jitney

In other words, they've started a jitney service.

I can't wait for the marketing copy that will go out when Uber starts a jitney or a city bus line.

An air-jitney? Its not engineering they need, its marketing sense.

The solution is called "jitney transit". It is illegal due to taxi medallion laws.

If you allowed jitney service without that requirement in popular areas, the taxi services couldn't compete.

>Los Angeles simply outlawed the jitney due to the amount of revenue it was losing as fewer people were taking the city's railways. They were obviously successful if they had to be stopped for emptying the trains.

"It's unclear how Chariot is getting around San Francisco's anti-jitney regulations." From the article: "...

Where jitney traffic is legal, the zone map and price list could even be printed in a sticker on the door so you can see the expected fare before you get in. Regarding "clog the roads", a functioning jitney system makes it much less necessary for people to own personal cars.

Similarly, jitney buses or other forms of efficient private mass transport are completely outlawed. The government doesn't want private bus routes competing with its clunky, unionized services.

Getting off track what I'd actually like to see is a standardized app/technology driven jitney/minivan system to help people make the last mile connections to and from subway endpoints.

They were called "jitneys." The city made them illegal as Muni service continued to degrade, to shield Muni from competition. It's unclear how Chariot is getting around San Francisco's anti-jitney regulations.

At a minimum, you'd see a thriving private jitney industry - private bus services outcompeting the public ones and private part-time cabs underpricing the metered ones. No, to get mass transit this bad requires active interference with the workings of "darwinistic capitalism".

We also have jitney transportation which is only slightly more expensive, but much faster than public transportation. Drivers are mostly from central asian republics or southern republics - demographics russians are rather hostile to - yet I haven't met more friendly drivers in the whole world.

A good history of the jitney transport industry[0]. I'll note that the statistics reported regarding length of service and demographics of jitney drivers indicate that UberX is a much more apt solution to the problem of matching riders with drivers than a "traditional" taxi service with full-time employees.

The city of Pittsburgh still has jitneys [1], and still calls them that, too. I always considered it a part of Pittsburghese, but I never knew the word was once used nationwide — I had never heard it before moving here. It's particularly interesting as the Pennsylvania Utility Commision has been giving Uber and Lyft a very difficult time [2] while the jitney has survived all these years.

The regulation was not desired by taxi/jitney operators nor requested/supported by the public. While it is true that regulation can be a general benefit, it is often the case that it is supported, at least in part if not in full, by firms/industries desirous of legal protection and elimination of competition where they cannot effectively compete.