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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a shame, but for SF at least, it's kinda "well, duh". I would love to take transit more often, but when I have to go somewhere, and map it, I see things like:

Car: 12 mins

Transit: 40 mins

Walking: 55 mins

If I have the time, I'll walk. If I don't have the time, I'll take a Lyft (pre-Uber/Lyft I would usually drive myself, and then have to deal with the pain of parking). Why would I ever take the bus?

I would love it if SF had a transit system like Tokyo's, or hell, even NYC's. But we don't, and there's little political will and money available to dig more subways. The new central subway is a start, but we really need to be building 5 of those, simultaneously, at all times. So... what's the solution here?

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You don't need subways, just take every 5th Street in the grid and declare it busses only.

Then setup traffic signals that prioritizes busses and run a bus every 2-5 min depending on time of day.

This is cheap and effective. But requires some serious political support to close streets for ordinary traffic.

You could also just forbid street parking in some streets and repurpose the extra space for dedicated bus lanes.

But you can't solve this cheaply without down prioritizing private cars.

If you try to do this, Uber/Lyft will throw money bags at regulators to ensure such a regulation never passes.

Uber is already known for working with city authorities to reduce the required number of parking spaces, which in theory helps increase Uber's rides, but also leads to more congestion due to people driving around looking for parking.

You should consider bicycling. Bicycling is usually faster than transit and nearly as fast as car travel (at least for getting around SOMA and the surrounding areas that aren't well served by elevated freeway). You don't even need a bike! A Ford GoBike membership is $150/year, and rides under 30 minutes are free after that. I personally use Ford GoBike almost daily for getting around SF.

Sorry, but biking in SF is a blood sport.

Got hit twice in two years. Can confirm.

Got hit zero times in twenty. But yeah it’s intimidating. My wife pretty much won’t ride with me.

You do develop a kind of situational awareness over time.

Yeah, agree with a sibling poster. I have a bike, and never ride it. I'm terrified of biking in SF. Good on you for not having my fear ;)

“Even” NYC? I know New Yorkers love to complain about the MTA, but don’t take it too seriously. New York’s subway is extraordinary. It has no match in the U.S. (by a long shot) and is still very, very big by world standards.

The next time a New Yorker feels like complaining that they had to wait 20 whole minutes for a 7 train in far out Queens, they might do well to remember that most cities in the world wouldn’t have a station there at all.

Lots of fun stuff here: https://www.citymetric.com/transport/what-largest-metro-syst...

>The next time a New Yorker feels like complaining that they had to wait 20 whole minutes for a 7 train in far out Queens, they might do well to remember that most cities in the world wouldn’t have a station there at all.

Living in Germany, almost all the far out places have train stations. And 30min to 1h wait times between trains.

As part of the primary subway system? Crucially, we're only looking at "subway" stops here (i.e. places where there is no system transfer to the primary, inner-city subway).

New York also has the LIRR, Metro-North, and Path, which are commuter rail systems that reach even further and wider (and with headways more like what you describe).

I'm just poking fun at New Yorkers. I understand why late trains are frustrating, but a little perspective never hurts.

Most cities in Germany have 2-3 primary "subway" systems, one operated by the national railroad company, and the other usually municipal.

Above that the national railroad operates regional trains (RB, RE), express trains (IC and ICE).

IC and ICE is what you would take from Stuttgart to Frankfurt.

RB, RE is what you would take from Stuttgart to some surrounding town like Tübingen.

Then there's the S-Bahn, U-Bahn and Strassenbahn (not always), which are the somewhat local trains.

The S-Bahn usually comes every 30 mins (but often multiple trains on the same line lead you to have enough selection for a 10 minute wait in the city) and fans far out (~30-50km in many cities), but often it's the fastest local train. The stops are about 2-5km apart.

The U-Bahn is more local and doesn't fan out as far, usually goes every 10min and has stops every km.

The Strassenbahn stops every 500m-1km and is above ground (so not technically a subway), also this doesn't exist in all the major cities.

I was referring to the S-Bahn. For me it's my city train service, It's the closest station and takes 10 min to downtown with a train running roughly every 10min. I can take it far out of town as well.

I'm putting all three in the same pool because you usually buy a single ticket valid for S-Bahn + municipal transport (U-Bahn, Strassenbahn and Buses).

The S-Bahn is both a primary subway for many people and it goes far out like some commuter trains in NYC.

> Lots of fun stuff here: https://www.citymetric.com/transport/what-largest-metro-syst....

Seems a bit disingenuous to count far out Queens as subway, but not RER in Paris, which is just as far and unfrequent.

Agreed. If I can use a single pass to ride, it should count. I don't care if it's operated by a separate company or is overground vs underground.

As I mentioned to the other commenter, NYC has an extensive network of commuter rails (and suburban light rail), too. If you want to add that stuff in, fine, but NYC's lead over Paris doesn't shrink, it grows.

Commuter rail would be Transilien in Paris. RER is really a lot like NYC subway, maybe express trains. It's the normal Paris subway that is weird in that its stops are waaaay too dense. To give you some perspective: a decent cyclist with a decent bike can outrun the subway in Paris, not in NYC.

In terms of frequency: RER in a station on the main branch in rush hour is around 2-3 minutes, Transilien around 15 minutes, métro can be even under 2 minutes (that's why it runs on tires and not on metal wheels).

Thanks for the response! I should read more about Paris transit.

I'm not saying NYC has a bad subway system, and agree that it's one of (if not the) best in the US. I've spent enough time there to know that. But when compared with most other large cities outside the US (where I've also spent enough time to enjoy their trains), it's merely decent.

It stopped being super useful when you could measure the variance in commute in hours depending on the delay of the day.

Especially once uberpool came around: almost every ride I take is either a dollar more expensive than the bus (and 3x as fast), or is far enough that the unreliability of Muni makes it not worth it.

My first couple years in the city (before UberX but after Uber), I took 100% transit, but it's really just not worth it outside of the tiny portion that's a subway.

It's the same in Oakland, unless you are on an artery going to a destination on the same artery.

how about entirely get rid of cars within zones and use bicycles? When I lived in SF I wondered about the people who would drive from one end of the mission to the other. So easy to ride a bike.

I'm talking about the 9-10 months of clear weather.

If we could get rid of cars and make some streets bus+bike only (no taxi, no ride-share), I'd almost certainly get myself a GoBike membership and use it nearly all the time.

I just don't feel comfortable riding a bike on most SF streets; it's (as another poster put it elsewhere) a blood sport, and the police tend to knee-jerk side with drivers whenever there's a crash involving a bike.

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