4 ms·

Thank you. This is what a ton of other comments are missing. I've had to occasionally go to our main corporate office. If I rent a car from the airport, it's a

Thank you. This is what a ton of other comments are missing. I've had to occasionally go to our main corporate office. If I rent a car from the airport, it's about 18 minutes from airport parking lot to door. Taking public transit means the absolute fastest I can get from transit stop to door is 32 minutes (25 minutes of transit + 7 minutes of walking). Taking public transit is an additional 14 minutes added to my commute time. I'm not against public transit. People are pretending or under the wrong assumption that getting more people onto buses and rails means that the new commute time is now equivalent to driving a car on a road without traffic. You need to factor in time waiting for transit, stops between your pickup and destination, and last mile. Dense cities suffer from less of the last mile problem, because buses can take routes all through a city with more stops. Moving to the outskirts of the city will have a larger last mile problem where few buses are patrolling.

danmaz74 7y ago
Driving a car point to point without traffic is obviously going to be faster. But if everybody drives point to point, there will be a lot of traffic and jams. The difference with public transportation is that it could move everybody without traffic, but if you remove the traffic lots of people want to use their car - profiting from the other people who use PTA and free their streets. Classic tragedy of the commons.
- noxToken 7y ago
  > but if you remove the traffic lots of people want to use their car - profiting from the other people who use PTA and free their streets This is true, but there's still a layer beyond that. There are cities where the layout is built to address the last mile problem. There are hub locations that can allow you to get from point A to B and to C within 5 minutes of each other on foot. This isn't true for many Americans. Take my example from earlier. If you didn't bring your lunch, your 5 minute walking options from the office are very limited. Expanding to 10 minutes gives more options, but the selection is still very limited. 10 minutes via car gives a much better selection, but 10 minutes via bus (due to waiting and intermediate stops) doesn't get you much further than 10 minutes on foot. Other examples include running and errand after work. If I need to grab something from a store, how much additional time is needed to add an extra stop to go 5 minutes off of my normal commute path? Again, I'm not against public transportation. Cities need to be designed to accommodate public transportation. Otherwise we are exchanging time idling bumper-to-bumper for time waiting and time hitting intermediate stops.
  - danmaz74 7y ago
    I agree that public transportation can't be the only solution everywhere. But, in cities above a given density, it's the only solution that can work without daily congestions.

danmaz74 7y ago

Driving a car point to point without traffic is obviously going to be faster. But if everybody drives point to point, there will be a lot of traffic and jams. The difference with public transportation is that it could move everybody without traffic, but if you remove the traffic lots of people want to use their car - profiting from the other people who use PTA and free their streets. Classic tragedy of the commons.

noxToken 7y ago
> but if you remove the traffic lots of people want to use their car - profiting from the other people who use PTA and free their streets This is true, but there's still a layer beyond that. There are cities where the layout is built to address the last mile problem. There are hub locations that can allow you to get from point A to B and to C within 5 minutes of each other on foot. This isn't true for many Americans. Take my example from earlier. If you didn't bring your lunch, your 5 minute walking options from the office are very limited. Expanding to 10 minutes gives more options, but the selection is still very limited. 10 minutes via car gives a much better selection, but 10 minutes via bus (due to waiting and intermediate stops) doesn't get you much further than 10 minutes on foot. Other examples include running and errand after work. If I need to grab something from a store, how much additional time is needed to add an extra stop to go 5 minutes off of my normal commute path? Again, I'm not against public transportation. Cities need to be designed to accommodate public transportation. Otherwise we are exchanging time idling bumper-to-bumper for time waiting and time hitting intermediate stops.
- danmaz74 7y ago
  I agree that public transportation can't be the only solution everywhere. But, in cities above a given density, it's the only solution that can work without daily congestions.