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The fact that this article does not break down the various transportation costs sets off massive red flags. The $3k/yr number mentioned for the cost of transpo

The fact that this article does not break down the various transportation costs sets off massive red flags. The $3k/yr number mentioned for the cost of transportation via car in Houston is on the same order as an MBTA rail pass in the Boston area. Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. Yes of course transit is not free but that's true whether regardless of your mode of transit. The premise is solid. The analysis is lacking.

oftenwrong 8y ago
An MBTA local bus and subway pass is $84.50 per month $84.50 * 12 months = $1014 per year As someone living in metro Boston, that is a large difference in cost from my perspective - approximately equivalent to 2 months of rent.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  If you live outside of the subway system and need to get places (particularly in/out of the city) within a reasonable time-frame you're likely going to need a commuter rail pass. That jacks up the price substantially. I did the whole "live in Boston and just use public transit thing" for awhile. Then I moved to one of those cities that MA likes to pretend doesn't exist and my transportation costs stayed about flat. If I had made heavy use of Uber/Lyft they probably would have decreased. My friend commutes in from Worcester and rides the train because of the tolls and the fact that his work subsidizes the rail pass. In a sprawling city with free/cheap parking there would be no economic reason to do anything but drive.
  - Steltek 8y ago
    When people say "public transit", they don't mean the periphery of a commuter rail system. They mean the core bus network and usually the subway. You're comparing the worst case of meaningful public transit to a city only built for cars. My hypothesis, if you lived in Somerville, Dorchester, or at most, Quincy, the numbers would look different.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Sure, if you specifically craft your living situation to not involve commuter rail (and don't replace it with Uber/Lyft) you can save money. But you'll spend the money on rent.
      - hsitz 8y ago
        > But you'll spend the money on rent. Bingo! That's exactly what the linked article is about. How much extra are you paying in rent? How much are you saving on transportation? What are total costs of [rent + transportation] in both cases? How much time is wasted on transportation when you're paying lower rent? These are questions that need to be asked. Why would you not want to "craft" your living situation to give you the optimal setup? No, you can't have everything, but a "crafted" lifestyle that avoids need for transportation may be preferred by many, and may in addition in some cases be cheaper _and_ provide higher quality of life. Maybe not, maybe not for everyone; but those are questions that need to be asked, not simply have, "What are housing rental/purchase costs?" be taken as deciding question of what places have higher cost of "housing".
  - oftenwrong 8y ago
    Yes, that is somewhat the point of this discussion. The money one saves on housing by living further from a dense urban core is often offset to a significant degree by transportation costs, whether those additional costs come from regional rail or driving.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thomascgalvin 8y ago
  I live in the outermost zone of the commuter rail, and a monthly pass is about $400, or $4,800 per year. Add to that the fact that you are going to be packed in like cattle, won't have a seat to sit on unless you board at the very first station, and can count on a 30-60 minute delay at least once a week ... the MTBA is probably the single biggest stressor in the Boston area.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - oftenwrong 8y ago
    If you lived in the urban core, you could save $3786 per year by just getting a local pass. You would avoid a lot of that stress and lost time from your commute. You would not need a car. Of course, your housing costs would be higher, or your housing would be worse, or both. Worth it?
    - thomascgalvin 8y ago
      > your housing costs would be higher My housing costs would be roughly twice as high (from $2,500 to more like $5,000 per month). Living closer just isn't an option.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  And most employers will have some sort of transit benefit. $84.50 falls well within a lot of the wage works style benefits people get!
aqme28 8y ago
> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. I'd really like to see how you come to this conclusion.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  More control of when you leave/arrive, storage space to transport things, not dealing with other people, ability to go wherever you want, air conditioning. There are downsides like traffic, car maintenance, and parking, but in general, cars are probably more comfortable than public transit in the US. I'm also ignoring externalities like pollution and unsustainable suburban sprawl growth. I'd rather take the subway Mon to Fri in NYC, but if the roads are empty, the streets are faster and more comfortable. Unfortunately, public transit is awesome if everyone has to take it, but if enough people opt out, and we give them an option like a personal car and pave roads over where we could have had public space, then cars become optimal for the individual.
  - derekp7 8y ago
    I personally like a hybrid approach. I absolutely hate driving in a city, and trying to find (and pay for) parking. So I drive to a park-n-ride that is outside the city, park for a couple bucks, then take light-weight rail into the city. This does require the physical ability to walk quite a bit once you are in the city, however, which a number of people can't do much of due to physical issues (starting to include myself in that category).
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Park-n-ride has great quality of life but costs a ton because you inevitably wind up paying the cost of driving, parking and public transit.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
        Like everything else, it depends. It would cost me approximately $23/day to drive to work accounting for gas + parking, even more if I wanted to pay to use the HOV lane. Instead I drive to a park and ride and take an express bus. The total estimated cost is around $6 including my gas costs.
dcolkitt 8y ago
Definitely agree. One way to show that car transport is much more "valuable" than public transport in terms of convenience and comfort is to observe that very rich people almost universally travel by private car.
- icebraining 8y ago
  > very rich people almost universally travel by private car. Do they? I thought this would be hard to know, has there been a survey? And is this true even in cities with decent public transportation?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    There are no American cities with “decent public transportation.” NYC, DC, and Chicago are the only candidates. The first two used to be good, but have fallen off a cliff due to deferred maintenance. The latter is pretty good but inaccessible from vast swaths of the city.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      You forgot to qualify that with "for all residents". If you live in the inner suburbs of Minneapolis and work downtown public transit is pretty good for getting you to work. You will still need/want a car for grocery trips but one car will cover the entire family so you won't need a second. Thus in Minneapolis public transit is subsided transport for the rich - from the perspective of those who do not have a job downtown. (of course the poor also ride public transit, but they don't live in the suburbs)
      - komali2 8y ago
        >You will still need/want a car for grocery trips Yea, exactly, there is no good public transit, anywhere, in America. There are cities throughout Europe and Asia where the thought of needing a car to get groceries is comical - the grocery store is right there, or a short hop on a bus/metro away, and it comes every 3 minutes so no big deal. The USA desperately needs infrastructure help.
aqme28 8y ago
The $3k/yr number mentioned is not the cost of transportation via car in Houston, but the premium you pay for Houston's sprawl. In other words, commuting in a low-sprawl city is $3k/yr cheaper than it would be in Houston. Car ownership is significantly more expensive than $3k/year.
- thex10 8y ago
  This. There are many other costs associated with car ownership. As a transit user I don't need to pay towards a vehicle registration/inspection, repairs, insurance...
  - davidw 8y ago
    Not to mention things like the mental stress and sedentary lifestyle.
- cobookman 8y ago
  My Nissan leaf disagrees with you. 6.5k purchase price. Cost to Charge less than 50$/mo th. Maintenance nill. Insurance cheap ($35/month)
  - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
    It doesn't depreciate?!
    - cobookman 8y ago
      Who cares. 6.5k/4 years is 1.6k/year. the car needs to only last 3-4 years
  - aqme28 8y ago
    Buying a used electric is clearly an exception, not the norm. Also https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2018/cost-to-own/ https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2018/cost-to-own/
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
impendia 8y ago
> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. Having lived in both places, and currently living in metro Boston without a car, I'm of the opposite opinion. To each their own.
- davidw 8y ago
  > To each their own. ... as long as they help pay for the externalities all that driving is responsible for.
  - komali2 8y ago
    I don't think anybody in the world is doing this, right? The environmental impact of all these cars? A great bit of activity San Francisco saw recently was someone renting out parking spaces as "office spaces" for like 2.50$ an hour. It pointed out that a similar space in a building would probably go for more like 10$/hour or more, highlighting how little we're valuing our street-side real estate.
    - andys627 8y ago
      In Denmark cars are taxed 100% and they still prob aren't paying their fair share. They do have lots of people walking, biking, and taking tansit.
      - davidw 8y ago
        Yes, gas is way more expensive in Europe, in general.
      - arminiusreturns 8y ago
        One thing my European friends tend to not understand is just how big the US is. For a huge portion of none-coastline America, driving is the only mode of transport. "Denmark is approximately 43,094 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km. Meanwhile, the population of Denmark is ~5.6 million people (321.0 million more people live in United States)" From a quick search.
hsnewman 8y ago
Why would you say using public transportation results in a poor quality of life? Not driving would increase my quality of life a great deal!
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  I just lived the last 10 months without a car. There needs to be a big asterisk of not driving would increase your quality of life if there is alternative transit in place. It's pretty miserable when the nearest activities are a 45 minute light rail ride away. Biking is great mid day, but doing anything at night when you're adding 30 minutes to an hour on each side makes most plans fall through. I would love to not have to own a car in my city, but we'd need to increase density and transit significantly.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  As someone who has years' of experience each doing non-trivial commutes by driving and by subway, I'd have to say, the subway wins hands-down. It's not even a close contest. I was doing the most reading of my life when I was taking the subway to work every day, and it was great. I also occasionally played handheld video games or read magazines. My commute time wasn't wasted; I spent it doing things I wanted to do. Contrast with driving, where my commute time was wasted. And driving is much more stressful and unsafe, as well. You can't be off when you're driving, but you can definitely be off when you're taking the subway. On days when I was especially tired, I would just zone out with my eyes closed. Now I just have a 10 minute bike commute, and it's my favorite commute I've ever had, but I do miss reading as regularly as I did back then on the subway.
- reddog 8y ago
  When I've driven I have never had to stand for 40 minutes in rush hour in a jammed Milan subway car with my nose in a strangers armpit while another stranger breaths down my neck. I've never been ask for spare change while in my car. I've never been challenged to a fight for asking someone to take their feet off the opposite seat so my wife could sit down. I've never been pickpocketed. I've never had a bad dixieland band set up, play a few measures of bad out-of-tune jazz and then aggressively solicit donations. I've never had a creepy passenger stare at me for the entire ride as if they are trying to memorize my face. My car seat is never covered with vomit when I get in. I've never had a car commute cancelled because of a a labor action, or a signal malfunction, of work being done on the lines or bureaucratic incompetence. I've never had my car stop running because it was too late in the day or a holiday. All these things and much more have happened to me on public transport. Yes, it is irritating to be stuck in traffic in a car -- you have to move your right foot back and forth between the accelerator and brake while you sit in your adjustable leather seat, traveling on your own schedule to your custom destination in climate controlled comfort while rocking out to music, an audible book or a podcast.
andys627 8y ago
> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. It's a trade off. One of these tanks the planet and the other doesn't, however.
- njarboe 8y ago
  Public transit doesn't come for free. Bus systems are sometimes worse than people in cars. I would suggest fixing the individual vehicle transportation system (congestion tolls + high gas tax would be a start) than forcing everyone to stand on trains for their commute and stay at home on the weekends.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    > Bus systems are sometimes worse than people in cars. Source?
    - njarboe 8y ago
      In the US, bus routes often run with zero passengers on the bus. Here is a Quora question and answer that states buses consumed 20% more energy than cars per passenger mile in 2009[1]. It references a US Department of transportation document that can now be found here(pdf)[2]. Tables in chapter two. Not sure about more recent figures. I made this comment as I remembered an AC Transit (Alameda County Transit which includes Oakland) study that said their average mpg per passenger was around 8 mpg some time ago and I found that surprisingly low. [1] https://www.quora.com/Do-buses-really-result-in-increased-energy-efficiency https://www.quora.com/Do-buses-really-result-in-increased-en... [2] https://tedb.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Edition30_Full_Doc.pdf https://tedb.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Edition30_F...
komali2 8y ago
Lived in Houston most of my life, and in places with public transit (good and bad) other parts. My perspective: sprawl fucking sucks. That's what this is about - not just driving, but what a city built on driving leads to: sprawl. 45 minute commutes to college from Clear Lake while I'm doing nothing but kinda listening to an audiobook or something. So demotivating. Not really being able to hang with my classmates after school cause I can leave at 4 and get home in 45 minutes or 6/7 and get home in 1.5-2 hours.... or just wait until 9, 10, which fucks me cause the next morning I need to be on the road at 6:30 sharp if I want a "reasonable" 45 minute commute. Oh, and when I turn up to school, better leave 20 minutes to an hour to find parking. That's not hyperbole, parking was that bad at University of Houston. Compared to the train I used to take to Mountain View - my "worst" commute from my time in the bay area. Still a "long" trip, but I'm sitting on a train reading, playing a video game, or sleeping. Traffic is not a consideration. I can go in rush hour or whenever, I'll still get there at the same time. I get off the train and bicycle to the office, leave my bike downstairs and that's it. No idling in the parking lot shitting out CO, waiting for someone to walk into the parking lot so I can offer them an AC ride to their spot in return for the ability to park in it when they leave. Growing up in that sprawl was painful. Our suburbs were spread out not too bad, but enough to suck hard. One of my best friends was a good 3 miles away in a different suburb (so I had to go the long way round to actually get to an entrance. Sometime's I'd toss my bike over the 10 foot sound barrier thing and try to scale it but stopped after spraining an ankle). Bicycling there would take 20 minutes if there were bike lanes, but there weren't, there were "sidewalks" with giant roots pushing the concrete up that were too big to hop on the bike, or there'd be massive puddles in the dips or dirt and sand ready to slip me up, so I was on/off/on/off the bike, waiting 5 minutes at an intersection for a walk signal and still keeping my head on a swivel because nobody expects someone to actually walk in the burbs. So, it'd take me like 50 minutes to get to my friend's house. If it wasn't so hard, I think I would have hung outside more with my friends, and played less videogames. I distinctly remember chatting in WoW about how we'd consider hanging out, and then say "nah don't wanna bike an hour" and just play more WoW. Then when you finally do get a car, it's not that much better. First spend 45 minutes driving a pentagram across the suburbs picking everyone up, then drive another 45 to get to the city or wherever. It just sucked! So, I don't know about cost, I don't have the math for it, but it was terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE and I hated it growing up. The convenience of living in a mildly walkable city like SF with even the mediocre (from int'l standards) public transit they have here is to me leagues better than the bullshit I put up with in Houston. And then you go to a city like Taipei and see what this world is capable of creating... it's a dream.
danans 8y ago
> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. I'd bet that few people exclusively take public transit in Boston. People still take taxis and car-shares, hitch rides with friends. The key is that for many important high traffic routes, the highest quality of life option in Boston is transit, far better than sitting in traffic. Even in parts of the world that have amazing public transit systems, there are use cases where a car (whether owned, rented, or hired), fills in the quality of life gap very nicely.
Finnucane 8y ago
We live and work in Cambridge, and live close enough to work that walking and cycling are our normal commutes, so our commute costs effectively nothing. I could get a subsidized T pass through work, but I don't need it. When we were looking for a house, we could have gotten something bigger further out, for less money even, but then everything else would cost more and take longer. We'd have to drive more. Hell, taxes would be higher. Our city tax bill is a lot less than most of the people we know in nearby towns pay.
- Noos 8y ago
  From zillow, the median home price there is 900k. The median rent is 3,000 a month. It is literally unaffordable to most people to do what you do; the yearly amount you pay in rent alone is the yearly salary of many other people. You'd need to make a wage of $24 an hour just to pay that rent. If you looked at the median wage in the USA, its 56k, and this rent would end up being 64% of that income. What you do is a luxury of the rich. Most people simply can't afford the luxury of carlessness in an urban center.
  - Finnucane 8y ago
    Gosh, I was unaware of what it cost to live here, or what the flood of tech/biotech money has done to the neighborhood. We got lucky and were in a position to buy during the crash. We couldn't afford it now.

oftenwrong 8y ago

An MBTA local bus and subway pass is $84.50 per month $84.50 * 12 months = $1014 per year As someone living in metro Boston, that is a large difference in cost from my perspective - approximately equivalent to 2 months of rent.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
If you live outside of the subway system and need to get places (particularly in/out of the city) within a reasonable time-frame you're likely going to need a commuter rail pass. That jacks up the price substantially. I did the whole "live in Boston and just use public transit thing" for awhile. Then I moved to one of those cities that MA likes to pretend doesn't exist and my transportation costs stayed about flat. If I had made heavy use of Uber/Lyft they probably would have decreased. My friend commutes in from Worcester and rides the train because of the tolls and the fact that his work subsidizes the rail pass. In a sprawling city with free/cheap parking there would be no economic reason to do anything but drive.
- Steltek 8y ago
  When people say "public transit", they don't mean the periphery of a commuter rail system. They mean the core bus network and usually the subway. You're comparing the worst case of meaningful public transit to a city only built for cars. My hypothesis, if you lived in Somerville, Dorchester, or at most, Quincy, the numbers would look different.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Sure, if you specifically craft your living situation to not involve commuter rail (and don't replace it with Uber/Lyft) you can save money. But you'll spend the money on rent.
    - hsitz 8y ago
      > But you'll spend the money on rent. Bingo! That's exactly what the linked article is about. How much extra are you paying in rent? How much are you saving on transportation? What are total costs of [rent + transportation] in both cases? How much time is wasted on transportation when you're paying lower rent? These are questions that need to be asked. Why would you not want to "craft" your living situation to give you the optimal setup? No, you can't have everything, but a "crafted" lifestyle that avoids need for transportation may be preferred by many, and may in addition in some cases be cheaper _and_ provide higher quality of life. Maybe not, maybe not for everyone; but those are questions that need to be asked, not simply have, "What are housing rental/purchase costs?" be taken as deciding question of what places have higher cost of "housing".
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  Yes, that is somewhat the point of this discussion. The money one saves on housing by living further from a dense urban core is often offset to a significant degree by transportation costs, whether those additional costs come from regional rail or driving.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thomascgalvin 8y ago
I live in the outermost zone of the commuter rail, and a monthly pass is about $400, or $4,800 per year. Add to that the fact that you are going to be packed in like cattle, won't have a seat to sit on unless you board at the very first station, and can count on a 30-60 minute delay at least once a week ... the MTBA is probably the single biggest stressor in the Boston area.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  If you lived in the urban core, you could save $3786 per year by just getting a local pass. You would avoid a lot of that stress and lost time from your commute. You would not need a car. Of course, your housing costs would be higher, or your housing would be worse, or both. Worth it?
  - thomascgalvin 8y ago
    > your housing costs would be higher My housing costs would be roughly twice as high (from $2,500 to more like $5,000 per month). Living closer just isn't an option.
electricslpnsld 8y ago
And most employers will have some sort of transit benefit. $84.50 falls well within a lot of the wage works style benefits people get!

aqme28 8y ago

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. I'd really like to see how you come to this conclusion.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
More control of when you leave/arrive, storage space to transport things, not dealing with other people, ability to go wherever you want, air conditioning. There are downsides like traffic, car maintenance, and parking, but in general, cars are probably more comfortable than public transit in the US. I'm also ignoring externalities like pollution and unsustainable suburban sprawl growth. I'd rather take the subway Mon to Fri in NYC, but if the roads are empty, the streets are faster and more comfortable. Unfortunately, public transit is awesome if everyone has to take it, but if enough people opt out, and we give them an option like a personal car and pave roads over where we could have had public space, then cars become optimal for the individual.
- derekp7 8y ago
  I personally like a hybrid approach. I absolutely hate driving in a city, and trying to find (and pay for) parking. So I drive to a park-n-ride that is outside the city, park for a couple bucks, then take light-weight rail into the city. This does require the physical ability to walk quite a bit once you are in the city, however, which a number of people can't do much of due to physical issues (starting to include myself in that category).
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Park-n-ride has great quality of life but costs a ton because you inevitably wind up paying the cost of driving, parking and public transit.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      Like everything else, it depends. It would cost me approximately $23/day to drive to work accounting for gas + parking, even more if I wanted to pay to use the HOV lane. Instead I drive to a park and ride and take an express bus. The total estimated cost is around $6 including my gas costs.

dcolkitt 8y ago

Definitely agree. One way to show that car transport is much more "valuable" than public transport in terms of convenience and comfort is to observe that very rich people almost universally travel by private car.

icebraining 8y ago
> very rich people almost universally travel by private car. Do they? I thought this would be hard to know, has there been a survey? And is this true even in cities with decent public transportation?
- rayiner 8y ago
  There are no American cities with “decent public transportation.” NYC, DC, and Chicago are the only candidates. The first two used to be good, but have fallen off a cliff due to deferred maintenance. The latter is pretty good but inaccessible from vast swaths of the city.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    You forgot to qualify that with "for all residents". If you live in the inner suburbs of Minneapolis and work downtown public transit is pretty good for getting you to work. You will still need/want a car for grocery trips but one car will cover the entire family so you won't need a second. Thus in Minneapolis public transit is subsided transport for the rich - from the perspective of those who do not have a job downtown. (of course the poor also ride public transit, but they don't live in the suburbs)
    - komali2 8y ago
      >You will still need/want a car for grocery trips Yea, exactly, there is no good public transit, anywhere, in America. There are cities throughout Europe and Asia where the thought of needing a car to get groceries is comical - the grocery store is right there, or a short hop on a bus/metro away, and it comes every 3 minutes so no big deal. The USA desperately needs infrastructure help.

aqme28 8y ago

The $3k/yr number mentioned is not the cost of transportation via car in Houston, but the premium you pay for Houston's sprawl. In other words, commuting in a low-sprawl city is $3k/yr cheaper than it would be in Houston. Car ownership is significantly more expensive than $3k/year.

thex10 8y ago
This. There are many other costs associated with car ownership. As a transit user I don't need to pay towards a vehicle registration/inspection, repairs, insurance...
- davidw 8y ago
  Not to mention things like the mental stress and sedentary lifestyle.
cobookman 8y ago
My Nissan leaf disagrees with you. 6.5k purchase price. Cost to Charge less than 50$/mo th. Maintenance nill. Insurance cheap ($35/month)
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  It doesn't depreciate?!
  - cobookman 8y ago
    Who cares. 6.5k/4 years is 1.6k/year. the car needs to only last 3-4 years
- aqme28 8y ago
  Buying a used electric is clearly an exception, not the norm. Also https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2018/cost-to-own/ https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2018/cost-to-own/
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago

impendia 8y ago

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. Having lived in both places, and currently living in metro Boston without a car, I'm of the opposite opinion. To each their own.

davidw 8y ago
> To each their own. ... as long as they help pay for the externalities all that driving is responsible for.
- komali2 8y ago
  I don't think anybody in the world is doing this, right? The environmental impact of all these cars? A great bit of activity San Francisco saw recently was someone renting out parking spaces as "office spaces" for like 2.50$ an hour. It pointed out that a similar space in a building would probably go for more like 10$/hour or more, highlighting how little we're valuing our street-side real estate.
  - andys627 8y ago
    In Denmark cars are taxed 100% and they still prob aren't paying their fair share. They do have lots of people walking, biking, and taking tansit.
    - davidw 8y ago
      Yes, gas is way more expensive in Europe, in general.
    - arminiusreturns 8y ago
      One thing my European friends tend to not understand is just how big the US is. For a huge portion of none-coastline America, driving is the only mode of transport. "Denmark is approximately 43,094 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km. Meanwhile, the population of Denmark is ~5.6 million people (321.0 million more people live in United States)" From a quick search.

hsnewman 8y ago

Why would you say using public transportation results in a poor quality of life? Not driving would increase my quality of life a great deal!

TACIXAT 8y ago
I just lived the last 10 months without a car. There needs to be a big asterisk of not driving would increase your quality of life if there is alternative transit in place. It's pretty miserable when the nearest activities are a 45 minute light rail ride away. Biking is great mid day, but doing anything at night when you're adding 30 minutes to an hour on each side makes most plans fall through. I would love to not have to own a car in my city, but we'd need to increase density and transit significantly.
CydeWeys 8y ago
As someone who has years' of experience each doing non-trivial commutes by driving and by subway, I'd have to say, the subway wins hands-down. It's not even a close contest. I was doing the most reading of my life when I was taking the subway to work every day, and it was great. I also occasionally played handheld video games or read magazines. My commute time wasn't wasted; I spent it doing things I wanted to do. Contrast with driving, where my commute time was wasted. And driving is much more stressful and unsafe, as well. You can't be off when you're driving, but you can definitely be off when you're taking the subway. On days when I was especially tired, I would just zone out with my eyes closed. Now I just have a 10 minute bike commute, and it's my favorite commute I've ever had, but I do miss reading as regularly as I did back then on the subway.
reddog 8y ago
When I've driven I have never had to stand for 40 minutes in rush hour in a jammed Milan subway car with my nose in a strangers armpit while another stranger breaths down my neck. I've never been ask for spare change while in my car. I've never been challenged to a fight for asking someone to take their feet off the opposite seat so my wife could sit down. I've never been pickpocketed. I've never had a bad dixieland band set up, play a few measures of bad out-of-tune jazz and then aggressively solicit donations. I've never had a creepy passenger stare at me for the entire ride as if they are trying to memorize my face. My car seat is never covered with vomit when I get in. I've never had a car commute cancelled because of a a labor action, or a signal malfunction, of work being done on the lines or bureaucratic incompetence. I've never had my car stop running because it was too late in the day or a holiday. All these things and much more have happened to me on public transport. Yes, it is irritating to be stuck in traffic in a car -- you have to move your right foot back and forth between the accelerator and brake while you sit in your adjustable leather seat, traveling on your own schedule to your custom destination in climate controlled comfort while rocking out to music, an audible book or a podcast.

andys627 8y ago

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. It's a trade off. One of these tanks the planet and the other doesn't, however.

njarboe 8y ago
Public transit doesn't come for free. Bus systems are sometimes worse than people in cars. I would suggest fixing the individual vehicle transportation system (congestion tolls + high gas tax would be a start) than forcing everyone to stand on trains for their commute and stay at home on the weekends.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  > Bus systems are sometimes worse than people in cars. Source?
  - njarboe 8y ago
    In the US, bus routes often run with zero passengers on the bus. Here is a Quora question and answer that states buses consumed 20% more energy than cars per passenger mile in 2009[1]. It references a US Department of transportation document that can now be found here(pdf)[2]. Tables in chapter two. Not sure about more recent figures. I made this comment as I remembered an AC Transit (Alameda County Transit which includes Oakland) study that said their average mpg per passenger was around 8 mpg some time ago and I found that surprisingly low. [1] https://www.quora.com/Do-buses-really-result-in-increased-energy-efficiency https://www.quora.com/Do-buses-really-result-in-increased-en... [2] https://tedb.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Edition30_Full_Doc.pdf https://tedb.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Edition30_F...

komali2 8y ago

Lived in Houston most of my life, and in places with public transit (good and bad) other parts. My perspective: sprawl fucking sucks. That's what this is about - not just driving, but what a city built on driving leads to: sprawl. 45 minute commutes to college from Clear Lake while I'm doing nothing but kinda listening to an audiobook or something. So demotivating. Not really being able to hang with my classmates after school cause I can leave at 4 and get home in 45 minutes or 6/7 and get home in 1.5-2 hours.... or just wait until 9, 10, which fucks me cause the next morning I need to be on the road at 6:30 sharp if I want a "reasonable" 45 minute commute. Oh, and when I turn up to school, better leave 20 minutes to an hour to find parking. That's not hyperbole, parking was that bad at University of Houston. Compared to the train I used to take to Mountain View - my "worst" commute from my time in the bay area. Still a "long" trip, but I'm sitting on a train reading, playing a video game, or sleeping. Traffic is not a consideration. I can go in rush hour or whenever, I'll still get there at the same time. I get off the train and bicycle to the office, leave my bike downstairs and that's it. No idling in the parking lot shitting out CO, waiting for someone to walk into the parking lot so I can offer them an AC ride to their spot in return for the ability to park in it when they leave. Growing up in that sprawl was painful. Our suburbs were spread out not too bad, but enough to suck hard. One of my best friends was a good 3 miles away in a different suburb (so I had to go the long way round to actually get to an entrance. Sometime's I'd toss my bike over the 10 foot sound barrier thing and try to scale it but stopped after spraining an ankle). Bicycling there would take 20 minutes if there were bike lanes, but there weren't, there were "sidewalks" with giant roots pushing the concrete up that were too big to hop on the bike, or there'd be massive puddles in the dips or dirt and sand ready to slip me up, so I was on/off/on/off the bike, waiting 5 minutes at an intersection for a walk signal and still keeping my head on a swivel because nobody expects someone to actually walk in the burbs. So, it'd take me like 50 minutes to get to my friend's house. If it wasn't so hard, I think I would have hung outside more with my friends, and played less videogames. I distinctly remember chatting in WoW about how we'd consider hanging out, and then say "nah don't wanna bike an hour" and just play more WoW. Then when you finally do get a car, it's not that much better. First spend 45 minutes driving a pentagram across the suburbs picking everyone up, then drive another 45 to get to the city or wherever. It just sucked! So, I don't know about cost, I don't have the math for it, but it was terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE and I hated it growing up. The convenience of living in a mildly walkable city like SF with even the mediocre (from int'l standards) public transit they have here is to me leagues better than the bullshit I put up with in Houston. And then you go to a city like Taipei and see what this world is capable of creating... it's a dream.

danans 8y ago

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston. I'd bet that few people exclusively take public transit in Boston. People still take taxis and car-shares, hitch rides with friends. The key is that for many important high traffic routes, the highest quality of life option in Boston is transit, far better than sitting in traffic. Even in parts of the world that have amazing public transit systems, there are use cases where a car (whether owned, rented, or hired), fills in the quality of life gap very nicely.

Finnucane 8y ago

We live and work in Cambridge, and live close enough to work that walking and cycling are our normal commutes, so our commute costs effectively nothing. I could get a subsidized T pass through work, but I don't need it. When we were looking for a house, we could have gotten something bigger further out, for less money even, but then everything else would cost more and take longer. We'd have to drive more. Hell, taxes would be higher. Our city tax bill is a lot less than most of the people we know in nearby towns pay.

Noos 8y ago
From zillow, the median home price there is 900k. The median rent is 3,000 a month. It is literally unaffordable to most people to do what you do; the yearly amount you pay in rent alone is the yearly salary of many other people. You'd need to make a wage of $24 an hour just to pay that rent. If you looked at the median wage in the USA, its 56k, and this rent would end up being 64% of that income. What you do is a luxury of the rich. Most people simply can't afford the luxury of carlessness in an urban center.
- Finnucane 8y ago
  Gosh, I was unaware of what it cost to live here, or what the flood of tech/biotech money has done to the neighborhood. We got lucky and were in a position to buy during the crash. We couldn't afford it now.