people should be reminded that posts like these aren’t really critical of people for not taking the bus. they’re critical of systems and planning that don’t make you want to take the bus.
if the bus is always packed people will not want to ride it. that’s not on you.
if the bus is unreliable, that’s not on you.
if there’s no bus or public transit that goes where you want to go out somewhere of a reasonable walking distance, that’s not on you.
if where you’re going is not walkable in the first place, then taking the bus is pointless since once you arrive you’d need a car anyway.
demanding change however is on you.
it’s not like cars are awesome by the way. they’re inefficient, pricy, troublesome, there’s traffic, parking… it’s stressful and it’s deadly to boot. if people are not taking the bus, the city has work to do.
I’m critical of all the people driving over sized SUVs by themselves in NYC when I’m trying to get a loaded box truck though a gridlocked intersection. Even if the city instruction doesn’t have mass transit, you do not need Escalade over a commuter car.
yeah just because you’re not riding a bus doesn’t mean you should get around with a Gigantus Pollutinator 9000 or a private jet, obviously.
An SUV in NYC is especially egregious. They could have taken the train from Yonkers, and used the bus/subway. You guys are the one city in the US that actually has decent mass transit.
If you actually live in the city, and own an SUV you are an idiot spending way too much on parking.
You guys are the one city in the US that actually has decent mass transit.
The DC metro is a lot nicer than the NYC subway.
Sometimes being in my little car driving in NYC is more relaxing or faster. Most of the time taking public transportation takes the same amount of time as driving, so I’ll pick driving so I don’t have to be cold or hot while waiting or to deal with other people. The argument for making more public transportation faster, more frequent is a good one and would make more people use it.
Valid complaint, but not really the focus of this post imo
I think (most) cars are awesome but want better public transit because there’s way too many people who are terrible drivers.
If driving required licensing like an airplane pilot I’d still get one. And probably enjoy driving more because I could expect people to know how to zipper merge.
I just want people to learn how the fucking stop signs work.
Semi solve by carrying passengers. Become the bus you wanna see.
piggy back rides for $1.99!
Pfft. But for real. I’m getting this feeling this is not normal in USA. Meanwhile where I live people routi ely pick each other up on the way ti save o fuel and/or time.
Only for cost reasons, really, so it’s only super common in poorer areas or among laborers (who pretty much universally get paid shit)
Carpooling is totally a thing, but in my experience doing it for years, unless the people in the group were punctual and lived close enough, it never works out.
people have designed the systems you are crying about and people use the systems you are crying about. People make the systems and engage them, you cant keep crying about systems or nothing will change
If this is America/Canada while it could be carrying more people the sad truth is that it’s probably carrying half a dozen people because it’s likely going from one unwalkable neighborhood to another. Especially up here in BC there’s a stark difference between downtown buses running between unis, skytrain and the dense core of Vancouver to the ones you’ll see in a suburban hell like Burnaby.
Also, more frequent and convenient bus trips probably means less people on board per trip.
Lets assume we disqualify the cars going left ro right, and if we also assume each car only has 1 person per car, that means the cars is 32.
A bus that size is usually built to fit around 50ish people using every seat, but none standing.
I ride my local bus everyday. It’s NEVER full like that. I might have 6 people on the bus. Sometimes I’m the only rider.
So, yeah, a bus CAN hold roughly as many prople as cars, (again assuming only 1 person per car, which probably isn’t the case 100%), the reality is that’s not functionally true.
Even if it’s only carrying 6 people it’s still doing a better job than the cars which on average probably have 1-2 people in each of them.
Yes, but it’s also the length of 4 cars, and uses diesel.
You can see on the road that it takes up one lane like the cars and is equivalent to about 2.5 cars lined up accounting for gaps. Also the point of this post is that if public transport was normalized then this bus wouldn’t have six people in it because half of these cars would be people on the bus instead.
Badly designed transit is not a condemnation of all public transit. Specially when in most of the world public transit is vastly more occupied than in the US and Canada, by the simple fact of actually connecting places people want to go, where people can then walk around when they get there. Parking lots are not destinations.
I lived in a European capital until 28 and never got a driver’s license because public transport was faster than driving through horrible traffic.
Moved to the US and in less than a year had to buy a car because it was impossible to do anything without one. And that was in am area with considerably better public transport than usual for the US. It was just my wife driving, but after a few years I had to get a driver’s license too and buy a second car. I like walking, I prefer good public transit to driving, but it’s simply not an option in most of the US.
Oh, and another story. In my hometown I absolutely loved the subway as THE way to get around. It was cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and average wait was 2-3 minutes. I visited New York one summer and as per habit I went to take the subway to my destination. It was sweltering hot and I waited 20 minutes for a train. Up to that point I considered NYC to be the closest US city to what I’m used to, but that would have been a deal breaker.
tbf, it’s only possibly not true because of intentional choices in city design and general social attitudes.
That being said, I live in a pretty shitty area for bus transport (I’m in the USA, no less) and the busses are still usually mostly full when I use them.
There are many other reasons why a bus might not be used at full capacity beyond just city design combined with the general attitude of “society”.
In individual cases, sure. But a well-designed city and public transport system should not be running skeleton capacities at daylight hours on the regular.
is it not packed because all those people who could be inside are outside driving their own cars?
is it not packed because the bus line doesn’t have much demand?
either case is not an argument against public transit. the point is to make public transit more convenient and utilized.
True but people have less of a problem when I masturbate in my car.
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lmao, I know that feeling. When I was younger, whole of body, and lived in a shittier area, there were multiple times that no amount of sprinting, shouting, and waving my arms after the bus which REFUSED to make its scheduled stop at the location I was very clearly standing at could penetrate the inscrutable thought processes of the fucking bus driver.
I’m starting to develop a vigor for public transit to match the one forced on us for car infrastructure in the 60s. Bigger, taller, more, I want 3 bus lanes and a tram line to any town in the country. We can do no wrong taking back all the space we gave to the car, as long as the garbage truck fits on the street, car users can share 1 lane both directions. Take their parking, take their license for rolling stops and using their phone, gift them e-bikes.
Make transit free, let the highways rot, expand the railways. Sorry for that pothole, all the money was used up by rail.
Just anything better than we have now. If we have to act fast and break things, so be it.
, car users can share 1 lane both directions.
Oh God, I don’t trust them with that.
I visited India 30 years ago and (in the southern part of the country at least) the major highways between cities had a single paved lane in the middle and then just dirt and gravel on the steeply-sloped sides. So on bus trips the drivers would stick to the middle until the last possible second and then veer off so that just the right wheels were on the pavement as they passed each other while tipping crazily to each side. I made the huge mistake on my first trip of sitting in the front seat; I later corrected my mistake by always taking the fucking train, which didn’t have this problem.
And I am sure drivers are furious about that bus lane.
Because bus lanes are usually poorly implemented. Usually they just take out a car lane, call it a bus lane, and wash their hands of it. Car congestion is now worse, and buses still have to wait at the same lights.
My city did a bus lane right: they took a 3 lane road (2 lanes each way plus dedicated left-turning only lanes), eliminated the turn lane and turned that into a dedicated bus lane with dedicated switching. The bus lane switches don’t correspond to regular traffic lights, so drivers don’t pull into the bus lane to use it (think weird slashes and circles) and the buses don’t have to wait at stoplights next to regular cars. Buses fly by the traffic, and cars didn’t lose a lane. They did extensive traffic surveys and found that only a small portion of traffic was turning left across oncoming traffic and those cars spent a long time waiting anyway. So now cars have to drive a few more blocks to turn but it’s almost the same travel time since they were waiting so long before anyway.
They also added bike lanes with raised concrete medians between them and the cars, which double as platforms for bus stops.
It was a huge win for everyone and works really well.
But how else will the oil companies increase profits for their shareholders?
Yeah, and that’s why I prefer cycling or skateboarding wherever I need (depending on the distance). In Russia those MFs get pretty packed at times, sometimes to the point it gets hard to breath in there 😬
Depends if it’s full or not. I live in a city with decent public bus transport. Outside of rush hour those buses are just mostly empty and sometimes we have a grid lock of empty buses.
I wonder if they’ll all end up in different places? 😉
In my experience (lived in four countries, ~30 cities / towns), public transport just feels unsafe. It’s always a choice between crazies shouting, groups of teenagers playfighting and blasting their mobile phones on full volume or just the good old rapey stare from strangers. I’d rather not be exposed to all the worst elements of society at close quarters in a metal tube I can’t escape from.
Isn’t that a bit self-fulfilling, though? If more people rode the bus, then it wouldn’t be all creeps and teens.
For my part, having lived in Philly where the people on the busses are actually quite pleasant, it was still too inefficient to make it work. A ten minute drive would be over an hour on the bus, and god help you if the bus was running late (I’m kidding, the bus was always running late). That’s a problem that gets worse when there are more riders. As soon as it got too cold to ride a bike, busses would be completely full and unable to take more riders, which meant you’d have to wait for the next one.
Employers aren’t very understanding about being late. Even if you had a direct route from your house to your job, you’d still need to account for extra time for delays. Taking the bus means you pack on two extra hours onto your commute every day, which even at minimum wage is $3,770 worth of time every year. At a living wage, it’s over $10,000 per year. Even with upkeep and insurance, anybody getting paid enough to live practically needs a car. And that’s if you live and work in the city, which is the ideal situation for public transit. Move to the burbs, and that bus ain’t going where you are.
It seems like it would be a self fulfilling prophecy, you are right.
At the same time, having lived in London for 10 years… This is from today: https://red.artemislena.eu/r/london/comments/1fprfcy/i_cant_even_take_the_bus_in_peace_due_to_sexual/
The argument that more people taking public transport would somehow fix this makes no sense in a place like London. It’s a gigantic city with public transport permanently bursting at the seams.
A bus through a dodgy area at midnight won’t feel safe unless it’s policed somehow. I don’t know where the resources for that could possibly come from.
City seems to have some bias, if mostly the worst elements drive public transport.
Sure, but I’m not going to get on any conveyance with a bunch of strangers if I can avoid it.
From my experience bus is carrying just the driver
I talk as a person who rode the bicycle and walked more than driven a car that in a typical city centre designed for cars I prefer to live poluting with my car rather than die hit by one while riding the bicycle in a hurry to work.
Your sentiment is fine. The reason you’re being downvoted isn’t because of your desire to drive a car for your own safety, it’s because it appears as if you feel that is the only solution.
This community is interesting because despite the name many users here understand a significant change does need to occur before vehicles can be drummed out at bigger percentages. Many also know that modern infrastructure and working expectations means that a car is the only way a lot of people can make ends meet.
In your case there may be an alternative route, a bus you can take, or even car pooling, amongst other options depending on the location. The answer isn’t continuing to pollute, that’s just the easy response. But you’re right, biking is dangerous and there are motorists out there who have an unhealthy emotional relationship with the road, and against bicyclists. So stay safe, alright?
Just maybe also look at alternatives whilst doing so.
Wow, I never expected that elaborated answer, thank you. To be honest I love the bicycle and can’t wait until the autumn rains stop and the good white finnish winter starts for some cool rides. It just requires more preparation and shower time each morning, but twice a week is great.
I have been so close to an accident several times that makes me think, what a sad way to end my life in a hurry to get my ass into work. I even love my job, but still it’s so absurd to precipitate an accident by hurrying to make it for 8 o’clock in the morning every damn day.
I’ve also used the bus a lot, but despite the last technology pros like vehicle gps tracking it takes three times longer to get to work than by car and is quite boring too.
To sum up I think the best solution would be to remove like 90% of the asfalt roads. If you want to drive, then get you some vehicle that can ride the mountains around the city.
