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In Europe, your bus fare would be half of the price and probably you would need one or two connections. The public transport is much more developed and to me s
by deusex_ 10y ago
In Europe, your bus fare would be half of the price and probably you would need one or two connections.
The public transport is much more developed and to me seems like a much better mass transportation alternative. More ecological, cheaper, less cars overall.
- trustfundbaby 10y agoIt also helps that Europe and its cities are ... smaller.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoI don't know if you're thinking about area or population, but by either metric London is bigger than any city in the US, and has a much better public transport system.
- afarrell 10y agoIt also helps significantly that London's busses are double-decker and come more often so you don't have to wait as long for a bus you can board. (I lived in Cambridge, MA for many years and this wasn't rare with the #1 bus)
- sokoloff 10y agoThe most aggravating thing that I saw about the #1 was it was on a nominally ~10 minute schedule at peak times. Pretty regularly, I'd wait 20+ minutes only to see three #1 buses, nose-to-tail, arriving.
- argonaut 10y agoThe New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas are larger in area than the London metropolitan area The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly less populous.
- foldr 10y ago>The NY metro area is much more populous than London, and the LA metro area is very slightly le Well, 14 million vs 20 million is not such a big difference. And the definition of metropolitan areas is somewhat arbitrary in any case.
- lqdc13 10y agoNYC transportation sucks even within areas where the population is very dense. It takes 2 hours to get from Bronx to Coney Island on subway. Plus there are almost daily service disruptions of all kinds. San Francisco's Bart is hated by almost everyone but it is much faster[1]. In fact, I have never taken a slower subway than NYC subway. [1] https://flic.kr/p/7LhwPz https://flic.kr/p/7LhwPz
- MaxfordAndSons 10y ago> It takes 2 hours to get from Bronx to Coney Island on subway That's a bizarre example. Of course it takes a long time to go from one corner of the city to the other. No reasonable person would be making that commute regularly.
- lqdc13 10y agoThe point is that the subway is slow and unreliable unless you are commuting within Manhattan for 4 stops. Lots of people work in Manhattan and commute from Brooklyn. It's a 1.5 hr train ride to Columbus Circle + 0-60 minute random slowdown where you may have to take the train in the opposite direction for a bunch of stops. Sometimes they actually tell you to get off the train, take a shuttle bus and get back on the train. Other times the train stops 8 subway stops from where you have to be with an inaudible message from the conductor. As a result, you are stuck the middle of nowhere at 8 PM on a Saturday. Only option is to take a local bus (that tends to be much more reliable) or Uber. This kind of treatment is unheard of in any European country including Russia. It could have been a 45 + 0-5 variation minute ride if trains ran as fast and reliably as they do in almost every other city.
- gurgeh 10y agoIt's probably a function of both population and area: higher population density makes mass transit more efficient. Europe is much more densely populated than the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...
- rtpg 10y agothe right word is "denser". American cities are built for cars, so even if you take a bus somewhere you're now walking 15 minutes between buildings. This can be solved on a small scale (build "pockets" of livability), but mass transit will have a harder time surviving without other urbanization changes
- kobeya 10y agosan Jose alone is about 1/3 of the size of the entire London metropolitan area, and that's just one part (albeit a big one) of the south bay area.
- vacri 10y agoThe conurbation that New York is part of is much bigger than London. The London metropolitan area is about 8.5k square kilometers. The New York metropolitan area is about 35k.
- samfisher83 10y agoHouston and Jacksonville are bigger in area and I am sure some other American cities are as well.
- deaddodo 10y ago> but by either metric London is bigger than any city in the US That's not even NEAR true. Los Angeles metro is 12,562 sq km, whilst "Greater London" is 1,569 sq km. The LA Metro has 12.8m residents, while GL has 8.6m. So, by either metric, they're much smaller.
- IanCal 10y agoI always dislike these comparisons. The truth is simply that it depends. You can't justify an unknown city having a certain quality of bus routes compared to a diverse range of tens of countries by saying "it's smaller". It'd be slower and more expensive in some parts of the UK, easier in others and in some countries I assume you'd be expected to just cycle the 6 miles.
- Arnt 10y agoWhich ones would that be? 6 miles is 10 km, that's a nice ride but I've never heard of traffic planners that expect 10km rides.
- IanCal 10y agoMaybe I'm totally wrong on this, I guess it just didn't seem like an odd choice in the UK and other countries have much stronger focus on cycling. "People I know" will be a hugely unrepresentative sample though. For another unrepresentative sample, cycling commuters on strava average a bit over 10 miles: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-paint-picture-british-cyclists-compare-151542 http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/10-stats-pai... I can't find the stat I want for Copenhagen, they have 1/3rd to 1/2 of people commuting by bike but I can't find out how many journeys of ~10km are completed by bike. I know it's a small number of cycle journeys, as many are shorter, but that's not quite what I'm after.
- CalRobert 10y agoIt may be over half commuting by bike now. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revolution-bikes-outnumber-cars-first-time-copenhagen-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revol... I can't seem to find mode share as a function of commute distance. Pure anecdata, but when I worked in El Segundo and lived in Santa Monica, I usually cycled the 12 miles to work. It took about 5 minutes longer than the drive.
- IanCal 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kuschku 10y agoEurope, as a whole, is actually quite similar in size. But you are right that the cities are more dense. That's a problem you created yourself, though. You can't say "this would never work here, because we'd never try". If you change your cities, it would definitely work.
- jsemrau 10y agoEuropean cities are not smaller in terms of population or services offered. It's just European cities are better planned compared to most American cities. This whole "suburban" lifestyle .....
- kobeya 10y agoSome people like suburbia.
- wcummings 10y agoPeople liking something doesn't make it sustainable.
- CalRobert 10y agoSome people like helicopters too; that doesn't mean cities should require all houses to have helipads.
- jsemrau 10y agoSuburbia has the benefits of affordable housing at the cost of transportation. That's why it was such a successful concept. In many non-American cities proximity to trainstations increases housing cost. With the colonization of America and the technical innovation of the automobile this was no longer deemed necessary.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoYes, but the physical size of American cities was a deliberate choice on our part. We could have had denser cities if we wanted, and we could fix that starting today if we wanted.
- celticninja 10y agoIf your corporate overlords wanted to you mean. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
- CalRobert 10y agoPerhaps that could serve as a guide for planning councils in the US who wish to improve their cities.
- kalleboo 10y agoEven so, even more sparsely population areas in Europe have better public transport than many US cities. When I started in uni in Sweden, before I found a local apartment I had to commute from my parent's place. The commute basically crossed a county with a population density of 120 ppl/km2. They lived in a village of 4000 ppl, and I commuted through farmlands, connecting in a city of 100,000 ppl to the student town of 90,000 ppl. It was about 70 km (43 mi) and 50 minutes each way (1 regional bus, 1 train, 1 city bus). Despite this, there were interlocking combinations of these trains+buses about every 20 minutes.
- arethuza 10y agoFYI Europe the continent (10,180,000 km2) is larger in area than the USA the country (9,833,520 km2).
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoWhere does your definition of Europe end? NATO? The Urals? Minsk and London might as well be in entirely different civilizations. And it's not like your values are substantially different.
- arethuza 10y agoIt's not really my definition of Europe - that is why I was careful to say the continent of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
- gydfi 10y agoYes but that's a bus. Public transport is intrinsically a worse and less convenient experience than having a private driver.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y agoNot at all. I can work or read on a train. I can't do that in a car. Nor does the car take me to London in 1hr15, at up to 125mph, like the public transport from our town[1] does. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_180 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_180
- aianus 10y agoWhy can't you work in a car? You're guaranteed to have a seat, for one, unlike public transport.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y agoMotion sickness. If I read in a car (whether paper or screen) then I feel like crap for the rest of the day, basically. It's not at all uncommon. Plus the train has tables, 240V sockets, wifi (which selects the best from several different providers, so better coverage than my phone), all of that. There are seats available from our station on pretty much every train, and the journey time is more reliable than the car.
- mercutio2 10y agoI'm a huge fan of trains and hate cars, but the motion sickness bifurcation you describe is unusual, so I would avoid trying to use motion sickness to carry water in pro-train arguments. The vast majority of people who experience motion sickness in cars will also experience motion sickness in trains. It took years for me to really understand why so many people don't love trains like I do: motion sickness makes the freedom, relaxation, and ability to focus on work I experience not universally shared.
- TheArcane 10y ago€30 in my city for unlimited bus travel for a month.
- biztos 10y ago81 EUR in Berlin for the "normal" ticket (zones A+B), 100 EUR for the whole network. Discounted tickets for late sleepers. :-)
- pawadu 10y agoAlso, the public transportation system in Berlin is much faster and more efficient. (compared to SF, compared to rest of EU not so much)
- p47 10y agoPricy. It is 85CHF for Zuerich for zone 110 which covers majority of the city.
- raverbashing 10y agoWhy pricy? Do you know what Zones A+B cover in Berlin?
- delroth 10y agoZürich zone 110 is tiny compared to Berlin A+B (which also covers the majority of the city).
- douche 10y agoBerlin has the finest public transit I've ever seen, by a long shot. Still, you get in places where waiting for a bus to come is longer than just walking to the U/S-bahn station.
- lis 10y agoIt's around 60€ if you get on a yearly plan. Compared to other cities Berlin is indeed a bit pricy, but the zones A+B are really large.
- jhuckestein 10y agoThe thing is, the user experience of Uber, Lyft et al is strictly better than public transport. Some would even say it is 10x better (in the From Zero to One sense). It picks you up whenever you want, wherever you want and drops you off exactly where you need to go. I agree that buses are more ecological, but doesn't this just mean that we should combine Uber and public transport? In the future I see a fleet of larger vehicles combined with a Uber Pool type app working really well. And even further in the future these vehicles would be self driving.
- charlesdm 10y agoVery true. If you can pay €250-350 for a month of uber-ing, vs €100 for bus tickets, and you don't mind spending the money, why not go for the Uber?
- _benedict 10y agoIt depends on the city and the route you're taking. If there are dedicated bus lanes, or other dedicated forms of transport (trains, metros), taking an uber can be slower than taking transport. Certainly in London, unless you're taking a route that cuts across the city in one of the outer districts, during quiet times of day, these services are rarely materially faster than public transport. If the traffic info is inaccurate you can end up in a journey that's many times slower, without expecting it. It's still great as an option; it expands the utility of taxis tremendously, since previously the arrival latency was unknown and potentially quite high. With a mature marketplace, the QoS for taxis as a whole goes up tremendously. But really it's a simple competition with the QoS of the local public transport, and in my experience (in the UK) the Uber QoS is somewhat correlated with the QoS of the local public transport, so it is rarely (if ever) objectively better. It just offers different characteristics that are sometimes worth the cost.
- humanrebar 10y ago> In the future I see a fleet of larger vehicles combined with a Uber Pool type app working really well. This already exists. Or it existed anyway. NYC used to have "Chinatown buses" that ran underserved routes for a fraction of the price. NYC and the MTA prosecuted them and got rid of them. Furthermore, innovation and competition in busing is great in Latin America. But we're waiting on regulations to change, not for innovation to happen. I agree that a fleet of self driving mini buses sounds great for efficiency and even housing prices (the pool of commutable properties goes up and the price of rent goes down). Even a fleet of buses with drivers that are allowed to innovate on the business model (monthly subscriptions? scheduled pickup windows? flex pricing?) would be better than what the U.S. has now.
- conanbatt 10y agoAnd yet its been commonly limited or forbidden to let services like Uber operate the way they do in the US. Berlin has uber with taxis only, for example.
- Xylakant 10y agoTaxis in Germany are regulated as part of the public transport. The state may even force Taxi companies to put more cars on the road, they are obliged by law to take on any passenger and there is a public supervision. In return, Taxis receive some benefits. Uber tried to take the benefits but not the obligations. Stuff like that doesn't fly here. That's what got them banned.
- conanbatt 10y agoWhat benefits are you talking about? As a taxi your only (and important benefit) is the monopolization of your business by the local government. All the rest are plays around that. Also, misses the point: the argument that infrastructure in europe is so much better that there is not a demand or a need for services like uber and lyft contradict the necessity of several cities to ban it. Otherwise they wouldnt have had to do anything and they would have failed.
- Xylakant 10y ago> necessity of several cities to ban it Uber has not been banned in Germany. They provided an illegal service and have never applied for a permit. They have never been legal. They also had drivers operate without the required health certificates and without the required insurance. (The usual "independent contractor and we're just an intermediary" dance didn't fly either - if you're soliciting an illegal service you're not protected by law just be because you're not directly providing the service.) Please also note that not all of Ubers services in Germany have been illegal and some still operate. Notably, the classic car-for-hire service is legal, but seems to be making losses, so yes, they failed. > As a taxi your only (and important benefit) is the monopolization of your business by the local government. The following describes the situation in Berlin. Since Taxi regulation is partly local, things will differ slightly elsewhere, but the gist applies. Data is from 2012, so somewhat outdated but nothing major changed. Monopoly is not an important benefit for the local taxi industry. There are about 3000 Taxi companies in Berlin, of which the large majority owns 1 car and only about 10% own three or more cars (about 7000 cars, one per 500 inhabitants). Taxi licenses in Berlin are effectively unrestricted. If you want one, prove that you're not convicted of a crime that makes you ineligible, fill in a 6 page form and hand proof of insurance and some papers, pay a fee, wait. Drivers need to pass a health check every few years (vision test etc) and a one-time knowledge test. All in all, a few hundred to a low thousand EUR and you're in business. However, Uber didn't even consider applying for a local license here, well, "because". They consciously chose to run an unlicensed Taxi service and spin it as if they'd be unfairly treated by authorities. (Eine Runde Mitleid) Licenses may be restricted in other jurisdictions or even - since it's a part of the public transport network, Taxis may even be subsidized (Ruftaxi for example) Benefits that Taxis enjoy is that they're allowed to use lanes restricted for public transport (they are public transport) and may stop on any road at any time to pick up passengers. There are restricted parking spaces at airports, train stations and in central locations that are reserved for taxis.
- op00to 10y ago"Yes, but poor people use public transportation to come from bad neighborhoods to good neighborhoods to rob us! We must ban all expansion of public transportation!" This exact sentiment is echoed by many in the US as a reason to not expand public transit. When asked about criminals driving cars to commit crimes, they were not open to bulldozing the roads over. It's gross.
- th5234 10y agoThe crime rates are much higher in the United States than in Europe. This website claims rape occurs at a 3 times higher rate and murder at a 6 times higher rate. I couldn't find any good statistics for robbery but I imagine it's in that range. Yes, crime has been decreasing in the United States for around a quarter of a century, but it still occurs at a much higher rate than Europe and almost an order of magnitude higher than in Asian cities with good transit like Tokyo or Shanghai. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Netherlands/United-States/Crime#2010 http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Netherlands... Whether irrational or not, any public transit paradigm has to take the realities of crime and the citizens' perceptions of crime into account if it's going to be successful. And if the crime rate was as low as it is in Europe, it might be easier to get European levels of support for public transit. This implies the need for better policing, earlier social interventions, etc.
- RobertoG 10y agoIt seems to me that it's all the same problem. If you have strong public spending you have more educated and less desperate people and better public transport.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoTo get the same transit in the US, we'd need to spend 5-10x what Europeans/Asians/anyone else in the world spends. https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative-subway-construction-costs-revised/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp... In the US, public spending is generally a way to funnel money to cronies of the inner party (e.g. transit worker unions, construction unions, politically connected consultants). Various other interest groups - mainly NIMBY homeowners - will also demand their pound of flesh. We need to fix our social technology ( http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-tyranny/ http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-... ) before we can build such things. Luckily we have people like Kalanick taking baby steps in that direction.
- dagw 10y agoIn Europe, your bus fare would be half of the price Which Europe? ~$100 pr month seems about par for the course for most major cities I've looked at, and some cities, like London, charge quite a bit more.
- espadrine 10y agoParis has a 66.92€/month ($70.38/month) pass including bus, train, tramway. http://www.navigo.fr/titres/le-forfait-navigo-annuel-tarifs-et-zones/ http://www.navigo.fr/titres/le-forfait-navigo-annuel-tarifs-...
- _benedict 10y agoFor bus fare, London is only $100/month. You can get around just fine by bus, although people tend to prefer the tube (which is typically $150-200/month).
- schrijver 10y agoBrussels is €41,58 (≈ $43.96) / month if you take the yearly subscription (bus, tram, metro, train)