You've got the economics completely backwards. Running a bus route has a fixed cost; where the fares collected fall short of that cost, it may be necessary to subsidise that route. You actively want to encourage more people to use that route, because it reduces the level of subsidy necessary. People who find the route merely convenient help to fund the service for people who vitally need it.
Bus subsidies are often remarkably cheap on a per-journey basis, because the service would only be modestly unprofitable without the subsidy. Paying a few pennies per passenger to make a service profitable is vastly cheaper than paying for taxis to ferry all of those people to their destination.
Some smaller, more efficient buses should be also employed.
If market forces aren't aligned with social values, it's sensible to use a different resource-allocation mechanism.
This isn’t about socioeconomics if anything poor neighborhoods would have more people commuting via buses than richer ones that can afford petrol, parking and rail passes.
What bus operators like is predictable routes even if you fill only 4 busses between 8-9am and again between 5-6pm it’s a very good route because it’s bother predicable and that most of your users would likely buy seasonal tickets.
So essentially routes that connect people to places are very attractive but routes that connect people to people are not.
This means that there would be much fewer routes that connect neighborhoods directly especially within the same socioeconomic level which forces many people to change at a city center or at any other service hub to get to their destination.
This also affects commuting routes outside of rush hours and especially night buses.
Governments have limited resources and so they’ll focus and optimize their spending to maximize efficiency and the same reason a bus route would be unattractive to a for profit operator would likely force a non for profit one to direct their attention somewhere else.
The best way is usually forcing the for profit operators to bid on whole regions rather than individual routes and mandating minimum service levels across the board which would prevent operators from running a bus once a day and calling it a served route.
The only way in which a government run transportation provider would not experience this issue is if the people are aware of it and are willing to pay the extra money in taxes to cover the costs of running unprofitable routes and would actively lobby their governments to spend that extra money on exactly that which isn’t likely.
Those that connect underserved communities?
Those that enabled the educational improvement of the population?
I highly doubt that. People carpool. NYC has dollar vans which serve underserved communities at lower cost than the state.
Providing subsidized bus routes to work is basically subsidizing employers who employ these people.
I can only assume that you've never been poor, because lack of transport is a massive obstacle for people struggling to get or stay on the bottom rung of the employment ladder. The world is a very different place if you're on the breadline - quite minor issues can become crises if you just don't have any spare money to fix them.
How do you get to the job interview if you can't afford a taxi? How do you carpool if you've only just started the job and don't know anyone who works there? What do you do if your shift pattern changes and you can't get a ride any more? What do you do if the person giving you a ride quits or gets fired? What do you do if they lose their license for drink-driving or their crappy old car breaks down?
If there was a private bus operator ("dollar van") serving that route, the local authority wouldn't have to subsidise it.
>Providing subsidized bus routes to work is basically subsidizing employers who employ these people.
Yes, but what's so wrong with that? Running a subsidised bus route is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying unemployment benefits and dealing with the social costs of long-term unemployment. It'd be nice if those companies were willing to pay for it, but they clearly aren't.
Place A has a lot of unemployed people with low skills. Place B has a lot of low-skilled jobs. There's no public transport between place A and place B, so a lot of those unemployed people can't get to those jobs. Is it really so irrational for the local government to solve that problem?
> If there was a private bus operator ("dollar van") serving that route, the local authority wouldn't have to subsidise it.
This assumes the government isn't actively trying to shut them down because they're unlicensed and the licensing system is excessive.
> Place A has a lot of unemployed people with low skills. Place B has a lot of low-skilled jobs. There's no public transport between place A and place B, so a lot of those unemployed people can't get to those jobs. Is it really so irrational for the local government to solve that problem?
I think this situation with a bunch of people sitting around unemployed because they can't get a ride and then suddenly getting jobs because you add an (unprofitable, i.e. underutilized) bus route is a contrived example.
I also think you would probably do better by subsidizing these people directly (e.g. through transport vouchers or just direct payments), rather than having the local government running an unprofitable route.
That's a really weak excuse for not helping people in need. The continued existence of unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy and suicide demonstrate that some people don't find ways to resolve their issues.
>This assumes the government isn't actively trying to shut them down because they're unlicensed and the licensing system is excessive.
My original comment was in the context of the UK. I have no idea what the situation in the US, but it's incredibly straightforward to legally start a bus route over here. To start a local route, the only significant administrative hurdle is a ten-page form and a £60 ($80) application fee. It's entirely feasible for a small company to open a new route with one vehicle.
>I think this situation with a bunch of people sitting around unemployed because they can't get a ride and then suddenly getting jobs because you add an (unprofitable, i.e. underutilized) bus route is a contrived example.
It definitely isn't. Here are some case studies to prove it:
https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/file...
>I also think you would probably do better by subsidizing these people directly (e.g. through transport vouchers or just direct payments), rather than having the local government running an unprofitable route.
We already do that through a variety of means, but other transport options can be prohibitively expensive to support and there is a very significant administrative burden associated with means-tested benefits. Subsidising a bus route can be quite inexpensive on a per-journey basis, because the local authority only needs to cover the shortfall between fare revenue and the cost of running the service. Subsidised bus schemes can also provide broader benefits in terms of access to healthcare and social inclusion - a subsidised bus taking a low-income worker to their job may also take a young mother to a doctor's appointment, an elderly person to a social club and a disabled person to the shops.
> Obviously, Cornwall is a rural county and more likely to experience poorer levels of public transport provision. In the Walsall study, which is clearly more representative of conditions in an inner-urban area, one officer felt that it was less to do with the lack of transport provision and more to do with people’s willingness to travel outside the immediate area
The next section which sites lack of links from areas of "high unemployment to key employment sites" is also talking about Cornwall again.
I actually like public transport, I just think your initial comment was an exaggeration.
I will be very surprised if you can point to any prominent public figure who wants to slash publish transportation but also wants to increase the minimum wage or provide more welfare or whatever alternate means of helping the poor you feel wouldn't be an employer subsidy.