8 ms·

Public transit done right should be intuitive. I've visited Boston once or twice in my life and The T is easy enough to use, despite having never used it before

Public transit done right should be intuitive. I've visited Boston once or twice in my life and The T is easy enough to use, despite having never used it before. I've flown on different airlines, but the process is still the same for arriving at the airport, checking in, boarding the plane, etc. That's because they all use the same "interface". The process is uniform across airlines. It doesn't matter if you fly United or Southwest, either way you know how to fly. Likewise, transit systems in towns and cities need to do the same. If they focus on user-friendly design and even work with other municipalities to create a standard, they can arrive at a uniform experience no matter which system you are using. We have this uniform experience with cars: we assume that no matter where we drive, there will always be a place to park. This is something that has become so ingrained, that the thought of removing these parking spaces is repulsive. But that's the uniform experience I'm talking about. You just assumed that parking will be available, without doing any research to actually prove it. See how natural we've made the process of driving a car? It will take effort, but we can do the same for public transit. This is a solvable problem! Maybe you've had bad experience in the past with whatever mass transit system a town used, but there is an opportunity there for improvement. How can you make their system as intuitive as possible? How can you make these systems uniform across different cities?

donatj 9y ago
I have used mass transit in San Francisco, Tokyo, Osaka, many other places, I know how to do it, but it's always a huge indirect waste of time I wouldn't want to do in my everyday life. If I'm meeting a friend for drinks after work I wouldn't want to spend an hour on a bus to get there when I can just drive directly to the brewery in town in a matter of minutes, or hell a suburb on the other side of the metro in 15 minutes. I can assure you almost all suburbanites feel the same way.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
  I agree with you that no one wants to spend an hour on a bus just to go grab a drink with a friend. But why do you think the bus takes an hour in the first place? It's probably because we've dumped so much of society's time and money into making our car-system as efficient as possible. Therefore, the public transit is terrible in comparison. Cars have encouraged so much sprawl in our suburbs. It allows buildings to be further away, because now you can travel greater distances. Massive parking lots then need to be constructed to facilitate the placing of our cars, which again, wastes huge swaths of land, further distancing buildings from one another. In my mind, we can't make public transportation viable while continuing to massively subsidize private car use. The latter causes sprawl, drawing us into a feedback loop of even more private ownership, which then in turn causes even more sprawl, and so on. It's a strong reinforcement cycle. We need to break free of this cycle, and I'm afraid the short-term efforts aren't going to be enjoyable, but it's all for what's best in the long run.
  - donatj 9y ago
    I disagree about mass transit being the way of the future. It's an outdated relic of the 1800s. It's a highly impersonal dehumanizing system that boxes everyone's lives into predefined routes. I see automated electronic vehicles as the very near future solution.
    - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
      My previous comment was heavily focused on public transit, but I don't mean to imply that the future should solely be based around public transit. Like many things, the solution is a balance of various things: private cars, public transit, and as you mention, automated EVs. It's just that I think our current system is far too skewed toward private car usage, when a healthier balance exists. Compromise is key.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
Another thing that helps is frequent service, so that it's faster to recover from problems like missing a bus/train, getting off at the wrong stop, or making a transfer where the other bus/train is scheduled to depart just before you arrive. The buses where I live are on an hourly schedule for all but a handful of high-volume routes, and it's pretty much a matter of luck whether you can efficiently transfer anywhere but the main terminal.

donatj 9y ago

I have used mass transit in San Francisco, Tokyo, Osaka, many other places, I know how to do it, but it's always a huge indirect waste of time I wouldn't want to do in my everyday life. If I'm meeting a friend for drinks after work I wouldn't want to spend an hour on a bus to get there when I can just drive directly to the brewery in town in a matter of minutes, or hell a suburb on the other side of the metro in 15 minutes. I can assure you almost all suburbanites feel the same way.

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
I agree with you that no one wants to spend an hour on a bus just to go grab a drink with a friend. But why do you think the bus takes an hour in the first place? It's probably because we've dumped so much of society's time and money into making our car-system as efficient as possible. Therefore, the public transit is terrible in comparison. Cars have encouraged so much sprawl in our suburbs. It allows buildings to be further away, because now you can travel greater distances. Massive parking lots then need to be constructed to facilitate the placing of our cars, which again, wastes huge swaths of land, further distancing buildings from one another. In my mind, we can't make public transportation viable while continuing to massively subsidize private car use. The latter causes sprawl, drawing us into a feedback loop of even more private ownership, which then in turn causes even more sprawl, and so on. It's a strong reinforcement cycle. We need to break free of this cycle, and I'm afraid the short-term efforts aren't going to be enjoyable, but it's all for what's best in the long run.
- donatj 9y ago
  I disagree about mass transit being the way of the future. It's an outdated relic of the 1800s. It's a highly impersonal dehumanizing system that boxes everyone's lives into predefined routes. I see automated electronic vehicles as the very near future solution.
  - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
    My previous comment was heavily focused on public transit, but I don't mean to imply that the future should solely be based around public transit. Like many things, the solution is a balance of various things: private cars, public transit, and as you mention, automated EVs. It's just that I think our current system is far too skewed toward private car usage, when a healthier balance exists. Compromise is key.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

Another thing that helps is frequent service, so that it's faster to recover from problems like missing a bus/train, getting off at the wrong stop, or making a transfer where the other bus/train is scheduled to depart just before you arrive. The buses where I live are on an hourly schedule for all but a handful of high-volume routes, and it's pretty much a matter of luck whether you can efficiently transfer anywhere but the main terminal.