alt Hacker NewsTransit rewards
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Waymo pays you $2.85 in Waymo credit to take the train
(Waymo takes $2.85 off your next ride if you take the train)
I live in East Bay, and I often take gratuitous Waymo trips all the way across the city to Embarcadero Station to ride BART back home. I do this because I like seeing the pretty skyscrapers and the bustling city and the pretty townhomes painted interesting colors. They may want to rethink their reward structure a bit to avoid paying out to people like me.
Once you are in the Waymo, why bother getting out just to get on a bus?
In New York, increases in the use of ride services like Uber mostly came from bus and subway riders[1]. If we are being charitable to Google, we might assume that this initiative is intended to reduce the same sort of trend. If we are not being charitable, we might assume that this initiative is intended to encourage current bus riders to expose themselves to the product.
[1] https://www.6sqft.com/mta-says-uber-use-is-the-cause-of-nyc-...
Oh man this is brilliant.
Amongst other reasons, I use Waymo for covering the last mile of a trip made by bus or light rail in my city (Houston, TX). Our public transit service is very reasonably priced but it would be awesome to get a discount!
I love it. We can argue to death, as usually happens in Waymo threads about public transit but the general truth is mass transit is hard in America where cities are designed mostly around cars. Could it change, sure but most likely not. This seems like such an elegant solution that I hope other cities adopt and use as part of new transit planning.
I like this idea. A simple bus route that delegates to waymos for the last mile seems like the best of both worlds. And maybe easier to develop public transit routes because they can be simpler.
Also hope it can applied to more rural areas eventually too, where driving is the only realistic option. DUIs, accidents, and whatnot are way higher than they ought to be in these places because there’s few or no alternatives. And you’ll never convince everyone to give up their imbibing.
I use my commuter benefit debit card to pay for public transit. Notably this does not include rideshares like Waymo. In order to claim the transit reward I could use a personal card to pay for both transit and Waymo, but that leads to considerable friction where I need to collect receipts and submit claims to use my commuter benefit. Most companies in SF must offer a commuter benefit so it doesn't seem like many people will be getting this Waymo transit reward.
This program is mainly a fig leaf defense that Waymo can trot out when it is criticized by transit proponents. Which is totally fine by me. Train transit as it exists in the US is largely indefensible. We will be better of the sooner we can rip up the tracks and put those right of ways to better use (AV and bike lanes).
at times I wonder all that money pumped into uber & Lyft to subsidize rides could've been pumped into electric buses that run 24/7
how much cheaper and accessible transportation would be. on the other side uber Lyft etc enabled plenty of people who were perennially unemployed to gain income. while the subsidized rates are gone, seems the ride share companies are making some of their money on food deliveries instead (another place robots could take over ??)
anyways this is a good move from Waymo if only the program can be maintained for 20+ years.
I use ride share singularly for the convenience. I don’t really think about the cost all that much if it’s “reasonable” and no financial incentive they could provide to link multiple forms of transportation would be enough to overcome that single convenience.
I would really like a full door to door with one payment. Put in the destination, one price and get a Waymo on each end. React as best as possible to delays, etc.
Ugh, looks like this only works if you pay for the Waymo with a Visa card, and also use that same Visa card to pay for transit. I don't use a credit card for transit in SF; I use my Clipper transit card.
I get that integrating with the Clipper system is a lot more difficult, but... c'mon.
It seems odd that they want you to pay for transit with your visa. That excludes a lot of travelers who might have passes on their transit cards. Less common in the Bay since all our transit providers are different but I used to pay monthly for the Muni + Local BART pass all the time when I lived in SF.
Does anyone know what the play here is?
(Is it given that there's a play? Waymo is culturally a little distinct from Google so from personal experience I can't actually rule out that they're just doing this coz they think it would be good for the world).
Nice idea. But too many ifs and buts, and it's too little to really change habits. Besides, waymo's main issue seems to be supply right now. I can never get one when I need it.
I wish the government would rather invest in better public last mile connectivity programs or higher frequency trains and buses.
Rewards are a nice bonus, but reliable, frequent service that actually gets me places on time is the ultimate reward for transit users.
My city tried this, mostly just gave existing riders a few bucks off. Never moved the needle on getting new people out of cars.
Tried a similar app once; the rewards were so minimal it barely incentivized taking the bus over driving. Needs better carrots.
This feels backwards to me, as inner-city transit is generally well-served by bus, rail, or walking.
It’s Commuter Rail where this is a net benefit, and honestly the target I’d go after were I Waymo, because selling these vehicles as fleets to large metro services as last-mile for commuter rail service (where busses would travel further with less passenger density) makes a lot of sense compared to huge parking lots.
In the mornings and evenings, the Waymos shuttle commuters to and from the rail station. At all other times, they provide last-mile transit where bus lines can’t reach effectively or consistently. If the cost can be covered by your transit pass, or a transfer can act as a discount, then that’s even better.
Americans will come up with anything just to avoid learning experience of socialist countries in public transport design.
Imagine a decentralized system rewarding actual transit usage with tokens. That could actually work and incentivize more.
Ridership of public transit has grown dramatically in the past 20 years, here in the Phoenix Metro area. I’m excited about this new offering, and I hope it is expanded as described!
As a Bay Area native I think this was the first time I've ever seen the accent over the E in "San José"
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
The sad reality is that it is practically impossible to tell a good act apart from one with ulterior motives. It could be just a cross promotion, but it could also aim to be friendly to lawmakers or to grow in ridership with the goal of extinguishing the competition.
The VC playbook heavily suggests the latter
> Public transit networks and shared autonomous vehicles are part of a complementary mobility ecosystem. As transit agencies modernize their payment systems to accept tap-to-pay debit and credit cards, multimodal trips are becoming more convenient than ever.
What a tonal shift immediately after the intro paragraph. I have to wonder how many times this went back and forth with PR and Legal to end up with this particular wording and to be the very first thing they stress after the basic facts. Especially the word ‘shared’ in ‘shared autonomous vehicles’ to connect people's thinking to ‘public’ transit. They even make sure to repeat the word ‘shared’ back to back to back in each of the final three paragraphs to make sure you end with that idea in mind. Yet all the cars are owned by Waymo and aren't ‘shared’ like the train and bus fleets which are owned by transit districts that I can vote on.
Translation: Waymo would like to learn how to prioritize their fleet of privately-owned vehicles, like where to have empty cars circling, where to expect them to be sent, and via what routes to send them, in order to replace the transit portion of the trip for as many riders as possible. Who wouldn't choose a single door-to-door trip over a transfer if the wait time is low and if the dollar cost of the private Waymo ride can be set approximately equal to the invisible ‘price’ people assign to the value of their time.
And just in case a reader doesn't pick up on that stuff, they directly tell you how to feel by quoting their very unbiased business partner:
> “San José has always believed innovation should make everyday life work better,” said San José Mayor Matt Mahan. “This partnership does exactly that by using new technology to strengthen public transit, not replace it, making regional travel more seamless and giving people more ways to get where they need to go.”
Fun fact: Waymo pay $4 to the San José Department of Airports for every pick-up or drop-off at SJC.
Widespread Waymo usage probably wouldn't “replace” the public transit routes we have now, sure, but it would remove the public's shared will to vote for transit expansions that could replace the Waymo portion of people's “““multimodal trips in a complementary mobility ecosystem””” (lmfao) instead of the other way around.
> When riders in the SF Bay Area use their Visa card to take a Waymo trip and public transit within 2 hours of each other, we will automatically issue $2.85 in Waymo Cash, which is the cost of a bus fare in San Francisco.
Great ‘anchoring’ technique in this wording too, to make people feel like $2.85 is getting them something tangible instead of being a pittance to pay for this type of hyper-personal behavior data.
Meanwhile, the 47 Muni bus that connects the Van Ness transit corridor to Caltrain has been “suspended” since 2020, and the extension of Caltrain to the transit center is still unfunded.
I appreciate solutions that meet us where we are, but it’s depressing that we don’t seem to actually have the will to make a sustainable, integrated mass transit plan.