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Yes, in the US. Public transit does work well here, doing its part to commute the above categories of people around. Anyone who can afford to opts out because p

by llbbdd 1y ago

Yes, in the US. Public transit does work well here, doing its part to commute the above categories of people around. Anyone who can afford to opts out because point-to-point travel is literally always better no matter where you are in the world.

joseda-hg 1y ago
If literally everyone who can avoids it, I'm not sure it works that well I avoid having a car because I live in a place where I can get by with busses, public carpools and the occasional uber, having a car would mean having to deal with finding parking for it, finding a mechanic I trust, driving in traffic and having to still ocasionally use any the former if I want to have a beer
- llbbdd 1y ago
  It's not a matter of quality, it's a matter of preference. I don't own a car. I live three blocks from a bus stop and I Uber everywhere instead, because it's cheap and predictable. The buses are clean, they run on time, but the population is well-off enough that there's almost no reason to take them, and that filters to buses being full of people who for one reason or another (often significant problems integrating with society) cannot pay for an alternative. If one takes public transit it's because of convenience, cost, or virtue, and convenience is often the leg lacking, because it doesn't come to your house. I have walked blocks to and stood at many bus stops in my life surrounded by unwell people and telling myself that I'm being socially efficient does not smooth that over particularly well.
  - palata 1y ago
    Not saying that you're wrong at all, but that feels pretty specific to the US. Which to me confirms that it is an urban planning failure. In many places in the world, it's not remotely like that. I understand that "public transportation sucks in the US", but I feel like US people conclude from it that "public transportation sucks". And this is wrong. It's really a failure in the US.
    - llbbdd 1y ago
      That's fine, I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. However I cannot imagine a version of public transit that would be so good that I would actually use it - and this includes looking at the options available in other countries, because as far as I know we're still operating with buses, trains, subways, carpools, etc. Until ya'll have free taxis that come to your house and take you directly to your destination, it's just not a comparable sell. To that extent I think it comes back to preference and maybe culture, and doesn't indicate any kind of failure. In the US we can afford not to take public transit and exercise that preference, in many places, it's not an option.
      - queenkjuul 1y ago
        Plenty of Europeans can afford to do whatever they want and still take transit. Same in Japan, China, all over the developed world. I just fundamentally can't get why you're so offput by trains.
      - palata 1y ago
        > In the US we can afford not to take public transit and exercise that preference, in many places, it's not an option. Public transit is objectively a better solution than individual cars. It's not that other countries have public transit because they don't have a choice. They do: they just choose the better option. > To that extent I think it comes back to preference and maybe culture, and doesn't indicate any kind of failure. Sure, it was built like this in the US because of the culture. But retrospectively it was a mistake. Driving an individual car emits more CO2 than taking a bus or a train, period. The US is probably the only place in the world where a swasticar is considered "ecological": it's using a lot of energy, just because it's heavy.
  - joseda-hg 1y ago
    It's the association with unwell people that I don't get, and I do agree that it feels particularly US Centric Coming from a place where it's a lot more normalized, I've taken the bus, twice a day for the last say 7 Years, the worst I've seen has been the ocassional drunk person (I've also slept 90% of my commute plenty of times, that's how safe I feel) Mostly it's working people and high school students (But also, old people running errands or going to church) I assume most of those druggies/thiefs/etc, know that there's a lot to lose if they get caught messing with people on the bus (And I have seen a couple times a driver refusing service to specific people) All the drivers know each other, and people on the same route are more often than not in you community and will tell people around On the same note, a common thief usually avoids "working" places near his own house, because that's one quick way of destroying your life even if police never gets involved
    - llbbdd 1y ago
      That's reasonable, and as I noted in another comment I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. Though I see a lot of discourse around this dismissed as "US-centric" while avoiding the fact that the US, the melting-pot of the world, is potentially one of the best test-cases for whether public transit works. All of the situations you describe are just carpooling with extra steps. Public transit as described in the US is a bunch of strangers with different goals and different jobs getting together in the same car at approximately the same time to go to roughly the same block. As a system it needs to be able to handle those, and when you scale it past the carpooling step, it doesn't. Perhaps that's the problem to be solved, but if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.
      - joseda-hg 1y ago
        I don't think I follow, all of those people in my example are taking the same route / the same bus, How is that different? Or what difference would there be on a carpool / not a carpool? On the same idea, walking a few blocks is the expectation here, being left on the same block on public transport would be enough to increase real state value The bus I take everyday usually has: - A random assortment of (Usually european) backpackers - Some hospital workers - A few factory workers - Some office monkeys like me - Random people dressed normally that I can't categorize We just go along roughly the same route at the same hour
palata 1y ago
My experience in the US is that it's not always worse than a car. I tried multiple times going from the San Francisco airport to Oakland. The BART was systematically faster than a taxi stuck in the traffic. I feel a lot safer going to the airport with the BART than with a taxi, because with the taxi I may miss my flight. Similar experience driving in Los Angeles. So much traffic, whenever there is a train it's better. In NYC, the subway works really well, too.
- llbbdd 1y ago
  I think these are just different measurements of safety. I do trust a subway to get to its destination on a reasonable schedule to a greater degree than an Uber, but to me that's a very different question than physical safety. The NYC subway is a great example of this actually, since it does seem to run very well but in the last year has had multiple horrifying incidents.
  - palata 1y ago
    > The NYC subway is a great example of this actually, since it does seem to run very well but in the last year has had multiple horrifying incidents. Boeing has had multiple horrifying incidents in the last years. Would you say that aviation is unsafe?
    - llbbdd 1y ago
      Again I think these are different concerns. On a plane I am with a section of the public that can hold their life together enough to buy a plane ticket, and I do not feel overtly physically threatened by them. On a subway I am with a section of the public so prolifically jumping over turnstiles that it's a systemic concern for for the subway itself. Concerns about the engineering mettle at Boeing or whoever provides the subway cars for NYC are separate.
      - palata 1y ago
        That's not what I meant. I understand that there are uncomfortable experiences in the subway in big cities. But statistically, what percentage of the people get physically hurt as compared to the total number of travellers? Same applies to planes: the quality of Boeing seems to have gone down in the last few years to the point where I choose airlines flying Airbus. That's my feeling, it is valid as a feeling. But statistically, the likelihood of my flight with Boeing ending up in a crash is very small.
Mawr 1y ago
> point-to-point travel is literally always better no matter where you are in the world Yeah, cycling is better than public transportation in cities in most scenarios.

by llbbdd 1y ago

joseda-hg 1y ago

If literally everyone who can avoids it, I'm not sure it works that well I avoid having a car because I live in a place where I can get by with busses, public carpools and the occasional uber, having a car would mean having to deal with finding parking for it, finding a mechanic I trust, driving in traffic and having to still ocasionally use any the former if I want to have a beer

llbbdd 1y ago
It's not a matter of quality, it's a matter of preference. I don't own a car. I live three blocks from a bus stop and I Uber everywhere instead, because it's cheap and predictable. The buses are clean, they run on time, but the population is well-off enough that there's almost no reason to take them, and that filters to buses being full of people who for one reason or another (often significant problems integrating with society) cannot pay for an alternative. If one takes public transit it's because of convenience, cost, or virtue, and convenience is often the leg lacking, because it doesn't come to your house. I have walked blocks to and stood at many bus stops in my life surrounded by unwell people and telling myself that I'm being socially efficient does not smooth that over particularly well.
- palata 1y ago
  Not saying that you're wrong at all, but that feels pretty specific to the US. Which to me confirms that it is an urban planning failure. In many places in the world, it's not remotely like that. I understand that "public transportation sucks in the US", but I feel like US people conclude from it that "public transportation sucks". And this is wrong. It's really a failure in the US.
  - llbbdd 1y ago
    That's fine, I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. However I cannot imagine a version of public transit that would be so good that I would actually use it - and this includes looking at the options available in other countries, because as far as I know we're still operating with buses, trains, subways, carpools, etc. Until ya'll have free taxis that come to your house and take you directly to your destination, it's just not a comparable sell. To that extent I think it comes back to preference and maybe culture, and doesn't indicate any kind of failure. In the US we can afford not to take public transit and exercise that preference, in many places, it's not an option.
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      Plenty of Europeans can afford to do whatever they want and still take transit. Same in Japan, China, all over the developed world. I just fundamentally can't get why you're so offput by trains.
    - palata 1y ago
      > In the US we can afford not to take public transit and exercise that preference, in many places, it's not an option. Public transit is objectively a better solution than individual cars. It's not that other countries have public transit because they don't have a choice. They do: they just choose the better option. > To that extent I think it comes back to preference and maybe culture, and doesn't indicate any kind of failure. Sure, it was built like this in the US because of the culture. But retrospectively it was a mistake. Driving an individual car emits more CO2 than taking a bus or a train, period. The US is probably the only place in the world where a swasticar is considered "ecological": it's using a lot of energy, just because it's heavy.
- joseda-hg 1y ago
  It's the association with unwell people that I don't get, and I do agree that it feels particularly US Centric Coming from a place where it's a lot more normalized, I've taken the bus, twice a day for the last say 7 Years, the worst I've seen has been the ocassional drunk person (I've also slept 90% of my commute plenty of times, that's how safe I feel) Mostly it's working people and high school students (But also, old people running errands or going to church) I assume most of those druggies/thiefs/etc, know that there's a lot to lose if they get caught messing with people on the bus (And I have seen a couple times a driver refusing service to specific people) All the drivers know each other, and people on the same route are more often than not in you community and will tell people around On the same note, a common thief usually avoids "working" places near his own house, because that's one quick way of destroying your life even if police never gets involved
  - llbbdd 1y ago
    That's reasonable, and as I noted in another comment I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. Though I see a lot of discourse around this dismissed as "US-centric" while avoiding the fact that the US, the melting-pot of the world, is potentially one of the best test-cases for whether public transit works. All of the situations you describe are just carpooling with extra steps. Public transit as described in the US is a bunch of strangers with different goals and different jobs getting together in the same car at approximately the same time to go to roughly the same block. As a system it needs to be able to handle those, and when you scale it past the carpooling step, it doesn't. Perhaps that's the problem to be solved, but if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.
    - joseda-hg 1y ago
      I don't think I follow, all of those people in my example are taking the same route / the same bus, How is that different? Or what difference would there be on a carpool / not a carpool? On the same idea, walking a few blocks is the expectation here, being left on the same block on public transport would be enough to increase real state value The bus I take everyday usually has: - A random assortment of (Usually european) backpackers - Some hospital workers - A few factory workers - Some office monkeys like me - Random people dressed normally that I can't categorize We just go along roughly the same route at the same hour

palata 1y ago

My experience in the US is that it's not always worse than a car. I tried multiple times going from the San Francisco airport to Oakland. The BART was systematically faster than a taxi stuck in the traffic. I feel a lot safer going to the airport with the BART than with a taxi, because with the taxi I may miss my flight. Similar experience driving in Los Angeles. So much traffic, whenever there is a train it's better. In NYC, the subway works really well, too.

llbbdd 1y ago
I think these are just different measurements of safety. I do trust a subway to get to its destination on a reasonable schedule to a greater degree than an Uber, but to me that's a very different question than physical safety. The NYC subway is a great example of this actually, since it does seem to run very well but in the last year has had multiple horrifying incidents.
- palata 1y ago
  > The NYC subway is a great example of this actually, since it does seem to run very well but in the last year has had multiple horrifying incidents. Boeing has had multiple horrifying incidents in the last years. Would you say that aviation is unsafe?
  - llbbdd 1y ago
    Again I think these are different concerns. On a plane I am with a section of the public that can hold their life together enough to buy a plane ticket, and I do not feel overtly physically threatened by them. On a subway I am with a section of the public so prolifically jumping over turnstiles that it's a systemic concern for for the subway itself. Concerns about the engineering mettle at Boeing or whoever provides the subway cars for NYC are separate.
    - palata 1y ago
      That's not what I meant. I understand that there are uncomfortable experiences in the subway in big cities. But statistically, what percentage of the people get physically hurt as compared to the total number of travellers? Same applies to planes: the quality of Boeing seems to have gone down in the last few years to the point where I choose airlines flying Airbus. That's my feeling, it is valid as a feeling. But statistically, the likelihood of my flight with Boeing ending up in a crash is very small.

Mawr 1y ago

> point-to-point travel is literally always better no matter where you are in the world Yeah, cycling is better than public transportation in cities in most scenarios.