Comments on: What the Ikea Shuttle says about NYC’s transit

By: Syed

Syed — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:56:37 +0000

Calling traisn by color makes me cringe too. At Columbia the other day someone asked me ifthe red line comes here, Ugh.

And yes, the MTA and the city do their best to run extra service on special game days. for example, the (4) can have boosted traffic because of Yankee Stadium as can the or (7) for Shea Stadium The MTA publicizes he thing for ballparks a lot, but I’m sure it happens elsewhere.

By: twakum

twakum — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:58:56 +0000

ooo BK touchy about the Smack, huh?

By: Greg Homan

Greg Homan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:54:39 +0000

From the Daily News article, the Ikea Spokesman Joseph Roth said this,
We are thrilled that we are providing free transit options for the people of New York to come to Ikea and to come to Red Hook.” “We support mass transit, and if people are using our services and not going to Ikea, that’s fine with us as well.”

The quotes above tells me that Ikea does not care that people are using the shuttle for commuting. I guess Ikea wants to be a good neighbor. Also I think Ikea had predicted people using the shuttles other than for shopping. When something free people will miss use it.

By: AlexB

AlexB — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:49:58 +0000

It is interesting that this bit of information should be tossed about on the blogs at the same time the Straphangers recently posted information about the increase in bus ridership versus the mediocre increase in service. Although I am willing to give the MTA the benefit of the doubt and assume that there was excess capacity ten years ago, the straphangers revealed some interesting information about the B61, the bus that I ride everyday and that duplicates the IKEA shuttle route. Ridership on that bus route has increase 74% in the last ten years and service has increases only 7% over the same period! Gene Russianoff is correct; at least once a week the bus goes by too full to accept more passengers. What’s going on here?

By: Todd

Todd — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:41:47 +0000

There is a ridiculous amount of car traffic on 9th Street. Anything (buses included) that takes some of these cars off the road is good news to me.

By: Think twice

Think twice — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:21:38 +0000

Hypothetical scenario:

I’m at a bus stop with my friend the businessman. Up comes three vehicles: an MTA bus, a plush private coach, and a no-frills private van.

The only things they have in common: they accept Metrocards and meet government safety standards. The businessman pays $4 for the coach and I pay $1 for the van and we all get to where we want to go.

By: Marc Shepherd

Marc Shepherd — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:57:52 +0000

The City should do more to encourage private business to run these type of ferry/bus services.

You’re forgetting that the main purpose of “Ikea Transit” is to get people to and from their store. Ikea isn’t offering to supplement NYC Transit out of generosity. If it doesn’t suit their business purposes, they can drop it at any time. That isn’t a sustainable transit model.

Does Mayor Bloomberg’s 2030 plan have anything to say about private comapanies like Ikea playing a role in the City’s public transportation?

It doesn’t, because there are very few cases where it would work. Indeed, we don’t even know if “Ikea Transit” will work in the long term. Remember, almost every public transit line we now have was run by a private for-profit company at one point. They all went bankrupt.

By: Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog » Blog Archive » The antithesis to Ikea’s free shuttles

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:20:09 +0000

[...] 2nd Ave. Subway History « What the Ikea Shuttle says about NYC’s transit [...]

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:15:07 +0000

From the Wikipedia article you just linked to: “Yet, this trend seems to have reversed, as profits grew more than tenfold in the fourth quarter of 2004, making it one of the few profitable public transport systems in the world.”

So you found the exception to the rule. For the most part, public transit is not profitable and thus hasn’t really worked in a private setting. I was being a bit hyperbolic when I said it hasn’t really worked anywhere. I should say that it hasn’t really worked anywhere outside of a Hong Kong system whose profit is largely dependent on real estate revenues more so than on the profit derived from rail passengers.

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:10:30 +0000

Actually, you might want to do a little research on your statement that privatization hasn’t worked…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....vatisation