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Comment by gkop | Hacker News Reader

My buddy lives in SoMa and works 1.7 miles away at Lyft HQ in China Basin. He takes Muni to work because it's faster (despite being significantly less direct). San Francisco is not even a dense city. It's frightening to me that none of the comments here on this thread show any love for mass transit.

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I live in Seattle, work downtown, and the bus is significantly cheaper than all my other commute options (except for riding my bike) and takes about as long to get me home as it takes me to drive myself in a car that was parked in the perfect spot to avoid the bad blocks.

I would be very skeptical of the claim that Uber (with today's public infrastructure and vehicles driven by human drivers) could do the job just as well if none of our public transit infrastructure existed. We have a lot of buses and a still-expanding light rail, and they are packed every day at rush hour. If they really were more expensive and/or slower than the alternatives and/or filled with crusty, ranting hobos crapping their pants and smearing it on the seats (which is what you imagine reading some of the comments in here) then people wouldn't ride them, which simply is not the case.

Sure, there are some bad buses, but "just take an Uber" is not a useful answer to that problem for most people or society at large, and I don't know how out of touch you have to be to suggest a public two-tiered poor/rich system with a straight face.

I live near Seattle and travel there frequently. I concur with your assessment.

San Francisco is the second densest major city in the United States.

Depends on how you count. If you look at the metropolitan area, it's the 7th densest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Cities in the US are less dense than cities elsewhere [0] because of the large extent to which US cities are designed around cars [1] (including SF, which is #104! Even our more dense cities aren't very dense relative to the world).

[0] http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...

[1] http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Casestudy/E_...

that's not really a good stick to measure against.

I use mass transit almost every time I go to SF (because driving on 101/280 on workday around SF is insane). It's reasonably working, but yes, there are smells sometimes (especially at underground stations), and there are many people, including some looking (and smelling), let's say, not in a way most are accustomed to. Not a big issue for me, but I guess might be for some.

My bigger problem with SF is that timing is kind of unpredictable (trains go on time mostly, but everything else is kind of hit or miss). Usually it's not a problem but once I missed a train because trams had a sort of traffic jam. I didn't know that can happen, but apparently it can. Another time it happened again, I was smarter and just got out and run for like 3 blocks and got on the train on time. But I still use SF mass transit, even though there's some room for improvement, and think it is very valuable.

I really get sick of how cavalier people like you are in these threads when talking about homeless/crazy/violent people on SF mass transportation. These people are sketchy as fuck and legitimate criminals in many cases and you're acting like they're just a mild inconvenience. They will yell at you, threaten you, and yes outright attack you. I'm glad that doesn't bother you but it's not unreasonable that it bothers most other people.

> These people are sketchy as fuck and legitimate criminals in many cases and you're acting like they're just a mild inconvenience.

For me, they are. You are free to express your opinion, I am just expressing mine :) I never claimed my experience is universal, it's just what I see. Parent poster solicited opinions about mass transit in SF, so I shared mine, without pretending it is some global truth applicable to everybody.

> I'm glad that doesn't bother you but it's not unreasonable that it bothers most other people.

Fine, I'm not sure why you have to express this simple thought - which I certainly agree with, and never claimed otherwise - in a form of an attack. It's like existence of people that have different problems that you somehow offends you.

Orlando has a commuter train and I love it. Takes me from the north suburbs into downtown Orlando for work everyday, and gives me good time to read, nap, play games, etc without having to deal with traffic.

It's also been popular enough they started testing it on weekends and building more track for more destinations.

If you're only 1.7 miles away, odds are you could hoof it faster than driving or taking public transit, once externalities like parking or waiting around for the bus to show up are factored in.

>San Francisco is not even a dense city.

Wow, man! Have you ever, like, been to San Francisco?

Have you even been in Paris or London?

Been to Paris a few times. Second trip someone slammed me into a metro car door and stole my wallet. Each time I went there were more and more immigrants loitering in groups on the streets, facing off with more and more police. Felt like a powder keg.

Most of the people that I worked with in Paris used cars or motorcycles; they earned IT and professional wages and could afford to avoid the prevailing public transport, which they did. Later the company I was involved with moved to a 'suburb' (not sure that's the appropriate term...) of Lyon. Huge improvement in every way and no one at that site used any public transport; all cars.

This was the early 2000's. I imagine the bad parts have gotten worse since then; if you look like a tourist or foreign worker don't go near the metro outside of business hours.

Come on. I won't dispute your past experiences but you really should avoid extrapolating on anecdotal data.

Car ownership for Parisian households sits at 39%.

Zooming out to the Ile-de-France region (population: 12 million), 33% of households don't have a car.

source (french): http://transports.blog.lemonde.fr/2015/05/03/la-preuve-par-l...

Regarding your comments on safety, I certainly believe the city feels much safer today than in early 2000's.

(Obviously not talking about terrorist acts, as they are not caused by 'immigrants loitering in groups on the streets').

> Regarding your comments on safety, I certainly believe the city feels much safer today than in early 2000's.

Then I don't want to imagine what it must have been like in the 2000's. :(

French here, lived in Paris, no-one in their sane mind would use their cars every day in the city center, and you can take the metro up until midnight and nothing will happen.

San Francisco is 3 times less dense as Paris. It's still a dense city by North-American standards, but it's not dense by comparaison to most big metropolitan areas in the world.

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