(09-28-2018, 01:11 PM)SammyOES Wrote: I think it would be interesting to look at the economics more. The service doesn't necessarily need to be free. If it can beat Uber / Taxi / Airport Parking it would be competitive. If it just has to run when there's actual demand registered ahead of time, you an avoid a lot of costs. And if you regularly have demand from 3 cities - that means there's probably enough justification to run the service.
But most importantly in my mind, even in the most pessimistic view we're talking about a service that costs 10s of thousands dollars/year instead of the millions that any sort of regular bus route / train would cost.
Of those 3 vehicles, are they going to one place to pick up people or doing a route to pick up people at their homes. If they are doing a route some people will have a longer travel time. So at this point are they better off taking the shuttle to save $5 vs taking a taxi to go straight to the airport. And this would be for the group that just don't offer a friend to drop them off for some beer later.
Operationally it's not too straight forward for the airport, they would need to hire a few individuals, and have an extra vehicle on hand. Since they only have one real flight it would probably need 3 hours of labour, so there will be some issues finding people to fill that role consistently, unless they come out of the GRT driver pool, which is a higher rate with extra premiums for the luggage hauling and cusomer interaction they are expected to have. Depending on union rules might limit who the on call driver is if there is a breakdown. And if there is a breakdown, a pipebursts and the shuttle is stuck in traffic, is the airport now on the hook to compensate them.
Considering how full or empty the shuttles could potentially be all year long I can't imagine it would be much cheaper, and it is a lot of extra operations and effort to save people who have spent a few hundred dollars flying $5.
I do agree laying down tracks or having a full blown service is just not well thought out and insulting to connestoga college students who have the demand but not the service.