For anyone who really likes driving:
More public transport = less people driving = less traffic = win-win situation for everyone
Fully agree and the US public transportation system is fucking pathetic.
What is “the US public transportation system”?
some cities have amtrak and it’s expensive. there’s also the private public transit system of greyhound, megabus, and the chinatown express network
Wouldn’t it be nice if this was people attitude and not “WHY SHOULD I BE PAYING TAXES FOR STUFF THAT I DONT USE”.
Why shouldn’t people say that? We have a long list of other examples of bad transport investments, transport projects that cost for more than they will benefit society and so on. Show that this investment isn’t a waste of money and I might be interested, but all I see is people who see transit as a way to shovel money their union and consultant donors. Clean up the our side of politics first.
“WHY SHOULD I BE PAYING TAXES FOR STUFF THAT I DONT USE”.
I’m on a citizen’s advisory committee for a county’s planning and development board… this can be answered rather easily in a way most posing the question haven’t even considered. Approach the person like this: “So, you’ll never use this thing, you like driving, but I’ll bet you don’t like traffic… every single solitary person riding on that new bus/light rail line, cycling on those new bike lanes, and walking on those new sidewalks is another car you’re not going to be stuck behind in traffic. You personally come out ahead in this as well!”
Usually, they’ve never considered that traffic calming and alternative transport modes actually IS infrastructure from which motorists benefit. It’s true that private vehicles aren’t efficient as a means of mass transit, but they are convenient… it’s the convenience factor where you can get car-brained folks to have a change of heart. The more you can emphasize that these improvements to other modes can make driving even slightly more convenient, the more they’ll get on board with spending on them. Remember, these folks are already used to telling each other “I don’t mind all the construction, that extra lane on that highway is needed.” Half the time, this line of reasoning gets them on board or, at the very least, to stop outright opposing improvements.
America, the land of “i got mine”
I watched a few episodes of that recent show “Paradise,” and as soon as I saw that they chose to make their giant bunker inside a mountain a fucking suburb with cars as the main form of transportation, I was like “fuck this…”
Then I remembered what time line we were on, and of course that’s exactly something that the US government would do.
Could fit several times more people by building vertically, but instead fill it up with one-family homes with a quarter-acre backyard and swimming pool. Sounds about right.
Sorry, best we can do is shitty robotaxis and electric cars that lock you inside when they explode.
it’s taken a few decades but seattle finally has really good light rail. every 10 minutes. you can get from the airport to the other side of the city for $4. it’s not perfect, and doesn’t go everywhere, but holy hell is it a giant upgrade for living in town.
Mmmmm. Grew up in Seattle, and finally having light rail is, of course, better than not having it.
But I’ve also lived in San Francisco, and I’m often frustrated by the unreliability and mismanagement of Seattle’s system. Meltdown days seem about as common as non-meltdown days.
fo sho if you’re going to compare it to bart, which is like, 50 years of concerted civil engineering to the last two decades here in Seattle, it’s gonna fall short. Bart’s an impressive outlier in commitment to the problem.
BART was pretty impressive too, but I was mostly thinking of San Francisco’s Municipal Railway (Muni). It’s about 110 years old, and ran eight routes, cable car and light rail, when I lived there in the '00s (they’ve added a few routes since then). I didn’t have a car, and Muni took me everywhere inside the city, pretty reliably. Sure, you could count on a meltdown of the system every month or two, but Sound Transit is only 15 years old, too young to be as rickety and unreliable as it is. And it still flabbergasts me that no heads rolled over the bridge fiasco for the 2-line.
Not trying to be argumentative. Big fan of public transit. I live in Seattle and don’t own a car. Sound Transit needs to be better, is all.
San Francisco’s Municipal Railway
muni is hella awesome too, it’s a great example of how not kneecapping things in the early 1900s changes the equation.
I wish ST was better, but I have limited expectations moving here from a red state.
Reminder that transit will never take off unless there are written and unwritten rules of public decorum, and they are enforced. I live in New York and take the subway every day. There are obvious pros to doing so, which is why I do it, but you would have a hard time selling my experience to people not used to it. I regularly have to deal with shit you should never have to.
I’ve been to a bunch of places and probably taken a dozen different subways/metros, they are all way better behaved than here. East Asia is not even in the same ball park.
Who you vote for matters. Right not everyone votes for the democrats who want it this way and so that is what you get. You need to find/make a choice that cares about transit and vote for them. Good luck.
I still want self driving cars
Safe and reliable self driving cars, affordable and accessible high speed public transit, a smart grid that can handle a nationwide shift to renewables… I want so many things. But my expectations have never been lower for what we’ll actually get.
I mean I can want two things.
Not having to drive myself to the hospital in a minor emergency where I’m alone would be nice, but even the friends and family discount at the local ambulance company is too expensive.
Maybe, you know, get universal healthcare instead of people relying on self driving cars for their emergency trips to the hospital?
Lmao never saw that, it’s great
But I think the solution to that is more accessible health care, not self driving cars
in my country during the day, you dont need to check schedules.
but then public transit is slow, uncomfortable and expensive.
they just made it frequent and to cover a big area because most of us cant afford cars but they still need us to get to work.
The US had voted against having this
During rush hour my city’s transit comes every 15 minutes, 7.5 minutes on the shared line. I only used it for commuting. On the weekend I saw the train leaving and didn’t worry but had to wait a while 30 minutes. Which sucked.
A train/bus every 30 minutes is fine for work - most people can plan their work day around that, so long as the schedule is reasonably consistent. However when going doing anything else there is too much risk that you will have to wait 29 minutes when you finish whatever it was you came to do and that is not acceptable to most people.
you see, if the City does that then it’s the city’s responsibility to maintain, both the infrastructure for transportation and the transportation itself. With cars, they only do infrastructure
car infrastructure is more expensive than public transportation
Sure, but you need some of that car infrastructure for trash collection, deliveries and such. In small towns that double duties for everything at no extra cost. Until you have a good network investments in public transit are bad as so few will ride that it isn’t worth having at all - then suddenly you have a good network and people start riding.
Agreed, traffic suck whether it jam or not
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