Leap - Your daily commute. Redesigned. (rideleap.com)
over 8 years ago from Gadzhi Kharkharov, Designer at Webflow
over 8 years ago from Gadzhi Kharkharov, Designer at Webflow
Warning: Grumpiness ahead.
This is cool and all, but do we really need another service catering to this demographic? I get that this sort of thing is hot right now, but I’m still disappointed; I wish I was reading about a company bringing some innovation to MUNI instead of cashing in on the area’s urban upper-middle-class.
Some of the stuff they’re doing would do wonders for the public transportation sector. Off the top of my head:
tl;dr: Neat service. Keeping my fingers crossed that this eventually helps disrupt public transit and doesn't stop at providing Bay Area yuppies with another taxi service. I’d probably give it a shot if I was in SF.
This definitely comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoK4_dQbfuU
This is what I came here to say. When I watched the commercial, it just didn't feel good. I kept picturing the peoples faces when a homeless person hops on the Leap.
Uber started out with black cabs only at a $30 minimum per ride. Tesla priced its first car at over $100K. Apple's Mac was priced at $2500 (costing over twice that after inflation).
These are all mass market companies who got their start by charging higher prices from people who could afford it. Leap is no different.
My first thought was that I had never seen a MUNI bus that was so clean until I rode one from Downtown/FiDi to the Marina. A friend and I were talking about how this would be a great service to compete with CalTrain if they were able to shuttle people up and down the peninsula.
“Then the two 20-something industrialists rode off into the sunset aboard their gleaming palanquin of tech privilege.”
“And they lived happily ever after. The end.”
So confused by this. From their Terms of Service:
LEAP OFFERS INFORMATION AND A METHOD TO OBTAIN THIRD PARTY TRANSPORTATION SERVICES, BUT DOES NOT AND DOES NOT INTEND TO PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION SERVICES OR ACT IN ANY WAY AS A TRANSPORTATION CARRIER Leap provides a means to enable persons who seek transportation to certain destinations to find, use and pay for private buses to get to those destinations.
It seems like the buses are fake? It's just an app and qr reader.
But… they sell snacks?
It sounds like maybe the buses are owned by independent operators and they just operate as a franchise.
I wouldn't think too hard about it though, because this is going to be short-lived.
It's basically Uber, except with buses.
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT UBER DOES NOT PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION OR LOGISTICS SERVICES OR FUNCTION AS A TRANSPORTATION CARRIER. UBER’S SERVICES MAY BE USED BY YOU TO REQUEST AND SCHEDULE TRANSPORTATION OR LOGISTICS SERVICES WITH THIRD PARTY PROVIDERS
Sound familiar?
This is some borderline hipster thing..
How long is this journey? Done some calculations and it's either 30 minutes on a bike or 20 minutes by car (obviously be a bit longer by bus, say a conservative 40 minutes). Correct me if I'm wrong but that ain't much of a commute.
I live in the UK and have never been to SF so I can't pass too much judgement but I really dont get it.
I need to go down to the Marina one morning and see if the buses are actually that full. If they are, MUNI just needs to up their rates to $3 a ride (if people are willing to pay SIX DOLLARS for this service?)
Yeah, also people could agree to pay higher taxes to have a better public transport system. But then the county/city/government would have to spend those taxes appropriately. Good luck with all that.
It would be interesting to see an Uber-like bus where the route is defined by people requesting pickups and dropoffs via their phones as opposed to a predefined schedule.
Additionally, the general perception of buses is pretty dreary—only undesierables use them. However, when the buses appearance is modernized, their appeal goes way up. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/02/the-myth-that-everyone-naturally-prefers-trains-to-buses/385759/
Perhaps this is where both of those worlds meet?
Only in California!
This would never work in London.
Out of curiosity, why do you think this would never work in London?
London puts a lot of money into its public transport system and from my own experience it works pretty damn well. Lots of buses, they run all night etc
The way I see it, the bus system in London is actually reasonably clean, pleasant-smelling, frequent and on-time, as-is. It's also such a large and spread-out city that designing routes that serve a big enough chunk of the demographic sounds incredibly difficult, even with the destination being the same. (City/Canary Wharf workers?)
The biggest reason why this has potential in SF isn't because it's a bus with coffee/snacks, but because Muni is completely disregarded as even being a transportation option by many upper-middle-class San Franciscans. I don't really see the same thing here in London.
Maybe not never, just not as well.
The public transport system in London has huge investment. Every single penny they make goes back into the system, so no one really has a problem with the busses and routes we already have. Meaning there's not much of a problem to be solved.
The new route masters are pretty damn swanky...
Plus us English are quite reserved, I woldn't personally want to be seen on a cafe bus thing.
I have no idea what this those. Can someone simplify this with colloquial copy?
Meanwhile in Africa...
If this is trying to solve the bad public transportation in SF, money and resource well wasted. We don't fix bad water in the fishing tank by putting in more expansive fish with the hope they'll purify the water.
Um, it's been a few years since I've lived in SF, but isn't that pretty much the 41/45 bus route?
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