the misconception I hear a lot is that riding transit means you’re stuck “on someone else’s schedule” whereas driving a car apparently gives you a greater ability to travel whenever you want. People who say this must believe traffic is like a random force of nature that can’t be managed rather than something that happens on clear time tables. They also must believe transit is always unreliable and buses only arrive every 5 hours or something, which is a fair belief if they’re american.
In a properly operating mass transit system you’re never going to be waiting for more than maybe 15 minutes for the next bus/train/trolley to arrive. You show up at the station whenever you like if it’s reliable. I’ve never had to wait more than several minutes to get moving when I’ve been to China and Japan. I’ve only experienced two delays on Japanese trains too. Once was an earthquake and the other was an injured monkey on the tracks (the monkey was evacuated to safety).
drives an hour in traffic every day to get to work by 8 AM as required by boss
“Trains just put you on somebody else’s schedule. I like the freedom of cars.”
in a properly operating mass transit system…
Therein lies the problem. The system here is terrible. Trains are 20 min during rush hour and up to an hour off times. I can’t even figure out if the buses are ahead or behind schedule because they’re nowhere near it. Too many times do I see 2 buses on the same route one street the other because the first must be so fat behind that the next bus has caught up to them.
They made bussing free post-covid and still people don’t use it.
This is really the problem for a lot of transit systems in the US. I guess you could say they operate below critical mass, so it’s neither fast nor frequent enough, nor goes places people are or want to go in too many systems across the US. It doesn’t help that our urban density levels suck.
Public transit also ends up being the last bastion for folks that society has discarded, and while I don’t have a problem with helping people, a lot of folks will flat out refuse to ride public transit because they’re terrified of getting harassed or having to exist in the same space as homeless people (I wish I was kidding). I think that some things that could be done with regard to that is to enforce some basic standards on public transit without shutting out the people who absolutely depend on it, such as: don’t smell like you just came from a Magic The Gathering tournament, don’t harass anyone else or cause a disturbance, and you have to be at least conscious enough to obey commands in order to ride.
How about fuck no. Who’s going to enforce that? The pigs? You’re advocated for the unhoused, mentally ill, disabled, and people who suffer from addiction to be further oppressed. Shut up.
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Better idea: mandatory re-education for those who can’t stand to be around the poors.
if people steer clear of our buses and trains because they’re busy doubling as psych wards and homeless shelters.
.ee user don’t dehumanize unhoused people challenge failed yet again very surprising
For some USian cities the transit is managed so badly that this misconception is kinda true. Buses that arrive every 30mins or even every 60, and that get stuck in traffic because there are no dedicated bus lanes, are tough to schedule your trips around.
Yeah, it feels deliberate though. Underfund and hobble public transportation until people are convinced that public transportation itself is the problem
Absolutely, it’s a common strategy for destroying public services. Make it shit, then point at it and say, “it’s shit let’s get rid of it.”
People who say this must believe traffic is like a random force of nature that can’t be managed rather than something that happens on clear time tables
Your local news probably has a “traffic forecast” every morning, where they say the exact same thing, every single day, without ever stopping to consider the absurdity of it.
“IT’S EIGHT AM! TRAFFIC ON THE HIGHWAY IS STOP-AND-GO! WHO COULD HAVE POSSIBLY PREDICTED THIS?”
A really good book on this matter is “Making Mobilities Matter”. I think you can get it on libgen or the like
injured monkey on the tracks
The only time I ran into a delay in Japan was due to a fire on the tracks. I like to imagine it was caused by monkey.
Also the delay was like 10 min max. Even the delays are shorter then USian wait times for on time transit
Monkey on the tracks?
Yeah certain parts of Japan have very rambunctious groups of monkeys who like to get up to mischief
saru for party rocking
The first one I believe, the second has to be a joke
My old boss thought trains were obsolete because rubber wheels on pavement was “more efficient”.
the trains have steel wheels, STEEL!
Well, obviously because we have more cars now, they must be the most efficient or we wouldn’t be using them. So something about rubber and road must be better than rail and wheel.
rubber wheels on pavement was “more efficient”.
they’re certainly efficient at being the world’s largest source of microplastics in the water supply
He believes Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson are the greatest minds of our time so I doubt he has thought it that far.
they’re the hecking reincarnations of freaking plato and gosh darn aristotle don’tcha know
This is literally not true, steel wheels on steel rails is much more efficient than rubber on pavement
He’s too busy weaving through his Mario Kart LARP to notice the train weaving right past him on its own tracks.
Kalamari Dessert Chad who drives on the track
I have basically no experience with mass transit, having lived most of my life in a rural area with only a notoriously unreliable bus line that services the county seat and university area. I’ve played a few hundred hours of Cities: Skylines and love playing pretend with digital infrastructure, but really, when it comes to transit, I am a bumpkin and I know it.
Even I am astounded at the wild ignorance on display in those anecdotes.
Is transit just one of those things that is deeply misunderstood by most people or does this guy know some world-class yokels?
mass transit is massivley missunderstood, especially in america. but these two anecdotes are a special kind of dumb
I kind of see where the people are coming from. The first one understands that trains are good but doesn’t understand how high speed rail works nor how rapid transit works. The second person might have mixed up MARTA with the Atlanta Streetcar, which is cute but is very much at the whims of traffic, owing to how poorly new streetcar “systems” (read: one streetcar line in mixed traffic as a handout to real estate developers to gentrify downtowns) are built in America.
They should make all street cars into supersonic bullet trains. Didn’t get out of the way fast enough? Too bad, you are now a diffuse cloud of matter.
I can get behind this. This is actually Brightline east’s policy with their not grade-separated crossings. I think they’ve flexed on over 100 cars and counting so far.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
according to the article you linked MARTA owns and controls the streetcar. That might be the source of the confusion.
yeah that makes sense
What’s the best way to balance public input on something like transit with “no investigation, no right to speak”? Comments like these are common at public meetings (plenty of private ones, too) and they’re notorious for sucking up the time and good will of everyone involved. Ordinary people engage less when your meetings run to midnight in no small part due to nonsense like this, and the people running the meetings get burnt out far more quickly.
Don’t do in-person public input. It’s a fucking garbage concept from start to finish. Also it has never changed anything.
Yeah, my province recently prohibited any public hearings for new housing proposals because they were just a soap box for NIMBYs to stand on and obstruct any progress whatsoever.
Here’s some theory on the subject you might enjoy https://organizingengagement.org/models/ladder-of-citizen-participation/
Basically: no investigation occurs from the public about public works, because sufficient resources have not been made available as to allow the average member of public to investigate
Thank you!
Guy’s talking about Atlanta, people there are just different. Non-Atlanta people fucking HATE eating in Atlanta. Keith Lee’s recent reviews are a great example of this. People there want to feel like celebrities, even the Harold’s chicken in Atlanta looks like an expensive club.
one of the most carbrained cities in america, not quite on the dallas/houston level but getting there
At least Atlanta suburbs are covered in trees and actually look quite nice, houston/dallas suburbs look like hell
at least I can weave through traffic
crab bucket grindset
peak bazinga brain
I was speaking with a California Republican and it seemed one of his complaints about the HSR project was that it was not advanced technology and that if he were in charge it would be maglev.
You run into a surprising amount of chuds who think the bicycle / train, really anything but the car, is outdated and therefore shouldn’t be used, despite all of them being invented in around roughly a 50 year timeframe
Yeah but cars have kept getting better and better for 100 years and bikes and trains are basically still the same. Just look at how futuristic the hypertruck is!
I hear so many people who think the only segment of the high speed rail is going to be Merced to Bakersfield and the rest was cancelled. Also thinking they’ve already spent $100B.
On top of that people say you’ll still need to rent a car when you arrive. Only true for some cities.
Also thinking they’ve already spent $100B.
Laughs in HS2
only Merced to Bakersfield
Lol, yeah they thought that too.
If it was maglev he’d be against it because it was too expensive and an overkill and they’d suddenly be really concerned with recycling and product life cycle analysis.
They don’t believe in anything concrete they’re just opposed to whatevers happening.
most people are dumber than the dirt they walk on.
I love the woman’s energy and I’m willing to believe that Atlanta’s transit is obsolete. In fact, I’m with her that the bullet train people need to be begged for their mercy and labor. However, you probably don’t spend billions making these stations and high speed rail for Atlanta specifically. That’s a project for a non-failed state to go across vast swathes of land. You’d probably find yourself despondent when your train travels across urban hellscape, destitution, and black sludge fields instead of the Japanese countryside where all the projects of man have some respect for nature and aesthetic.
Though, with some preliminary googling, it looks like I’m being pedantic. There’s every reason why you’d want to revamp the transit instead of having a big police budget any given year. You just don’t need the intra-city transit to be mag lev trains.
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