Capitalists don't innovate. They gut public services and then claim they invented the idea...
this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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if I had a nickle every time a techbro invented a bus or a train, I'd probably be able to afford a fucking bigmac
Chef Kiss.
And then when people complain because its an inherently worse service, they resort to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "just start your own company even though you have no capital" type bullshit.
Cheff kiss
WOAH! This is an AMAZING idea! WHY hasn't Anyone THOUGHT of this Before? It's INCREDIBLE!
-People who Vote AGAINST Public Transportation and will COMPLAIN about how Expensive this is!
No it's privatized, so somebody at the top is getting rich. See that's the important part for these assholes. They just don't want the government spending that money when they could be spending it on more airplanes to drop into the fucking ocean.
I like the spice...cheff kiss
Public transit can be privatized and run for profits. Good example is Japan metro and train networks. Bad ones are bus routes in latinamerica.
Germany's partial privatization of public transit, led to major issues like underinvestment, frequent delays, and high costs for passengers, underfunding, and profit-driven management.
The trolley system in early 20th century US cities died due to issues related to privatization. It's been done; doesn't work.
Well, it's more like the model was unsustainable. The trolley system was originally built by neighborhood builders as a neighborhood amenity to attract buyers. When the neighborhood was all sold up, the builder would hand the system over to the city, who would then fund the maintenance of the system via ? which was fine and dandy for a while because rail infra doesn't need half the maintenance asphalt does, but once you had enough of these lines aging out and piling up maintenance issues all at once and the city having done almost no planning to fund said maintenance, the cities would reliably just say "fuck it, let people drive" rather than try pulling teeth via passing a tax or something. From here in 2025, I'm ready to send a terminator back in time at them over it, but I can see how they arrived there in the context of their time.
The problem is that if the profitable routes are private, who will run the unprofitable ones? This is effectively siphoning money away from the profitable public transit routes placing more of a burden on transit agencies.
That being said, even if it's 50% cheaper than a normal uber I doubt anyone will use it.
The fragmentation of railway companies is horrible to deal with. Tokyo is a mix between JR and Keisei and you need to buy a separate ticket for each.
At least they run really well.
There are actually more operators than just JR and Keisei, but transferring between any of them is usually very quick and painless if you have any of the major transportation network cards in Japan, or associated NFC app. Only tourists actually buy tickets at the machines.
However, it does tend to cost more than sticking to one operator.
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In reality, it is first mile and last mile.
If you're in a wheelchair or you oare therwise are ADA eligible, they will give you a ride to/from a public transit stop.
The onus is on the transportation system to be ADA accessible beyond the dropoff.
There are also employment partners who will pay for this leg.
Is this not just a bus but worse?
Well you don't have to ride with the poors and you pay direct instead of taxes for maximum inefficiency of money for value.
It's a shared taxi/marshrutka/dollar van/jitney ... Too many names but common across the world especially where the government is incapable of organizing proper public transport.
Just repackaged for techbros.
Exactly this. Interestingly, while in "those" places the government is incapable of organizing public transit, in US, the government chooses not to. It's like learned helplessness at the society level.
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Busses are going to get privatized....that's this administrations goal, privatize everything.
I live in the San Diego area, and both our public transit agencies have the bus side privatized. Same shitty service and poor security for years. Meanwhile, the media labels public transit as something for freaks and losers, which provides a great reason not to improve it.
Theoretically they can use the data collected from the app to optimize pickup locations and routes and be flexible as demand changes, since people can be directed to new pickup locations easily. Whether or not that's true and how much it costs will be the deciding factor.
Great, so a more expensive less reliable bus. Perfect
i'm guessing it would serve routes not already served by busses. in which case it could be useful if you can share them.
it used to annoy me that i couldnt get a bus to the next town over from my hometown when i lived there. i had to get a bus 40 mins in the wrong direction and get a second bus from there into work.
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wait wait wait hear me out, what if we had something bigger than a car and it still had a single driver but multiple passengers???
Like a library but for travelling?
public library transport! we might be onto sth here
Here's one more for "trains is to transportation what crabs are to evolution '
And what Excel is to every productivity app, and what email is every messenging service.
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You guys don't get it. It is like public transportation but with the following "features":
- No poors.
- Owner can exclude anyone they don't like
- No job security/unionization for the staff
A surge pricing bus if you will,
self-driving with signed waivers of liability in the terms and conditions
Ah yes, private sector innovation
And more expensive too!
Next step: reinvent the train, but call it uber on steel or uber on rails
You just know it’s going to be individual rail cars so we can have traffic jams on rails!
traffic jams on rails
In Germany we achieve that with just normal trains
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We are 10 years from UberRail
In the UK uber started advertising that you can buy your train tickets via the uber app. Like WTF, no thanks I’ll just use Train Line.
Lemme guess, next they'll try connecting multiple carriages to carry more people per vehicle then work with local governments to build dedicated right of way...etc etc...
And put some guidelines in the road to assist with self driving. Maybe make them out of metal for improved durability. Then swap out the rubber-wheeled tires for some more efficient and less poluting conical metal wheels since we don't need to worry about them running on asphalt anymore.
Oooh. And as long as we have multiple carriages connected, we can add a walkway between them. Then instead of all of them being for passengers, they can subsidize the cost by having a car dedicated to selling snacks, or other items. You can literally buy your morning coffee from the road!
Do you want everyone to just sit there, drink their coffee, read daily news or a book and gasp interact with others like some kind of savages? Back in my day we stared at same-looking highways for hours, it builds character.
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Adam Something has a done a whole bunch of videos ridiculing tech bro reinventions of bus and train, great stuff.
If there is something anyone under 30 should have learned in today's world, is that capitalism will ALWAYS enshittify even the best idea. Always.
What’s that other meme? The one about how every few years tech bros reinvent public transportation.
Lol, that kind of is a thing already in rural areas of germany. They go by beautiful names like RufBus and AnrufSammelTaxi and are provided by several state owned public transportation companies in low passenger areas/times of day. Usually, it's an additional 2 € per drive on top of the transportation ticket you need to have/buy.
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Of course they re-invented the bus. It's like carcinisation but the end product is always trains or busses., but if this means less cars on the roads I think I'm for it. As long as cities don't get lazy and use this an excuse to cut their bus programs.
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