all of us as we get older) need personal assistance door-to-door. There's a spectrum of inclusion, and I don't think "whatever the cost" acknowledges that.

Elsewhere in the thread someone with a wheelchair bound sister mentioned that she doesn't like taking public transit because she gets harassed and gawked at for her disability.

Also, accessible transit benefits everyone with a stroller, as well as the elderly and anyone else with a temporary injury.

In BC, Canada, Handydart is part of the public transit system. Paratranspo is part of OCTranspo under the Ottawa Transit system.

Cost would be basically the same as normal bus ride.

The municipalities could, you know, fund transit?

In the Valley, I was talking to some interns. It was a 50 minute walk, 40 minute bus ride, and 15 minute bike ride. Basically the only reason why you'd take the bus is you can't afford a bike?!?

Not just wheelchair users. People with epilepsy and other chronic conditions unfortunately have to rely on these services for gaps in public transit.

I wish Uber and Lyft had focused on sustainability vs monopoly and not foisted so much of their costs off onto their drivers, but here we are.

I'm not able to drive because of epilepsy and have to rely on ride share apps when family members can't drive me. It's expensive but public transportation doesn't exist here. Around 1/100 people are epileptic and the chance of a seizure during one's life is double digits, so it's not an insignificant amount of people. Mine is "well controlled" but the consequences of accidents can be extreme. Plenty of other conditions exist which also prevent people from driving.

Unfortunately it's difficult to participate in a lot of our society unless you can drive.

Honest question: Has there been a mass action lawsuit against this lack of options for you and other people in your situation? It would seem to me that your county or municipality is in violation of some ADA regulations.

If not, and lawyers agree there is no case (yet), then there is an obvious gap in the ADA regulation, and it should be fixed. Everyone has equal rights to get around their community, and it is massively unfair if a significant number of people are left behind because of their disabilities.

Not the OP, but the ADA only requires that existing businesses/services accommodate disabilities, not provide them where they don’t exist. There’s no mandate to provide transportation for the disabled in the US.

Unsurprisingly, Uber and Lyft have also been violating the ADA for pretty much their entire existence, arguing that they don’t have to comply and settling with states and cities when they lose cases:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90343921/lyft-claims-its-not-a-t...

What did people in wheelchairs do before these rideshare apps were around?

Waste a lot of time waiting for paratransit to show up.

Yup basically.

I guess they hired a personal driver or spent hours a day in the public transit system.

Endured.

Worse, the financially better off using the paid services allowed the public services to become more responsive to the poorer members of this demographic. So now everybody will suffer.

Wait hours for a van to maybe show up.

There are plenty of cabs that are wheelchair accessible. My wife works in surgery centers and they often call a cab for someone that needs a ride home and is in a wheelchair.

Edit: This was one of the main reasons against using Uber. Cabs were, I believe, legally required to provide this service, and Uber wasn't. That may have changed, but cabs were subject to that regulation, at least in Oregon, and Uber wasn't. Uber may have filled that gap, but I'm sure it was for financial benefit to them and not because it was the right thing to do.

This was the complaint from the cab companies here in Toronto; they were required to have a certain percentage of their fleet as accessibility vehicles where as the ride “share” companies were not.

Unfortunately, the cab companies had accumulated years of bad will from tolerating bad and abusive drivers and then ran strikes in the city where drivers attacked people and deliberately blocked an ambulance.

I don’t like any of the sides in this battle.

Not sure the right word, but a lot of towns and cities have a heavily subsidized busing system for very local routes. Things like DATA Bus or Meals on Wheels.

Also my grandparents in a city always used a cab service that only serves wheelchair and has trained drivers to load and unload.

public transit agencies are obligated to provide this service, most municipalities contract it out. in recent years, it has been increasingly common for transit agencies to work directly with uber and lyft for paratransit services.

In most cases, they waited additional hours, per trip, for limited spots on paratransit or depended on friends and family.

The ones affluent enough to afford it used private drivers.

A few years ago I was in a freak accident and ended up in a wheel chair for about 3 months. It's really hard to put into words how much more effort and hassle it is to get around that way, even when most of the people around you are willing to help. And I was relatively lucky, still having full use of my arms and no other health issues. But a decent rule of thumb is to take however long you think some activity should require and multiply that by three, at minimum.

A disabled friend of mine has often spent quite literally all day dealing with disabled transit issues to get across town for a single appointment someplace. We help him out when we can, but like most people he hates feeling beholden to the charity of friends.

I was in an Uber rideshare once with a blind person. Had no idea they were blind until the driver pulled over and got out (which initially confused me) to help them to their house.

This is a true and an important concern. Municipalities and counties in California really need to step up their game and provide a viable and cheap to use alternative.

Everybody deserves to be able to go where they want within their community when they want to. And we should provide these without relying on private companies with questionable labor practices.

Why step up and provide a viable and cheap alternative when you can just step down and not kill the existing cheap alternative?

Because these cheap alternatives rely on questionable labor practices.

People with limited mobility deserve the same freedom of movement as fully abled people, however that cannot come at the cost of the workers who provide it. We should be asking for both adequate transportation and fully compensated and decently paid workers.

Americans spent $1 TRILLION on personal transport (cars + car insurance, mainly) in 2017 [1]. Imagine if just half that went to building local subway networks / high-speed rail across the country / expanding bus options.

[1]: https://www.itdp.org/2019/05/23/high-cost-transportation-uni...

Yeah, that'd be great when they shut it all down for the next pandemic

This is a dishonest argument. Compared to the United States, countries like Japan, Germany, and others in Europe have been much more successful at containing the pandemic, even with their extensive public transport systems.

Our transportation system is entirely based on individual travel, and yet we cannot keep cases under control.

Besides, this situation is not permanent. We should not live in complete isolation out of fear for the next pandemic. Instead, we should learn from our mistakes this time around, and agree on an appropriate course of action to protect against future contagions.

I live outside of the USA. I used to take our electric rail system all the time. Haven't touched it since January and won't go back till next year. Have fallen in love with driving and the personal convenience of it all over again.

Even when the pandemic is over, I might end up driving more often than before. It's so nice to know that I can just stay somewhere until I want to leave, to know that I can go wherever I want at whatever time, without having to worry about coordinating it with anyone else. Profoundly enabling, even as it is sickeningly individualist.

You might reconsider when the pandemic is actually over and more people start carrying this mindset that will increase traffic.

But that is besides the point, what you personally feel doesn’t really matter. Your previous comment is still incredibly dishonest. Functioning frequent and convenient mass transit system is enabling for far more people then personal transports. Even during a pandemic there are ways to mitigate the risk of spreading the virus. And even if not, a pandemic is a temporary situation, and after it is over the infrastructure is still there to enable much more people to transport them self, in varying physical conditions, without sacrificing the working conditions and benefits of the transportation workers.

> But that is besides the point, what you personally feel doesn’t really matter. Your previous comment is still incredibly dishonest.

If I say what I believe, it's not dishonest. It might be _wrong_, but it's not a lie.

It is a lie by obfuscation. Americans do need better public transpiration options. Mentioning the pandemic serves no purpose other then to obfuscate this fact. The fact that the current pandemic is causing some of the existing options to be more limited does in no way take a way from this need.

Yeah, this is a pattern I see a lot. Rather than discussing solutions to an problem, there is a tendency from some people to just throw their hands up in the air and say "it is what it is, can't do anything about it!". When it comes to...

> Public Transportation... if future pandemics pose a danger, what can we do to implement transport options that will be safe during future pandemics? How can we better design our cities to make individual transport by bike/foot more possible, rather than by car? etc etc. Let's listen to urban planners and public policy experts.

> Election Security... if voter fraud is an issue, what security measures can we take to ensure that every citizen can safely and securely exercise their right to vote? Let's listen to cryptographers.

> Wealth Inequality... how can we ensure that all children have a safe and nurturing home environment, along with the opportunities for school and work that they need to achieve upward social mobility? Let's listen to educators and economists.

> Healthcare... how can we reform hospitals and private/public insurance to provide both urgent and preventative medical care at a fair price? Let's listen to medical health professionals and economists.

There are many possible answers to these questions. I would love love love to debate actual solutions. But it's hard to even agree there is a problem! Often, the reason is that national+local news networks are all fed their talking points by wealthy individuals who personally profit from a broken system.

> Americans do need better public transpiration options

No-one has mentioned transpiration until now. This is a lie by changing the subject completely.

but I have all this water vapor that I need to exhale through my stomata!

haha, I rely too much on my spell checker. If I misspell a word I’ll too often click on the first word in the context menu without actually reading it and seeing if it is the word I want.

> Compared to the United States, countries like Japan, Germany, and others in Europe have been much more successful at containing the pandemic, even with their extensive public transport systems

UK here. We contained it by mostly stopping using public transport. The efficiency case for public transport (in its current form) is inversely correlated with social distancing.

California proved that $100B won't even build you a high speed rail between SF and LA. The cost of convincing people to change their mind, is still cost.

At least we know now that a $100B will get you a high speed train from Bakersfield to Merced in 10 years behind schedule.

I think though that California has an extreme case of NIMBY-ism which makes much needed projects like these so much harder then then should be. I’m sure similar projects in Texas between Houston and Dallas would be far easier to complete on schedule. Similar with the Cascadian corridor between Portland OR, and Vancouver BC. Although I see the Pacific North Western politicians capitalizing on this project for a few decades to win a few more election before this projects gets a go-ahead.

If only there could be an efficient method for connecting those who need to travel with those who can provide them with transportation.

Wait a sec - this efficient method doesn't involve abusing contractor status to not pay employees benefits, does it? If it does, I'd rather come up with another idea, thanks.

You're right, we'll make it completely voluntary for the transportation providers to participate.

This myth of voluntary participation in capitalism has been debunked many time. When you need to sell you labor in order to feed and house you and your family, it isn’t voluntary by a long shot. It is not a free market because the employer has a significant advantage. This is why we need labor regulations and protections. When a workplace fills out their labor needs with contractors, it is an obvious way to circumvent these necessary labor regulations and protections.

So you are wrong—as California is proofing—unregulated gig-capitalism is not a system that can provide fair working conditions and cheap accessible transportation at the same time.

So your assertion is that unless a person has all of their basic needs met, they are providing labor compulsorily? If we're just starting from Marxist axioms, whereby all relations between classes are best understood as power struggles, then sure everything you said follows.

We're not, however, so you have quite the circular argument going on here. By any reasonable definition, I am not compelled to work -- despite laboring in order to myself and my family fed and housed. Power struggles are a poor lens for understanding this dynamic.

So your refutation of my argument is: “Because Marx said so, it must be false”? Note that I’ve never mentioned classes or power struggle in my arguments, so you are putting words in my mouth.

I don’t understand how my argument is circular. If you strip away any ways for a person to provide for them self except selling their own labor, you are basically saying to them: “work or perish!” Technically perishing is an option, but it is not an option most people will consider (including my self; and demonstrably Uber drivers).

The argument is not "Marx therefore bad," it's that this is a useless observation. You've selected axioms that necessitate your conclusion. It's like me saying "the most moral thing anyone can do is preventing a human death, and therefore everyone here is immoral because they're writing comments on a message board instead of flying to an impoverished country to feed a starving child."

That's true, given the predicate. I don't know why it would be relevant, since -- just like with your comment -- nobody has conceded this definition of morality. The conver preceding is not obviously rooted in Marxist class struggle, so I'm not sure why you're framing it thus (whether you use the words or not.)

Your argument depends on everyone agreeing that, unless a person's basic need for house and food are totally met first, anything they do in pursuit of those needs is compelled and not voluntary. This is not an agreed upon predicate.

I think you'll find that few, if any, "economic predicates" are universally agreed upon. Certainly, in your original post, you're accepting some premises that allow for your own claims to be true, and which are not universally agreed upon. So why can't he?

I think you'll find that most, if not all, human conversations are embedded in a context, which carries assumptions, so that participants can understand each other without iterating all of their definitions. That's why, for example, I don't have to start every conversation in my life by clarifying that I will not be explaining everything in terms of Xenu and thetans.

And if I did want to explain things in those terms, I should first explain why that's a valuable frame to adopt.

Is there enough market size for this so that a commercial company can come in and swoop the customers?

You mean the same taxi-service market that Uber has been notably unprofitable and bleeding investor cash for years in? But smaller and more niche? With more legal hurdles regarding accessibility and mobility requirements? Operating with only non-gig, full-benefit workers?

Yeah, sounds like a market ripe for picking.

Hahah, you nailed it. People think that they can have their cake and eat it too, but the result will either be rides that are too expensive to bother with, or workers that are paid too little. The actual financials of this don't make sense unless we were to find some way of removing all the overhead caused by having gigantic companies as middlemen.

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