11 ms·

This opinion is (I believe) largely a function of one's worldview: if you grew up and live in a place designed for cars, you will probably find public transit s

This opinion is (I believe) largely a function of one's worldview: if you grew up and live in a place designed for cars, you will probably find public transit systems inefficient. Why shouldn't I be able to get in a thing at my door and out of a thing at my destination door, without all this walking and standing nonsense? If you grew up in e.g. Hong Kong, though, you'd likely see public transit as an arterial system designed to get you from one walkable neighborhood to another. I want to be able to walk around my neighborhood without dodging cars, even pedestrian-aware self-driving ones. The failure of public transit in many contexts is really in foundational civil planning, not the nature of transit itself.

forrestthewoods 11y ago
No. It's shit. It's always been shit. And it will always be shit. New York City has the longest commute times in the entire country. I've had friends who grew up ther and upon leaving literally said, "oh so this is what it's like to be alive. I thought all people did was work, commute, and sleep." Walking to a bus stop sucks. Waiting for the next train sucks. Inevitably missing your transport or connection sucks. Listening to podcasts is cool so it's not the end of the world though. People who live off public transportation live in tiny bubbles. A square mile here and a square mile there. Like you said, moving from one all walkneighborhood to another. God help you if you want more than one of ~five neighborhoods. And if you want to go see nature? Hah. sure you could rent a car or use a zip car but that's a huge hassle and people rarely do. Assuming you even have a drivers license which, much to my surprise, many folks are starting to skip. You aren't wrong that it's a function of worldview. Perhaps one view is right or perhaps both are.
- wibr 11y ago
  Well sitting in a traffic jam also sucks? In my opinion even more because you are literally stuck, you can't just choose another connection, go somewhere else to have a coffee, you are trapped in your car on some road and there is nothing you can do except wait and try to ask the navigation system for better routes. I don't think driverless car will fix any congestion problems in the city. Instead there might be even more cars: Elderly, children, deliveries, pets, driving billboards and vending machines, everyone can go anywhere on their own!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ACow_Adonis 11y ago
  I live in inner-city Melbourne, in what, I am under no delusion, is a relatively privileged position even in this city and where people (as people do everywhere) complain about transport. The outer suburbs are dominated by car use. Myself and my partner currently preference, by free choice (we could easily afford one) not to have a car. We own a carspace in our building in case we ever needed one one, but we rent it out to others. We're dreading the day when we have to waste our money or time buying a car, say if children came along, but we're seriously asking ourselves whether we could maybe go without one even in that case because its unhealthy, an inconvenience and a frustration. We're members of a car share, but honestly...we've used it once so far. I have 3 tram lines within about 5 minutes walk from me. I don't really look at timetables, I walk to the stops or use the phone tram-tracking and just go. Why do we preference to not owning a car? Because its a pain in the arse to drive + a time + money + health sink. But let me just tackle another of your points. Namely: people who live off public transportation live in tiny bubbles. Guilty. I even jokingly refer to this place as the inner-city bubble, because once you're in you really have no reason to leave. And yes, my neighbourhood is walk friendly for a couple of kilometers in all directions. My bubble is made up of about 5 walkable 'burbs within a few square kilometers of my house, and that's where I spend 90%+ of my time. But you know what. Previously I've lived in a couple of places, one of which was Sydney. Traffic is awful there. And Canberra, a little country car town if ever there was one. And what I observed was that car-cultures live in bubbles too. But you know what? Their bubbles are orders of magnitude smaller. Oh sure, they commute and move 30kms to get from one little bubble to park in another little bubble, but their lives become miniscule little bubbles connected by road journeys. Its the IDEA of freedom that most car owners enjoy, but if you tacked on a GPS, I bet you'd find most car owners moving between and handful of miniscule bubbles via a system of road based arteries for 99% of their lives. Indeed in Sydney, it was pretty much an attitude of "screw it, its such a god damn hassle to get anywhere because of the traffic/roads, i'm going to bunker down in my own little bubble as much as possible". Now is there variation? Sure, but the idea that public transport is the shit option, or that users on it are living in bubbles compared to the freedom of car owners is demonstrably not universally true.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
Even if you ignore the extra walking required, and even if public transit actually gets you close enough to your destination, public transit at least doubles the travel time required. Potentially more if your drive doesn't need to deal with traffic, which it often doesn't. Random example: in the Portland area, a city known for both public transit and pedestrian/bike friendliness, I looked up routes from my current workplace to the university building I took most of my classes in, via either a car or public transit. Despite having a train line that handles most of the distance, that trip would take at least 90-100 minutes, depending on time of day. That assumes you start your trip at a time that doesn't require waiting for the first pickup. The same trip by car would take 25-40 minutes, depending on traffic. And with a reasonably fuel-efficient vehicle, the trip would cost less in gas than the cost of the transit fare. On top of all that, you can leave when you want to leave, not worry about which bus or train you need to catch, and not worry about getting stranded when the buses and trains shut down for the night. This isn't an issue of worldview; by any almost objective measure, a car beats public transit, here in one of the most transit-friendly cities in the country. (In the interests of a fair comparison: public transit does work better if you don't have the option of using a car, such as if you can't afford one, or if you have some legal reason you can't drive.) Adding more public transit vehicles or routes wouldn't solve this problem, because the current set of vehicles aren't actually at capacity; by measures of throughput, they carry all the passengers that want to ride. However, by measures of latency and similar metric, public transit utterly fails. Perhaps if you somehow convinced the entire population to use public transit, then you could put many times the number of public transit vehicles on the road without wastefulness, and partially solve the latency problem. But you'd have a lot more luck convincing people to use a fleet of self-driving electric cars instead. I would welcome a similar latency-based comparison in a more transit-friendly area, as long as the comparison shows transit infrastructure getting better to compare well with cars, rather than driving infrastructure getting worse while transit stays the same.
- rmc 11y ago
  "one of the most public transport friendly cities in America" is like "one of the most pro-women cities in Saudi Arabia"
- 11y ago
jejones3141 11y ago
It's now been a little over a year that I've been in Pittsburgh and mostly gotten to and from work by bus. Here's how it looks to me: 1. You have to arrange your life around the schedule. The buses, OTOH, don't. Last winter it was not uncommon to wait half an hour with no shelter or place to sit, in below-freezing weather, for a late bus. The bus I get on in the morning has tended to be five to ten minutes late (which means delays for transfers), and once pulled in shortly before the bus making the next scheduled stop. 2. Once the bus does arrive, there may or may not be a seat available. 3. If the buses have shock absorbers, I've not seen or felt evidence of it. The driver's seat, OTOH, is quite the technological miracle of jerk (in the physics sense) minimization. 4. The buses aren't designed to accommodate any items a passenger might be bringing along. 5. The bus driver sometimes either can't or doesn't bother to set the bus's identification of itself (to potential passengers via signage or to apps). It's a good way to make people miss their buses. I can only describe my experiences with the Allegheny Port Authority, others may differ. When I've called, the recording describing the menu runs at VERY low volume, perfect for trying to get help on a busy street with traffic noise. When I got through and described the issue, I was asked if I wished to register a complaint. I did; I think I may have gotten a followup on it once. OTOH, that's not been as much of an issue lately, because now you can only call between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., just the thing for avoiding people having problems during the morning and evening commute. I will celebrate when mass transit is disrupted out of existence.
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  Sorry friend. Your experience is wrong. We don't tolerate different opinions here. Besides, you just haven't seen public transportation done right. You know. Like communism.
  - stuaxo 11y ago
    That does sound like a terrible public transport system, good bus transport does exist though; at least in the UK - we also have bad ones in rural areas.
  - Piskvorrr 11y ago

forrestthewoods 11y ago

No. It's shit. It's always been shit. And it will always be shit. New York City has the longest commute times in the entire country. I've had friends who grew up ther and upon leaving literally said, "oh so this is what it's like to be alive. I thought all people did was work, commute, and sleep." Walking to a bus stop sucks. Waiting for the next train sucks. Inevitably missing your transport or connection sucks. Listening to podcasts is cool so it's not the end of the world though. People who live off public transportation live in tiny bubbles. A square mile here and a square mile there. Like you said, moving from one all walkneighborhood to another. God help you if you want more than one of ~five neighborhoods. And if you want to go see nature? Hah. sure you could rent a car or use a zip car but that's a huge hassle and people rarely do. Assuming you even have a drivers license which, much to my surprise, many folks are starting to skip. You aren't wrong that it's a function of worldview. Perhaps one view is right or perhaps both are.

wibr 11y ago
Well sitting in a traffic jam also sucks? In my opinion even more because you are literally stuck, you can't just choose another connection, go somewhere else to have a coffee, you are trapped in your car on some road and there is nothing you can do except wait and try to ask the navigation system for better routes. I don't think driverless car will fix any congestion problems in the city. Instead there might be even more cars: Elderly, children, deliveries, pets, driving billboards and vending machines, everyone can go anywhere on their own!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ACow_Adonis 11y ago
I live in inner-city Melbourne, in what, I am under no delusion, is a relatively privileged position even in this city and where people (as people do everywhere) complain about transport. The outer suburbs are dominated by car use. Myself and my partner currently preference, by free choice (we could easily afford one) not to have a car. We own a carspace in our building in case we ever needed one one, but we rent it out to others. We're dreading the day when we have to waste our money or time buying a car, say if children came along, but we're seriously asking ourselves whether we could maybe go without one even in that case because its unhealthy, an inconvenience and a frustration. We're members of a car share, but honestly...we've used it once so far. I have 3 tram lines within about 5 minutes walk from me. I don't really look at timetables, I walk to the stops or use the phone tram-tracking and just go. Why do we preference to not owning a car? Because its a pain in the arse to drive + a time + money + health sink. But let me just tackle another of your points. Namely: people who live off public transportation live in tiny bubbles. Guilty. I even jokingly refer to this place as the inner-city bubble, because once you're in you really have no reason to leave. And yes, my neighbourhood is walk friendly for a couple of kilometers in all directions. My bubble is made up of about 5 walkable 'burbs within a few square kilometers of my house, and that's where I spend 90%+ of my time. But you know what. Previously I've lived in a couple of places, one of which was Sydney. Traffic is awful there. And Canberra, a little country car town if ever there was one. And what I observed was that car-cultures live in bubbles too. But you know what? Their bubbles are orders of magnitude smaller. Oh sure, they commute and move 30kms to get from one little bubble to park in another little bubble, but their lives become miniscule little bubbles connected by road journeys. Its the IDEA of freedom that most car owners enjoy, but if you tacked on a GPS, I bet you'd find most car owners moving between and handful of miniscule bubbles via a system of road based arteries for 99% of their lives. Indeed in Sydney, it was pretty much an attitude of "screw it, its such a god damn hassle to get anywhere because of the traffic/roads, i'm going to bunker down in my own little bubble as much as possible". Now is there variation? Sure, but the idea that public transport is the shit option, or that users on it are living in bubbles compared to the freedom of car owners is demonstrably not universally true.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

Even if you ignore the extra walking required, and even if public transit actually gets you close enough to your destination, public transit at least doubles the travel time required. Potentially more if your drive doesn't need to deal with traffic, which it often doesn't. Random example: in the Portland area, a city known for both public transit and pedestrian/bike friendliness, I looked up routes from my current workplace to the university building I took most of my classes in, via either a car or public transit. Despite having a train line that handles most of the distance, that trip would take at least 90-100 minutes, depending on time of day. That assumes you start your trip at a time that doesn't require waiting for the first pickup. The same trip by car would take 25-40 minutes, depending on traffic. And with a reasonably fuel-efficient vehicle, the trip would cost less in gas than the cost of the transit fare. On top of all that, you can leave when you want to leave, not worry about which bus or train you need to catch, and not worry about getting stranded when the buses and trains shut down for the night. This isn't an issue of worldview; by any almost objective measure, a car beats public transit, here in one of the most transit-friendly cities in the country. (In the interests of a fair comparison: public transit does work better if you don't have the option of using a car, such as if you can't afford one, or if you have some legal reason you can't drive.) Adding more public transit vehicles or routes wouldn't solve this problem, because the current set of vehicles aren't actually at capacity; by measures of throughput, they carry all the passengers that want to ride. However, by measures of latency and similar metric, public transit utterly fails. Perhaps if you somehow convinced the entire population to use public transit, then you could put many times the number of public transit vehicles on the road without wastefulness, and partially solve the latency problem. But you'd have a lot more luck convincing people to use a fleet of self-driving electric cars instead. I would welcome a similar latency-based comparison in a more transit-friendly area, as long as the comparison shows transit infrastructure getting better to compare well with cars, rather than driving infrastructure getting worse while transit stays the same.

rmc 11y ago
"one of the most public transport friendly cities in America" is like "one of the most pro-women cities in Saudi Arabia"
11y ago

jejones3141 11y ago

It's now been a little over a year that I've been in Pittsburgh and mostly gotten to and from work by bus. Here's how it looks to me: 1. You have to arrange your life around the schedule. The buses, OTOH, don't. Last winter it was not uncommon to wait half an hour with no shelter or place to sit, in below-freezing weather, for a late bus. The bus I get on in the morning has tended to be five to ten minutes late (which means delays for transfers), and once pulled in shortly before the bus making the next scheduled stop. 2. Once the bus does arrive, there may or may not be a seat available. 3. If the buses have shock absorbers, I've not seen or felt evidence of it. The driver's seat, OTOH, is quite the technological miracle of jerk (in the physics sense) minimization. 4. The buses aren't designed to accommodate any items a passenger might be bringing along. 5. The bus driver sometimes either can't or doesn't bother to set the bus's identification of itself (to potential passengers via signage or to apps). It's a good way to make people miss their buses. I can only describe my experiences with the Allegheny Port Authority, others may differ. When I've called, the recording describing the menu runs at VERY low volume, perfect for trying to get help on a busy street with traffic noise. When I got through and described the issue, I was asked if I wished to register a complaint. I did; I think I may have gotten a followup on it once. OTOH, that's not been as much of an issue lately, because now you can only call between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., just the thing for avoiding people having problems during the morning and evening commute. I will celebrate when mass transit is disrupted out of existence.

forrestthewoods 11y ago
Sorry friend. Your experience is wrong. We don't tolerate different opinions here. Besides, you just haven't seen public transportation done right. You know. Like communism.
- stuaxo 11y ago
  That does sound like a terrible public transport system, good bus transport does exist though; at least in the UK - we also have bad ones in rural areas.
- Piskvorrr 11y ago