> I started regularly taking a Monday morning trip to the airport, then another ride home from the airport Tuesday evening.
My first thought from the headline: Walk, bike, or take public transit. But the pollution I expected wasn't in the same league as his actual behavior. He's a global warming machine.
Yes, walk or bike >30 miles between cities before getting on an airplane for work. Your fellow passengers in coach will appreciate your odiferous devotion to the environment.
Sometimes the comments in here are truly insane. How could you even suggest walking or biking between two California cities?
I wonder if the poster has considered the cost in carbon of their use of a computer and the internet to visit Hacker News to criticise other people's commute?
One would think that a more green practice would be to offset carbon use instead of using carbon to complain.
Yes, the parent commenters did skip public transport and focus on the other modes.
But focussing on public transport, I use it. I go to Manchester on the train. It's about the same time as driving (once you've got to the station), and when you take into account parking about the same cost.
It works for me because I live not too far from a station, and Manchester is a /relatively/ nice city to walk around in. I like it at least. I do it in part because it's easy, and in part because it means I can have a few sociable beers at one of the user groups I attend.
But it doesn't take much to make it a far worse option than driving. I live on the edge of the area that's reasonably walkable to a station. Many others live further away.
If I want to go somewhere else (the closest town, Stockport, for example) I'd have to get the train into Manchester, then back out to Stockport. It'd take potentially an hour to do, and cost way more than the 15-20 minute car journey + parking. The bus to Stockport is an alternative, but also weirdly more expensive, far less convenient, less reliable (1+ hour wait for a bus? Done that when I was younger), slower and less clean than my car.
If I want to go to Chorlton, a little further over (there's a nice supermarket apparently) I can take a 35 minute car journey, or I can take a 3 walk + 2 bus journey at 1 hour 20 minutes. A trip that has all the downsides of bus travel I previously mentioned, but doubled, + it will still cost more.
Public transport is great, and cars are toxic, but it only works where it's not crap. I used to live in London and didn't need or want a car, it was great. Here, I'd be isolated. In the US public transport as far as I can tell is even worse.
I don't hold out much hope for public transport here, or in the US unfortunately. It's a nice idea, but then so is universal healthcare and not leaving Europe.
"Here is a tip: comments are a lot less insane if you actually read them."
Oh, so when he said "walk, bike or take public transit" he actually meant "walking and biking aren't options for you, only public transit is"
Wow, I'm so glad we have folks like you to literally rewrite posts.
And of course it's completely beyond the pale that I dared quote someone and judge their words as they wrote them!
The reality here is that this person obviously did not read the post and wrote a boilerplate "green shame" post, assuming that walking was valid, assuming because they obviously did not read.
The "insanity" is people not reading and just running to the comments to parrot their script even when the script is absurdism when applied to the situation.
Even then, it turns a 1-h car ride to a 3-h trip with three connections. And that's the route given by GMaps, the eternal optimist (it thinks 4 mins to make a bus connection is reasonable).
That sounds suspiciously close to "he should move closer to the southern California airport he's headed to or should quit the job that requires travel." I don't think we know nearly enough about the writer or his situation (or his wife's job that might then require the reverse of that drive but 5-6x/week?) to entertain any such sentiment.
I feel pretty safe though in saying that if you're driving Uber for extra income then you're probably not financially solid enough to uproot to save 3-4 gallons of gas per week.
Edit: Yes, public transit could indeed be an option to/from Oceanside. Probably wouldn't add much more than an hour each direction, assuming that there are appropriately timed trains for presumably early and late travel.
My first thought from the headline: Walk, bike, or take public transit. But the pollution I expected wasn't in the same league as his actual behavior. He's a global warming machine.