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Comment by aidenn0 | Hacker News Reader

IMO there's only really 2 underlying issues people have with public transit:

1. In nearly all of the US (maybe everywhere except parts of NYC?) it is a worse experience than driving (requires planning, takes longer, can't carry more than one or two bags with you).

2. It is déclassé.

I think #2 is at least partly a result of #1. Also note that #1 is true even for most cities in the US, because cities in the US are unbelievably car friendly compared to cities in e.g. western Europe. I don't see any public-transit solution that doesn't involve intentionally making the car experience worse, and that's going to be a tough sell to voters.

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> 2. It is déclassé.

“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation” – Gustavo Petro

> I think #2 is at least partly a result of #1

And vice versa. As I said in a thread yesterday[1]: we justify our continuing neglect of public transit by claiming that "polite society" avoids it, which in turn fulfills the prophecy.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32165783

That's partly it, but the status quo in the US is of the car infrastructure being so good that driving in the US is a better experience than taking public transit in many places with excellent public transit. Therefore #1 will remain true as long as we don't downgrade (either intentionally or via neglect) the car infrastructure, and taking things away from people is always harder than just not giving it to them in the first place.

This is a great point, but I’ll also note: neglect of our automotive infrastructure is a matter of when, not if. A consistent theme among suburbs in the Strong Towns surveys is unsustainable financing of municipal and county roads. Even at the state and federal levels, our road funding doesn’t accurately reflect the biggest sources of wear (trailer and other shipping traffic).

It’s not like we’re ever going to regress into a nation without interstates. But there will be a significant reckoning over the next 50 years over the increasing burden of our overdeveloped road network.

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