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­>A lot of people think that mass transit is for the poor That's because it is. I had to take the metro in Montréal to get to work this week, hadn't taken it i

• abawany 8y ago
  My experience in my multiple Montreal soujourns has been so different that I consider the Metro to be a jewel. I admit that some stations are grungier than others (once I had to duck an errant basketball at Cote-des-Neiges) but that was once out of around 100 trips. I do agree that the air conditioning is marginal.
• paganel 8y ago
  > That's because it is It largely depends on the country or even city. Me and my gf went to Switzerland by car a couple of years ago (we live in Eastern Europe) and I’d had expected that we’d visit different parts of the country by car. What happened once we got there is that we “forgot” the car in the hotel’s parking lot for a week and we did all our travel by train, it was wonderful. Even traveling inside the city itself (we were based in Lausanne) was a very nice thing, I’ve started building a soft spot in my heart for the city’s trolley-buses (electric public transport rocks, btw, always has, alwsys will).
  • cjslep 8y ago
    American living in Switzerland. From what I understand, access to public transportation seems to be considered a basic human right here. No one is expected to have to buy and upkeep car maintenance. While the electrification of the mass transit systems is super nice, unfortunately it came about because of the World Wars. Switzerland was hit really hard, and no one wanted to trade their precious coal away (Switzerland had no coal mines). Thus out of sheer necessity they began electrifying all the trains. So unfortunately there's not replicable policies other countries can use to achieve what Switzerland has achieved in terms of electrification, so it'd take some creativity.
• tomjakubowski 8y ago
  I can't speak for Montreal, but there are countless counterexamples of cities in wealthy countries (not as wealthy as the US) where metro users are drawn from more or less every income level. Turns out you can actually make riding a metro into a good experience with a bit of effort. New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Taipei, London, Berlin, Munich come immediately to mind. And as sibling commenters have pointed out, in some places even smaller cities and towns have excellent public transit networks that pretty much everyone uses (maybe not always, but when convenient). Freiburg, Germany is one example I've seen.
  • zaphod12 8y ago
    Don't know if I'd go so far as to say riding the subway in NYC is "good" experience, but I'll certainly agree that it's one shared by people across the socioeconomic spectrum.
  • SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Taipei... yes, absolutely. That was a great experience and easy to use. NYC... altright, better than 15 years ago but still not great at all. Not as good as Germany or DC. Tokyo... lol, no! While clean and efficient, it’s a joke that you have different rail stations owned by different companies, different cards that may work on each other but probably not. The ticket machines are almost all cash only. And instructions in other languages might have well used Google translate. Tokyo was one of the more difficult public transport systems I’ve used and I’ve been around the world a bit.
    • cevn 8y ago
      Suica cards work practically everywhere. You can poke a button to use english, usually clearly labeled. You need cash everywhere in Japan so not sure why that surprised you. My experience with Tokyo metro was pretty good. I've never seen a metro as well-organized despite 15 private rail companies splitting the system. The only problem is the operating hours, the last train rush is insane some nights.
      • SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
• dionidium 8y ago
  Mass transit will always be viewed as the lesser option where it is the lesser option. In cities that were designed or entirely remade to support the automobile, the automobile works better than everything else. This is almost a tautology, but it's remarkable how often it's overlooked in this discussion. If cities were re-designed around transit (with more density, smaller roads, and more space for alternative transportation modes), then transit would work better and cars would be worse. † In summary, yes, obviously cars work better in cities designed for cars! But cities that work well for cars aren't a natural feature of the universe. It took a lot of work to get them to look like that. † An important implication of this is that transit will never overtake the automobile in low-density, sprawl-heavy cities. Transit use is high where the transit infrastructure is good and driving is painful. Both things have to be true. †† And the tension here is direct. Sprawl-heavy areas can't support good transit infrastructure and high-density, pedestrian-friendly areas are awful to drive in. A choice for one is a vote against the other. †† This is why arguments about the superiority of cars based on revealed preference are usually spurious. If you put a light rail system in a town built for cars, then people will keep using the thing the town was built for. But those people are revealing their preference for cars in an environment built for cars. Where the built environment is different, people behave differently.
• 100ideas 8y ago
  My wife & I live in San Francisco. SF Muni fares are a flat $2.50. So for the two of us, a Muni trip is - total cost: $5 - usually takes 30-60 min to get wherever we want to go in the city. - we need to to figure out the optimal route, schedule, and entry & exit stops. - we need to make sure we will arrive at the stop on-time. - we need to walk 5-10 min to closest stop on either end This process is familiar to anyone who's taken public transportation. In general, I think it's a great system. Muni network coverage is pretty good in SF. However... a low-cost Uber or Lyfts pool ride for two is - total cost: $5-12 (same serice area as Muni) - duration: 15-45 min - we don't have to plan the route or schedule - we don't have to worry about going to a remote pick-up stop on-time - we get dropped off directly at our destination So, in the best case scenario, a lyft line ride is the same cost as Muni but so so much better in terms of value to us. Even when it is 2x as expensive, for us, the extra $5 is totally worth it. I know that's not true for everyone, but I personally am amazed that the cost of using the cheapest ride share option is often only 1x-2x the cost of using the billion-dollar municipal public transportation system. Of course, here in SF ride share vehicles are definitely not allowed to use the special public-transportation-only lanes of some of the major roads, which remain reserved for the exclusive use of Muni buses and taxis to improve their transit times. (edited to fix indentation)
  • photos_victim 8y ago
    This is cherry-picking. It always makes more sense to take a car service when multiple people start and end at the same places and can easily coordinate (e.g. a married couple). But this tells us nothing about the average outcome. The _average_ car contains only 1 person.
    • 100ideas 8y ago
      Does anyone have back-of-the-napkin estimates of total passenger throughput for central public transportation vs ride share transportation for any metropolitan area? If public transit i.e. Muni serves 10x or 100x riders each day vs ride sharing than I see your point... I think. Wait. Maybe you could spell it out?
• f2f23g424323 8y ago
  You say that, but a quick Google search undermines your assumption. At least in the US, the number of people holding a license has dropped off a cliff since the 80s. More folks in urban areas are turning to pub trans and other sources. There are numerous studies to back up the notion that the era of ubiquitous private ownership of a personal vehicle is about to screech to a halt. Costs of purchase, maintenance, gas, insurance, environmental concerns, and easy to use options available to an increasingly urban population are the most common responses provided to numerous surveys. Future generations aren't inclined to babysit and nurse previous generations pet projects. Ubiquitous car ownership is barely a generation old idea, and there are a number of signs, IMO, it won't last many more.