Public Transportation is the answer to traffic-not more highway lanes

if the private sector were the answer to the question, then we would already have highly successful mass 'private' transportation. But we do not have it. In fact, the private sector did more to destroy mass transportation than all the conservatives in government. In the 1940s, car companies bought up all the trolley and streetcar companies, tore up their tracks, and then were fined $1/CEO for having destroyed our private mass transit system. Indeed, private transportation is heavily subsidized and the series of choices our government has made, from Eisenhower and before, to the present has resulted in very little mass transit outside of dense urban centers like New York (really, New York is the great highlight of our public transportation, despite its problems, and no other American city compares). Suburban sprawl, among other factors, made public transportation particularly inefficient. But sitting in traffic doing nothing for a couple hours a day, like millions of Americans do, is immensely unproductive. Imagine how much work you could do if you were zipping along in a train with your laptop in front of you! And how much more pleasant would that be? If Europe and Japan and China can do it, we can do it. But we're going to need bigger commitments from government to do it, and when the economy is roaring along again and the debt is under control, I'd like to see Obama make a serious commitment to it.

Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

If Europe and Japan and China can do it, we can do it.

Well, duh.

And if we wanted private mass transportation, we would have it. duh.

We love our cars and our freedom to travel however we want, whenever we want and live anywhere.

Btw, when is the last time you took a train anywhere? Yeah, that's what I thought.

china hasn't done shit. 50% of china is still functionally illiterate.

we have no choice but to start building city trams, subways, city rail lines, maglev bullet trains, and zero emission vehicle electric charging stations.

I've ridden city buses in a number of large/midsized American cities on an occasional basis. On every ride, you are guaranteed to interact with the bottom rung of society. Not very enjoyable.

Maybe if we could improve the quality of people on public transportation, people would actually want to ride it. But America's major cities produce so many derelicts, I don't see that happening.

How do you get that moral from a story where, excepting one instance, your friend has choosen the public transit system over any alternative? Is he never going to use it again after this incident?

I take a class after work twice a week. It is a 35 minute drive down the highway. One time I had to use public transportation because my car was in the shop. This was the sequence/timing of that trip:

1) Walk to bus stop - 2 minutes

2) Wait for bus - 5 minutes

3) Bus to train station - 10 minutes

4) Wait for train - 15 minutes (because you have to get there early or you risk missing it)

5) Train ride - 30 minutes

6) Wait for shuttle from train to campus - 10 minutes

7) Shuttle ride - 5 minutes

Total: 77 minutes

Round trip driving - 1 hr, 10 min

Round trip public transit - 2 hr, 34 min

Reppy wrote:

We love our cars and our freedom to travel however we want, whenever we want and live anywhere.

But a fundamental question is how much time and aggravation (and wasted money on gas) are you willing to spend sitting in traffic with everyone else loving their freedom to travel wherever and whenever they want, are you willing to sacrifice for that same freedom?

Obviously for many there isn't a viable public transit alternative right now, but perhaps that means that there needs to be lobbying to spend the money to build it, rather than spending money on building roads that allow people to live further away from work/friends/shopping and just makes them spend more time sitting in their car in traffic.

I simply love the idea of getting in my car to go anywhere I want.

I happen to live right between Baltimore and DC and work just outside of DC.

I could commute to either city by a train not too far from my house but would likely have to switch trains to get to any final destination.

I pretty much eliminated the idea of working in either city to avoid public transportation.

There is a metro station one mile form work so I could make it in without my car.

I could, carrying whatever I need, walk a half mile to a bus stop and wait for a bus to take me to a MARC rail station.

Wait.

Take that to Union Station.

Switch trains to the Red line for a couple stops.

Switch trains to the Green line, go 25 minutes to my stop

Take a short bus ride to a bulding near my office and carry my stuff in.

Or I can drive my car 30-40 minutes door to door and have my car avaible to carry stuff and drive somewhere for lunch if I choose.

I am no Republican. I am just not a city person.

I gotta drive.

Again, the idea of living close to work is a great one. But it's also an idea from an earlier time when one person in a family worked and probably did it at the same place until they retired or died. My granddad never owned a car and couldn't even drive. He worked for 56 years in a steel mill that was three blocks from his house. My grandmother was home with the kids.

Today no one keeps a job for anywheer near that length of time. I got a job in the town I currently live and mover there. For about two years I could walk to work. Then I changed jobs to one roughly thirty miles away. when I got married my wife had a job about twenty miles away in the opposite direction from mine. We couldn't really decrease outr overall use of cars by moving close to either of our jobs and if we did we'd likely have had to move a few years later when one or both of us changed jobs.

Public transit around here is not that bad. It just doesn't go everyplace most people need to go in anywhere near the time they can drive to those places and there's really no practical way of changing that.

HRE wrote:

Public transit around here is not that bad. It just doesn't go everyplace most people need to go in anywhere near the time they can drive to those places and there's really no practical way of changing that.

I can't speak to your specific location, but that certainly isn't true for many urban centres in North America.

If there was a public and political will, vastly superior public transit systems could be developed.

Would they be guaranteed to be faster than private car? Most likely not, but there is a real physical limit to how many private cars be moved along public roads and highways or how many more roads and highways could be built. At some point there will simply be too many vehicles trying to exercise their freedom to go wherever whenever they want that no one will be able to move.

Just like suburban sprawl and interstate freeways did not pop up overnight, building a dramatically better public transit infrastructure won't be done for tomorrow or next week's commute. It comes down to choices citizens want to make as to the future of their communities.

A possibly relevant question would be: how long would your thirty mile commute or your wife's twenty mile commute have to be before you would be looking at other alternatives? (Alternatives include moving, changing jobs or maybe pushing to build better public transit.)

One thing that I think transit is very good for is intercity travel. I travel fairly regularly between NYC and our campus in Ithaca for job interviews and school projects. If I drove myself, I would basically waste more than an entire workday on the round trip drive. Taking the bus allows me to be productive en route. Even if the bus takes a bit longer, I'd rather have 5 hours of productive time on a bus than 4.5 hours of wasted time in a car.

Especially now that buses have wireless internet, places to plug in your laptop, etc I can't imagine choosing waste hours of my life behind the wheel of a car when traveling long distances.

Have you actually used European public transport or are you using the typical talking points?

I have been to Paris, London, and Rome. Their public transit is no better or worse than Chicago or New York (I'm not familiar with LA's). Also, the bullet trains smell of fecal matter and urine. When in Europe I try to take cheap flights over the bullet trains whenever possible.

Privatize wrote:

I agree, the private sector does a much better job.

The government has no business subsidizing farms, bailing out car companies, and Wall St, and should leave it up to free market forces.

The government should not be in the health care provider business. VA Hospitals should be closed. Army, Navy, Air Force Hospitals should be only for active duty personnel or reservists on 2 week summer training. Retired and non-active duty personnel should go to private sector hospitals. The President, Congress, Supreme Court, etc. should go private sector hospitals for health care.

The government should not have taxpayer provided pension plans and health insurance plans. They should pay 100% of the costs for their own plans and obtain it from private sector pension companies and private sector health insurance companies.

YEAH!!!! DOWN WITH SOCIALISM! WERE WASTING OUR MONEY ON POLICE WHO ALL THEY DO IS TICKET PEOPLE AND FIRE... THEY NEVER COME TO MY HOUSE! WHAT A WASTE

this just in wrote:

YEAH!!!! DOWN WITH SOCIALISM! WERE WASTING OUR MONEY ON POLICE WHO ALL THEY DO IS TICKET PEOPLE AND FIRE... THEY NEVER COME TO MY HOUSE! WHAT A WASTE

If you don't agree with something, please debate it. Typing a sarcastic statement in all caps does not help your case or make it correct.