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US cities pay too much for buses

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355 points pavel_lishin | 4 comments | 26 Sep 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.023s | source
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bluGill ◴[26 Sep 25 15:13 UTC] No.45387448[source]▶
Don't be fooled, paying less won't help much since the cost of a bus is a small part of the costs of running a bus route. about half your costs are the bus driver. The most expensive bus is still only 1/3rd of your hourly cost of running the bus. If a more expensive bus is more reliable that could more than make up for a more expensive bus (I don't have any numbers to do math on though).

Half the costs of running a bus route are the driver's labor. The other half needs to pay for maintenance, the cost of the bus, and all the other overhead.

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esafak ◴[26 Sep 25 17:33 UTC] No.45388984[source]▶
I'm hearing you say we should have self-driving buses... which is feasible since their route is fixed.
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1. dzhiurgis ◴[27 Sep 25 01:30 UTC] No.45392626[source]▶
Or buy 10 Teslas for the same price and offer superior service.
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2. aidenn0 ◴[27 Sep 25 03:33 UTC] No.45393033[source]▶
That's 10x the cost of drivers though.
3. rsynnott ◴[27 Sep 25 08:24 UTC] No.45394066[source]▶
The main cost of running a bus system is drivers, not buses. So that would be horribly expensive.

Also... how small are you imagining buses are? Standard buses here have a capacity of around a hundred people. If you broke them out into cars there simply wouldn't be space on the roads.

4. bluGill ◴[27 Sep 25 12:32 UTC] No.45395163[source]▶
That is worse service. A tesla has low capacity and so cannot handle multiple groups randomly showing up at the same time. The point of great transit is you don't think, the system is ready for you.