5 ms·

But public transport is simply not as good for now; ramming it down people's throats is not a solution. It is crowded, unclean, slow, and noisy. I have to lis

by mises 7y ago

But public transport is simply not as good for now; ramming it down people's throats is not a solution. It is crowded, unclean, slow, and noisy. I have to listen to some one else blaring his music, or some fat guy taking two seats. Or some smelly guy who can't be bothered to shower. I suddenly have to plan my schedule around my transportation, rather than my transportation around my schedule. Maybe we should focus on making it a better option. Also, why would you block existing roads? That's a ridiculous proposition. There's a difference between building something better and just forcing every one onto something worse. The market is stronger and smarter than any government, and will try as hard as it can to circumvent any thing you pass. Why not have the invisible hand do your work for you? Make it a better option, and people will use it.

arethuza 7y ago
Depends where you are I guess - I rather like taking the train into Edinburgh. It's occasionally a bit crowded going home in the evening but 99% of the time getting a seat isn't a problem and my fellow commuters seem a decent bunch and it is faster and cheaper than driving (and I have a decent fairly new car). Edit: Out of interest, looking at your username is it not possible that you have an ideological objection to public transport?
helen___keller 7y ago
> Maybe we should focus on making it a better option. I think everybody agrees with this until it comes time to talk taxes and then everyone with a car says they're happy with their commutes and they don't want to pay for somebody else to take a train, don't want a whole lane for a bus, and so on. So instead you get some meaningless token effort and everybody goes on driving Making driving "worse" (or at least refusing to invest to make it better) gives transit a competitive advantage. Optimizing for personal cars gives cars a competitive advantage, which is the story of the 20th century > Also, why would you block existing roads? That's a ridiculous proposition. It's not even remotely controversial when I've seen it done, like downtown streets in Boston made pedestrian only. The vast majority of people (who are on foot) love it.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Speaking of being happy with their commute. I'm very happy and I'm walking to work everday. Maybe you should rethink the need for cars/trains in the first place? Because I sure am not using trains in my daily life and don't own a car.
  - mantas 7y ago
    Other part of the equation is being be happy with living location. Walking to work is nice, but if that means you've to pay fuckton for a tiny apartment in concrete jungle.. Some people will be happy, some people would be more misery than dealing with long commute.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      I live in a nice place with a park in front of my door.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    I don't want to move every time I change jobs. I thought no most people share my preference.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      Why do you need to change jobs so often?
- briandear 7y ago
  Why can’t the people that want transit be the ones that pay for it? If public transit were in high demand, it would seem like it shouldn’t be charging a subsidized fare. Making driving worse does give transit a competitive advantage. However, if transit were so desirable, why would it need to win by simply making everything suck more? That’s not a very strong vote for transit. Transit should win because it’s better, not because we have made all the other options suck more. I suppose we could have snipers shooting at freeway cars if we wanted to increase subway ridership right? However, that doesn’t make the subway intrinsically better. It just means you have a lot more people unhappy. I don’t understand why people are willing to make the largest number of people unhappy in order to achieve some transit utopian fantasy. The whole debate sounds like Marxism: let’s make everyone’s life suck equally. We don’t actually want anyone to enjoy their car because then they wouldn’t want to take our shitty bus. If your bus wasn’t so shitty (I am in the Bay Area, so I mean that both literally and figuratively,) then maybe people might want to ride your bus. My company has some private bus shuttles that are spectacular. When possible, I prefer to ride those shuttles despite having a great car and an easy drive. But riding the city bus? Heck no! I would need a hepatitis booster shot as well as having to ride in dirty, uncomfortable surroundings with crazy people. Not to mention waiting at a bus stop with those same sorts of people — and stopping every two blocks for someone to get on or off.
PorterDuff 7y ago
I'd say that it isn't just a matter of comfort, but also one of personal security. I'd be far more apt to take a local train in Tokyo or Switzerland than I would BART.
dasKrokodil 7y ago
> The market is stronger and smarter than any government If that is the case, the parking minimums should indeed be abolished, because they are mandated by the government, no?
sachdevap 7y ago
> The market is stronger and smarter than any government Then let the market decide how much people should pay for the socialized parking that citizens provide for car owners benefit.
ticmasta 7y ago
>> It is crowded, unclean, slow, and noisy. in North America it's also expensive and heavily subsidized by those who don't use it. With no judgement, both of these aspects go directly against the capatalist American zeitgeist
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  Expensive to run. A big reason North American systems are so heavily subsidized is that they are really cheap to ride. Very few flat-rate systems have good (>=60%) farebox recovery, yet the majority of NA systems are flat-rate. It's something of chicken-and-egg thing, though. It's hard to charge reasonable prices when a system is inconvenient, but it's hard to build a convenient system without demonstrable demand.
  - treis 7y ago
    >It's something of chicken-and-egg thing, though. It's hard to charge reasonable prices when a system is inconvenient, but it's hard to build a convenient system without demonstrable demand. Uber/Lyft have done it with their pool/line service. IMHO, the problem is the focus on major infrastructure over less grand services that people actually will use. My city is talking about spending billions to extend commuter rail. Yet when I looked at going to a place in the city center 5 miles away it was 23 minutes by car and an hour and 20 minutes by public transport. I literally could have run there faster than taking the bus. I did the math and for the system as a whole it comes out to be about ten bucks a ride. It would be cheaper and better for everyone if they just subsidized line/pool.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >Expensive to run. A big reason North American systems are so heavily subsidized is that they are really cheap to ride. Huh? Here in DC, the subway fares are rather high compared to the fares I payed in Germany and Japan. Germany was downright cheap, with multi-day all-you-can-ride passes available for what it costs me to take 3 rides on the DC Metro. The NYC MTA isn't very inexpensive either, though I think it's still cheaper than DC's. But for the money, it's a far, far worse user experience than the systems in Germany and Japan.

by mises 7y ago

arethuza 7y ago

Depends where you are I guess - I rather like taking the train into Edinburgh. It's occasionally a bit crowded going home in the evening but 99% of the time getting a seat isn't a problem and my fellow commuters seem a decent bunch and it is faster and cheaper than driving (and I have a decent fairly new car). Edit: Out of interest, looking at your username is it not possible that you have an ideological objection to public transport?

helen___keller 7y ago

> Maybe we should focus on making it a better option. I think everybody agrees with this until it comes time to talk taxes and then everyone with a car says they're happy with their commutes and they don't want to pay for somebody else to take a train, don't want a whole lane for a bus, and so on. So instead you get some meaningless token effort and everybody goes on driving Making driving "worse" (or at least refusing to invest to make it better) gives transit a competitive advantage. Optimizing for personal cars gives cars a competitive advantage, which is the story of the 20th century > Also, why would you block existing roads? That's a ridiculous proposition. It's not even remotely controversial when I've seen it done, like downtown streets in Boston made pedestrian only. The vast majority of people (who are on foot) love it.

Kaiyou 7y ago
Speaking of being happy with their commute. I'm very happy and I'm walking to work everday. Maybe you should rethink the need for cars/trains in the first place? Because I sure am not using trains in my daily life and don't own a car.
- mantas 7y ago
  Other part of the equation is being be happy with living location. Walking to work is nice, but if that means you've to pay fuckton for a tiny apartment in concrete jungle.. Some people will be happy, some people would be more misery than dealing with long commute.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    I live in a nice place with a park in front of my door.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  I don't want to move every time I change jobs. I thought no most people share my preference.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Why do you need to change jobs so often?
briandear 7y ago
Why can’t the people that want transit be the ones that pay for it? If public transit were in high demand, it would seem like it shouldn’t be charging a subsidized fare. Making driving worse does give transit a competitive advantage. However, if transit were so desirable, why would it need to win by simply making everything suck more? That’s not a very strong vote for transit. Transit should win because it’s better, not because we have made all the other options suck more. I suppose we could have snipers shooting at freeway cars if we wanted to increase subway ridership right? However, that doesn’t make the subway intrinsically better. It just means you have a lot more people unhappy. I don’t understand why people are willing to make the largest number of people unhappy in order to achieve some transit utopian fantasy. The whole debate sounds like Marxism: let’s make everyone’s life suck equally. We don’t actually want anyone to enjoy their car because then they wouldn’t want to take our shitty bus. If your bus wasn’t so shitty (I am in the Bay Area, so I mean that both literally and figuratively,) then maybe people might want to ride your bus. My company has some private bus shuttles that are spectacular. When possible, I prefer to ride those shuttles despite having a great car and an easy drive. But riding the city bus? Heck no! I would need a hepatitis booster shot as well as having to ride in dirty, uncomfortable surroundings with crazy people. Not to mention waiting at a bus stop with those same sorts of people — and stopping every two blocks for someone to get on or off.

PorterDuff 7y ago

I'd say that it isn't just a matter of comfort, but also one of personal security. I'd be far more apt to take a local train in Tokyo or Switzerland than I would BART.

dasKrokodil 7y ago

> The market is stronger and smarter than any government If that is the case, the parking minimums should indeed be abolished, because they are mandated by the government, no?

sachdevap 7y ago

> The market is stronger and smarter than any government Then let the market decide how much people should pay for the socialized parking that citizens provide for car owners benefit.

ticmasta 7y ago

>> It is crowded, unclean, slow, and noisy. in North America it's also expensive and heavily subsidized by those who don't use it. With no judgement, both of these aspects go directly against the capatalist American zeitgeist

vonmoltke 7y ago
Expensive to run. A big reason North American systems are so heavily subsidized is that they are really cheap to ride. Very few flat-rate systems have good (>=60%) farebox recovery, yet the majority of NA systems are flat-rate. It's something of chicken-and-egg thing, though. It's hard to charge reasonable prices when a system is inconvenient, but it's hard to build a convenient system without demonstrable demand.
- treis 7y ago
  >It's something of chicken-and-egg thing, though. It's hard to charge reasonable prices when a system is inconvenient, but it's hard to build a convenient system without demonstrable demand. Uber/Lyft have done it with their pool/line service. IMHO, the problem is the focus on major infrastructure over less grand services that people actually will use. My city is talking about spending billions to extend commuter rail. Yet when I looked at going to a place in the city center 5 miles away it was 23 minutes by car and an hour and 20 minutes by public transport. I literally could have run there faster than taking the bus. I did the math and for the system as a whole it comes out to be about ten bucks a ride. It would be cheaper and better for everyone if they just subsidized line/pool.
- magduf 7y ago
  >Expensive to run. A big reason North American systems are so heavily subsidized is that they are really cheap to ride. Huh? Here in DC, the subway fares are rather high compared to the fares I payed in Germany and Japan. Germany was downright cheap, with multi-day all-you-can-ride passes available for what it costs me to take 3 rides on the DC Metro. The NYC MTA isn't very inexpensive either, though I think it's still cheaper than DC's. But for the money, it's a far, far worse user experience than the systems in Germany and Japan.