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I mean, you would also have millions of people spending 5 hours riding between bus stops every day. Cars are a bare necessity due to how badly we fucked up urb

I mean, you would also have millions of people spending 5 hours riding between bus stops every day. Cars are a bare necessity due to how badly we fucked up urban planning. And we fucked it up because we planned around cars.

s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
You need private transportation in rural areas due to the sheer size and remoteness. You also need to plan around cars in urban areas for people coming from rural areas. That's not to say you shouldn't focus on public transportation in urban areas, but it's not possible to ignore cars.
- shereadsthenews 7y ago
  Eh let’s don't. The thing about rural areas is nobody lives there, by definition. Our city centers should not be degraded so a tiny minority can drive. Instead we should have the Swiss/German S-Bahn model where outlying areas have train stations that take the rural folks to cities quickly and efficiently.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    Many people do live there, just more spread out. It's not degrading city centers, you still need trucks to stock your stores, you still need tourism. If everyone that lived in the city centers took public transportation, the already built roads would be freed for foreign traffic. As you say, there's nobody living in rural areas so they wouldn't have a huge impact on the roads. They can share it with the buses and trucks. I see this kind of elitism of urban > rural a lot here.
    - shereadsthenews 7y ago
      Elitism is when you tear down thousands of homes in black neighborhoods so rural drivers can go non-stop downtown. Elitism is when you spend a billion dollars on a freeway interchange in the middle of nowhere while cutting bus service in downtown Milwaukee. Elitism in America always works in favor of rural people because rural America is overwhelming White and American elitism is just racism.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        There can be many forms of elitism, I don't see how it excuses your view of "not many people live in rural America, so fuck em". Black and white people live in rural America, and just because someone is white doesn't mean they are racist or had anything to do with what you're claiming. You're generalizing people based on race, that's racism. You need freeways to connect cities and transport goods, I don't see what that has to do with cities not properly funding public transportation. Urban cities need rural areas for foods and goods. You're living in a bubble of your own elitism. There's more to America than your city, go travel, you'll need a car though :)
        shereadsthenews 7y ago
        > You need freeways to connect cities and transport goods, I don't see what that has to do with cities not properly funding public transportation. You don't see it because you aren't paying attention. In Wisconsin the people of Milwaukee had to sue the state because the state transportation agency cut funding for bus service in black, car-free Milwaukee while spending $1.7bn on an interchange to serve overwhelmingly white people from the surrounding area. It was not a meritless suit; WisDOT settled.
        s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        Re-read my comment. I don't see what rural areas have to do with cities not properly funding public transportation. Like all cities, Milwaukee should get their public transportation in order. That being said, public transportation cannot work for rural areas. It can only work in urban and possibly suburban areas.
        shereadsthenews 7y ago
        In Wisconsin like most states cities are creations of the state and transit authorities are also creations of the states. Local tax revenues flow out of cities into the state government for redistribution, which usually results in a net flow of money out of those cities to rural areas, because the cities have the larger economies and the rural areas have a variety of high costs for things like firefighting and road building. The Milwaukee County Transit System, being a creature of the state, derives its funding from the state, which is not always equitably forthcoming. NYC has the same problem with the MTA being controlled by the state government, despite the fact that 97% of the state's economic activity originates in NYC. Any way, if you know anything about American history then you know about the phenomenon where a surrounding entity like a county or state arranges to extract money from a city while also starving it of services. St. Louis is probably the most notable example. Blaming such a city for its own transportation system, while also suggesting that those cities need to spend their own capital to provide parking and driving opportunities to rural citizens, just underlines how little you understand about American cities.
  - taborj 7y ago
    > The thing about rural areas is nobody lives there, by definition. I get what you're saying, but according to this[1], about 46 million people live in rural areas. That's...not nobody. I am a died-in-the-wool car loving 'Merican, but even I can agree that cities shouldn't necessarily be designed around cars. It'd make the most sense for a park & ride type situation (only one that actually works), where us rural-types can drive in close to the city, park, and take public transit in towards the town. Edit: as another commenter pointed out, this plan wouldn't absolve the cities of needing roads, because goods still need to make it into the businesses in the city. [1] https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/states/united-states https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/states/united-states
    - shereadsthenews 7y ago
      That’s only 14% of Americans. If we start spending only 14% of our transportation budget moving those people and storing their cars, that would be great.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    It’s not just rural areas. There are vast swaths of low density suburbs all over the country. And getting to the city isn’t the primary concern—it’s getting between all these low density suburbs. I grew up less than 15 miles from DC and went there maybe a dozen times from ages 5-18. 90-95% of all jobs in the DC metro area are outside the city. (That’s a big difference from Germany, where even in relatively rural areas most people live in villages that are pretty dense.)
rayiner 7y ago
Do transit advocates have a solution to totally incompetent transit agencies? When we lived in Wilmington Delaware, we lived in an apartment that was ostensibly a 7-10 minute bus ride away from my wife's office and a 10 minute walk to commuter rail for my job in Philadelphia. We had just moved from Chicago, where we didn't own a car, and assumed we could continue our public-transit-oriented lifestyle. We quickly gave up on both, and I ended driving 45 minutes each way, dropping my wife off at work in the process. The bus would just never come. Bus drivers would randomly skip stops. The train was regularly late. That was on the weekday. Once, we tried taking the bus on the weekend to the local mall. After waiting for 45 minutes (during which time three buses were supposed to have come), we went back home and got in the car. (Another anecdote: When I was in law school, I spent a month in the Menlo Park office of the firm I was working at. Having spent the rest of the summer in the NYC office--before MTA's total collapse--I figured I'd rent something on the train line to get between San Jose and Menlo Park. Hah! A commuter train that runs only every half an hour during peak times? Are you kidding? I ended up renting a car and driving in every day. Third anecdote--because I've really used a lot of public transit: When I first started working in DC, my wife kept working in Delaware. So we moved right next to Baltimore Penn Station, so she could take the Amtrak up and I could take MARC/Amtrak down. On paper it's under an hour for her, and about an hour and fifteen minutes for me between Amtrak and Metro. Hah! For my trip, Amtrak was routinely 10-15 minutes late, and the trip took 10 minutes more than scheduled. For her trip, Amtrak was regularly 15+ minutes late. And that was when it was almost on time. Several times a month there would be 1+ hour delays.) That's the reality of public transit for the vast majority of the country. Chicago is basically the only place left that has public transit that runs mostly on time and has decent coverage between bus, subway, and commuter rail. Everywhere else the transit system has either completely broken down (DC, New York), or doesn't go anywhere (Baltimore, Atlanta, etc.).
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Do transit advocates have a solution to totally incompetent transit agencies? At best you'll get people saying "the MTA is a corrupt money burner compared to European rail and we need to fix that" or something along those lines but that's about it. It makes sense that people aren't in a hurry to point out the flaws of what they see as a solution to a problem most don't care much about.
robocat 7y ago
For me the main advantages of a bus over driving my own car were: a) you can read or watch movies b) I walked for 5 minutes each day to get to and from stops c) It was relaxing on a bus (driving is frustrating in busy traffic). The benefits only worked when the bus route was convenient between home and work. At my new place the bus takes a very indirect route (slow) and requires a change (I hate time at bus interchange, I don't mind time spent on bus if it is not too much more than driving). I did notice I still required a car: when my car was off the road for a while I became less social (too much hassle to visit friends without a car).

s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago

You need private transportation in rural areas due to the sheer size and remoteness. You also need to plan around cars in urban areas for people coming from rural areas. That's not to say you shouldn't focus on public transportation in urban areas, but it's not possible to ignore cars.

shereadsthenews 7y ago
Eh let’s don't. The thing about rural areas is nobody lives there, by definition. Our city centers should not be degraded so a tiny minority can drive. Instead we should have the Swiss/German S-Bahn model where outlying areas have train stations that take the rural folks to cities quickly and efficiently.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  Many people do live there, just more spread out. It's not degrading city centers, you still need trucks to stock your stores, you still need tourism. If everyone that lived in the city centers took public transportation, the already built roads would be freed for foreign traffic. As you say, there's nobody living in rural areas so they wouldn't have a huge impact on the roads. They can share it with the buses and trucks. I see this kind of elitism of urban > rural a lot here.
  - shereadsthenews 7y ago
    Elitism is when you tear down thousands of homes in black neighborhoods so rural drivers can go non-stop downtown. Elitism is when you spend a billion dollars on a freeway interchange in the middle of nowhere while cutting bus service in downtown Milwaukee. Elitism in America always works in favor of rural people because rural America is overwhelming White and American elitism is just racism.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      There can be many forms of elitism, I don't see how it excuses your view of "not many people live in rural America, so fuck em". Black and white people live in rural America, and just because someone is white doesn't mean they are racist or had anything to do with what you're claiming. You're generalizing people based on race, that's racism. You need freeways to connect cities and transport goods, I don't see what that has to do with cities not properly funding public transportation. Urban cities need rural areas for foods and goods. You're living in a bubble of your own elitism. There's more to America than your city, go travel, you'll need a car though :)
      - shereadsthenews 7y ago
        > You need freeways to connect cities and transport goods, I don't see what that has to do with cities not properly funding public transportation. You don't see it because you aren't paying attention. In Wisconsin the people of Milwaukee had to sue the state because the state transportation agency cut funding for bus service in black, car-free Milwaukee while spending $1.7bn on an interchange to serve overwhelmingly white people from the surrounding area. It was not a meritless suit; WisDOT settled.
        s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
        Re-read my comment. I don't see what rural areas have to do with cities not properly funding public transportation. Like all cities, Milwaukee should get their public transportation in order. That being said, public transportation cannot work for rural areas. It can only work in urban and possibly suburban areas.
        shereadsthenews 7y ago
        In Wisconsin like most states cities are creations of the state and transit authorities are also creations of the states. Local tax revenues flow out of cities into the state government for redistribution, which usually results in a net flow of money out of those cities to rural areas, because the cities have the larger economies and the rural areas have a variety of high costs for things like firefighting and road building. The Milwaukee County Transit System, being a creature of the state, derives its funding from the state, which is not always equitably forthcoming. NYC has the same problem with the MTA being controlled by the state government, despite the fact that 97% of the state's economic activity originates in NYC. Any way, if you know anything about American history then you know about the phenomenon where a surrounding entity like a county or state arranges to extract money from a city while also starving it of services. St. Louis is probably the most notable example. Blaming such a city for its own transportation system, while also suggesting that those cities need to spend their own capital to provide parking and driving opportunities to rural citizens, just underlines how little you understand about American cities.
- taborj 7y ago
  > The thing about rural areas is nobody lives there, by definition. I get what you're saying, but according to this[1], about 46 million people live in rural areas. That's...not nobody. I am a died-in-the-wool car loving 'Merican, but even I can agree that cities shouldn't necessarily be designed around cars. It'd make the most sense for a park & ride type situation (only one that actually works), where us rural-types can drive in close to the city, park, and take public transit in towards the town. Edit: as another commenter pointed out, this plan wouldn't absolve the cities of needing roads, because goods still need to make it into the businesses in the city. [1] https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/states/united-states https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/states/united-states
  - shereadsthenews 7y ago
    That’s only 14% of Americans. If we start spending only 14% of our transportation budget moving those people and storing their cars, that would be great.
- rayiner 7y ago
  It’s not just rural areas. There are vast swaths of low density suburbs all over the country. And getting to the city isn’t the primary concern—it’s getting between all these low density suburbs. I grew up less than 15 miles from DC and went there maybe a dozen times from ages 5-18. 90-95% of all jobs in the DC metro area are outside the city. (That’s a big difference from Germany, where even in relatively rural areas most people live in villages that are pretty dense.)

rayiner 7y ago

Do transit advocates have a solution to totally incompetent transit agencies? When we lived in Wilmington Delaware, we lived in an apartment that was ostensibly a 7-10 minute bus ride away from my wife's office and a 10 minute walk to commuter rail for my job in Philadelphia. We had just moved from Chicago, where we didn't own a car, and assumed we could continue our public-transit-oriented lifestyle. We quickly gave up on both, and I ended driving 45 minutes each way, dropping my wife off at work in the process. The bus would just never come. Bus drivers would randomly skip stops. The train was regularly late. That was on the weekday. Once, we tried taking the bus on the weekend to the local mall. After waiting for 45 minutes (during which time three buses were supposed to have come), we went back home and got in the car. (Another anecdote: When I was in law school, I spent a month in the Menlo Park office of the firm I was working at. Having spent the rest of the summer in the NYC office--before MTA's total collapse--I figured I'd rent something on the train line to get between San Jose and Menlo Park. Hah! A commuter train that runs only every half an hour during peak times? Are you kidding? I ended up renting a car and driving in every day. Third anecdote--because I've really used a lot of public transit: When I first started working in DC, my wife kept working in Delaware. So we moved right next to Baltimore Penn Station, so she could take the Amtrak up and I could take MARC/Amtrak down. On paper it's under an hour for her, and about an hour and fifteen minutes for me between Amtrak and Metro. Hah! For my trip, Amtrak was routinely 10-15 minutes late, and the trip took 10 minutes more than scheduled. For her trip, Amtrak was regularly 15+ minutes late. And that was when it was almost on time. Several times a month there would be 1+ hour delays.) That's the reality of public transit for the vast majority of the country. Chicago is basically the only place left that has public transit that runs mostly on time and has decent coverage between bus, subway, and commuter rail. Everywhere else the transit system has either completely broken down (DC, New York), or doesn't go anywhere (Baltimore, Atlanta, etc.).

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Do transit advocates have a solution to totally incompetent transit agencies? At best you'll get people saying "the MTA is a corrupt money burner compared to European rail and we need to fix that" or something along those lines but that's about it. It makes sense that people aren't in a hurry to point out the flaws of what they see as a solution to a problem most don't care much about.

robocat 7y ago

For me the main advantages of a bus over driving my own car were: a) you can read or watch movies b) I walked for 5 minutes each day to get to and from stops c) It was relaxing on a bus (driving is frustrating in busy traffic). The benefits only worked when the bus route was convenient between home and work. At my new place the bus takes a very indirect route (slow) and requires a change (I hate time at bus interchange, I don't mind time spent on bus if it is not too much more than driving). I did notice I still required a car: when my car was off the road for a while I became less social (too much hassle to visit friends without a car).