A NYC redditor posted a fascinating how-to about Dollar Vans 6 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ap4t6k/dont_be_intimid...

The model of having large vehicles that pick up a bunch of people, but drop each person off exactly at their doorstep, is something that has been repeatedly proposed for self-driving vehicles in the future (by Tesla and others). I wonder if these dollar vans provide clues about what such a system could look like at an even larger scale.

Sounds a bit like Marshrutkas, which are cheap vans that function as the primary “public transit” system in many post-Soviet cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka

I thought they were talking about the jitney buses run by companies like Spanish Transit from Paterson <-> NYC. They're absolutely vital means of transport when the trains are reliably behind schedule (as they currently almost always are) or when the NJTransit buses aren't running on time because of some unknown issue.

I wish they would expand their offerings, because I live and work at two major points of their routes (except that it's different routes) and if they closed the triangle, I'd be able to avoid using Uber or Lyft.

During a snow storm/PABT outage this past winter, I observed a jitney line from 8th ave down halfway to 10th. It's pretty crazy to see the mishmash of alternative transit modes people will piece together when their main route (NJT, PATH, NJ bus, etc) goes offline.

I've spent a fair bit of time driving in New York City, since the early 90's. When is autonomous driving ever going to get to NYC? It sometimes seems insane to drive there. I have a hard time imagining computer drivers being able to deal with NYC human drivers. (Same goes for Boston, only more so.)

The Caribbean islands have a lot of these types of vans on ring roads and elsewhere. So cheap and nice and fast and amazingly decorated in some cases. But forget seatbelts and be prepared to squeeze. Was really $1 in the Caribbean though when I was there briefly.

>The license costs $550, according to the TLC website. After getting a license, a driver needs to get their van insured, which can cost around $15,000 a year, Clarke and several van drivers told the Eagle.

Well no wonder there's many unlicensed vans. They way the incentives are set up they may as well print "don't even bother" at the top of the license form in big bold letters.

With those kinds of costs in addition to the cost of running the van you'd be making pennies. Run unlicensed and on normal insurance (or better yet, read the statutes and figure out where the risk/reward sweet spot is) and you'd save a ton of money. If you don't have a lot of money or a legitimate business that needs protecting then it's a no brainier.

Edit: Down-voting me won't make running above the table any more financially attractive. If the insurance made financial sense the state wouldn't need to force them to get it or at the very least it would not be the owner's primary gripe. Most small businesses love to advertise their credentials and how insured they are. Every other business complains about labor cost and regulation. These guys are complaining about insurance. That should be a massive tip off that something is wrong.

I haven't taken these in a while but there is a huge word by mouth van system that connects the five Burroughs (besides SI). Someone tried using huge coach bus equivalent and was offering $1 a ride but that got shut down pretty quickly because of apparent traffic issues these coach bus were making.

I'm curious what makes these succeed in NYC while Chariot failed in SF.