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Comment by tolbish | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this has been studied by researchers. Is this a genuine preference or rather something akin to Stockholm syndrome?

Something tells me the average American who moves to a mass-transit friendly city is happier than someone from a mass-transit city that moves to a car-centric city.

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Even in cities with mass transit in the US, there's a substantial wealthy population that chooses car (or helicopter!) commutes (they might not be commuting daily, though, or driving themselves when they do) over transit ones, so with people for the means for either, it's definitely not a 100% preference for mass transit.

It's weird though since in the US people actively fight against mass transit. Even if you're not personally riding on mass transit it's a public service that helps the local economy thrive - people just get silly minded and all the NIMBY arguments start coming out.

> It's weird though since in the US people actively fight against mass transit.

It's kind of understandable that people protest against having their money stolen and used to build things they don't like. Why do you think it's weird?

No, it's completely illogical from every aspect. Even if the person is going to drive no matter what, and only wants to improve their own experience for least cost, the dollar for transit improves their road experience more than a dollar for more road infrastructure. And even those roads are mostly funded by general funds, not through gas taxes. Gas taxes and user fares fund roughly equivalent amounts of roads and public transit, respectively. And 80% of federal transportation money goes to roads.

The only explanation that's possible is extremely short-sighted and self-defeating selfishness: seeing something that's not for them and instinctively opposing it, without thinking of the bigger picture. It's just childish.

It's not weird, it's just extremely short sighted.

It's exactly like socialized healthcare: somehow the US system manages to be more expensive than anywhere else in the world, ranks among developing nations, yet people will fight fang and teeth against "communism".

A proven track record of local government incompetence and private-public fleecing makes large civil projects much less popular than they would be in a perfect world.

Mostly it's because they think black people will ride the subway to their house and rob them. This is why Atlanta suburbs vote down every MARTA extension and fare change.

I guess we have several competing hypotheses, how might we go about finding out the true answer?

I'd take a look at how often crime statistics come up during discussions of expanding public transit options - up here in BC and when I lived in Boston that was the primary argument against expansion... Public transit stations "cause" a raise in crime rate and lower (detached) home values.

Cities with mass transit are still lacking compared to cities across the world. The NYC subway is a very different (and inferior IMO) experience than the London subway.

London subway doesn't operate at night which is enough to say new york's is better imo.

Is that a recent change? I swear my wife and I used it after midnight back in 2016.

Some lines are open on Fridays and Saturdays nights since 2016.

They run night buses along the same routes though.

I can't imagine more than 1 in 20,000 helicopter commutes every day in the US, but I couldn't find a number.

I be surprised if 1 in 20k _rode_ in a helicopter every day, let alone commuted

On Manhattan, a taxi is very often slower than subway (especially compared to the express trains), but it gives you more privacy, and more room to put your baggage.

It's a balancing act.

A helicopter is theoretically great, but in practice helipads on Manhattan were removed in 1980s because of several spectacular crashes, so it's only practical between e.g. the financial district and the airports, which is probably where all the customers are anyway.

Helicopter commuting is so wasteful and awful it ought to be illegal. Why should I have to suffer the noise pollution of some rich asshole riding a marginally quicker commute? In fact while they are allowing helicopter commute, they should pay everyone in on the commute path $100 in compensation, and then another $1000 to the state for the air pollution and the carbon emission.

Maybe this is why helicopter "commute" in NYC mostly happens above water, where a car or a train is not such a good option.

The cheapest I know is $400 from Manhattan to JFK; I could probably use it in a pinch (say, a transatlantic flight with a connection), if split between four passengers.

Police helicopters and fire trucks are much more bothersome sources of noise.

I’m fine with the noise pollution if it means potentially saving someones live. However some rich asshole wanting do depart 20 min later then otherwise, to the airport is unacceptable.

Yup. I spent some time in Singapore which has one of the most extensive mass transit systems in the world. Yet the demand for cars is still very high, even with a massive ($70k USD) licensing fee and 100% import duty (Corolla costs $70k USD).

People have a genuine preference for good mass transit, and they also have a genuine preference for large private homes. Those two preferences are in direct conflict.

This is kind of what I was trying to get at. People have made a choice, because they were forced to make one, and they chose detached suburban living. It has good and bad points, for sure.

Something tells me the average American who moves from a mass-transit city to a car-centric city is happier than someone from a car-centric city that moves to a mass-transit city.

People are allowed to like different lifestyles than you without being victims of Stockholm syndrome.

The US government subsidizes houses in suburbs by guaranteeing mortgages and building toll free highways. Apartments are literally illegal to build in many areas (restrictive zoning). Property developers are mandated to include ample free parking. So in many places you are not allowed to have a different lifestyle than drive everywhere.

First off, you get all the same mortgage benefits with a condo or townhouse; those benefits are not just for single family houses [1]. The Seattle area has an urban growth boundary [2, see the red line] that effectively bans construction of new single family housing. The Seattle government also makes it impossible to get a project approved if it has "too many" parking spots and the the vast majority of the transit system is not paid for by its riders: Sound Transit, Seattle's train and express buses, has around 30-40% farebox recovery of operating costs, and capital costs are fully subsidized [3, Page 8]. King County Metro, the bus system, has a farebox recovery of around 25%, again with capital costs being fully subsidized [4, last graph]. User fees (tolls, car registration, gas taxes, etc.) pay a far larger percentage of roads than this: Washington collects 63.5% of road spending from user fees, which is a figure that includes both capital (new roads) and operational (maintenance on existing roads) costs [5]. So someone living in the Seattle area who wants to have a "different lifestyle" has to pay to subsidize the government's preferred lifestyle. Seattle isn't the only region with a strong bias towards transit (especially with new development), so generalizing across the entire country isn't helpful as different areas have very different urban planning cultures.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p530

[2] https://www.kingcounty.gov/property/permits/codes/growth/GMP...

[3] https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2...

[4] https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/about/acco...

[5] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/

Most Americans don't really have a choice. Even the most transit-friendly American cities like Seattle were created with job sites that lie in isolated hovels outside of denser areas. And changing this requires planning across multiple industries, not just the efforts of a couple companies.

Funny you should mention Seattle as it is possible the worst city I have ever lived in with regards to infrastructure, both in terms of amount per capita and maintenance. Most of its white collar jobs are concentrated in one small area (in contrast to other regions which are more distributed) and it has the infrastructure of a much smaller city. The local government believes in only expanding transit infrastructure while leaving roads and bridges to rot, and so far their actions haven't improved travel times at all but they do certainly cost an enormous amount: the most recent ballot proposition allocated almost a billion dollars per mile of rail.

I've found this urban design has created isolated neighborhoods where people without cars refuse to travel more than a mile away from home. An example that comes to mind is friends living in Capitol Hill refusing to visit any restaurant in Fremont, a distance of around 3.5 miles with both locations being located directly on highly trafficked bus lines, but if offered a ride (in a car) they would come. For comparison, when in the car-centric cities I lived in, people were willing to travel anywhere in the metro area. Now this is just a few pieces of anecdotal evidence, and you may reply with examples of people who behave completely differently, but it's no better to assume that everyone hates driving and living less dense areas just because you personally dislike them. I prefer living in an area that doesn't hate cars with a passion, and I'm far from the only one who thinks so.

The bus network in Seattle is completely busted. Try riding a bus from Bellevue to the International District on a game night before covid. There is simply not room for more people on the busses, nor is there room for more busses on the Third. Seattle needed this extra rail like 20 years ago.

But I think you are wrong about the focus here. They just opened the downtown tunnel recently, and they are opting to fix the West Seattle bridge even though they won’t be able to fit a train to it. They are also fixing the 520 bridge to Kirkland without a train line. And all the roro ferries have significantly more frequency then the walk on ferries (except for West Seattle). So cars definitely still weigh heavily for the city planners

Huh, I came back and found my comment to be more polarizing than expected...

I am unsure where the preference lies. I don't always think there's a preference, but you can get forced into it by other economic factors. Young people move into a city, getting adapted a mass transit lifestyle, but they move to a more car-centric area when they inevitably get priced out of car-free living downtown or on a popular rail/bus line because they want to start a family. Personally I don't really want to give up being able to walk outside and down the street to go to restaurants and shop or connect to transit easily, but it would be short-sighted to say that everyone has the same preferences as me.

There's benefits to living in a detached house with a yard. The price is usually being tethered to a car in the US. If you pick a low density area you're probably not going to have an oppressive commute and running errands will be easy (if predictably lengthy, but knowing it'll always be a 20 minute drive and not 20-60 minutes based on traffic is valuable) because there's large roads and every business was mandated to build a large parking lot.

The problem comes when inevitably other people make the same decision and development happens and more people move in. A Californian pattern of development (and in the many areas of the country that have since copied this pattern) is incredibly hostile to good public transit, but due to the geometry of cars, you inevitably have to do _something_... it's just probably going to suck and get underused. So, an alternative strategy emerges: fight tooth and nail against growth.

> I came back and found my comment to be more polarizing than expected...

You basically said "people who disagree are mostly children".

Whoops. Wasn't actually trying to say that. But thanks for the explanation.

Sharing things sucks. I’ve lived in both situations and much prefer rural-20-minutes-from-a-city to living in a city.

I think it's subjective, and maybe related to what you grew up with.

I moved to Chicago in the 1990s, lived there for about 10 years. The mass-transit was very good, but I wasn't happy living there.

Move to a smaller town with basically no useful public transit, but am vastly happier.

I'm a definite small town country person. I think even my town of 5300 people is getting too big for me these days, and I couldn't imagine being happy living in the city or even a bigger suburb. But if I had to live in a city, good public transit would be a must. I spent a week in Paris a few years ago getting around everywhere on the subway and enjoyed it immensely. On a later trip I spent one day driving in Paris and was ready to shoot myself.

Even the buses in Paris are pretty great. About halfway through my last visit, I switched almost entirely from subway to buses. They aren't necessarily the fastest way to get across town, but I found them clean and convenient, and just a great way to take everything in.

But that is not a fair comparison. You need to compare moving from NY, Amsterdam,Berlin, Madrid, Shanghai, Singapore, big cities with good public transportation to any big America city https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZDZtBRTyeI

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