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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

The Tokyo metro is doing fine, maybe try learning from Japan?

Public transit works great in other countries. People in the US don’t like it because of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” thing, so we make up all these reasons about why it can’t work while setting up all future public transit up for failure (defunding, not letting it pass through areas people would want to travel to/from, failing to maintain it, bike-shedding for decades instead of building something, etc). As much as I hate to say it, I doubt we’ll see any successful public works projects happen in the next decade or two, and only then if things drastically improve.

People don't like it in the US, because it's overwhelmingly a shit experience. Are there any other countries in the world with the vastness of the US, that have awesome public transit? Everyone here is waaaaay more spread out. No excuse for cities, but most of us don't live in giant cities. It's just easier to take your car.

That is a consequence of failed premises in the city planning in the US.

People don't want to live on top of one another. We have a huge country, and we enjoy having our own land. I understand most people in this world don't understand that rationalization, but it is what it is. Murica.

The trend towards urbanization is unbroken. Most young people want to live in the city - and not just because of jobs

Then they wise up and leave to go somewhere they can afford and have some privacy, raise their kids, and the cycle starts anew.

More and more families are deciding to stay in city centers, too. Not all of them of course, but the current trend is clear.

Do you have any sort of proof that this happens on any sort of statistically significant basis? It appears most of the people in this country live in urban places and that this has been an upward trend for a long time...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...

Observation? Who the fuck wants to live cheek by jowl with other people if they don't have to?

Apparently most of America, wants to. Your observation doesn't really mean a whole lot, I could move to Michigan and buy a 10 acre lot for a tenth of what I'd pay here in king county, but I and most of the people that live here don't want to do that....and not only is this my observation - it's a statistical fact.

The last decade has seen people leaving rural areas with their own land to very much live on top of one another in the cities. More Muricans live on top of one another than you're giving credit for. In the context of this thread, no one is suggesting building subways in the middle of Wyoming - this conversation is very much focused on urban areas.

Population density is about 4x in the US as it is in Sweden. The difference is planning is better here. That is, we pay for good government who do a good job planning how cities expand and putting infrastructure in place before growth happens. Everything can be solved by money, just pay more taxes and hold govt accountable, all will be good in 20-50 years (that's your catch-up time).

What's the habitable area of Sweden? No way it's as much as the US. There is very little farmland there. Look at the size of Canada, and most of it is useless beyond the southern greenbelt area.

US cities are denser than Swedish cities.

Rural areas are not the problem. People will have to use their cars in rural areas no matter what. But that’s fine - there’s no density there. You don’t see people complaining about traffic in rural areas either. The issue is the cities, and comparing cities in the US to cities in Canada, American cities lag in having good public transit.

China is just as big as the USA and the public transit is amazing.

It's overwhelmingly fine. Everyone's got a story about a bad experience, but so often I see these generalized into "it's just shit".

I've ridden TriMet daily in the past, SoundTransit daily, and the L in Chicago daily. (Now I bike.) Maybe one trip in 20 or 30 there'd be unpleasantness.

Not overwhelmingly a shit experience. Mostly fine.

(Also FYI 80% of the US lives in cities. And 82 million of us--a fourth of us--live in the top 10 metropolitan areas alone.)

That 80% number is very misleading though because of the broad way the US Census categorizes urban. According to the census, my 7,000 person town is considered urban even though myself and my two neighbors are collectively on about 100 acres of land.

There has to be a point where you stop relying on national exceptionalism as the reason for why something can't happen, because all it sounds like is an excuse. It's as if you're saying you have a lot of land so there's no point in improving anything.

Public transport in the US is an overwhelmingly shit experience not because of the geography of the country, but because it all got sold out to lobbyists who wanted to sell as many cars as they could. Shit public transport = more cars.

It's overwhelmingly shit because urban planning favoured cookie-cutter suburbs far out of town, with no local amenities and no convenient transport connections in any reasonable walking distance. They never had to be designed that way.

Add to that the whole nuclear family rhetoric - a husband, a wife, some kids, a couple of cars...

People won't pay out of pocket to upgrade infrastructure and provide these services knowing how much they've been gutted over the past hundred years, so it really requires a government who is willing to invest in it and support it and begin to change the perception of public transport. That will probably come at a loss but an arguable purpose of a government is to provide such services that a corporate entity won't, without profit motive, because it is still ultimately in service of its people.

This isn't the only topic where people in the US are convinced they're in a unique situation that nobody else in the world has ever encountered and then solved, and I'm sure that it almost always boils down to some element of corporate lobbying that rejects any attempt to make life easy for citizens.

> lobbyists who wanted to sell as many cars as they could.

That's such a boring scapegoat. Rail was a plenty powerful industry at the time who afforded themselves plenty of lobbyists. Personal vehicles were a literal revolution. What always seems left out is that people overwhelmingly wanted this state of affairs and largely still do. People here are acting like people would love public transportation if only their minds hadn't been corrupted by the bad people.

> It's overwhelmingly shit because urban planning favoured cookie-cutter suburbs.

But now that we're here what do you propose we do? Going back in time for a do over isn't exactly a solution.

> People won't pay out of pocket to upgrade infrastructure.

* People who own cars don't use public transportation and have little desire to start.

* The overwhelming majority of people own cars.

* Public transportation comprehensive enough to replace cars is ludicrously expensive.

* People who don't use a thing don't want to pay for a thing.

=> It's not exactly a leap in logic that people wouldn't vote for it.

I think you've got a better chance of creating programs that just outright buy cars for the poor.

Fair points, but it feels like the product of an intensely individualistic society and at some point the impact of that has to be taken into consideration, considering the effect it has on government, policy, and culture.

If a group can look at evidence of successful public transport (and other things) and still decide that can never work for them, for various nonsensical reasons (big country, x million people, the guiding hand of the free market, whatever), then they can at least be honest with themselves and say what their problem really is.

That's fine. Manhattan, Kansas does not need a highly functional train system. Seattle, LA, San Diego do.

Yes, Russia has awesome public transportation.

Source: here now

Why? Cities are built at human scale (i.e., vertical)

Right, but the experience is largely due to lack of funding. And people being more spread out is partly due to public transit being shit, so they don't build near transit stops and there aren't more transit stops to build around.

I love public transportation and hate driving my own car to and from work. I stopped using public transportation for personal safety reasons. I am not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

It works great in dense cities, obviously. Even dense US cities like New York, Chicago, etc...

Except Tokyo represents only the small fraction of Japan. Outside of largest cities in Japan, and perhaps a lot of prefectoral capitals, public transit option is fairly limited.

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