The Innisfil experiment:the town that replaced public transit with Uber

[Iormlund]

Yes, really sounds like a failure.

For such a thing to work I'd think you'd need to have true ride sharing, picking up multiple passengers going the same way.

Overall I'm interested to see where the next few years take Uber. It is looking increasingly likely it may never make a profit.

Uber will make a profit when autonomous cars replace car ownership, and the cost per ride plummets.

As of now they are merely investing to be the go to app when that moment comes.

[Habbaku]

And Uber could easily run out of other people's money long before that point comes. Which is why they're incredibly risky.

[Zanza]

Yes, really sounds like a failure.

For such a thing to work I'd think you'd need to have true ride sharing, picking up multiple passengers going the same way.

Overall I'm interested to see where the next few years take Uber. It is looking increasingly likely it may never make a profit.

Uber will make a profit when autonomous cars replace car ownership, and the cost per ride plummets.

As of now they are merely investing to be the go to app when that moment comes.

Apps like that live of a self-reinforcing network effect. More subscribers, more providers. But providing the service of self-driving cars just needs a single large fleet provider, so that part of the equation can easily be undercut by a determined competitor with capital.

[Josquius]

And Uber could easily run out of other people's money long before that point comes. Which is why they're incredibly risky.

Yes. We're a long way short of that point. We haven't even seen its beginnings yet, let alone it becoming the norm.

[Savonarola]

Sounds like the title of a Lovecraft novel.

To be followed by The Dream-Quest of Facebook Privacy Settings.

The Shadow over Innisfil. Where our hero has a soul-destroying revelation that he is one of them while buying a coffee and donut in a Tim Hortons.

Really no different from any visit to Tim Hortons, though  ... 

Miles Sheffield was born in Innisfil and had grown up in the large grey-stone house beyond the valley.  His was the descendant of one of the founding families of Salem, Massachusetts; they had fled to Canada in the wake of the American Revolution.  His mother had been a deaf-mute with sullen, expressionless eyes; her long straight black hair more than hinted at her First People's ancestry. 

The Sheffields had made their fortune as lumber barons; they were one of the first settlers of the area around Lake Simcoe.  Miles's ancestors were said to be ruthless businessmen with a fanatically loyal workforce.  Stories are told about them to this very day: bizarre ceremonies to mark the beginning of land clearings; workers from rival camps disappearing; unnatural dealings with the First Peoples; threats, credible threats, made against sawmill bosses and their families.  Miles laughed them off as ghost stories; but some of the old timers of Innisfil insisted they had heard them from their parents and that all of them were true.

Miles didn't have many friends growing up; like me he lived far from town beyond the valley.  Most of the time he spent alone in that vast mansion with its big, empty halls and portraits of his long dead ancestors with gaunt eyes that seem to pierce your flesh.  As a child he had a peculiar obsession with schedules and timetables; going so far as to own three Franklin Planners in order to properly correlate them between three calendar systems: Gregorian, Julian and Mohammedan.  It was rumored that some of the people of the valley, though they had lived in Innisfil as long as the Sheffields, still used the Julian calendar to mark unknown festivals from their strange, backwards lands.  The Mohammedan one was even more idiosyncratic, it was to correspond with some book he had picked up in a second hand shop that was some translation from Arabic.  He showed it once to me, it was his prized possession.  It was bound in cracked leather and it's vellum pages were filled with complete gibberish.  I could never fathom why he was correlating its dates to his schedule; but he insisted it was important.

He held onto the Franklin Planners as the years went on.  As the world embraced the Palm Pilot's chill of steel and chrome he kept with his Franklin Planner.  As the smart phones tendrils reached out and enveloped the whole world; he stuck to his Franklin Planner.  He loved the Franklin Planner.  He loved feel of its tacky vinyl cover.  He loved his writing he poured over the organic, splotchy notes in his own cryptic hand.  The scheduling worked, perhaps, he had been such a good student that he won a scholarship to the prestigious Ansnorveldt University.  He told me he spent his days in its vast library, pouring through the dusty tome of its rare book collection.  He never mentioned what he read; but he gave me a tour when I visited him.  The Ansnorveldt collection is maginificent, one of the largest in Canada, and filled with all manner of obscure books.  After graduation he returned and went to work for the city of Innisfil.  He so impressed his bosses with his knowledge of schedule management software that he quickly rose through the ranks and soon became the central planner for the bus system schedule.

His bus schedule was brilliant, intricate and yet somehow unworkable.  No one dared question it; no one knew where to even begin.  His assistants, well his assistants didn't last for long.  Mike Steiner drove his car through a doughnut shop and ended up in Saint Dymphna's Asylum.  Jane Richards bought a bus ticket to Niagra and was never seen again.  Jeff Tanner just sits at home all day and drinks; he doesn't say much about anything only once in a while he'll give a hoarse whisper "Time-table... time-table."  Day after day fewer respectable people took the bus; they found cars, or ride shared, or anything just to avoid the buses and their maddening schedule.  The years passed; in time only the people from the valley would.  All of them with their degenerate weak chins and sullen, sunken eyes that stare at you without interest, without comprehension.  They're always on the bus, riding, riding, always riding to a Tim Hortons.

[celedhring]

I actually made the joke to get Sav to bite and give us on of those brilliant posts  . Thanks Malthus for the assist. 

[Habbaku]

  Great work, as always, Sav.

I volunteer as your copy editor, though. Those double-spaces after a period have to go. 

[Barrister]

POTM!

[Malthus]

 

Awesome work.

[Berkut]

That is amazing.

[Savonarola]

I actually made the joke to get Sav to bite and give us on of those brilliant posts  . Thanks Malthus for the assist. 

I've been posting here too long.  Anyhow thanks guys, it was fun to write.

[Savonarola]

Great work, as always, Sav.

I volunteer as your copy editor, though. Those double-spaces after a period have to go. 

You kids with your instagram influencers, and your twitter feeds, and your double-mocha-espesso-macchiados, and your single spaces after periods.     Back in my day we didn't have all that; all we had were cassette tapes and television and Joe Biden () and it taught us to think for ourselves.   



When I was in school we got marked down for single space after periods; single spaces after periods still looks wrong to me.

[grumbler]

When I was in school we got marked down for single space after periods; single spaces after periods still looks wrong to me.

You are quite correct.

[Valmy]

It has taken me years to stop double spacing after periods. I hope they don't randomly switch it back at some point.

[Habbaku]

Same here. I was taught double-spacing in my high school keyboarding classes, and I think that the word processor flagged it as an error, even.

But I've broken myself of the habit as of a few years ago. It's a tough one.