I agree with the overall point that people don't want to cycle because the experience sucks, but your description feels like an unnecessarily inflammatory way to say "people are willing to pay for a more pleasant experience". Nobody says "a lot of the anti-cheap laptop stance comes down to, "what am I, poor?".
At some point I told her that I hadn't rented a car, so I was basically walking. And because I wanted to go to some outlet, I was thinking on taking the bus. Her comment was: "Don't take the bus, that's for Mexicans!", I had to swallow my surprise and keep a poker face, just answering something along the lines of "ooh yeah? thanks for the advice".
I guess the stigma that only poor people (And we Mexicans are poor you know haha) take the bus is pretty alive in some parts of the US.
Greyhound is also, in my mind, significantly different than regional public transit. I consider it more like an airline for poor people. Public transit, definitely there are poor people using it, and there are also commuters, especially on the Express lines, which have a premium fare and operate exclusively during office-commute hours. (R.I.P.)
Are we talking during the covid era (eg. 2020-2022), or the post-covid era (2023+)? I can understand how flying during the covid era sucked with mandatory masks and PCR tests, but my flights in 2023 were all pleasant. All the covid protocols were lifted, and I didn't experience any long lines at check-in or at customs/passport/security lines.
Then again, I've noticed that the ones with money are utterly alien to those of us that don't have it or grew up without it.
The waves of immigration also look different demographically; the people who came over to build the railroads and staff laundromats, restaurants and nail salons are very different from the tech worker on H1B. (And the latter often look down on the former.)
Because it's mostly true.
It's not _always_ true and we shouldn't hold prejudices, but it would be just as wrong (though not as un-PC) to claim that public transit was used equally across income levels, racial/ ethnic checkboxes, etc.
"Americans who are lower-income, black or Hispanic, immigrants or under 50 are especially likely to use public transportation on a regular basis, Pew Research Center data show."
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/04/07/who-relie...
The bigger problem for most folks (not your racist co-worker) is the crime, drug use and general anti-social behavior on public transit. This will vary by city/ transit district, but it's gotten much worse in the last decade (after it had gotten much better for the previous two).
My realtor said I was the only person she’s worked with who has ever bought a house that doesn’t own a car — in Los Angeles, of all places.
Yet 8 years later, I still get around by a mix of Uber and trains and bus. And the funny part is, I am almost always the first to arrive because I don’t have to worry about parking, and even with 50% of my trips done via Uber to fill in gaps in the network, after gas/insurance/parking I am still spending less!
I do walk a lot too, but that’s one place I would agree LA has absolutely systemically dropped the ball on outside of the historic pockets that the city didn’t demolish. I often feel like I’m the only one who has walked on a given sidewalk in years, and wonder if I’m supposed to be walking there
Yes, it's unheard of that folks can become accustomed to circumstances which most people would view as abnormal or dangerous.
I've been riding public transit almost my entire life; I started riding _by myself_ when I was 8 so I could get to and from school, back when the Bronx was much more violent.
Riding during rush hour is a very different experience than riding off-hours. While I almost never felt unsafe (gotta keep your head on a swivel), lots of women have told me how they've regularly felt unsafe. Maybe it's some dude ranting on a subway car. Maybe it's one ranting on the subway platform. Maybe it's a dude sitting WAY too close on an empty bus. Then there's the open drug use on some systems like BART.
> but it’s really not that bad,
Maybe you're just more tolerant of crime, drug use and general anti-social behavior.
This term always amazes me, along with ‘loitering, was it designed to criminalise undesirables?
I’ve seen police called for ‘antisocial behaviour’ on kids swimming in a river and on teenagers hanging out and chatting at night.
The same thing happens here in my city in Mexico: public transport is uncomfortable, slow, insecure and dirty. So, mid/high income population avoid using it and instead buy cars. The government then has to spend more money in infra for those cars; money that could be used to improve public transport.
I guess a difference between Mexico and USA is that because here the m as majority of people are "poor" , more people use public transport.
My own recent anecdote: For context I’m white, but I speak Spanish, lived for a time in South America, and ended up marrying a US-born Mexicana. I wanted to get some legit Cali-Mex food while I was on a trip so got an Uber over to Mission and 24th which is a predominately Hispanic area. My Uber arrives and it’s a hippie-looking white woman in a Prius /covered/ in left-wing bumper stickers including one that said “Stop Racism” and a BLM sticker.
So we make small talk on the way, when we get to my destination and as I’m about to open the door to step out she says to me “be careful, this area isn’t so safe, there’s a lot of Mexicans.” I don’t know how to react exactly so I just leave. As I’m walking around looking at restaurants I realize nearly every street parked car is a relatively new import luxury vehicle. So it’s safe enough to street park your $100k car, but I need to watch out for those scary Mexicans.
As a white person I encounter this stuff a lot outside of work where people feel comfortable “confiding” their racism to me. For the record I gave her 1 star in Uber. The more left-leaning an area in the US, the more affluent and white it tends to be and the more likely I am to encounter casual racism.
It's gone out of favor in the US (because people like to change every term with newer versions) but it's still a word just meaning "being from asia".
It's both, but as an ethnicity it's subdivided in several cases based on their origin (e.g. "white mexican").
But can also be seen as the future/aspiring all-encompassing Mexican ethnicity through the inter-mixing (cultural and genetical) going on for centuries...
(It's not like "Spanish" in Spain are some pure ethnicity that always existed either, it's one that emerged by combination of several ethnicities).
The idea that cycling is "for poor people" seems quite bizarre after living somewhere like this. Indeed it is one of the few things - in a city among the worst in the UK for inequality - that truly spans almost all financial and social classes.
The idea that a lot more money and resources need to be invested in improving facilities to make cycling and walking more attractive does resonate though. The arguments made in the article look on point here.
It's still less than half its previous average at 4700 daily riders now. https://metrolinktrains.com/globalassets/about/agency/facts-...
By that they mean "no middle class and up white person takes the bus".
+ hard plastic seats
+ inadequate climate control
+ poor maintenance leading to excessive nose and exhaust fumes in the cabin
+ extremely poor personal space
+ seating configurations with poor leg room
+ convoluted routes and schedules, degrading point-to-point travel
+ the driving can be uneven, because they aren't much better off than riders
Light rail is better because the folks who design and operate the systems aren't bent on bargaining away the entire rider experience.
hard plastic seats inadequate climate control
poor maintenance leading to excessive nose and exhaust fumes in the cabin
extremely poor personal space
seating configurations with poor leg room
Check out that seat right by the articulation joint. Or the seats next to the stairs
convoluted routes and schedules, degrading point-to-point travel
the driving can be uneven, because they aren't much better off than riders
Light rail can be better but not always. Certainly the diesel vs electric issue can come into play (although you can make some truly awful trolley coaches too).
Because rail routes are fixed, that means that developers can count on their longevity, and therefore they develop real estate to match it. A rail line can greatly gentrify the neighborhoods it runs through, given a decade or two to get started. This is a big reason why many neighborhoods will protest and block and vote against any rail lines being built near them, because they know it will start the timer on rising property values, rising rents, new neighbors, and the destruction of low-income and affordable housing.
Central planners might like the idea that they can choose which neighborhoods will succeed, but count me among those who think they can F themselves.
Buses work. They're cheaper than every kind of rail. They're more flexible. But planners and meddlers want control.
They have USB chargers and WiFi on half of them.
[0] Zone A: core; Zone C: the part of the commuter belt outside the city limits; Zone B: between A and B — https://sbahn.berlin/en/tickets/the-vbb-fare-explained/fare-...
Of course the city also needs to support walking the final 300-2000 ft to your destination after the bus stop. If most of your stops are some BS office or industrial zone, with roads build for cars, no shade, no shops, and nothing to do around, it's pointless.
https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/styles/teaser-col-...
I was only there as a tourist though, I don't know how well they'd be for day-to-day life and cross-town trips.
In other cities where I have used buses regularly, I've found them to suffer a bit from limited routes, transfers, it taking 2 hours to get anywhere, and then buses stop running too early at night.
Literally, the whole framing is that walking sucks and is embarrassing :(
How so? I’m reminded of that sequence of shots in Zabriskie Point where Mark Frechette walks around Los Angeles and is assailed by billboards everywhere around him.
Hey! Don't settle for walking.
You got it all wrong! It does noy matter how the expience feels physically.
The problem is social stigma attached to cycling.
Like tell you mates you spent 3 weeks fixing your car, or built your own house, and it was super u pleasant and you broke your hand in the process - you are cool.
But tell them you cycled to work to improvr fitness, and you are a weirdo.
The last thing I would want to do is show up at an office for an 8 hour shift soaked in sweat. Where I live, it is humid enough during the summer that there's really only at most 4 months of the year where "pleasant" can be described to use the weather for biking.
In fact, the weather forecast for today is 85% humidity, and is going to hit 93% twice this week.
The closest is "people aren't willing to pay to improve an unpleasant experience" which isn't related to purchasing a laptop in anyway.
Are we reading the same post here? The one I'm seeing lists out all the reasons why cycling/public transport sucks, all of which can be avoided if you pay several hundred dollars per month for a car.
And then the tax base doesn't want to pay to improve public transit, because they already have a car.