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Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

Have you used busses or the metro recently? My girlfriend refuses to ride them because they are dirty, uncomfortable, and most crucially, unsafe. And although I am an ardent supporter of public transportation, I tend to understand her side quite well when I see fare hoppers, people blasting loud music, shouting incoherently or doing drugs - and I probably see one of those every time I ride.

I use public transportation frequently. But I feel that 50 years of work on public transportation has created a system that fails a large percentage of the population. Perhaps another solution is needed.

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Sure but this is not a fundamental issue with public transport, it's an issue with the implementation of public transport in the US. There are plenty of places where it's done well, and it is felt deeply.

Living in major city in the Netherlands I have never felt any need to own a car. I've been quite open to it a few times and I can afford it no problem, but it was just not worth the hassle, it's just an inferior option.

I don't think you can compare public transport outcomes in the Netherlands with those of the US and use it as an indictment of the US implementation. The US has 50% more crime (including 5x more homicides) and ~$12k extra income (ie Americans can afford a little more comfort); the Netherlands has 5x the population density. Comparing the results of transporting a very different population through very different places doesn't reflect on either implementation on its own.

Population density is similar in the us and the netherlands, when you only count places that matter for transit. Farmers rarely get transit. Look only at the cities and not the rocky mountains and the us is plenty dense

Not that simple. Take Amtrak Northeast Regional. Service from NYC to Washington D.C is a very busy business travel route that goes down the densest population corridor in the country, but it still crosses areas (especially in northeast Maryland) that could be properly described as rural farmland.

That area is still very dense compared to what trains pass through elsewhere in the world. Of course as a tiny country the Netherlands has nothing to compare with. However France has plenty of not dense farmland their trains pass through. Spain has even worse terrin that their trains pass through and again a great system.

The Netherlands as a whole is less dense than NYC. If density were the issue, why does public transportation in NYC have problems that the Netherlands does not?

The population density of a whole massive country like the USA doesn't matter for public transportation that reaches its largest cities, you have pockets of very high density and an immense flyover space where few people live.

With the density of the Northeast Corridor you could have the exact same setup as the Netherlands has, the Northeast is only 20% less dense than the Netherlands while housing 50m people, there's almost a whole France in there but nowhere close to the infrastructure the Netherlands nor France have to move people around.

The USA is massive so there's a lot more space for localised solutions that work for different parts of the country, the West and East coasts could have similar solutions to interconnect the whole N -> S, there's enough density for it. If Sweden with 10m people and a frigid climate can run trains, public transportation, etc. in all major population areas along an area equivalent to the whole West Coast then I don't see any reason, except cultural-political ones, the USA couldn't.

Nobody lives in the all the empty land in the US. The majority of people in the US live in urban areas. The density argument never makes any sense. We're talking about public transit within a single city, not between Chicago and Denver.

My point is that we've had 50+ years of "trying to do it well" in the US. For all the claims that "it has been done better in other countries", how come not a single city in the US has been able to extract the je ne sai quoi of what makes it work over there when it doesn't work here? What exactly is the time horizon for fixing all our issues? 50 years wasn't long enough to make a dent - if anything, things have gotten worse in that time.

> how come not a single city in the US has been able to extract the je ne sai quoi of what makes it work over there when it doesn't work here?

Manhattan sort of nails it. Between the subway, Metro-North, LIRR and taxi system you don’t need to own a car and it massively increases life expectancy.

> it massively increases life expectancy.

Life just seems longer. When I lived in small cities and walked mainly, all of my health numbers went in the wrong direction. Higher blood pressure, poorer quality sleep, worse glucose control. It took me quite a while, but I eventually determined the problems were connected to noise, nighttime lighting, and too many people.

Living outside of cities and better controlling my sleep environment has significantly improved my quality of life.

> Living outside of cities and better controlling my sleep environment has significantly improved my quality of life

There will be outliers. Nevertheless, life expectancy and healthspan in car-free cities is meaningfully longer than in places where people drive.

Wait, are you arguing that we’ve tried to do it well in the US?

What I'm saying if we've had 50 years to try to get it right and we have failed.

As the sibling comments suggest, I don't think the US has really been trying to very hard get it right. Leaving alone European countries, I've experienced and commuted using better public transportation in poorer countries of varying sizes 2+ decades ago.

Plenty of other places have figured it out. There's nothing so special about America that it can't work there too.

My city's public transportation is excellent. It's a vital service for people like me who don't drive and need timely transport loops.

No, sorry, the US has had 50 years of "trying not to do it at all if we can get away with it"

Absolutely not been trying to do it well.

Despite this, Washington Metro is pretty solid, i take CTA or my bike everywhere in Chicago, and i was able to navigate Philly and NYC reliably without a car without issue.

US transit agencies have been deliberately and systematically underfunded and poorly maintained. Public transit works great all over the world when governments actually care about doing it well.

But public transport in the Netherlands works because society as a whole isn’t broken. There aren’t even any noticeable homeless populations, for godsakes.

Which is why I’m happy to pay taxes there. It’s really worth it in quality of life.

> and most crucially, unsafe

This is more or less a completely imagined issue. The most dangerous form of transportation is personal vehicles, and its not even close.

For example, on the NY subway you have a 100x greater chance of dying by driving instead of taking the subway. 100x.

If you look at the risk of injury it's not any better.

The thing is that feeling unsafe and actually being unsafe are two different things. Cars feel safe because you're isolated, you have walls between you and everyone else. Public transit feels unsafe because you can directly see other people and there's nothing stopping them from just walking up to you.

Like, for your point on drugs, on a subway you can literally see the people on drugs, which makes you feel unsafe. In a car, you don't know who is on drugs, so you feel more safe. But, you're not. People are still on drugs, but now, they're also operating a deadly weapon.

> This is more or less a completely imagined issue. The most dangerous form of transportation is personal vehicles, and its not even close.

I think GP was referring to lack of safety due to crime, not accidents.

My (European) understanding of US public transport is that you get stabbed or shot at every station. (Full disclosure, everything I know about US public transport comes from "Death Wish" (1974).)

It's still safer than driving when you account for crime on public transit, which is itself a largely overblown problem.

I understand women feeling uncomfortable (am woman, have been harassed on trains) but I've had one time I've ever felt truly unsafe on public transit in many years of riding, I'm not going to let that stop me.

I realize i should add: it's basically impossible to drive on an expressway in Chicago without some jackass putting your life in danger cutting you off at the last second or weaving in and out of traffic with inches of clearance. It is genuinely far more dangerous, and far more scary, than riding a CTA bus alone at night.

I included injuries in my comment. Yes, you are more likely to be injured by vehicles, too, and again - it's not even close.

Do people get stabbed? Yes. But what happens way more often is car accidents resulting in injuries.

> on the NY subway you have a 100x greater chance of dying by driving instead of taking the subway

Is this comparisons solely based upon deaths by (car passenger * distance traveled in NY streets) to deaths by (passenger * distance traveled in the NY subway)? The total amount of car passengers victims of accidents happening on highways, for example, seems not pertinent to me.

> This is more or less a completely imagined issue. The most dangerous form of transportation is personal vehicles, and its not even close.

Sure, you can make that argument. I can even agree with you. But you're not going to convince my girlfriend, or most women for that matter, that they're "actually more safe" in a car than BART. Especially if she has to dodge people yelling or cat-calling her to get on the station. You or I can be totally fine with that. But I can't find it within me to fault her for not being OK with that, and wanting to call an Uber instead.

I already included this in my post - feeling unsafe is a different thing. I don't know how to solve people feeling unsafe, because it's a combination of human's irrational risk management and real-world limitations.

If you remove walls and sound barriers, i.e. you go public for transportation, I'm not sure there's any way around the "feeling unsafe" problem.

Maybe the right framing here isn't safety, but how pleasant or unpleasant the experience is.

> I see fare hoppers, people blasting loud music, shouting incoherently or doing drugs - and I probably see one of those every time I ride

It has very little to do with public transports and everything to do with our declining western societies. I've never witnessed any of these in any part of developed Asia I know of...

> Perhaps another solution is needed.

Reducing inequalities, funding education, local police, etc. all seem like a more sustainable way forward than shielding ourselves from the shit in a robotaxi...

Just enforcing basic laws and rules on buses would go a far way. Also fare enforcement is talked about in Seattle not as a way to raise more revenue for the system (indeed, fare enforcement costs more than it brings in), but to make it safer (no one wants to ride Link and get stabbed at Capitol Hill station).

Make crime crime again and get rid of the loud music and drug use?

As a society we forgot how to just stand up and say no. We relegated people doing so as Karens instead of supporting them.

I strongly agree. Laws are a reflection of our values. If our values are that people should be free to blast loud music in public, spit on the sidewalk, and harass and intimidate others, our laws will permit that behaviour. Many Asian societies ensure their laws prevent people acting that way, often with harsh penalties. As long as we have such a strong movement to "defund the police," and "abolish prisons," our societies will never be as safe as theirs.

I live in northern Europe now. The only time I ever felt unsafe on a bus, was once when a raving junkie walked up and down the bus with a scissor in his hand, trying to "sniff out the snitch". Turns out the bus I took, was the bus that also went to a halfway home.

But that's about it. I've taken thousands of rides, and have felt safe.

Sure, there are some annoying aspects - like teens blasting music, drunk people going out on the weekends, but most of the time it is pretty good.

Then again, taking the bus isn't looked down on in Europe - and carries no shame , so to speak. That goes for the metro, too.

This has never happened to me in a taxi or Uber, and one such incident would be more than enough for me to never take public transit again.

I'd rather see drunks on my bus/in the metro than on the road.

I know it's dismissive of real fears and anxiety caused by that kind of behaviour, I understand where it comes from. But intellectually, I know I'm infinitely more safe having effective public transportation than not, even if emotionally I might not always feel the same.

I agree, but at that point I'm in favor of just having a bus that carts drunks and druggies around the city and normal people have no expectation of using it. In my experience in a big city this is already how public transit is used.

Vast majority of public transit riders in big US cities are perfectly normal people. Majority of my office takes transit (or other non-car method) to work here in Chicago. It's similar in NYC and Washington. And yes we all can afford to drive (i even own a car) it just doesn't make sense to take a car downtown, ever.

I've taken the bus all over the city too. Overwhelming majority of people are not drunk or high or anything, and it's not considered weird for normal people to ride the bus.

In fact, i haven't touched my car since i last visited friends in Wisconsin back in May. Most of my friends don't own cars, several can't even drive

> In my experience in a big city

Do you mean "in the US"? There is a whole part of the world where public transit is actually working well.

Yes, in the US. Public transit does work well here, doing its part to commute the above categories of people around. Anyone who can afford to opts out because point-to-point travel is literally always better no matter where you are in the world.

> point-to-point travel is literally always better no matter where you are in the world

Yeah, cycling is better than public transportation in cities in most scenarios.

My experience in the US is that it's not always worse than a car. I tried multiple times going from the San Francisco airport to Oakland. The BART was systematically faster than a taxi stuck in the traffic. I feel a lot safer going to the airport with the BART than with a taxi, because with the taxi I may miss my flight.

Similar experience driving in Los Angeles. So much traffic, whenever there is a train it's better.

In NYC, the subway works really well, too.

Even with the slow ass 2025 CTA and a transfer in the loop, it's faster for me to take the train to get home at rush hour than to drive. Getting to Midway i could technically save 25 minutes driving, but at 10x or more cost.

I think these are just different measurements of safety. I do trust a subway to get to its destination on a reasonable schedule to a greater degree than an Uber, but to me that's a very different question than physical safety. The NYC subway is a great example of this actually, since it does seem to run very well but in the last year has had multiple horrifying incidents.

> The NYC subway is a great example of this actually, since it does seem to run very well but in the last year has had multiple horrifying incidents.

Boeing has had multiple horrifying incidents in the last years. Would you say that aviation is unsafe?

Again I think these are different concerns. On a plane I am with a section of the public that can hold their life together enough to buy a plane ticket, and I do not feel overtly physically threatened by them. On a subway I am with a section of the public so prolifically jumping over turnstiles that it's a systemic concern for for the subway itself. Concerns about the engineering mettle at Boeing or whoever provides the subway cars for NYC are separate.

That's not what I meant.

I understand that there are uncomfortable experiences in the subway in big cities. But statistically, what percentage of the people get physically hurt as compared to the total number of travellers?

Same applies to planes: the quality of Boeing seems to have gone down in the last few years to the point where I choose airlines flying Airbus. That's my feeling, it is valid as a feeling. But statistically, the likelihood of my flight with Boeing ending up in a crash is very small.

For me it comes down to a very binary decision. Any measurable number of passenger-on-passenger incidents in the NYC subway is enough to give me pause over taking a taxi or Uber. It doesn't happen on planes, and taxis and uber have better audit trails, and the bad stuff mostly happens outside the US, where I live. In both of these situations I'm also at the mercy of a bunch of lazy engineers and a Jira board. It's valid to try to pick the better engineers. But my immediate concern is my physical safety, and the safety of the people I bring with me, and a private situation is always going to be the safer option when the primary threat is the strangers around me.

> a private situation is always going to be the safer option when the primary threat is the strangers around me.

Sure, but what I'm saying is that maybe you over-estimate the threat.

> Any measurable number of passenger-on-passenger incidents in the NYC subway is enough to give me pause

I don't see why you apply that to the NYC subway and not to Boeing flights: Boeing planes have crashed because of technical issues. The fact that they haven't crashed on the US soil doesn't say it's safer to fly them in the US.

So there is a measurable number of deadly incidents that happened with Boeing planes. I find it interesting that it doesn't give you pause at all, but the subway incidents do.

Over-estimation or not, it's safer to take an Uber than the subway or bus. The granularities of the stats don't affect my decision much.

> I don't see why you apply that to the NYC subway and not to Boeing flights

Because again technical and social issues merit different weighting. If I'm flying on a 787-MAX I am at the mercy of all the good and bad design decisions that went into producing it. Those will be relatively consistent between flights for better or worse. The population of people traveling on a bus or subway routinely changes and is much less predictable. That predictability matters a lot here (to me). And given the option between weighting the threat of strangers around me vs. the threat of technical issues with a particular manufacturer, it seems to me that Boeing would have to crash a lot of planes on US soil before it would outweigh the number of people threatened or made uncomfortable on other forms of public transit.

> Over-estimation or not, it's safer to take an Uber than the subway or bus.

Pretty sure it's not. But it definitely feels safer.

I think that you make your decision based on your feeling. Don't get me wrong, it's fine. But it's irrational. You don't avoid the NYC subway because it's dangerous, you avoid it because it feels dangerous to you. That's a valid concern, but you should be aware of the difference. Because I'm pretty sure that the actual statistics will tell you that it is not as dangerous as you feel.

If you said "I take the car because I don't feel safe in the subway", I'd say "it's unfortunate, I wish they could improve the experience in the subway". If you say "I take the car because taking the subway is a bigger risk on my physical integrity", I'll say you're probably wrong.

It's literally not safer to take an Uber

> Any measurable number of passenger-on-passenger incidents in the NYC subway is enough to give me pause over taking a taxi or Uber.

But any measurable number of car-on-car incidents in the NYC is not enough to give you pause? Uber drivers aren't exactly known for their safe driving you know...

I am actually less scared of having my purse stolen than getting killed by a reckless driver.

If literally everyone who can avoids it, I'm not sure it works that well

I avoid having a car because I live in a place where I can get by with busses, public carpools and the occasional uber, having a car would mean having to deal with finding parking for it, finding a mechanic I trust, driving in traffic and having to still ocasionally use any the former if I want to have a beer

It's not a matter of quality, it's a matter of preference. I don't own a car. I live three blocks from a bus stop and I Uber everywhere instead, because it's cheap and predictable. The buses are clean, they run on time, but the population is well-off enough that there's almost no reason to take them, and that filters to buses being full of people who for one reason or another (often significant problems integrating with society) cannot pay for an alternative.

If one takes public transit it's because of convenience, cost, or virtue, and convenience is often the leg lacking, because it doesn't come to your house. I have walked blocks to and stood at many bus stops in my life surrounded by unwell people and telling myself that I'm being socially efficient does not smooth that over particularly well.

It's the association with unwell people that I don't get, and I do agree that it feels particularly US Centric

Coming from a place where it's a lot more normalized, I've taken the bus, twice a day for the last say 7 Years, the worst I've seen has been the ocassional drunk person (I've also slept 90% of my commute plenty of times, that's how safe I feel)

Mostly it's working people and high school students (But also, old people running errands or going to church) I assume most of those druggies/thiefs/etc, know that there's a lot to lose if they get caught messing with people on the bus (And I have seen a couple times a driver refusing service to specific people)

All the drivers know each other, and people on the same route are more often than not in you community and will tell people around

On the same note, a common thief usually avoids "working" places near his own house, because that's one quick way of destroying your life even if police never gets involved

That's reasonable, and as I noted in another comment I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. Though I see a lot of discourse around this dismissed as "US-centric" while avoiding the fact that the US, the melting-pot of the world, is potentially one of the best test-cases for whether public transit works.

All of the situations you describe are just carpooling with extra steps.

Public transit as described in the US is a bunch of strangers with different goals and different jobs getting together in the same car at approximately the same time to go to roughly the same block. As a system it needs to be able to handle those, and when you scale it past the carpooling step, it doesn't.

Perhaps that's the problem to be solved, but if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.

> Though I see a lot of discourse around this dismissed as "US-centric" while avoiding the fact that the US, the melting-pot of the world, is potentially one of the best test-cases for whether public transit works.

This is extremely US-centric :-). It's the exact cliché of how Americans see the world: "if it doesn't work for us, then it doesn't work at all", suggesting "because we are the best".

Go pretty much anywhere in the world: the US are perceived as the least capable in terms of public transit. I am not saying "it's the worse because there are conditions in the US that make it impossible to work" (which is what you suggest with "the US is the melting-pot of the world"). I am saying that public transit doesn't work in the US because the US doesn't understand how to make public transit work (and because the urban planning was often a complete failure in that sense).

There are many things that the US do really well. And there are many things that the US do really badly. The cliché, which honestly you kind of confirm here, is that the US people can't apprehend the thought that maybe they could learn something from other countries. "If it doesn't work for us, it means that it is impossible". And I'll end by quoting you saying pretty much exactly this:

> if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.

I don't think I follow, all of those people in my example are taking the same route / the same bus, How is that different? Or what difference would there be on a carpool / not a carpool?

On the same idea, walking a few blocks is the expectation here, being left on the same block on public transport would be enough to increase real state value

The bus I take everyday usually has:

- A random assortment of (Usually european) backpackers

- Some hospital workers

- A few factory workers

- Some office monkeys like me

- Random people dressed normally that I can't categorize

We just go along roughly the same route at the same hour

This is also mostly true in the US but replace the backpackers with people who often have little or no reason to be on the bus at all; panhandlers or people whose specific motive during the day is to harass people on the bus for money or fun. There are people who spend all day on the bus following its route back-and-forth to harass passengers. It's a not-insignificant amount of people; I have no doubt they exist in some form in other countries and maybe the generalized social solution lies outside the transit system, but I do think it's a product of having truly public transit in a place where the public is a sample of everybody everywhere.

EDIT: The distinction I make with a carpool is that you all know each other - you know the passengers, you know the drivers, everyone knows each other, the social contract enforces that nobody does anything too off-putting. Truly public transit has to assume that every passenger is a stranger to the other, and that's harder.

Where the fuck do you live dude

Not saying that you're wrong at all, but that feels pretty specific to the US. Which to me confirms that it is an urban planning failure.

In many places in the world, it's not remotely like that. I understand that "public transportation sucks in the US", but I feel like US people conclude from it that "public transportation sucks". And this is wrong. It's really a failure in the US.

That's fine, I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. However I cannot imagine a version of public transit that would be so good that I would actually use it - and this includes looking at the options available in other countries, because as far as I know we're still operating with buses, trains, subways, carpools, etc. Until ya'll have free taxis that come to your house and take you directly to your destination, it's just not a comparable sell.

To that extent I think it comes back to preference and maybe culture, and doesn't indicate any kind of failure. In the US we can afford not to take public transit and exercise that preference, in many places, it's not an option.

> In the US we can afford not to take public transit and exercise that preference, in many places, it's not an option.

Public transit is objectively a better solution than individual cars. It's not that other countries have public transit because they don't have a choice. They do: they just choose the better option.

> To that extent I think it comes back to preference and maybe culture, and doesn't indicate any kind of failure.

Sure, it was built like this in the US because of the culture. But retrospectively it was a mistake. Driving an individual car emits more CO2 than taking a bus or a train, period. The US is probably the only place in the world where a swasticar is considered "ecological": it's using a lot of energy, just because it's heavy.

Plenty of Europeans can afford to do whatever they want and still take transit. Same in Japan, China, all over the developed world.

I just fundamentally can't get why you're so offput by trains.

Be grateful you've not been assaulted by a taxi/Uber driver then. On the topic of self driving cars, I'd much rather put a woman in a Waymo at 2am after the bars close than an Uber.

I am grateful and this is exactly my point. On a bus I am at risk of being assaulted by dozens of people who did not need to provide any ID to be there. In an uber or taxi I am likely to have recourse.

If the Uber driver kills you, you're just as dead as if some random on the bus killed you, unfortunately.

I don't disagree, but I still have more recourse as a dead man who hired an Uber with a license plate and never made it to his destination vs. stabbed to death on a subway with 100 people, CCTV and no witnesses.

There have been plenty of people that have got into an Uber or taxi only to find out the driver is unlicensed or has bad intentions. One such incident would be more than enough for me to never get in a car alone with a stranger again.

An Uber i was in pulled straight out into traffic and if not for oncoming cars slamming their brakes we'd have been t boned. Like 4 Ubers I've been in featured a driver watching YouTube.

Sometimes you don't really have a choice. But I basically always choose the bus instead of i can help it.

See my other comment here but this is exactly my point. On a bus with dozens of strangers I have 0 recourse. In a car with someone who at least had to provide some kind of ID, I have more power. Consider that strangers just being present is not likely to protect you.

EDIT: I don't think your original comment included the licensing bit (apologies if I just read it poorly), but it doesn't change my point. If you have to provide some paperwork, however illegal, however incorrect, it is a barrier to crime that public transit does not have, and is a paper trail.

You've never had a road rager try to run you down or follow you somewhere?

And this doesn't even begin to account for injury or death due to car accidents. People die all the time in cars.

I second this.

The drunk people you find on a bus are just driving themselves home in the US. Not sure which option is safer. As a European it's mind boggling that you would find a big parking lot next to a bar

For what it's worth, I prefer drugged up people in a bus rather than behind the wheel. It's better to be annoyed by them than to be dead from a car crash with them.

This seems like a false dichotomy. In general, the drugged up people on the bus probably don't have cars.

11,000 dead Americans a year disagree. (Alcohol is a drug too.)

No one is saying that people who use drugs (or alcohol, which you refer to) don't ever drive cars. My point was that the ones on the bus probably don't. People who ride the bus are disproportionately poor, and unable to afford a car.

As for your point about drunk driving, I would guess most people who drive drunk would be more likely to take an uber/cab than ride the bus, which is not point-to-point, and which often takes much longer.

You’re making a guess. Who can say? There are many people who have a car and don’t want to pay Uber prices when they don’t want to drive, and there are many cities where public transportation is convenient.

But drugged up people in a driverless taxi seems best of all.

That sounds like a self centered culture problem not a public transportation problem.

Using public transport is, statistically, safer than a private vehicle.

It is often perceived as unsafe, but perception is not reality.

The likelihood of getting stabbed on a bus is probably higher than in a car.

Perception of safety isn't just about accidents.

Now I'm curious whether or not this is true. I'm much more likely to be killed or assaulted by friends or family than by a random person, and if I'm being killed by someone, the most likely killer by far is also the person they killed, even in the US. Further, while I know people who were shot in their car, I know nobody who was shot on a bus (I don't know anyone involved in knife violence in any capacity).

Do you have any reason to only care about being stabbed in particular? Is another car running a red light and smashing into yours, leaving you to bleed to death within the hour preferable to being stabbed somehow?

How about just fix those problems in public transport. Weve put zero thought/resources into it

Off the top of my head, we spent 90M[1] over the last few years adding new gates to prevent fare-hoppers. That's a far cry from "zero thought/resources".

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/bart-fare-gates-...

Sorry Im from LA.

Still though, compare 90M to the amount of money that goes into car infrastructure, including the ~$500+ (on average, 20% of peoples income) people pay monthly for their automobiles.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DMVSRC1A027NBEA Over 360 billion spent in 2024 alone

> I tend to understand her side quite well when I see fare hoppers, people blasting loud music, shouting incoherently or doing drugs - and I probably see one of those every time I ride.

That seems to describe city streets. I had a relative that until recently refused to visit major cities because of this, using basically those same words (unsafe, uncomfortable, dirty).

People die or are grievously injured all the time in car accidents. The subway has a very particular kind of unsafeness concern (visible poverty). Cars as an insulated bubble for people to avoid ever being in the same physical space as a poor person is a mess.

None of those things particularly contribute to the traffic problem.

If the problem you are trying to solve is "interacting with random humans" then sure Robotaxi is good. If you are interested in "moving a lot of people to where they need to go efficiently" then it's not.

The former is what individual people are interested in solving. The latter is not on their minds outside of threads like this.

That's a reflection on your city and society rather than busses.

Oh no, not fare hoppers, the most terrifying urban creature!

Why do people care about this. How does this affect you.

In America or elsewhere? In America, they are dirty and unsafe because they are drastically underfunded, because of people like Elon Musk. This is the history of public transportation in America. America also has a despicable homelessness problem because of all the libertarian nonsense.

Nah. Here in my corner of eastern europe public transit gets a fuckton more funding compared to wild 90s. Yet it’s getting worse and worse.

Your robo taxis will also become dirty, unsafe and unclean.

The quality of service a private entity will provide, does not magically make it better.

It’s better only because of competition driving differentiation in order to capture more market share.

But if you cannot compete further on quality, you will compete on price.

The airline industry is a good example of this.

Public Safety, public transit, can be very good, provided the incentives, funding and institutions to serve it are funded.

People take pride in their work, including the work that results in world quality public services.

How will the robotaxis become unsafe? The reason public transit is unsafe is because of the other passengers on board with you, but you have the robotaxi to yourself.

> How will the robotaxis become unsafe?

Apparently they already are: they need a supervisor human for every ride.

Are Waymos unsafe too? Didn't they also have them at first?

My point was that the robotaxis have to become safe before we can think of them becoming unsafe again :-). I don't remember mentioning Waymo.

They already aren't safe

Pricing - the point of the airline industry example is to highlight the level of nickel and diming that happens.

I’ve been on the best ranked airline, and had dirty toilets - before take off.

I’m not alluding to enshittification here - just that if your commuters don’t have the money to pay for better quality taxis, they are going to get dirtier cabs, and less safer cars.

Being private isn’t a magic bullet- it’s a matching of incentives and markets that produces outcomes.

This doesn’t mean that public goods and services can’t be equivalently good.

But when people complain public transit is unsafe, they don't mean that it's dirty (even though that's usually also true). They specifically mean they're worried about being the victim of a crime committed by someone else on it with them, and robotaxis solve that regardless of price.

There was a gang operation in India that targeted drivers stuck in traffic.

They tapped on the side of the car, making it seem like there had been an impact.

When the driver opened their window and leaned out to find out what would happen, they grabbed whatever was on the windshield and ran.

Automated cars have been stopped by … consecutive stop signs.

Look - Safety is - at some point - a societal issue. Yes, being in your own taxi is cool, and the threat you are concerned about is reduced.

But this is assuming things remain the same.

I have never seen an airplane anywhere near as filthy as nearly every subway I've been on.

I did. Long haul flights are always yummy. And the toilets there are just the cherry on the top.

Airplanes are dirty, unsafe and unclean?

The robotaxis will have someone cleaning them between uses? Maybe they can sit in the front seat!

By letting people report messes in the taxi that arrives and passing on the vehicle if it’s soiled, then you can quickly determine and evict the messy people from the system.

Airplanes usually have crews cleaning them after every flight + crew keeping order during the flight. Have you ever seen an airplane which just landed after 12 hours flight? What a mess huh?

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