5 ms·

I mean you could just use public transport? I lived in a small village 40 minutes from a big city half my life. There are buses going every 30 minutes each way

by ajuc 3y ago

I mean you could just use public transport? I lived in a small village 40 minutes from a big city half my life. There are buses going every 30 minutes each way between around 06:00 and 20:00. They cost under 1 USD per trip. Lots of people use them - kids going to schools, people commuting for work, grandmas who don't have driving licence. I probably used them over 1000 times through my life. That city isn't even that big - 350 000 people. And the buses are profitable. Why can't cities over million people afford public transport is beyond me. BTW notice how old people who can't drive still might want to go to a cinema/theater/doctor/whatever without asking their family or paying for a taxi. It's a huge benefit to everybody that these buses are available. I doubt you can get AV profitable transporting 1 person where buses transport 10-20 people.

ghaff 3y ago
The only public transit option for me is commuter rail which would require me to drive to and park at the (relatively) nearby station. (I'm well outside the city's local bus and subway transit system.) It takes 60-90 minutes to go the 50 miles depending upon whether I need to connect to the subway at my destination or not. It runs no more frequently than hourly and the last couple of trains at night are more like 90+ minutes apart. It's utterly impractical to take in for an evening event. (And it's about $30 round-trip with parking; I do take it in the rare times when I'm going in for the day to work because driving in and back at rush hour is awful.) The commuter rail is "fine" but its schedule doesn't really work outside of commuting hours--and even that is significantly worse than pre-COVID.
- ajuc 3y ago
  Yeah for me it was like 500 meter walk to the bus stop :) And bus stops were every 2 km or so :) I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live? It it a matter of population density, different road network architecture (here most villages are build along the roads so you can put bus stops every 1-2 km and you'll get enoguh passangers to get by), or just a chicken-and-egg problem of customers not being used to it so it's not profitable if you create it?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There is a small regional transit system that covers the grocery store, Walmart, train station, and I'm not sure what else. My sense from seeing it at the grocery store is that it's mostly for seniors and others who can't drive. It covers the nearby ~40K population pair of cities. The surrounding towns--one of which I live in--are pretty rural, or at least exurban, with a very limited commercial tax base and generally don't even have sidewalks outside of the town centers. We'd have neither the density/demand or the budget to have a public transit system.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Comparing your experience of the service for ~40k people vs an urban setting intended to serve ~400k people or more seems at least irrelevant and at most intentionally misleading.
      - thereisnospork 3y ago
        That sounds pretty accurate for most of the country which isn't in an ultra high COL area.[0] One doesn't "just" take public transit to a city center from most of America. [0] Which can be fairly accurately described as regions within an acceptable commute of the aforementioned centers. (Or non city job centers a la silicon valley).
  - hollerith 3y ago
    >I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live? Because the residents of his city overwhemlingly prefer cars.
    - eropple 3y ago
      Do they? Or is it the only game in town because of decisions made sixty years ago and housing pressures and cost structures mean that if you want to live at an affordable level in that area a car is functionally required? (Hint: in almost all of America, it's this one.)
phpisthebest 3y ago
[flagged]
- ajuc 3y ago
  They are strictly private enterprises and aren't subsidized. There was a national transport company that was subsidized, but it was slowly losing customers after communism fell in 1989 because it was inflexible and used big 40-person buses instead of small 20-person vans on every route. Now the national one was privatized and only runs very few long-distance routes in some parts of the country, most routes are handled by small companies that have a few vans each. The city buses going inside the big cities are centralized and often subsidized tho. > School Busses, not public transport, School buses are a form of public transport, we have them too, but kids go to various schools - some to the nearest one, some to a bigger city further away (I commuted to a primary school 5 km away and then high school 40 minutes away - and mostly used regular buses) - it wouldn't make sense to restrict these buses to kids only and then have separate buses for other people. Why drive 10 people when you have 20 seats and enough potential customers to fill them? > Nope, never. I prefer not to spat on, robbed, or other ways harassed. Why is this accepted? If people spit at others in a mall or a cinema would you just accept that it's a thing, or would the society do sth to stop it? It's not rocket science - the driver just has to call police and drive to meet them at nearest stop. In 90s we had huge problems with crime (20% unemployment at one point so you can imagine) yet public transport wasn't any less safe than a mall or cinema - what was unsafe was walking in the wrong hood after dark ;)
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    >>They are strictly private enterprises and aren't subsidized. I guess this is a deviation of definition, "public transport" in the US is government run, regulated, and subsidized by government. There are no private "public transport" in the form of local buses, trains, etc. They are either quasi government run (amtrak) or directly government run "Transportation Authority" often run by city or state governments. Airlines are private though at this point HEAVILY subsidized as most airports are government run, and they get bailouts all the time... I can not think of a single mass transportation system in the US that is not either directly owned by the government or HEAVILY subsidized by government >>Why is this accepted? Good question...
ZoomerCretin 3y ago
Public transit has been run at barebone levels in the US for so long that hardly anyone even thinks of it as something that should, or even can, function well. For a route in my city, a 14 minute drive in a car is 83 minutes on public transit. The three buses come every 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and 60 minutes respectively. There are no bus lanes, because drivers are a powerful and greedy constituency. There's no political will to convert one lane on each road to bus-only, to add traffic signal prioritization, or to buy enough buses and hire enough drivers to have 10-15 minute headways. Even if we did, we're fighting uphill against 70 years of suburbanization and the general pattern of very sparse and sprawling development. The level of taxation necessary to make transit work well in many areas would be far more than is politically feasible. Plus there's the perception of public transit being dangerous, for criminals and drug addicts, etc.

by ajuc 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago

The only public transit option for me is commuter rail which would require me to drive to and park at the (relatively) nearby station. (I'm well outside the city's local bus and subway transit system.) It takes 60-90 minutes to go the 50 miles depending upon whether I need to connect to the subway at my destination or not. It runs no more frequently than hourly and the last couple of trains at night are more like 90+ minutes apart. It's utterly impractical to take in for an evening event. (And it's about $30 round-trip with parking; I do take it in the rare times when I'm going in for the day to work because driving in and back at rush hour is awful.) The commuter rail is "fine" but its schedule doesn't really work outside of commuting hours--and even that is significantly worse than pre-COVID.

ajuc 3y ago
Yeah for me it was like 500 meter walk to the bus stop :) And bus stops were every 2 km or so :) I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live? It it a matter of population density, different road network architecture (here most villages are build along the roads so you can put bus stops every 1-2 km and you'll get enoguh passangers to get by), or just a chicken-and-egg problem of customers not being used to it so it's not profitable if you create it?
- ghaff 3y ago
  There is a small regional transit system that covers the grocery store, Walmart, train station, and I'm not sure what else. My sense from seeing it at the grocery store is that it's mostly for seniors and others who can't drive. It covers the nearby ~40K population pair of cities. The surrounding towns--one of which I live in--are pretty rural, or at least exurban, with a very limited commercial tax base and generally don't even have sidewalks outside of the town centers. We'd have neither the density/demand or the budget to have a public transit system.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Comparing your experience of the service for ~40k people vs an urban setting intended to serve ~400k people or more seems at least irrelevant and at most intentionally misleading.
    - thereisnospork 3y ago
      That sounds pretty accurate for most of the country which isn't in an ultra high COL area.[0] One doesn't "just" take public transit to a city center from most of America. [0] Which can be fairly accurately described as regions within an acceptable commute of the aforementioned centers. (Or non city job centers a la silicon valley).
- hollerith 3y ago
  >I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live? Because the residents of his city overwhemlingly prefer cars.
  - eropple 3y ago
    Do they? Or is it the only game in town because of decisions made sixty years ago and housing pressures and cost structures mean that if you want to live at an affordable level in that area a car is functionally required? (Hint: in almost all of America, it's this one.)

phpisthebest 3y ago

[flagged]

ajuc 3y ago
They are strictly private enterprises and aren't subsidized. There was a national transport company that was subsidized, but it was slowly losing customers after communism fell in 1989 because it was inflexible and used big 40-person buses instead of small 20-person vans on every route. Now the national one was privatized and only runs very few long-distance routes in some parts of the country, most routes are handled by small companies that have a few vans each. The city buses going inside the big cities are centralized and often subsidized tho. > School Busses, not public transport, School buses are a form of public transport, we have them too, but kids go to various schools - some to the nearest one, some to a bigger city further away (I commuted to a primary school 5 km away and then high school 40 minutes away - and mostly used regular buses) - it wouldn't make sense to restrict these buses to kids only and then have separate buses for other people. Why drive 10 people when you have 20 seats and enough potential customers to fill them? > Nope, never. I prefer not to spat on, robbed, or other ways harassed. Why is this accepted? If people spit at others in a mall or a cinema would you just accept that it's a thing, or would the society do sth to stop it? It's not rocket science - the driver just has to call police and drive to meet them at nearest stop. In 90s we had huge problems with crime (20% unemployment at one point so you can imagine) yet public transport wasn't any less safe than a mall or cinema - what was unsafe was walking in the wrong hood after dark ;)
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>They are strictly private enterprises and aren't subsidized. I guess this is a deviation of definition, "public transport" in the US is government run, regulated, and subsidized by government. There are no private "public transport" in the form of local buses, trains, etc. They are either quasi government run (amtrak) or directly government run "Transportation Authority" often run by city or state governments. Airlines are private though at this point HEAVILY subsidized as most airports are government run, and they get bailouts all the time... I can not think of a single mass transportation system in the US that is not either directly owned by the government or HEAVILY subsidized by government >>Why is this accepted? Good question...

ZoomerCretin 3y ago

Public transit has been run at barebone levels in the US for so long that hardly anyone even thinks of it as something that should, or even can, function well. For a route in my city, a 14 minute drive in a car is 83 minutes on public transit. The three buses come every 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and 60 minutes respectively. There are no bus lanes, because drivers are a powerful and greedy constituency. There's no political will to convert one lane on each road to bus-only, to add traffic signal prioritization, or to buy enough buses and hire enough drivers to have 10-15 minute headways. Even if we did, we're fighting uphill against 70 years of suburbanization and the general pattern of very sparse and sprawling development. The level of taxation necessary to make transit work well in many areas would be far more than is politically feasible. Plus there's the perception of public transit being dangerous, for criminals and drug addicts, etc.