
Dial-A-Ride: Boom or Bust (1975) - cromulent
https://books.google.fi/books?id=e-IDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA82#v=onepage&q&f=false
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DrScump
Dial-a-Ride was a horrendous failure in Santa Clara County despite the faint
critical tone of this article. How it works among a small and/or dense
population is another story.

My late father was a leading critic of Dial-a-Ride at the time, mustering his
considerable organizational analysis skills to show just how unworkable it was
even in the most perfect scenario. To wit: imagine an assortment of riders all
lying roughly in a long line across the valley with a common destination. Even
in that case, the transit time for the first boarder from origin to
destination would be at least 10-15 TIMES direct door-to-door time, or at
least 3-4 times as long as taking existing bus routes with transfers (if
needed).

In a small town with a well-bounded small center of commerce and residences,
sure, that could work.

Here's a postmortem analysis from Stanford:
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00165244](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00165244)

VTA's current farebox recovery rate is below 15% and, to my knowledge, has not
ever been better than that.

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cturitzin
I believe the "farebox recovery ratio" of Muni in San Francisco is ~20%. Which
means, the actual cost of a bus ride is $11.25 ($2.25/0.2). So, the government
is paying $9 subsidy for each rider.

Looking at how municipalities subsidized dial-a-ride, are any subsidizing
ride-sharing (uber, lyft) systems? Many uber/lyft rides inside of SF are
cheaper than the cost of a muni trip.

~~~
gohrt
> fare capture

Terminology "fare capture" refers to the % of rides that are paid (vs
"stowaways"), not the $ of expenses that are paid by fares.

> So, the government is paying $9 subsidy for each rider.

This isn't quite right. A proper analysis needs to separate marginal cost from
overhead. If the system is not running at capacity, adding more rides would
decrease the subsidy per ride.

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cturitzin
You're right. The correct term is "farebox recovery ratio".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)

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Animats
Dial-a-Ride in Santa Clara county was a nice service, but Santa Clara County
is 200 square miles, and at the time, had nothing like a "downtown". Downtown
San Jose had almost no tall buildings back in 1975. There wasn't much
commonality of trip sources or destinations, and thus most buses had one
passenger.

~~~
DrScump
oh, there was a handful of tall buildings (I recall seeing the Community Bank
and Bank of America buildings using a telescope from the eastern hills), but
there was never sufficient density of population or workforce for transit to
be cost-effective.

The (lack of) such commonality was key.

SCCTA/VTA's infrastructure was always politically oriented, not need-based.
Note how Mineta obtained hundreds of millions of Federal funding for light
rail along the Mountain View/Sunnyvale corridor (despite mass reductions of
workforce in the area at the time from Lockheed and the Blue Cube)... then
quit his House seat early and joined Lockheed Martin's executive ranks.

But I'm sure that was just coincidence.

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jsherer
Quite interesting. I grew up in a small town with < 10K people and we used
Dial-a-Ride all the time. I think the service is still offered to this day.

