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Comment by jayd16 | Hacker News Reader

The paradox of 'unpopular because its overcrowded' always cracks me up.

In this case it’s not a paradox: These services could not effectively scale to meet demand without sacrificing comfort. Whatever their other problems, automobiles won out here and continue to do so.

How can you not effectively scale a streetcar system when you can just attach more carts?

I dunno, but somehow rush hour for public transit is often crowded and unpleasant, which suggests a solution is non-trivial.

Rush hour in a private car is a very unpleasant experience to most people as well, it doesn't help much that you get sit inside your own metal box. Cars take so much space that vast amounts of taxpayer money has been poured on infrastructure in order to try to keep traffic flowing – and we still have congestion.

if it is running near capacity, its crowded, and therefore unpleasant, which causes people to attempt to adjust their schedule to use it at other times, shifting the load

if its not running near capacity, its wasting a lot of space, and therefore more wasteful than private automobiles

in both cases the scale of the system and the centrally planned nature of the system make its response time lag behind the people using it, causing them to seek alternatives if they are able

As Yogi Berra probably didn't say, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

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