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Getting off topic here but actually I would love to invest in transit. And judging from the kickstarter in the link below so would many other people.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-take...

Unfortunately in my city (Toronto) and I would assume in many others it's illegal to run a private bus service.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shutt...

So we're stuck with the government monopoly burdened with the enormous costs of public service transit unions with some transit union workers making six figures for things like being bus drivers or ticket collectors. Then you have bus routes that are not decided by numbers business purposes but by politics. Finally you have rude drivers and buses and trains that smell like urine. And you have buses and trains provided by special favored contractors that are technologically and mechanically less than what is available. My aging mother says it hurts her body to ride the bus because it doesn't provide a smooth comfortable ride.

So if we want funding into buses and trains we can start by dealing with the political quagmire that has made buses and trains inefficient and unfriendly to users. But the familiar government cry of "just keep throwing more money at it until the problem is solved" is likely not the best solution.

> transit union workers making six figures for things like being bus drivers or ticket collectors

You say that like it's a bad thing. We also have "tech workers making six figures for things like increasing engagement on social networks by 0.1%." What do you think about that?

> Finally you have rude drivers and buses and trains that smell like urine.

This would change right-quick if congestion pricing pushed wealthier people onto public transit.

I have utmost respect for anyone who can safely and responsibly drive a huge vehicle full of people, day in and day out, on cramped city streets with precision down to centimeters on some complicated turns and crossroads.

If anything, good bus drivers aren't paid enough.

Do you know what the disadvantages of your vehicles? they don't take riders to their house. They don't allow riders to bring along any oddity of luggage. They aren't available at the moment notice. They aren't personal escape room when one is needed. I'm sure you know what kind of vehicles providing such comfort.

So take the high moral ground all you want, be snarky all you want, but the real world is a strange and messy place. Car has it place, along with bike, scooter, planes, trains. Until teleporter arrives.

People who rely on public transit adapt to public transit.

For example, they become more savvy about how much stuff they own and what they carry around.

I adapt by taking Uber/Lyft instead. I got fed up with crazy people threatening and attacking me on public transportation. Thankfully, I'm fortunate enough that I can afford to be driven around. I hope that in the future such a pleasant experience can be made available to everyone in the form of autonomous vehicles.

>> I got fed up with crazy people threatening and attacking me on public transportation.

As usual, this seems to be very different between EU and US citizens. I've been using public transport of all possible types (trains, boats, busses, trams...) in more than half a dozen EU countries since I was a wee bairn and I've never been threatened or attacked on any of them. Like, not even close. The absolutely worst thing that has ever happened to me on public transport is some guy puking his guts out on a London bus on a Saturday night. And that was just once. And it was more like "what an idiot" than "oh god I'm scared".

Which tells me that this is nothing to do with public transportation, as a means of transport, but with - other issues, for example various social issues that are particular in the US.

Or people are just exaggerating the misery of taking public transport in the US? I struggle to believe it's really that bad as you say, for instance. Public transport descriptions by US citizens always sound a bit like The Warriors, to me, and a bit unrealistic, to be honest.

Taking a driver to their house sounds like a luxury, not a real necessity. Same for having the car available at a moment's notice, except for emergency situations for which there are emergency vehicles.

Carrying luggage on public transport is perfectly possible and for larger or more items it's always possible to hire a van.

I don't understand the "personal escape room" comment. Escape- from what? In a car? How?

And note that even if all of the above were true limitations of public transport, the benefits would still significantly outweigh them. Just the reduced emissions from multiple people using the same vehicle instead of each their personal vehicle, would be (are!) an enormous advantage.

The fact that everyone has their own car and drives it every day has caused serious problems, not least of which is environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale from the necessary infrastructure and emissions- and that's before we count the number of deaths from accidents and pollution. We need technologies and solutions that take more cars off the roads- not ones that put more on them.

I think you're right in that mass transit is the best solution to transportation from a social and environmental standpoint. But the reality is that most people prefer cars. It's unrealistic to force people to use the socially optimum solution rather than their prefered solution. Many governments have tried and many have failed to force people to use the socially beneficial solution over their preferred one. A good example of this is the failure of carpool lanes.

Any system that caters to humans has to account for what people want. The way to make people take transit is to make transit comparable to cars - in terms of speed, reliability etc. And to make it better now rather than holding out some promise that it will be better at some future date when enough people take transit. People will take transit now if its better now, not if it promises to be better in the future.

I mean at the end of the day we can't force or guilt people into taking our preferred solution. We have to create a solution that caters to them. People will do their part for society and the environment - recycling programs are proof of this. You just have to create a solution that's not too much of an inconvenience. People would take transit more if it was cleaner, faster and more reliable. Rather than pouring more money into it hoping it gets better, or goading more people to take it under the promise it will get better - I don't think its unreasonable to ask to make current systems more user friendly and then increase funding as service improves and ridership increases

> It's unrealistic to force people to use the socially optimum solution rather than their prefered solution.

It is perfectly realistic and has happened, like when schools were desegregated much to the dismay of white people in the south, who abandoned the democratic party as a result of it. The hard part is getting a law passed and not diluted along the way by people who refuse to accept inevitable change. Making transit comparable and better than cars is the goal of every transit agency in the world, the difficulty comes from getting people to vote for funding and approve construction projects. Los Angeles is pointed to as a slow meandering failure of a transit build out, but the only reason why it is a slow meandering failure is that the people who would benefit from transit the most do not vote, and the people who vote care about their view or have a preconceived and bigoted notion of who rides public transit, latching on to psuedoscience along the way to further their racist worldview into political action (underground subway construction was banned in LA from the 90s to a couple of years ago due to an unfounded fear of blowing up the city, for example, but the real reason was that the concerned citizens of beverly hills felt they might see more black or brown people on their stretch of sunset boulevard).

>> It's unrealistic to force people to use the socially optimum solution rather than their prefered solution.

That sounds ...wrong? You might as well say that it's unrealistic to force people to pay taxes. If the benefits of using public transport outweigh the disadvantages, people will just have to get used to the idea.

This has certainly worked in many other cases- for example, with rules about smoking indoors etc. I'm sure that smokers prefer to smoke indoors. But there's good reasons not to, and a very strong push with fines and all to not do it, so they just have to suck it up and conform. Sad face.

Driving in the car is one of the few times one can be completely alone with one's thoughts, for many people. I think I'd lose my mind without being unplugged for an hour or so a day.

Hunting and fishing isn't bad either, but I've got to get up at 4:30 these days to get out there before the turkeys fly off their roosts...

> I don't understand the "personal escape room" comment. Escape- from what? In a car? How?

My car is my second home, one that I can bring with me anywhere. It's why I prefer to drive long distances rather than fly. It even saves on hotel costs in the summer.

It's a place to escape from "out there". When I worked in an office, I would take my car to get lunch, then spend the whole hour absorbed in my thoughts or reading a book, away from my co-workers.

I'm a bit of a loner, but I can say that I've observed similar behaviour in others. After a many hour hike in the forest, getting back to the car in the evening is a relief. It's comfortable, familiar, and safe.

Sure, I could get used to public transit. But as long as I don't live in a dense city, I'll keep my car, and love it.

Door to door transport is an individual perk but a network wide con. Imagine if american airlines was tasked with bringing you to your door or hotel rather than just asking you to find your own way to the airport hub, or if there were no connecting flights at all. It's way simpler to just ask people to walk (or bike, or scooter, or skateboard) a half mile (10 minutes, I'd do it in a blizzard), than to serve all those random last mile connections. Available at a moments notice is also another con, better to wait for a ride every 10 minutes than have the network strained by serving minute to minute stops. Plus I don't think I've had an uber arrive in 10 minutes ever.

The last thing, with the luggage, well try going to Portland, one of the only cities I've been to where you can ride a train from your downtown hotel to within ~100 yards of airport security in 20 minutes. People rarely are checking more than one bag, and you can strap your carry on to the handle of your roller bag and it isn't a strain on the system, as hard as this might be to believe. In Los Angeles, people find room to set up little potato chip shops on the trains, and there are people who manage to transport all their worldly possessions with them on the subways in NYC. And if you really needed to haul a lot of junk, you can rent a uhaul box truck (or a tall van, or a pickup truck) for $20 and change plus gas for a local trip.

Buses are great but cars are 2x as quick to any destination more than a few km away (at least in Singapore). I don't own a car fwiw.

Buses really need to be grade separated from traffic, but most cities are reluctant to remove a lane out of a road to make it possible. I believe rio de janero has a huge BRT (bus rapid transit) network. Grade separated, and they are pretty much a subway with rubber wheels and it's waaay cheaper to build even an elevated roadway vs. a tunnel with rails that is more constrained with how sharp you can turn and what elevation changes your track needs to avoid. In Los Angeles, BRT busses are twice as long as well, all the more riders in one go.

You would need to split subway-like buses and less frequent suburban buses. Suburban buses need to navigate streets.

I wish they also did this for bicycles and e mobility devices