
Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S - jseliger
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/while-america-suffocated-transit-other-countries-embraced-it/572167/
======
40acres
Lesson #1 seems deliberate to me.

Post war, many urban centers in the US experienced white flight, it seems
rational to assume that since these folks moved away from the cities to get
away from minorities they would be against infrastructure that would allow
minorities to "follow them" to the burbs. But these workers needed a way to
get to the city for work, leisure, etc.

What better way to circle that square by building massive infrastructure which
requires a middle class income (which allows you to buy a car) to use?

Even now we see lots of resistance by suburban communities to public
transportation. In the Portland, OR metro area there is a upper middle class
community called Lake Oswego, the residents have continuously lobbied against
any form of public transportation in the town, lots of folks complaining about
the "crime train".

The metro transit authority which designs new lines has succumbed to the
pressure and the newly proposed line while in the vicinity of Lake Oswego
avoids the town completely.

~~~
ip26
It's a shame to see people campaigning against new regional transit lines, but
I have to be at least a _little_ sympathetic. BNSF runs through my town, and
it _does_ bring transients, plenty of whom do bring drugs, needles, & crime.
No matter how you feel about train hoppers, that is a matter of fact in our
town.

To the downvotes I face, I'd be curious what you feel is incorrect in what
I've said.

~~~
astrodust
This is _exactly_ the mentality that makes getting public transit built a
problem.

Trains don't cause crime. The crime was already there because of a whole heap
of deeply embedded issues in America that, for various reasons, Americans on
the whole prefer to completely ignore.

The problem is that trains make these problems _visible_. If you rip out the
trains you're just sweeping it back under the carpet which is how America
tends to deal with these things.

If the best economic opportunity afforded by the trains for someone is crime
that's saying something about your society, not the trains.

~~~
forapurpose
> The crime was already there ...

Crime as at generational (multi-generational?) lows. People are solving a
problem that no longer exists.

An American friend of mine is terrified of going into cities; it's bizarre.
I've spent a lot of time in American cities, in all sorts of neighborhoods;
I've never had a problem. (Like other American conservatives I've talked to,
he also seems to define himself as being in opposition to liberals, in this
case by putting down cities and their residents; so perhaps it's partly a
political thing. However, it's a bit bizarre that political rhetoric would be
confused with reality.)

~~~
dx87
I don't think it's a political thing, people in cities just seem to have
different expectations than people that don't. I live in the suburbs and there
isn't anywhere nearby that I would worry about going. My co-worker who lives
in the city says that it's dangerous to go 2 blocks from his house at night,
but thinks that's normal. My wife has a co-worker who's had someone repeatedly
try and break into her house, but she doesn't call the cops because she just
considers it part of city life. There are some things that people in cities
put up with that I think they only accept because it's been part of their
entire life.

~~~
forapurpose
> My co-worker who lives in the city says that it's dangerous to go 2 blocks
> from his house at night, but thinks that's normal. My wife has a co-worker
> who's had someone repeatedly try and break into her house, but she doesn't
> call the cops because she just considers it part of city life.

I know many, many people who live in American cities, and I don't know even
one person with those experiences or attitudes (unless you mean, there is a
specific spot within 2 blocks that feels potentially dangerous in the middle
of the night - a 4 square block area in a dense city is a large area with
potentially tens of thousands of people).

However, I do know people in suburbs or rural areas with those attitudes and
stories. In my experience, almost all the scary stories about cities come from
people who don't actually live there - and the less experience they have, the
more scary stories they seem to tell, similar to other bogeymen like racial
stereotypes. Some people in rural areas seem to love to tell these stories
these days.

People I know in cities usually talk about how great it is - or at least how
they could never live in the suburbs.

I guess we can argue about anecdata, but the actual data shows that crime is
very low.

EDIT: Many edits, mostly reorganization

~~~
rayiner
I wouldn't go that far. When we lived in downtown Baltimore, we definitely
told our nanny that there were neighborhoods where the crime was high enough
she probably didn't want to go there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandtown-
Winchester,_Baltimore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandtown-
Winchester,_Baltimore). And when we lived in Wilmington, DE, if you went a few
blocks south from our apartment (across an underpass beneath the highway), you
got to a neighborhood where the crime rate was so high that the EMTs once
refused to pick up a dead body after a shooting. Also in Wilmington, someone
was shot at the Nike on Market street waiting for a new shoe to be released at
like 6 am. Someone was mugged outside my wife's office (in the nice part of
the central business district) at 5 pm.

In the city, crime is low enough where you will probably not be a victim of
crime (especially if you're wealthy). But it's happening _around you_ , you're
aware of it, and property crimes are a real risk if you're not careful.

Meanwhile, now we live in the Annapolis suburbs, and I don't even lock my car
when I park it.

------
WhompingWindows
1\. Low overall population density

2\. Newer cities designed when cars were already king

3\. Redesign of cities with the car in mind, due to fierce lobbying by car
industry.

4\. Hidden subsidies for cars, like untaxed carbon, untaxed smog leading to
respiratory illnesses in cities, and of course free ubiquitous parking in so
many areas.

5\. Continuing lack of innovation, policy hold-ups, partisanship leading to
gridlock, not to mention a public disinterest in using public transit.

------
tokyodude
> Figuring out how to improve transit isn’t like curing cancer or inventing a
> quantum computer, either. There are good, viable models of transit systems
> that already exist in cities that look a lot like U.S ones. They are
> successful both at attracting riders and at being financially viable, from
> places that have more in common with American cities than one might expect

If that's the case then you'd think some company would step in to grab that
"financially viable" market

Tokyo's transit system is run by multiple companies. There are at least 10
different train companies many of which also run bus services. AFAIK they are
hugely profitable. Many of them also open retail spaces and office spaces in
and around the stations they run.

~~~
amyjess
> Tokyo's transit system is run by multiple companies. There are at least 10
> different train companies many of which also run bus services.

I find this interesting because it's a stark contrast to NYC. NYC is of the
only cities in the country where PT is so pervasive that most people can get
around on PT alone, but they tried that same exact model back in the day, and
it failed miserably leading to the creation of the MTA.

~~~
rayiner
The special thing about Tokyo's rail system is not that it's private, but that
the railroads are the primary landowners around the rail stations, which was
never true in New York.

Rail infrastructure benefits both the passengers who ride it, and the
businesses whose workers and customers ride to their premises on the
infrastructure. Traditionally, rail systems can only recover from the
passengers. That leaves a large positive externality accruing to the
businesses, which the rail operator cannot recover.

The Japanese model solves that problem by allowing the rail operator to
capture value from both ends of the transaction. It charges fees to
passengers, but also charges rent to all the businesses built near rail lines.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The special thing about Tokyo's rail system is not that it's private, but
> that the railroads are the primary landowners around the rail stations,
> which was never true in New York.

They also don't have the TWU, whose unchecked corruption would be capable of
destroying the public transit system of _any_ city in _any_ country, given the
opportunity.

------
logicgateandor
We should try shutting down most bus systems outside major dense metro areas
and start over. For example, I used to live in Orange County, California.
There is no rail there, only buses. But whenever I saw the buses on the road,
they were empty. And I rarely saw anyone at bus stops. But they have a huge
budget, $290 million per year ([https://www.octa.net/News/About/OCTA-Board-
Approves-$1-3-Bil...](https://www.octa.net/News/About/OCTA-Board-
Approves-$1-3-Billion-Balanced-Budget/)) for bus operations. What a waste of
money, empty buses driving around in circles.

Imagine if that money went to this instead:

* Estimate of $15 round trip per day for Lyft Line/Uber Pool for commuting to/from work. That's $300 per month. Create special Lyft/Uber cards and distribute to low income residents. $290 million/$300 = 966k low income residents. Note that the population of OC is 3 million. And this would be free for low income residents. Whatever they spend on commuting now can be spent for other non-commuting transportation.

* These MUST be used with Lyft Line/Uber Pool. Also these rides will be only pickup/drop off at bus stops. These requirements allow for massive routing efficiencies and the bus stop infrastructure is already designed for a lot of pickup/dropoffs.

Eventually Lyft/Uber will notice that certain stops are very popular. They may
start asking drivers of minivans to cover these. As demand increases more,
they may run shuttles. And some extremely popular bus stops may even have high
capacity buses. But this will be a natural growth that reacts to demand.
Ironically, the end result is a functioning bus system for some popular stops.
But the key is that we get there by growing the system and the demand, instead
of just throwing buses out there and hoping someone will use them.

~~~
rovolo
You're mixing per-month and per-year.

* $300 (/person /month) -> $3.6k (/person /year) for your estimated Lyft Line.

* $290m (/year) bus salaries / $3.6k (/person /year) lyft subscriptions = 80.5k people.

------
kodablah
> When transit service isn’t good, few will choose to use it. [...] improving
> American transit doesn’t necessarily demand multi-decade, hundred-billion-
> dollar infrastructure projects

Yes, but it's not free either. Americans, for better or worse, just don't want
to pay for public services they might not use. You see the private sector
entering into agreements with localities to build toll roads knowing there is
profitability. You don't see the private sector looking to enter mass transit
presumably because of lack of profitability. One can argue for the social good
to be borne by all, but surely there is a limit. Like it or not, you need
majority support for public works projects, and it's not coming.

Many of those who have flown to the suburbs have done so because of the
propensity for their smaller city governments to not spend money on projects
like these (or their increased voting influence to prevent it). So, unlike
what the article states, you either have to give up on the suburbs or risk
being voted out for giving up on the citizens' wants there. So your left with
dense-urban-only transit because they are the only ones that want it. And it's
ok. The want for quality mass transit outside of dense urban areas should be
subject to the will of those that live there despite the objections by the
ones that don't. If you want to tackle pollution as a matter of policy, so be
it, but you can't make people ride a bus without doing so regressively.

------
Salamat
Blame it on the auto industry they created the idea "jay-walking" which was
introduced in the 1920's by them part of a propaganda campaign to claim the
roads for cars and shift the blame in accidents from cars to pedestrians. They
forced other countries some in the middle east to abandon public transport to
promote cars.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797)

------
hprotagonist
We also have a strong first-adopter problem: our rail systems were among the
first, so we're stuck with some inherent design limitations that weren't an
issue in 1890 but sure are now.

For example, if you want high speed rail between major cites in new england,
you're out of luck; the rails were laid out with curves and shapes that will
not allow you to go fast. You can solve this, but the solution is to
straighten out the rails -- and that means eminent domaining several billion
dollars worth of Connecticut. I don't see that happening.

~~~
StreamBright
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_State_Railways](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_State_Railways)

We had rails sooner yet we did not get stuck. Do you think that the size of US
is limiting here?

~~~
hprotagonist
That's the other big problem, yes.

See also the Netherlands. In the 70s they decided that bikes were good, and
that paving over canals to let big trucks and cars take over was bad, and it
was time to stop doing that and move to a better way.

They got away with it because the Netherlands is 19 times smaller than the
state of Texas.

------
s0rce
Certainly doesn't help that car companies actively worked to dismantle the
public transit systems and promote personal vehicles.

~~~
rayiner
It doesn't help, but it probably doesn't make much of a difference in the
grand scheme of things. Why is the D.C. Metro or Atlanta's MARTA so bad? I
don't think car companies had anything to do with it. Americans are just bad
at transit. The people don't care, and the people running it have bad taste,
are bad at management, etc.

~~~
noirbot
I'm not sure about DC, but for Atlanta at least it's really a question of
density. Atlanta's one of the least dense major metros, so outside of the
major corridors that MARTA already runs on, there's not a lot of big wins to
be had by adding more stations.

In my opinion, Atlanta's actually pretty well-built in a lot of ways. While
MARTA is awful for commuter/everyday use, MARTA is effective for a lot of
other things like getting to major events downtown, or getting residents and
tourists to/from the airport. I'm not sure you could really make it all that
much better without some fairly insane investment.

~~~
smileysteve
As a Marta daily commuter, it's all about where you choose to live and where
your work is. Training from Midtown to Buckhead is easy, it's 5 miles (half
the length of manhatten), getting to the airport is easy, exact times of 27
and 37 minutes, getting to Decatur for dinner is easy. Getting to Dunwoody and
Sandy springs are easy, except when you get there everything except for State
Farm is a long outdoor walk away though 4 lane car traffic and inadequate
sidewalks.

I used to even ride from Alpharetta to Buckhead when the buses had priority in
the shoulder; it was much preferable to morning Rush hour(s) if you got on the
highway after 7am

~~~
noirbot
Oh, I definitely agree and Atlanta's generally done well recently at building
more things nearer to the stations. That said, unless you live in one of the
areas you just mentioned, there's not a lot you can do. There's a ton of
Atlanta along 85/75 that's mostly unserved by MARTA, let alone a lot of stuff
outside of 285.

Atlanta has a pretty rough last-mile problem just due to its density. Outside
of midtown/downtown, a lot of the stations are pretty far apart by NYC/Euro
standards. You mention Midtown to Buckhead, which is 3 stops on MARTA, being
half the length of Manhattan. That's more than the length of Battery Park to
Penn Station, which is 12 stops on the 1/2/3 line. MARTA is fine if you're
mostly going from major area to major area, but if you want to go to somewhere
like Little 5, you're kinda out of options in a way that the MTA seldom has
issues with.

I don't so much see this as something MARTA could really fix, but more just
innate to Atlanta's sprawling geography. It's getting better, but MARTA pretty
much cannot be what people want it to be.

~~~
smileysteve
Some people don't think the beltline is a panacea; but that is the hope in the
original plan and on the city planners; that by having a tighter perimeter
that connects to the 4 spokes, we can focus the next 500k people in a smaller,
denser area. Here's hoping.

------
forapurpose
I think to discuss it as a technical problem is to put their heads in the
sand. It's a political problem - one of the two major American political
parties opposes government spending on principle and also opposes public
services in particular; they favor policies that increase profit to big
business. In this comment I'm not saying that the party is right or wrong, but
that these are the consequences of their policies, for good or ill.

I understand that many would like to avoid politics. Citylab wants to focus on
technical issues; Bill Gates cares about education, but AFAIK ignores how the
same problem is one of the largest obstacles to improving education in the
U.S.; people on HN are the same - they don't want to discuss politics.

Don't discuss it then, but then the discussion you do have is as pertinent as
talking about technical solutions to your overloaded bandwidth, which are well
known, when the real problem is that the CIO intentionally underfunds it.

------
throwaway456321
Does public transportation always work better outside the US? Metra in Chicago
is a heck of a lot more reliable than the likes of South West Trains and Govia
in the UK.

Metra even works in the snow! And in the 15 years I've been using it has not
had one strike. Whereas London suffers rail and tube strikes every few weeks.

Add to that commuting from the Chicago Burbs costs about 1/3rd of what
commuting from the London suburbs does.

~~~
ams6110
Yes, a few American cities have good public transit, probably rivaling Europe.
Chicago and NYC are at least two, there may be others. But once you get
outside of those kinds of major metropolis areas, it's pretty bleak.

My town (pop. about 80,000) has a bus system. It's a college town, and a few
routes that run between campus and student apartment neighborhoods are heavily
used. But otherwise most of the buses drive around empty especially mid-day
and at night.

It's not anywhere close to self-sufficient.

It contributes to a lot of people who don't use the bus themselves to think
the whole system is a waste of money. Especially when you see a large diesel
bus driving around with zero, one, or two people on board.

We'd keep 90% of the benefit and cut a huge amount of cost if we just killed
off all the routes that the students don't use. But the system is more
political than pragmatic so it doesn't happen.

~~~
francisofascii
Empty buses do create a wasteful perception. However I would argue that most
cars you see on the road are single occupant, i.e. mostly empty, and thus
hugely wasteful as well.

------
bleair
I think it's also a cultural thing. Americans do _not_ like public transit.
They'll tolerate it maybe (though they will complain about how taxes are too
high, the transit itself costs too much, and how it's inconvenient).

If you are successful, if you're happy, you own a car and you drive. As a
example, if you've lived in LA just imagine how humorous it would be if a
successful person you meet at a party or dinner said "yup, I took the bus to
get here".

Only the low income and undesirables are forced into using public transit. So
station locations, and transportation that feeds into the public network will
always be second or third tier.

In Japan they have the ridership and society generally thinks good thoughts
about their public transit.

~~~
nine_k
This is because LA is basically a giant suburb with a few city-like areas.

USA have very few "proper", dense cities, in the European sense of the world.
In these cities, like NYC and Chicago, public transit does quite OK. A lot of
successful people don't own a car exactly because they can afford not to.

Of course, most of the US territory, including most cities, and areas as
important as major cities (see Silicon Valley) are suburbs, if not outright
countryside. At a low density, public transportation makes much, much less
sense, so it's not get built.

------
rayiner
> But there was a big difference between America’s approach to big urban metro
> projects and that of Canadian and European cities: Even when the United
> States built expensive rail systems, it never took care of the basics.

This is a really important point. In many U.S. cities, even the public transit
is more of an adjunct to driving.

Here's the eastern terminus of one of Munich's S-Bahn lines:
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/munich++erding+train+stat...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/munich++erding+train+station/@48.3040278,11.911279,192m/data=!3m1!1e3).
Despite being about 25 miles outside the city, the area around it is developed
and you can walk to the train station.

In contrast, here's the eastern terminus of D.C.'s orange line:
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/new+carollton+metro/@38.9...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/new+carollton+metro/@38.9493696,-76.8738014,1305m/data=!3m1!1e3).
Even though it's only about 10 miles from downtown, you can't walk to anything
from there. You can't even get a cup of coffee except at the little shop in
the Amtrak lounge. Like much of the D.C. Metro, it was designed primarily for
people to drive there and park.

And somehow, even for people who drive there and park, it's off putting.
There's a vast expanse of concrete you have to traverse just to get to the
train from the parking lot:
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/new+carollton+metro/@38.9...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/new+carollton+metro/@38.9480302,-76.8718511,142m/data=!3m1!1e3).
It's so bad I actually started driving to a slightly further station on the
blue line to get to one that doesn't make me want to kill myself every
morning:
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/morgan+blvd+metro/@38.893...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/morgan+blvd+metro/@38.8936083,-76.8691199,362m/data=!3m1!1e3).
It's still got this completely unnecessary vast swath of pavement out front,
but at least there's some trees.

Compare those monstrosities to Munich, where the parking is right next to the
tracks:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=image...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjJkbyzqfzdAhWOTt8KHfNvDcMQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.merkur.de%2Flokales%2Ferding%2Ferding-
ort28651%2F3-unternehmerkonferenz-stadt-erding-ringschluss-riesenschub-fuer-
erding-9939555.html&psig=AOvVaw0XMsc7gyGC8oE6pESfC25o&ust=1539276316706943).

A lot of the post-1960s "public transit" development is like the D.C. Metro's.
These concrete edifices surrounded by vast swaths of concrete sidewalks and
surrounded again by highways.

~~~
ams6110
Some of it isn't that bad. Here's Lockport, Illinois Metra station.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lockport+Metra+Station/@41...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lockport+Metra+Station/@41.5842457,-88.0609657,368m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Most of the suburban Chicago stations are similar.

(Edit: I'd agree that most of Chicago's rail system is not "post 1960s"
though). Chicago is a rail hub and most of the suburbs developed along the
rail lines.

~~~
rayiner
Yeah, Metra (Chicago) and Metro North (New York) are the exception, as a lot
of those systems were built before the 1960s.

~~~
tptacek
Arguably the El trains have the same humane attributes as well (though the
closest easily-parkable one to me, in Forest Park, has a big parking lot
schlep; but I mean, I should just walk to the Green Line on Austin.)

------
NotCamelCase
Is it really bad in the US or really good in Canada? I have a friend who has
moved to Canada from Europe some time ago and he was complaining how it's not
so efficient and you need a car eventually.

------
logfromblammo
Because U.S. cities treat transit as a business or a utility rather than as
infrastructure.

~~~
osdiab
I think treating it as vital infrastructure is one way to get it to work
properly (assuming federal, state, and local gov't can get their act together
enough to do a good job of it), I don't know much about the historical
precedent but I would imagine a lot of public systems in Europe work that way.

But private companies seem to have done a good job of making Tokyo's system
work well (see my comments above about how since they own the land on
stations, they have a huge incentive to make it painless to get to them and
derive profit from that); I wonder if given the general ineffectiveness of
American bureaucracy right now, if a private approach with the right
incentives would be more politically feasible.

That all said, I think the article brings up plenty of good points about how
transit has been hobbled in the USA, that aren't entirely attributable to the
business vs infrastructure mindset.

------
baybal2
>Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S.

Well, I have a much simpler answer than the article:

1\. In US, the skill of public administration is not high enough to handle a
complex system of public mass transit.

2\. Any effort to just bring the transit to level of material parity with
Europe is done the Soviet way: "I pretend to work, and you pretend to spend
money"

And explanation on point 2: why it takes a public transit authorities from two
to three times more money to buy a bus than its market price? A bus costs more
in paperwork, services, and interest than the price of its hardware to them!

This is why American cities can't have clean new busses that say Germany have.
It will need them a multiple of their budgets to do something a German city
can do at 1/3 the cost.

