A new paper argues that lack of competition, demand for custom features and “Buy America” rules have driven up costs for transit agencies in the US.
In 2023, two transit agencies went shopping for new buses. Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) and the Cincinnati area’s Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) both bought 40-foot, diesel-powered vehicles from the same manufacturer. Although the vehicles were similar, their prices were not: RTD’s 10 buses cost $432,028 each, while SORTA’s 17 cost a whopping $939,388 a pop.
That same year, Singapore’s Land Transport Authority also bought buses. Their order called for 240 fully electric vehicles — which are typically twice as expensive as diesel ones in the US. List price: Just $333,000 each.
Read the original article
Comments
"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder."
Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing.
Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance.
Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can eat buffet.
The second you detach the consumer from the price of something, even through an intermediary such as health insurance, that is when they stop caring about how much something costs, and so the price jumps.
And congratulations to any of today's lucky ten thousand who are just learning of the Principal-Agent Problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
I'm convinced that a great majority of problems in the US these days fundamentally boils down to principal agent problems. The 2008 financial crisis is a great example. Once banks no longer kept mortgages on their own books, it just became a matter of time until that was going to blow up. The incentives change.
By breatheoften 2025-09-2623:53 It takes more than just misaligned incentives to get a banking crisis -- you have to have structural corruption preventing the transfer of the loss gradient back to the "misaligned" decision makers. It's somewhat disingenuous (or overly innocent) to reimagine the pathways which power structural corruption as "innocent ignorance in the face of bad incentives".
The real world has "actually bad" actors -- not just misaligned incentives.
How about the ten thousand learning about "today's lucky ten thousand"?
By wyre 2025-09-2621:13
By theologic 2025-09-2621:43 Throw in confirmation bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias and you have a lot of inertia from changing. Not only do they not have the right info, but because they have invested in the ongoing solution, it is difficult to get any change going because humans tend to simply see everything as supporting their current viewpoint.
By trollbridge 2025-09-2622:13 And watch out for troublesome agents who often propose themselves as the answer to the principal-agent problem they created in the first place.
By frollogaston 2025-09-2619:255 reply Shouldn't insurance care about the pricing though? I get why federal govt isn't sensitive, given 0 competition.
By SoftTalker 2025-09-2619:313 reply Insurance profit is limited to a percentage of what they pay out. So the more they pay, the more money they make.
Also the largest insurers increasingly own the doctors you’re seeing too.
Also the pharmacy you get your drugs from.
Also the entity that negotiates prices between pharma companies and your insurer.
More healthcare consumption = better, across the board
Even when it's not the insurer, it's at least a hospital. Many a doctor around me that used to have a private practice sold to one of the hospital chains, as they promised more money than by owning, solely due to superior collective action advantages. A large insurer can bully a private practice into cutting costs, but a hospital network that handles 40% of ERs in the metro area? The insurance company can lose. So everyone makes more money but the people paying insurance.
On top of that the ACA prevents new physician owned hospitals from being established and placed restrictions on expansions of existing ones
By estearum 2025-09-271:19 To be fair, this is because there's long-standing [but disputed] evidence that healthcare providers drive up costs/utilization when they can refer to hospitals they have equity stakes in.
Messy business!
By NooneAtAll3 2025-09-2622:001 reply > More healthcare consumption = better, across the board
no
more paid money for less healthcare consumed = better for insurence
thus all the declined treatments
By estearum 2025-09-271:11 Not quite true. If you own the providers, getting people to pay deductibles and copays (i.e. getting treated) will yield way more money than just having them pay premiums.
By frollogaston 2025-09-2619:411 reply Oh, that's important info. Also such a rule suggests that health insurance isn't a competitive market.
By littlestymaar 2025-09-2619:462 reply There's no such thing as a “competitive market” in the real world.
By samdoesnothing 2025-09-2619:55 Yes there is.
By itsmek 2025-09-2621:11 Global commodities are not competitive?
By VirusNewbie 2025-09-2622:24 wow, why would they cap it that way? that makes no sense.
By foolswisdom 2025-09-2620:55 As noted by sibling comments, the arm of the Healthcare company that wons the doctor's office wants to collect as much as possible, while the insurance arms are anyway capped at how much they can make. Incentives (conflict of interest) are towards paying more.
Governments of countries that have public health care generally are price sensitive. The competition is from other governmental functions that need the budget.
By silotis 2025-09-2623:18 That's less a matter of price sensitively and more that other countries usually have price controls on healthcare. That's why doctors make so much less and drugs are so much cheaper outside the US: it's literally illegal to charge more.
By whimsicalism 2025-09-2620:10 massive proportions of utilization come from govt subsidized plans
By sleepybrett 2025-09-2620:05 If the feds are mandating USA manufacture in order to secure the funding for the muni.. then it just really amounts to welfare for the bus manufacturer.
Which is probably the right way to support american manufacturing.
In reality, this claim doesn't survive a cursory glance at the OECD's numbers for health expenditure per capita[1].> The second you detach the consumer from the > price of something, even through an > intermediary such as health insurance, that > is when they stop caring about how much > something costs, and so the price jumps.You'll find that (even ignoring the outlier that is the US health care system) that in some countries where consumers bear at least some of the cost directly via mandatory insurance and deductibles, the spending per capita (and which survives a comparison with overall life expectancy etc.) is higher than in some countries where the consumer is even further detached from spending, via single-payer universal healthcare systems.
Or, the other way around, it's almost like it's a very complex issue that resists reducing the problem to an Econ 101 parable.
1. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2023/11/health-at-a-gla...
By trollbridge 2025-09-2622:132 reply If consumers actually directly paid the whole cost for health services (as opposed to a fixed price, like a $20 copay, etc.), the prices charged would become far more regular.
An easy way to examine this is to compare the price of over-the-counter versus pharmaceuticals. If a third party weren't paying for them, the price would have to either come down to something affordable to the average person, or else the market for it would shrink to only the wealthy.
By avar 2025-09-2622:34 I'm aware of your and the GP's claim, I'm saying it doesn't survive contact with reality.
If you look at e.g. the per-dose price of insulin it's as low or lower in countries with single-payer universal systems, where someone requiring insulin is never going to have any idea what it even costs, because it's just something that's provided for them should they need it.
In that case it's usually some centralized state purchaser that has an incentive to bring prices down, or a government that has an overall incentive to keep the inflation of its budgetary items down, which ultimately comes down to public elections etc.
In any case, a much more indirect mechanism than someone who'd be directly affected paying the costs associated with the product, which directly contradicts this particular argument.
By sam345 2025-09-271:09 Exactly. Same for Universities. Thank you.
By WalterBright 2025-09-2623:29 It's not just about not caring. It's a system that is wide open for grift. For example, the mayor awards the contract to X, and X in return donates to his campaign reelection.
By marbro 2025-09-2622:06 We need to shut down the government until buses and other wasteful borrowing and spending is eliminated. Local governments should pay for 100% of their buses rather than 20%.
By Fade_Dance 2025-09-270:53 I actually don't see how that follows from OP.
By thegreatpeter 2025-09-2621:33 Posts like these on Hacker News are quite interesting bc if this scenario comes up in any "left vs right" debate, it's always shot down as a terrible concept and idea to keep the government out of it.
I mean if it's a strict 80/20 split the incentives are the same as a 0/100 split no?
By salmonellaeater 2025-09-2623:00 The transit agency will choose more expensive features that do not meet a 1x ROI but do meet a 5x ROI.
It's even worse, I will use my healthcare just because it is free. I would feel like a moron not get my free physical, bloodwork and other labs every year. If it was $20 I wouldn't bother but its almost obligatory to take something "because its free".
Once I learn something is free it is like I already own it, so now I don't get it if I take it, I lose it if I don't.
By NoahZuniga 2025-09-2621:51 These free things are preventative. If you take them, the insurance company expects you to need less healthcare in the future, so actually this is a good thing (and not a problem as in the op)!
By hdgvhicv 2025-09-2621:28 It’s not fee though is it. How many hours does it take do go somewhere and have a checkup? Almost certainly more than $20 worth.
Preventative care is free because it saves a tremendous amount of money for the insurance company and physical and emotional hardship for yourself by catching bad things early.
Your view is a commonly-held one, and makes a lot of sense; unfortunately there is very little support for it. One data point to the contrary is the Oregon Health Care Study, which showed that 'free' preventative care increased healthcare spending, but did not improve lifespan or reduce long-term cost.
By johnmaguire 2025-09-2620:31 I'm not sure they determined that it did not improve lifespans. Here's some snippets from the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experim...):
> On average, Medicaid coverage increased annual medical spending by approximately $1,172 relative to spending in the control group. The researchers looked at mortality rates, but they could not reach any conclusions because of the extremely low death rate of the general population of able-bodied Oregon adults aged 19 to 64.
> In the first year after the lottery, Medicaid coverage was associated with higher rates of health care use, a lower probability of having medical debts sent to a collection agency, and higher self-reported mental and physical health. In the 18 months following the lottery, researchers found that Medicaid increased emergency department visits.
> Approximately two years after the lottery, researchers found that Medicaid had no statistically significant impact on physical health measures, but "it did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain."
By johnQdeveloper 2025-09-2621:25 Anecdotally, if I hadn't gotten tested as part of a long term physical I wouldn't know about stuff that would cause my body to fail much younger than it would otherwise and lead to an early death.
So hey, at least in my case, it worked as the commonly held belief states.
And that study doesn't look at multi-decade long term effects like diabetes, etc. where you need it for a decade (or longer!) untreated (or poorly managed) before it kills ya. But it still kills ya years early.
So even the "raising rates of diabetes detection" in combination with your belief from that study proves you incorrect when people talk long term.
By hombre_fatal 2025-09-2620:391 reply But it only looked at two year outcomes, yet you made a claim about long-term health and cost outcomes.
For example, it found that diagnoses and medication increased. If you are diagnosed with heart disease and you begin an intervention, you probably see no change in mortality in two years especially since it took decades for you to progress to that point in the first place.
By barchar 2025-09-2622:31 In two years maybe you have a different insurance co though.
Otoh this is why we invented reinsurance
Such a counterintuitive study, when there are highly motivated political actors trying to deprive people of social benefits, makes me highly skeptical. Catching bad things early is almost always better. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc, cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to treat caught late and prevent people from working or doing things they like to do, and mere thousands to treat early while preserving their quality of life.
Cancer, in particular, can be practically free to insurance if caught early. Colon and skin cancer are the poster children. Colon cancer can be treated in the process of doing the screening when caught early. And skin cancer is a pretty minor "just lop off that mole" procedure that also ends up being the treatment.
Letting it grow and catching it when symptoms arise is terribly expensive. The chemo, surgery, scans, and frequent doctors visits are all crazy expensive.
About the only way I could see preventative care not costing less is if you just let the people die and call it god's will rather than calling it a death that could have been prevented.
Another variation of this are GLP 1 drugs.
Obesity costs USA $1.75T (https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/news-releases/econom..., grossed up for inflation)
Number of people that are obese: 100M
Annual economic impact from obesity per person: $17,500 per year
GLP-1 "For All": $6,000 per year (assuming multiple vendors, and some will be over vs under)
Savings: $11,500 per year per person.
Economic impact: Around $1T
This should free up around 3% of GDP for better uses of money rather than just fixing up people.
Obviously, the devil is in the details, but the potential impact is so massive that it should be deeply studied.
By dzhiurgis 2025-09-271:11 Could US gov just buy out one the patents and make it free for all?
By sagarm 2025-09-2622:52 The study is looking only at healthcare spending and two-year outcomes, so it doesn't really address people's intuition that healthcare spending is lower in the long term with preventative care.
That said preventative probably does result in more dollars being spent on healthcare; presumably significantly, if not completely, offset by economic benefits like increased productivity and quality-of-life benefits. Analyses that only look at the cost side of the equation IMO are unhelpful.
By barchar 2025-09-2622:32 It's usually cheaper to die
I think that the authors solution, outsourcing production is not quite right, they gloss over other issues.
>In a large country like the US, some variation in bus design is inevitable due to differences in conditions like weather and topography. But Silverberg said that many customizations are cosmetic, reflecting agency preferences or color schemes but not affecting vehicle performance.
This is kind of absurd, I have been on busses all over the country, a metro bus, is a metro bus. There are not really differences based on topography or climate.
>Two US transit agencies, RTD and SORTA, bought similar 40-foot, diesel-powered buses from the same manufacturer in 2023, but RTD's 10 buses cost $432,028 each, while SORTA's 17 cost $939,388 each.
The issue here appears to be: Why is SORTA's purchasing so incompetent that they are buying 17 busses for the price of 35? They are over double the price of RTD.
> That same year, Singapore’s Land Transport Authority also bought buses. Their order called for 240 fully electric vehicles — which are typically twice as expensive as diesel ones in the US. List price: Just $333,000 each.
Singapore has a very efficient, highly trained, highly educated, highly paid administrative staff, and their competency is what is being shown here. They thought to get a reduction in price because of the large number of busses they are ordering.
One solution the author doesn't point out is that Federal funds often come coupled with a large amount of bureaucratic red tape. It could be cheaper in the long run to have more tax collection and expenditure at the local level, and not rely as much on federal grants.
But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities. Some need heat, some need AC, some need both. In Utah there are buses that go up the canyons and they have gearboxes focused on climbing steep hills, while a bus in the valley might never need that ratio and can be optimized for efficiency on the flats.
Seattle has buses with electric trolley lines above, and buses that were designed to go through the tunnel under downtown on battery power to avoid causing air quality issues in a confined space. https://bsky.app/profile/noahsbwilliams.com/post/3lx4hqvf5q2...
Maybe SORTA wanted more customization on the interior of their buses? I'm not sure but in the last year I've been riding buses to work much more than before and I've been interested in the different seating configurations on buses from the same service and route. That shouldn't explain $8 million in differnce but I'm sure that semi custom work isn't cheap. A friend worked on airline interiors which might be reasonably analogous, I wonder what the cost for say Lufthansa seats/upholstery is vs Southwest?
But they all basically come with AC and heating? At least in basically any semi-modern bus I've ever been in in Europe. No matter if it's -20 or +35 celsius, as long as they turn the AC actually on it's tolerable.
And we also have some mountains here, so there's some buses for that (still stock from the factory)
By lazyasciiart 2025-09-2619:331 reply No, they certainly don’t all come with AC and heat.
By decimalenough 2025-09-2619:575 reply I haven't seen a non-AC bus in ages, even in developing countries.
By hibikir 2025-09-2621:05 You'll find buses with no AC in northern Spain today. And it's not ancient ones, but ones running on natural gas: They option then without, making them a hazard in July and August. I've seen one specifically operated to take special needs children to their facility, where we'd argue with the company that the fact that they are special needs doesn't mean they don't feel the heat in the summer.
By goalieca 2025-09-2621:28 In Vancouver the climate generally does not need them. Some days it gets hot and those suck.
By dmbche 2025-09-2622:24 The vast majority of buses in Montreal, Canada do not have AC. Crack a window in the summer.
Does have heat in the winter though.
My public school buses in a decent Midwestern suburb had no AC cooling as recently as a decade ago (only heat, since heat comes free with an engine). I wouldn't expect them to have AC cooling today.
Buses you pay directly to ride may be a bit different, but I'd also expect AC isn't ubiquitous in those, or wasn't until very recently.
By fn-mote 2025-09-271:08 They are exactly the same busses. I've never heard of a school bus with AC in the US. (Please, someone from Arizona correct me.)
By inferiorhuman 2025-09-270:32 It's been a while since I've been on Muni but most of their bus fleet did not have AC as of 2019.
> Seattle has buses with electric trolley lines above, and buses that were designed to go through the tunnel under downtown on battery power to avoid causing air quality issues in a confined space.
And then the city government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to shut the tunnel down and make it light rail-only, forcing the buses up onto the surface and clogging up the street grid.
By SpicyUme 2025-09-2620:05 I go back and forth on that, the bus tunnel was useful. But a tunnel with 3(4?) stops seems like a good place for a train of some sort. I guess the buses are why there are no center stops in there? It seems like a missed opportunity. Not sure about the history of the tunnel but there were tracks there years ago so they must have planned to put trains in eventually.
Given the choice between clogging up the city grid for car commuters, and clogging up the rail grid because buses are pushed to share rail lines, I'm going to pull the trigger on the first option, every day of the week.
Clogging up the rail grid was somewhat acceptable when it was a few end-of-line terminal stops, but now those tunnels are in the middle of the rail network. A bus breaking down and blocking the tunnel was bad enough when it affected end-of-line service, but would be an absolute nightmare when it affects middle-of-line service.
Sorry, downtown single-occupant vehicle drivers, you're just going to have to deal with the consequences of spending tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dollars on your choice of the least space-efficient, gridlock-inducing form of transportation.
It's not that pushing buses onto surface streets makes it worse for cars. It's that it makes it worse for buses, which then leads people to take cars instead, which makes things even worse.
By itsmek 2025-09-2621:24 I'm not familiar with the details of the situation but the tunnel is being used for transit either way right? If someone used to rely on busses in that tunnel aren't they vastly more likely to switch to whatever replacement is in the tunnel (rail?) than a car?
By MrMorden 2025-09-2621:28 Only because the current mayor hates non-drivers and is sandbagging bus lanes. Seattle's buses will become a lot faster in January once the Wilson administration starts putting bus lanes everywhere.
1. Priority bus lanes are solving that problem.
2. If getting through downtown by bus is slow, getting through it by car isn't any faster.
Anyways, Seattle's transit problem isn't bad downtown bus service, it's godawful spoke-and-last-mile coverage, which eviscerates ridership, makes the overall network less efficient, and forms a negative-feedback-loop that blocks transit improvements.
Nobody likes sitting around for half an hour waiting for a bus that will take them to another bus.
By SpicyUme 2025-09-2622:27 It is too bad the Rapidride R line is so far away from being finished. I think it would be good to have it and allow for more E/W routes possibly between there and the train. Having regular, quick bus service on the rapidride lines makes connections easier to decide on the bus.
Not many people per bus are needed for a bus to be better than the equivalent number of cars. And no, carpooling is not a useful option to rely on to reduce the impact. At least not until some of the occupancy rules are enforced.
By itopaloglu83 2025-09-2618:042 reply We also don't know much about these so called purchasing contracts either.
For example. do they contain sustainment services, maintenance equipment, storage facilities, or other sourcing requirements?
When using federal funds, you're generally required to purchase all American products, I remember trying to furnish an office with just two desks and four chairs (nothing fancy), and the initial cost estimates were over six thousand dollars. When we acquired private funding, we were able to get everything under two thousand, you can see the same pricing with Zoom hardware as a service leasing prices as well, they're leasing some equipment almost at twice the cost due (as far as I know) to all American sourcing.
I'm not questioning the sourcing restrictions, but trying to point out that it's a little more than the education level of the staff only.
By ojbyrne 2025-09-2622:43 One of the interesting things I read in the article is that the industry is a duopoly, and one of the companies is a Canadian company, New Flyer Industries. I went on a tour of their factory many years ago, and they told us they do most of the assembly of the busses there, then ship them to Minnesota where the engine was installed. They did that in order to meet US content requirements.
By citizenpaul 2025-09-2618:307 reply All the contract stuff is too muddled to even consider debating online.
I'd start with one HUGE obvious waste. Why don't the buses anywhere have some sort of uber style pickup. My point. I see countless buses running empty all the time through the day where I live outside of busy hours. It is so depressing to watch 3 empty busses pull up to an empty stop to not pick anyone up then do it again and again and again.. I was once told it cost something like $250+ every time an empty bus drives one direction on its empty route. And there are hundreds of busses that do this for hours each day. Just so in case someone is there they can be picked up.
It seems like a dynamic system for determining where where people that need the bus are would be a massive saving. Or really just changing to a taxi style system only using buses during rush hours. I think some cities are actually experimenting with this.
Someone is gonna come at me about the reliability scheduling of transport for underprividged. But they have never actually rode a bus route so they don't know that the buses are as reliably late as they are on time in 90% of cities. This change would likely improve scheduling for people that need it.
By itopaloglu83 2025-09-2618:521 reply Yes, they're empty, but it's also a catch 22 because it takes urbanization, frequent bus services, and a lot of time for people to adjust to it. Anyone who spent enough time in Europe can tell you about how efficient, convenient, and efficient a bus network can get. Also, most people go to work, so buses tend to be very busy in the morning and at shift changes etc.
It's not magic though, there are a lot of places where buses simply will not work and we need to find better ways to improve mobility. I don't have the slightest idea how, it's a generational effort.
By baggy_trough 2025-09-2619:261 reply We solved that several generations ago with cars.
Considering the amount of traffic jams, wasted space due to parking lots, and lost third places, I'd argue "solved" isn't exactly accurate.
By baggy_trough 2025-09-2619:411 reply Traffic jams are solved by congestion pricing. Parking lot congestion can be solved the same way with pay-parking lots. I don't know what cars have to do with "lost third places".
Congestion pricing works when there are alternatives. If you have both no public transport and congestion pricing, what you have is only increased tax collection with no behavioral change.
By namibj 2025-09-2623:40 No, you'll get car sharing and even if just because you swing by a spot your friend recommended to pick up passengers to near you office, on days you feel like driving yourself, and likely become one such passenger yourself after a couple weeks of that, provided you're not amongst those who couldn't do it without their own car.
By baggy_trough 2025-09-2619:571 reply That's false because everyone has alternatives (you can stay home, for example). Raising the price will always on margin reduce trips.
You wouldn't. If you need to get to work, that wouldn't be the option you would exercise.
By namibj 2025-09-2623:43 You'd really quickly find a way to work differently as soon as driving in to work to work for a shift becomes a net-negative on your finances.
Be that a pay raise, be that partially remote work, or carpooling.
By baggy_trough 2025-09-2622:01 If you have to go to work to keep your job, then staying home isn't a great alternative. But there are others! Carpooling for example. Or, maybe you're one of the people that will keep driving. But not everyone is like you, and some won't.
By dotnet00 2025-09-2621:54 Just be a rich tech worker with a remote job /s
By johnnyanmac 2025-09-2619:10 >Someone is gonna come at me about the reliability scheduling of transport for underprividged. But they have never actually rode a bus route so they don't know that the buses are as reliably late as they are on time in 90% of cities. This change would likely improve scheduling for people that need it.
So your justification for not having reliably scheduling comes down to "well we never had reliable scheduling", and your solution is to make the schedule more chaotic?
Why do we just accept and the broken windows in order to try and make new buildings, instead of fixing the windows?
By decimalenough 2025-09-2619:59 > Why don't the buses anywhere have some sort of uber style pickup.
They do.
I've thought about this a lot, and wonder if the last mile problem could be lessened with an uber style pickup you suggest. I have a civil engineer relative who follows this stuff better than I do, and he says all the pilot programs he's seen (in the US) tend to be wildly unprofitable.
That said, I think that some program like this is essential to bootstrapping a really good transit system. The last mile problem really does stop a lot of would be commuters and is a huge, largely hidden cost, in regional transit planning. You could have fewer, more reliable trunks, that can run less reliably after core commuting hours, all because you have ways of alleviating the pain associated with difficulty getting to out of the way places. This allows people to make life decisions that they might not otherwise be able to make. And once you have a solid core, you can continue to grow it, by continuing to encourage long term ridership. Couple this with increasingly aggressive zoning changes to allow for density, and I think you could really grow out a transit system in 10-20 years.
But this is a fantasy of mine. It would likely be wildly unpopular to run an unprofitable program long enough to make all of this possible, and would probably only work in regions that have the potential for good transit anyways. You'd also need a large cohort of YIMBYs, that while currently growing in many regions, aren't guaranteed to still vote that way in a decade when they have more to lose.
Most bus systems in the US are wildly unprofitable and quite costly. My local system is just under $10 per unlinked trip (i.e. get one on bus). That makes getting from point A to point B not much cheaper to provide than Uber because it will usually involve a transfer.
Everyone would be better off in an Uber type system but there's no appetite or budget to subsidize rides at the level people would use it
By namibj 2025-09-2623:54 Don't calculate the amortized (over a reasonable 30 years if you also ignore inflation and major maintenance/refurbishment costs) capex of the proposed Dallas red line northern extension, seen in a per-passenger-mile figure..... (I got 54ct per passenger mile just in capex (well, a capex-based view on the cost of having the track there and operable; costs from direct wear and tear of running trains and electricity and the trains themselves are additional)...)
By SpicyUme 2025-09-2618:44 There are some variable pickup transit services, but you may not see them because of when/where they go. I know around me there are zones where you can call for pickup and they use small shuttle buses. I think they drop of within the zone or at other bus stops, but I haven't used the service so I'm not sure.
My preferred way to solve bus lane reliability would be to shut down streets or lanes to only allow buses.
By Johnny555 2025-09-2619:48 Because buses are shared and follow a fixed-route and can't support an on-demand model. It may take a bus over an hour to complete the entire route.
Would you rather have to call for a bus that might take an hour (or might take 2 minutes) to get to your stop when you call it, or would you like to know that it comes at 4:45, 5:45 and 6:45 so you can plan ahead to know when to get to your stop.
(failing to run on schedule is a separate issue, but on-demand rides won't solve that). In cities, one solution to that problem is to run at such frequent headways that a late bus doesn't matter -- when I lived in SF, I had 2 busy bus routes that could take me to work, during peak hours a bus ran every 6 minutes, so even if they weren't on schedule I didn't care since I knew another would be along soon.
If you want me to ride the bus to work every morning and home every evening, you still have to have buses in mid-day so I can go home early if I need to. Even if those buses are mostly empty.
By throw7 2025-09-2620:17 So in my area, believe it or not, there is experiments with uber-style point-to-point pickup/dropoff and electric car short term "rentals".
https://www.cdta.org/flex https://drivecdta.org/
The few flex areas are small and I've never tried the electric rentals.
Every once in awhile I do use the bus system to check out how things are going and I get how depressive an empty bus is... I was just on an empty bus to the airport (which I have to take two routes to get there, another tough negative to solve).
< This is kind of absurd, I have been on busses all over the country, a metro bus, is a metro bus. There are not really differences based on topography or climate.
Off the top of my head, road salt, used in the northern areas of America to melt snow can cause corrosion of metal pieces on the underside of the bus. So Chicago or Boston might need to take that into account but Miami probably doesn't.
By bradfa 2025-09-2618:47 Yearly fluid film or woolwax treatment solves the rust concern in salt states. Roughly $1k/year/bus in operating expense. Schools do this to their buses already, it’s totally common.
By bee_rider 2025-09-2619:44 > This is kind of absurd, I have been on busses all over the country, a metro bus, is a metro bus. There are not really differences based on topography or climate.
I don’t know much about bus procurement, but I’m not sure I believe you just based on the fact that you’ve ridden on lots of busses.
I’d expect that things like tire choice, engine, and transmission choices could be dependent on weather and geography. I’d expect any expensive differences to show up there, and I don’t really see how a passenger would gain much insight.
By closeparen 2025-09-2619:37 San Francisco continues to use trolleybuses (powered by overhead wires) after the most of the country has moved onto hybrid and battery-electric vehicles because the energy demands from climbing hills are beyond at least the earlier generations of batteries.
By inferiorhuman 2025-09-271:01
As far as I can tell the author is making a bad faith argument. SORTA's purchase was about one third diesel-electric hybrids, while RTD's was almost certainly diesel only.The issue here appears to be: Why is SORTA's purchasing so incompetent that they are buying 17 busses for the price of 35? They are over double the price of RTD.SG vs the US? Economies of scale, simpler drivetrains (hybrid vs non), and less expensive smog equipment.
A very common problem in Metro Phoenix involves government or corporate procurement. They just purchase whatever is used everywhere else and end up with something that lasts well under is rated life time or doesn't even make it though a single summer.
By inferiorhuman 2025-09-270:43 Federal funds for transit vehicles come with an expected lifetime.
By numpad0 2025-09-2619:53 > Singapore has a very efficient, highly trained, highly educated, highly paid administrative staff,
Or it's just literal economy of scale. 10 buses, 17 buses, vs 240, that difference changes economics completely.
You will be buying 500 of headlights, little under 1k tyres and wheels, couple thousands of seats, etc. Those are all whole lot numbers. That will save tons of overheads.
By freeopinion 2025-09-2620:032 reply Your excerpts don't divulge whether one of the bus manufacturers is required by law to pay health insurance, social security, and other labor costs. Are they required by law to treat the water from their cooling towers before they dump it in the river? Do they have to pay a 50% tariff on imported parts?
I'm sure there is a lot of slop in different purchasing departments. They can probably all tighten things up. But there are legitimate reasons for one product to cost more than its twin. The U.S. should not allow twin products to be sold on the same shelf if one was not manufactured under the same rules as the domestic product. If all three of these products played under the same rules, then we can point fingers. Without that you are just ridiculing the company who knowingly takes a hit for purchasing from responsible vendors. If that is what you are doing, shame on you.
By maxerickson 2025-09-2621:402 reply The 2 bus contracts were with the same manufacturer, which is headquartered in California.
By freeopinion 2025-09-2622:321 reply Thank you. That's informative. What about the third contract?
By maxerickson 2025-09-270:02 The difference between the North American buses is larger than the difference between the cheaper NA bus and the Singapore buses.
Is your theory that they treat half the plant poorly?
By inferiorhuman 2025-09-270:41
The wikipedia entry for SORTA claims that in 2024 they took delivery of 19 buses: 7 diesel-electric hybrid and 12 diesel. They also list four more hybrid coaches on order. Presumably some or all of these are the 2023 order.The 2 bus contracts were with the same manufacturer, which is headquartered in California.RTD's web site shows far more than 10 buses delivered in 2023 and nothing beyond that. They talk a bit about diesel hybrids but from what I can tell RTD does not operate any 40 ft hybrids.
Unsure what to say about the Bloomberg article but it smells like bullshit to me. Regardless, hybrid drivetrains will increase the unit cost significantly.
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.
By mcflubbins 2025-09-2617:411 reply I wonder if they take into account the fact that if there are no bus routes (or less of them) there is a certain population of people that won't be able to work, and those worker pay taxes and put money back into the economy. Probably impossible to know what the effect is in total and I wouldn't be surprised if its not part of the TCO formula.
> about half your costs are the bus driver
(Genuine question) is this true around the globe, or is that US-specific?
We were in Portugal over the summer and travelled with Flixbus (for the first time ever) to get from Porto to Lisbon. Were impressed by the high-quality service and great value for money. Wonder how much the driver makes per hour?
By lazyasciiart 2025-09-2619:35 Those services are pretty different to local bus routes - people book ahead, tickets aren’t covered by student passes or subsidized by employers, people care a lot more about comfort and are much less likely to be daily riders, etc.
By rootusrootus 2025-09-2618:23 > We were in Portugal
Notably, Portugal has the lowest income, by far, of any Western European country. I would expect their bus drivers make considerably less than equivalent bus drivers in the US.
By marcosdumay 2025-09-2618:391 reply It's true in developed and developing countries, it's probably not true in all poor countries. I'd guess the driver makes for a larger share of the cost in Portugal than in the US.
But the one most important factor defining the total cost by trip is the number of passengers by trip. If 60 people all show up to pay the driver's daily salary, it gets quite cheap.
By bpicolo 2025-09-270:50 Portuguese salaries are miserable
By bluGill 2025-09-2618:36 US - though richer countries arounde the world have wages close to the us. Portugal as the other reply said will have different numbers. Still labor is going to be a large factor.
By whimsicalism 2025-09-2620:12 snip
By balozi 2025-09-2619:58 Federal subsidies don't stop at paying for much of the bus purchase costs, they are also paying for much of the roads and bridges the busses run on. Subsides cover of the operating costs, especially labor and energy. And at the very end, the reason most localities are able to offer free rides or very low cost rides is because federal dollars are subsidizing the final ride fares.
By brailsafe 2025-09-2617:39 Probably true, but those are accounted for differently, and (I'd speculate) that public transit labor costs convert tax dollars into economic activity as efficiently as the route can possibly operate given the constraints on the rest of the system. The lower the overhead to buying busses and the more reliably you can run them, along with making them more usable by your regional population, the more efficiently you're moving people to their jobs and the more of the tax dollars allocated to transit can into the pool that's going into the economy.
All the busses and tools required for maintenance are capital assets amortized and expensed over years, while the roads and the other infrastructure are hugely expensive and are rarely used as efficiently as they can be.
I'm hearing you say we should have self-driving buses... which is feasible since their route is fixed.
It is absolutely not feasible (yet), most of the job of the bus driver is knowing when to break the "rules", because someone is parked in the bus stop, or traffic is backed up so it make sense to stop a bit before the stop to let people off, or when to stop for longer than usual because someone needs to use the bike rack on the front, or when to use the bus kneeling feature because someone with mobility issues needs to get on or off, or when to skip a stop because your bus is too full and there's another right behind you, etc.
This is ignoring payment issues (hopefully it would be free anyway), answering riders' questions, being nice and letting someone off halfway between stops because it's 2am and pouring and they're the only one on the bus, and so on. I guess the general theme is that unlike Waymo where everything is ordered and planned out ahead of time and the car just needs to go from A to B, a self-driving bus will need to be constantly updating its plan in real time based on the conditions outside and what people on the bus need. It's not like a train where it can always stop in the exact same place and open the doors for a pre-defined amount of time.
It's obviously not impossible, but bus driving is much more complex than taxi driving despite the predictable route.
You could help set up the self driving bus for success. Make bus stops a clearway for other vehicles. In other words, if you stop there you get fined and possibly towed. Bus dashcam can help here.
The bike rack is an excellent feature where US beats my country. Well done. I think you'd need a button to ask for more time. And a Tokyo-like culture of respect for this all to work.
By burkaman 2025-09-270:57 I mean it's already illegal to stop in the bus stop, and in some cities the buses have cameras to catch offenders, but people still do it. What would help is bus rapid transit (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit), which involves a lot of dedicated and separated bus lanes to make it a bit more like a train, but that only solves some of the problems I mentioned.
By angmarsbane 2025-09-2622:30 If/when we get to self-driving buses I'd like to see them with a security guard on board or someone like the train ticket guy. I wouldn't feel comfortable as a woman getting on driver-less bus with strangers without a bus representative there too. With existing buses, I've had bus drivers stop the bus and kick someone off who was creating a dangerous situation and I feel even just the presence of a bus driver kept some people's behavior in check.
And since the route is fixed, maybe we could install guides rather than needing a complicated steering mechanism. Then replace inefficient tires with much more efficient metal wheels rolling on the guides....
By SoftTalker 2025-09-2619:382 reply And then we need to make a change to the route.... oops.
By oblio 2025-09-2620:58 Predictability has value.
For example because "we need to make a change to the route" type people are around, your bus line can be taken away from you.
Because tracks aren't moved as easily, people rely on them, plan around them and you get things like increased property values because (and overall higher quality of life, especially around tram lines) due to that.
By phinnaeus 2025-09-2619:50 No we don’t. Put another one in if need arises.
By johnnyanmac 2025-09-2619:251 reply And with that, we can scale it up and have multiple chains of these buses used for mass transport. Heck, in some fantasy land we can really speed up the bus and have it trek across the the continent in a few hours!
By whimsicalism 2025-09-2620:131 reply e: after looking at the numbers again, i was wrong.
By Zagreus2142 2025-09-2621:041 reply The market clearing wage only applies in economic textbooks, in a perfectly competitive market with balanced supply and demand. The US public transportation sector has major supply/demand imbalances and is a regulated market.
Also the median weekly wage in the US is currently $1196 a week (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf)
Seattle is currently paying bus drivers $31.39 an hour, 40x = $1256 (https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/careers/drive-for...). And I'm sure the pay is less in less affluent/dense US cities.
It's not exactly apples to apples because the bls figure is nationwide and doesn't include healthcare benefits, and king county metro may have better than average healthcare, but at least ballparking this: No, public bus drivers are not paid "well above" the median wage
Edit: I found this listing on indeed for greyhound bus drivers (the closest comparison I could think of in the private sector) and starting rate is $28-$31 in Seattle (https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=2516c81006044ec8).
By whimsicalism 2025-09-2622:021 reply i think main thrust, you are right that the numbers are less extreme than i had recalled. SF (which i imagine is the top end) is $31-$47 range or so. i see lower ($25) for greyhound than you do, but frankly that seems unreasonably low so i think “salary.com” is not giving me solid numbers there.
By Zagreus2142 2025-09-2622:21 It's not starting $31-$47 it's $31 starting and as you build seniority and tenure you can get up to $47. https://careers.sf.gov/classifications/?classCode=9163&setId...
Indeed shows an active listing in SF for Greyhound for the same amount as Seattle. Greyhound appears to have a single national salary scrolling through different cities. https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=ad2e68b167688669
Bus driver also does things like trigger ramp for handicapped people, strap in wheelchairs securely, answer questions about the route, and security surveillance.
You can have a fleet of specialized self-driving taxis for people with disabilities. They can have articulated ramps or other special accommodations.
By jodrellblank 2025-09-2622:121 reply You could have trams and trains with level boarding which helps people who don't have disabilities too, costs less, takes less space in the city, makes less noise, needs less maintenance, and moves more people.
By cyberax 2025-09-2622:27 Except that they don't cost less. And are more inconvenient, especially if you can't move a lot. And they're slower, and will require you to make a transfer. And don't run at night.
But otherwise,yeah. Sure.
None of those should be needed. Get more people riding and they take care of security.
wheelchairs are hard - but the driver strapping them in is robbing everyone else of their valuable time so we need a better soultion anyway
Every bus in Copenhagen has a button next to the door to lower the wheelchair ramp, but I have never seen anyone use it. I've never seen a wheelchair on a bus.
The metro and suburban trains have level boarding (the platform is at exactly the same level as the floor of the train so it's very easy for a wheelchair user to wheel themselves in). I've still only seen wheelchairs users on these trains once or twice.
I suspect wheelchair users prefer to call the disability taxi service. It's free for wheelchair users and blind people [1]. I don't know if this service is more or less expensive to provide than adapting buses and trains, but it is probably easier for everyone.
[1, in Danish] https://www.moviatrafik.dk/flexkunde/flexhandicap
By rootusrootus 2025-09-2618:28 That's relatively similar to how my local (US) municipality handles disabled passengers. All of the big infrastructure supports wheelchairs, but it is only occasionally used. Disabled people are served by mini-buses which operate point-to-point and charge them the same fare they'd pay for the big bus.
By cogman10 2025-09-2621:26 This honestly makes a lot of sense, particularly because the number of people that need wheelchairs is so much smaller than the general population.
I visit hospitals pretty frequently and while it's not never that I see someone in a wheelchair, it's not every day and it's definitely not a majority of the visitors.
When I'm out and about in public, I basically never see wheelchair users.
It makes sense to simply have a taxi service instead. Far more convenient for the wheelchair user and you don't need to retrofit every bus with wheelchair access.
By pessimizer 2025-09-2619:35 Wheelchairs, sometimes multiple, are on Chicago buses all the time. Also rolling grocery trolleys, walkers (especially for dialysis patients where they have a medical functions) and also old people whose legs don't work so good and need the bus lowered.
By johnnyanmac 2025-09-2619:281 reply >the driver strapping them in is robbing everyone else of their valuable time
Oh so we're now fine putting more of our tax dollars into specialized disability services? If our time is more valuable, this is a steal.
By hamandcheese 2025-09-2620:121 reply It's paying either way. I'd rather pay with money.
By johnnyanmac 2025-09-2620:51 I'm the same. When brought up for policy, the results tend to be very disappointing, though.
Taking a look at NYC or SF bus, are you sure that more riders solve security issues?
By cogman10 2025-09-2621:32 Yes, this is simply a well known fact.
You can look up the NYPD report on crime for the month of june the total amount of reported crime was 427 for all forms of transport (metro, bus, etc). 3.6 million people use public transport in NYC daily.
No matter where you are, you'll never drive that number to 0. But if you wanted to make it better then you'd stop positioning the police to catch turnstile jumpers and you start positioning police to ride public transport during low ridership times to prevent incident.
Once you have self-driving, you don't _need_ buses.
Large buses are fundamentally inefficient, they can never be made competitive compared to cars. And the main source of inefficiency is the number of stops and fixed routes.
You can easily solve all the transportation problems with mild car-pooling. Switching buses and personal cars to something like 8-person minibuses will result in less congestion and about 2-3 times faster commutes than the status quo. Only large dense hellscapes like Manhattan will be an exception.
By rootusrootus 2025-09-2618:262 reply Yeah I remember once doing the math, and it takes a relatively high level of ridership before a bus (or train) reaches the per-passenger efficiency of something like a Civic Hybrid carrying three passengers. We have a number of routes in my local area that I think could be more quickly and economically served by replacing the full size bus with something much smaller.
general rule of thumb is 5 passangers for a but to break even. Now a civic is a smaller car so it will be better, and you specified 3 passanges whes single occupant is by far more likely - even with those unrealistic assumption a typical bus will do well overall.
By rootusrootus 2025-09-2618:52 I don't disagree, the typical use case isn't great for the car, this was just a thought experiment for what it would look like to use an efficient, reliable passenger car as an alternative to buses.
> general rule of thumb is 5 passangers for a but to break even.
"Break even" how? A bus has a road footprint of about 15 cars (it's more than the physical bus length because it also occupies the road during stops and is less maneuverable).
15 cars have the occupancy of about 25 people.
> even with those unrealistic assumption a typical bus will do well overall.
Nope. Buses absolutely fail in efficiency. They pollute WAY more than cars, and they have fundamental limitations like the frequency.
By dns_snek 2025-09-2620:36 > A bus has a road footprint of about 15 cars
What's this supposed to mean? I can't even try to take it at face value, it's ridiculous.
In bumper to bumper traffic they might take up 2 cars worth of footprint. At higher speeds it's even less as the footprint of each vehicle equals "vehicle length + following distance". At 30km/h (8.3 m/s) and minimal 1s following distance, the "footprint" of a 5m long car is 13m, and the footprint of a 12m long bus is 20m. At highway speeds their footprint is almost equivalent to cars.
> it also occupies the road during stops
I've never seen a bus block a busy city road. Either way this is an easily solvable problem stemming from poor design and lack of investment and not some inherent issue with this mode of transportation.
> They pollute WAY more than cars
Citation?
By SoftTalker 2025-09-2619:42 They also contribute to pollution when they are stopped and you have 10 cars idling behind them because there's no room to pass. Repeat every 2 blocks.
By QuadmasterXLII 2025-09-2623:09 carrying 3 passengers is doing all the work for you there
