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Comment by ctoth | Hacker News Reader

For me, who can't drive, a big chunk of it is the crime aspect of public transit.

In the last two months alone, two people have been murdered on my local transit system, including a 13-year-old-kid shooting some dude for no reason [0][1].

This, combined with it taking at least three times as long to get literally anywhere, with many trips resulting in a detour to a central hub station or similar means the Uber is a far better value if you care at all about your time.

If you are trying to visit friends 10 minutes away, this is 20 minutes by car or (if you're lucky and the time windows line up) an hour out of your day by transit.

[0]: https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/02/boy-13-arrested-fatal-...

[1]: https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/27/man-accused-of-longmon...

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Ya, safety is important. Metro and Sound transit here in Seattle want increased funding for more routes, while the routes they have are becoming unusable as anything more than unhoused neighbor day centers. Fix the safety problem first, and then expand.

I still take the D line into Downtown Seattle when we go there, but will always have one or two situations on the bus where I regret the choice. It keeps me from using the bus more often.

I've never been to Denver but I would guess auto fatalities are a higher percentage than public transit fatalities.

It's one of those things that may work out mathematically, but the true fact of it is if someone dies in a car accident everyone is sad and gets back in their car after the funeral (and to be fair, a decent number auto fatalities involve drugs or alcohol). Crime hits in a completely different way.

Same way that no amount of "more people died in car accidents than on Boeing planes" would ever get people to agree that fixing the MCAS was not needed.

There's an element of control when you're in a personal vehicle that's lacking when you're on transit with the general public, and fatalities aren't necessarily the only risk factor to be considered.

e.g. I'm less likely to be mugged or assaulted in a personal vehicle compared to public transit but I'm also more likely to have my vehicle broken into or stolen. Public transit is also _very_ different during typical commute times, compared to off hours.

I think this is a critical aspect: the current statistics on who takes which mode of transportation are hopelessly distorted. The current system is broken every which way. For the San Francisco Bay Area you don't take one or the other because you like it. You take one because the other is even more messed up. You can't even "like" one if it's right under your door. Parking is (deliberately) terrible. Car windows broken entirely expected to happen sooner or later (pretty deliberately also really). Transit shows up or not. And is slow. And might break down right under you. And is a war zone. The potholes are massive enough they affect the busses just fine, etc, etc. Back to the point at hand: looking at how many trips are taken in one or the other tells you nothing about people's preferences. The preference would be NEITHER.

It says a lot that you evaluate traffic deaths as “crime”

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