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Comment by nytesky | Hacker News Reader

I was a huge proponent of urban planning and smart growth, loved trains.

But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter.

For me personally, I hate the smell of weed and it is EVERY where in many downtown areas and transit hubs.

Bikes? So weather dependent, little cargo space, hard to secure, and no way to carry a family readily.

It’s a sad state of affairs.

Autonomous cars will be a travesty as everyone starts sending them on non stop errands or run double commutes to save on parking…

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I hate driving down the highway and people speeding past me and weaving in and out of traffic without a license plate.

I can't stand cars driving into buildings and businesses in my downtown area.

Whenever it snows it seems like there's a huge multi-car pileup on the highway causing a complete stop and I can't get to where I was trying to go.

The highways and roads are really really loud.

Someone drove into my family in their truck and killed us all.

Etc.

It's not fair to point out the problems with bikes like you are, like the smell of weed (what about drunk drivers??) without also at least acknowledging the gigantic list of problems associated with car-only transit.

Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure.

Also I do want to point out that the disease vector comment seems really weird to me. Like the population density at Costco is a lot less than a train ride therefore you won't get sick as often? I don't get it.

> Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure.

They seem pretty equally hopeless to solve. How are we going to "change society's standards?" This isn't even a public transit problem--it's a "dealing with other human beings" problem.

Ever since the pandemic, going out in public and trying to do basically anything is like entering a probabilistic mental facility, where some non-trivial percentage of the time, some member of the public is going to enter your life as an obstacle, aggressor, or at least as an irritant. It's always been kind of the case, but the percentage chance just seems much larger today.

Road ragers are out in equal number to smokers on the train, sidewalk poopers while you're trying to walk, and coal rollers while you're trying to bicycle. It's not the mode of transportation, it's the growing belligerence of the general public.

My point is that most people don't consider externalities when deciding on their transit. Sitting in your car is far more comfortable than navigating smelly and dirty transit with unstable individuals roaming. Yes transit is safer, but people really don't do that calculus on the morning of their commute.

Weed smell is going to be a problem simply from the fact that users stink ALL THE TIME, even if they aren't smoking in the actual metro. It like an epidemic of BO.

What Costco do you shop where you are pressed up against people for half an hour? A loaded train is a sealed environment with poor ventilation and way more density than almost any other scenario in modern life. Regardless it's also people's perception, and a huge warehouse feels better ventilated than a subway car.

I have a feeling that if people made one of those pros and cons sheets and did the crossing off equal things, these conversations would go easier

I can't imagine equating things like the smell of weed and having to share a train with a homeless person, with death, death, accident clean up, new barriers added, and then more death anyways

I've never died in a car, but I experienced awful negative externalities with public transportation all the time (back when I used it). You're comparing a 95% occurrence to a <1% occurrence.

> But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter

Speak for yourself. More metros around the world are pushing for better mass transit. Even in the US, even mild expansion of light rail makes it possible for my kids to bike+rail to school and for me to use light rail to commute to work. US needs to handle its homeless problem - agreed - but that's a bigger societal issue.

Pandemic lockdowns are not going to happen again. People are finding out that lockdowns did not help all that much (even when implemented near-perfectly like in China).

Parking has been less affordable and available since the pandemic, not more.

Really, here on the east coast our downtowns are largely empty, with huge office garages always at the ready. Maybe less street parking because we still have some outdoor cafes using sidewalk space for dining now?

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