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Comment by ogzk | Hacker News Reader

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> We’ll never have public transport because

Wait, we…do…have public transport. Effective and useful public transport. In NYC 60% of people commute with it. Boston, DC, SF, Chicago, Philadelphia… You might have a specific gripe because it doesn’t take you exactly where you want to go with exactly the comfort you think you need, but these places have public transit that is good enough for hundreds of thousands or even millions to use every day

Having lived in a few of those cities, I’d say NYC is very much the exception. It’d be great if every major city’s public transit was as good, but it’s inadequate or barely adequate for a large percentage of the area of those other cities.

If you look outside of the USA lots of cities have good public transport systems that aren't plagued by poverty, crime, homelessness and mental illness. Just because Americans have decided to optimize their society to maximize misery of a minority for the benefit of an even smaller minority doesn't make it necessary.

It's the other way round: cities that aren't plagued by homelessness, rampant drug use, and criminality can have good public transit. Middle class people simply won't pay (in taxes or directly) for public transit that acts as a homeless shelter and routinely features crimes against them.

Western European countries are also much stricter on law and order via transit. Brussels, for example, deploys heavily armed police to check fares on the metro often. And Switzerland…you really don’t want to break the laws there even if you have nothing to lose.

I had three interactions with Swiss police in various cities, and they were all ok. Maybe it depends on the person?

Well, it also depends if you can speak a national language. Nothing beats getting chewed out by a Swiss cop for only speaking English.

Transit isn't plagued by those here either, but a tiny minority gets a lot of attention.

You're getting downvoted to hell, but there's some truth to this. No one wants to ride Hotel 22 as a passenger, and homeless people on Bart is at least a small negative for ridership. Caltrain doesn't have this problem because they do fare enforcement, a ticket only gets you one ride, and its mostly a commuter train. Caltrain even lets people drink on the train and its not a problem, but it's because of the crowd they serve.

> Caltrain even lets people drink on the train and its not a problem, but it's because of the crowd they serve.

Even Caltrain gets rowdy on the game days, particularly with people on the bike cars refusing to give way to bikers boarding/deboarding in the intermediate stops. While this only happens occasionally, it made me miss my stop enough times (in addition to lack of safety with last mile biking) to completely give up on Caltrain.

> Being poor in a city

Homeless are attracted to free services, which are often abundant in cities.

> the worst way to try to climb out of poverty.

I disagree, as anyone who wants to work can find more help wanted signs in cities than along interstate in rural Nebraska.

London has fantastic public transport.

proximity to public transportation is one of the strongest indicators of economic mobility

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