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Comment by bgirard | Hacker News Reader

I recall in ~2009 my university (UWaterloo) had a referendum to increase tuition by $50/term (now $80/term) to increase city bus routes to the university and provide free service to students using your student card. I voted against it because I could easily carpool and was against another mandatory fee.

The vote was fairly controversial and passed by a narrow margin. But since the service was improved to every 15 minutes and I was already paying for it I started using the service and shortly stopped driving to school altogether.

By the time I graduated I really loved the system since it really improved my commute and really regretted voting against it. I just checked and now the approval is at 94% for the UPass.

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This is the dilemma in a car society - whenever you ask people what they want, it's more roads and parking spaces. People can't even imagine how a good public transit can improve their lifes, including that of the remaining road users.

I think the solution is just for everyone to visit a place with a good public transit network and live there for a few months - in the US I can only think of New York. Exchange student programs should be mandated anyways, to mend the cultural gaps within the nation.

> People can't even imagine how a good public transit can improve their lifes, including that of the remaining road users.

For some reason, the most unexpectedly shocking levels of ignorance I ever encounter from otherwise intelligent people come from car fans when discussing transportation policy. I'm talking the most basic failures of logic from people that I don't consider to be complete idiots (the acquaintances I've seen this from may not be extremely intelligent, but are generally capable of reasonable conversation about any other issue). For example, one of the most common things I see is indignation at why a given public transit system doesn't fully pay for itself, somehow imagining that vehicle owners directly defray the entire costs of car-specific transport infrastructure at time of use.

I don't know what it is about this issue that uniquely disables so many people's brains and simultaneously supercharges how passionate they are about it. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that transportation/traffic/etc is a big headache in most people's lives and the idea of it becoming any worse, even temporarily, is unpalatable enough to short-circuit any form of adult thought.

My parents would say the trains are dirty and shake their head.

So hard to get people in the US to like public transit :(

Because trains are dirty in the US.

Go to Vienna, ride a train, and then go to San Francisco, and ride BART. Its night and day. Vienna had clean trains with a smooth ride. BART seems to always be dirty, and the cars screech like banshees.

Its a vicious cycle. No one wants to fund trains, so they fall into disrepair. The then get a bad rap about being in disrepair, so no one wants to fund them. If you want a real villain, blame the oil companies that bought up local trains and dismantled them in the first half of the century.

Placing the onus of the death of public transit in the US on the General Motors streetcar conspiracy fails to look at other economic aspects of the end of streetcars.

* Streetcar companies were the loss leaders for real estate developers.

* The Great Depression and WW2 caused deferred maintenance that undercapitalized transit companies could not afford after the real estate had been sold.

* Municipalities regulated fares, with voters regularly voting down measures to increase fares. At the time, transit agencies had to generate revenue almost entirely from fares.

* Transit companies had to pay recurring franchise fees for each mile of track, while bus companies didn't pay such a fee.

* With the increase in auto traffic slowing down streetcars, busses had more maneuverability in heavier auto traffic.

The new tapered wheels on BART cars are supposed to be only half as noisy.

https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2016/news20160831

> If you want a real villain, blame the oil companies that bought up local trains and dismantled them in the first half of the century.

That's quite a claim, considering air travel's hand in killing train companies. You have a citation for that?

I thought this was well-known:

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

First, streetcars aren't trains. They're good at circulating people around an urban center, but not for getting them in and out.

Second, even that article indicates streetcar systems were well on their way to death before the conspiracy started.

Third, the participation of oil companies in it was tangential; it was auto manufacturers who drove it.

As someone who's lived in Zurich, here's the main advantage of streetcars vs buses: They get their own reserved space in the middle of the road. That makes them very reliable and on-time like trains (assuming good planning / operations). That's why they're still popular in places with good service, and new ones are getting built.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/

I want to fund trains. And tracks too! What I don't want to fund is the colossal bureaucracy built up like barnacles around these trains. General management administrators, assistant general manager administrators, assistants to the assistant administrators. Because whenever we're asked to pay more taxes to increase funding to mass transit, THAT's where the money is going.

Trains and buses aren't exactly cheap, and the service contracts on top of that are even more. Subway cars (not trains) cost over $1 million each [1] [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R143_(New_York_City_Subway_car...

[2] https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/cars/delivery-plan -- Says $184 million is equal to 104 cars.

> Vienna had clean trains with a smooth ride. [...]

Same regarding the trains in The Netherlands and Germany. They get cleaned when they arrive at their destination and this is calculated in the downtime.

i hate to admit it, but i agree with your parents.

where I live, a small fraction of the people on public transit are obnoxious, play loud music, talk loudly on mobile phones, put their feet on the seats, eat and drink, litter, and create the appearance of being threatening to public safety. law enforcement agents are practically nonexistent.

because of that the entire experience of riding public transit is, rather than being relaxing, a bit tense. rather than being pleasant, it is often unpleasant.

on the plus side, underground trains get me to my destination very quickly.

if public transport were clean and pleasant, if the stations and trains and buses were safe havens rather than magnets for poor behavior and even crime, i'd get rid of my car.

It's a public space. There will inevitably be things you don't like about it, that's life in a city. Doesn't stop me from taking the bus almost everyday. You're really exaggerating unless your city is a lot worse than mine. Most trips are pleasant and without incident.

>create the appearance of being threatening to public safety

Care to elaborate?

Intimidation. I dealt with that a lot when riding the bus in my city, was a problem back in 1998, was a couple of years ago, and from my understanding still is today. Perhaps my city just sux though.

http://wfpl.org/charges-dropped-tarc-stabbings-downtown-loui...

http://www.wlky.com/article/tarc-adding-security-measures-in...

> You're really exaggerating unless your city is a lot worse than mine

my city is Los Angeles. my experience is that if I look at such a person while their expletive laden music (with lyrics that would not be tolerated as productive discourse on HN, to put it mildly) is blaring, i get back a hostile look. usually the person is physically larger and more powerfully built than i am. sometimes there are neck tattoos indicative of gang affiliation. i see no signs of concern about the comfort and privacy of other riders. there is a sense of carelessness and what i can only interpret as a desire to provoke and annoy. they are all but saying "i will disrupt this space as much as i want and i know you will not fuck with me"

> It's a public space. There will inevitably be things you don't like about it ...

I tried a test with that argument. I replaced "a public space" with "my old, dilapidated private car" and I found that the argument still works.

Then I thought about someone who complained they didn't like living next to a freeway because there was a lot of air pollution. The argument works there too.

Then I thought about the complaints I've heard about the difficulties of living in a neighborhood characterized by a high number of shootings and police sirens. Sure enough that argument wins again.

I'm pretty sure it can be applied to complaints about the atmosphere and global warming too.

That argument is unstoppable.

Yep this has been my experience with public transportation in the U.S.

For my city in particular, I would say the solution is more parking, but further from the city at public transport hubs, and remove the parking in the CBD. Which will give way to a more walkable CBD. Our CBD is small enough to walk around and it's inner public transport is free and frequent if you're not personally mobile enough for walking far.

It wouldn't be feasible to build out train infrastructure to reach all of suburbia but we definitely have some decent existing train lines.

My perfect commute from suburbia would be driving to a carpark beside a seperated bike path, then riding my bike the last mile and through a carless CBD. Where others might do the same but take a train instead of biking.

An argument against is car parking for less mobile people nearer their destination, but for where I live there are never free parks on the streets anyway, and you need to park in a multi-story. So perhaps a compromise and have the multi-story carparks on the fringe of the CBD, then better last-mile public transit for getting closer to your destination would work.

I think like many issues, people are often polarized to an extreme of no cars or only cars, but the best case likely sits somewhere inbetween.

Are you living in Denver? I visited there once and it seemed to me the way you describe. In any case one of the better American cities I've seen so far.

I absolutely agree that all important needs should be addressed - what works in Europe isn't necessarily the best solution for the US. That being said I do think there's a lack of good public infrastructure in general and this is IMO a shame - in many places around the world, public infrastructure is something people are proud of and something that makes many lives incrementally a bit better. Replacing 1-2h of daily commute full of car jams, bad air and stressed out drivers with standing or even sitting in a clean train while reading Hacker News appears to be a really low hanging fruit to me. For the first and last mile I think that shared autonomous cars/small buses will be a very good and cost effective solution - think of it like the limousine / shuttle services at airports.

Park-and-ride is totally a thing. People in the burbs should (and in some places, do) drive to rail stations outside the city and park in lots there. This is not "last mile", though, ideally you drive a relatively short distance to a rail station. Most of the trip should be via train. This reduces congestion in the city and accommodates suburban-types.

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