
How to stop the decline of public transport in rich countries - edward
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/06/23/how-to-stop-the-decline-of-public-transport-in-rich-countries
======
unicornporn
It's not rocket science. Establish tax-switching policies.

Make it less attractive to take the car by building automated car tolls and
let the drivers pay. Subsidize public transportation to make it cheaper for
the citizens.

That's basically what has been done in Stockholm (even though I wish it had
been done to a greater degree, public transportation needs to be even
cheaper). Cars destroys our shared environment and expanding it's
infrastructure costs plenty (space, money, pollution). Of course it should be
heavily taxed so that cycling, bus and subway infrastructure can be financed.

~~~
existencebox
It's a bit of a chicken-egg problem, at least from my perspective in the US,
as well as a bit of a vicious cycle. I'm not optimistic. Here's why. (and also
why I think the fix wouldn't work for many cities in the US at the current
time.)

In Seattle, if I want to get from a suburb on the east side into the city,
during ANY trafficked time, it's going to be at least 2 busses (usually
crowded, late, or full, so add another ~1), a decent amount of walking, and a
1.5-2 hour total trip. This compounds with the fact that many of the fringe
buses only come once every half/hour, and not at all on weekends.

Compare this to a city that had proper infrastructure to start, Philadelphia.
I lived a comparative distance, and the population is MUCH higher and denser.
But a 5 minute walk and a single 20-30 minute train ride put me anywhere I
wanted in center city. While Seattle "has light rail" it's an honest joke next
to the coverage in the north-east.

As such, there's _no option_ to tax balance, it would end up being highly
regressive punishing those forced to live further out and with no option but
to use a car. The vicious cycle comes into play as the increased car traffic
makes public transit less emphasized, convenient, and more of a perceived
negative, leading to increased car traffic, etc etc. (compounded by less
people wanting to take the tax burden they don't see a personal benefit to;
there are a few different "tragedy of the commons" type effects in this mess.)

If we had trains that could get me to work like the sister post says about
Stockholm's, no need for additional motivation, I wouldn't own a car for an
instant, and didn't until my mid/late 20s when I left the east coast, but
that's not the reality of the cities we've built, and now we're in a bit of a
hole that I'm not sure how to incentivise people out of.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Zoning is the problem, especially parking minimums. Not only are areas zoned
to only allow single-family homes (thus reducing density), but many zoning
codes mandate a certain number of parking spots for every new business,
leading to a car-centric lifestyle.

~~~
gowld
Put another way, letting people live in comfortable homes, free of noise,
light, and smell pollution from neighbors, has transit costs. Having a
miserable home in order to get fast commutes isn't a trade everyone wants.

~~~
freeone3000
While this may be true, I'd like to see some unrented apartments in major
cities that can't be filled before we decry this solution. Rents have been
skyrocketing - so it appears there's a lot of people who WOULD like this
trade, but can't do it.

------
bischofs
Where i'm at in Michigan, they always put any kind of transit funding proposal
on the ballet. This obviously gets voted down because most people don't want
higher taxes for system that will only benefit urbanites in the short term.
And the politicians who don't want transit know this.

It becomes obvious what they are doing when more funding for freeway
expansions just gets rubber-stamped. That is "an executive decision" by the
politicians for "long-term success of the region".

The entire funding model is aligned where they can move money around for more
roads, but any public transit funding should be "up to the people to decide"

~~~
xienze
> This obviously gets voted down because most people don't want higher taxes
> for system that will only benefit urbanites in the short term.

There's more to it than that though. In cities not named Chicago, DC, and New
York, these stupid light rail measures inevitably end up with trips that take
waaaay longer than driving, and still involve driving to a bus station.
Patronage is predictably low and the system loses money per passenger in
perpetuity. No, that can't be why people vote these down, they're just hating
on them fancy downtown folks.

~~~
bischofs
I recently took a trip to Bochum, Germany. They have a light rail system that
goes to every small suburb, the university, and is centered at the Bochum city
train station where there are cabs, bus lines and connections that get you to
any surrounding city.

It is maybe 6-8 lines total and was incredibly useful because it was
_designed_ to be, I didnt need a car to get anywhere and it was clean and
cheap (2 euros per trip) .

The new Q-line in Detroit is 1 line that is three miles total and is more
designed as a tourist trap, most people dont work three miles away from where
they live. You need to connect it to other systems like an airport or a bus
station, and you need more than 1 line (duh).

If you gave everyone horses and only build a three mile road you wouldn't say
that "cars are a failure, and roads lose money". For some reason in the States
we build out a tiny one line system and then throw our hands up in the air
when nobody rides it.

~~~
so33
>Q-line

Most American streetcar systems suffer the same fate: Shiny but slow, much
like a theme park monorail; and sold first as a way to boost property values
and economic development. They are designed to do everything except provide a
useful way to commute.

~~~
mjevans
That's probably because "doing it right" is expensive.

There should be an 'express' bypass (which actually does this) that hops only
among key points (such as the airport to a downtown hub, and maybe the next
hub out on the other side).

There should also be /frequent/ service - which probably means you need fully
automated routes (it might be best to move the humans to supervising the
actual concourses, where human interactions are highest). I also like the idea
of a couple days of subservience that's automatically deleted if not expressly
copied out for legal proceedings.

Finally, everything should be enclosed and on it's own isolated layer. Subways
sound great, above-surface enclosures might work too.

-

Why enclosed? Security, noise abatement, weather isolation. The middle point
lets you run the trains faster and with less disruption.

------
booleandilemma
For the NYC subway trains: get rid of the dance troupes, musicians, beggars,
and crazy people.

I would pay extra for the NYC subway user experience to be like the LIRR user
experience. Why can’t it be?

Why do I have to dread getting on the subway after 10pm?

Why do I have to put up with mariachi bands playing in my ear at 6am?

Why do I have to worry about my face getting kicked by a dancer during my
commute?

~~~
haskellandchill
I like it though, so let’s get separate cars.

------
Raphmedia
One word: comfort.

Riding the public transportation systems meant I would arrive at work sweaty
(hot crowded train and bus), with a backache (inadequate seats) and a headache
(noisy engine).

Those issues made my life so miserable that I swore never to ride those again.

~~~
protonimitate
All those issues can be fixed with more funding and better equipment. Not
saying you're wrong, but the issues are not unsurmountable. In most cases
people will have a handful of bad experiences and default back to their
comfort zone.

~~~
jamesblonde
I prefer to travel by subway in Stockholm because of the comfort. It's a money
issue, plain and simple. Jeff Bezos could fix the problem for the whole US all
by himself. Will he? Will he, my ass!

~~~
rekado
Maybe it's a bad idea to let people get really rich.

~~~
coryrc
Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US.

~~~
rekado
I'm not talking about the US. I'm talking about the world. This is not a
competition. Maybe it is _generally_ a bad idea to concentrate financial means
in few people.

I don't want to depend on a billionaire's altruism.

~~~
Felz
Counterpoints: 1\. It's not concentration, it's creation. There's probably not
an active conspiracy to make the rich richer. (Your phrasing seemed to
connotate that)
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html)

2\. We tried forming a broad spanning coalition and charging it wit public
transportation (among other things). Then we gave it 30-40% of all economic
activity. And yet, people apparently still feel like only excitable
billionaires can fix public transport. I don't see how taking more money from
the billionaires and putting it into the government would help.

------
temp-dude-87844
Public transit works if large amounts of people move along predictable routes
at predictable times, and the immense cost of infrastructure and operation is
spread among a large pool. People desiring additional control and comfort can
use personal vehicles, and use publicly-subsidized roadways, but fuel taxes,
licensing fees, and tolls recoup a small portion of this cost from the
operator.

As the article points out, newer car-hire services mount the most unfortunate
competition, because they take advantage of the low costs of private vehicles'
road use, and then turn around to collect a fare from each user, which,
depending on market conditions, may or may not even result in an operating
profit. While these are comfortable for their occupants, they clog up the
streets more so than personal-use vehicles, which don't need to patrol the
town when their driver is occupied. The fact that the likes of Uber
notoriously ignore local regulations hurts even more. These car hire services
pay the same way as private vehicles do, but the marginal difference between
their usage goes not to the government's coffers, but to private operators.

------
Symmetry
The Tokyo metro is doing fine, maybe try learning from Japan?

~~~
seanp2k2
Public transit works great in other countries. People in the US don’t like it
because of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” thing, so we make up all
these reasons about why it can’t work while setting up all future public
transit up for failure (defunding, not letting it pass through areas people
would want to travel to/from, failing to maintain it, bike-shedding for
decades instead of building something, etc). As much as I hate to say it, I
doubt we’ll see any successful public works projects happen in the next decade
or two, and only then if things drastically improve.

~~~
overcast
People don't like it in the US, because it's overwhelmingly a shit experience.
Are there any other countries in the world with the vastness of the US, that
have awesome public transit? Everyone here is waaaaay more spread out. No
excuse for cities, but most of us don't live in giant cities. It's just easier
to take your car.

~~~
ljm
There has to be a point where you stop relying on national exceptionalism as
the reason for why something can't happen, because all it sounds like is an
excuse. It's as if you're saying you have a lot of land so there's no point in
improving anything.

Public transport in the US is an overwhelmingly shit experience not because of
the geography of the country, but because it all got sold out to lobbyists who
wanted to sell as many cars as they could. Shit public transport = more cars.

It's overwhelmingly shit because urban planning favoured cookie-cutter suburbs
far out of town, with no local amenities and no convenient transport
connections in any reasonable walking distance. They never had to be designed
that way.

Add to that the whole nuclear family rhetoric - a husband, a wife, some kids,
a couple of cars...

People won't pay out of pocket to upgrade infrastructure and provide these
services knowing how much they've been gutted over the past hundred years, so
it really requires a government who is willing to invest in it and support it
and begin to change the perception of public transport. That will probably
come at a loss but an arguable purpose of a government is to provide such
services that a corporate entity won't, without profit motive, because it is
still ultimately in service of its people.

This isn't the only topic where people in the US are convinced they're in a
unique situation that nobody else in the world has ever encountered and then
solved, and I'm sure that it almost always boils down to some element of
corporate lobbying that rejects any attempt to make life easy for citizens.

~~~
Spivak
> lobbyists who wanted to sell as many cars as they could.

That's such a boring scapegoat. Rail was a plenty powerful industry at the
time who afforded themselves plenty of lobbyists. Personal vehicles were a
literal revolution. What always seems left out is that people overwhelmingly
wanted this state of affairs and largely still do. People here are acting like
people would love public transportation if only their minds hadn't been
corrupted by the bad people.

> It's overwhelmingly shit because urban planning favoured cookie-cutter
> suburbs.

But now that we're here what do you propose we do? Going back in time for a do
over isn't exactly a solution.

> People won't pay out of pocket to upgrade infrastructure.

* People who own cars don't use public transportation and have little desire to start.

* The overwhelming majority of people own cars.

* Public transportation comprehensive enough to replace cars is ludicrously expensive.

* People who don't use a thing don't want to pay for a thing.

=> It's not exactly a leap in logic that people wouldn't vote for it.

I think you've got a better chance of creating programs that just outright buy
cars for the poor.

~~~
ljm
Fair points, but it feels like the product of an intensely individualistic
society and at some point the impact of that has to be taken into
consideration, considering the effect it has on government, policy, and
culture.

If a group can look at evidence of successful public transport (and other
things) and still decide that can never work for them, for various nonsensical
reasons (big country, x million people, the guiding hand of the free market,
whatever), then they can at least be honest with themselves and say what their
problem really is.

------
IanDrake
Only my limited personal experience here. In the last 20 years I’ve used the
following public transport:

\- One bus ride in western mass with crazy drug head yelling crap.

\- Six T rides in Boston, one ended with some drunk dude yelling and cursing
at me. Another with some bum hassling a woman and then pretending to have a
gun when my buddy stepped in.

\- Four Metro train rides from CT to NY. Not too bad. Only saw two fights that
didn’t involve me.

\- A few metro rides in Paris, nothing bad, just a few harmless beggars.

\- A few time in the Tube in London. Jolly good there.

So, my personal answer to this question is safety. Fewer crazy passengers and
more security.

~~~
jopsen
Safety probably requires reducing poverty..

------
Tiktaalik
Vancouver has never legalized Uber/Lyft.

Vancouver has the highest gas prices in NA.

Vancouver's transit operator Translink is enjoying a big influx of funding
from the government and is increasing service hours.

Unsurprisingly Vancouver transit ridership is experiencing record growth.

> Average weekday boardings on buses were up 9.5 per cent. Expo/Millennium
> Line average weekday boardings were up 9.2 per cent, while Canada Line’s
> boardings grew 8.1 per cent. On SeaBus, average weekday boardings increased
> by 13.1 per cent, thanks in part to increased sailings. Even West Coast
> Express ridership is on the rise, up 6.7 per cent.

[http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/transit-ridership-
hi...](http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/transit-ridership-hits-a-high-
in-metro-vancouver)

------
gaspoweredcat
in this town there would be simple solutions, first is that here if you need
to get anywhere generally you have to take not one but two buses, this makes
it petty expensive, but thats not the biggest flaw.

oh no, the main problem is one of time, none of these buses match up so
despite being a mere 3-4 miles an average commute via public transport is well
over an hour, not only that but the timetable is not even close to accurate,
youll often wait for a bus marked on the digital info boards as coming any min
only to find that bus actually never existed and you have another 30 min wait

basically if you want to get to work on time be prepared to leave at least 2
hours early. you may be thinking "hey its only 3-4 miles, just walk you lazy
bastard!" but sadly again this town does not lend itself well to things such
as walking or cycling because there is no such thing as flat roads here, youre
either going up a steep hill or down one

a reasonably priced tram system or even a properly organised and reasonably
priced bus service could fix these issues easily but sadly that will never
happen

------
fma
We can start by stopping the political influence of those who benefit from
declining public transportation.

How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country

[https://nyti.ms/2lmrvVP](https://nyti.ms/2lmrvVP)

------
criddell
I was in London a couple of weeks ago and used the subway extensively and it
was, overall, an excellent experience. It made me wonder if there are cities
that have made big investments in subway or other light rail systems and then
later regretted it.

~~~
pjc50
Interesting. The London system is ancient, creaking, lacks modern conveniences
like mobile coverage/wifi/aircon, and has comparatively small trains that get
horribly overcrowded at peak times. It it probably a worse experience than
most European metros (unless you're using one of the few new lines). But it
does get a decent amount of investment and fundamentally it _works_. If only
we could get a comparable level of investment in the rest of the UK.

Regretted systems: guided buses. Both Edinburgh and Cambridge regret theirs
and Edinburgh built trams over it instead (with massive disruption and cost
overrun, but not actually regretted yet).

------
throwbacktictac
Arrived in Singapore recently and I'm quite impressed with the public
transportation system here. My base is the slow Metro transit in Los Angeles
and the over crowded system in Manila.

------
hitekker
Meanwhile in Singapore:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Rapid_Transit_(Singapor...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Rapid_Transit_\(Singapore\)#/media/File%3AEvolution_of_the_MRT.gif)

Best city public transport ever and getting better every day. For the most
part.

------
ryandrake
If I were to take public transportation to work Google maps says it would look
like this:

2 min: Walk to bus stop

15 min: Bus to transit center

35 min: Bus to rail

20 min: Train 1 then switch

15 min: Train 2

45 min: Bus to transit center

20 min: Another bus

15 min: Another bus

3 min: Walk to work

Including wait times, we are at 3 hours 45 minutes. Compared to 1.5-2hrs by
car depending on traffic. I don’t think more funding can realistically fix
this. People are spread out and the USA is a big place.

~~~
kalleboo
A 2 hour commute by car sounds kind of insane to begin with. You spend 3-4
hours a day commuting to a 8 hour workday?

~~~
geodel
Not sure about him. For me living in mid-size city in US and 10-12 miles to
work. It is about ~2 hr commute everyday. I think bay area gets more coverage
but even smaller cities are having terrible traffic nowadays.

~~~
kaybe
2 hours for 20-24 miles? Just.. wow. You'd be faster with a bike if the
infrastructure was there.. (e-bike for no sweat)

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
I think you hugely overestimate the number of people who can ride a bicycle
for 24 miles - let alone those who can do that in 2 hours.

I ride a bicycle a 3 miles to work every day, and while I'm sure I could work
up to it I'm not entirely sure if I can do 24 miles without stopping because I
haven't done it in so long. And keep in mind my 3 miles commute is more than
the vast majority of westerners ever do - I probably have a higher base
fitness just by using a bicycle at all.

~~~
kaybe
Good point. It's only half the distance without stopping since there is a full
workday before going back, but it's still not close.

3 miles is pretty standard around here, I think about 75% of people could do
it. (excluding small kids and bedbound elderly) (some of them will have muscle
aches at first, maybe, and be really slow)

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
Oh you're talking round trip? That's a bit more realistic.

------
hackerpacker
FWIW, as an avid hypermiler (who also owns an EV and pays for wind power), and
works from home, the mpg per person of public transport isn't that great, I
have no problem exceeding it, even without passengers (though I usually have
passengers when I go somewhere).

[https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10311](https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10311)

Certainly there are plenty of motorcycles that beat it without much
effort/technique as well.

So, what am I supposed to be taxed for again? The environment inside a moving
box full of strangers, and the scheduling headaches, doesn't excite me much as
an alternative.

I wonder how much of the "decline" is because of people who work from home. I
don't think uber is entirely the cause, more like uber displaced taxi drivers.

~~~
crooked-v
> So, what am I supposed to be taxed for again?

The societal benefits of poor people being able to get to work every day.

------
acover
What Chinese electric bike is worth buying? Electric bike review seems to
point to Western brands costing several thousand dollars.

Any recommendations on where to start looking?

~~~
davidgould
I don't have a brand recommendation, but if you are handy, it is possible to
convert an existing bike by adding a motor and batteries. For a bike like
experience (as opposed to a light electric motorcycle experience) the
components can be had for between $500 to $800 depending on how much battery
you need. Some resources:

\- ebikes.ca - Informative website, sell high quality items with a lot of the
problems worked out and with support. Prices are fair given the added value.
Motor and trip simulators for calculating speeds and feeds etc.

\- bmsbattery.com - Chinese vendor of cheap but mostly functional components.
Not much support and shipping will add 30% to prices, but very inexpensive if
you can make it work.

\- lunacycle.com (US), e3emv.com(China) - Sell high quality battery packs

\- endless-sphere.com - massive discussion board full of good information
leavened with the usual opinionated know nothings, but mostly civil.

Assuming you need to go less than 25 miles and don't need to climb long steep
hills and intend to pedal lightly I'd say you are looking for a small front
geared hub motor rated for 250-350 watts and a small controller rated for 20A
or less along with a 48v battery between 350-600 watt hours capacity. Target
speed should be around 18 to 20 mph. Start with a nice used practical commuter
bike, older mountain and road bikes and hybrids will all work. Get something
that started out as a decent bike, not big-box store "bike shaped object".

I've built a few now and am pretty happy with the process and results.

~~~
acover
Thanks for the reply.

I'm considering the BBS02 but I really like the torque sensors. I was hoping
that there was some mass produced Chinese model T but couldn't find it.

------
borgmeister
The real problem that no one wants to admit is overpopulation. If every couple
had only 1 child, the problem would gradually go away as the population
shrank.

~~~
j7ake
Hong Kong has one of the highest population densities in the world and their
transportation is excellent. Your argument isn’t supported by data.

------
WhompingWindows
Why not have fleets of electric vehicles with varying sizes, from 2 person
mini cars to 20 person vans for large parties? Where I live, there are no
subways, and busses are very energy/money inefficient. You may have a nearly
full bus here and there, but the majority of the time there are barely any
people in the busses, probably because it's $2.50 and it's a poor service. You
don't get door-to-door service, increased road surface damage (y=x^4, where y=
road damage with x=vehicle weight), crappy diesel fuels spewing pollution onto
pedestrians/cyclists, hitting sidewalks and causing cars to back up whenever
they make turns. I don't believe in the investment path to useful public
transport here when we can have decentralized, electric, personalized services
in the near future.

~~~
dorfsmay
My understanding is that road damage is linked to tire pressure and contact
surface, and that bus and trucks with bigger tires have a larger contact
surface hence the same pressure as a car and therefore don't do more damage
than a car.

~~~
WhompingWindows
See the following analysis by Brad Templeton, a SDC expert:

Road wear There is strong potential to reduce the damage to roads (and thus
the cost of maintaining them, which is immense and seriously in arrears)
thanks to the robotruck. That's because heavy trucks and big buses cause
almost all the road wear today. A surprising rule of thumb is that road damage
goes up with the 4th power of the weight per axle. As such an 80,000lb truck
with 34,000lb on two sets of 2 axles and 6,000lb on the front axle does around
2,000 times the road damage of a typical car! An interesting solution is now
possible. With fully self-driving trucks (or platoons with nobody in the rear
vehicle) you can have two half-weight trucks, which would do 1/8th the damage.
4 1/4 weight trucks would do roughly 1/16th the damage. This is a bit more
expensive in fuel and truck wear, though you can get back some of it with
platooning. The platoon can space out further on bridges to avoid stressing
them.

[https://ideas.4brad.com/otto-and-self-driving-trucks-what-
do...](https://ideas.4brad.com/otto-and-self-driving-trucks-what-do-they-mean)

------
sandover
I don't think it's wild Silicon Valley chatter to say that public
transportation along fixed routes WILL decline as a result of new technology,
and this is a great thing.

Fixed-route 19th-20th century public transportation networks are inefficient
because most of the vehicles are pretty empty most of the time. This makes
these systems expensive on a passenger-per-seat-mile basis. Not to mention the
colossal waste of people's time spent trying to accommodate their journeys to
those fixed routes (and schedules).

Example: LA's Metro system is subsidized to the tune of about 50 cents per
passenger seat/mile, or was as of 2009
([http://www.newgeography.com/content/002361-los-angeles-
metro...](http://www.newgeography.com/content/002361-los-angeles-metro-bus-
system-compares-favorably-with-its-peer-group))

In 10-15 years, transport companies like Lyft/Uber/Didi will be able to offer
municipalities a much better deal than that. An electric car or van without a
driver in it, with an operating lifetime of a million miles, will cost on the
order of 20-40 cents a mile to run. Get 3-8 paying customers into the vehicle,
and there is absolutely no need for a 50 cent per passenger seat mile subsidy.

~~~
s73v3r_
How does that affect those who have to take public transit due to finances?

~~~
ghaff
Personally, I expect there will always be a need for high throughput fixed
line transit in some areas. But, to answer your question, if some portion of
the population requires transportation subsidies to participate in society
then the best policy answer would seem to be to provide them with subsidies
directly.

------
zepto
I think it’s worth starting to question the term ‘Rich Countries’ when what we
mean is countries with a richer elite.

~~~
quasse
Specifically "rich countries with a contingent of multibillionaire ideologues
actively working to destroy public infrastructure".

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-
pub...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-
transit.html)

~~~
jamesblonde
In contrast, the richest family in Sweden (Wallenberg) just contributed 100m
Euro to a research programme on AI - [http://wasp-sweden.org/](http://wasp-
sweden.org/) Proper Noblesse oblige. The Koch family are evil, in contrast.

~~~
GW150914
From all available evidence there is no need to add the qualifier “by
contrast” to that statement. The problem is that it seems about half of the
American electorate support the Koch’s and others like them for ideological
reasons. As a non-American it’s a really strange thing to see. Dirt poor
families from generations of bad education and dirt poor seem to think distant
billionaires have their best interests at heart. They all seem to think
they’re about to join the ranks of those billionaires any day now, and they’d
hate the idea of hurting their prospects. It’s so weird...

------
paulddraper
> rich counties

I am unaware of this trend across multiple rich countries of less public
transit. Anyone have actual numbers instead of hersay?

I could believe that people travel longer distances than they used to, in ways
that transit never served. But less public transit itself? Is love to learn
more.

------
eqdw
How to stop the decline of public transport in rich countries:

1) Allow transit systems to provide a luxury tier of service with no upper
limit on price

2) Mandate that 100% of the money that comes from (1) has to be pumped back
into expanding transit infrastructure

------
NedIsakoff
My commute: * driving: 10 minutes * biking: 24 minutes * bus: 12 minutes walk
+ 20 minutes on bus 1 + 11 minute wait for transfer + 29 minute bus 2

------
collinf
Somewhat interesting. I have a different reason for the declining weekday
rates of the MTA (NYC's subway system). More and more companies every year
seem to be alright with their employees being remote on a more regular basis,
which would attribute for the _slight_ decline in weekday ridership.

~~~
majewsky
How many factory workers, construction workers, waiters, barbers, etc. do you
know whom work remote?

------
greggman
it's not declining in Tokyo afaict. I believe that's because they privatised
it?

[https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-
pr...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-privately-
owned-rail-systems-work-so-well/389/)

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phobosdeimos
The rich country I live in is investing billions in public transport. Its also
investing heavily in cycling.

Trying to meet the Paris climate accord and making sure people don't die from
poor air quality makes this a legal requirement. Ofcourse the US has Trump so
there is no such pressure to get people out of their SUVs.

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NedIsakoff
Money. QED.

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hkon
Hey, if I lived in the city centre and worked a few blocks a way, I too would
probably want to hate on the car. Same people get families, move out of the
centre, get car, regret they voted for politicians who put in place huge tolls
on roads.

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jopsen
Yeah, for starters the right fix is probably to make public transit free.

Just reducing traffic would payoff in terms of less wear and tear on the
roads, and less need to expand the roads.

And with any luck, free public transit would help poor people the most.
Allowing more people to find work.

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hkon
Ok, so the ones with jobs should pay for those without a job? I have a better
solution, why not let the unemployed drive the busses without pay. Then they
get to do something, I get free transportation. Win-win?

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jopsen
> Ok, so the ones with jobs should pay for those without a job?

Yes.

And if by some miracle we can help people get jobs, by making transportation
cheaper then we call it a win-win.

Note, even if public transit was free that wouldn't make everybody use it all
the time. But it might reduce the number of cars on the road, and help a few
people out of poverty.

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hkon
How much of your salary do you donate today? This is not something the
government has to enforce. You are free to do it by yourself.

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AtlasBarfed
Self driving vehicles will solve all of this. You don't need centralized
routes, it can be door-to-door, it can be tiered for comfort, it can be high
density transport, it can be on demand, it can be safe and secure, it can be
automated, it can be taxed to incentivize density or usage patterns or demand
as needed.

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f_allwein
Serious question: how would it be door to door and high density at the same
time? So far, all self driving car proposals I saw looked just like cars, or
vans at best. Compare this to a fully loaded double-decker bus in e.g. London.
So much more efficient use of road space.

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AtlasBarfed
Let's look at a traditional bus route in an urban area:

Scheduled set of stops between basically two places.

Each of those stops rely on people walking a couple blocks or more to a stop
for the route.

Basically, you deconstruct and make on-demand the route. As people register
for a trip, you combine a set of origination and destination points into
closely grouped numbers, pick up a set of people in close proximity, and drop
off them off.

At high density times, there will be opportunities for substantial "rideshare"
efficiencies.

At less high density times, you save overhead of the busses with a couple
riders.

If you've ever taken the cheaper alternative airport -> city hotel van that
goes to all the hotels in a downtown from an airport, that is basically the
idea. It isn't as convenient as 1:1 taxi transport, but it's a lot better than
the vagaries of train/bus hopping.

It seems strange that with all the graph and NP-complete interview-ready
people on this site that this isn't completely obvious. Self-driving vehicles
will obviate all but the highest density mass transport.

And then if you get self-flying drones going...

