
A Denver Suburb Experiments with Free Lyft Rides to Light Rail - dpflan
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/08/centennial-lyft-transit-partnership/495080/
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cpprototypes
There is great potential for something like Lyft to fix the rail "first mile"
and "last mile" problem. If they can integrate systems with government so that
the Lyft cost is part of the rail fare, then it's possible it could be covered
by the commuter tax benefit. That would be a big win for everyone, lower cost
for commuters, steady income for Lyft, increased ridership for rail.

EDIT: The more I think about it, this is such a good idea I hope Lyft is
seriously working on this. With something like Lyft Line, the optimization
potential is immense. Assuming each Lyft Line car can have 3 passengers and
most workplaces would be within 2-3 miles of a rail station, rides could be
very cheap and fast. For example, most coworkers going home would probably
share the same Lyft back to the station. The short distance (assuming a 2-3
mile radius) combined with Lyft Line would allow very high throughput during
rush hours. If the Lyft cost can benefit from the commuter tax deduction,
that's just icing on the cake since the car sharing alone should drop costs by
a lot. And there's also networking effect. Coworkers will want to encourage
coworkers to do this so they can lower costs for everyone.

~~~
nathancahill
The old is new again. Lyft invents the commute carpool.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Except Lyft is on demand; I don't have to be waiting in my driveway exactly at
7:45 every morning, lest a coworker have to wait for me and hold up everyone
else as well - and I'll never be held up waiting for them either.

~~~
nathancahill
Have you ever taken Uber pool? It's like that, but worse, because you're
riding with strangers that you can't yell at for dilly-dallying.

~~~
vegashacker
It's a fair point about the dilly-dallying (although I believe there are rules
like you can't be more than 3 min late, tho I don't know how strict they are.)
I've definitely had rough lyft lines where I seem like I'm really being taken
out of my way. But most of the time it's awesome, and kind of fun.

But the important difference that pavel was identifying was that you don't
have to decide ahead of time that you are heading to the bus station. That's
huge! You decide to head downtown or whereever, pull out the app, bam
someone's coming to pick you up. To me this feels very different than, e.g.,
"casual carpool" in the Bay Area.

~~~
ringwalt
I think Uber Pool only gives you 1 minute from the time the driver arrives,
but I've never had a driver leave without the second passenger when they took
5 or 10 minutes to show up. Plus people never like to admit that they're at
fault; if they driver leaves after 5 minutes because a passenger wasn't at
their pickup point, the passenger can probably leave nasty feedback and risk
the driver being banned if it happens a few times.

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RobotCaleb
I live in Centennial. Once a week I commute up to Westminster for work. I've
been contemplating the light rail + train to get me to within 5.5 miles of my
office. However, it looks like this would be about 1.5 - 2 hours vs my 45
minutes (on a bad traffic day) drive in my POV. I'm not sure it'll be worth
it. Even with a free trip to the closest station, that's only going to shave
about 3/4 of a mile off of my walking/biking trip.

Edit: If anyone lives in the area, I wouldn't mind meeting up. My email is in
my profile.

~~~
Brendinooo
Time is often an underrated element in these discussions, as is the sunk cost
of already owning a car if transit can't take you everywhere.

I can get a bus to downtown Pittsburgh a block away from my house, but I'll
almost always drive because I can often get downtown in almost half the time
(25 minutes vs 45), I can often find free parking, and I can then set my own
terms for arrival and departure. Fares are currently $7.50 for a roundtrip,
which is over two gallons of gas or a gallon of gas and a cheap parking spot.

Point being, if you already have a car and if you can park cheaply, public
transit, as much as I personally like it, becomes a tough value proposition.

~~~
voxic11
Traffic can be a real thing. For me to get most places in Boston it's actually
at least as fast for to take the subway then to sit in rush hour traffic. I
guess buses don't have that advantage though.

~~~
swampthinker
Not sure what you're talking about. Taking the train from Alewife to Downtown
always beats the car, just not a bicycle.

~~~
MrFoof
He's more referring to where Commuter Rail, not subway, is the method.
Problems notwithstanding, subway lines other than the Green Line will _always_
win over driving during peak times.

A great example would be coming from Waltham via the Worcester/Framingham Line
versus driving along the Mass Pike -- it'd be a coin flip as to what wins on a
given day.

Moreover, outside of subway service the only alternative (where available) is
bus which can easily double commute times compared to driving. In some cases
(Waltham and Newton for example) there's the Inner/Outer Express Buses which
also competes directly with Commuter Rail in terms of timeliness (10% slower
on average) but at a lower cost -- you can take non-express buses as well
which are cheaper still, but tack on another 35-45 minutes each way -- we're
talking 3 to 4 hours of commuting a day from northern parts of Boston to
central Waltham via a combination of subway and non-express buses.

However, Commuter Rail tends to be faster than driving on longer trips. Such
as coming from Providence, Worcester, Fitchburg, etc.

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djrogers
FTA:

 _Centennial’s dial-a-ride program, provided by RTD, currently costs about $21
per one-way trip, requires advance sign-ups, and averages just a little over
four boardings per hour._

Wow, that's scarily inefficient. I'm glad some places are trying alternatives,
but I hold out little hope this will happen in California any time soon - the
SEIU would shut it down faster than you could say 'competition'.

\-- edited for formatting

~~~
bps4484
Another area that's scarily inefficient in transportation:

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/12/technology/lyft-medical-
ride...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/12/technology/lyft-medical-rides-health-
care/)

"Typically, National Medtrans Network calls livery cab companies to book
rides. Cancellations, late cars and fraud are big problems. Sometimes it can
take as many as six phone calls to complete one booking. A 2005 analysis found
that 3.6 million Americans miss or delay medical appointments every year
because of transportation issues."

~~~
jessriedel
> 3.6 million Americans miss or delay medical appointments every year because
> of transportation issues

So...less than a single missed or delayed medical appointment in a person's
life in expectation?

~~~
burkaman
Sure, if it's a uniform distribution and everyone only goes to the doctor once
a year. More likely there's a bunch of poor old people constantly missing
appointments, and poor parents unable to take their kids.

From the study
([http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_webdoc_29.pdf](http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_webdoc_29.pdf)):

"The estimate of 3.6 million Americans who miss or delay medical care because
of a lack of access to NEMT each year [...] is conservative and should be seen
as a lower bound estimate. Response bias inherent in these studies, e.g.,
their difficulty in surveying the homeless and other truly disadvantaged
individuals, lowers the estimate, and some populations may be totally ignored
in the data."

"Finally, several factors and trends—disproportionate population growth of
groups in the current target population; the aging of the U.S. population;
more expensive, less affordable healthcare; rising disease prevalence—will
conspire to dramatically increase the future projection of transportation-
disadvantaged individuals at risk of missing health care, i.e., this study’s
target population."

"In terms of health status, the target population suffers from critical
diseases at a higher rate than does the rest of the U.S. population, and it
generally accesses more medical care than does the rest of the U.S.
population, despite its transportation barriers, almost certainly because it
is much more ill on average."

~~~
jessriedel
> in expectation

I don't know what you're arguing against.

~~~
burkaman
I thought your comment was implying this statistic wasn't really a big deal
when you average it over the whole population. I was trying to argue that a
simple average is misleading, and it is a big deal.

If "in expectation" is a well-defined statistical term or something and I
misunderstood, my bad.

~~~
jessriedel
No worries. "In expectation" is indeed a technical term, in the same sense of
"expected value".

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chejazi
This makes a LOT of sense for the elderly. My grandmother occasionally
schedules a pickup from her home in the suburbs, and the system is very
lacking. First off, it's based on scheduling a time far in advance. Second,
there's no way to get real time updates. Third, the van/bus that picks her up
is often EMPTY!

I see a lot of people trying to map the functionality of this onto their non-
retired lifestyles, but I think that's missing the point. This will mostly
benefit seniors.

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peatmoss
Relatedly, I'm hyper impressed by Lyft's partnership-based approach to working
with governments. As a transportation person, the work Emily Castor and her
crew have done is pretty remarkable. Lyft has been super scrappy in seeking
these kinds of mutually beneficial agreements.

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pboutros
That's actually pretty cool. I bet that Lyft has some sort of guarantees
around availability to ensure some sort of base capacity at set times of day.

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andys627
This is so so so very much cheaper than building freeways and promoting single
occupancy driving.

~~~
matthewowen
Lyft (not Lyft line) is for all practical terms single occupancy driving.
There might be two people in the car, but only one of them has a purpose to
the trip.

~~~
ndonnellan
But the capacity (utilization) factor is potentially much higher. If a lyft
driver takes 10 people to and from the train in a day, 1 car is used for 10
trips versus 10 cars and their corresponding storage costs. The variable costs
might be similar, but the fixed/capital costs are much lower.

If the lyft driver picks up more than 1 person, the costs start to drop
precipitously.

~~~
acgourley
If there is still one car for one person making each leg of the trip, the on
road utilization has not changed. The parking utilization has been reduced,
however, which then could open more lanes and increase density.

~~~
hiou
The road utilization has increased as well as the fuel usage for the driving
between passenger drop offs and pickups. As well as the commute of the Lyft
driver. That said, if it causes people to take the train the next 25 miles
into the city as opposed to driving it could actually decrease.

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martinald
This is a great idea. If it got popular, Lyft line could cut the cost of it,
while still being efficient.

And, the best thing, if it does really well then the data can be used to plan
new high quality bus routes or even light rail to replace it.

This isn't ever likely to work for suburb to suburb transit (and I don't think
there is a model that would) but could definitely work for suburb to downtown
style transit.

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zjaffee
While this is a new concept for something a government does, this is already a
thing that I've seen tech companies in the south bay provide to their
employees when they are too small to afford sending busses.

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r0m4n0
If you lived near the station you could get free lift rides anywhere nearby
and also back home :)

~~~
hrez
That can be easily prevented. Just mark rides as free only if start or end
within 50-100 feet of billing address.

