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The story for public transportation in most large cities in the US is not awesome. 1. Crime 2. Forces you to come in contact with people you would no

by bb88 8y ago

The story for public transportation in most large cities in the US is not awesome. 1. Crime 2. Forces you to come in contact with people you would not choose to associate with normally 3. Public transportation vehicles are often dirty/unclean 4. Long waits during off peak times, often, which forces you to revolve your schedule around public transportation 5. Commutes are often longer 6. Can't get to your destination often without a long walk, or another vehicle 7. Usually still requires walking in the rain/hail/snow/sleet/wind/sub-zero temps 8. Initial build out and future expansion are very expensive. Unless those are addressed in new buildouts, public transportation will continue to have the reputation of public housing and public schools in many places.

mrerrormessage 8y ago
I agree that many of your points present legitimate difficulties with the use of public transit in the US as it currently exists. However, I think that the first two points are just as true for ride share as they are for public transit. Ride share also has crime (see sexual assault scandals https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexual-assault/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexu...) and ride sharing (particularly pool-style) also "forces you too come into contact with people you would not normally choose to associate with"; some people (including myself) see this as a benefit of public/shared transit, not a drawback. Part of the problem is that public transit scales differently from ride share. The more riders public transit has, the better it gets. The more riders ride share has (beyond a certain point) the worse it gets.
- bb88 8y ago
  I'll disagree with you on safety in ubers/lyfts. But even so, the rest of the list is pretty terrible. This was the number of reported assaults in 2017 in NYC subway systems: https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/new-york/nyc-subway-stations-crime-report https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/new-york/nyc-subway-sta... "Assault and related offenses were also frequent, with 1,243 reports within the subway in 2017, as was harassment, which accounted for 1,003 crimes." Data for assaults against passengers in ride hailing (taxi/uber/lyft) services seems hard to come by, but there were 103 reported incidents of rape nationwide in ubers from the years 2014-2018. https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexual-assault/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexu... It's worth noting that Buzzfeed said there were was a much higher number, but that was disputed by Uber directly.

by bb88 8y ago

mrerrormessage 8y ago

I agree that many of your points present legitimate difficulties with the use of public transit in the US as it currently exists. However, I think that the first two points are just as true for ride share as they are for public transit. Ride share also has crime (see sexual assault scandals https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexual-assault/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexu...) and ride sharing (particularly pool-style) also "forces you too come into contact with people you would not normally choose to associate with"; some people (including myself) see this as a benefit of public/shared transit, not a drawback. Part of the problem is that public transit scales differently from ride share. The more riders public transit has, the better it gets. The more riders ride share has (beyond a certain point) the worse it gets.

bb88 8y ago
I'll disagree with you on safety in ubers/lyfts. But even so, the rest of the list is pretty terrible. This was the number of reported assaults in 2017 in NYC subway systems: https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/new-york/nyc-subway-stations-crime-report https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/new-york/nyc-subway-sta... "Assault and related offenses were also frequent, with 1,243 reports within the subway in 2017, as was harassment, which accounted for 1,003 crimes." Data for assaults against passengers in ride hailing (taxi/uber/lyft) services seems hard to come by, but there were 103 reported incidents of rape nationwide in ubers from the years 2014-2018. https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexual-assault/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/technology/uber-driver-sexu... It's worth noting that Buzzfeed said there were was a much higher number, but that was disputed by Uber directly.