What about the wheelchair users? What do they prefer?

If it were both cheaper and best for the users (as I believe it would be) to pay for private rides, I would support that wholeheartedly. If one option were cheaper, and the other is preferred, it would seem that you'd have to engage in some type of cost-benefit analysis.

I don't see why able-bodied people should impose their view of 'social integration' on minorities at great cost, without additional justification.

You have a good point.

But I think taken to the extreme: who wouldn't prefer a private air-conditioned taxi over 100 ˚F subway platforms?

In this hypothetical: we're assuming the facilities are good enough that the experience for the disabled is within reasonable parity.

On the other hand, if it means having to go 40 blocks uptown, just to find an elevator then head back downtown, the system is inadequate and my narrative doesn't hold.

If wheelchair users prefer to take private rides, and it's cheaper than adapting public transit to their needs, I really don't see why we need to worry about this kind of issue. Most people view mass transit as generally undesirable, so they're okay with 'missing out' on it, and I don't think the disabled population is large enough to significantly contribute to urban congestion. I suppose that mass transit ridership will appear less diverse, but I'd rather not force people to use public transit just to make it more diverse.

Don't get me wrong; I'd love for everyone to be able to do everything, but trying to make everything work for everyone all the time can get Procrustean.

Just a question - why build public transport at all if it's undesirable? That just pushes everyone who can afford NOT to take it out, which leads to pollution, but worse, the effect that the populace using the public transportation are probably seen by others as 'more undesirable', leading to a snowball effect of people not using it until it's fully subsidized and terrible. That's what basically happened to busses in my old city. Even the less well off people would tell you not to ride one because it's full of crazies/homeless/beggars/etc. We're like, worse off than if they'd never have built it at all.

If we're serious about modernizing and reducing our carbon footprint, we should provide reliable, safe, comfortable transportation that people want to take. Not relegate it as a public service for the needy. (though the both can work together)

If you take a look at surveys on the subject, nobody likes buses, and everyone loves the idea of trains, though they have more mixed feelings on the implementations. Buses are generally viewed as transportation for the poor and the young; I don't see how we can change that.

I think the 'solution' is to replace buses with smaller and more efficient urban mobility solutions; buses are not that efficient (as they spend most of their time driving around almost empty), so this is the lowest-hanging fruit anyway. If I knew how to create these solutions, I would be working on them right now, but I think some combination(s) of car-sharing, high efficiency vehicles, self-driving technologies, and electric bicycles will eventually replace buses.

I don't like buses, and I vastly prefer trains over them.

However, I've taken some really, really bad buses (SF), some middle-of-the-road buses (Seattle), and some rather good buses (Vancouver).

If you want to improve bus efficiency, the lowest-hanging fruit is switching the less-used lines to 24-person shuttle-buses. Vancouver uses that model heavily.

The next lowest-hanging fruit would be actually getting people to use the bus. If the reason they don't use the bus is 'it doesn't take me where I need to go', you can fix that. If the reason they don't use the bus is 'only crazies and poor people take the bus', you can fix that too. Transit systems that are used by everyone, as opposed to just 'undesirables' tend to run a lot better.

Also, keep in mind that most cars on the road are $20-50,000 vehicles that drive 75% empty, and spend 95% of their lives sitting in parking lots. That's a damn low bar for 'efficiency' that even a mostly-empty bus can match. Likewise, taxis are vehicles that spend ~30% of their time driving empty, and only transporting 1 person the vast majority of the remaining time. (While costing ~$30/hour to operate.)

You're right about buses, but I don't think that's inherent to buses, just how we've implemented them. In other countries, buses are comfortable and air conditioned and basically anyone and everyone rides them. If we could figure out how to make them safe, clean, and comfortable, then of course they wouldn't be empty most of the time, and would run at capacity(which would be a good problem to have).

Rail I think is obviously preferred long term, but setting up a fleet of electric buses could be done in a matter of months, vs a simple limited rail that takes many years.

Buses almost always run at less than 50% capacity, as people are going to or from school or work, but not both (i.e. morning rush is in the opposite direction of evening rush). The other unsolvable problems for buses is that they necessarily increase commute distance and time, as people must take a more indirect route to use buses (as opposed to individual transportation), and they are not flexible (i.e. they have limited peak capacity and fixed schedules).

> who wouldn't prefer a private air-conditioned taxi over 100 ˚F subway platforms?

When it's prohibitively expensive to take private air-conditioned taxi.

If taxi is, as you said, both cheaper and provides a better experience, why not? Are we torturing people just for your poetic justice?

That's fair, if it's cheaper including externalities.

Well, I don't have a wheelchair-bound piano tuner handy to ask, so I'll have to model this person based on other wheelchair users I've been acquainted with over the years.

So let's ask this imaginary person: Would you rather get free rides everywhere you need to go, or have to wait in the rain/snow/heat for the bus, feeling the stress of inconveniencing others with the ramp, and having to wheel yourself the rest of the distance to your destination?

That's if the bus arrives on time, which it won't. But keep in mind! silviogutierrez will feel better about themself if you take the bus! "poetic and noble" were the exact words.

> Would you rather get free rides everywhere you need to go or have to wait in the rain/snow/heat for the bus

At least in Toronto, the para-transit fares are the same as the regular transit system fares.

Sometimes they send you a taxi, but other times they send around a mini-bus that operates like an UberPool and may not save you any time.

Even if a Lyft/Uber would be cheaper, if the gov is subsidizing it, they’ll pay for the lowest priority to save 3 cents.

I think that's somewhat uncharitable of a take. But fundamentally, I agree with you.

See my other comment. In this ideal, the experience for the wheelchair-bound is comparable to others. Not the current embarrassment we have in New York, for example.

I'll grant you my take was a bit over-the-top.

The thing is, there are a few reasons why the able-bodied tend to prefer the experience of a ride-hailing app over public transit.

- it comes to where you are, and drops you off exactly where you're going

- you get a ride when you're ready to go, and not whenever the transit is running

- higher chances of getting rides at weird hours

- no risk of interacting with aggressive panhandlers, people high on drugs, the mentally ill, or people with bad personal hygiene

Public transit has significant advantages, as well: biggest among them, it avoids the tragedy of the commons, particularly road congestion and carbon emissions. It has salubrious effects on urban planning. Places with good public transit are nice places to live.

What I want to point out is that, every one of the advantages for the able-bodied are significantly exaggerated for wheelchair users.

I don't think it's possible to offer a comparable experience, due to the very nature of the disability. So if it's more expensive to offer the less desirable option, well, we shouldn't do that.

More expensive public transit means picking from the following buckets: less transit, more expensive tickets, less pay for workers, starving other municipal programs, or kicking the problem down the road with municipal debt. None of those are great; they can be worth it for a better experience (replacing old worn-down cars for example), but not for a worse one.

That's such a false dichotomy, public transportation can be comfortable and efficient. And It is in a lot of places around the world.

yes let’s make all public policy based on your sense of poetic justice. and not numbers.

i know cost is just a number to you but that’s other people’s money you’re spending

Believe me, I'm very fiscally skeptical with government spending.

Moreover, public transportation costs in the US are outrageous. Each elevator in the tens of millions for an NYC subway station. It's a racket and unacceptably corrupt.

But we can tackle both problems, and should.

Even with hyper efficient spending, there's an external benefit that is hard to measure and value beyond the cold, hard cash needed for the infrastructure vs government-paid private rides.

I've been laterally involved in frivolous ADA lawsuits for websites before, so I also understand how even noble goals can become corrupted.

Well, not based on one person, but sometimes making uneconomic decisions based on human decency? That’s the society I’d rather live in.

I mean, if numbers are all that matter, I’m fairly sure someone could come up with a model to deprioritise and disenfranchise almost anyone - the disabled, the elderly, the retired...

Is forcing wheelchair users to use subway human decency to you? We're talking about a situation where it's cheaper to let them use taxi service, and it's a better experience.

My uncle lives in a wheelchair by the way. The horror of imagining him having to use the subway...

That’s not the situation. In the absence of Uber/Lyft (they being positive for disabled mobility) there appears to be no choice: it’s bad slow disabled-specific transport vs... nothing. And the argument was to not do things for disabled people that were uneconomic.

So yes, I’d like to give disabled users the option of using all public transport, if they choose. (Having lived in London, many underground stations are actually pretty good - and certainly not below ‘human decency’.)

But I’d also like that disabled people have other options, including reasonably-priced taxis.

yeah the proposal from the original comment also seems more designed to “teach” the billionaire by making him sit next to a disabled person instead of helping the wheelchair bound person. all out of some sort of sense of justice

In Sweden if you're disabled, the government will pay for taxis for you. There's limits on how often et c and they don't come as fast as a normal taxi booking and you can only bring one other person with you, but it's a great option for when public transit doesn't cut it.

> A while ago — and I have no citations for this — I read it was easier to just pay for private rides for every accessible person than to make NYC and SF's public transportation accessible. Yes, in perpetuity. Considerably cheaper, too.

1. Accessibility doesn't just benefit wheel-chair bound people. Accessibility benefits just about anyone who has temporary difficulty walking, is carrying heavy or bulky things, is out with children, is not fully sober, etc, etc, etc.

2. NYC may indeed be a special case, because of the poor design of existing subway stations, and the difficulty of rebuilding them in the middle of Manhattan. I don't think this sort of thing would generalize to other locales.

I firmly agree on #1. In fact, my piano tuner is not wheelchair-bound and that was a white lie. My apologies. He was born blind.

#2: Normally I would strongly disagree. It's a NYC trope to say our subway is in shambles because pick one of: the city is old, the city is dense, the subway runs 24/7, and so on. And yet Paris, London, and other ancient subways run better and make cheaper and faster improvements.

But looking around, it seems like accessibility is very poor for London and Paris too. So you're right. They all have this in common. In fact, NYC may even be ahead[1]

However, going on a real tangent here, with the crazy amounts of money we spend or even with quantitative easing[2], I feel like we could try novel concepts like shutting down entire city blocks for months at a time and compensate everyone involved. Yes, crazy prices, but who knows?

[1] https://www.citymetric.com/transport/what-paris-metro-map-lo...

[2] Instead of propping up bonds and equities, prop up infrastructure?

There are many different ways to be disabled. Some people get around in wheelchairs and will be fine wherever there are elevators. Other people (including all of us as we get older) need personal assistance door-to-door. There's a spectrum of inclusion, and I don't think "whatever the cost" acknowledges that.

I 100% agree, for that reason and more. But I also don't know that I see accessible public transit as being a something to set against accessible point-to-point transportation. One needs both. For the same reasons that everyone needs both.

Elsewhere in the thread someone with a wheelchair bound sister mentioned that she doesn't like taking public transit because she gets harassed and gawked at for her disability.

Also, accessible transit benefits everyone with a stroller, as well as the elderly and anyone else with a temporary injury.