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Comment by asiachick | Hacker News Reader

I've used public transportation all over the world (Japan, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Barcelona, Brussels, Antwerp, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam). Of those, SF's is by far the worst. SF might be #3? in the USA (NYC->Chicago->SF) but it's still arguably crap compared to all those others. The Muni effectively has no schedule. Just show up and pray. There's no way to plan your trip except to go 30 minutes early. The Bart rarely comes since there's effectively one bottleneck track so you have to wait 20-30 minutes for the correct train. The muni actually has the same problem. The Bart is also so loud that I suspect it breaks pretty much every 1st world country's occupational safety hazard rules and is effectively ruining commuter's ears. It's a horrible experience.

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In the United States, being the 3rd best city in public transportation is infinitely better than having literally zero reliable public transport because everything is car first. suburbia is quite a miserable experience and it's tragically justified because we don't know what we don't know.

i haven't traveled the world and experienced the worlds best public transit. rather, i've grown up in Los Angeles where we can't conceive that a public transit system could possibly be of any value. "what poor lowly miserable soul can't afford a car? SHAME SHAME on you poor soul"

Anything is better than the suburban denial that is the concrete jungle. I love Bart.

It’s hilarious that LA is building out a ton of track but they put all the stations in highway medians, guaranteeing that it will never be a useful mode of transportation ever.

There are no footpaths (tunnels?) that let you go there? They are surely reachable, right?

There are, but if you have to walk 5 minutes through tunnels up and down flights of stairs just to get out of the station, and then another 10 minutes to walk to whatever is actually of interest (since nice things don’t tend to be positioned right next to a noisy highway) then nobody is going to ever use that transit as a preferred mode of transportation. You’re adding 20-30 mins of misery to any transit experience. Even if LA is betting that the areas around stations will get developed because of the presence of the station, they put them in the middle of highways, which guarantees they can’t even develop on that land without destroying the highway or with some engineering heroics. So all in all, it’s a huge waste.

A few minuten to exit the station and a 10 minute walk (who lives next to a station?) do not seem unusual or badly designed to me. Can you park your bike at the station?

You’re doing this wherever you arrive too, and then you’re doing it again when you return. It sucks, as someone who lives in a city that actually values transportation.

So, how would you like it if I said that the nearest parking to both your home and your favorite store is a 15 minute journey away? And the whole time it’d be loud and annoying? Would you still drive there?

I'd take my bike. This is how a large fraction commute here in NL.

You’ll bike to the station, then you’ll need to bring your bike on the train (not sure if they allow this) and then bike again at your destination (or they need to build out share bike infrastructure), and keep in mind that LA is bike theft central so you’ll need to seriously lock down your stuff (unlike the Netherlands or where I live, Japan), and keep in mind that the “highways” I’m referring to aren’t sensible European/Japanese sized highways, but instead 8 lane each way hellscapes. Add the fact that for much of the year it’s 35C+, people already think transit is bullshit there, you’re probably on the train for at least an hour since everything is so sprawled out and there’s no express trains, and like I mentioned, the stations are 100% of the time not even close to anything of interest - no thanks, I’ll stick with a sensibly designed system.

that does soilund terrible. Look at london, there is a metro station right in front of the BigBen, and other landmarks.

Sure, it isn't ideal, but there is something in between dense urban PT and no PT at all: sprawl goes pretty well with (light) rail combined with busses or bikes.

Crappy PT means they won’t build good PT pretty much ever since they already made the bad capital investment. It’s like sealing the fate of LA to never have good PT.

It's the nature of the problem. In suburbia, station must be further away on average, the difference in density with a major inner city imposes that. A 15 main ride on each end is something that is nothing unusual here, and millions travel that way.

Modern North American transit is designed exclusively for the poors. The time of those people has little or no value so we can save money on getting them to our kitchen, gardens, and factories by spending their time walking more. Besides, it's good exercise and keeps them fit for their lot in life.

All the money we save at the expense of the poors can be put into making the capital works impressive and highly visible so when the taxpayers are driven by (or drive by, some people like that kind of thing) they can behold how much their elected representatives have done for them and get reminded of that next time they vote.

It's particularly sad in LA because LA used to have the best public transportation in the world.

https://www.amazon.com/This-Pacific-Electric-Stephanie-Edwar...

In terms of urban rail transit SF can’t really be considered #3

SF is #5 in total ridership and significantly worse than that when you look at ridership per mile.

I think with a mix of subjective and objective measures I can declare with some confidence that most people would take NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston over SF’s transit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_tr...

The T in Boston is almost cartoonishly short compared to the other 4, but it's definitely a workhorse.

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