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Comment by nickstinemates | Hacker News Reader

Why would I choose to be on someone else's schedule when I can be on my own?

Because it can get you to a location substantially faster than by car, in a way that doesn't require you to waste all your time and attention driving? The US has bent over backwards to accommodate cars and we're still seeing astronomical traffic during peak hours in all major metro areas. When they're built well, a train (or any public transit) ride can you to and from your place of work in an equal or shorter amount of time, while allowing you the freedom to do whatever you want during the ride itself. For the small hassle of adjusting your schedule by 15 minutes you can regain 1+ hours of your life

It absolutely cannot get you to your location substantially faster, unless you live in a city and are going to a destination inside of the city or to another city that is serviced by the train. I wanted to believe, because I don't inherently love driving and love to configure my computer/laptop/environment such that I can work from any device (thin client-esque) and LOVE the idea of someone else worrying about transportation and me hacking away instead. I'll tell you a story about my personal experience delving into making this work.

In order from me to get from north of the golden gate bridge in the SF Bay Area (in Marin) to say, Cupertino, which I did regularly when I worked for Rancher Labs and MariaDB, I'd have had to take 3 separate modes of public transportation which I would need to weave together in a weird way, and was surprisingly expensive. It would also take 4 hours with appropriate adjustments in variation in route timing. Each way. So 8 hours in commute time alone. I didn't even try. The route would have been Home -> Ferry -> Walk from Ferry Building to King St -> Caltrain -> Cupertino'ish, then bus or walk.

OKOK, maybe I should have to live closer to take advantage of the marvels of modern public transportation...

When I worked at Docker, the Golden Gate transit bus stop was right outside of my house (less than a block.) It was $15 each way. The bus ride took an hour+ and dropped me off 2-6 blocks away, depending on the location of the office at the time. So 1.5 hours each way or 3 hours a day + $30 in fares.

Taking the bus was very limiting. Not only did I have to get to the bus at a specific time in the morning, but I had to leave before a certain time at night. What ended up happening was I would take the 5:45am bus, arriving in office around 7:30am and often take the 4pm or 5pm bus back, on average. This was the time I'd get to the office earlier than everyone, work away for a few hours without anyone there, but also leave earlier than most (but arrive home around the same time)

If there was an event in the evening, a spontaneous outing with co-workers, anything, which would happen after work, the busses were no longer running so I had to take the ferry which would take my across the bridge and ask my lovely wife to come pick me up (in a car) from the ferry terminal.

The ferry was shorter in terms of travel time (30 mins across the bay) but you have to get there 15 mins early to park and get in line to board and there's a variation in the schedule. Factor in potential traffic getting to the ferry terminal, and you're leaving to the Ferry 45 minutes prior to departure (for a 30 minutes ride.) So all told it's not much better, all in, but I am already in a car, driving. So no car savings in this scenario.

Even later (past 10pm, oh no!) I'd then I've to call an Uber, and it was incredibly expensive ($120+) in addition to being inconvenient for the Uber driver to have to drive so far away from their normal operating place.

I've tried to like Public transit. It was not time efficient or cost efficient in any way for me personally to do any of this. It was far too constraining, despite the benefits.

I don't think my situation is all too different from most people living outside of a major city or the suburbs of a major city in the united states. Trains and public transportation is definitely not the answer for me. Getting more transportation infrastructure in my area to make it more efficient is not appealing to me in the slightest.

HOWEVER, because of all of this, I am such a huge proponent of remote work. Remote work eliminates all of this shit, and, if you don't want to have a car or commute or have your car on the road, you don't have to.

I've put substantially less miles on all of my vehicles since 2020 as a result of the pandemic and the shift from remote work and I could not be happier. I started my truck and drove it for the first time this year today. That's amazing.

That is a big block of text which reports a rather obvious fact: public transit in the US sucks. I fully agree with this fact. I think that this is a fact because of our car fetishism. I think we need to have less car fetishism and more public transit. I think our current car-centric infra is costing us way too much money, and isn't going to scale in the way we want. I agree with the Strong Towns position that most (or at least many) suburbs are going to become insolvent because of their car-enabled low density. I have no opinions in either direction about remote work generally, but personally I enjoy having an office to work in that isn't my home. I hope the rising cost of gasoline isn't negatively impacting your truck-driving experience too adversely.

I didnt read all of that, but trains are indoubtedly faster than cars. The reason while thats not necessarily true in US is that train network in the US sucks because the whole infrastructure (and ideology) is leaning heavily towards cars and now you have serious people who claim "why whould I adjust my schedule when I am FREE with my car and its faster" as a counter argument to "we should improve public transport network". Living in Europe with functioning train networks, I can confirm train is much more comfortable than car. Adjusting to a fixed schedule is worth the cost of being much faster and having the time to do something else on the train and be it just relaxation to arrive without exhaustion at the destination.

A lot of these discussions devolve because of a lack of shared context. I live out in farm country. No trains are coming out here for a plethora of reasons.

Using public transportation - for me - and a lot of America where population density is LOW in such a case is a waste of time for all of the reasons I listed.

Right but the ability of you and many Americans to live in such low-density areas is fully supported by the massive amount of resources directed towards car-centric infrastructure. The problem you refer to- that public transit cannot service low density- is one which creates itself. Moreover, low-density means low tax revenue and infra is EXPENSIVE; more expensive in many cases than the low-density tax base can support. The net result is that revenue to build infra is generated in high-density areas and then spent on low-density ones, which weakens the public transit offerings in high-density areas and encourages more driving, which encourages more low-density living, and the cycle continues. This is not sustainable, and something will give eventually.

You point out one of the key things about making public transport work well as an alternative: frequency and reliability . And I don't mean reliability in the sense that it doesn't break down, I mean in the sense that you can rely that the service will be offered, no matter when. Now the funny part is that it's probably a lot easier to make a self driving train, airplane or bus on a controlled, dedicated lane than a self driving car to increase frequency and extend running hours.

I wouldn't call being stuck in forever traffic, and spending a quarter[1] of my income on transportation to be 'living on my own schedule'[2]...

[1] TCO of an average car is ~$6,000-10,000/year of after-tax money, median US after-tax income is sub-$40,000/year.

If you are spending $10,000 on your car per year you are making an extraordinarily bad financial decision.

Parking, toll roads, tabs, gasoline, insurance, interest payments, maintenance, depreciation will all happily run up to that amount for a new car, and to $6,000 for an old car.

The IRS mileage deductible rate is 65 cents/mile, and it's pretty close to operational cost of a vehicle. Parking and tolls and 10,000 miles a year will easily get you to these numbers.

Some call this freedom, but I call this a financial millstone around your neck.

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(Not to mention the mountains of public[1] and private money that get spent on automobile infrastructure, parking offsets, etc, etc.)

[1] Most of which comes from the general tax fund...

My car payment alone is almost that much. Then my insurance is also almost that much.

Oh, and about $5,000/yr in gas.

Anecdotally - I bought my car for $7,000 cash, about four years ago. I guess that's about $1,500 a year plus gas and maintenance.

> My car payment alone is almost that much. Then my insurance is also almost that much.

Are you in Europe or the US?

My insurance at age 20 with an accident under my belt was under $3,000 a year. My 50k mile Corolla cost less than your annual car payments.

> Oh, and about $5,000/yr in gas.

That's $100 or two sedan sized tanks every week at US prices. At 30 MPG that's over 30,000 miles a year.

Try having a family.

When the true cost of being "on your own schedule" costs tens of thousands more per year.

What is your time worth to you? If your time is worthless then of course waste it and use public transportation, but for me every hour I spend on unnecessary transportation is $120 in straight income and immeasurable from losing out on time with my family.

Of course this is very situation dependant but under my exact scenario you can probably imagine why I’d spend tens of thousands per year on a car. Of course I don’t, and the number is actually closer to $4k, but even then the time saving makes up for that in like a month.

I've always thought the "Set an arbitrary dollar amount to my time to do whatever I want" argument is kind of dumb. No value to glean from it. Regardless with good urban design, public transportation is faster than a car anyway.

And I say tens of thousands because car amortization/maintenance, road maintenance, oil subsidies, environmental cost (gigantic) probably clears 4 figures per year easily.

good public transport networks are faster than cars in most cases, plus its much more environmental friendly. The problem is US is catered to the most inefficient modern transport (cars) and falls now for sunk cost fallacy.

“Most cases” is a wildly subjective statement to use here. For my current job, I’d use an hour more for my commute if not for my car. For my previous one, it would be an hour and a half.

I live in the second largest city in the country.

You mean why would you ever fly on a commercial airline, for example?

Exactly

Long-distance travel by train is a luxury compared to the car. Traveling by train, you can work, eat, read, watch a movie, and socialize.

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