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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

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.

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