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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

> People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic

I think it has a lot less to do with the bubble factor than the fact that public transportation in the US just sucks, period.

My 3-mile commute from Menlo Park to Palo Alto would take

- bus: 58 minutes (2 minute walk from home to bus stop + 12 minutes average wait for ECR bus + 10 minutes on ECR + 12 minutes average wait in Palo Alto Transit Center for bus 22 + 15 minutes on bus 22 + 7 minutes walking to work)

- train: 51 minutes (4 minutes walking from home to station + 30 minutes average wait till next train + 5 minute train ride + 12 minutes walking to work).

- running: 35 minutes end to end

- bike: 15 minutes end to end

- Uber: 13-20 minutes

- driving: 8-12 minutes

I bike, but I can see why others would drive. Public transportation is basically defunct here. I can run faster to work than taking public transportation. That says something about seriously how bad it is.

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I live in a UK city with fantastic public transport options, and I would get to work faster by taking public transport than by car about 90% of the time. And yet I still drive, because I just don't like sharing the space with strangers, I can sit in comfort at the temperature that I like and listen to music/podcasts that I want without using headphones. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.

Typing this as I exit the world's fifth best public transit system: the exact same sentiment exists here - for a commute of 45 min by public transport, 120 min by bike, and 90 min by car (morning traffic+cruising for a spot), people still pick the car option, as it's "more comfortable".

So, while the efficiency of public transport might be a concern, car-as-a-status-symbol seems to be near-universal.

I use the 3rd best in the world and I dunno, sometimes at the end of the day or end of a long-haul flight you're really tired and you don't want to jostle for a comfortable place to stand on the tube. I'd understand why people prefer getting a cab in such a situation.

I do understand and do have those use cases, but aren't they exceptions? Moreover, I was referring to driving, not taking a taxi (perhaps I should have been more clear). What I meant was "driving my own car is my primary, everyday mode of transport, regardless of congestion: hour and a half there, an hour back, never mind that I could have made the round-trip an hour faster by public transport. I'd rather be dead than be seen on the tube, EVER."

People certainly pick a car anywhere, but in areas with great public transportation the percentage who do is greatly reduced, even if the reasons why those that do remain largely the same.

>train: 51 minutes (4 minutes walking from home to station + 30 minutes average wait till next train + 5 minute train ride + 12 minutes walking to work).

Do the trains really not go on a timetable there, instead arriving completely randomly?

They do, but:

- The signs about which train is actually arriving are frequently wrong, resulting in boarding the wrong train

- The time I need to be at various destinations is fairly uniformly distributed. with a bike I can just leave for work exactly 20 minutes before my first meeting, allowing 5 minutes to freshen up.

Why wait for a train or bus? Install an app that tells you when you need to leave your place to get to the station just in time.

That implies 1) the train or bus arrives and leaves at the station exactly according to the timetable and 2) you get from home to the station exactly according to the estimate.

In my limited sample group of one (1), these are rarely true.

The train usually doesn't arrive exactly on time where I live, but delays aren't so bad that I have to wait 30 minutes on average. And if it's a 4-12 minute walk to the station, as OP says, I'm sure they don't need a huge buffer to get there on time. Personally, I just make sure I have a five-minute leeway and I'm good.

There certainly must be places in the world where trains are so unpredictable that the average delay is 30 minutes, but (not having been there, I should say) Menlo Park and Palo Alto sound like places where trains should be a bit more punctual than that?

But without baking in a 30 minute wait on a train platform how would the parent have been able to make their point?

Not all trips are to and from locations on specific timetables, such as work. Sometimes you want to go from your house downtown, or some other location. There's still an average wait of half the train interval time. You can wait at the train station, or wait at home and travel closer to the arrival time (and hope you don't miss it), but there's still a wait involved. Sometimes you can effectively use this time, sometimes you can't. Acting like it doesn't exist isn't useful though.

Okay, so instead of waiting at the platform 30 minutes, it becomes waiting at my destination (e.g. restaurant, office, whatever) 30 minutes for everyone else to arrive or for the meeting/event to start because it is unprofessional to arrive late, so I must arrive 0-60 minutes early, dictated by the train schedule. Doesn't change the fact that I have to waste 30 minutes on average either way.

In many cases, running, biking, driving would all waste less time because I can leave on-demand, even if the actual transit time takes longer.

Public transportation needs to be either frequent enough (e.g. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, etc. where rush-hour trains arrive about every 1-2 minutes, non-rush-hour every 5-8 minutes or less) or on-demand (e.g. UberPool, autonomous cars) to cut the time waste.

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