Stephanie Vacher

I just read an article on Core77 called “Municipal transportation is an expensive business” by ‘hipstomp’ and was slightly taken aback by the fact that the author was surprised about the price that MTA pays for their transit buses. Double surprise attack:

Case in point: How much do you think the average New York City bus costs? I would’ve naively guessed about $90,000, and if you told me it was $120,000 I’d be surprised but I wouldn’t question you.

But if you told me the average city bus costs over a half a million dollars, I would have thought you were dead wrong. Yet an article in The Times tells us the price of a new city bus is “just under $550,000.”

MTA? WTF!

$120,000? And this guess was coming from someone who routinely writes for an industrial design supersite? Eek. Let’s get back to reality, here. The cost of one New Flyer trolley bus in Vancouver settles in at just under $900,000, and the city has purchased over 200 of these vehicles in the past four years. This puts our pricetag at somewhere around $198,000,000 CAD. Hmm, spendy.

But! There’s no reason to be surprised by the cost of these machines- and, yes, the price is justified even if it sounds exorbitant. Here’s why:

Nearly every city in the world has an individualized, regulation-specific system of municipal transportation. The bus system in Philadelphia is vastly different to the one in Portland, which is in no way similar to the ones in Seattle or Regina. The MUNI trains in San Francisco look nothing like the SkyTrain in Vancouver, and were built by a completely different corporation- and to top it all off, three different companies have built SkyTrains, which means each company has been forced to come up with new designs just to ensure that the trains all fit the same elevated rail system. These systems are like a fingerprint- every city has a different feature.

The lack of standardization is mostly to blame for the extremely high price of city buses, and because no two cities are going to come to a conclusion on regulations for emissions, consideration for people with disabilities, fare collections, etc., this means that new designs must be created to fit the guidelines set by individual transit companies. Commissioning a company to build a bus that is city-specific is a massive undertaking, wherein every detail has to be submitted to maintain consistency among the fleet of buses, and meet new regulations that change on a regular basis.

As an example- prior to the inclusion of the New Flyer buses in Vancouver, not all bus routes were accessible for wheelchairs. Now, every bus route in Vancouver should be accessible- but this also means that the new bus design had to incorporate a wheelchair lift system, and security restraints to keep the passengers safe. All of this added to the cost of manufacturing the buses- every design change leads to the manufacture of new parts, of which only a short run would be made. Unless another transit company decides to use the same wheelchair lift system, these parts become part of a limited production run and the manufacturer can’t sell more to reduce the production price.

‘hipstomp’ goes on to complain but not really offer any solutions:

… the freaking M42 Crosstown is worth two Lamborghini Murcielagos … you’d almost think it would be cheaper for the city to pay for all 8 million of us to take taxis everywhere!

Here’s a few solutions to the problem: standardize regulations for public transit. On a continental scale. Manufacture closer to home, so shipping costs aren’t added to the cost of production. Consider using industrial design practices when creating new regulations for the system, such as co-creating with the public so that usability problems can be solved before they even become an issue in practice.

Governments that spend taxpayer money have a responsibility to make intelligent financial decisions with money that isn’t explicitly theirs. Canada could hold a large-scale conference in which a publicly-elected council can determine the requirements set on the systems. Imagine what would happen if any city in this country could swap buses with any other city and have them all run, without fail, on the same system. The production and manufacturing costs could decrease to the point at which our buses might actually cost the same as one Lamborghini Murcielago, instead of two ;]

edit: Who knew that ‘buses’ wasn’t spelled with two S’s? Whoops.

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