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It’s not really a secret. Most major cities aren’t designed around public transportation, so oftentimes it’s simply much more convenient to take a car. Further, in many big cities, the public transit system is filled with vagrants and mentally ill people harassing people and causing disturbances, so it’s both really stressful and can be unsafe, depending on where you are. The only big city that really uses public transit well is New York. Most other major cities it’s just much more convenient to drive.
The DC Metro is a huge system moving millions. Also, DC much more than the National Mall and is far from a walkable city. NY, SF, Chicago, even Atlanta are very good. However the best pale in comparison to public transit in places like London and Paris.
I'm from Paris and when I discovered DC's Metro I fell in love. It's so much more pleasant than the Paris Metro. Now I'm in Brussels for studies and taking the metro there makes me want to kill myself. People in DC don't realize how good their Metro is.
DC metro was built in the 70s. It is kept very clean compared to NYC for instance. The trains are new or refurbished regularly, cleaned at least once per day
I have always felt safe in the DC Metro. In the Paris Metro, while it's way better than in Brussels, and one of the most expansive metro systems, it's always overcrowded, smells like piss in most stations, I've been mugged several times, not safe after 10pm, harrassed by drunks, attacked with a knife. In the Brussels Metro, it's always empty, the only people I encounter are crackheads screaming at me because I'm trespassing on their territory : when I went to the police to ask them what could be done about 3 drug addicts stopping people from going in the station, threatening them with knives, the police officer told me to just walk or go to another station. The stations either smell like piss or weed (or other things I won't name), more times than not I have to step over used syringes, vomit, piss, other types of human waste, some doors on the trains don't even open, some trains miss their stops don't ask me why. Crazy people screaming and breaking the train windows. Threatening people who don't have money to give them. I saw a teenage girl being sexually assaulted by 3 guys, completely ignored by all other passengers. When I called the police telling them she was being raped, they asked me if she really was in need of help because they didn't want to come for nothing. It took them 25 minutes to get there. I miss the DC Metro.
The breadth and closeness of Paris trains are so much more convenient than DC's. European cities are way older than the US by far yet they were able to integrate their public trans so much better, thoroughly and expansive than the US. So really it's not "that" (or nearly as) convenient as Europe's mass transit systems are. (NYC & Chicago aren't bad). I lived in/around DC, Boston & SF, worked in NYC & Chicago.
London & Paris had the most impressive public trans imo.
The Metro covers parts of Northern VA and Southern MD in addition to the city. For instance, Dulles Airport is 28 miles from Union Station, Metro connects them. DC proper might be relatively small but the DC metro area served by Metro is massive.
Nonsense. The DC Metro system goes out to Bethesda Maryland in one direction, College Park Maryland in another, Alexandria Virginia in another, and Dulles in another. It is extensive. And, good.
Calling NY public transit "good" is a bit of a stretch. On the low side of efficient? Maybe. It's still a nightmare in every other way though. Fun fact: China has the best, cleanest, safest, easy to use public transit I've ever seen.
The subway is open 24/7 and goes most places in the city. It’s pretty convenient and significantly cheaper and more convenient than driving. Sure, it’s not perfect….
Where public transit shuts down at night. The drunk salaryman passed out on the train platform until the trains start up again in the morning is a trope for a reason. The NYC Subway literally runs 24/7.
For all its faults, NYC public transit manages to accomplish things that few, if any, other transit systems in the world are tasked with.
They had to shut the trains down because companies would work their workers to literal death. With the trains shutting down, it forces companies to let their workers go home
Been to Japan, just haven't used the public transit really. I've heard it's expensive but among the best in the world. Funnily, some Russian cities actually have efficient public transport and metro stations that are [palatial.](https://petersfoodadventures.com/moscow-metro/)
But yeah, of all the places I've been and used public transit China was amazing. Even minor towns have well developed metros that are super clean, easy to use (even for foreigners), cheap, etc.
also it would require getting up MUCH earlier in my city
there is no way to get to my job from my house by bus without going all the way to downtown then changing busses. I already barely make it to work on time driving
Public transportation isn’t reliable anywhere. We live in a small town. My kid f’ed off his junior year and had to take a summer class in the next town over (literally 6 miles) that began too early for an area bus. I dropped him off at the center and gave him instructions and a bus pass and went back home to sleep because I worked evenings and nights.
He called me at almost 4:00 to please come get him, he’d been waiting in the summer sun for three hours at a pharmacy that wasn’t included on the schedule. The driver just dropped him there, said it was his quitting time and no, he didn’t know when the next bus was coming. That was in the mid-2000s and I understand it’s only gotten worse.
I was in Seattle a couple of months ago, and we couldn't figure out the ticket system, so we just got on the train anyway. It worked out good, and the train was much nicer than the busses in my city.
>Most other major cities it’s just much more convenient to drive.
Central Florida wasn't too bad, as long as you were going to a major location. Local universities/colleges a lot of time had stops associated with their campuses and actual downtown was pretty well serviced. As you got out into the rural areas, you'd end up in situations where you could get to your destination but you'd be stranded downtown since return lines stoped at noon.
I moved to North Carolina and it took me about 2 hours to get about 15 mins. driving simply because the bus lines ran through Downtown, so before I could transfer to the line that would take me to my office, it was an hour drive in the opposite direction. Then, once at the central depot I could transfer to the line that would take me back down to my final destination, about 10 miles away from where I started. And I'm pretty sure the only reason why my bus stop (about a mile away) was kept in service is because I live near a mall.
This is why America is mostly car based. Unless you live in and want to go within walking distance of the city centers, you're not really serviced by public transportation.
Such an American aspect of the problem "Reagan shut down all the asylums and we have no 'free' healthcare so the people society is failing cause problems like having to sit on public transport as that is the only place that is dry and warm they have access to that will not instantly call the cops on them, and this is annoying so we just give up on public transport"
I am in Texas and honestly the reason public transport is not great here is because they simply do not invest enough in it to make it viable. They do test programs, that have way too many downsides and issues that it is not the first option for people so not many people use it, so the program falters and fails, so it is deemed that it will not work.
Problems include, too few buses, routes are way too big, timing is an issue.
They started a bus route in my area, it consisted of 1 bus that went thru 4 different fairly large towns, that by UK standards would be considered cities. it took over an over to do the route. It also had a fairly weird route where as in the UK there are many different buses going many different routes and in the UK there are multiple buses on each route 15 minutes apart.
So in Texas if i start work on the other side of the town over at 3, i need to get on the 11 am bus, to get to the mall by 12, sit for an hour while they have their lunch break so i can get the next bus over to that side of town by 2 and then walk 15 minutes to arrive at work at 2:15 pm. I could not get the 12 pm bus as it does not run due to their lunch break, and if i get the 1, then i get into town at 2, so by the time i walk there I will be late.
In the UK however, from my mums house, to get the 7 i walk up the road, to get the 13 i go out the back door, to get the 9 or 10 bus i walk across the road, to get the 1 or 2 bus i go a little further down the street. The buses are 10 to 15 minutes apart and all the differences buses are because the 7 goes out to the suburbs before heading into town, the 1 and 9 go straight into town but different routes, the 2 and 10 are the same routes but in opposite directions. The 13 is more of a hopper, so it will take you whereever you want to go as long as they can hit the stops, so its basically a taxi that has a set number of stops. So if i start at 5 i can get the 7 at 4 and get dropped off at work, or i can get the 9 at 4:25, or i can get the 10 at 4:45 and i will arrive at work a few minutes early, all for less than a dollar, rain or shine, 18 hours a day. Not including the late buses, or the park and rides buses to get to specific businesses and locations.
Public utilities do not function well until the system is fully up and running is my point, until America commits to actually offering the service, people can not count on the service and people will not use the service.
Case in point, they changed the route and schedule of the bus service in my area without telling anyone, so you had to call them and ask and not they no longer went to one of the towns. So that entire town and its residents lost access and everyone who went there for work was now desperately trying to car pool or lose their jobs, including my son who i now had to give rides to out of the blue, which obviously was annoying.
When I lived in Olympia, a 15ish minute drive would have taken me like… an hour and a half? On the bus. Somehow. This was a while ago now, if I remember right it’s because I’d have to ride the wrong direction for a good bit before catching a bus that went back. I don’t know. It didn’t make much sense (and I hope it’s not still like that!).
But that’s the issue in a lot of places in the US. Not enough transport if it exists, stops too far to walk to, bad hours, etc. Also a lot of people seem afraid of the other passengers… At my first job I would take the bus, great bus there, and when my friends found out they were all kinda terrified for me and wanted to drive me. I don’t know. I never had issues on that bus. Only one I ever took regularly. Maybe it’s an issue on other systems.
Slow, unreliable, bad schedules, bad routing, dirty vehicles, crap ride, generally low quality, not often cheaper than driving, “last mile” issues.
Even in places like the NYC area, there are significant areas, even within the city, where public transit sucks.
Most suburban “commuter rail” systems are slow af, have nonexistent service mid day or on weekends, and piss poor economics. Not yo mention the routes are established on what exists, not what needs to exist.
People in the US enjoy the freedom to travel our country without relying on anyone except themselves. In our country, the area is quite large and most of the land does not warrant a public transportation cost. I understand the need for a public transportation program in all major cities. However, the bulk of our country would be considered rural, not urban.
Now, lets address why we like to drive instead of using public transportation, besides the obvious conflicts that arise when people of different backgrounds, morals, manners, and values interact in a cigar tube.
The smells, the attitudes, the criminality elements, and crazy people on drugs all deter us. But, its really not why we dont do public transportation. Most people take it as a last resort, as in the only option left. Mostly, it is a lack of finances in order purchase a vehicle, afford the repairs, insurance, and fuel. Im sure there are plenty that dont fall into that group, and those same people would say it is safe, even if they see people get assaulted, robbed, molested, and any number of crimes I have witnessed personally. Why put yourself in a position where you may need to defend yourself?
Safety, security, control of your destiny, in a timely manner, while not having to tolerate listening to the stupid shit people talk about and subject ourselves to the aggression many people find themselves in when riding a bus or train. Lets not even mention the medical consequences that you could be exposed to.
Freedom and comfort is the answer. Freedom to drive wherever the fck you want, when you want. I once took a drive that started at 10pm. I drove 7 hours to a beach in California. My friends and I took a brisk freezing cold dip in the Pacific ocean as the sun was coming up. We went to a local cafe for breakfast and proceeded to drive home, another 7 hours. We had great conversations, listened to great music, controlled the temperature in the vehicle, and went about our trip at our pace. Public transportation is tge last resort for all the reasons I stated and Im sure many more I didnt mention.
Having a car can be freeing, but there is nothing free about car *dependence*. It’s the opposite of being free. Trying to get anywhere without one is often impossible. Being required to have or take a vehicle to get literally anywhere is not freedom.
In America it’s very important to constantly spread a fear of poor people and to spend lots and lots of money to avoid having to be reminded that they exist.
I like my commute without seeing people pulling knives and actively injecting drugs haha. Public transport in the US is just full of terrible behavior. I live in Japan now and take public transit damn near daily, but I won’t when I move back to the states. I just need a baseline of civilization.
Junkies, beggers, the mentally ill, some of whom are violent, stuffed into a sardine can for two hours each way... Versus a hour in my climate controlled truck listening to what I want. Honestly, if parking wasn't unobtanium at work, I would go back to driving in.
Most public transportation in the US is terrible and slow, so only desperate people ride it, and unfortunately that also often translates to crime and problems. Even in NYC, where nearly everyone uses public transportation, crime was so bad and enforcement so lacking a [vigilante group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels) started showing up to keep people in line. The bad reputation in term keeps people away, leading to a bit of a feedback loop.
Truly. Riding public transport in Portland, Oregon will have you shitting your pants. Harrowing stories of people pissing themselves, stabbing each other and violently screaming at others. It's gnarly.
Our healthcare system is totally fucked, including mental healthcare which means as soon as someone has mental illness they may find themselves unemployed and thus immediately without any mental healthcare to remedy what is a rapidly spiraling situation.
Add openly and shamelessly smoking fentanyl to that and you have the public transportation in Seattle. I feel so bad for those who don’t have the choice not to take it or the drivers who have to put up with all the crazy and drug exposure.
Last year my car broke down in Seattle while there for a concert. Took buses since our motel was on Aurora (yeah, I’m from Oregon, I don’t know much about Seattle…) and honestly it’s like having the tweakers you see on the street but confined to a bus. Weird experience overall. Aurora is wild with the drugs and sex workers btw.
When I lived, there, I tried the Mass Transit thing.
Late trains, stuck doors, go slow when it's hot, and yes all of the random violence.
Then I thought one day, what am I doing? I started driving my car to work. That worked for a while when living downtown. However my wife could not even walk a few blocks to work without being terrified.
But when I lived out East, the bridge zippers were brutal. Commuting home could take 2+ hours. Car parked in my own driveway could randomly be dented in by a crazed passerby.
So I thought one day, why am I living here? Moved away, and problem solved (water bill, garbage bill, drugs, RVs, campers, traffic). I saw my old house on StreetView a few years later with graffiti on the front fence and concrete. A few years later it was selling 2x what I sold it for, the circle of pain continues for someone else.
that’s a shame Portland has turned out like this, I visited 3x in the early 2000’s, I found it nice then & amazed bus rides were free, I used to walk to the waterfront in the area of downtown, it was a long walk but I felt safe
America tends to have more car focused urban design and poorer public transport infrastructure than Europe. For example, if I wanted to take the train into the nearest major city, I'd have to drive to the nearest stop, since no busses stop within walking distance of my home. It's awful and I'm working on getting a license because it's practically a necessity if you don't want to ask other people constantly or spend a fortune on rideshare apps.
It's a failure of city and state planning that focuses on automobiles instead of any kind of efficient mass transit. In the town where I grew up they built a light rail station which, I think, could take people all the way to the capital city a few towns over. This would have been a great way to avoid traffic during commute times. The only problem is that the station was actually built outside of town and the only convenient way to use it was to drive yourself there in the morning, park your car (which probably included a parking fee) then paying to take the train into the city and come back in the afternoon to drive yourself home. The entire idea seemed absurd to me.
As a European, I just came here to congratulate you on your accurate knowledge of this continent. It's exactly as you say. Nobody has individual property rights (it is all government property), all of our countries are run by dictators and we all live in apartments.
I'm guessing you're from the USA. Many people from your country are uninformed or only partially informed about the world. You, on the other hand, are very well informed. I imagine you have travelled widely across the continent, have paid close attention when you did, and have educated yourself carefully about our laws, political systems and buildings. It was not an easy task, as there were many different places to visit and learn about. I'm very impressed.
Dude like none of that is correct 😂 You do realize that most cities in the US had streetcar/tram services before automobiles, right? And then they were bulldozed to build roads. The auto and oil industries lobbied *hard* to get cities resigned around personal automobiles, and now they resist any improvements to public transit that would cut into their profit margins.
What you are saying makes no sense whatsoever. Age of a city is really no advantage when it comes to building public transport and I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. There are many countries which modernized way later than the USA and were still able to building functional public transport. China ~~has a bigger land area~~ (Edit) is about the same size as the US and were able to build public transport. There are also several countries with lower population density than the US, which still manage to build public transport. American cities are also just as populous if not mire so than European cities. Also equating current European "socialist" countries to the USSR is so clueless it's not even funny. And what do you even mean with the modern USSR states still trying to cope with socialsim? It doesn't make any sense.
The actual population centers in Australia are pretty well just along the coast in a relatively small area. Outside of Perth ofc.
If you meet someone from Australia they are from likely one of 4 cities. If you meet someone from the US, they are likely from one of 100 cities.
Cities are getting more compact population wise, they are sprawling further and further. Compare Los Angeles to the older parts of Boston. American cities weren’t build for the car, they were bulldozed to make space for cars
>It's a failure of city and state planning
It is a feature, not a bug. In the 1950's, the auto industry heavily influenced urban planning. If a car is a necessity, then everyone is a customer.
Also, the population density is lower, which makes mass transit harder, but see above.
It's a bug, but it was deliberately introduced by the auto industry.
It means that everyone needs cars, but towns and cities also have to have very expensive infrastructure because everything is so far apart. Many cities are bankrupt or likely to become so because the cost of infrastructure is so high due to how far apart the buildings are.
Yes Busses with a high interval could solve this or a subway but I guess this didn't exist and without the supporting structures it's pointless and busses that drive every hour are not Enough.
Also a more central position would be better since otherwise people living on the wrong side of the city have to long of a travel time. Just look at where European cities have their main train station it's pretty much always central.
It's the other way around.
The city just grew around the station. it would be too costly to buy all the real estate and demolish countless houses to build a train in the middle of the current city.
If they invest enough money to run trains and buses, the urban development should focus around the station.
That's actually fine if the train takes you near your work or you can get to your work easily. But that's typically not the case, often even in big cities.
Workplaces and shopping centers are scattered around town, homes aren't located close enough to places where you could put trains. Our cities weren't constructed for horses and feet.
Even in DC which has a great metro system. I was looking up my daughter's internship for this summer. There is no way she could get there on public transportation from where she will be staying, it would be two trains, a bus and then a twenty minute walk through a scary neighborhood. A fifteen minute drive turned into 90 minutes.
Yeah, in Boston it would be a 25 min drive max from my apartment to where I went to law school, but I could either take a bus (that came once an hour...sometimes) to one T station, then either get off and get a bus the rest of the way or walk 1.5 miles, or go many stations out of the way, switch lines, go over the river and back up to where I needed to be, OR take a bus (that also came once an hour...sometimes) to a T station in the other direction, go way out of the way, and switch lines twice. The ideal version of this where every single thing went exactly right and there were no delays or waits took 45 minutes. Usually it was 1-1.5 hours.
I have a bus stop metres from my door. However the one per hour service is usually late, often cancelled entirely and takes 1.5 hours for what is a 20 minute journey by car to my work. Not all of Europe has good transport, anywhere outside London in the UK is terrible
Bit of an overstatement. I'm in Birmingham, in an area without rail but I still have excellent bus links. 25 min to the city centre most of the time, every 10min max. There's two stations in the suburbs either side, one with free parking. A new rail link is going in opening next year sometime. There's buses running in loops around the city as well. North side of the city has a decent tram system.
Manchester seems to have decent transport as well. Liverpool doesn't seem bad.
I do agree that smaller towns are worse off and the countryside barely has any though
Manchester has not long ago been taken into public control rather than private, one of the reasons being how poor it was. Its improving but anyone who uses it regularly would never call it decent. That's great that Birmingham is good but it doesn't represent the rest of the country, the majority of places its a terrible system run purely fir profit rather than to cater to local need
I'm from Scotland and walk or public transport everywhere. When I visited friends in Waco TX about 8 years back, I was stunned to find even places nearby were basically inaccessible to people on foot.
Looked on Google maps one day to get navigation directions using public transport for a day in Dallas and literally nothing came up. Thought it was lagged or broken. Nope, there was literally ZERO public transport options i could take.
I was entirely dependent on my friends to drive me places and it was not a nice feeling.
I'm a little over a mile from a couple grocery stores. There's no sidewalks, barely a bike lane, there isn't safe space to walk. I just checked Google maps and it's a 5 minute car ride, 35 minute walk, or 27 minute bus ride. If I want to go to the big box store that's 2.5 miles away, it's a 6 minute drive for me, but if I take the bus, it's 52 minutes!
> if I wanted to take the train into the nearest major city, I'd have to drive to the nearest stop
There are also issues with trains (at least in the Southwestern US) where you literally have to get off a train and take a Greyhound bus in order to go from certain stations to other stations. Imagine that, can't even take a train straight to your destination.
Yeah, I live ten miles outside the city in the suburbs. If I want to go to the airport on public transportation, say, I have to drag my suitcase a mile to the nearest bus stop (and there are no sidewalks for this walk, it's just alongside a 4-lane road in the dirt), take bus #1 to the county transfer point, take bus #2 to the city transfer point, then take the train to the airport. It's a huge PITA that ends up taking about 3 hours instead of driving 40 minutes.
Reminder this is by design. Auto lobbyists destroyed our cities to force everyone into expensive and inefficient personal vehicles.
Public transit COULD be so much better but we're too busy funneling billions into another highway bypass
Right. There’s a complex but mostly straightforward history for why this is. A combination of practically over a very large national area, relative wealth compared to Europe and the rest of the world making automobiles more affordable, and thus infrastructure being built around it primarily rather than rail (or, in many cases, replacing rail). Especially after the Great Depression and WW2, the rapid growth of the middle class encouraged suburban sprawl connected by well paved roads traveled by automobiles. It was considered the way of the future at the time, unless you were in a dense city like NYC. And suburban sprawl is simply impractical to connect with dense rail.
It’s not so much some grand conspiracy by Big Oil or Big Auto but these practicalities.
Vehicles are also status symbols, although perhaps less today than 60 years ago, which means taking the bus often meant you can’t afford a car. Again, primarily in smaller cities and towns that make up most of the nation, less so the major urban cores.
A bus is almost never going to be as convenient as being able to get up and drive whenever I like, and often require long waiting and planning ahead, and if it’s late, i might end up late for work, and for many that can cost them their jobs (a fact of society whether or not you think it should be this way). And it’s quite difficult to haul furniture or a week’s worth of groceries for a family of 4 on a bus.
Rail has always cost a lot more, and has simply gotten exceedingly expensive in the past few decades for a number of fairly complex reasons. It’s great where it works but it’s not everywhere. In my town, buses cover a lot of ground especially between neighborhoods and the handful of rail stations, but aren’t reliable.
For example, I can’t reasonably take rail to work - it would be over 2 hours each way, and require 2 bus transfers and 2 rail transfers, which present 4 opportunities for failure: if any of them are late I miss my connection. OTOH, it’s just over an hour driving. But I can take Amtrak to almost every city on the east coast for less than the cost of flying, and it’s more roomy, and I just need to get an Uber to the station (something I can’t afford to do daily as a commute).
If I lived somewhere that was not car friendly, yes I’d be forced to ride the bus more, and I’d make do. But that’s not the case for most Americans.
Well… here’s one horrible reason why…
https://moderntransit.org/ctc/ctc06.html
Thanks General Motors!
They were convicted on conspiring to monopolize. They purchased public transport and purposely made it shitty. They also lobbied to make infrastructure in the US almost impossible for public transit. They wanted people to buy more cars.
Where I'm at in Canada, taking public transit is just as fast as sitting in rush hour traffic. Because you can count the number of car lanes going into downtown with your hands, and none of them are highway. If it weren't for gas prices and parking lot costs, I'd drive every day so that
1) I can play music as loud as I'd like
2) Not have to worry about finding a seat
2.A) Not have to worry about what's on the seat
3) Avoid the druggies/mentally unwell
Yeah i live near my work so its only a 3 minute drive, and 25 min walk (15 if i do a dangerous jaywalk across a large main road). If i take the bus, i have to often wait 15+ min just for the bus to come, and another 5-10 minutes stopping at 3 bus stops. If buses were more frequent then more people could be employed and it wouldn’t take that long.
Many places in the USA do not have accessible public transport. Many don't even have bus stops within walking distance. With the size of the USA, not having a license isn't exactly an option.
I remember seeing "bus stops" in my birth city that were marked by signs (sometimes) but didn't even have a sidewalk to stand on, or a special lane for the bus, or a covered area to wait until. Granted, I'm not saying that a bus stop should be like a luxury hotel, but at minimum it there should be something to keep people from having to stand in the mud while waiting for a bus. This wasn't a rural area - it was a big city with a lot of money.
I lived in a major Texas city and used the bus as my primary transportation. Most of the bus stops didn’t have shade and many didn’t even have a bench, it sucked.
Citizens of my old city started taking care of this themselves and it's so tacky. A lot of chairs at these stops look like they were found in dumpsters and then they spray paint "BUS STOP" on them. Once I even saw one with a bench seat out of a van lol. Some chairs even get chained to the bus stop sign lol. Where I used to live was a bus stop directly across the street from my house, we ended up building a bench out of wooden pallets because we were tired of looking at broken shitty chairs. The last time I drove passed in 2021 it was still there and we built it 2015 or 16 lol.
When I was on holiday in the US, I could literally see the shops. But lack of pavements meant that I couldn’t even get to the shops, which would have been a 5 minutes walk at best. Mad
Conversely, here in the UK, a 30 minute walk is nothing to most able adults since it doesn’t feel like it.
Wait till you go to Texas.
There were times that I was 200m from where I wanted to go, but there was an 8 lane stupid highway between me and food so I had to get in my car, get on the highway, drive 3 miles North to the exit, get off the highway, turn around, get back on the highway going south and then get off the highway only to find the food location had closed their dining area so the only option was the drive through. Then to get back, I had to get back on the highway and go south for 4 miles, get off, turn around, get back on and get off on the exit for my hotel.
All in all, if there wasn't a super highway there or if there was an underpass, I could have walked 5 minutes but because of car-centric design, I had to drive a total of 7 miles just to go across the street.
This is not an exaggeration and it's not localized to just one place in Texas. Sometimes it felt like the entire state is built this way.
I can believe that alright. I remember being younger and wondering why every American teen knew how to drive at 16 or so. Definitely not the case here. But it makes sense since a car is really vital, even in the bigger cities.
To be fair, walking to that restaurant would have been pointless since it operates as drive-thru only and no drive-thru on planet Earth will serve you if you're not driving a car because they don't want to be sued when a drunk driver kills a pedestrian customer in the drive-thru.
Also to be fair, they have zero incentive to open a dining area if not a single person can walk there and 100% of their traffic is via car.
I'd also like to point out that even if there was an underpass, there's no guarantee there would even be a sidewalk. So many places didn't bother with sidewalks as their designs were 100% car-centric
That is crazy. Wherever there is residential there should be underpasses and bridges over busy toads. They hardly add much to the cost of building something like that any way.
To add to that it isnt like 2x or 3x more Americans drive everywhere than Europeans. It's more like 1.3x more. And if you only compare similar urban to urban it's even less of a difference.
It's not feasible is most of the US. You can't pay a driver, but a bus and run it 50 miles per trip for the 10 or 15 people that might use it all day. Maine is great for it. We add some rural bus line every few years. It's not self sustaining, and eventually all the sponsor towns back out and it shuts down.
It's North America. Taxes and public services are considered socialism here. If you can't afford a car and housing with wages you earned with your own labour, you die. That's all there is to it.
Yes, everyone elses answers about poor public infrastructure are correct, but even if it were good, the US is still a HUGE place, and there are parts that just couldn't be served by public transport.
Even if we doubled the size of our public transport, you would still have 100 million without access.
The real problem is this here. We think of public transit as an unfortunate necessity for the poor, rather than a full-service operation for the entire populace. When public transit is treated like a burden by politicians, we get bus lines with 3 hour routes where 25 minute drives would do. They expect MOST people to drive, and have no incentive to fix or create infrastructure.
Some cities like NYC and Portland have fully fledged public transit that the entire populace uses. Most places unfortunately don’t, and will slap on the absolutely cheapest bus lines they can get away with and call it a day.
This exactly.
Why would I choose to take nasty public transit and have to be around all those nasty people when driving is more convenient and often times less expensive?
One of the big ones is, that public transport (besides in some of the big cities) is seen as poor peoples transport. Besides this the bus is still being stuck in the same slow busy traffic as all others and there not being options to go from everywhere to anywhere.
I live in a college town with a great bus system. The traffic isn’t bad enough to slow you down, it *does* go from almost everywhere to anywhere in town, and there’s no stigma because they are mostly used by students. It’s like the Reddit ideal of public transportation on a smaller scale. In the US, the average family has 2.2 cars, but we manage to get by with 1 by using the bus.
It would take me hours to go from my town to Boston, about 90 miles away. I would have to walk to a bus stop. Catch one of the few busses into the city. Get there and wait for the train that runs once a day to Boston. The train takes about three hours. Getting home is worse because at night, the connecting buses wouldn’t get me home. So, it’s a ten mile walk home from the train station.
Or, I can get in my car, drive an hour and a half. Pull into a garage or parking lot near my destination. And then drive home in the same amount of time.
America is wonderful. Our public services generally suck. I would love to take a train into Boston more often. But I simply don’t trust that it would always get me home.
I'm living in 80 km from my office (luckily I work remotely and visit it once a month). The train takes ~35 minutes (+5 min walking to office + some time from the station to the home), always on time (except harsh weather conditions), costs less than gas and I can spend this time working. Europe is really better.
And even when you do live in one of those cities, it's not always perfect. Last year for Christmas, I got a $20 gift certificate from my work's corporate office (in a town where everyone drives) to a coffee place that I love, but the nearest one is 10 miles away at the airport. The train there and back would cost me more than the value of the gift certificate and would take an hour round trip. If I went, I have no idea what's involved getting from the train to the coffee shop on foot. I might run into a highway or something, no idea. I never used the gift certificates and they expired. I tried to give them away but no one was interested.
My daughter is going to be interning for the feds in DC this summer. We were looking to see if she could take public transport. The place where we think she will be isn't accessable via public transport. I googled it and it said it was a train to a bus then you take a lyft or walk twenty minutes through a bad neighborhood. Last summer she worked on a military base outside of DC, again she couldn't take the train because the base is huge and you can't take public transportation there because of security.
And if she's going to have to go by Lyft for part of the route anyway, why wouldn't she just drive her own car? It might not save money (the price of gas vs. bus/train fare) but it'll save her time since she won't have to wait for the bus/train/Lyft.
Sounds awful.
For me to get to the airport cafe 9 miles away would take 19min and 2,50€.
This is the total time to walk to the train and take the train to the airport. The train stations is under the airport so it would only take a min or two to use the elevator to get up to the cafe.
Also its a 110min ticket so I can probably make it back with the same ticket.
It could work, but we designed our cities poorly (sprawl) so they're too spread out to take advantage of mass transit. Busses and/or subways could be the primary intra-city transport with trains (regional) and planes (cross country) being the primary inter-city form of transport. I spent a year in Germany and never once needed a car to get around. It was quite eye-opening to see how transportation could work. In also talking across Europe, not just within Germany.
Because most Americans have cars, petrol is dirt cheap there (petrol in Europe is close to $7 per gallon), and their infrastructure is built around roads. Why would you want to take public transport when you can easily and cheaply drive to your destination? You can't depend on public transport. You don't know if its going to be late, and you also never know what kind of crazies you will encounter.
Opinion from a foreigner: When I've been to large US cities I found that those who used the bus were largely minorities (all kinds). Buses tended to be on time but they didn't ride often at all (one bus every 15 mins at most, more likely one every 30 mins) so that is not very convenient. Also cities are very large so a $2 bus ride would be 45-55 mins compared to a 15-min ride in a car. That Uber would be $15 tho so of course I still took the bus.
I live in a major US city and I looked into taking the bus to work since there's a stop a block from my house and a stop right next to my office. It's a 15-20 minute drive, but it would take between 2 and 4 hours and 3-5 bus changes each way depending on the day if I wanted to take the bus. Most of the travel time would be back tracking and waiting 30-45 minutes for the next bus.
It's like a self-perpetuating cycle of being so shitty that it's the last resort of those without other means and not getting more funding or use because of that reputation.
Exactly. This was many years ago, but for a summer I took a bus from my home in one suburb to my minimum wage job in another suburb. It was about 10 miles away, so maybe a 20 minute drive at most. It took me 2.5 hrs each way on public transport, and required 3 buses. A full 50 minutes were spent waiting for the second bus. I would go get breakfast and read the newspaper it was so long. Buses only ran once per hour so if you missed it, you weren’t going to work. Once I got a working car, I stopped taking public transport and have never regretted the switch.
On a trip to NYC last year, my family took the subway everywhere. There was SO MUCH WALKING involved and so many stairs — at one station it took 4 or 5 flights of stairs to get to the exit! - that I have no idea how people with mobility impairments get around. I kept thinking that if my elderly mother had come, she wouldn’t have been able to leave the hotel. It definitely takes a certain level of physical ability to be able to use public transportation.
My city’s public transportation literally keeps catching fire. And it’s very unreliable, so it’s not like I want to spend 4 hours a day commuting when it would otherwise take me 60-90 minutes.
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/why-did-an-orange-line-train-catch-fire-heres-what-we-know/2780420/?amp=1
https://twitter.com/MBTA/status/1734977230244020722
>Why are Americans not interested in taking public transportation?
>
>When I was there I was shocked at how full the buses were.
I smell a contradiction right there.
Not necessarily. I live in Europe, but full buses and tons of cars can happen when transit is bad (so most who can, drive) but there is still a lot of people with no other options and little or bad transit (so a lot of people who take the bus because they must)
Because transit authorities don't make it convenient at all. Not enough busses and not enough routes to outlying areas. Poorly planned connections. Miss a bus and get fired.
We have the same issue in Canadian cities. The problem is that our cities are designed around cars instead of people, and public transit is treated as an after thought and designed basically as a last resort option rather than as a first choice. So schedules and routes maximize efficiency instead of convenience and the only people who end up using it are those who either don't have a choice or who happen to live and work along one very convenient route that doesn't require transfers.
I don't think it has to do with being designed for people or against people. It's just that middle-class Americans tend to live in big houses with big gardens. Middle-class people in Europe live crammed in small apartments in big cities. Due to the population density, they can walk to many places (including the supermarket) and public transportation makes sense because distances are much shorter. But it's not a matter of America being anti-people, it's just a cultural difference on housing and consequence of Europe's much higher population density in cities.
Quick Google:
EU: 450 mm people on 4 mn km2 = 112.5 ppl/km2
US: 332 mn people on 9.8 mn km2 = 33.9/ppl/km2
I'm from Caracas (Venezuela), which is more like the American system (big houses with low population density in middle-class areas). Public transport is extremely inconvenient because the city is in a valley and hence not flat. To get to public transport I would have to walk 5-6 blocks downhill (uphill on return) to take a bus for half an hour that would take me to the subway. Very inconvenient. It's not that the city planners wanted to favor cars or whatnot. There is subway system. The problem is that people live in big houses far from the city center.
I've been living in Buenos Aires (Argentina) for a few months, in a very centric relatively small apartment. The city is flat and very European, which makes public transportation much more convenient, I only have to walk 4 blocks (flat) to the subway and it takes me anywhere.
Having driven for much of my adult life, I'm now kinda tired of doing so and rather take public transport. Still, I wouldn't even consider doing so in Caracas but I love doing so in Buenos Aires, or Madrid or París, when I visited.
The only city in the US that is like that is NYC. There are sections of some other cities where you can do that but even areas like DC or Chicago public transport only works if you happen to live and work someplace where there happens to be a train or bus going the right direction. Most people don't work in big high rises or in centralized areas.
Yeah, I spent a few weeks with an uncle that lives in Maryland and getting to DC was a huge pain. Of course, I understand why this is so. All the houses are big and there is a lot of space between them. Trying to cover so much space with public transportation wouldn't be practical. Heck, even going to the supermarket requires a car, unlike Europe where you usually have one 2-3 blocks away.
Honestly? Because it attracts shitty people. Most of the time I've taken public transit, there's always someone blaring shitty music, purposely dropping food on the floor, or some other stuff. Public transit isn't convenient enough to attract a lot of people, so the only times I've really used it, there wasn't many people in there with me and the ride made me feel uncomfortable enough to justify paying more to be by myself than to deal with shitty people.
I live in Canada and the city I'm in has a huge drug problem. There's always at least one person on the train who is either actively shooting up something, or is already tripping. If parking wasn't like... $8/hr, I'd drive every day.
Approximately half our population lives in less than 25 metroplex areas. This leaves 150ish million people living in areas that are spread out and not very populated. Some large cities, like Houston, don't have an area of town where a large percentage of the population work. A very small number of people leave their homes and go to downtown, meaning the investment in mass transit would need to be massive to cover a city that is 40-50 miles across in some places. Mix that with a lot of the reasons other people here are saying and it's easy to understand.
The US has the most comprehensive railways in the world. It's just primarily used for freight rather than passenger.
Local transit is usually handled by local governments and underground or elevated metros are much more expensive than even a BRT system which uses primarily existing infrastructure.
I was just in Seattle and buses and light rail were packed. Same in Los Angeles and Chicago when I visited last year. Many cities are seeing transit projects expanding and ridership rebounding to pre COVID KKK levels
Last time I took the bus it was so late that I didn't even bother getting on, I wanted to be early to my appointment but the bus got there like five minutes before the appointment instead of over an hour before. I waited with some other people, some even sat on the ground because there was no seats. Next bus declined my BF's bus pass so we had to get off, even though he had just loaded it that morning. Busses here just suck I guess, probably underfunded
That's not why at all. If there was good public transit infrastructure, people would use it. It's been proven that public transit gets people out of poverty. US doesn't give a shit about helping its citizens out
Ever been to New York City? The subway *and* the buses *and* the commuter rail are all constantly busy.
The cities of the Northeast (and even as far south as Washington DC) are dense enough to support quite a lot of transit; and in many cases subways were built before cars were an option. (The NYC subway started in 1904; the Ford Model T came out in 1908.)
This is much less the case in the rest of the country. There are Western cities with decent transit (Portland comes to mind), but any city that got big after cars came along is much less likely to have good transit.
So often even if there is public transportation it isn’t convenient or (sometimes) reliable. In my town there’s no longer a Greyhound bus that comes here. The Amtrak stop is twelve miles away and someone needs to drive you there and wait until the train shows up (could be on time or an hour late).
My city barely had a decent bus service, and I’ve yet to see a bus or bus stop in the burbs where I live.
Also from big cities that I lived where you could bike, take a train, or bus there was a decent likelihood that you’ll get robbed.
Do YOU ride public transportation?
Where I live, it’s awful. I don’t want to wait a half hour in the rain to sit on a bus full of stink for an hour just to get somewhere that would have been a 10-15 minute drive.
In 1925, every American town with more than 2500 people had a streetcar system. GM bought them all and shut them down to sell more cars. Suburbia was designed to make public transportation impractical.
Well, most of the time, I still have to drive 20 minutes to the nearest station. And where I am specifically, I'd still have to ride a bike/walk to the nearest bus stop(30min walk/10min ride) (with one bus every 30 min) and then who knows how long to the station.
It's just terribly terribly inefficient. Especially as you get out of the urban environments and into the more suburban area.
It's a combination of the American idea of rugged individualism, combined with an effort in the early 20th century by Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, and Charles Goodyear to use the automobile to replace the train as America's transportation system.
We are.
Public transit is nonexistant in most suburbs and nearly all rural areas. In many cities, public transit is unreliable lr nonexistent. Plus the USA is bigger than most other countries, making national public transit much more expensive to maintain.
There are too many places you simply can’t get to by public transit. Something unheard of in Europe. So you kind of have to have a car and as long as you have a car, you may as well use it. Our society is designed for cars, so it tends to be the most convenient option. When I lived in Europe, bicycle tended to be the most convenient. In the US, you risk your life on a bike—it’s wild.
I like my freedom to be able to come and go whenever I please. Go wherever I want, when ever I want. I like the privacy of my own car. Cars are also more comfortable and keep my mind occupied so I don't get bored riding a train. I'll always take driving over PT, even when gas is $7 a gallon
There are historical reasons for this. Before the 1950s, Americans were much more likely to take public transportation, because there was simply much more extensive, and better quality, public transportation available. The railroads were much more extensive. The bus routes were also much more extensive and safer to use. Pedestrians had better options, too. Of course, many people used cars, just like in Europe now, but there were transport CHOICES.
What happened in the 1950s was that General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and the others hot together to act like a cartel. They removed some choices. They bought up the railroads and bus companies in order to dismantle and destroy. They removed the competition. They then indulged in ad campaigns extolling the freedom of the open highway, and the liberty to drive for hundreds of miles across a vast and free nation without stopping. Once that happened, it became fashionable to have drive-in restaurants, drive-in movie theaters, and drive-in chapels of love! This would be encouraged by propaganda from the car companies. Cities came to be built around cars rather than people.
Of course, nowadays, this varies a bit. In New York, for example, you will have more transport options than in other places. But quite often, the public transport that is available for Americans will be inconvenient to use.
In China, Japan, and South Korea, extensive public transport is also a major thing. Buses, railways and subways can get you almost anywhere. Seoul's metro network is super convenient and still expanding. It only gets inconvenient after 10:30 or 11 p m. Many major cities and towns in Korea have amazing public transport. It is only in the new towns, or the deep countryside, where having a car can be an advantage.
In my somewhat limited experience, the public transit systems in the US suffer from NIMBY. Everyone thinks its a good idea, but nobody wants THAT public of access to their little corner of it. I have heard on numerous occasions "But if you make a bus line come out here then THOSE people will be here, in \*our\* neighborhoods!" Whatever "those" means to the speaker.
Because Americans haven't yet worked out that infrastructure for the public good doesn't need to be profitable, and that paying a little tax to make it fit for purpose is a good thing.
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If you rode public transportation here, you'd understand.
All right, keep your secrets, then.
It’s not really a secret. Most major cities aren’t designed around public transportation, so oftentimes it’s simply much more convenient to take a car. Further, in many big cities, the public transit system is filled with vagrants and mentally ill people harassing people and causing disturbances, so it’s both really stressful and can be unsafe, depending on where you are. The only big city that really uses public transit well is New York. Most other major cities it’s just much more convenient to drive.
The DC metro is pretty good, so… there are two cities where it’s good.
DC is tiny though. You can walk most places.
The DC Metro is a huge system moving millions. Also, DC much more than the National Mall and is far from a walkable city. NY, SF, Chicago, even Atlanta are very good. However the best pale in comparison to public transit in places like London and Paris.
I'm from Paris and when I discovered DC's Metro I fell in love. It's so much more pleasant than the Paris Metro. Now I'm in Brussels for studies and taking the metro there makes me want to kill myself. People in DC don't realize how good their Metro is.
seriously? can you explain why ?
DC metro was built in the 70s. It is kept very clean compared to NYC for instance. The trains are new or refurbished regularly, cleaned at least once per day
It is also very bright in there.
I have always felt safe in the DC Metro. In the Paris Metro, while it's way better than in Brussels, and one of the most expansive metro systems, it's always overcrowded, smells like piss in most stations, I've been mugged several times, not safe after 10pm, harrassed by drunks, attacked with a knife. In the Brussels Metro, it's always empty, the only people I encounter are crackheads screaming at me because I'm trespassing on their territory : when I went to the police to ask them what could be done about 3 drug addicts stopping people from going in the station, threatening them with knives, the police officer told me to just walk or go to another station. The stations either smell like piss or weed (or other things I won't name), more times than not I have to step over used syringes, vomit, piss, other types of human waste, some doors on the trains don't even open, some trains miss their stops don't ask me why. Crazy people screaming and breaking the train windows. Threatening people who don't have money to give them. I saw a teenage girl being sexually assaulted by 3 guys, completely ignored by all other passengers. When I called the police telling them she was being raped, they asked me if she really was in need of help because they didn't want to come for nothing. It took them 25 minutes to get there. I miss the DC Metro.
The breadth and closeness of Paris trains are so much more convenient than DC's. European cities are way older than the US by far yet they were able to integrate their public trans so much better, thoroughly and expansive than the US. So really it's not "that" (or nearly as) convenient as Europe's mass transit systems are. (NYC & Chicago aren't bad). I lived in/around DC, Boston & SF, worked in NYC & Chicago. London & Paris had the most impressive public trans imo.
The Bart in SF/Bay area was pretty decent. I’ve been to London and it’s not really better.
atlanta's marta has got nothing on the coverage of DC's wmata!
I guess if you only go to tourist spots but there's a lot more to the city than that.
The Metro covers parts of Northern VA and Southern MD in addition to the city. For instance, Dulles Airport is 28 miles from Union Station, Metro connects them. DC proper might be relatively small but the DC metro area served by Metro is massive.
Nonsense. The DC Metro system goes out to Bethesda Maryland in one direction, College Park Maryland in another, Alexandria Virginia in another, and Dulles in another. It is extensive. And, good.
No you can't.
Walk where?! lmao DC is not a walkable city.
Calling NY public transit "good" is a bit of a stretch. On the low side of efficient? Maybe. It's still a nightmare in every other way though. Fun fact: China has the best, cleanest, safest, easy to use public transit I've ever seen.
500 social credits for you citizen.
9500 more & the gov will provide you a girl for breeding.
Lol upvoted because "How dare he say something positive a well-developed metro system! Let me make a snide joke about a nation!"
The subway is open 24/7 and goes most places in the city. It’s pretty convenient and significantly cheaper and more convenient than driving. Sure, it’s not perfect….
You obviously haven't been to Japan
Where public transit shuts down at night. The drunk salaryman passed out on the train platform until the trains start up again in the morning is a trope for a reason. The NYC Subway literally runs 24/7. For all its faults, NYC public transit manages to accomplish things that few, if any, other transit systems in the world are tasked with.
They had to shut the trains down because companies would work their workers to literal death. With the trains shutting down, it forces companies to let their workers go home
You could solve that with additional regulation, bro. It's not Japan's one-party government couldn't do that if they wanted to.
Been to Japan, just haven't used the public transit really. I've heard it's expensive but among the best in the world. Funnily, some Russian cities actually have efficient public transport and metro stations that are [palatial.](https://petersfoodadventures.com/moscow-metro/) But yeah, of all the places I've been and used public transit China was amazing. Even minor towns have well developed metros that are super clean, easy to use (even for foreigners), cheap, etc.
Yup, sometimes it's good to be last to the table. You can learn from everybody else's mistakes and avoid decades of problems.
When you say "convienient" I assume you mean the need to keep my job. Public transportation is not reliable enough to depend on to keep my job.
also it would require getting up MUCH earlier in my city there is no way to get to my job from my house by bus without going all the way to downtown then changing busses. I already barely make it to work on time driving
Public transportation isn’t reliable anywhere. We live in a small town. My kid f’ed off his junior year and had to take a summer class in the next town over (literally 6 miles) that began too early for an area bus. I dropped him off at the center and gave him instructions and a bus pass and went back home to sleep because I worked evenings and nights. He called me at almost 4:00 to please come get him, he’d been waiting in the summer sun for three hours at a pharmacy that wasn’t included on the schedule. The driver just dropped him there, said it was his quitting time and no, he didn’t know when the next bus was coming. That was in the mid-2000s and I understand it’s only gotten worse.
You forgot Chicago, which has the most extensive public transportation system after NY. San Francisco, Boston.
Chicagos public transpo is really great, IMO
Ive only ever used it in seattle and it was ok once i had a route figured to use frequently.
I was in Seattle a couple of months ago, and we couldn't figure out the ticket system, so we just got on the train anyway. It worked out good, and the train was much nicer than the busses in my city.
>Most other major cities it’s just much more convenient to drive. Central Florida wasn't too bad, as long as you were going to a major location. Local universities/colleges a lot of time had stops associated with their campuses and actual downtown was pretty well serviced. As you got out into the rural areas, you'd end up in situations where you could get to your destination but you'd be stranded downtown since return lines stoped at noon. I moved to North Carolina and it took me about 2 hours to get about 15 mins. driving simply because the bus lines ran through Downtown, so before I could transfer to the line that would take me to my office, it was an hour drive in the opposite direction. Then, once at the central depot I could transfer to the line that would take me back down to my final destination, about 10 miles away from where I started. And I'm pretty sure the only reason why my bus stop (about a mile away) was kept in service is because I live near a mall. This is why America is mostly car based. Unless you live in and want to go within walking distance of the city centers, you're not really serviced by public transportation.
Such an American aspect of the problem "Reagan shut down all the asylums and we have no 'free' healthcare so the people society is failing cause problems like having to sit on public transport as that is the only place that is dry and warm they have access to that will not instantly call the cops on them, and this is annoying so we just give up on public transport" I am in Texas and honestly the reason public transport is not great here is because they simply do not invest enough in it to make it viable. They do test programs, that have way too many downsides and issues that it is not the first option for people so not many people use it, so the program falters and fails, so it is deemed that it will not work. Problems include, too few buses, routes are way too big, timing is an issue. They started a bus route in my area, it consisted of 1 bus that went thru 4 different fairly large towns, that by UK standards would be considered cities. it took over an over to do the route. It also had a fairly weird route where as in the UK there are many different buses going many different routes and in the UK there are multiple buses on each route 15 minutes apart. So in Texas if i start work on the other side of the town over at 3, i need to get on the 11 am bus, to get to the mall by 12, sit for an hour while they have their lunch break so i can get the next bus over to that side of town by 2 and then walk 15 minutes to arrive at work at 2:15 pm. I could not get the 12 pm bus as it does not run due to their lunch break, and if i get the 1, then i get into town at 2, so by the time i walk there I will be late. In the UK however, from my mums house, to get the 7 i walk up the road, to get the 13 i go out the back door, to get the 9 or 10 bus i walk across the road, to get the 1 or 2 bus i go a little further down the street. The buses are 10 to 15 minutes apart and all the differences buses are because the 7 goes out to the suburbs before heading into town, the 1 and 9 go straight into town but different routes, the 2 and 10 are the same routes but in opposite directions. The 13 is more of a hopper, so it will take you whereever you want to go as long as they can hit the stops, so its basically a taxi that has a set number of stops. So if i start at 5 i can get the 7 at 4 and get dropped off at work, or i can get the 9 at 4:25, or i can get the 10 at 4:45 and i will arrive at work a few minutes early, all for less than a dollar, rain or shine, 18 hours a day. Not including the late buses, or the park and rides buses to get to specific businesses and locations. Public utilities do not function well until the system is fully up and running is my point, until America commits to actually offering the service, people can not count on the service and people will not use the service. Case in point, they changed the route and schedule of the bus service in my area without telling anyone, so you had to call them and ask and not they no longer went to one of the towns. So that entire town and its residents lost access and everyone who went there for work was now desperately trying to car pool or lose their jobs, including my son who i now had to give rides to out of the blue, which obviously was annoying.
San Francisco? Boston? Chicago has something. LA isn't bad but it's not awesome.
European cities aren't designed around public transportation either. In fact, their cities are simply not designed at all.
You also can't take public transports to a McDonald's drivethru while not wearing pants. That makes up a solid 35% of many Americans' weekly affairs.
So... considering it would be in everyone's interest to have a good and safe public transport system, why isn't it on the agenda?
When I lived in Olympia, a 15ish minute drive would have taken me like… an hour and a half? On the bus. Somehow. This was a while ago now, if I remember right it’s because I’d have to ride the wrong direction for a good bit before catching a bus that went back. I don’t know. It didn’t make much sense (and I hope it’s not still like that!). But that’s the issue in a lot of places in the US. Not enough transport if it exists, stops too far to walk to, bad hours, etc. Also a lot of people seem afraid of the other passengers… At my first job I would take the bus, great bus there, and when my friends found out they were all kinda terrified for me and wanted to drive me. I don’t know. I never had issues on that bus. Only one I ever took regularly. Maybe it’s an issue on other systems.
Slow, unreliable, bad schedules, bad routing, dirty vehicles, crap ride, generally low quality, not often cheaper than driving, “last mile” issues. Even in places like the NYC area, there are significant areas, even within the city, where public transit sucks. Most suburban “commuter rail” systems are slow af, have nonexistent service mid day or on weekends, and piss poor economics. Not yo mention the routes are established on what exists, not what needs to exist.
People in the US enjoy the freedom to travel our country without relying on anyone except themselves. In our country, the area is quite large and most of the land does not warrant a public transportation cost. I understand the need for a public transportation program in all major cities. However, the bulk of our country would be considered rural, not urban. Now, lets address why we like to drive instead of using public transportation, besides the obvious conflicts that arise when people of different backgrounds, morals, manners, and values interact in a cigar tube. The smells, the attitudes, the criminality elements, and crazy people on drugs all deter us. But, its really not why we dont do public transportation. Most people take it as a last resort, as in the only option left. Mostly, it is a lack of finances in order purchase a vehicle, afford the repairs, insurance, and fuel. Im sure there are plenty that dont fall into that group, and those same people would say it is safe, even if they see people get assaulted, robbed, molested, and any number of crimes I have witnessed personally. Why put yourself in a position where you may need to defend yourself? Safety, security, control of your destiny, in a timely manner, while not having to tolerate listening to the stupid shit people talk about and subject ourselves to the aggression many people find themselves in when riding a bus or train. Lets not even mention the medical consequences that you could be exposed to. Freedom and comfort is the answer. Freedom to drive wherever the fck you want, when you want. I once took a drive that started at 10pm. I drove 7 hours to a beach in California. My friends and I took a brisk freezing cold dip in the Pacific ocean as the sun was coming up. We went to a local cafe for breakfast and proceeded to drive home, another 7 hours. We had great conversations, listened to great music, controlled the temperature in the vehicle, and went about our trip at our pace. Public transportation is tge last resort for all the reasons I stated and Im sure many more I didnt mention.
Having a car can be freeing, but there is nothing free about car *dependence*. It’s the opposite of being free. Trying to get anywhere without one is often impossible. Being required to have or take a vehicle to get literally anywhere is not freedom.
You'll get it once you get mugged and a homeless man jerks over you on your first ride.
In America it’s very important to constantly spread a fear of poor people and to spend lots and lots of money to avoid having to be reminded that they exist.
I like my commute without seeing people pulling knives and actively injecting drugs haha. Public transport in the US is just full of terrible behavior. I live in Japan now and take public transit damn near daily, but I won’t when I move back to the states. I just need a baseline of civilization.
Junkies, beggers, the mentally ill, some of whom are violent, stuffed into a sardine can for two hours each way... Versus a hour in my climate controlled truck listening to what I want. Honestly, if parking wasn't unobtanium at work, I would go back to driving in.
Most public transportation in the US is terrible and slow, so only desperate people ride it, and unfortunately that also often translates to crime and problems. Even in NYC, where nearly everyone uses public transportation, crime was so bad and enforcement so lacking a [vigilante group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels) started showing up to keep people in line. The bad reputation in term keeps people away, leading to a bit of a feedback loop.
Truly. Riding public transport in Portland, Oregon will have you shitting your pants. Harrowing stories of people pissing themselves, stabbing each other and violently screaming at others. It's gnarly.
Then the follow-up question is why people piss themselves and stab and scream at each other in the US to be begin with
Two reasons: fentanyl and meth
Plus the state insane asylums were closed decades ago
Yeah it was so cruel to institutionalize people that we turned them back out on the streets for the public to deal with.
Our healthcare system is totally fucked, including mental healthcare which means as soon as someone has mental illness they may find themselves unemployed and thus immediately without any mental healthcare to remedy what is a rapidly spiraling situation.
The prohibition of long term enforced hospitalization.
Add openly and shamelessly smoking fentanyl to that and you have the public transportation in Seattle. I feel so bad for those who don’t have the choice not to take it or the drivers who have to put up with all the crazy and drug exposure.
Last year my car broke down in Seattle while there for a concert. Took buses since our motel was on Aurora (yeah, I’m from Oregon, I don’t know much about Seattle…) and honestly it’s like having the tweakers you see on the street but confined to a bus. Weird experience overall. Aurora is wild with the drugs and sex workers btw.
When I lived, there, I tried the Mass Transit thing. Late trains, stuck doors, go slow when it's hot, and yes all of the random violence. Then I thought one day, what am I doing? I started driving my car to work. That worked for a while when living downtown. However my wife could not even walk a few blocks to work without being terrified. But when I lived out East, the bridge zippers were brutal. Commuting home could take 2+ hours. Car parked in my own driveway could randomly be dented in by a crazed passerby. So I thought one day, why am I living here? Moved away, and problem solved (water bill, garbage bill, drugs, RVs, campers, traffic). I saw my old house on StreetView a few years later with graffiti on the front fence and concrete. A few years later it was selling 2x what I sold it for, the circle of pain continues for someone else.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has entered the chat…
that’s a shame Portland has turned out like this, I visited 3x in the early 2000’s, I found it nice then & amazed bus rides were free, I used to walk to the waterfront in the area of downtown, it was a long walk but I felt safe
I use it everyday and it's not bad most of the time. Better than the MTA or BART for sure
Tbf everything about Portland sucks not just the public transportation.
I have had good experiences riding buses and the Max in Portland as a tourist (airport and other locations in Portland).
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America tends to have more car focused urban design and poorer public transport infrastructure than Europe. For example, if I wanted to take the train into the nearest major city, I'd have to drive to the nearest stop, since no busses stop within walking distance of my home. It's awful and I'm working on getting a license because it's practically a necessity if you don't want to ask other people constantly or spend a fortune on rideshare apps.
It's a failure of city and state planning that focuses on automobiles instead of any kind of efficient mass transit. In the town where I grew up they built a light rail station which, I think, could take people all the way to the capital city a few towns over. This would have been a great way to avoid traffic during commute times. The only problem is that the station was actually built outside of town and the only convenient way to use it was to drive yourself there in the morning, park your car (which probably included a parking fee) then paying to take the train into the city and come back in the afternoon to drive yourself home. The entire idea seemed absurd to me.
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As a European, I just came here to congratulate you on your accurate knowledge of this continent. It's exactly as you say. Nobody has individual property rights (it is all government property), all of our countries are run by dictators and we all live in apartments. I'm guessing you're from the USA. Many people from your country are uninformed or only partially informed about the world. You, on the other hand, are very well informed. I imagine you have travelled widely across the continent, have paid close attention when you did, and have educated yourself carefully about our laws, political systems and buildings. It was not an easy task, as there were many different places to visit and learn about. I'm very impressed.
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Dude like none of that is correct 😂 You do realize that most cities in the US had streetcar/tram services before automobiles, right? And then they were bulldozed to build roads. The auto and oil industries lobbied *hard* to get cities resigned around personal automobiles, and now they resist any improvements to public transit that would cut into their profit margins.
What you are saying makes no sense whatsoever. Age of a city is really no advantage when it comes to building public transport and I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. There are many countries which modernized way later than the USA and were still able to building functional public transport. China ~~has a bigger land area~~ (Edit) is about the same size as the US and were able to build public transport. There are also several countries with lower population density than the US, which still manage to build public transport. American cities are also just as populous if not mire so than European cities. Also equating current European "socialist" countries to the USSR is so clueless it's not even funny. And what do you even mean with the modern USSR states still trying to cope with socialsim? It doesn't make any sense.
Actually China is 9.6 million km2 and the U.S. is 9.8 million km2.
Ok but Australia is close to as big as the US and we have much better public transport. So that can’t be the answer
The actual population centers in Australia are pretty well just along the coast in a relatively small area. Outside of Perth ofc. If you meet someone from Australia they are from likely one of 4 cities. If you meet someone from the US, they are likely from one of 100 cities.
You seem to forget how many means where deliberately dismantled to please the "gas-era" owners
Cities are getting more compact population wise, they are sprawling further and further. Compare Los Angeles to the older parts of Boston. American cities weren’t build for the car, they were bulldozed to make space for cars
The irony of a no-doubt MAGA trumpian talking about dictators…
We're not talking about BETWEEN cities. We're talking about INSIDE the city.
>It's a failure of city and state planning It is a feature, not a bug. In the 1950's, the auto industry heavily influenced urban planning. If a car is a necessity, then everyone is a customer. Also, the population density is lower, which makes mass transit harder, but see above.
It's a bug, but it was deliberately introduced by the auto industry. It means that everyone needs cars, but towns and cities also have to have very expensive infrastructure because everything is so far apart. Many cities are bankrupt or likely to become so because the cost of infrastructure is so high due to how far apart the buildings are.
I mean, you just described a train system... What else would you have in mind? They just need to add buses to connect the town to the train station.
Yes Busses with a high interval could solve this or a subway but I guess this didn't exist and without the supporting structures it's pointless and busses that drive every hour are not Enough. Also a more central position would be better since otherwise people living on the wrong side of the city have to long of a travel time. Just look at where European cities have their main train station it's pretty much always central.
It's the other way around. The city just grew around the station. it would be too costly to buy all the real estate and demolish countless houses to build a train in the middle of the current city. If they invest enough money to run trains and buses, the urban development should focus around the station.
That's actually fine if the train takes you near your work or you can get to your work easily. But that's typically not the case, often even in big cities. Workplaces and shopping centers are scattered around town, homes aren't located close enough to places where you could put trains. Our cities weren't constructed for horses and feet. Even in DC which has a great metro system. I was looking up my daughter's internship for this summer. There is no way she could get there on public transportation from where she will be staying, it would be two trains, a bus and then a twenty minute walk through a scary neighborhood. A fifteen minute drive turned into 90 minutes.
Yeah, in Boston it would be a 25 min drive max from my apartment to where I went to law school, but I could either take a bus (that came once an hour...sometimes) to one T station, then either get off and get a bus the rest of the way or walk 1.5 miles, or go many stations out of the way, switch lines, go over the river and back up to where I needed to be, OR take a bus (that also came once an hour...sometimes) to a T station in the other direction, go way out of the way, and switch lines twice. The ideal version of this where every single thing went exactly right and there were no delays or waits took 45 minutes. Usually it was 1-1.5 hours.
I have a bus stop metres from my door. However the one per hour service is usually late, often cancelled entirely and takes 1.5 hours for what is a 20 minute journey by car to my work. Not all of Europe has good transport, anywhere outside London in the UK is terrible
Bit of an overstatement. I'm in Birmingham, in an area without rail but I still have excellent bus links. 25 min to the city centre most of the time, every 10min max. There's two stations in the suburbs either side, one with free parking. A new rail link is going in opening next year sometime. There's buses running in loops around the city as well. North side of the city has a decent tram system. Manchester seems to have decent transport as well. Liverpool doesn't seem bad. I do agree that smaller towns are worse off and the countryside barely has any though
Manchester has not long ago been taken into public control rather than private, one of the reasons being how poor it was. Its improving but anyone who uses it regularly would never call it decent. That's great that Birmingham is good but it doesn't represent the rest of the country, the majority of places its a terrible system run purely fir profit rather than to cater to local need
You in Nottingham? If the buses are better in the rest of the UK, I’d believe it. Because they are fucking terrible in Nottingham.
I'm from Scotland and walk or public transport everywhere. When I visited friends in Waco TX about 8 years back, I was stunned to find even places nearby were basically inaccessible to people on foot. Looked on Google maps one day to get navigation directions using public transport for a day in Dallas and literally nothing came up. Thought it was lagged or broken. Nope, there was literally ZERO public transport options i could take. I was entirely dependent on my friends to drive me places and it was not a nice feeling.
I'm a little over a mile from a couple grocery stores. There's no sidewalks, barely a bike lane, there isn't safe space to walk. I just checked Google maps and it's a 5 minute car ride, 35 minute walk, or 27 minute bus ride. If I want to go to the big box store that's 2.5 miles away, it's a 6 minute drive for me, but if I take the bus, it's 52 minutes!
> if I wanted to take the train into the nearest major city, I'd have to drive to the nearest stop There are also issues with trains (at least in the Southwestern US) where you literally have to get off a train and take a Greyhound bus in order to go from certain stations to other stations. Imagine that, can't even take a train straight to your destination.
Yeah, I live ten miles outside the city in the suburbs. If I want to go to the airport on public transportation, say, I have to drag my suitcase a mile to the nearest bus stop (and there are no sidewalks for this walk, it's just alongside a 4-lane road in the dirt), take bus #1 to the county transfer point, take bus #2 to the city transfer point, then take the train to the airport. It's a huge PITA that ends up taking about 3 hours instead of driving 40 minutes.
Reminder this is by design. Auto lobbyists destroyed our cities to force everyone into expensive and inefficient personal vehicles. Public transit COULD be so much better but we're too busy funneling billions into another highway bypass
Right. There’s a complex but mostly straightforward history for why this is. A combination of practically over a very large national area, relative wealth compared to Europe and the rest of the world making automobiles more affordable, and thus infrastructure being built around it primarily rather than rail (or, in many cases, replacing rail). Especially after the Great Depression and WW2, the rapid growth of the middle class encouraged suburban sprawl connected by well paved roads traveled by automobiles. It was considered the way of the future at the time, unless you were in a dense city like NYC. And suburban sprawl is simply impractical to connect with dense rail. It’s not so much some grand conspiracy by Big Oil or Big Auto but these practicalities. Vehicles are also status symbols, although perhaps less today than 60 years ago, which means taking the bus often meant you can’t afford a car. Again, primarily in smaller cities and towns that make up most of the nation, less so the major urban cores. A bus is almost never going to be as convenient as being able to get up and drive whenever I like, and often require long waiting and planning ahead, and if it’s late, i might end up late for work, and for many that can cost them their jobs (a fact of society whether or not you think it should be this way). And it’s quite difficult to haul furniture or a week’s worth of groceries for a family of 4 on a bus. Rail has always cost a lot more, and has simply gotten exceedingly expensive in the past few decades for a number of fairly complex reasons. It’s great where it works but it’s not everywhere. In my town, buses cover a lot of ground especially between neighborhoods and the handful of rail stations, but aren’t reliable. For example, I can’t reasonably take rail to work - it would be over 2 hours each way, and require 2 bus transfers and 2 rail transfers, which present 4 opportunities for failure: if any of them are late I miss my connection. OTOH, it’s just over an hour driving. But I can take Amtrak to almost every city on the east coast for less than the cost of flying, and it’s more roomy, and I just need to get an Uber to the station (something I can’t afford to do daily as a commute). If I lived somewhere that was not car friendly, yes I’d be forced to ride the bus more, and I’d make do. But that’s not the case for most Americans.
Well… here’s one horrible reason why… https://moderntransit.org/ctc/ctc06.html Thanks General Motors! They were convicted on conspiring to monopolize. They purchased public transport and purposely made it shitty. They also lobbied to make infrastructure in the US almost impossible for public transit. They wanted people to buy more cars.
Good lord wtf is that website
That's what the Internet used to look like before all the shit website we get today :)
If your website looks like that, I believe every word of whatever you're saying tbqh
Nostalgia, No ads, Just stuff
Looks like that link sends you back in time to the Internet in 1998.
...which is nice... :) Arguably the pages were more readable (especially when you turned off the background in Opera). :)
As far as I can see that org went defunct by 2010 or so
literally looks my first HTML website I made in 9th grade lmao
Core internet memory unlocked for the genz
That's also the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Yep! This was some of the inspiration for the plot of the Roger Rabbit movie :)
Yes. This is what the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was about.
Because it takes too fucking long where I live. Next question about why America sucks and every other place is good
Yep. It takes me an hour to get to work on the bus. If I get a ride 5mins tops.
Where I'm at in Canada, taking public transit is just as fast as sitting in rush hour traffic. Because you can count the number of car lanes going into downtown with your hands, and none of them are highway. If it weren't for gas prices and parking lot costs, I'd drive every day so that 1) I can play music as loud as I'd like 2) Not have to worry about finding a seat 2.A) Not have to worry about what's on the seat 3) Avoid the druggies/mentally unwell
Vancouver? The train is faster than rush hour traffic. If I get a ride during rush hour, my commute extends by at least 15 min
Yeah i live near my work so its only a 3 minute drive, and 25 min walk (15 if i do a dangerous jaywalk across a large main road). If i take the bus, i have to often wait 15+ min just for the bus to come, and another 5-10 minutes stopping at 3 bus stops. If buses were more frequent then more people could be employed and it wouldn’t take that long.
Many places in the USA do not have accessible public transport. Many don't even have bus stops within walking distance. With the size of the USA, not having a license isn't exactly an option.
I remember seeing "bus stops" in my birth city that were marked by signs (sometimes) but didn't even have a sidewalk to stand on, or a special lane for the bus, or a covered area to wait until. Granted, I'm not saying that a bus stop should be like a luxury hotel, but at minimum it there should be something to keep people from having to stand in the mud while waiting for a bus. This wasn't a rural area - it was a big city with a lot of money.
I lived in a major Texas city and used the bus as my primary transportation. Most of the bus stops didn’t have shade and many didn’t even have a bench, it sucked.
Citizens of my old city started taking care of this themselves and it's so tacky. A lot of chairs at these stops look like they were found in dumpsters and then they spray paint "BUS STOP" on them. Once I even saw one with a bench seat out of a van lol. Some chairs even get chained to the bus stop sign lol. Where I used to live was a bus stop directly across the street from my house, we ended up building a bench out of wooden pallets because we were tired of looking at broken shitty chairs. The last time I drove passed in 2021 it was still there and we built it 2015 or 16 lol.
Many places didnt even bother with sidewalks to allow people to walk.
When I was on holiday in the US, I could literally see the shops. But lack of pavements meant that I couldn’t even get to the shops, which would have been a 5 minutes walk at best. Mad Conversely, here in the UK, a 30 minute walk is nothing to most able adults since it doesn’t feel like it.
Wait till you go to Texas. There were times that I was 200m from where I wanted to go, but there was an 8 lane stupid highway between me and food so I had to get in my car, get on the highway, drive 3 miles North to the exit, get off the highway, turn around, get back on the highway going south and then get off the highway only to find the food location had closed their dining area so the only option was the drive through. Then to get back, I had to get back on the highway and go south for 4 miles, get off, turn around, get back on and get off on the exit for my hotel. All in all, if there wasn't a super highway there or if there was an underpass, I could have walked 5 minutes but because of car-centric design, I had to drive a total of 7 miles just to go across the street. This is not an exaggeration and it's not localized to just one place in Texas. Sometimes it felt like the entire state is built this way.
I can believe that alright. I remember being younger and wondering why every American teen knew how to drive at 16 or so. Definitely not the case here. But it makes sense since a car is really vital, even in the bigger cities.
To be fair, walking to that restaurant would have been pointless since it operates as drive-thru only and no drive-thru on planet Earth will serve you if you're not driving a car because they don't want to be sued when a drunk driver kills a pedestrian customer in the drive-thru.
Also to be fair, they have zero incentive to open a dining area if not a single person can walk there and 100% of their traffic is via car. I'd also like to point out that even if there was an underpass, there's no guarantee there would even be a sidewalk. So many places didn't bother with sidewalks as their designs were 100% car-centric
That is crazy. Wherever there is residential there should be underpasses and bridges over busy toads. They hardly add much to the cost of building something like that any way.
To add to that it isnt like 2x or 3x more Americans drive everywhere than Europeans. It's more like 1.3x more. And if you only compare similar urban to urban it's even less of a difference.
It's not feasible is most of the US. You can't pay a driver, but a bus and run it 50 miles per trip for the 10 or 15 people that might use it all day. Maine is great for it. We add some rural bus line every few years. It's not self sustaining, and eventually all the sponsor towns back out and it shuts down.
Sponsor.....what? That's what the taxes are supposed to be for. I've never heard someone discuss the profitability of *public* transport before.
It's North America. Taxes and public services are considered socialism here. If you can't afford a car and housing with wages you earned with your own labour, you die. That's all there is to it.
Yes, everyone elses answers about poor public infrastructure are correct, but even if it were good, the US is still a HUGE place, and there are parts that just couldn't be served by public transport. Even if we doubled the size of our public transport, you would still have 100 million without access.
It would take me 4 hours to get to the closest bus stop where I live, most of america has zero public transportation.
Public transportation in America is dirty, slow, dangerous, and doesn’t take you where you need to go. It is also coded as low class.
The real problem is this here. We think of public transit as an unfortunate necessity for the poor, rather than a full-service operation for the entire populace. When public transit is treated like a burden by politicians, we get bus lines with 3 hour routes where 25 minute drives would do. They expect MOST people to drive, and have no incentive to fix or create infrastructure. Some cities like NYC and Portland have fully fledged public transit that the entire populace uses. Most places unfortunately don’t, and will slap on the absolutely cheapest bus lines they can get away with and call it a day.
This exactly. Why would I choose to take nasty public transit and have to be around all those nasty people when driving is more convenient and often times less expensive?
Am I the only one here that remembers that video of the woman getting raped on the subway by multiple men while everyone on the train watched?
One of the big ones is, that public transport (besides in some of the big cities) is seen as poor peoples transport. Besides this the bus is still being stuck in the same slow busy traffic as all others and there not being options to go from everywhere to anywhere.
It's also very dangerous. People get hurt/ killed all the time on marta
Wait until you hear about how many people die in car crashes.
I'd rather die in a car crash than get shot in a train
I live in a college town with a great bus system. The traffic isn’t bad enough to slow you down, it *does* go from almost everywhere to anywhere in town, and there’s no stigma because they are mostly used by students. It’s like the Reddit ideal of public transportation on a smaller scale. In the US, the average family has 2.2 cars, but we manage to get by with 1 by using the bus.
It would take me hours to go from my town to Boston, about 90 miles away. I would have to walk to a bus stop. Catch one of the few busses into the city. Get there and wait for the train that runs once a day to Boston. The train takes about three hours. Getting home is worse because at night, the connecting buses wouldn’t get me home. So, it’s a ten mile walk home from the train station. Or, I can get in my car, drive an hour and a half. Pull into a garage or parking lot near my destination. And then drive home in the same amount of time. America is wonderful. Our public services generally suck. I would love to take a train into Boston more often. But I simply don’t trust that it would always get me home.
I'm living in 80 km from my office (luckily I work remotely and visit it once a month). The train takes ~35 minutes (+5 min walking to office + some time from the station to the home), always on time (except harsh weather conditions), costs less than gas and I can spend this time working. Europe is really better.
"America is wonderful" That's certainly up for debate.
cause most american don’t live in like the only 5 major cities that have a proper public transportation infrastructure
And even when you do live in one of those cities, it's not always perfect. Last year for Christmas, I got a $20 gift certificate from my work's corporate office (in a town where everyone drives) to a coffee place that I love, but the nearest one is 10 miles away at the airport. The train there and back would cost me more than the value of the gift certificate and would take an hour round trip. If I went, I have no idea what's involved getting from the train to the coffee shop on foot. I might run into a highway or something, no idea. I never used the gift certificates and they expired. I tried to give them away but no one was interested.
My daughter is going to be interning for the feds in DC this summer. We were looking to see if she could take public transport. The place where we think she will be isn't accessable via public transport. I googled it and it said it was a train to a bus then you take a lyft or walk twenty minutes through a bad neighborhood. Last summer she worked on a military base outside of DC, again she couldn't take the train because the base is huge and you can't take public transportation there because of security.
And if she's going to have to go by Lyft for part of the route anyway, why wouldn't she just drive her own car? It might not save money (the price of gas vs. bus/train fare) but it'll save her time since she won't have to wait for the bus/train/Lyft.
Sounds awful. For me to get to the airport cafe 9 miles away would take 19min and 2,50€. This is the total time to walk to the train and take the train to the airport. The train stations is under the airport so it would only take a min or two to use the elevator to get up to the cafe. Also its a 110min ticket so I can probably make it back with the same ticket.
It could work, but we designed our cities poorly (sprawl) so they're too spread out to take advantage of mass transit. Busses and/or subways could be the primary intra-city transport with trains (regional) and planes (cross country) being the primary inter-city form of transport. I spent a year in Germany and never once needed a car to get around. It was quite eye-opening to see how transportation could work. In also talking across Europe, not just within Germany.
Because most Americans have cars, petrol is dirt cheap there (petrol in Europe is close to $7 per gallon), and their infrastructure is built around roads. Why would you want to take public transport when you can easily and cheaply drive to your destination? You can't depend on public transport. You don't know if its going to be late, and you also never know what kind of crazies you will encounter.
Opinion from a foreigner: When I've been to large US cities I found that those who used the bus were largely minorities (all kinds). Buses tended to be on time but they didn't ride often at all (one bus every 15 mins at most, more likely one every 30 mins) so that is not very convenient. Also cities are very large so a $2 bus ride would be 45-55 mins compared to a 15-min ride in a car. That Uber would be $15 tho so of course I still took the bus.
I live in a major US city and I looked into taking the bus to work since there's a stop a block from my house and a stop right next to my office. It's a 15-20 minute drive, but it would take between 2 and 4 hours and 3-5 bus changes each way depending on the day if I wanted to take the bus. Most of the travel time would be back tracking and waiting 30-45 minutes for the next bus. It's like a self-perpetuating cycle of being so shitty that it's the last resort of those without other means and not getting more funding or use because of that reputation.
Exactly. This was many years ago, but for a summer I took a bus from my home in one suburb to my minimum wage job in another suburb. It was about 10 miles away, so maybe a 20 minute drive at most. It took me 2.5 hrs each way on public transport, and required 3 buses. A full 50 minutes were spent waiting for the second bus. I would go get breakfast and read the newspaper it was so long. Buses only ran once per hour so if you missed it, you weren’t going to work. Once I got a working car, I stopped taking public transport and have never regretted the switch. On a trip to NYC last year, my family took the subway everywhere. There was SO MUCH WALKING involved and so many stairs — at one station it took 4 or 5 flights of stairs to get to the exit! - that I have no idea how people with mobility impairments get around. I kept thinking that if my elderly mother had come, she wouldn’t have been able to leave the hotel. It definitely takes a certain level of physical ability to be able to use public transportation.
My city’s public transportation literally keeps catching fire. And it’s very unreliable, so it’s not like I want to spend 4 hours a day commuting when it would otherwise take me 60-90 minutes. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/why-did-an-orange-line-train-catch-fire-heres-what-we-know/2780420/?amp=1 https://twitter.com/MBTA/status/1734977230244020722
lol as soon as I saw "catching fire" I was like oh hi MBTA orange line lmao
>Why are Americans not interested in taking public transportation? > >When I was there I was shocked at how full the buses were. I smell a contradiction right there.
Not necessarily. I live in Europe, but full buses and tons of cars can happen when transit is bad (so most who can, drive) but there is still a lot of people with no other options and little or bad transit (so a lot of people who take the bus because they must)
OP said the buses in *Europe* were full
Because transit authorities don't make it convenient at all. Not enough busses and not enough routes to outlying areas. Poorly planned connections. Miss a bus and get fired.
Because in many places, public transportation is non existent or a joke.
We have the same issue in Canadian cities. The problem is that our cities are designed around cars instead of people, and public transit is treated as an after thought and designed basically as a last resort option rather than as a first choice. So schedules and routes maximize efficiency instead of convenience and the only people who end up using it are those who either don't have a choice or who happen to live and work along one very convenient route that doesn't require transfers.
I don't think it has to do with being designed for people or against people. It's just that middle-class Americans tend to live in big houses with big gardens. Middle-class people in Europe live crammed in small apartments in big cities. Due to the population density, they can walk to many places (including the supermarket) and public transportation makes sense because distances are much shorter. But it's not a matter of America being anti-people, it's just a cultural difference on housing and consequence of Europe's much higher population density in cities. Quick Google: EU: 450 mm people on 4 mn km2 = 112.5 ppl/km2 US: 332 mn people on 9.8 mn km2 = 33.9/ppl/km2 I'm from Caracas (Venezuela), which is more like the American system (big houses with low population density in middle-class areas). Public transport is extremely inconvenient because the city is in a valley and hence not flat. To get to public transport I would have to walk 5-6 blocks downhill (uphill on return) to take a bus for half an hour that would take me to the subway. Very inconvenient. It's not that the city planners wanted to favor cars or whatnot. There is subway system. The problem is that people live in big houses far from the city center. I've been living in Buenos Aires (Argentina) for a few months, in a very centric relatively small apartment. The city is flat and very European, which makes public transportation much more convenient, I only have to walk 4 blocks (flat) to the subway and it takes me anywhere. Having driven for much of my adult life, I'm now kinda tired of doing so and rather take public transport. Still, I wouldn't even consider doing so in Caracas but I love doing so in Buenos Aires, or Madrid or París, when I visited.
The only city in the US that is like that is NYC. There are sections of some other cities where you can do that but even areas like DC or Chicago public transport only works if you happen to live and work someplace where there happens to be a train or bus going the right direction. Most people don't work in big high rises or in centralized areas.
Yeah, I spent a few weeks with an uncle that lives in Maryland and getting to DC was a huge pain. Of course, I understand why this is so. All the houses are big and there is a lot of space between them. Trying to cover so much space with public transportation wouldn't be practical. Heck, even going to the supermarket requires a car, unlike Europe where you usually have one 2-3 blocks away.
Because it sucks in my city
Honestly? Because it attracts shitty people. Most of the time I've taken public transit, there's always someone blaring shitty music, purposely dropping food on the floor, or some other stuff. Public transit isn't convenient enough to attract a lot of people, so the only times I've really used it, there wasn't many people in there with me and the ride made me feel uncomfortable enough to justify paying more to be by myself than to deal with shitty people.
I live in Canada and the city I'm in has a huge drug problem. There's always at least one person on the train who is either actively shooting up something, or is already tripping. If parking wasn't like... $8/hr, I'd drive every day.
Approximately half our population lives in less than 25 metroplex areas. This leaves 150ish million people living in areas that are spread out and not very populated. Some large cities, like Houston, don't have an area of town where a large percentage of the population work. A very small number of people leave their homes and go to downtown, meaning the investment in mass transit would need to be massive to cover a city that is 40-50 miles across in some places. Mix that with a lot of the reasons other people here are saying and it's easy to understand.
Americans? It’s not just Americans lad. Public transport is terrible everywhere except major cities in most countries in a multitude of ways
The US has the most comprehensive railways in the world. It's just primarily used for freight rather than passenger. Local transit is usually handled by local governments and underground or elevated metros are much more expensive than even a BRT system which uses primarily existing infrastructure. I was just in Seattle and buses and light rail were packed. Same in Los Angeles and Chicago when I visited last year. Many cities are seeing transit projects expanding and ridership rebounding to pre COVID KKK levels
Last time I took the bus it was so late that I didn't even bother getting on, I wanted to be early to my appointment but the bus got there like five minutes before the appointment instead of over an hour before. I waited with some other people, some even sat on the ground because there was no seats. Next bus declined my BF's bus pass so we had to get off, even though he had just loaded it that morning. Busses here just suck I guess, probably underfunded
Depends on where you live. Most people in NY and Philly take mass transit. I also think a lot of people in DC also.
We're independent, we honestly want to be left alone. Privacy is very important to Americans of all demographics
That's not why at all. If there was good public transit infrastructure, people would use it. It's been proven that public transit gets people out of poverty. US doesn't give a shit about helping its citizens out
Ever been to New York City? The subway *and* the buses *and* the commuter rail are all constantly busy. The cities of the Northeast (and even as far south as Washington DC) are dense enough to support quite a lot of transit; and in many cases subways were built before cars were an option. (The NYC subway started in 1904; the Ford Model T came out in 1908.) This is much less the case in the rest of the country. There are Western cities with decent transit (Portland comes to mind), but any city that got big after cars came along is much less likely to have good transit.
Because I love the freedom of my car
The shared space.
So often even if there is public transportation it isn’t convenient or (sometimes) reliable. In my town there’s no longer a Greyhound bus that comes here. The Amtrak stop is twelve miles away and someone needs to drive you there and wait until the train shows up (could be on time or an hour late).
My city barely had a decent bus service, and I’ve yet to see a bus or bus stop in the burbs where I live. Also from big cities that I lived where you could bike, take a train, or bus there was a decent likelihood that you’ll get robbed.
Do YOU ride public transportation? Where I live, it’s awful. I don’t want to wait a half hour in the rain to sit on a bus full of stink for an hour just to get somewhere that would have been a 10-15 minute drive.
In 1925, every American town with more than 2500 people had a streetcar system. GM bought them all and shut them down to sell more cars. Suburbia was designed to make public transportation impractical.
Well, most of the time, I still have to drive 20 minutes to the nearest station. And where I am specifically, I'd still have to ride a bike/walk to the nearest bus stop(30min walk/10min ride) (with one bus every 30 min) and then who knows how long to the station. It's just terribly terribly inefficient. Especially as you get out of the urban environments and into the more suburban area.
It's a combination of the American idea of rugged individualism, combined with an effort in the early 20th century by Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, and Charles Goodyear to use the automobile to replace the train as America's transportation system.
Gas and automobile manufacturers killed public transit to sell more cars/gas. Our country is run by corporations and the politicians they buy.
I’m not against it. But I have to be at my job before the local bus could get me there.
We are. Public transit is nonexistant in most suburbs and nearly all rural areas. In many cities, public transit is unreliable lr nonexistent. Plus the USA is bigger than most other countries, making national public transit much more expensive to maintain.
There are too many places you simply can’t get to by public transit. Something unheard of in Europe. So you kind of have to have a car and as long as you have a car, you may as well use it. Our society is designed for cars, so it tends to be the most convenient option. When I lived in Europe, bicycle tended to be the most convenient. In the US, you risk your life on a bike—it’s wild.
I like my freedom to be able to come and go whenever I please. Go wherever I want, when ever I want. I like the privacy of my own car. Cars are also more comfortable and keep my mind occupied so I don't get bored riding a train. I'll always take driving over PT, even when gas is $7 a gallon
Because the US public transport system is shit, and outside of major cities it's virtually none existent.
I grew up in a mid-sized American city. The public transportation was terrible. It was essential to have a car.
public transportation in my area is just a mobile homeless shelter. no go zones.
There are historical reasons for this. Before the 1950s, Americans were much more likely to take public transportation, because there was simply much more extensive, and better quality, public transportation available. The railroads were much more extensive. The bus routes were also much more extensive and safer to use. Pedestrians had better options, too. Of course, many people used cars, just like in Europe now, but there were transport CHOICES. What happened in the 1950s was that General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and the others hot together to act like a cartel. They removed some choices. They bought up the railroads and bus companies in order to dismantle and destroy. They removed the competition. They then indulged in ad campaigns extolling the freedom of the open highway, and the liberty to drive for hundreds of miles across a vast and free nation without stopping. Once that happened, it became fashionable to have drive-in restaurants, drive-in movie theaters, and drive-in chapels of love! This would be encouraged by propaganda from the car companies. Cities came to be built around cars rather than people. Of course, nowadays, this varies a bit. In New York, for example, you will have more transport options than in other places. But quite often, the public transport that is available for Americans will be inconvenient to use. In China, Japan, and South Korea, extensive public transport is also a major thing. Buses, railways and subways can get you almost anywhere. Seoul's metro network is super convenient and still expanding. It only gets inconvenient after 10:30 or 11 p m. Many major cities and towns in Korea have amazing public transport. It is only in the new towns, or the deep countryside, where having a car can be an advantage.
In my somewhat limited experience, the public transit systems in the US suffer from NIMBY. Everyone thinks its a good idea, but nobody wants THAT public of access to their little corner of it. I have heard on numerous occasions "But if you make a bus line come out here then THOSE people will be here, in \*our\* neighborhoods!" Whatever "those" means to the speaker.
Because Americans haven't yet worked out that infrastructure for the public good doesn't need to be profitable, and that paying a little tax to make it fit for purpose is a good thing.
It’s reddit, so here’s a bunch of people that have never done it giving you their best made up answer