Actual American public transit is when you ask it for public transit directions and your phone shoots you with a small caliber bullet
People in the “fuck cars” community would have an aneurysm. Work drive sucks.
It’s trash lol
That’s actually quite the improvement. I remember back when I had the lovely choice between an actual hourly train that would take you within a literal days walk of your destination with the entire route having the constant risk of you being run over, the local bus route which requried switching three busses even to leave town, with another 5 or 6 easily to reach close walking distance to where you’d be going the next town over, or the good old fashioned route of just driving there which took a good hour and a half if you were going anywhere important and had the added bonus of constant risk of being run off the road from our local drivers.
To be fair these days it’s a lot better, the bus route only takes three swaps at worst, and the bus drivers only ocasionally start driving like they are formula 1 racers on their way to take a pit stop in the middle of goddamn nowhere.
The fact that the route has public transit and walkable options narrows it down to a handful of American cities.
Google doesn’t actually care when there are no walkable options. If there are walkable options it will prioritize those paths, but if there are none it just gives you the shortest route and hopes.
Define “walkable”. The side of the road is considered “walkable”.
We have a street whenever a telephone pool is squarely in the center of the sidewalk, such that you have to squeeze between a building and the pole to pass it or step into a three lane one way street with a 35mph speed limit
If you look on Google Maps, there’s this super convenient line of trees that goes from the next large city north-ish of my town to the largest city in the state, south of me. It runs right through my town. If you go looking in that line of trees, you’ll find abandoned train tracks.
There was a day when someone (not me, I’m not that old) could get on a train in my town and go to virtually any medium to large city. Now, we can’t even get funding to connect the walking trail segments that parallel portions of those abandoned tracks between towns.
Fuck cars
I assure you, Amtrak isn’t good. There’s only one stretch near me where it’s faster to train than drive, and Amtrak makes the price about 8x the cost of driving (or 32x if you have passengers)
Amtrak isn’t good
Going from DC to NYC without stepping onto a plane or fighting traffic is such a blessing.
And you’ve nailed the only functioning service line I was referring to in one go :)
Oh I believe you. I’m on a train literally right now.
Is this Houston?
This sounds exactly like Houston.
Nah. If Ted Cruz called the same state home as I do, I’d self deport.
Not one.
Not a single one of you is gonna acknowledge the artistry that is the username “beemovieerotica”?
Nah, it checks out for Tumblr
🎷It’s hip to fuck bees🎷
Do not the bees
I almost had jury duty a while back so I thought I might take public transit to that. Car trip is 25-30 minutes. Public is 2.5 hours and I would arrive 45 minutes before the courthouse opened.
This is why we need better public transit. Sure, there’ll always be some inefficiancies, but in quite a few countries public transit is a very reasonable option
Sorry, car dealers are major contributors to sales taxes so the best I can do is one more lane, bro
That other cars will ignore the rules of, and drive in anyways.
Just one more lane bro. And remove the bicycle lanes. That’ll fix everything.
Two different problems. Nothing much stopping a city that cares from improving their bus system.
All we need is to figure out how to have public transit generate accelerating, double-digit profit growth year-on-year, so that VCs all start bankrolling public transit startups, and then all our transit problems will be solved! /s
If you find a way to link public transit to the further oppression of brown people or the extraction of oil, you’d get it in every city in America within 5 years.
And that’s exactly why freight trains have no problems existing in USA.
I really wanted to argue with this, but you’re right. Shipping companies would have gone truck-only by now to attack brown countries harder with climate change if brown neighborhoods in the US had any say over the use of train tracks through their areas. Yet another thing that’s not about efficiency or cost, while corporations pretend to be all about money.
The thing is it can be quite profitable for the biggest possible VC firm out there. The government.
The Interstate System spurned so much economic growth and thereby new tax revenue. Weve just pissed it away on stupid shit and have failed to maintain critical bridges and things like that.
Yes, they just have to “run it at a loss”. Instead of trying to drive up the fares trying to reach “profitable” levels.
A lot of the savings should come from reduced road deterioration and lower road maintenance costs.
And smaller roads. The routes that are ideal for trains already have the overloaded highways that are already too big to maintain rain and cant scale to traffic: just one more lane, bro?
You’re joking… but look into “brightline” with the Florida shit show and how they’re now getting further public subsidiaries to make a “profitable” HSR (highspeedrail) between CA and NV. Doing exactly what you’re stating but with their ears plugged while screaming as loud as they can.
I can’t believe you didn’t use the word “disrupt”. Huge No-No. Why would I fund something that doesn’t explicitly disrupt the public transportation space?
Just use AI to disrupt public transportation space! On the blockchain!
What we really need to do is figure out how to make public transit profitable to the automobile lobby.
Living in NYC, I had to go to downtown from uptown everyday.
Train: under 20 minutes.
Bus: over an hour.
The cool thing was I could use the same MetroCard for both. Sometimes I would take the bus because the scenery is nice to look at, or I wanted to read a book.
The cool thing was I could use the same MetroCard for both
Has this not been a thing for like 60 years practically everywhere?
RIP cities that don’t have this.
In conclusion, I approve of your lifestyle
Nowadays I think you just tap any debit/credit card on the new system for NYC
And Mamdani promises to make the buses free!
Good!
I was in the US with my sister. Didn’t know whether the bus to get us to town would pass as it was already sunsetting (yes, it did pass we later figured out) as the trip was a couple hours long. One guy stops with his big truck towing a boat and picks us up. Apparently he did not figure out we were hitching, he thought we were waiting for the bus and was afraid for us. Apparently the previous day he had taken the bus for the first time in his 65 years of life and that was one of the most traumatizing experiences in his life. He figured we should not go through the same pains he had to go through…
But yes, American public transport is terrible. While travelling I had decided not to rent a car. I ended up having to make friends with people travelling with cars so that I could go around with them.
I love public transport, it is basically the only form of transport I use. I do occasionally drive a car, maybe once or twice a year. That said, I really prefer not to need transport in my day to day life.
I live in a city in Spain. It is an important city, but it is not very large. I walk to work in 20 minutes. From work I walk to the city centre 15 minutes. From the city centre I walk to the woods outside town in 15 minutes. It’s not even worth it to wait for the bus to arrive…
It’s a mystery why people don’t take buses in the US.
A real head scratcher.
Hub and spoke kills use of buses.
30-45 minute drive to work, depending on traffic. Bus would be 3.5 hours. No trains.
I’m almost 40 and I’ve spent about 9 months during which there was public transport between me and my job, and I probably could have walked from Holt ave to Lewis street faster than the GTA bus.
I had a few years where I rode the train from a stop a mile from my house to a station literally in the basement of the building I worked in. A 55 minute ride where I could read peacefully or nap, absolute heaven. I didn’t even like moving to WFH because I missed the restaurants in the city.
