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So I hate driving and actually moved to DC for work and also partly for the transit. Here's what I found: 1) Taking the metro many places (for example, from my

So I hate driving and actually moved to DC for work and also partly for the transit. Here's what I found: 1) Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building a couple blocks from the initial station to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge. Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up but a: most people have a pretty mediocre personal mobile computing setup and b: now I can't use that time for anything other than programming projects. 2) I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit. It's bad enough not having a truck but losing the car entirely would create some serious logistical problems on a regular basis. So while I saved some money I couldn't save as much as I wanted. 3) Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families^ and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places. It might not ever be economical. Like it or not transit will probably always lower property values in the US too. For whatever reason the more violent people here tend to take it and anywhere it goes becomes more violent so building it into suburbs like these is always going to be unpopular. 4) Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent. I have an extremely high tolerance for this sort of thing (I've wandered around some of the more violent cities early in the morning just to see what the fuss is about) but I can absolutely see why most people here would give up after that happening once at a maximum. I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it. (^ and for those that don't start families, many have lots of intense DIY projects that don't fit in apartment buildings and actually need either detached housing or industrial space with similar density.)

ashtonkem 4y ago
> Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge. Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially. One of the clear downsides to transit oriented cities is that you do need to pay attention to transit access when renting. A unit being “luxury” is no guarantee that it’s in a convenient place for transit, nor that the trip will be short. > Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up I find the need to make commute time productive quite an odd but common impulse. How about just making your commute suck less? Reading a book is better than driving in traffic. > I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit. Again, experience varies. For a lot of people it would be cheaper to abandon the car and pay for deliveries when necessary. Regardless, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you relegate your car trips to just when you need bulk goods, that is far more efficient than the current habit of using a car fo every single trip. > Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places. We could, but we’ve built our infrastructure with the opposite assumption in mind. Most other rich countries use a mix of regional rail, bus, and cars to solve this problem. The issue of “mass transit doesn’t go to the burbs, therefore I must use a car everywhere for everything” is an entirely self inflicted wound. > Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent Maybe we could solve that problem instead? Because that seems like a rather silly rationale for designing a transit system around. Also, it’s not like all car drivers are sober. In fact, a drunk driver is almost certainly a far bigger risk to your safety than a belligerent drunk on the train. > I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it. It’s almost like I’m arguing that we should make public transit more convenient than using a car for urban transit or something.
- iso1210 4y ago
  > Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially. I got a taxi from Gare du Nord to a hotel on Champs Eleyse this evening -- took about 40 minutes to go 2 miles. That's ridiculous, but it's apparently a thing.
  - ashtonkem 4y ago
    A reasonably fit person can walk 2 miles in 30-40 minutes, so your cab was literally going walking speed.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Not with heavy baggage.
      - ashtonkem 4y ago
        Duh? I wasn't literally suggesting that GP walk from a hotel; baggage was obviously implied by the context. I'm just commenting on how taking a taxi on that route is less time and speed efficient than walking. Obviously a bus would be a better choice, or a train depending on geography. They handle baggage just fine.
  - ericd 4y ago
    That might be partly because Paris has heavily deprioritized cars, in favor of bikes (which seem to be booming in popularity as a result).
cameronh90 4y ago
Almost everything you're saying is a symptom of poor investment in public transport. I have no doubt that the car works better for your commute, as is the case for millions of other people. Unfortunately, stick millions of cars on the road and you have a huge bottleneck for growing the commuter belt, which means only houses in a relatively small area are useful, and they get extremely expensive. Historically, and in some countries still, we solved this problem by identifying when it was happening and creating new public transport lines for faster commutes and people living further out. In the UK, we even developed whole "New Towns", upgraded their transport, amenities and infrastructure specifically to support shuttling a greater number of people into London. They weren't particularly inspiring towns, and we still make fun of them nearly a century later - but it worked. Even today, it's far quicker to take the train into London from those towns than it is to drive, as is the case for pretty much all suburb to central commuting here. There are still lots of situations where a car will be better (I have one too, in London), but if we can get people out of their cars for their commutes, that frees cities up to expand and useful houses will become more affordable. Driving to the tip or mall is much less of a problem. Regarding the violence and antisocial behaviour, that's really a problem of policing and allocation of funding. It needn't be that way and it doesn't happen to nearly the same extent in the UK and I put that down at least partially to the excellent British Transport Police. Apparently it used to be violent and dangerous in the 80s but we turned it around. Now the train stations are mostly far safer than the surrounding environs. If I was ever being harassed or attacked, I would run towards the station as there would most likely be someone to help me there. Living within a few minutes of a train station also significantly increases your property value here, provided you're not so close that it rattles your bed...
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > Regarding the violence and antisocial behaviour, that's really a problem of policing and allocation of funding. Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world with heavy investment in public transportation & policing, and yet they still have issues with sexual harassment and sexual assault on their trains. It’s a hard problem to fix related to population density.
  - 4y ago
hnlmorg 4y ago
The problem is you’re comparing the commute by public transport in the current status quo and missing the point that fixing the car culture means improving public transport so that it does become more convenient than taking the car. Plenty of European cities have achieved this. I work in London and I wouldn’t even dream of driving into the city. It’s far more convenient to get the train.
- exfascist 4y ago
  I think you should read my comment a little more carefully. 1 and 2 are due to serious physical and economic constraints that are very unlikely to change and apply to all but the absolute most dense areas. Remember, this is in DC. It's unusually dense and is supposed to be the best we have. 3 and 4 are additionally due to cultural, historical, and demographic problems that are becoming worse rather than better and the current political situation is working to accelerate it. I'm not against transit but it's not the solution people think it is.
  - dijit 4y ago
    It is. But the problem is that the US is about 80-100 years behind Europe in this. Personal economies are literally built on the idea of driving, it will be painful to solve that, but unfortunately it’s necessary to solve it otherwise you end up losing enormous amounts of your life to traffic and the infrastructure cost grows exponentially.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      America is simply too big for public transit to replace cars to any great extent. There's an old cliche that goes something like, "In America, people think 100 years is a long time. In Europe, people think 100 kilometers is a long distance." It's pretty much spot on.
      - exfascist 4y ago
        I'm not convinced the physical size is the problem.
CRConrad 4y ago
> and b: now I can't use that time for anything other than programming projects. Read a book.
- ashtonkem 4y ago
  Right? I genuinely don’t understand why “I want my commute to be more pleasant” isn’t a more common answer. Not everything has to be productive!
  - exfascist 4y ago
    When you're spending twice the time traveling it cuts into time that was otherwise productive. You can't spend all your time relaxing.
elevaet 4y ago
>Like it or not transit will probably always lower property values in the US too. For whatever reason the more violent people here tend to take it and anywhere it goes becomes more violent so building it into suburbs like these is always going to be unpopular. This smells of the coded racism that is so rampant in the USA. It's sad because there might be some element of truth at its root, but it gets exaggerated and the attitude creates more and more segregation, exacerbates the divisions and creates a hostile society.
hackerfromthefu 4y ago
The comments pushing for urban densification and public transport are largely theoretical and abstract, while your comment is personal and subjective. To all those thinking about is as 'policy' - you have to solve ways for making the subjective experience actually better if people are going to go for it.

ashtonkem 4y ago

> Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge. Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially. One of the clear downsides to transit oriented cities is that you do need to pay attention to transit access when renting. A unit being “luxury” is no guarantee that it’s in a convenient place for transit, nor that the trip will be short. > Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up I find the need to make commute time productive quite an odd but common impulse. How about just making your commute suck less? Reading a book is better than driving in traffic. > I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit. Again, experience varies. For a lot of people it would be cheaper to abandon the car and pay for deliveries when necessary. Regardless, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you relegate your car trips to just when you need bulk goods, that is far more efficient than the current habit of using a car fo every single trip. > Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places. We could, but we’ve built our infrastructure with the opposite assumption in mind. Most other rich countries use a mix of regional rail, bus, and cars to solve this problem. The issue of “mass transit doesn’t go to the burbs, therefore I must use a car everywhere for everything” is an entirely self inflicted wound. > Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent Maybe we could solve that problem instead? Because that seems like a rather silly rationale for designing a transit system around. Also, it’s not like all car drivers are sober. In fact, a drunk driver is almost certainly a far bigger risk to your safety than a belligerent drunk on the train. > I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it. It’s almost like I’m arguing that we should make public transit more convenient than using a car for urban transit or something.

iso1210 4y ago
> Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially. I got a taxi from Gare du Nord to a hotel on Champs Eleyse this evening -- took about 40 minutes to go 2 miles. That's ridiculous, but it's apparently a thing.
- ashtonkem 4y ago
  A reasonably fit person can walk 2 miles in 30-40 minutes, so your cab was literally going walking speed.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Not with heavy baggage.
    - ashtonkem 4y ago
      Duh? I wasn't literally suggesting that GP walk from a hotel; baggage was obviously implied by the context. I'm just commenting on how taking a taxi on that route is less time and speed efficient than walking. Obviously a bus would be a better choice, or a train depending on geography. They handle baggage just fine.
- ericd 4y ago
  That might be partly because Paris has heavily deprioritized cars, in favor of bikes (which seem to be booming in popularity as a result).

cameronh90 4y ago

Almost everything you're saying is a symptom of poor investment in public transport. I have no doubt that the car works better for your commute, as is the case for millions of other people. Unfortunately, stick millions of cars on the road and you have a huge bottleneck for growing the commuter belt, which means only houses in a relatively small area are useful, and they get extremely expensive. Historically, and in some countries still, we solved this problem by identifying when it was happening and creating new public transport lines for faster commutes and people living further out. In the UK, we even developed whole "New Towns", upgraded their transport, amenities and infrastructure specifically to support shuttling a greater number of people into London. They weren't particularly inspiring towns, and we still make fun of them nearly a century later - but it worked. Even today, it's far quicker to take the train into London from those towns than it is to drive, as is the case for pretty much all suburb to central commuting here. There are still lots of situations where a car will be better (I have one too, in London), but if we can get people out of their cars for their commutes, that frees cities up to expand and useful houses will become more affordable. Driving to the tip or mall is much less of a problem. Regarding the violence and antisocial behaviour, that's really a problem of policing and allocation of funding. It needn't be that way and it doesn't happen to nearly the same extent in the UK and I put that down at least partially to the excellent British Transport Police. Apparently it used to be violent and dangerous in the 80s but we turned it around. Now the train stations are mostly far safer than the surrounding environs. If I was ever being harassed or attacked, I would run towards the station as there would most likely be someone to help me there. Living within a few minutes of a train station also significantly increases your property value here, provided you're not so close that it rattles your bed...

chaostheory 4y ago
> Regarding the violence and antisocial behaviour, that's really a problem of policing and allocation of funding. Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world with heavy investment in public transportation & policing, and yet they still have issues with sexual harassment and sexual assault on their trains. It’s a hard problem to fix related to population density.
- 4y ago

hnlmorg 4y ago

The problem is you’re comparing the commute by public transport in the current status quo and missing the point that fixing the car culture means improving public transport so that it does become more convenient than taking the car. Plenty of European cities have achieved this. I work in London and I wouldn’t even dream of driving into the city. It’s far more convenient to get the train.

exfascist 4y ago
I think you should read my comment a little more carefully. 1 and 2 are due to serious physical and economic constraints that are very unlikely to change and apply to all but the absolute most dense areas. Remember, this is in DC. It's unusually dense and is supposed to be the best we have. 3 and 4 are additionally due to cultural, historical, and demographic problems that are becoming worse rather than better and the current political situation is working to accelerate it. I'm not against transit but it's not the solution people think it is.
- dijit 4y ago
  It is. But the problem is that the US is about 80-100 years behind Europe in this. Personal economies are literally built on the idea of driving, it will be painful to solve that, but unfortunately it’s necessary to solve it otherwise you end up losing enormous amounts of your life to traffic and the infrastructure cost grows exponentially.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    America is simply too big for public transit to replace cars to any great extent. There's an old cliche that goes something like, "In America, people think 100 years is a long time. In Europe, people think 100 kilometers is a long distance." It's pretty much spot on.
    - exfascist 4y ago
      I'm not convinced the physical size is the problem.

CRConrad 4y ago

> and b: now I can't use that time for anything other than programming projects. Read a book.

ashtonkem 4y ago
Right? I genuinely don’t understand why “I want my commute to be more pleasant” isn’t a more common answer. Not everything has to be productive!
- exfascist 4y ago
  When you're spending twice the time traveling it cuts into time that was otherwise productive. You can't spend all your time relaxing.

elevaet 4y ago

>Like it or not transit will probably always lower property values in the US too. For whatever reason the more violent people here tend to take it and anywhere it goes becomes more violent so building it into suburbs like these is always going to be unpopular. This smells of the coded racism that is so rampant in the USA. It's sad because there might be some element of truth at its root, but it gets exaggerated and the attitude creates more and more segregation, exacerbates the divisions and creates a hostile society.

hackerfromthefu 4y ago

The comments pushing for urban densification and public transport are largely theoretical and abstract, while your comment is personal and subjective. To all those thinking about is as 'policy' - you have to solve ways for making the subjective experience actually better if people are going to go for it.