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Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"? A bus will pretty much always be inferi

Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"? A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. Mathematically impossible to run on time. It never gets you where you want to go, just kinda close usually. If one doesn't show up, there is no real feedback without an extensive background metadata system. Never as clean as your own car (unless you're one of those carbage-loving people I suppose, but then you're just going to litter on the bus anyways). Obnoxious, loud, smelly, or crazy people you have to deal with. I'll never understand the crowd so desperate to have them, but I'll still support the cause if it cleans up the highways for me I guess.

jeffbee 1y ago
Nobody denies that if we all chip in to build a door-to-door freeway and free parking for you it will be cool for you. The question is whether we have better things to do with our money.
- kulahan 1y ago
  Than spending it upending the entire transportation infrastructure when we have much more pressing problems? Then I agree. If you think buying a whole bunch of busses is going to solve some major problem... I have a bridge to add to your purchase.
hamdingers 1y ago
> A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. I never have to clean a bus, or put gas in it, or change its oil. I don't even have to drive it. I don't have to dedicate a big portion of my property to storing it, just to pay to park it somewhere else when I go out. I'll never get a ticket for leaving it in the wrong place, and I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong. I don't have to worry about it getting stolen, or crashed into. I don't have to worry about being unable to afford the insurance or registration. I don't have any wealth tied up in it, so its deprecation doesn't matter. Having to walk a few minutes at the start and end of my journey is a small price to pay for such convenience. And if I ever do need one, I can rent one for less than the average American's monthly payment. In fact, I can rent the exact one I need that day, which might be a pickup today but a minivan tomorrow.
- watersb 1y ago
  > I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong. Technically, it's possible to be required to go to court, for some value of "used it wrong". Or so I'm told.
- kulahan 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - hamdingers 1y ago
    You have severe misanthropy you need to work out in therapy. The possibility of encountering elderly people or children on your commute should not invoke this kind of reaction and it's weird that's the first place your mind went. The answer is no, I do not mind people coming and going on the bus because I am a normal human. Not that your example is realistic anyway, I can't think of a time in the last few years any passenger has delayed my bus for 10 minutes (drivers, on the other hand...). FWIW "some mediocre experience every single day" could just as easily describe sitting in traffic. At least on the bus I can play with my phone. You find these arguments convincing because you're starting from "I hate the bus" and working backwards. That's not an honest way to have a conversation.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      Gotta love these armchair psychologists who have no clue what they’re talking about. You made a whole psychological profile because I… came up with an example. Physically painful to have to converse in scenarios like this. The fact that you think “transportation for people who explicitly cannot drive” is not a major draw of public transit, you’re crazy. But of course, when you start from “I love the bus” and work backwards, I guess you weren’t interested in arguing honestly from the beginning, right?
  - watwut 1y ago
    I have never seen a bus staying at stop for 10 min for random reason. You are making up inconveniences that dont exist.
NegativeK 1y ago
In most places I've lived, busses are for poor people. Because anyone else will pay whatever it takes to get a car and avoid something like a _three hour_ round trip for something 10 miles away. I'm not kidding; my work commute is 10 miles each way, in a city of way more than 1M, and it's 1.5 hours total for me to get to work on time. I've lived in one place where they were great. Dense urban environments can do that, though. So nuh us busses can be great (the trains were even better), but it seems like the US has zero actual drive to make public transit not crap.
- mothballed 1y ago
  I've lived in a couple places with public transit way faster and more efficient than cars. But because it's public, people can't be easily kicked off. Once I was caught between a knife fight; another time a schizophrenic person started to aggressively trap me in the corner while going on an increasing paranoid tirade. Not long after that I bought a bicycle.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    A bicycle is pretty much always going to beat a bus over reasonable distances, on performance alone, not even counting the crazy people.
ponector 1y ago
>>It never gets you where you want to go. As well as the car. Unless you destination is a parking lot.
rsynnott 1y ago
Always amused by HN on buses. It seems that the median HN is basically okay with trains, but is convinced that if they ever set foot on a bus they will immediately be stabbed by 47 drug addicts, and then their soul consigned to Bus Hell. It's kind of comically hyperbolic. I wonder where the dividing line is. Are HNs afraid of trams? Very Light Rail systems? Trambuses? Trolleybuses? BRTs? Railbuses? Someone should do a survey.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  (Though thinking about it further, probably _should_ be afraid of railbuses, which are a bus chassis on rails; kind of amazing they were ever allowed really. Bizarrely, some were actually still in use in the UK til 2021 or so. Even more shockingly, there don't seem to have been many/any documented fatal incidents; one of the UK railbuses was destroyed more or less completely in a crash, but it was empty at the time.)

jeffbee 1y ago

Nobody denies that if we all chip in to build a door-to-door freeway and free parking for you it will be cool for you. The question is whether we have better things to do with our money.

kulahan 1y ago
Than spending it upending the entire transportation infrastructure when we have much more pressing problems? Then I agree. If you think buying a whole bunch of busses is going to solve some major problem... I have a bridge to add to your purchase.

hamdingers 1y ago

> A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. I never have to clean a bus, or put gas in it, or change its oil. I don't even have to drive it. I don't have to dedicate a big portion of my property to storing it, just to pay to park it somewhere else when I go out. I'll never get a ticket for leaving it in the wrong place, and I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong. I don't have to worry about it getting stolen, or crashed into. I don't have to worry about being unable to afford the insurance or registration. I don't have any wealth tied up in it, so its deprecation doesn't matter. Having to walk a few minutes at the start and end of my journey is a small price to pay for such convenience. And if I ever do need one, I can rent one for less than the average American's monthly payment. In fact, I can rent the exact one I need that day, which might be a pickup today but a minivan tomorrow.

watersb 1y ago
> I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong. Technically, it's possible to be required to go to court, for some value of "used it wrong". Or so I'm told.
kulahan 1y ago
[flagged]
- hamdingers 1y ago
  You have severe misanthropy you need to work out in therapy. The possibility of encountering elderly people or children on your commute should not invoke this kind of reaction and it's weird that's the first place your mind went. The answer is no, I do not mind people coming and going on the bus because I am a normal human. Not that your example is realistic anyway, I can't think of a time in the last few years any passenger has delayed my bus for 10 minutes (drivers, on the other hand...). FWIW "some mediocre experience every single day" could just as easily describe sitting in traffic. At least on the bus I can play with my phone. You find these arguments convincing because you're starting from "I hate the bus" and working backwards. That's not an honest way to have a conversation.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Gotta love these armchair psychologists who have no clue what they’re talking about. You made a whole psychological profile because I… came up with an example. Physically painful to have to converse in scenarios like this. The fact that you think “transportation for people who explicitly cannot drive” is not a major draw of public transit, you’re crazy. But of course, when you start from “I love the bus” and work backwards, I guess you weren’t interested in arguing honestly from the beginning, right?
- watwut 1y ago
  I have never seen a bus staying at stop for 10 min for random reason. You are making up inconveniences that dont exist.

NegativeK 1y ago

In most places I've lived, busses are for poor people. Because anyone else will pay whatever it takes to get a car and avoid something like a _three hour_ round trip for something 10 miles away. I'm not kidding; my work commute is 10 miles each way, in a city of way more than 1M, and it's 1.5 hours total for me to get to work on time. I've lived in one place where they were great. Dense urban environments can do that, though. So nuh us busses can be great (the trains were even better), but it seems like the US has zero actual drive to make public transit not crap.

mothballed 1y ago
I've lived in a couple places with public transit way faster and more efficient than cars. But because it's public, people can't be easily kicked off. Once I was caught between a knife fight; another time a schizophrenic person started to aggressively trap me in the corner while going on an increasing paranoid tirade. Not long after that I bought a bicycle.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  A bicycle is pretty much always going to beat a bus over reasonable distances, on performance alone, not even counting the crazy people.

ponector 1y ago

>>It never gets you where you want to go. As well as the car. Unless you destination is a parking lot.

rsynnott 1y ago

Always amused by HN on buses. It seems that the median HN is basically okay with trains, but is convinced that if they ever set foot on a bus they will immediately be stabbed by 47 drug addicts, and then their soul consigned to Bus Hell. It's kind of comically hyperbolic. I wonder where the dividing line is. Are HNs afraid of trams? Very Light Rail systems? Trambuses? Trolleybuses? BRTs? Railbuses? Someone should do a survey.

rsynnott 1y ago
(Though thinking about it further, probably _should_ be afraid of railbuses, which are a bus chassis on rails; kind of amazing they were ever allowed really. Bizarrely, some were actually still in use in the UK til 2021 or so. Even more shockingly, there don't seem to have been many/any documented fatal incidents; one of the UK railbuses was destroyed more or less completely in a crash, but it was empty at the time.)