Supertram to be closed down by 2019?

[geared]

Today you can summon personal transport to your front door with the touch of an app and get to your destination in a fraction of the time it would have taken using a tram. When the cost of such a service begins to fall within a stones throw of the publicly-funded alternative, questions of viability will naturally start to arise.

 

You've been able to phone for a taxi for decades mate, it's really nothing new.

[apelike]

Uber lost $2.8bn in 2016. They're getting market share at huge cost.

 

True but like other transport operators they make gains in one area and losses in another, Uber actually made a profit in the UK in 2016. In this case it shows Uber cant yet compete or do it cheaper than mainstream public transport as it is designed to compete with private hire.

 

A town in the states has binned its public transport and is further subsidising uber - I'll dig out a link tonight if you want. Once they've crushed the opposition, what do you think will happen to their prices?

 

But that is in the USA.

[xsf7]

This may be a side issue but as we expect +10,000 of our Scottish brothers and sisters to descend on us this Sunday, the tram provides a manageable way for away fans to get to Hillsborough which I'm sure the police are glad of.

 

Thanks. It isn't a side issue!

 

Big cities rely on mass transit in order to survive. It's ignorant and short sighted to think that Uber and the like can move the same numbers of people, as cheaply and with no impact on the environment.

[dutch]

Uber will be no substitute for tram. It ain't super but is far better than all the cars needed to transport its passengers.

 

Comparing Sheffield with usa? Are we going to sell hot dogs all over the place as well? Bon appetite.

[Puggie]

But.. It will never fall enough to compete and that is the problem, look at Uber for instance as it is the classic business model. You will also notice that public funded transport also carries many more people at once so is much more cost effective than having a driver and passenger in one car.

 

For Sheffield this is true, we are on the wrong side of the adoption curve. The minute you start questioning our entrenched way of doing things you're struck down and demonized. This creates a hostile environment for people and companies with creative solutions to 21st century problems.

 

However if you cast your eyes on other cities like London, Paris, San Franciso, New York etc. ride-sharing is picking up in a very big way and it's quickly becoming a viable and cost-effective alternative to public transport. The beautiful thing about the sharing economy is that it requires zero public funding.

 

About 7 months ago when I went down to London I tried this out for the first time. After arriving into St Pancras station, I fired up Uber and summoned a shared ride.

 

Five minutes later I was jumping into a car that already had another passenger inside! She was going to Heathrow airport and I was going to a hotel in Hounslow which was just outside the airport ring road.

 

The algorithm was so intelligent that it was able to match my trip to another almost identical journey that was already taking place. As a passenger you pay 40% less by agreeing to share your ride.

 

Last year Uber's CEO made a great [

] about the future of on-demand shared transport and how it could be a game changer for society.

 

Well worth watching if you've got a spare 10 mins.

[geared]

Such a solution needs a large number of users and a large number of vehicles on the road to be able to hook people up.

Currently the city has a low number of drivers so it's not always possible.

 

I'm not going to be able to ride-share to Middlewood if the only taxi in the area is on the way to Frenchville.

[thorphanger]

Doesn't even need to go down much of the road, it's all fields next to the A6102 between the airbase and Jordanthorpe.

 

A Park and Ride at RAF Norton would be good.

 

All these FIELDS are agricultural land. Why do people think it's ok to use agricultural land and concrete it over. That land is gone for ever. We don't need a concrete jungle. The way the population is growing we need to keep all the agricultural land we have to keep growing the food people need. RAF Norton by the way is in Yorkshire but all the fields after there are in NE Derbyshire.

[Puggie]

Such a solution needs a large number of users and a large number of vehicles on the road to be able to hook people up.

Currently the city has a low number of drivers so it's not always possible.

 

Large number of vehicles on the road? Check.

 

Large number of people needing to get from A to B? Check.

 

Modern technology and algorithms capable of connecting the dots? Check.

 

The only hurdle is our antiquated 17th century legislation that criminlizes sharing if you're rewarded a single penny above £0.45p per mile.

 

So unless we do something brave and move away from this broken system we're going to be left with a concrete jungle of parked cars like [this] and [this].

[Funky_Gibbon]

You work for Uber right?

[Puggie]

You work for Uber right?

 

I might find their vision for public transportation exciting but that doesn't mean I work for them!

 

The notion of car pooling or sharing private resources as a form of delivering public transportation is not a new concept. Car pooling has been studied in academia long before the advent of smartphones or Uber. Of course it was all based on computer simulations back then.

 

Fast forward to the 21st century and we now have companies like Uber, Lyft, and Ford putting this into practice.

 

I don't think it's far fetched to imagine a future where our cities transportation needs will be based on algorithms, where mobility problems will be solved by simply writing lines of code.