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Counterpoint: I grew up in an area which allegedly has some of the worst roads in the country. They're fine. Sure they're not silky-smooth surfaces ready for Mo
by closeparen 8y ago
Counterpoint: I grew up in an area which allegedly has some of the worst roads in the country. They're fine. Sure they're not silky-smooth surfaces ready for MotoGP but contemporary mass-market vehicles have no problem traversing them. At worst you're going to feel uncomfortable for half a second. Really bad construction might slow you down 10-20 minutes.
Meanwhile America's best, most expensive, most politically supported public transit systems barely work, and can be expected to fail you completely several times each month.
The lived experiences don't match the theory. Roads usually work fine, and degrade gracefully when they don't. Transit is obnoxious on a good day, and when it fails it cascades catastrophically.
I want to be a good urbanist, but the quality just isn't there, nor does it seem to be a budget priority (instead new money goes to fare subsidies, empty bus routes, etc).
- mundo 8y agoI don't know which transit system you think is our best and most expensive, but the one where I live (Portland, OR) is great. In 20 years it's failed me twice: once a bus broke down in a snowstorm, and once a train was blocked by protesters. That's it. The other ~10,000 trips were pretty uneventful. My biggest gripe is that the arrival time api is sometimes 1-2 minutes off.
- honkycat 8y agoFellow PDX resident here! Literally moved to this city due to the walkability and quality of public transit. I. LOVE. IT. HERE.
- sethherr 8y agoMy lived experience is that public transit is great. I take BART 5 days a week and have a 15 minute late experience once every few months. This to me is something like the “I can’t live in a city because I can’t afford a 2000 square foot detached unit” issue. You just need to modify your expectations. I’m far happier and less stressed not driving every day - but yes, it’s noisy and I have to stand and sometimes something smells bad. There’s room for improvement, but that doesn’t mean public transit is unuseable.
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- closeparen 8y agoThe "suck it up" school of user experience design is poorly adapted to a competitive marketplace. There is no supreme authority who gets to say "you just need to modify your expectations." There are only consumers and voters.
- burfog 8y agoYou're forgetting the BART strike. That is just unacceptable. Nothing comparable shuts down all the roads.
- sethherr 8y agoI have no idea where public transit “fails you completely several times a month” or what that failure mode is. If you mean transit can’t deliver you to your destination, that certainly isn’t the case in the Bay, Chicago or NY for any of my friends who take public transit daily in those cities.
- honkycat 8y agoRoads are bad for more reasons than maintenance though. People don't like to live near them. They are an UNPLEASANT part of the journey, not a destination. That means whoever gets stuck with the road going through their community sees their local businesses suffer and their housing prices drop. Saying "We need roads because public transit does not work" is just false. There are MANY examples of cities where they all get around just fine without having to slather down some more pavement. I was very impressed by the Park and Ride system in Strasbourg, France and Amsterdam, Netherlands. Or hey, my current home Portland, Oregon! Or my previous home Chicago, Illinois also has excellent public transit! ( Though Chicago has been going through a rough patch lately due to bad zoning laws around the Blue Line EL stops )
- closeparen 8y agoThe design and operation of a transit system is a huge and complicated topic. It doesn't work out well just because you want it to. I agree that Europe tends to do it successfully; we should be figuring out why, and how to emulate it, because so far our own attempts tend to be mediocre. When I lived in Chicago it took 60-70 minutes to get to the Loop by bus and Red Line, or 15-20 by car. I don't claim this is an inherent feature of transit. I claim that the way we do transit systematically underperforms the way we do roads, and so all else being equal, roads are going to deliver a better UX. We should be fixing that. Unfortunately, politicians who preside over transit meltdowns (i.e. Cuomo) keep getting reelected.
- max76 8y agoCountercounter point. When comparing the best roads in the world (Say the German Autobahn) to the best mass transportation in the world (Japan Railways Group) we see that when mass transportation is done correctly it can be timely and reliable. It is also cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient than roads. We shouldn't limit our sources of inspiration to one continent when developing transportation solutions.
- closeparen 8y agoBarring a radical change in governance, we should plan for US transit projects to play out how US transit projects have played out in the past, not indulge in the baseless fantasy that an American polity would suddenly do a system correctly. Inspiration is cheap. Disenfranchising the stakeholders who reliably mess things up is the real work.
- selimthegrim 8y agoI moved from Portland to New Orleans. Unlike most other things about NOLA, there’s no allegedly in a statement about its roads.
- kadendogthing 8y ago> most expensive, most politically supported public transit systems barely work Source? >but the quality just isn't there Based on what metrics? Last time I checked, public transportation in any city doesn't routinely suffer breakdowns around the same time, every work day. It also doesn't suck money from productive city centers into outlying suburbs to pay for an absurd amount of infrastructure to support a particular, luxurious transportation lifestyle.