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Comment by jbmchuck | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me a lot of people just really don't like to be associated with public transit or anything associated with anything remotely underclass.

It's a class marker to be driven around in an autonomous 6000lbs tank rather than move your legs a bit.

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Be serious. Its not a class marker, its a nessesity. Even the poor have cars

People clearly chooses the convenience and predictability of cars, and pay significantly to do so

In places where there is greater convenience/predictability from pubilc transit, they choose it. See london/ny

It is also a class marker. I intentionally lived without a car in West Coast city as a younger man, and I learned to be very selective about whom I told. The vast majority of people would assume that the only reason for not having a car is not being able to afford one, and would judge me accordingly.

I have the same situation here. We live intentionally without a car, and our quality of life is fantastic. People assume poverty, given the lack of car, as opposed to I just don't see the value, and value controlling my time (the walks are force exercise, a win for me). I learned along time ago to not play other peoples games.

I only recent got my driver's license again, at 40, after it expired a decade ago. Having a car just didn't make financial sense to me (and still doesn't, I just want the option to be able to drive one sometimes).

I had to learn pretty quick that, if this trivia topic came up, I'd need to mention "I lived in NYC so long that I just never used it and didn't realize it expired" because otherwise people would assume that I lost it because of too many DUIs.

I chose not to drive as a teenager (public transit even in my smallish city seemed fine, I wanted to spend my money on a computer not a car) and it was interesting to watch the assumptions go from "you are incapable / afraid" to "you must be too poor or have a DUI" over the last 30 years.

It's inconceivable to most people that it could be a choice.

West Coast cities (or pretty much all cities in the USA except maybe NYC and Chicago and sometimes SF) suck without car. Yes, you can do it. It will be a chore.

That attitude and class marker disappears in big cities in much of Asia and Europe

Because living in west coast cities without a car sucks. They see a decision you made, question why you made it, and can only conclude it's because you cant afford the other one. People in areas where public transit is good dont come to the same conclussion.

We judge a lot of our friends who dont have cars, or worse licenses. It can be annoying to drive a 30 or 40 something adult around like a toddler.

Increasingly, we just stopped inviting them to select activities. It is like inviting the gluten free vegan to dinner parties.

If I am hosting an event, I'm not interested is spending a disproportionate ammount of time or effort to accommodate one person.

Are cars convenient? Drivers are constantly complaining about inconveniences. Parking, storage, maintenance, repairs, citations, congestion, construction, registration, insurance, the toil of driving itself, negative interactions with other drivers, etc.

Are cars predictable? According to google maps, my route to downtown Los Angeles could be 30 to 150 minutes depending on the time of day, the train is always 50.

It seems you would have to be unaware of alternatives to make those claims.

This is very much location dependant. Cars are convenient, predictable, and affordable in most of the USA. People just drive to their destination and park in one of the abundant free spaces without worrying about it. There are only a handful of dense cities where traffic and parking are a huge hassle. Public transit can sometimes be a great option and we should build more of it, but realistically most people will continue to rely on cars (possibly autonomous) in our lifetimes.

> Cars are convenient, predictable, and affordable in most of the USA. People just drive to their destination and park in one of the abundant free spaces without worrying about it.

This. I don't know what places people have in mind when they say that driving is inconvenient. Even in NYC driving isn't as bad as people claim, except perhaps in Lower Manhattan where there just aren't any parking spots. In most other places, a car takes you from door to door cheaper and faster than any alternative.

> Even the poor have cars

Poor, relative to whom?

This is a huge difference between NYC and SF. There are certainly some in NYC who would prefer Waymo (direct route, no driver chitchat), but I don't think many New Yorkers would be proud of taking Waymo's. Most people feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere!

in nyc any car based transportation is slower than subways often, but everyones so narrow minded they just think about their own life. if you're old in nyc cabs/ubers/waymo are a big deal, without them you're stuck walking to a bus stop or subway and that gets hard in your 70s and 80s.

    > Most people [in NYC] feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere!

High income women (or women married to high income men) -- of all ages -- not at all. Most women under 30 with a good job expected to be "Uber'd" home from a date. As a joke, if you are very high income, you would be embarrassed to ride Uber because your car and driver were diverted for an unexpected repair.

Public transit in the US just mostly sucks. It tends to be sparse, slow, unreliable, and yeah sometimes there are crazies who make the environment feel dangerous.

You send Americans over to visit Tokyo and they have zero problems taking the train. The problems isn't with individual Americans.

Americans don't want to live in dense neighborhoods, so public transit is not viable (the operating costs would be too high). Foreigners are often amazed by the quality of life in American suburbs relative to what they experience at home for this reason. Our homes, cars, stores, cafes, are a lot more spacious for example.

Americans actually like decent, walkable neighborhoods. But there's no cultural momentum behind actually zoning for such; quite the opposite, really.

If you are talking about a city where this makes sense like Phoenix, the public transportation is very poor. It can take 90 minutes to cover the distance you could drive in 20.

They have a light rail, but it only goes between downtown and a few suburbs. Your other option is several bus transfers.

If you’re thinking of cities like New York or London, public transport is more practical in many cases.

Not to mention how hostile Phoenix can be to walking.

The HN commentariat skews young and male so opinions seen here are often disconnected from average people in the real world. Many women feel unsafe riding on US public transit because other riders act out in antisocial ways. We can argue about whether this perception is rational based on crime statistics or whatever but you're not going to convince them to ride until the police and transit system operators start enforcing basic rules of behavior and cleanliness.

Can confirm. My partner has had far too many bad encounters on bart. I had a female coworker say she saw a guy get murder with a hammer on bart.

Obviously everyone’s experience is different but public transit had a bad rep for a reason and it had nothing to do with class/status and almost all to do with safety. Uber/lyft is getting a bad rep too due to safety.

Not saying you're 100% wrong, but there are tons of markets where Uber is robust enough to rely on and get you where you need to go, and public transit absolutely is not. (I'm half an hour outside of Pittsburgh.)

Yes, and this is a policy failure.

...that's a totally different argument right?

More like want to avoid being in an enclosed space with mentally ill, people smoking meth, people that smell of petrified urine, with uncomfortably hot temperatures and crowding.

Are people really "smoking meth" on SF Muni buses or trains? I doubt it. On a bus/train, the driver would stop and call the police.

    > uncomfortably hot temperatures

The SF Muni trains and diesel-powered buses have air conditioning. What am I missing here?

I have been in an SF muni car with someone actively smoking something that was not marijuana or a cigarette. I think it was fentanyl but I’m not sure. This was about two years ago. I hope this is tolerated less now than it has been.

Idk about SF but in LA I've definitely seen people with pipes doing the fent lean at train stations

San Francisco public transportation is neither reliable or safe enough for my family. The only thing that’s remotely decent is Caltrain, but that has the last mile problem.

I am on the fence about this comment. Without doxxing yourself too much, what neighborhood do you live and where do your children and (I assume) wife work? I would disagree for about 50% of the city in the "western zones". Sure, it is slow, but it is reliable and safe (both trains and buses).

The L-Taraval, at least historically, was not reliable between downtown and the outer sunset (past Sunset Blvd).

Wealthy people in NYC have no problem with the subway. When the service is better than alternatives people use it.

    > Wealthy people in NYC have no problem with the subway.

No trolling: I gotta ask: Is this humor? If so, hat tip. Else: "Wealthy people in NYC (Manhattan)" have a car and driver. They don't care about the subway.

What I do believe: People that earn 200K to 400K in NYC/Manhattan still frequently ride the subway to work. Why? They rent/buy an apartment on an extremely convenient subway line to their office. They are not quite rich enough to have a car and driver.

> People that earn 200K to 400K in NYC/Manhattan still frequently ride the subway to work. Why? They rent/buy an apartment on an extremely convenient subway line to their office.

Sure, this is mostly what I was referring to. The overwhelming number of people in SF would never dream of choosing where to live based off public transit access. I cant speak to billionaires, but the upper middle class of NYC(imo these people are all wealthy but we can change that word if you like) are mostly happy or at least open to public transit. Its not a class thing until you get to billionaire level. Therefore the reason people don't use public transit isn't because it's associated with the underclass, it's because almost all of it in the US is objectively worse than other transportation options.

    > The overwhelming number of people in SF would never dream of choosing where to live based off public transit access.

I want to push back on this idea. Why would Manhattan (and the very selective group of people that I discussed) be any different than San Francisco? Think about it: Imagine that you work for Uber/Twitter/Google/Meta in San Francisco and earn 200K to 400K total comp. It is very unlikely that you drive to work. (Let's assume your office is downtown or SoMa.) You ride Muni Metro or BART. Where do you think these people live? Just like the junior bankers/lawyers in Manhattan, they live in a neighborhood with excellent access to Muni Metro or BART to make their commute as convenient as possible. I don't say it often here on HN, but if you live in the Northeast Quadrant of San Francisco, it is quite reasonable to live without a car. The best mass transit options are overwhelmingly in that quadrant of SF.

I use public transit but it comes with a lot of inconvenience. You need to stand on a moving vehicle more often than not, it takes more time, there are panhandlers, you might not feel safe, transfers don't generally seem to time well, going up and down multiple flights of stairs is a fair bit of exercise, some people don't shower as often as you'd hope, etc. People generally pay for convenience. I certainly would if I could budget for it. I couldn't care less about status or class.

I'm much less likely to get randomly harassed or robbed or stabbed or catch COVID in a car where I am the sole occupant. I'm happy to pay extra to drop the chances of those things down to 0.00%.

If that makes me some kind of class supremacist in your silly world, then guilty as charged.

How often do you think that happens to transit riders? Your concerns seem overblown. And by driving, your odds of getting hurt or dying in a car accident go way up. You’re trading one set of risks for another, not eliminating risk entirely.

This response is part of the problem.

People feel uncomfortable about others who look really crazy/shady for public transit or in parks, and in response they're told, "have you considered that maybe you're just overthinking it?"

Instead of fixing the problem, we blame those who have the audacity to notice.

Both things can be true. People can have exaggerated fears about the dangers of transit (especially compared to driving, which people seem to pretend is relatively risk-free), and the crazy / shady folks on transit can still be a problem and still need to be addressed.

I can only speak from my own experience riding transit in Seattle for 9 years. I've never had any issues. Sure, there are sketchy characters, but I've never been bothered, and never had anyone bother me. I definitely see news stories about bad shit happening on transit, but when you look at the number of people riding transit vs the amount of bad things that happen, and you look at the number of people driving and how many people die or get seriously injured in the city daily from car-related accidents, it's a no brainer. You don't see people dying on transit every day, but car-related fatalities are a daily occurrence.

I have been puked on when riding the bart and know several people who have seen a person die or get murdered. This dismissal of the very real problems of public transport is why public transport has the reputation it does.

Yes I am trading one set of risks for another based on my judgement of which risks I prefer to bear, as it is my right to do. Simply leaving my house entails a set of risks. I get to choose how I want to handle and prioritize those.

The point is that it has absolutely nothing to do with "class".

You are much more likely to be killed or seriously injured in a car than you are in a transit vehicle.

Try living in Phoenix without a car...

Do you think people avoid the underclass because it depletes their aura, or because they like avoiding clearly mentally ill people, or people with no ability for personal hygiene, or people who need to smoke meth on the bus?

The first two are what I experienced today on a bus in SF, and the guy smoking meth was about 6 days ago

I don’t think this is entirely wrong, in that there is a ‘class thing’ about riding the bus, but it’s more practicality than a class marker for a lot of people.

- In SF you can either walk 1-10 minutes to the bus, wait 0-15 minutes for the bus, tap on (while watching most other passengers evade the fare), get dropped off, and then walk 1-10 minutes to your destination… or spend an additional $5-10 to get Ubered door to door at a third of the time. First and last mile are real costs.

- In SF I Uber, unless Muni/BART is a straight shot. In NYC I take the subway. It’s not really a class thing. In NYC it takes longer to Uber much of the time and it costs several more times than the subway. You still have a 1-5 minute first and last mile problem, but headways on trains is decent and above ground taxis are incredibly inconsistent with traffic.

That about matches up with the experience with social groups in similar classes in these areas too. Most of my SF friends Uber. Most of my NYC friends take the subway.

This comment is legit! So many of these comments here are wildly biased to people's own personal experiences (usually the male/female Karens are the most noisy). You make many good points here.

My question(s): Why do you think Uber works so well in SF? Why don't they get trapped on Market Street with crawling speeds?

I lived in NYC (Manhattan) many years ago and I always felt that when I needed a taxi (cold/snow/rain), they were hard to get. As a result, I almost never took a classic yellow cab in NYC/Manhattan.

When it's as bad as SF's then yes, trams/trains/busses can often suck. I used them but it was rarely plesant. Other cities (Europe, Asia) are much better.

> It's a class marker

> autonomous 6000lbs tank

Hmmm. The meta here made me chuckle. Calling cars tanks is certainly a class marker.

Nonsense. This is just the "last mile problem"

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