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I lived in Austin just before the advent of Lyft and Uber, and was thus stuck using the bus from time to time. I found the bus service in Austin to be unusually

I lived in Austin just before the advent of Lyft and Uber, and was thus stuck using the bus from time to time. I found the bus service in Austin to be unusually slow by US standards due to the abnormal number of wheelchair users. why oh why doesn't that city have light rail…

krn1p4n1c 7y ago
It does, if you're going from Leander/Cedar Park to downtown it's useful. It takes about the same amount of time as driving in rush-hour, but without the bs. Texas generally sees public-transport as something for poor people and the state is full of armchair libertarians..
- dkarl 7y ago
  Yep, that's almost the only scenario it covers, along with commuting from east Austin to the Domain. I was at a lecture recently about the things cities do right and wrong when planning public transit, and the speaker used Austin's rail system to illustrate what happens when cities route public transit around political opposition. The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable, and Austin's Red Line is the perfect example: it barely sticks its nose into one side of downtown and then manages to dodge the capitol area, the university, and the dense residential neighborhoods of north Austin. Even the station that seems intended to serve the Domain is actually a ten minute walk from it, twenty minutes to most of the shops and restaurants.
  - NathanKP 7y ago
    I mean its not like they really had much of a choice for the route. They didn't build new tracks, just reused old existing tracks and built stations along the way. I lived in Austin when they were voting to build the rail line and there was so much opposition that they never would have been able to get funding for any serious development of new tracks. There was a proposal for a while to run trains up Mopac, along the train line in the middle of the highway there, but apparently that wasn't possible because there is too much freight traffic on that line. > The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable That actually wasn't the case either. The original proposal was for a roughly $2 billion project, and while it had lots of support in the central city the suburbs voted against it. In the end they got the proposal passed, but with a drastically reduced budget, and were only able to spend about $100 million to build a rail system. So they just slapped together the red line on existing rail tracks
    - dkarl 7y ago
      They could have found the money if people weren’t opposed to the route the money would have enabled. The university was very strongly opposed, NIMBY residents in north Austin were opposed to having nearby transit, and lots of people who owned or rented commercial land along the route were opposed because businesses would lose a lot of business during construction. Many of the people who were opposed found cost to be a convenient grounds for opposition, and the cheaper alternative happened to conveniently coincide with making the least number of people upset.
      - NathanKP 7y ago
        Haha yeah, I rememeber the NIMBY's in North Austin. I was living out near the Domain area back then, so I was glad to at least get the Kramar station. Honestly the biggest shame is still no rail line out to Austin Bergstrom.
the_common_man 7y ago
Buses in bay area and in SF take forever as well
supernova87a 7y ago
This is a real problem, and hard to raise without coming off (or being accused) as an insensitive clod. The number of handicapped and mentally ill / incapacitated users who take public transport is a really big problem when combined with a system's stated need to serve everyone equally. They take up stopping time, slow the bus down, antagonize other riders, which leads to people not wanting to take the bus, making it seen more and more a transport mode of the dysfunctional. Then depriving it of funding, and into a spiral of decline. On a train or bus, you can't allow 1 person to delay 50 or 200 by multiple minutes during every ride. People who take public transport (the poor, those with no alternative) are the very people whose time is precious and wasting it with delays is really irresponsible. There needs to be a way to handle the outlier cases who slow the system down, to maintain confidence and reliability of the system for the bulk majority of passengers.
- unapologetic 7y ago
  I'd go with selfish ableist asshole over insensitive clod. The reason it's hard to raise this "real problem" without coming off that way is being you are absolutely just being an ableist asshole. Yeah it's a real problem that people who have trouble walking or traveling need to get around. Sorry that's mildly inconvenient. Maybe you should just quit being lazy and walk.
  - supernova87a 7y ago
    "Ableist"? Go off back to your ridiculous PC college fantasy world and leave the solving of real problems to people who want to actually make things better.
    - dang 7y ago
      Breaking the site guidelines like this is not ok here, regardless of whether another user broke them. We've had to warn you about this in the past. Continuing to post like this will get you banned, so please don't. Edit: it also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not ok, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for (curiosity and thoughtful conversation). We ban such accounts, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
alex_c 7y ago
Toronto handles this in part with a separate fleet of buses for wheelchair users. It’s effectively a taxi service with the same cost as a bus fare. It’s not perfect, it has to be booked in advance and times / availability can be unpredictable, but it is there. http://www.ttc.ca/WheelTrans/index.jsp http://www.ttc.ca/WheelTrans/index.jsp All regular buses are still wheelchair accessible, but in practice I cannot remember the last time I saw a wheelchair user on a bus.

krn1p4n1c 7y ago

It does, if you're going from Leander/Cedar Park to downtown it's useful. It takes about the same amount of time as driving in rush-hour, but without the bs. Texas generally sees public-transport as something for poor people and the state is full of armchair libertarians..

dkarl 7y ago
Yep, that's almost the only scenario it covers, along with commuting from east Austin to the Domain. I was at a lecture recently about the things cities do right and wrong when planning public transit, and the speaker used Austin's rail system to illustrate what happens when cities route public transit around political opposition. The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable, and Austin's Red Line is the perfect example: it barely sticks its nose into one side of downtown and then manages to dodge the capitol area, the university, and the dense residential neighborhoods of north Austin. Even the station that seems intended to serve the Domain is actually a ten minute walk from it, twenty minutes to most of the shops and restaurants.
- NathanKP 7y ago
  I mean its not like they really had much of a choice for the route. They didn't build new tracks, just reused old existing tracks and built stations along the way. I lived in Austin when they were voting to build the rail line and there was so much opposition that they never would have been able to get funding for any serious development of new tracks. There was a proposal for a while to run trains up Mopac, along the train line in the middle of the highway there, but apparently that wasn't possible because there is too much freight traffic on that line. > The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable That actually wasn't the case either. The original proposal was for a roughly $2 billion project, and while it had lots of support in the central city the suburbs voted against it. In the end they got the proposal passed, but with a drastically reduced budget, and were only able to spend about $100 million to build a rail system. So they just slapped together the red line on existing rail tracks
  - dkarl 7y ago
    They could have found the money if people weren’t opposed to the route the money would have enabled. The university was very strongly opposed, NIMBY residents in north Austin were opposed to having nearby transit, and lots of people who owned or rented commercial land along the route were opposed because businesses would lose a lot of business during construction. Many of the people who were opposed found cost to be a convenient grounds for opposition, and the cheaper alternative happened to conveniently coincide with making the least number of people upset.
    - NathanKP 7y ago
      Haha yeah, I rememeber the NIMBY's in North Austin. I was living out near the Domain area back then, so I was glad to at least get the Kramar station. Honestly the biggest shame is still no rail line out to Austin Bergstrom.

the_common_man 7y ago

Buses in bay area and in SF take forever as well

supernova87a 7y ago

This is a real problem, and hard to raise without coming off (or being accused) as an insensitive clod. The number of handicapped and mentally ill / incapacitated users who take public transport is a really big problem when combined with a system's stated need to serve everyone equally. They take up stopping time, slow the bus down, antagonize other riders, which leads to people not wanting to take the bus, making it seen more and more a transport mode of the dysfunctional. Then depriving it of funding, and into a spiral of decline. On a train or bus, you can't allow 1 person to delay 50 or 200 by multiple minutes during every ride. People who take public transport (the poor, those with no alternative) are the very people whose time is precious and wasting it with delays is really irresponsible. There needs to be a way to handle the outlier cases who slow the system down, to maintain confidence and reliability of the system for the bulk majority of passengers.

unapologetic 7y ago
I'd go with selfish ableist asshole over insensitive clod. The reason it's hard to raise this "real problem" without coming off that way is being you are absolutely just being an ableist asshole. Yeah it's a real problem that people who have trouble walking or traveling need to get around. Sorry that's mildly inconvenient. Maybe you should just quit being lazy and walk.
- supernova87a 7y ago
  "Ableist"? Go off back to your ridiculous PC college fantasy world and leave the solving of real problems to people who want to actually make things better.
  - dang 7y ago
    Breaking the site guidelines like this is not ok here, regardless of whether another user broke them. We've had to warn you about this in the past. Continuing to post like this will get you banned, so please don't. Edit: it also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not ok, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for (curiosity and thoughtful conversation). We ban such accounts, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

alex_c 7y ago

Toronto handles this in part with a separate fleet of buses for wheelchair users. It’s effectively a taxi service with the same cost as a bus fare. It’s not perfect, it has to be booked in advance and times / availability can be unpredictable, but it is there. http://www.ttc.ca/WheelTrans/index.jsp http://www.ttc.ca/WheelTrans/index.jsp All regular buses are still wheelchair accessible, but in practice I cannot remember the last time I saw a wheelchair user on a bus.