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Comment by uoaei | Hacker News Reader

It's a chicken-and-egg concern. If there was a higher amount of passenger load on public transit there would be more eyes, accountability, and generally a feeling of being around people who are going somewhere rather than using the trains and buses as living rooms. Safety in numbers and all that.

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I think social perception plays a big role too. In most countries where public transit is widely used, it’s used across nearly every social class. No one thinks that riding the bus is something only poor people do.

That isn’t the case in America, where riding the bus absolutely has a low social status. So I think making public transit more of a prestige product (safe, clean, well-designed, etc.) would help break that and make it more socially acceptable for middle and upper class people.

I remember visiting Germany for work years ago, and was pleased to find that my hotel was literally on the same block as a tram/trolley that went to next door to the company; super nice Eurotransit done Right™ for the win!

A short walk from the hotel and a quick ride and I was there for the day; and when I mentioned it to the manager he was flabbergasted because the tram is for poor people he must give me a ride back in his Audi.

Which took twice as long hahahaha.

That only applies to developed countries. In China, a lot of people use public transit, but richer people will prefer taxis, ubers, or their own cars. There are a lot of taxis also, that are cheap enough for daily commutes if you are middle class. I lived on a subway route in Beijing that went close enough to my work, but it was so crowded (often nowhere to sit on a 25 minute ride) that I just paid for the taxi anyways. Traffic was horrible, so it made sense to take the subway if traveling during rush-hour (if you can fit on, of course), but I re-arranged my work schedule to mostly avoid that.

In Paris, buses are a little slower than light rail, so they tend to be associated with higher status, parents with prams, and elderly people, who have more time and would rather enjoy the view. Middle-class people take the metro. The working class lives in the suburbs and takes the regional trains.

I disagree. I lived in NYC for 10 years without a car and used public transit for everything. There are plenty of passengers, and that didn't matter. It was just a larger captive audience for whoever was having their mental breakdown.

The US's approach attacks public transit from both ends. Transit is gutted, cars are prioritized, making transit not good enough. And social services are gutted, the poor and the unwell are demonized, and then the only people riding transit are scary. And these two feed into each other; by making transit inefficient to use, and making expensive cars necessary, poverty is increased.

You want to have a more holistic view of living together. Public healthcare is part of that.

Whether people in crisis are on the side of the road (and easier to ignore with a lifted car hood) or in your train car, they aren’t getting the help they need.

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