Comment by herodotus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by herodotus | Hacker News Reader

Vancouver used the excuse of hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics to build a LRT system called "The Canada Line". The line runs from the YVR airport through downtown to the waterfront station (near the cruise ships terminal). As it happened, one of the stops was very close to the Apple office I worked at. What an improvement to my life for my frequent trips to Cupertino. No more leaving the office for the airport early in case of traffic on the way to the airport; no more harrowing trips from a crazy cab driver; just a pleasant stroll to the station from the office, and a (usually) comfortable seat for the 22 minute ride to the airport. The system was an instant success (based on ridership). It was also (as it happens) a boon to developers because of new high-density building opportunities near Canada Line stations. The only bad part is that the city allowed no room for extra cars - the line has a two-car limit because of the platforms. In my view, opposition to public transit is incredibly misguided. I found the article in the NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...) about the Koch brothers particularly depressing: not the Koch's part, but that so many young people apparently were happy to participate in killing transit proposals. I would be surprised if you could find a single person in this city who thinks public transit is a mistake.

Footnote: The two car limit was a deliberate measure to reduce costs as digging and building out the stations is the most expensive part of a new subway line

> I would be surprised if you could find a single person in this city who thinks public transit is a mistake.

I'd qualify that with someone who has used it to go to the airport. Guarrantee there are "drive everywhere, even across the street" folks lurking.

And those people benefit too by having less cars & busses on the road because of the transit system.

I had a neighbor that would back their car out of the garage to the mailbox to get the mail, then drive back into their garage.

The mailbox was less than 50 feet from the frontdoor.

And thankfully it sound slike Translink has learned from the mistakes of making the Canada Line platform so short - it was mentioned as something that must not happen for the Broadway extension.

Oh god this hurts to read as a Madison, WI resident. People still talk about the cancellation of the high speed rail between Mn, Wi, and Il.

The short answer is "they don't know any better". And that's because they have never seen "the other" option in a fully functioning system.

I mean NYC is not really a secret. The problem is a mental association between big city subway systems and societal problems that plague big cities.

The US is big enough that most folks away from the northeast have never been there.

Also, plenty of folks visit NYC without using the subway.

I remember I had two tourist books for my HS NYC trip, and one recommended never taking the subway ("because its mostly for locals, and hard and confusing" or something like that), and the other basically didn't mention it at all. Filling a Metro card was like discovering a secret power in how much of the city I was able to see in a short timespan.

One of my favorite stories from that trip was getting a call from my father that he got last minute Broadway tickets for us in a couple hours, while I was on the Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty ferry. When he heard where I was on the map he was concerned I might not make it to dinner/the show on time, and I knew I had the timing on my side with the Subway to get there right on time. (And I did.)

Sounds like you founds books sponsored by the TLC :)

NYC public transit is not "fully functioning" anymore.

This is a favorite topic of conversation amongst New Yorkers, but, while there are no doubt real problems, New York's subway system is still an enormous benefit to residents and especially remarkable by U.S. standards.

This is certainly true, but I think it mistakes the concern?

If the NYC subway system had always been like it is now, and would stay this way indefinitely, it would still be worth having. It would be sweaty and crowded and unreliable for getting to work right on time, but it would work well off-peak and decrease congestion admirably. The heatstroke and crashes and fires would be objectionable, but it's probably still safer per trip than the sidewalks.

But it used to be better, and the city shaped itself around that, and all serious estimates say it's going to get even worse. If picked your apartment to suit your paycheck and give you a 30 minute commute by subway, and that suddenly goes up to 90 minutes (or to "track fire, everybody out"), you might well be worse off than if you'd never had the option in the first place.

NYC has fewer miles of subway than it did after WWII. On time rates are the worst of any major city in the world, and have been steadily falling for every single line in the city, outages have risen, injuries have risen, maintenance spending fell while budget rose. There's no plausible budget plan to fix most of that. Meanwhile, the North River tunnels have a lifespan of "20 years or until the next hurricane", and the most optimistic plans for fixing that require either 10+ years of construction and several billion in future funding, or a 50% capacity reduction for years.

The issue isn't that the subway is expensive and slow. It's that the city is reliant on the subway, but there doesn't appear to be any realistic plan for halting the decline or preventing crisis if it continues.

As a tourist, my favorite was visiting cities that had a weeklong any-public-transit type pass. Such a nice way to explore an area.

Many people think the equivalent of the "consumerism" promoted by older generations is the "experiences consumerism" (travelling) of the younger ones. I would say with the one huge difference that travelling allows you to see things in action that you either never thought possible, or feasible. That maybe you always disconsidered or perhaps never even crossed your mind. And it allows you to make better choices when you come back home.

For example seeing so many successful public transport systems in other parts of the world could not only make you reconsider you opinion on this in general but even come up with an idea that you can actually get behind for your home city.

Public transportation between hotels and tourist destinations is usually pretty good, even when a city’s transit system is a complete mess. Spending big on prestige transit projects just for tourists is such a common pathology, it’s become cliche. A tourism experience tells you nothing about what public transit is like for people who live in middle class neighborhoods and work in normal offices.

I think it tells you a little, as it's fairly apparent the split between tourists and locals. Since I often ended up in places off-season, for me it was mostly me and locals. But, I could certainly understand if some times of year the traffic being much larger and more tourists.

A "tourism experience" can be whatever you want it to be. If it's a cliche maybe you're doing it wrong. As a tourist I always enjoy getting the "local" experience, I take the regular buses or the subway, I visit the "regular" parts of the city, sometimes I take the bus and ride it to the end of the line and back. I take long walks through residential neighborhoods that are never on any tourist map to see how those people live and organize things. I walk on side streets to see what's behind the curtains of the touristic city. I go off the beaten path because that's where I find the most interesting things.

The one thing I try to avoid is testing the rush hour traffic as a driver. This doesn't mean I don't pay attention to see what that city/country has done about it and how they're tackling it.

Many people just hop on the tourist bus, go straight from the hotel to visit the handful of famous attractions and call it a vacation. Good for them I guess, although I find that just marginally better than Google Street View.

Any experience can be a let down or a cliche if that's what you planned and executed. You get to experience more or less exactly what you bargained for.

> not the Koch's part, but that so many young people apparently were happy to participate in killing transit proposals

Let’s assume these young people aren’t dumb or brain washed. What rational reasons might they have to oppose rail transit? (In your answer account for the fact that Vancouver is several times denser than Seattle or most US cities).

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