Interesting Links for 25-04-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Labour being decent on asylum for once!

(tags:asylum labour )

2. I love this about Angela Rayner

(tags:labour UK charity )

3. Google gives users a 'reject all' button for tracking cookies - if you're in Europe

(tags:surveillance advertising Google Europe )

4. UK first as 'driverless' bus begins testing on Edinburgh Park tram and train interchange route

(tags:Edinburgh automation driving transport buses )

5. Labour pledges to scrap non-dom tax break, investigate tax havens

(tags:tax UK labour )

Comments

Driverless Buses

[danieldwilliam]

So that's about a 20 minute journey from Ferrytoll to Edinburgh Park. So perhaps a 45-50 minute round trip with loading and unloading.

5 buses means a service every 10 minutes I think. Or every 15 minutes if you assume 1 bus is off the road at anyone time. Which is pretty decent.

Re: Driverless Buses

[andrewducker]

It'll be very useful if they can make it fully driverless.

I'm intrigued as to how often a driver is needed for non -driving purposes.

Re: Driverless Buses

[danieldwilliam]

I'm intrigued as to how often a driver is needed for non -driving purposes.

I don't think all that often. If you have contactless ticketing, a good way of telling strangers that this bus goes to X and Y but not Z, some sort of PA system to tell you that the bus you are on is broken or diverted and some way for passengers to inform central control or the emergency services that an emergency has happened probably not very often at all.

I suppose the service that they do provide in the background all the time they are driving is the twin one of providing a deterance to anti-social behaviour and reassurance that anti-social behaviour won't happen. Not sure how you replicate that easily and cheaply and in a way that is not a burdensome privacy violation.

Re: Driverless Buses

[andrewducker]

"a good way of telling strangers that this bus goes to X and Y but not Z"

That's the tricky one, I think. And also deterring people from getting on without a ticket. I think you have to switch to a train-like model, where you can't actually get *near* the bus without a ticket and there is someone at the station to tell you which bus you want to be on.

Or have it mostly for free buses - if the park/ride buses are free then you don't have to worry about gatekeeping them at all.

Re: Driverless Buses

[danieldwilliam]

That's the tricky one, I think

I think so too., Not least because by defination the bus driver is dealing with people who couldn't make Google Maps or a bus tracker app work satisfactorily and / or don't even know the right question to ask.

deterring people from getting on without a ticket.

I think you can solve this with some combination of bus passes and targeted revenue enforcement activity with heavy penalty fares. If you have a video analysis tool that can tell you that there are 40 people +/- 1 or 2 on the bus and only 30 tickets / passes have been presented then someone gets sent to do a full ticket check with a £200+ fine if you get caught without a ticket.

Re: Driverless Buses

[andrewducker]

I think the former might be easiest with things like the point-to-point travel that we get from Park/Ride to Tram terminus. There's not a complex series of stops to worry about, and you either want to go to Edinburgh or you don't! (And chances are, if you're at the Park/Ride then you know what you want already - you've not ended up there by accident)

A whole different kettle of fish in Edinburgh during the festival, where a driver will sometimes have a whole series of people getting on and asking if they're going to a particular venue. I think that, if nothing else, more advertising of the app would be worthwhile!

Re: Driverless Buses

[danieldwilliam]

Absolutely agree. I think everyone who uses a bus in Edinburgh has seen a non-English speaking tourist get on the bus in August and essentially say "Help?"

So you need better navigation apps and for popular destinations in your city to advertise that the closest bus route to them is the Number Whatever and some sort of emergency contact advertised near bus stops. A chat bot with human back up might work okay for that - assuming one is okay with Boomers taking a taxi instead of a bus.

And probably some other stuff too. Which just goes to show that fully replacing humans in even moderately skilled jobs might be really hard.

Re: Driverless Buses

[andrewducker]

You might find, though, that the job of "bus driver" is replaced by one of "bus host", which is then paid far less. But equally might allow the reinvented conductor to spend more time focussing on the customer than they are able to when they're having to drive a bus!

Re: Driverless Buses

[danieldwilliam]

Maybe.

A quick google tells me average salary for a bus driver in Edinburgh is about £27k. Minimum wage annualised is just under £20k. So maybe a 1/4rt or 1/3rd saving by the time you factor in on-costs.

A bus costs about £350k capital costs, say about £35k a year over ten years. Plus same again for maintenance. So, the driver is about half the cost of owning and maintaining the bus on an annual basis.

Reducing the cost of the crew by 25% or thereabouts is probably not the radical saving you need to make bus travel significantly cheaper on a passenger mile basis.

Re: Driverless Buses

[andrewducker]

This is true. Either we can get rid of drivers entirely, or it's not worth the argument of cutting the cash.

One alternative, of course, would be to deploy people to the most used bus stops to help guide tourists in the right direction before they get on the bus.

[ninetydegrees]

#3. So European regulations and fines do work. Nice.

[andrewducker]

Yup! Same as how Twitter can ban Nazis. But only if you live in Germany!

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/08/02/twitter-users-switch-profiles-to-germany-to-escape-online-hate.html

[danieldwilliam]

Saw a neat question yesterday on Twitter along the lines of are you more focused on Nadine Dorries' Censor's Act providing the powers for the UK government to compel Twitter to censor content or Elon Musk's vague aspirations about free speech?