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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Public bus systems can be good; most cities and municipalities simply don't bother to make it so (because "polite society" drives everywhere).

NYC's buses have their own flaws, but they demonstrate many of the necessary conditions for success: dedicated bus lanes, split-service (local and express on the same route, with corresponding bus sizes), and multimodal connections (light rail, streetcars, subways). This is all in contrast to how many bus networks in the US operate: they pick you up on the side of the highway, drive with the rest of traffic, and drop you off on either the highway or in a bus depot in the middle of nowhere.

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It's definitely a perception issue that's borne from some reality. Having taken buses in a few cities, I can say some buses were perfectly fine, clean, and felt dignified to ride. A utility of the commons. Some other cities, it felt like taking a vandalized back alley vending machine to work.

Sounds pretty good, if you overlook people smoking meth or crack, publicly urinating and defecating on the bus, violence, etc. Not unique to buses for sure. Thanks, but I'll keep my "polite society" vehicle and properly planned highways in Orange County.

You don't see that during rush hour.

I have never once seen any of these on a public bus, either in my city or others. What you're describing sounds like a civic problem where you live, not some kind of intrinsic quality of public transportation.

Definitely saw a foilie in use on the bus yesterday evening.

The issue is that my city promotes itself as a good example of public transit and receives accolades from public transit folks, and naive people take it as archetypal.

I’ve lived in 3 Canadian cities and 1 major US city. Regularly used public transit in all of them. Used transit around both Canada and the US as a tourist, plus a few locations in Europe, Australia.

For any location where I was using it for more than a week I’ve encountered something unpleasant. Various degrees and extremes, but in my experience (not OP) it certainly seems to be intrinsic to public transit.

Some of these could arguably be a net good (it’s much better that the drunk is on the bus rather than driving himself!) and I continue to prefer transit over driving myself when available, but I would never deny that it’s not always an enjoyable experience

To be fair: I've seen plenty of unpleasant things on public transport. Subways, in particular, are a different world from public buses in NYC.

When I think about these things, I interrogate my frame of reference. At least for the US, the most appropriate contrast is the road trips I've taken, during which I saw no shortage of drunk drivers and general mishegaas at gas stations and rest stops.

Totally agree. But to run with your frame of reference point if I may, it’s also important to look at those events from other’s POV. I’m a larger, older man. What I find mildly uncomfortable on a late night bus alone might feel absolutely dangerous for my wife. Or someone with disabilities, etc.

Yeah, that's a great point, and a source of bias. On top of that, it would be a real contortion for me to claim that NYC's public transit is even remotely accommodating to people with disabilities.

Same. I've travelled by bus in many cities on three continents and never experienced anything like that. The worst bus I've been on was in San Francisco but even that was pretty clean and decent.

I haven't owned a car for three years and public transit has been fine most of the time, but I live in a city that prioritises public transit. On the rare occasion that I can't get a bus somewhere there is a car sharing service I can fall back on.

Sounds like they need to put toilets on the bus. People poop, it's normal.

> Thanks, but I'll keep my "polite society" vehicle and properly planned highways in Orange County.

Ah yes, my fondest memories of the US are passing the dead and the dying in their little metal boxes after the long backup of other funeral gazers.

Yeah, same in Chicago, really the same as mass transit anywhere: You need density to make it work. My little town of under 100K population tries to do city bus services but it's a joke. Most routes run once or twice an hour which is not often enough to be convenient. Busses drive around empty or with one or two riders. It's a service that costs millions of dollars a year to operate and is used by a tiny minority of the people. It's a sacred cow though.

Sounds like the problem is cost. Once we can eliminate the salary of the driver with autonomous buses, it will be much easier to run more of them.

Taking the bus to Javits Center will quickly show how even NY with their subways and buses fall short. I ended up walking about 10 NY city blocks b/c the bus wasn't running.

I won't excuse Javits: they built it in one of the most inconvenient neighborhoods in Manhattan for public transit (presumably because it's a convention center, meaning that most of the expected traffic is out-of-towners staying at nearby hotels). That being said, the 7 to Hudson Yards is (IME) the best way to get there, and is among the more reliable subway services.

Edit: That being said, 10 city blocks is half a mile. That's an ordinary walk in NYC.

> because "polite society" drives everywhere

In other words, because they are currently bad.

Chicken and egg; we've (in the US) culturally encoded public transport as inconvenient, inefficient, and for "poor people," all but ensuring that it remains that way. Other parts of the world don't have that stigma, and are better off for it.

No, public transit systems can only be good on paper. Then they get implemented, the fares are held artificially low for equity reasons, bums move in, polite society abandons the system and it turns into a rolling cesspool. Every time.

My private car however has only my germs. No drugs. No needles. No piss. No stinky bums laying across the seats. My music. Air conditioning. Goes where I want, when I want it.

The only difference is cost. My private car costs me a lot. Your public transit dream also cost ME a lot.

As evidenced by functioning public transport virtually everywhere else in the world: the things you're describing are civic problems, not problems with public transit. It's no particular coincidence that the US, with its car-dominated culture, has more civic problems on public transit than just about any other nation.

> Your public transit dream also cost ME a lot.

Are you operating under the misapprehension that my local, state, and federal taxes don't pay for your roads? We can play that game all day, but I don't think it's going to be a very fruitful one. And that's before we even get to the question of externalities, via which your car costs me a great deal.

> No, public transit systems can only be good on paper. Then they get implemented, the fares are held artificially low for equity reasons, bums move in, polite society abandons the system and it turns into a rolling cesspool. Every time.

Have you been to London? Paris? Zurich?

I'm trying to understand the basis for your absolutism and pessimism. In those cities, polite society definitely hasn't abandoned the public transit systems; at least not when I had been.

I am a resident of Bengaluru. We have a city bus service that is quite good, has air conditioning on some routes, and is quite cheap (I spend about 50c to go about 25km).

Our government subsidises the operations of BMTC, so it is cheap.

The central government spent a whole lot of money in cleaning up the country, and I am glad to report that a lot of changes did take place.

All things considered, our cost of living is lower, we try to ensure that there are not too many homeless folks, so that is there.

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