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> No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. People care that they sit in two hours of rush hour traffic per day. There is zero synchr

> No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. People care that they sit in two hours of rush hour traffic per day. There is zero synchronicity when you're staring at the license plates in front of you.

dkersten 9y ago
This is a problem of a car centric society. I’ve been in places where public transport is the norm and travel was a lot easier and more efficient, regardless the time of the day. Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. (Sure, there’s places where even that isn’t enough and the public transport pipe is congested. We’ve all seen those videos of trains in some places in asia, for example)
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. And during rush hour, the highways are a lot more full, and often capacity (number of lanes) is increased to compensate. If people didn't typically commute at the same time, then busses, trains, and car transport would all benefit from a reduction in required peak capacity. This is not in any way specific to cars.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. For example, I was recently in the US and during the day the 6-lane-each-way highways were completely empty, almost like a ghost town, but during rush hour, they were at a complete standstill. > If people didn't typically commute at the same time... Absolutely! That would be ideal.
    - JoshTriplett 9y ago
      > The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. To increase the capacity of trains and busses, you need more trains/busses, larger trains/busses, more train/bus operators, more electricity/gas usage, more storage, more maintenance, and so on. And those same huge trains and busses also become near-empty late at night. Yes, the baseline efficiency of a train or bus is potentially better, making all the standard tradeoffs. But everyone commuting at the same time causes similar problems with both. I'm not arguing against public transit, here, I'm arguing against the claim upthread that "This is a problem of a car centric society", which is orthogonal to a staggered commute.
CalRobert 9y ago
But walking with thousands of other people is nice, except in places where large sidewalks were turned over to cars. Old photos of ranhattan show shockingly large walkways which were later turned in to asphalt.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  See also the video "A Trip Down Market Street" (1906), recently discussed [1] at HN. Though it arguably weren't "thousands" of walking people. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621

dkersten 9y ago

This is a problem of a car centric society. I’ve been in places where public transport is the norm and travel was a lot easier and more efficient, regardless the time of the day. Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. (Sure, there’s places where even that isn’t enough and the public transport pipe is congested. We’ve all seen those videos of trains in some places in asia, for example)

JoshTriplett 9y ago
> Yes, obviously during “rush hour”, the public transport would be a lot more full, but often frequency is increased to compensate. And during rush hour, the highways are a lot more full, and often capacity (number of lanes) is increased to compensate. If people didn't typically commute at the same time, then busses, trains, and car transport would all benefit from a reduction in required peak capacity. This is not in any way specific to cars.
- dkersten 9y ago
  The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. For example, I was recently in the US and during the day the 6-lane-each-way highways were completely empty, almost like a ghost town, but during rush hour, they were at a complete standstill. > If people didn't typically commute at the same time... Absolutely! That would be ideal.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    > The difference is that those extra lanes take up physical space, which goes unused outside of rush hour, while increasing frequency of eg trains or trams does not. To increase the capacity of trains and busses, you need more trains/busses, larger trains/busses, more train/bus operators, more electricity/gas usage, more storage, more maintenance, and so on. And those same huge trains and busses also become near-empty late at night. Yes, the baseline efficiency of a train or bus is potentially better, making all the standard tradeoffs. But everyone commuting at the same time causes similar problems with both. I'm not arguing against public transit, here, I'm arguing against the claim upthread that "This is a problem of a car centric society", which is orthogonal to a staggered commute.

CalRobert 9y ago

But walking with thousands of other people is nice, except in places where large sidewalks were turned over to cars. Old photos of ranhattan show shockingly large walkways which were later turned in to asphalt.

Fnoord 9y ago
See also the video "A Trip Down Market Street" (1906), recently discussed [1] at HN. Though it arguably weren't "thousands" of walking people. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944621