

The most common navigational mistakes we all make - splat
http://www.slate.com/id/2249565

======
philwelch
"A study in the Netherlands of car drivers, for example, found that drivers'
perceptions of how long their trip would take by public transportation tended
to "deviate substantially from real travel times." Whether this was because
car drivers didn't know, or because they don't want to know, is an open
question. Car drivers will often describe themselves as "car dependent," even
when the designation isn't objectively true; they are instead rationalizing
their chosen course of action."

Hence the annoying difficulty of implementing good public transit _after_ your
country is already full of motorists. Americans can't conceive of a modern
lifestyle without automobiles, therefore public transit is an afterthought in
most American cities.

~~~
mhb
Maybe. Even though the travel time by public transportation might mistakenly
be perceived to be longer than it is doesn't imply that the actual travel time
is acceptable.

~~~
_delirium
I've found people _also_ underestimate the car transportation time, though, so
the estimated time difference is compounded. In particular, when people give
me estimates of how long it'll take to drive somewhere, it seems to almost
always be the best-case scenario, not the average time. Excludes foreseeable
complications, like buffer time for the once-a-week occurrence that a freeway
lane is closed, and an "unexpectedly" long time spent finding parking.

------
megamark16
I thought this was going to be about designing navigation for a website. I
read through the whole article waiting for them to tell me how their studies
showed users were more likely to click on links at the bottom of a landing
page than at the top, because they didn't have to "Travel" back upwards to
click on it. Funny how we sometimes make assumptions about what where we think
an article is going.

It was still interesting, it just wasn't what I was expecting :-)

