Hacker News Reader

Comment by em3rgent0rdr | Hacker News Reader

> "Musk doesn’t want to share a vehicle with “a bunch of random strangers.” But the presence of random strangers is what a city is"

Yes. This is the essential fundamental pro & con of living in the city: "There's a lot of other people nearby". If the benefits of this situation don't outweigh the downsides, then maybe the city isn't right for you.

This is not to say that maybe by appealing to the rich people who don't like associating with the rabble, he might have a successful business. But for the vast majority of commuters, the downside of public transport is not having to be close to strangers but rather the inconvenience (in america cities) of limited coverage and schedules.

I personally don't like noisy trains, but a simple fix could designate some train cars to be no-talking, so I can more easily get work done.

View on HN

If you’re imagining getting work done, I don’t think you understand what transit crowding is like. In cities with busy transit systems, getting a seat is out of the question - the variable is how tightly you’ll be squished against your fellow standees, and whether it will even be possible to squeeze onto the train.

The problem is absolutely being too close to strangers. Still, going to individual cabins is an over-reaction, what we need is longer and more frequent trains so that people can at least have seats and/or room to breathe.

> what we need is longer and more frequent trains so that people can at least have seats and/or room to breathe.

I think autonomously networked trains would be a huge leap towards accomplishing this. The headway between trains could be cut down dramatically and could allow for some magical improvements, eg express trains passing using the opposing direction's rail, that aren't feasible with human drivers.

DC has autonomous trains (in metro) until an accident happened and they switched to human conductors. Autonomous networked trains aren't new technology.

Vancouver has them and (while the SkyTrain has had loads of issues) the autonomous part isn't one of them, this may be due to the fact that the rails are not at ground level which prevents stupid humans from doing stupid stuff along with a higher emphasis on avoiding collisions over getting places (when it snows sometimes sensors will get tripped and prevent the system from allowing any trains to run over a section because the system believes that section is occupied)

Living in Seattle I miss the skytrain.

But you have the monorail from Seattle Center to Westlake :-)

Skytrain is a big bet transit system. Enormously expensive from a capital perspective, but offers a qualitatively great experience, and with pretty fixed operating costs.

Busses done well can offer great performance characteristics at lower costs (with the added benefits of resiliency though rerouting and service refinement).

But there seems to be something psychological about a choo-choo that gets people fired up for transit in a way that busses typically don’t. I think it’s because we have North American examples like Seattle’s Rapid Ride line that in the end didn’t deliver a train-like experience that we were sold on. We watered the BRT concept down so far as to make it meaningless.

Meanwhile, Link light rail is being delivered at high cost, but they aren’t cutting corners. Thus Link feels so much better than Rapid Ride.

If you have been on both buses and trains it should be obvious.

Trains: smooth ride where the tracks are good, smooth power delivery/acceleration, satisfying whooshing sound, forward facing seats, spacious aisle, feels solid and efficient. Makes one acceleration and deceleration per stop, which are at least a few blocks apart. A BMW sailing down a wide-open left lane.

Buses: rattles 10x worse than the cheapest car you’ve ever been in. Violent, jerking, loud, desperate-sounding acceleration and braking action. Cramped aisle, mostly inward facing seats, hostile, harsh, and dirty fluorescent interior. Everything about it gets right up to your face and screams in your ear at the top of its lungs, “CHEAP!” A rolling welfare office waiting room. Stops every block, even with a dedicated lane. Usually averages walking speed, or worse when you factor in the wait. (No, these are not symptoms of being old - I have been on some perfectly pleasant 80s New Flyers. I am talking about San Francisco’s newest fleet here).

Somehow it still baffles transit planners that people might care about the subjective experience of being in transit rather than the throughput or cost. How the auto industry hasn’t made that blidndingly obvious is beyond me.

> If you have been on both buses and trains it should be obvious.

It's not that obvious if you've been on a well-done BRT line. The design characteristics of busses that you mention don't hold true universally—in particular, on quality BRT lines, the busses are typically designed to feel very much like the interior of the trains people like. I'll give you acceleration and deceleration comfort in general though.

> Somehow it still baffles transit planners that people might care about the subjective experience of being in transit rather than the throughput or cost.

It baffles me that people think transit planners control vast sums of wealth and are never forced to make tradeoffs due to cost considerations :-)

In all seriousness, if cost were no object, I'm sure we'd all love trains. The reality is that even hyper-premium BRT lines with dedicated exclusive right-of-way and premier station design are cheaper (way cheaper) than building rail infra.

EDIT: > How the auto industry hasn’t made that blidndingly obvious is beyond me.

The auto industry relies on there being a huge government subsidy to maintaining the infrastructure that their product rolls around on. Nobody ever said cars don't deliver a nice experience (at low levels of congestion). The problem is that we tend to have too many people driving on roads that cannot, due to laws of geometry, space, and time, accomodate that demand.

Nobody uses transit anymore, it's too crowded.

When your choices are “put up with transit” or “live somewhere else,” plenty of people choose transit, grudgingly, for a while. But we can and should do better.

I was recently in Vancouver for a month and used transit daily. It's a well oiled machine and not unpleasant to use.

This is in stark contrast to my home city, a more typically north American city: sprawling, car-centric and any transport mode that isn't a motor vehicle is compromised, and transit system exists to punish people for being poor. Even using a car is compromised because of all the other cars, there's a geometry problem there. Nobody is actually saving time, they're just spending lots of money, running people over and generally making a mess. But you do have a nice, protective shell to segregate you from strangers.

My primary experience living in different cities is 'put up with cars or live somewhere else', and I don't even know where this mythical land unsullied by the tyranny of the automobile might be, but I fantasize about it regularly.

The Netherlands, Danmark and, to a lesser extent, Sweden are seriously rethinking the automobile tyranny. I live in Sweden, and have no real need to own a car, since public transportation and a bicycle solve pretty much all my transportation needs.

This sounds like another instance of Silicon Valley trying to fix something that doesn't need fixing, certainly not the way Silicon Valley considers "fixed". Public transit does not need to be awful. In many places it's great!

You should probably credit Yogi Berra if you're going to steal his quotes.

If I had asked Yogi Berra what he wanted, he would've said 'A faster horse'.

So an electric bicycle with solar power. ;)

Switzerland has those silent cars. If you make just a bit too much noise, passengers will happily come and stop you. Great environment to work or read!

Chicago, too, on the Metra trains.

Unfortunately, Metra recently got rid of the bar cars on its commuter trains. Only Metra can lose money selling booze.

I know. Now I drink from 40oz can in a paper bag. I feel like a hobo.

This is very NYC/east-coast true, but travel on the west coast is much more individualized.

I'm not rich but I hate taking transit partly because of the people. Some kids in the back are being noisy, the homeless man there is pestering me for food because I have grocery bags, and some guy is falling asleep on my shoulder.

Gee, what a great time.

A lot of people need to work in a city but DONT want to live there. Many only live in cities because its convinient but would otherwise live outside the city.

The thing is we already have a solution to that, high speed commuter rails from the suburbs into the city, there's just not enough funding to build out the infrastructure.

The amount of people who come into Tokyo is mind boggling.

The problem is that high speed rail is only cost effective when it is going between two dense cities. If it goes to low density suburbs not enough people will ride it for it to be financially viable.

We certainly don’t hold roads to a standard like “financially viable,” and systems like Metro, LIRR, and BART may have their problems but they exist.

That's an awfully loose definition of "high speed". Metro North averages about 37 mph and LIRR about 31 mph[1]. The only high speed rail in the US is Acela and even that is pretty slow for high speed rail.

[1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2015/07/26/why-labor-effi...

Yeah ok, high speed rail (competing with air travel) and commuter rail (competing with driving) are pretty much mutually exclusive. I think parent meant the later. Tokyo’s commuter network isn’t proper HSR either.

Exactly. Self-driving minibuses are a much better solution for suburban-urban transit.

And many others would rather live in the city or closer to the city, but can't afford it.

Agreed. What I like best about cities is the people; we're social animals. (Musk and others are entitled to their preferences, of course.)

And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer

I suspect Musk is orders of magnitude more likely to win the California lottery jackpot than meet a serial killer on the bus, much less be killed by them. He's too smart for this silliness.

In one of his presentations he talks about the stress of commuting with such intensity (“hell”) that I remarked that perhaps he should talk to a guru or a therapist.

Now, I have never commuted in LA, but I have in chicago and Seattle and I can say from deep personal experience that much of the stress of commuting is self inflicted. There are ways to make that time less stressful and less “wasteful” but high intensity people often refuse to see.

I've lived in LA and Seattle. Seattle is rough, but I can absolutely see how LA could legitimately cause you to need professional help. It has all the bad parts of being spread out like the suburbs, added to all the bad parts of living in the city.

In the bio about him, Musk is quoted as asking something along the lines of "How much time do I have to spend with my girlfriend?" If that's your general attitude toward time management, spending time in crowded subways where you can maybe listen to a podcast isn't going to be viewed very favorably.

And that's generally OK. There are good reasons to have just self-time. But public transit doesn't necessarily optimize that time. And for some people that's important.

I used to commute to work by driving car for several years. I now use public transportation.

I will take the stress of getting sweated on by strangers over the stress of driving in rush hour traffic any time.

Not to mention that in rush hour traffic there's always the one, and only one if you're lucky, selfish asshole who is hellbent on killing you with speeding, aggressive or distracted driving. There's a much higher chance of being killed in traffic than by imaginary serial killers on a subway car.

Some people find it very stressful. I have a relative who did not use the tube in London as he had claustrophobia.

Using tube stoned or hungover can be very very very difficult.

Also, mornings in London tube are unbearable.

He is from SA which is a lot more violent so I maybe his initial upbringing has influenced him in that regard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com