Robo-taxi fleet economics napkin math

 Assuming $1 of monthly income supports $100 of expenditure, and that a robo-taxi costs $150k, a taxi needs to make $1500 a month (above operating costs). Marginal operating costs (beyond depreciation) can be assumed to be $.10/mile. Assuming 25 miles per hour (averaged over high speeds and waiting time), that's $2.50 in hourly operating costs or about $900 in monthly operating costs. So capital and operation is about $2400/month for a robo-taxi, or about $6.50 per hour. 

Of course a robo-taxi can make more than $6.50 an hour. A single Lyft trip reliable runs over $20. Assuming three trips per hour, $60 income versus $6.50 costs makes robo-taxi fleets a very attractive proposition. 

The counterpoint is that such a robo-taxi costs far more than a bus fare. The counterpoint to which is that we subsidize buses, so why wouldn't we subsidize robo-taxies? (For the sake of simplicity assume one pool of subsidy, and all operations are contracted out). Begs the question of how much it costs to provide service by bus. Costs varies wildly by service type - basic bus service is cheap, commuter bus is less so, demand-response (paratransit) is wildly expensive.

"UTA’s official published cost per passenger (per boarding) from its 2006 performance audit was $5.11 for buses, $3.51 for light rail, $36.82 for paratransit, and $3.53 for vanpool".

Add 57% for inflation (2006 to 2026) so it's about $7.25 per passenger for a bus. That's more than the capital + operations cost for P2P AV ($6.50), so our hypothetical subsidy provider would be better off switch many riders to subsidized AV. 

How many (and which routes) is a more nuanced question. Bus route productivity (passengers per service hour) varies widely. Removing the least productive routes would substantially reduce the average subsidy cost per passenger. $7.25 per passenger is $22 for 3 passengers per hour, so it would be far better to switch a lot of passengers to P2P AV. 

An intuition of averages suggest that would be a lot of riders. But that intuition is wrong. $7.25 per passenger is an average, and that average hides a staggering a range in productivity. There is one route that costs $40/passenger and another that costs $3/passenger. But the $3/passenger route has a low subsidy/passenger because it's transporting a lot of people. It's costing $150/hour to operate, but transporting 99 passengers/hour, which would cost $215 to do by PTP AV. In an economist's chart, the two lines in the napkin math would cross at about 75 passengers per hour. 

Assuming 15 mph for a bus, that's about 5 passengers per mile. Not a high standard. 

But a lot of transit agencies own some very expensive capital equipment (buses) that they can't resell, as the feds helped pay for it, and if they sell the buses they have to return the subsidy. So at best, agencies will shift to AV by not buying new buses rather than selling excess buses. So we'll see a lot of new PTP AV's serving marginal routes, as older and older buses serve the high-capacity routes. (Not a great outcome).

All of this assumes that bus costs remain fixed, and that the bus service provider doesn't also shift to fixed guideway AV vehicles. The advantage isn't as extreme for fixed guideway AV as for P2P AV, because the ratio of drivers/passenger is much lower. If it halved labor costs, the break-even point between fixed guideway and P2P AV shifts in favor of fixed route. This may be expected, and transit agencies are simply being quiet about it so as to not spook their driver's unions. (It will be a slow shift--a new bus has an operational lifespan measured in decades). 

It also assumes that P2P AV can only manage one passenger per vehicle. But even assuming extremely generous carpool standards (averaging 1.3/trip) it would only raise that number by a third. Most people don't start and end in the same location, and pairing up in even a portions of two trips requires them to coincide in time and space in an unlikely way. 

Finally, anyone providing services has to size their fleet (and supporting infrastructure) for the peak hour, whether that's 10 buses or 60 PTP AV vehicles. They also have to maintain sufficient 'spare' capacity to maintain that fleet capacity while part of the fleet is out of service and being repaired, which means 10-50% more vehicles than are actually in use even at peak. Which would substantially degrade the productivity we've assumed for AV vehicles. Vehicles achieving 3 trips during the peak hour are never going to achieve that outside of it. A key part of the economics of ride-hailing is part-time drivers who only work and accrue vehicle costs during the peak hour. In a 'fleet' context, that advantage vanishes. The operator wants to keep vehicles operating as close to constantly as possible, but the other 23 hours of the day are only ever going to be (at most), 90% of the peak hour volumes. So the operator will need to buy 110 P2P AV vehicles, of which only 90 will be operating 23 hours a day (10 spare, 10 idle for lack of demand). On which basis, the $6.50/hour operating costs looks a lot more like $8 an hour, further eroding advantage. 

[1] "But that's so much money!"---"Let me tell you about how much roads cost". 

[2]  In reality, assume the average fare is $2.00, so the subsidy is $5.50/passenger. 

Revanchist Planning

 Always depressing to see revanchist planning. Orlando, rather than working to make their downtown more pedestrian-ORIENTED, has decided that more people will come if they remove the bus lane to add half a dozen parking stalls, and ease car navigation by converting a major road to being bi-directional.

A downtown can compete (and fail) to be the best edge city or compete on the basis of walkable urbanism. It can't do both. Given that historic downtowns already possess a key asset (a street grid), trying to be the best exurb is a poor choice. 

"DISPOSABLE ARCHITECTURE IS A CULTURAL CRISIS"

Arguably, it's a matter of interest rates. When it costs a lot to borrow, you borrow less, which means you build less, and less well. So, when interest rates were running at 13%, our building sector responded with a type of building that could be built rapidly, but which depreciated rapidly. Indeed, reinforced concrete has proven to be worse than anticipated--concrete was thought to be waterproof (protecting the iron rebar from rusting). Which has not proven to be the case, as the Florida condo collapse showed (saltwater induces rust faster than rainwater).

There is also the hangover of anything built from 1947-1973, (pre-OPEC) when oil was cheap. And since oil was cheap, electricity was cheap, and concrete was cheap, and so concrete seemed readily replaceable. 

Zoning is only one of the most obvious of the obstructions to building Missing Middle housing

Zoning is only one of the most obvious of the obstructions to building Missing Middle housing. Parking a close second, especially as it interacts with setbacks, and driveway access to a rear lot, which in turn interacts with fire code, which can require enough space for two cars to pass. 'Stacked duplexes' are popular for a reason--central access alley avoids setback issues and counts as a driveway, so it doesn't trigger fire code issues.

Pedestrian protection hierarchy in traffic control

How serious someone is about urbanism based on the materials they use to protect people from vehicles. More serious means more permanence. And more damage to cars, with less notice. On a highway, if a pedestrian jaywalks, they get hurt. In a pedestrian zone, if a car drives, it gets hurt.

If it's a temporary (plastic) installation: cones < poles < barrels < portable safety barriers < traffic barriers.

Traffic cones are the stackable orange ones suitable for a few hours use. Poles are the taller ones you can leave out overnight. Barrels get used on highways, for blocking whole lanes. Portable Safety Barrier is a movable fence - no physical protection, but highly visible. Traffic barrier is a plastic jersey barrier, easy to move, but also capable of being filled with water to provide an actual physical barrier. 

For permanent (concrete) installations: signage < paint < flex-post < swale curb < armadillos < full curb < planter < jersey barrier* < bollards < raised planters < stair blocks.

Signage is functionally worthless, as the "Share the Lane" signs demonstrate.  Paint is meaningless without enforcement, as the abuse of bus, carpool and bike lanes readily demonstrates. Flex-posts are just road debris waiting to happen. Installation down the street from me is down 2 already. 25 MPH speed limit. They sit on top of a swale curb. Swale (mountable) curb is just tactile paint to an SUV. Armadillos promising - more damaging, less able to be damaged. Full curb is a serious barrier to preventing casual mis-use. Jersey barriers are designed to be relocated, and so are only sort of permanent. Bollards are like icebergs - most of them exists beneath the surface. 7-11 builds them for real, and they will stop a moving vehicle. Bell bollards are superior to pole bollards, but harbor bollards are superior to both. Counter-intuitively, the more likely a bollard is to damage a car, the more effective it is - it means that drivers have to look around and beware. Raised planters may have trees planted in them, but that doesn't require a foot thick concrete wall--it is security made pretty. Stair blocks the gold standard - are designed to prevent car ramming attacks by terrorists - they protect Federal Courthouses.