Uber to introduce fixed-route shuttles in major US cities
185 comments
·May 14, 2025dogman144
JumpCrisscross
> pub transit degrades bc now it shares service with competition
Privately-operated buses on city bus lanes seems fine? Like, American cities have largely failed at making bus rapid transit economically sustainable and comfortable for the broader population. Trying a different model seems prudent versus going for puritinism.
(The alternative for these riders isn’t the bus. It’s private Ubers and cars. If cities won’t permit something like this, it warrants asking if public resources are better used turning those bus lanes into standard ones.)
> Taxpayers fund Uber and buses
Why? Charge a use fee.
dogman144
NYC’s newer bus lane approaches and congestion pricing findings counter this.
Also, you’re measuring pub transit by its economic sustainability. Pub sector services are not judged by this, nor should they be. See my OP.
JumpCrisscross
> NYC’s newer bus lane approaches and congestion pricing findings counter this
Could you clarify which this? (And point to the source? I’m a big fan of congestion pricing.)
Would also note that my “largely” is “largely” mostly to exclude New York. Public transit works in Manhattan, and is uniquely successful in the New York metro area [1].
[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/resources/car-ownership-statistics...
pavel_lishin
> The alternative for these riders isn’t the bus. It’s private Ubers and cars.
Why? If they're taking a fixed-route shuttle, why is their only alternative a different sub-service of Uber?
null
nickff
In the vast majority of US cities, most people do not use transit. Most of the people who choose not to use Uber shuttles or busses will be opting for passenger vehicles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_...
macspoofing
>pub transit degrades bc now it shares service with competition that operates under an entirely different model.
Public transit degrades because bus lanes are now congested with people taking mass transit instead of single cars ... and we don't want this why?
The goal is to get people into taxis/uber, buses, subways, bicycles ... basically anything except a car.
delusional
> The public transit degrades because bus lanes are now congested with people taking mass transit instead of single cars ... and we don't want this why?
That would be nice. In the real world they would be congested with Uber buses that purposefully block the public option to ruthlessly "out-compete" it.
Maybe uber will start transporting their food delivery in the bus. Now you have a congested bus lane full of burgers.
> taxis > anything besides a car
kek.
seltzered_
> Or we could just all get mercenaries for our burbclaves. Not like police turn a profit either!
There was literally a documentary on Citizen in 2023: https://www.vice.com/en/article/watch-new-documentary-tells-...
fblp
In Australia it's not unusual for taxis to be allowed to use bus lanes, and a portion of taxi fees go to the state. They can also charge Uber a fee to use the bus lane so the state gets more revenue than before for the same asset.
carlhjerpe
Taxis can use bus lanes in Sweden too, but here people don't commute by taxi.("ever") Cities where Uber and Bolt have precense also has good enough public transport for people who don't own a car for some other reason than going to work.
I think it's fair taxis use bus lanes, you pay VAT on the taxi ride which goes back to the government to keep building.
thallium205
There's already an Uber for mercenaries. https://www.techspot.com/news/106838-protector-uber-guns-app...
groby_b
> Buses, like Amtrak and pub transit, degrade and degrade and degrade - look how government can’t do anything!
As an LA resident: Public buses degrade just fine without any uber buses. And we seem to lack the political will to fix that.
As for Amtrak: Outside the NE corridor, it's one of the more useless train systems I've seen. Only eclipsed by CA HSR.
Yes, we shouldn't corporatize the commons. But... that requires us to develop the will to actually care about the commons as a polity.
underlipton
*including
And burbclave police already exist.
Otherwise I agree. This is dumb. It also feels like a safety issue, but I can't quite articulate why. Also, private commuter busses already exist that can use bus lanes... But technically it's a service provided by the local transit authority. @uber: get in line with all the other contractors, bub.
ardit33
Most of BUS lanes in NYC are not fully occupied. 2/3rd of the time they are just sit empty.
But, I agree on the part that they will slow down a bit existing public transportation, but, if Uber served routes that are currently difficult to reach, it has public service as well.
Why would someone pay $10 for the Uber service, meanwhile the local one is just $3? There is a good chance that the local bus doesn't cover certain areas properly, or stops too frequently, making it a slow trip for regular commuters.
Ps. In Europe there is both public and private trains, both running the same tracks. I don't see a problem with this.
afavour
> Why would someone pay $10 for the Uber service, meanwhile the local one is just $3?
In this scenario Uber would give endless promos pricing the trip at $2.90 until they’ve degraded the public bus service to a level where no one wants to use it. Then they jack up the prices.
JumpCrisscross
> In this scenario
So based entirely on a hypothetical that didn’t pan out with Uber’s original services.
philipallstar
They won't jack up the prices now the main price-jacking-up event has occurred: having to change the agreement with their contractors to give them employment-like benefits.
dcrazy
A transit lane with excess capacity is a feature, not a bug. It provides slack to recover from issues.
dheera
That works in cities like Zurich where there are lots of buses going absolutely everywhere and are almost always perfectly on time. I worked there for 3 months and my 8:23am city bus was there on the dot pretty much every day. It would often get to the stop at 8:21 and wait till 8:23, like clockwork. There was no payment system on the actual bus, people had to take care of payments outside the bus so as not to delay boarding.
In the US, buses largely don't need to get you where you need to go, are never on time, delayed at every stop by a line of people fumbling for how to shove crumpled dollar bills into the machine. The governments have no plans to fix any of this, so I welcome the private sector to step in and provide a bus solution in the meantime that is fast, clean, and efficient.
vkou
Slack is good, too much slack is wasteful.
Charge them their full amortized share of the road, raise rates if congestion becomes a problem.
pavel_lishin
Most of the spaces in front of fire hydrants sit empty, too.
dogman144
- Uber serves routes that are difficult to reach
- Those routes hit underserved communities (read: low income)
- The $2 service becomes $10 after some loss leading, which is what Uber literally did.
//
- The lanes aren’t fully occupied. The public sector doesn’t turn a profit. The… (see my OP).
//
- Comparing Europe, the land of GDPR, tech company regs and fines, and its general suspicion of private sector, to the US, which is basically none of that, is a unique take.
spookie
Taxis are able to use bus lanes in EU too. And it's completely ok to do that.
mdeeks
I know everyone thinks this is a bus, but as a regular bus commuter in the bay area, I think there is room to expand here that a bus can't always meet. A few problems:
* Bus stops are often far from homes and offices
* There’s rarely parking near stops so you can't drive to it
* Routes are fixed and rarely change.
* The process for petitioning for a new stop is painfully slow and done based on rough approximation of demand, community input, budgeting, and other red tape. I can't even guess what data they use to decide.
* Many people can’t or won’t walk long distances to reach it.
* The websites, maps, and schedules for buses are often very bad and hard to interpret
* They have hundreds of thousands of users in a metro area.
* Get those users to enter where they live, where they need to go, and roughly at what time.
* They find a group ~30 people with similar locations, routes, destinations, and times to create a route
* It doesn't have to be door to door. Just an acceptable walking distance at both ends.
* Dedicated stops don't have to be approved and built. Just pull over on a major street.
* It is extremely easy to use Uber
Animats
> I know everyone thinks this is a bus
It's not a bus. It's an ordinary Uber driver with their own car, with multiple customers and a different, confusing pricing scheme. It's not Uber buying and operating their own fleet of branded vans, like SuperShuttle.[1]
How does the driver get paid? If it's a regular route, with regular times, it ought to be a regular job paid by the hour, regardless of whether the vehicle is empty or full. But that wouldn't be Uber's gig slavery system.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2020/12/30/rip-supe...
pinkmuffinere
I just want to point out that your criticism is not disagreeing with the parent post. You can both be right — this can be better than a bus, and uber can be illegally claiming workers as contractors.
JumpCrisscross
> How does the driver get paid?
Ideally these routes wouldn’t need a driver for long. Waymo could offer this, for example. They don’t because they need not compete on price.
More practically: in many states where this has been announced, Uber drivers get a minimum wage.
dylan604
I haven't thought about this for quite some time, but I remember the local mass transit, DART, offered shuttle vans if people got together and showed enough interest in people meeting in one spot and being dropped off in one spot. DART provided the driver and van, and the users just paid whatever the fare. This allowed DART to offer service and acted as a trial run on if a full bus route was needed.
Seems like something that whatever transit authority can use as well. Uber just has a better PR department with much larger budgets than metro agencies, so to younger people this probably seems like an original idea.???
mdeeks
It's not about PR budget or whatever. It's about the fact that they have an incredibly easy to use app, with millions of people actively using it, and a ton of software engineers who are really great at logistics problems like this.
Our transit authority hasn't managed to spring this up for us and I'm not confident they have the capability.
FWIW I'm not "younger people". I'm just someone who's been using mass transit to commute for the past 15 years and desperately wants something better. I don't care if it is an original idea. I just want it to exist.
levocardia
Also, importantly:
* There is an accountability component where if you behave badly you will be banned from the shuttle service
ceejayoz
That's entirely possible on buses.
https://smdp.com/news/newsom-signs-bill-allowing-big-blue-bu...
> Current law allows organizations like the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) to issue prohibition orders. BART is the only such agency that has actually issued prohibitions in California, giving out 1,118 such orders from 2019-2022. About 30% of orders issued by BART in 2022 were for battery or threats against riders.
mdeeks
I can't imagine how this is enforced. Clipper cards and cash will get you on any bus without any sort of check to see if you're allowed. There is probably a lot of overlap of people who get banned the people who skip gates and fares.
JumpCrisscross
> giving out 1,118 such orders from 2019-2022. About 30% of orders issued by BART in 2022 were for battery or threats against riders
Curious if these bans are actually effective.
SoftTalker
The requirement to actually pay will keep much of the riff-raff out. In my local bus system, you theoretically have to pay but the drivers are not going to throw you off the bus if you don't and so the buses all have a few homeless guys who just ride all day.
vkou
Don't know what town you live in, but here in Seattle, a very few bus routes have homeless people who ride them all day.
The vast majority don't.
The reason transit in this city sucks (still head and shoulders above the vast majority of the US) isn't because there's 12,000+ homeless people living in it[1], it's because the buses don't run frequently enough and because all the fucking single-occupant car traffic turns what would be a 20 minute bus ride into a 40 minute slog, and because you'd be insane to bike for your last-mile.
---
[1] Increasing every year, and under the current mayor's tenure, we lost a net of 200 shelter beds.
lenerdenator
If you behave badly on public transit there's a real chance that you get the ultimate ban: jail time.
mdeeks
There is a very large and rampant amount of bad behavior well below the "jail time" threshold. Even then, the police can't be everywhere all of the time.
JumpCrisscross
> If you behave badly on public transit there's a real chance that you get the ultimate ban: jail time
In New York or San Francisco?
mdeeks
Strongly agreed. I have unfortunately had many infuriating and dangerous experiences on AC Transit and Bart.
I'd pay extra to not have to be afraid I won't make it home to my kids.
jasonjmcghee
> Get users to enter where they live, where they end to go, and roughly at what time
Friends / people I've seen using uber have "home" and "work" saved. And they have trip history. They likely already have a very good sense of this stuff.
belinder
Problem is you don't want necessarily to sell this to people you have frequent/consistent trips for, as you're getting a lot of money from that. Here you want to capture the market of people that aren't using the service, so it's not information from the app
bsimpson
This sounds a lot like Chariot, which tried to augment SF's bus routes in 2014.
mihaaly
Probably improving buses is a too radical idea here?
KptMarchewa
> * The websites, maps, and schedules for buses are often very bad and hard to interpret
There's an app for that, it's called Google Maps.
Yizahi
Uber Shuttle works in my home city since 2019. It's Kyiv, 3mil population, ancient public transportation network but probably a bit better than USA (by hearsay).
While it was working in normal conditions (before Covid and war) it wasn't that good. Routes were limited and timing iffy. Inside it was a regular small bus, so nothing fancy. And more expensive that public transport. So it is a serviceable transportation if there are no normal bus available at your route and at the same time uber shuttle route is matching yours. But any proper city transport beats them on all counts.
PS: from the article it seems this is not about Uber Shuttle feature, but a different new ride share feature. Anyway, I'll leave my comment, but consider that it is not quite relevant.
tokai
For everyone saying this isn't a bus service because they pick you up and modify routing; that concept is called a Telebus and is over 50 years old.
exiguus
> In Europe this is called public transportation
Just kidding! This comment reminds me of how Uber's leadership underwent a complete overhaul due to their questionable business practices. It seems like not much has changed, and they're still trying to exploit the public for their own profit.
To learn from them, i can highly recommand: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321080908_A_REVIEW_...
1659447091
>> ...fixed-route rides along busy corridors during weekday commute hours in major U.S. cities
>> The commuter shuttles will drive between pre-set stops every 20 minutes ... there will be dozens of routes in each launch city ... To start, riders will only ever have to share the route with up to two other co-riders
This sounds like there are going to be people driving empty cars (and later empty large SUVs) on a loop in already busy and congested areas. Do the drivers at least get paid whether or not they have riders?
Major US Cities already have services like SuperShuttle and other car pooling for shared rides with people going the same way, as an added bonus, you can get picked up in front of your house -- no "turn-by-turn directions to get them from their house to the corner where they’ll be picked up". This Uber service seems wasteful when they already have shared rides.
orange_joe
they rolled this out to NYC a month or two ago. They were airport shuttles with an initial price of $10 and will go to $25. It was dramatically more comfortable than taking the subway and then transferring to the air train and the normal price is honestly fairly competitive against the subway + air train (~$12).
bsimpson
Uber Shuttle leaves from Atlantic Terminal, which is also the home of the LIRR. It's a train that goes to the airport on a fixed schedule. More comfortable and reliable than the Subway for $2 more.
JumpCrisscross
I have a place near Penn Station and take the LIRR to JFK almost religiously. But the most expensive part of the journey is the Uber to Penn. Having a shuttle that picks me up at my apartment and deposits me in Jamaica would be a solid pitch against the LIRR.
bsimpson
That sounds like the old Super Shuttle (which I know from CA, not NY).
I thought Uber's offering was more like a bus - you meet at the terminal and it takes you to the airport.
wenc
That’s not bad.
I had to get from JFK to midtown during peak hours. It was Airtrain ($8.50) + LIRR to Woodside ($11) + Subway 7 train to midtown ($2.90) = $22.40. (I didn’t know LIRR had city ticket, it would have been $16.40.
But it took 1.5 hours.
MentatOnMelange
So its like a more expensive version of public transportation, that also causes more traffic congestion and pollution because you've got a ton of cars on the road doing the job of a single bus/trolley/train
bko
The whole argument about "inefficiency of duplicative services" is an idea that needs to die.
Whether its the Soviet Union trying to optimize shampoo production to create a single "shampoo" brand or a health care provider requiring a "certificate of need" [0] to open up, the results are always the same: no competition, bad service, low supply and high prices
ausbah
but a road or mass transit isn’t the same as a shampoo brand. roads and vehicles already take up enough space (amongst other things) in dense urban areas, so i think adding even more under the guise of “competition” would incur a bunch of worse side effects. i think they’re akin more to a natural monopoly
bluGill
The problem is this isn't more efficient than just owning your own private car. A mass transit solution would be. Nothing wrong with inefficient solutions, but don't try to pretend you have the advantages of an efficient solution when you are not it.
delfinom
This is actually just competing with exhausting "competiton" in this space.
In NYC we got dollar vans.
Suppafly
My kid was in the hospital in Chicago and there were a ton of shuttles that run routes between the various hotels and the hospital. In a big city, shuttles have a lot more flexibility than buses. While I don't know if Chicago has something akin to dollar vans, I could see it really working if those shuttles all just added a few extra stops. A lot of cities have shuttles organized to do the routes between colleges and bars, usually owned and managed by the bars themselves.
SonOfKyuss
It seems like it is targeted at people who currently commute by car. It could be a net benefit if the number of car riders who use it outnumber the amount of people it cannibalizes from public transportation.
xnx
> So its like a more expensive version of public transportation,
Most US public transit systems are funded by taxes in addition to fares. The true cost of a bus ride can be many times the ticket price. If the services doesn't provide enough value for the service, let the customer decide.
> that also causes more traffic congestion and pollution because you've got a ton of cars on the road doing the job of a single bus/trolley/train
Buses are huge obstacles to the free flow of traffic (e.g. blocking right turns, slow left turns, blocking car and bike lanes with width) and are heavy polluters (diesel powered, oversized for most of their operating time).
Public transit agencies want to outlaw services like Chariot (https://sf.curbed.com/2019/1/10/18177528/chariot-san-francis...) because they don't want the competition.
bluGill
Your criticism of buses is correct only if there is only the driver on board. Your typical large bus route has more than enough riders (except at the end where they are turning around) to more than make up for all the problems buses cause. You just don't see how much worse traffic / pollution would be if those people were driving a car instead.
xnx
Buses are very efficient at peak times, but run mostly empty the rest of the day. Better to have a system that can scale with demand.
Suppafly
>Most US public transit systems are funded by taxes in addition to fares.
As a homeowner this is abundantly clear by looking at your tax bill, and something that I suspect renters don't think about. I don't grumble much about paying my taxes, but when you look at the breakdown, it's insane how much goes to things I don't personally use or even get much benefit out of. I like the idea of public transit, but the design of the system in my area seems to be to get the poor where they need to go, not as an alternative transport method for people who can afford private vehicles.
>Buses are huge obstacles to the free flow of traffic (e.g. blocking right turns, slow left turns, blocking car and bike lanes with width) and are heavy polluters (diesel powered, oversized for most of their operating time).
They also something like 20x the damage to roads that cars and trucks do because of the way the weight is transferred to the axels. I think buses are important, but a lot of negatives are ignored because they are absorbed by the overall system.
xnx
> get the poor where they need to go
The poor would probably be much happier with a $250 Uber voucher than a bus pass.
> They also something like 20x the damage to roads that cars
This is very evident in my city where they had to install huge concrete pads at every bus stop because of the deep ruts and potholes busses cause when they start and stop.
sundaeofshock
> Most US public transit systems are funded by taxes in addition to fares. The true cost of a bus ride can be many times the ticket price. If the services doesn't provide enough value for the service, let the customer decide.
What about the true cost of cars? I don’t drive, yet my taxes are used to subsidize car ownership, including the storage of vehicles in public spaces. The various externalities — pollution, congestion, deaths, excess asphalt — are not included in the true cost of private car ownership.
Suppafly
>I don’t drive, yet my taxes are used to subsidize car ownership
You still rely on roads, either for cars driven by other people to take you places or to service you with package delivery and fire and medical services at a minimum.
tenebrisalietum
By your logic we should get rid of trucks and have all freight delivered by car.
xnx
My logic is trying to use the most efficient method to safely, efficiently, and affordably transport people. Deliveries are already scaled to the items they carry. No one is delivering a pizza in a semi-truck.
gamblor956
Buses are huge obstacles to the free flow of traffic (e.g. blocking right turns, slow left turns, blocking car and bike lanes with width) and are heavy polluters (diesel powered, oversized for most of their operating time).
This is all wrong. At any given moment, the average bus will replace at least a dozen cars, so a bus "blocking a right turn" for a few seconds is significantly less of an obstacle than a dozen or more cars in that lane.
Buses make slow left turns, yes. But not much slower than normal cars, and it's far more likely that you'll miss a left turn due to a normal driver staring at Instagram on their phone instead of watching for the green turn signal.
Buses do not take up more than their lane in the U.S. Also, buses and bus stops were around before bike lanes, which (being generous) serve 1/100,000th as many people.
One diesel-powered bus still pollutes less than the vehicles it replaces.
And finally, Chariot wasn't outlawed. It just couldn't compete on the basis of real-world economics even though it was charging a multiple of what Muni charged for the same routes. To put it bluntly: the private company so inefficient that it couldn't make the numbers work even charging 5x what the public agency was charging. (SF did suspend Chariot for a weekin 2017 because Chariot was found to have been employing drivers without licenses.)
Suppafly
> the private company so inefficient that it couldn't make the numbers work even charging 5x what the public agency was charging.
That's not surprising because the public agency is mostly tax supported. Fares never reflect the true cost of the ride on public transportation.
robotburrito
So will this end up destroying public transit for them to eventually 6x the price?
bdamm
Public transit is a joke in marginally services areas anyway. Wherever public transit is already working well it will likely continue to do well. Competition is good, and if your life depends on subsidized transit, well, yeah you might end up bearing more of the cost. I don't personally see a problem with that.
vlovich123
> The routes, which are selected based on Uber’s extensive data on popular travel patterns, might have one or two additional stops to pick up other passengers.
This is a blindspot Uber will have on traffic that’s not currently serviced by their taxi model but maybe could be serviced by a shuttle. But maybe that traffic is riskier / more volatile since it’s not on Uber already. Interesting optimization problem.
gwbas1c
I wonder if this could put a real dent in rush hour?
(Letting my imagination wander a bit)
If everyone on the highway did this...
Could Uber be more convenient than public tranit?
Would they be able to regularly group passengers so that people are picked up and dropped off nearby?
Could Uber be cheaper than parking garages in large cities?
Could this put such a large dent in the number of cars on the road that traffic moves faster?
m2fkxy
This sounds like marshrutki. These are very common in post-Soviet countries to fill the demand left unmet by public transportation service.
- Uber builds a bus
- Uber asks to use bus lanes because because once again, and ITT, private sector frames public sector as “a peer product” that should have competition because this is America and so on
- Uber gets access to bus lanes
- pub transit degrades bc now it shares service with competition that operates under an entirely different model. A lion is introduced into a zoo with house cats, but hey they’re both cats and think of the zoo observers, they deserve options!
- Taxpayers fund Uber and buses, only one has the revenue model to provide unbiased social good
- Buses, like Amtrak and pub transit, degrade and degrade and degrade - look how government can’t do anything!
Turning a profit” for public services is the most harebrained meme that is simultaneously deeply damaging and continually propagated by certain folks, to include ITT.
Or we could just all get mercenaries for our burbclaves. Not like police turn a profit either!