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Comment by trothamel | Hacker News Reader

Why? Public transit takes about twice as long as driving a car.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61077-0 https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-transit-driving-times....

1 - traffic jams slow down public transit too if the road space is shared (buses, trams) or they increase the time needed to reach a train/subway station if you don't happen to live at walking distance from one.

2 - driving time is only half of the time you spend in a car. in Milan I could drive to work in 15-20 minutes, compared to 25-30 using the subway. good luck finding a parking spot though. they're either forbidden, very expensive or non existent. Not counting that many areas, like where my office is, are restricted traffic zones, getting a permit is really hard for non residents and fines are very high (very common in many medium to large cities in Italy). I gladly use the subway and read the news while commuting, so I don't even need to drive myself.

I'm really sorry for those that drive to work everyday, it must be hell, I don't understand how they can withstand it.

That's the problem, and why people choose cars over public transportation. It's a solvable problem however, and countries like Japan and Switzerland have done just that.

Because it fills the street with cars that are trying to go twice as fast as public transportation. That's the point of the entire thread, I think.

In São Paulo, Stockholm, Sydney and Amsterdam.

None of which are top tier cities when it comes to public transport. Why not talk about Singapore, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Tokyo?

The paper also ignores the last part of a car trip: finding a parking spot. In cities that takes often as long as the trip.

Public transit could be faster if we adopted Japanese style bullet trains and gave the buses their own dedicated lane. Running more frequent transit service and offering trains that skip some less popular stops also reduces travel time.

Cars are faster in car first environment, hmmm.

In the US because roads are built to maximize vehicle throughput rather than throughput of people. The former would have 2 lanes with cars and buses using all the road space. The latter would have a massive traffic jam in one lane and a clear land for buses. The buses carrying 30x the capacity moving freely is more efficient for moving people.

With more self driving cars there should be fewer accidents which translates to even faster driving times.

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