Technology

The suburban sprawl makes building transit a lot harder but to fix that we need to increase density but then it’s hard to increase density when you need space for cars because you have no usable transit

Chicken and egg situation, Americans drive because that’s how their cities and suburbs are laid out (excluding NYC, for the most part).

They don’t rely on alternatives because they are slow, inconvenient or non-existent; alternatives can’t be built up as the costs can’t be justified based on existing patronage levels.

transit

"We mean electric cars, you commie! The next time you talk about that thing, you are going out that window."

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Honestly, it's just so convenient to be able to get in the car and go (unless the destination's parking situation is really bad).

Americans value convenience quite a lot. We even trade our personal data for it.

I live in a mid-sized Canadian city, with a population of just under 400k with what is considered a pretty good bus-based transit system, with roughly 60 routes. Even way out in the boonies you can catch a bus. You can get from pretty nearly any point A to any point B on the bus.

And yet I and those who can afford to do so generally avoid the bus. Our streets are still filled with cars during rush hour (which, as someone who has 100% WFM for the last 15 years I’m happy to say I’m not contributing to). Reasons?

1. If your origin and destination aren’t on the same route, you’re going to need to transfer. Possibly multiple times. And wait for those transfers.
2. Buses are sometimes either late, or too full and don’t stop. Which means if you rely on taking the bus to get to work, you had better be up quite early to ensure you get to your destination on time.
3. Bus people. Creepy old guys hitting on young (or even old) girls and women. People who haven’t showered in a while sitting next to you. The people who think their bag is too important and needs a seat. We bought my wife a car the week after some racist tried to attack her.

You know what doesn’t have any of those problems? My car. I can crank my music up if I want to. I get to pick who is in my car. I don’t have to get up extra early to make sure I get to my destination on time because the bus might be late, full, or because I have to make multiple transfers (at each point of which the bus could be late or full…).

I’m glad we have the bus system we have for those people who need it. I know we have people in our city who don’t have the privilege of owning a vehicle of their own — and for some people whose needs are simple the bus can likely work just fine. I’m glad we have that system for the people who don’t otherwise have a choice — but for everyone who has that choice, the choice is typically being in their own private vehicle where they can sing loudly, eat and drink whatever they like, control who rides with them, and go wherever they want to — heck, I can even change my mind about my destination mid-drive and go wherever I want to without having to switch cars.

I’ll admit, having taken transit in bigger cities (Toronto, Montreal, Istanbul) being able to take a train (subway, LRT, surface rail, streetcars etc.) can be pretty great. I think bigger cities need this kind of transit — even with its many, many problems it can beat out taking a car to a downtown core. But even when I lived in some of these cities I still had a car. But the size of my current home city just isn’t big enough to accommodate that level of transit. The cost would just be too horrendous.

Can everyone do better? Sure. But I don’t think such improvements are going to significantly encourage more people to take transit over their own vehicles.