Lyft invents a bus without poor people on it. https://www.lyft.com/shuttle
Lyft invents a bus without poor people on it. https://www.lyft.com/shuttle
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Lyft invents a bus without poor people on it. https://www.lyft.com/shuttle
John Hardy Developer 
FFS.
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I do like the potential information awareness though. Right now I am taking the dirt cheap dumb bus to work. I love it. It’s great. Poor and middle class riders. Serendipity and everything. But the routes are dumb. It does ghost segments where there is >90% that noone will exit or board (just in case someone happens to be there to get on)
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They’ve invented (most) taxis in low- and middle-income countries.
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There used to be a strong tradition of jitneys in the US as well, particularly before WW2. They were generally banned because they threatened public bus routes (and street cars). and the licensed taxi industry because they could undercut the prices. Am unlicensed normal-capacity taxi is still called a jitney in some areas of the US as a result.
[Jitney was slang for the US nickel.]
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Some middle class folks don’t know that airplanes are just as bad as public transit – including the crazy people. Actually, in a handful of areas in the US, public transit is used by all but the limousine class. In most areas though, it’s seen and resented as a subsidy to the poor.
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James Lamb In inner city Australia, public transport is heavily used even by the rich* because it’s damn near impossible to get a car through the core in any sane amount of time.
* Until they’re rich enough to afford a chauffeur.
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That sounds more or less like the business case behind Spiri (look them up on Facebook).
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God Emperor Lionel Lauer – in Toronto, the TTC at least used to be popular, to the point that South Park once depicted Torontonians as two guys simply saying “I like the subway.” “Yes, I like the subway, too.” over and over in stereotyped Canadian hoser accents.
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Why could poor people not also use this Lyft bus?
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Thom Thomas To use it and pay, you probably need a mobile device (not too rare among the rich-world poor) and a mobile data plan (much rarer). To use the bus, you just need to stand at the bus stop and then drop $2–3 into the fare box.
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In Memphis, the transit is so bad that working poor that don’t live close to where they work (and Memphis is very spread out) have great difficulties with on time reliable service.
I’ve been left stranded trying to get to work across town because a connecting bus just never showed up. After being an hour late, I had to call a co-worker.
We live in a state that is very mean toward the poor so public infrastructure (like transportation, reliable power et cetera) are already pretty terrible. And mobile phones w/data plans are more and more prevalent.
The use of mobile tech is an excellent command and control lever – great way to track the unruly masses – better than television to entertain and subdue especially since the tech is great for tracking and manufacturing consent. I only see it being made more and more available to the poor as a matter of entrenching our aristocratic neo-feudal lords. Or, maybe I’m being cynical – maybe this tech is being “democratized.”
Either way, I don’t see Lyft’s bus product as necessarily exclusionary of the poor in some municipalities.
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Yes, Thom Thomas, I’ve seen that pattern in some US cities I’ve visited. The big urban centres like NYC, SF, etc tend to be good (LA is the exception), but elsewhere, the cities and seem to be socially engineered to work against the poor and/or non-white population (eg no sidewalks beside busy roads, to keep people without cars out of rich white suburbs; bad transit like you describe; etc).
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Oh, they didn’t invent it, Austin Capital Metro has two kinds of bus routes, one more expensive than the other. Essentially, they have discovered the hard way that if the homeless are on the bus, no one else who has an option will be on it. Except me, because I apparently have a “don’t talk to me” vibe that works on even the homeless, which my wife has often commented on with considerable envy.
So, they made a few high-frequency bus routes, with fewer stops so they go somewhat faster, and in more expensive buses. Because they cost a bit more, the homeless do not use them, and because of that, the middle class will use them. I don’t like the classist attitude that they embody, but I have some sympathy for Capital Metro’s position, in that if they don’t have bus routes that the middle class are willing to use, they will not get middle class votes for funding.
The U.S. has a class bias problem every bit as serious as racism or sexism or homophobia, but without a willingness (even on the left) to talk about it.
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The U.S. has a class bias problem every bit as serious as racism or sexism or homophobia, but without a willingness (even on the left) to talk about it.
Indeed. Hence the bizarre refusal by upper & middle-class Dem supporters to acknowledge the fact that economic justice is far more urgent & important for the working class of all genders, ethnicities, & sexualities than the kinds of identity-politics that the Dems claim to support.
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It’s the flip-side of the American Dream – if anybody can make it in America then there must be something morally suspect (Unamerican!) with the people who don’t.
[Of course that if is applicable only to a very small subset of people that have the potential to cause problems if they weren’t offered an escape valve. And admitting this would cause them to look at their own state of being.]
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