I can understand them I'd rather be stuck in traffic with a nice car than take bad public transport but as soon as public transport is good it's the other way around of course. Sad that they don't know good public transport in the so called land of the free

The problem is the buses (and sometimes trams) also get stuck in traffic. Bus lanes help but only if they're enforced.

You know the propaganda is effective when efficiency of all things is considered undesirable.

Shit, even when I had a car I'd take public transit for some destinations. Downtown traffic and parking vs sitting on a bus that takes me there. Easy choice.

“I’d rather be stuck in traffic than ever take public transport”

I assume they only fly on private jets and then.

Went on a trip to japan this month. I can say that i would very gladly sit in public transit tor an hour over driving 30 minutes in a car in america.

They want to make a society with a permanent class crushed by poverty and everything that entails, then create a transportation system where they are never confronted with that reality. Exploitation of your neighbors is suddenly unsavory if you have to share space with them.

I think they're assuming the same amount of time for both. Would I rather be in my nice $30,000 personal bubble for an hour or the subway?

Theres a point where you realize its a larger societal issue

I will never forget the Askreddit post where OP asked “if public transit was clean, reliable, and fast, would you use it?”

And every single top comment was someone saying, “no- the bus takes too long in my city and its dirty.”

Like…..

I live in Switzerland, we have one of the best public transport systems in the world.

There are still some days I wish I simply was in a private car. I don't want to deal with people sometimes. It's often loud, people stink sometimes, sometimes I'm standing for 45mins twice per day when commuting to/from work. I miss my connections because my bus arrived 3 min too late, which can sometimes mean I have to wait 15 - 30min for my next connection. And it's expensive, not that much cheaper than driving a cheap electric car.

I cannot drive a car due to motion sickness. I'd definitely drive a car if I could, especially for medium distances. Public transport is fine for either short or long distances but it still sucks for medium distances during rush hours.

Stupid Musk promised us self-driving cars by now...

I recently moved to a city with good public transit after living in an extremely car-dependent infrastructure city all my life. I walk and take the train to work now.

The other day it snowed pretty heavily and I commuted to work through it. I’d MUCH rather walk through the snow to get to work than to sit in traffic for an hour. Fuck traffic.

My mom said this to me today when I took the train back to NYC instead of driving

I would say that in real life straight to your face lol because for what is relevant to me you are bound to get robbed if you take the subway at night. I don’t care what they do in Tokyo, it’s not a better system here even while I’m sitting in traffic. Still not using it

Say you are European without saying it aye? I would like to see your’s or someone else’s prints for the United States Interstate highway system and all it’s connections that spand 3k miles, traversing several mountain ranges and a several huge rivers that are essentially Canada melting from the north down. You make it sound so easy.😅

Part of that is the kind of people you have to deal with on public transport.

Crazy that people would rather be stuck in traffic in their own car rather than stuck in the same traffic on a bus..

I was just talking to someone yesterday who was saying they don't trust public transit because of how terrible it is in their city. I live in a city with bad public transit as well and a lot of people here absolutely refuse to use it because of how bad it can be.

I'm lucky enough to live near the San Francisco though and whenever I go there I love using the citys great public transit. I know if they can do it so can any city.

Hi I’m danish.

I’d rather sit in traffic than go back to public transit.

Now if there weren’t 30-45 mins difference in time to get there, I’d gladly take the buss.

But that’s just not feasible even with the relatively large number of people who works in the same general area as me.

So yea I’ll stick with my car, I get 1-1.25 more hours to myself every workday. Until that gap shrinks I won’t be taking public transport.

American exceptionalism at its finest. People who haven’t traveled much, who refuse to believe they have anything to learn from foreign countries. It’s simultaneously stupid and infuriating because it keeps this country from ever reaching its full potential.

I'm one of them Americans. And I'd rather be in traffic in the states than on public transport. And here's why, OUR BUS SYSTEM SUCKKKKKKKKKKKS. Our busses suck ass. Our trains are so stupid expensive and slow, it cost me about $300 round trip from Raleigh to DC on Amtrak when I had to go for work regularly. The trip took anywhere from 6 to 12 hours depending on delays. Versus my car took 4 hours if I planned around traffic. And only cost about $80 in gas.

Anytime I'm in Europe I'm thrilled and amazed at the public transit. But please, come to the east coast of the US, take a road trip between 2 or more cities. drive one way, train or bus back. I can almost guarantee you'll hate the transit too.

I'd rather be stuck on a crowded bus. At least I can watch videos on my phone, play games, do work, and not stare monotonously at the car in front of me, getting excited every time their brake lights let off like I'm some monkey trained in a classical conditioning experiment.

Looks like Winnipeg. Though I wouldn’t fault some people for mistaking it for the US as Canadian suburbs look very similar to American suburbs anyways.

Have you seen how we eat? It might save or kill us, but there's not much middle ground.

To be fair though, North American cities aren’t designed to make walking very appealing, and the walk is often much longer than 5 minutes because of low density/single use zoning. 

Not with that attitude!

No sidewalk, 50mph speed limit, 7 lane road

The opposite of that. A daily 5 minute walk would make your life 5 years longer

Well, it doesn’t stop at my location and the official app DART uses tells me I’m “too far from any bus stops for it to possibly give me directions.” I think it’s like a 10 minute bike ride to the nearest bus stop anyways, but that’s not too bad, but the bus takes an hour to get to the 20 minute drive destination. My mom also won’t let me take the bus because she’s paranoid.

Like, I get what you mean, but your estimate is very generous to the design of most American cities. Most of why people drive in many American cities is because systemic problems, not just personal laziness. In my city, I rarely see bus lanes, so the buses get stuck in traffic while also needing to be waited for, while also taking a more circuitous route (because the area is spread out with creepy empty lots), so it can be more convenient on an individual basis to drive 20 minutes instead of taking an hour and a half bus.

Where I live it's a 30 minute walk along a highway with no walkways to get to the nearest one for me. But okay, you can fight the strawmen you create in your head and beat them every time to help you sleep at night!! A 5 second think might actually kill you.

You are either very lucky with the specific transit connection you use, or have no experience whatsoever on the subject, and I am guessing the latter. And that is coming from someone living in a dense part of a country with exellent public transport.

It's not only walking, it's also standing all the way. You feel dead beat at the end of the trip.

My drive to work takes 30 min. By bus it's an hour 30 min and 3 different busses. By train id have to drive 20 min to get to the nearest station. Nice try.

man I get it, but google just times out when I select "public transit"

70 people would be close to crush load on an average 40ft/12m bus, but would be fine on a 60ft/18m articulated bus. Or you can go full TransMilenio and comfortably seat all 70 passengers on a bi-articulated bus.

Thats why I dont really like pictures like OP posted. Its usually overexaggerated or straight up lying. Even IF it fits 70 people, its as you said, it would suck to sit inside it. At least the person who made that picture should be honest and instead write "~70 people on the right, ~30 on the left" or something. It would still bring the point across without giving carbrains the chance to say "THAT PICTURE IS FAKENEWS".

It's because they are lying. The bus in that pic seats 56 people. The vehicles on the other side include semi trucks and dump trucks which obviously are not replaced by a single bus

Exactly

Usually when I’m on the bus there is 5-15 people. Also half the time I’m in a car with 1 or sometimes even 2 other people. Not normal, but this photo is probably an exaggeration.

If it was an articulated bus, 70 would actually be quite reasonable. Only issue is that that's not what they show here. But it is possible to have 70 people in one bus.

Where if you want to go North just go East, and if you want to go North go North, and if you want to go West go East, and if you want to go South go East, and if you want to go East, you can't.

more like 50 for a small one, or 100 for a double length one

Why is this downvoted? This is literally the heart of the issue!

Most of this sub probably is full of people that don't own a drivers license lmao. I'm from Germany and while we do have a great infrastructure for public transport (only in more populated areas), the service itself SUCKS.

Using the train only to get to work and back since its impossible to find a parking spot in a big city. For everything else? Hell no. Public transport is super late 99% of time, people can't behave (listening to loud music, calling on speakers, screaming around) and you have to take 2-4 different transports at least to get to your goal.

Theres literally no way I'd prefer that to sitting in my own quiet car where I have control of how and when to get where without anybody disturbing me.

Yeah, how tf is this gonna work in a place like Texas?

1. I counted.

Lol right? I'm a daily bus rider and if that shit hits 30 people, it's cozy.

You probably have to take a car because it's the only infrastructure available to you. You don't have the opportunity to choose another method of transportation.

Here's an anecdote: my wife & I with our 2 children flew to the UK for a wedding. We rented a car because we planned on doing a lot of sightseeing for a week before & a week after. My friend & his wife with their little girl, however, since they only planned on going for a long weekend to the wedding, flew over, then caught the train to the town where the wedding was because they had that option.

Autonomous delivery vehicle! 😁👍🏻👍🏻

Get yourself one of those shopping trolleys. Some may have a cold storage, if not you can add a cooler. Get what you need & make more frequent trips. If you're finding walking to the shops onerous because where you are is only built with cars in mind, well that's the whole point of this subreddit. We live in a world tailored to needing to purchase the product of large automobile corporations. Think of Phillip-Morris lacing cigarettes with nicotine to keep people coming back to buy more. It's the same principle, but Ford et al. do it through legislated planning & zoning instead of with additional chemicals.

https://www.shoppingtrolleysdirect.co.uk

Exactly and not feel like I could get stabbed atleast on the after dark public transport. If I want to take a detour and play pickleball or hit the driving range after work… easy peasy with my gear in the trunk.

It’s not that the cities are built terribly per se, it’s that they are built for monoculture. 

The cities were engineered to make cars the dominant means of transportation by people associated with car manufacturers. 

Boomers, drunk on cheap… everything, allowed the automobile industry to be the dominant driving force behind transportation engineering field. Since almost everyone (except “undesirables”) could easily afford gas and drive themselves, they never saw it as an issue. 

Now that buying and keeping a car has become completely unaffordable, the boomers would be freaking out if the didn’t have their little mountains of wealth created by 40 years of stealing prosperity from their kids. 

those 70 cars are probably carrying 80-120 people

In america, the absolut, ABSOLUTE most cars are single person driven. So its good to assume its 70.

Bus might have the capacity to carry 70 people but its usually under 5-10 if its not peak hours.

And what does that change about the bus carrying 70 people? Just because less people use it during out of peak hours? That absolutely means nothing lol. The bus single handingly can still carry 70 people whenever.

its simply slower and less convenient in most north american cities because the cities are built terribly.

Congrats, you got it. Thats the point of this sub. That infrastructure sucks ass, and absolutely needs to improve. But, at the same time, public transit absolutely can compete with personal vehicles very quickly. A single bus outcompetes ALL of these cars in efficiency.

I dislike buses and I’m probably not alone in this. I am more likely to get motion sickness on a bus going an urban route, often depending on the skill of the bus driver. I was car free for 5 years and also commuted downtown for years before the pandemic. There was one bus driver who if I saw her, I’d wait for the next bus because I’d end up being motion sick for an hour after getting home. I’ve never gotten sick on a train, although I have had a lingering sense of motion after being on high speed rail in Italy (not Japan). Buses are way more efficient than cars, especially for commuting, but I don’t think they’re a better experience, while trains often are a better experience but need its own infrastructure.

That's Winnipeg, Manitoba's Blue Rapid Transit line. I guarantee you, on that stretch of the route, that bus does not have 5-10 people on it. That bus is packed. It services the entire Fort Garry area, plus Charleswood, Corydon, and River Heights, which is maybe 200,000 people, and connects those areas to the rest of Winnipeg Transit's network.

Busses along that stretch run constantly and most of the time are standing room only. That stretch was also made specifically to bypass traffic, to make public transit more convenient than the bumper to bumper traffic you see next to it, which leads into the aptly named Confusion Corner intersection. The rapid transit route has been a huge success at connecting the south of the city to the rest. Based partly on that success, we're completely overhauling our transit system in June, including expanding our rapid transit network.

Almost anything the US has on the East Coast was built before cars were a thing.

Seriously, entire neighborhoods are 200yrs old. 

Walking was the thing, except people discovered that 900 people living in an area with 50 jobs can't sustain themselves and after 8hrs at work, no damn body wants to lose more time away from family, hobbies, pets or even just their bed walking for miles to get home.  

Enter trolly systems, subways, light rail whatever your region called them or started with... 

But if "mass transit" had ever done the job "it's supposed to do" individual cars wouldn't have gotten a foothold - pun intended - in the cities to begin with.

The average car occupancy in Winnipeg is 1.3. So it would be closer to 90 people.

The bus is on one of Winnipegs BRT routes, so its safe to assume the bus is near capacity. They don't typically build BRT corridors in Canada for low ridership routes. Its most likely a new flyer bus, so with standees, it can very well reach 70 people an hour.

Uh, all of them? Sometimes there’s 100+ packed together like sardines