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> "I am white, privileged, and want to ride on a fancy looking bus where I can buy a Vita Coco. Uh, lets not place the race card here. In all major US cities we have 100+ years of political corruption, union protectionism, bad planning, kick the can mentality, etc that have led to a shitty level of public services. A non-government competitor can help to keep the government honest as people see how much better things can be. As a Chicagoan, my advice is, don't become like Chicago. We ran full tilt towards the "don't challenge the government, we know best" approach which just led to the corrupt machine politics that is driving the city into bankruptcy. I would love to take a non-CTA bus to work. I can't see how anyone could possibly do worse than the CTA bus system. >Some critics have raised worries that these bus startups, like Chariot and competitor Leap Transit, will cause the broader public to disinvest in the city’s municipal transit system. This is a feature, not a bug. I mean, should universities and hospitals give up on their private bus system because it "threatens" the public one? If the public system is so terrible, continuing to prop it up makes no sense. Personally, the idea that we need to build this ultra-egalitarian society is highly hypocritical, especially on an entrepreneurial forum like HN. Yeah, I'm willing to pay to not ride with crackheads and criminals. There's nothing wrong with that, the same way I bought a house far away from crackheads and criminals. |
I don't know where you are in Chicago, but tooling around Streeterville/Gold Coast/Lincoln Park, I always found the CTA buses clean and punctual. I don't think CTA is a great example of union protectionism or bad planning in Chicago (I'd level those at CPS/CPD).
If you can't see how anyone could do worse than CTA, try riding the public transit in the Rust-belt east coast cities (Philly, Baltimore, Wilmington). It can get so much worse.