I came here to say this. When you bundle NYC (which is one of the largest systems in itself between subway and bus) that represents a skewed average.
As a NYC resident of 20 years I can assure you public transportation much much faster than a car in most cases.
Don't even get me started about the time it takes to find parking in this city... I am guessing that that time consideration is not in this study.
For a while when I lived in Austin, cycling to work from where I lived would be comparable to driving in terms of time. That's despite the fact that I was only going roughly 15 mph when in motion. I'd often catch up to drivers at stop lights, and I could park directly in front of my building. No time spent finding parking and walking to the building. Some drivers are quite arrogant about the advantages of driving and are quick to dismiss the time spent parking, but time spent parking is a significant factor in many places.
- Being in good shape reduced how much I sweat in the first place. If an average driver started cycling, they'd see a reduction in how much they sweat from getting in better shape alone.
- I would wear lightweight clothes for my commute and change when I got to work.
- On hotter days, I would wet down my shirt and a stocking I wore on my head. That water would evaporate, making sweating unnecessary. If the water evaporated prematurely, I found that a small spray bottle would work great to add back water and avoid sweating. (If it's too humid, this won't work, obviously, but I didn't find the humidity in Austin to be a problem.)
- Don't ride too fast.
- My ride wasn't longer than 15 minutes. Obviously, the longer the ride, the more sweat. I found that even on 100+ degree days, I would only slightly sweat given the other things I did.
- If I did sweat, I'd wipe the sweat off with a bandana or rag and then splash water on myself to freshen up. If you do splash water on yourself, dry yourself off before going to see coworkers as some assumed that I was sweating profusely when I wasn't.
- A bike commute naturally places going to work at a cooler part of the day, the morning. I don't care if I'm sweaty when I get back home.
- Also, getting a little sweaty isn't that bad. A lot of people seem to think that sweating automatically makes you smell terrible. But that hasn't been my experience. Yes, getting extremely sweaty can smell terrible and feel grimy too, but mild sweat is pretty normal and happens to people who are walking outside for a few minutes when it's hot.
Surely you jest. Even in Manhattan this is rarely true. Outside of Manhattan it is practically never true. In some circumstances in Manhattan the subway can indeed be faster, but it’s really only true for traveling north/south along an express line during peak traffic.
For instance I can get from 96th to Chambers in about 25 minutes on a subway if I’m lucky with my timing. That’s faster than a car during peak traffic, but slower than a car during any other time of day. But if I need to get from 96th to basically anywhere else that isn’t on the 1/2/3 there is no way the subway will ever win, much less by any significant margin.
Even the idea that subway is “much much faster” defies basic logic. If that were universally true few people would ever take a ride share or taxi.
And this ignores the almost comical problems and lack of reliability with the subway system in NYC. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had to give up, exit the subway station, and hail a cab. I imagine for many people it’s happened one too many times and they’ve exclusively switched to rideshare/taxi.
For me personally I’ve switched to electric bike. I gave up on the subway earlier this year after one too many negative encounters with vagrants and criminals. A good question to ask is how visitors feel about the NYC subway system. When friends or family come to visit, what do they think about it? I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a healthy combo of amazement at the scale of the system, and amazement at how atrocious and disgusting it’s become.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
People take ride shares and taxis because of separate pressures, including very reasonable ones like needing to haul something bulky to a specific address or trying to get to their airport (I will freely acknowledge that the subway connections to LGA and JFK are pitiful).
I used to live in Jamaica and trying to get anywhere that's not Manhattan is a chore. For example going to Flushing would take twice as long because you have to get close to Manhatten before you can switch from F line to 7.
Bus in this case works fine most of the time though. But you still need to walk to a bus station.
That’s a fair point — there are a couple of pathological routes in the subway system, and traveling between Jamaica and Flushing is definitely one of them. But yeah — IME the bus tends to cover those gaps relatively well; the MTA’s priority (for better or worse) is high-traffic routes, meaning routes between the outer boroughs and Manhattan.
IMO, the key idea here is that public transit is slower in places that have bad public transit. To find examples of really good public transit, you have to look outside the United States.
And it's still slower for almost any trip you'd need to take where your subway exit isn't exactly where you needed to go. If you add walking 2-3 blocks north/south and 2-3 avenues east/west at entry and exit the uber/rideshare starts to dramatically leap ahead.
People calling this stuff an "internet mirage" are just delusional to the reality that is slowly destroying the subway system. Why do you think ridership is down to 55% of pre-covid levels?
Google Maps says both trips should take the same amount of time in the absolute dead of night.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/40.7154695,-74.0091386/40.79...
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/40.7154695,-74.0091386/40.79...
Admittedly, both ends of this trip are right by a subway station, but they're also both near the FDR Drive highway. And we're leaving out the time it takes to park your car, and it's the dead of night.
>And we're leaving out the time it takes to park your car, and it's the dead of night.
It would be silly to drive your own personal car within Manhattan, so my analysis is strictly comparing rideshare/taxi to subway.
If we really are talking about midnight, perhaps. But trains on this line typically arrive every two minutes during rush hour, or every four minutes in the middle of the day.
> and it's still a wash in most circumstances.
But it's not "most circumstances". During rush hour, this trip could easily take 40 minutes by car, as Google Maps acknowledges.
You're of course correct that Google Maps isn't perfect. But I knew my own experience wasn't anything like the times you were quoting, so I was trying to find an authoritative source.
I actually think Google Maps is over-estimating the subway time. I know I can get from my apartment on 135th street to Times Square in 26 minutes door-to-door. Around 20 of those minutes are actually sitting on the subway, and I think the train gets to 96th street at around the halfway point.
On "finding parking": it's all a question of $$$. If you're willing to pay through the nose for a commercial lot, it's reasonably quick. If you insist on cheap parking... well, you'll be hunting for a while.