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Comment by tims33 | Hacker News Reader

There is no doubt that America needs to get much better at rail and other mass transit and that there is a lot to be learned from the rest of the world. The challenge is that America is not Europe in many ways, but particularly in geography. And yet there is a certain condescension that America has to do it like Europe. That is a message that will never be well received delivered in that way.

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> There is no doubt that America needs to get much better at rail and other mass transit and that there is a lot to be learned from the rest of the world.

No doubt? I have doubts.

Does America need to have better rails? I highly doubt it. If we can speed up existing rails without building new rails, that would be nice. Building new rails? Why don't we just improve air travel?

Does America need to have better mass transit? I am not sure. I know there are lots of people on NH love mass transit, but I am not a fan of it. And many Americans don't like it either, because mass transit has its disadvantages (1. do not directly bring you from point A to B, 2. difficult to travel with kids, 3. difficult to go to stations in bad weather, 4. can't bring lots of stuff with you, 5. have to check time schedule, etc. etc.). Maybe improve personal vehicle is the way to go?

Lots of people here are against Uber, but do you want to think about how to improve the taxi system, instead of blaming Uber?

> 2. difficult to travel with kids

I'm pretty sure my nephew's first ride on the subway was when he was 3. I don't recall how old I was when I first took the subway, but I think wasn't more than twice his age.

Transit is no harder than any other mode of transportation with kids. Sure, you might have to be schlepping around some duffel bags of supplies, but you'll have to do that anyways at your destination.

> 5. have to check time schedule

This is only true if your city has a bad transit system. And, yes, every city in the US (including NYC!) has bad transit. That's one of the main themes of the author--if you actually look at how transit works in other countries, you'll find that the American experience with transit is unusually bad.

> 1. do not directly bring you from point A to B

This is mostly a result of bad urban planning. When you have a transit system in place, you want to focus development around the accessibility of transit so that all of the desired origin and destination points are actually near enough to transit to you allow you to go directly from point A to B. When cities cross the hurdle and stop making every other block be a parking lot, then the nonavailability of parking means that it's driving that has the problem of not getting you directly from point A to B like transit would.

> I'm pretty sure my nephew's first ride on the subway was when he was 3.

He said "difficult" not "impossible". And if you was travelling with 3 years old, you would know it is in fact more difficult and tiring. Not impossible. You can travel by public transport with 2 years old or baby too.

But, where public transport can be more or equally comfortable then going by car, if you have small kids you have to watch all the time, it is more difficult.

For 2, I meant with multiple kids. With a baby is indeed more difficult. You apparently did have the experience of carrying the stroller up and down in subways. Especially when elevator is not working, which is not rare in NYC.

5 and 1 may be a planning issue, but the terrible situation in NYC could because the size of population and geography. It certainly can be improved, but the cost of change must have deterred the management.

Elevator not working or nonexistent (because in NYC it costs $80m (!!!) to install one that works ~80% of the time) is exactly what the US needs to get better at wrt mass transit. You just made a great case that NYC for example needs to! You’re also making wild assumptions about the relationship between the impact of change and NYC transit managers’ incentive to realize it.

Separately I’ve been traveling with my son on the subway since he was months old. I grew up taking the trains with my siblings to and from outings all the time. This “can’t do it with kids” meme is pernicious nonsense.

Imo, baby is easy. The hard is toddler you have to watch constantly else it does something stupid or get lost. Baby can be contained in carrier.

But baby cries, sometimes need sleep and sometimes need milk. So much easier to do all those in cars.

In carrier, they are able to sleep and you walking around makes them sleep. They also can wait without milk for an hour or so. They don't eat constantly.

In car, they are in the back, so if they cry, you have to stop, exit car, deal with them, enter again and so on. And driving while baby cries in the back is annoying. Public transport and carrier is not that much worst, assuming you are not carrying too many things.

More importantly, I compared difficulty of toddler and baby. Toddler in car can be noisy too.

Actually car also make them sleep. But subway has too much noise, which could wake them up.

For breast feeding, car provides a private space.

For baby crying and toddler drama, it's kind of embarrassing to have those in public transport.

I can even have the toddler pee in a bottle in my car, definitely not on public transport. Also change diaper, etc. etc.

I mean, I had both kids and car. I also used public transport. I also breasted - personally, I am woman.

Calming crying kid on carrier is easier then while driving.

Breastfeeding in car is not all that comfortable and you cant drive while breastfeeding. Typically it is not that difficult to find reasonably private place within time limit since kid cries constantly. You are going to spend time somewhere, park or friend or shopping center. That somewhere has usually good solutions, otherwise you would not be spending time there.

I never used pee bottles and such.

Does America need to have better rails? I highly doubt it. If we can speed up existing rails without building new rails, that would be nice. Building new rails? Why don't we just improve air travel?

I think people that think air travel is a replacement for rail haven't experienced good rail and transit based city planning. City center to city center travel can't be matched by air. Walk from your job to the train, then walk to the conference center in the city you're traveling to. Rail may be slower than air, but it picks you up and drops you off closer to where you want to be.

Maybe improve personal vehicle is the way to go

The problem is not the vehicle so much as the roads. I have a very nice car that I enjoy driving, but I prefer to the take train since I'm often stuck in stop-and-go traffic with the car (and the car will nearly drive itself in that traffic).

The number of buildings in walking distance to a train station is very limited. Your case can't be generalized.

Yes. Roads can also be optimized.

The number of buildings in walking distance to a train station is very limited. Your case can't be generalized.

The number of buildings within close commute distance of an airport is even more limited, airports are big and loud and no one wants one close to the city center.

Take, for example, travel from Buckingham Palace to the Louvre, the cities are they are connected by a high speed train, but neither source or destination is within close walking distance. The total trip length by train is 3:30 including taking a train to St Pancras, Eurostar high speed rail to Gare du Nord, then a train to the Louvre.

By plane, LHR to CDG is only 1:20. Paddington station to LHR is only around 15 minutes, but it'll take you 20 minutes to get to Paddington. And once you get to the airport, allow 10 - 15 minutes from the Heathrow Express train to the terminal. So you've got 50 minutes of travel time to your get. And you need to allow time for security, and to get to your gate so get there 30 minutes early. Now you're up to 1:20 just to get to your flight.

Airports, being so large, are located far from downtown, so it'll take you 45 minutes by train to get from CDG to the Louvre, but add 15 minutes to get off the plane and walk to the train. So that's an hour.

So you've got 1:20 + 1:20 + 1:00 = 3:40 by air.

Yes. Roads can also be optimized.

LA has devoted around 30% of its land area to roads, yet they still have some of the worst traffic congestion in the country, how much can roads be optimized?

Very easily! Use congestion pricing.

When you see an "easy" solution to congestion, there are usually factors that make it not so easy - if cities rely on cars for personal transport and don't provide a transit alternative, then congestion pricing alone isn't going to help other than being a regressive tax on the people that can least afford to pay it. The $200K/year software engineer can avoid the $10 tax by working from home until 10am when the rate drops to $5. The $30K/year service worker doesn't have that option, when his workday starts at 9am, he has no choice.

And you can only stretch out the commute so far with congestion pricing before the morning commute runs into the afternoon commute, already in the bay area (pre-covid), I was seeing stop and go traffic from early afternoon through 8pm or so. COVID has been a nice reprieve from the traffic, but many companies want their employees back in the office, so within a year or so, traffic levels will be back to pre-covid levels, maybe worse because many people moved farther away when they were working from home.

You're missing that there are marginal trips that would be discouraged/eliminated if one had to pay for them.

There can be subsidies for low income individuals if one cares about the regressive aspect (I don't). Low income individuals can use carpooling to escape per-person fees, as well.

If those marginal trips aren't already dissuaded by rush hour traffic, it's going to be hard to dissuade them with congestion pricing. I intentionally avoid rush hour traffic when scheduling doctors appointments, etc, but sometimes it's not always possible. And if there's focus on personal vehicles over transit, then people will have no alternative, they either drive and join the traffic on the road or don't go.

That would depend on the price.

I'd like to see a source for this.

If you take away transit and rely on personal car transport, there's going to be a point where there's no price that will stop the congestion.

Using San Francisco as an example, the Bay Bridge carries around 250,000 cars/day, while BART's transbay tube carries around 300,000 passengers/day.

If you put those BART passengers into cars, even if you build another Bay Bridge, how are all of those cars going to fit onto city streets and where are they going to park? Even if they are magic self-driving cars, that's going to double the amount of traffic on city streets (one trip to drop someone off, one to pick them up).

Assuming that you don't count "not having a functional city" as an acceptable cost, if you don't provide any alternative to cars, I don't think there's any price that you can set that will stop congestion. At higher prices, you may as well just call it "travel rationing" since a price of, say, $500/trip would price commuting out the reach of almost everyone.

You can certainly use congestion pricing to shift some portion of traffic or drive people to other modes of transportation, but if the only choice is driving, then congestion pricing isn't really a solution.

Any basic economics textbook can explain supply and demand and the marginal substitution that occurs as prices change. "...there's no price that will stop the congestion" is simply wrong.

I already provided carpooling as an example of a behavior change that could occur in response to price increases which would reduce cars on the road while keeping the number of trips the same. There are many, many others.

I'm not sure why you think I advocate "taking away transit" - congestion pricing is one way to make transit more attractive, something it badly needs.

I'm not sure why you think I advocate "taking away transit"

Look back to where I joined this thread:

Does America need to have better mass transit? I am not sure... Maybe improve personal vehicle is the way to go?

If you're saying that mass transit coupled with congestion pricing can reduce congestion, I agree. I'm saying that if mass transit is ignored in favor of personal cars as transportation, then you can't use congestion pricing to get out of congestion, because people will have to drive, regardless of price. If you price driving so high that people literally can't afford to drive to meet basic needs, then it's no longer congestion pricing, it's rationing.

I was not part of the discussion in that part of the thread.

I agree with the statement that "mass transit coupled with congestion pricing can reduce congestion".

I disagree with the statement that "if mass transit is ignored in favor of personal cars as transportation, then you can't use congestion pricing to get out of congestion", for the reasons I've already stated.

Saying that "people will have to drive, regardless of price" is indicative of being unfamiliar with the economic way of thinking about tradeoffs.

I don't want to discourage marginal trips. I want them to happen because that marginal value is worth it. Sure you can discourage them for congestion reasons, but that means something useful can't happen.

That is true, but if the price of the road-space resource is zero, it will be overconsumed and lead to even greater value loss due to time wasted in traffic.

You don't have to check the schedule for a good transit system because it comes so often it's always there. On the other hand, you have to find parking everywhere you drive a car, which is very expensive to provision. Plus someone can break into it and steal all the stuff you're carting everywhere.

You don't have to check the schedule for a good transit system because it comes so often it's always there.

Depends very much on where you are going. I live in a European city with pretty good transit so if I'm going to or around the city center, then sure there is a bus every few minutes[1]. However If I'm going to visit my in-laws a few suburbs out, that train leaves once an hour if traveling at off peak times (like Sunday afternoon when I normally go). If I'm going to visit my parents (3.5 hour drive away) that train leave twice a day.

[1] Although with COVID being what it is I haven't been on public transport for over a year and have to admit that driving everywhere is actually quicker and easier in almost every case at the moment.

> 2. difficult to travel with kids

Umm, just because American trains suck it doesn't mean all trains do.

In Finland all long-distance trains have a separate "kids car" with a playground, toddler/diaper change-compatible toilet and more open seating.[1]

I'd never subject other people to a 2-3 year old who hates cramped planes, nor do I want a screaming kid in the backseat of my car.

They can burn off their energy in the play area in the train. When they are sufficiently drained, we can walk to the restaurant car where I can get a beer and they can get some lunch.

Everyone arrives well-rested and relaxed.

[1] https://www.vr.fi/en/facilities-and-services/travelling-with...

> Why don't we just improve air travel?

Unless you go electric, you'll never get anywhere near a carbon footprint of rail.

Do you count in all the efforts of building the rails?

You're right, in the case where rail needs to get built and not just upgraded or used where it exists you need to take that into consideration. And I don't know what that means for the carbon footprint but my gut feeling is that it'd still be better than air travel in the long run.

The a priori assumption that America must be unique in some respect such as geography that means there is nothing to learn from other countries is part of the problem.

Both of my first two sentences were dedicated to the fact that America should learn from other countries. There is lots to learn, but our geography is also quite unique relative to Europe and Japan.

I'm not sure how having different geography means there isn't still lots to learn in the area where those countries are ahead. Like a company can be using a different programming language doesn't completely detract from learning how to use version control.

Part of what Alon is saying is that for USA we are ahead in most other stuff and so we don't have this expectation to learn from other countries but we are behind in this area.

Then compare to China and Russia, both of which have better high-speed (in Russia's case, I'd say the same as the US - a single high-traffic corridor, but its faster than its American counterpart), slower intercity, regional, urban public transit. Both are bigger, with serious geographic challenges, and poorer than the US.

People must be reading a different piece than I am. Where does the author say we have to do it like Europe does?!

"Amtrak can and should fully replace its senior management with people who know how to run a modern intercity railroads, who are not Americans"

The entirety of the article is a set of comparisons to European countries with 2 references to Japan thrown in.

Which is still not the same as saying we have to do it their way, but that people who have done it successfully might be able to do it again.

I agree that sentence is too strongly worded, but hell it might be entirely correct.

I understood this point, but honestly the author's writing style is fairly combative for a piece that is responding to absolutely no one. Generally when I've said, "We should do x like y, because they do it better" I figured out that people are often off-put by this because it's been used in reductionist ways to avoid having to answer very we-centric problems.

If the reading comprehension ITT is typical of Americans, TFA may well be correct.

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