Require better utilization of the cars or you have to take the bus. Pretty simple.
people should be reminded that posts like these aren't really critical of people for not taking the bus. they're critical of systems and planning that don't make you want to take the bus.
if the bus is always packed people will not want to ride it. that's not on you.
if the bus is unreliable, that's not on you.
if there's no bus or public transit that goes where you want to go out somewhere of a reasonable walking distance, that's not on you.
if where you're going is not walkable in the first place, then taking the bus is pointless since once you arrive you'd need a car anyway.
demanding change however is on you.
it's not like cars are awesome by the way. they're inefficient, pricy, troublesome, there's traffic, parking... it's stressful and it's deadly to boot. if people are not taking the bus, the city has work to do.
I'm critical of all the people driving over sized SUVs by themselves in NYC when I'm trying to get a loaded box truck though a gridlocked intersection. Even if the city instruction doesn't have mass transit, you do not need Escalade over a commuter car.
Blame marketing (propaganda.) Our government has given control of our information networks to corporations and corporations use those channels to blast us with consumerist propaganda 24/7. People are taught that the type of car they drive defines who they are as a person so they do what they were taught and they buy a giant tank of a vehicle so that people will see them as dependable, manly, successful, outdoorsy, etc.
yeah just because you're not riding a bus doesn't mean you should get around with a Gigantus Pollutinator 9000 or a private jet, obviously.
An SUV in NYC is especially egregious. They could have taken the train from Yonkers, and used the bus/subway. You guys are the one city in the US that actually has decent mass transit.
If you actually live in the city, and own an SUV you are an idiot spending way too much on parking.
Sometimes being in my little car driving in NYC is more relaxing or faster. Most of the time taking public transportation takes the same amount of time as driving, so I'll pick driving so I don't have to be cold or hot while waiting or to deal with other people. The argument for making more public transportation faster, more frequent is a good one and would make more people use it.
I think (most) cars are awesome but want better public transit because there's way too many people who are terrible drivers.
If driving required licensing like an airplane pilot I'd still get one. And probably enjoy driving more because I could expect people to know how to zipper merge.
I just want people to learn how the fucking stop signs work.
True but people have less of a problem when I masturbate in my car.
Honestly? I judge you every time man, but I can't tear my eyes away
Majestic, isn’t it? I don’t send dick pics because they just can’t capture its grandeur.
Yeah. You meed a better setup for that. Just a basic 10x+oculus doesn't cut it. Your microscope needs some immersion fluid for the 400x.
If this is America/Canada while it could be carrying more people the sad truth is that it's probably carrying half a dozen people because it's likely going from one unwalkable neighborhood to another. Especially up here in BC there's a stark difference between downtown buses running between unis, skytrain and the dense core of Vancouver to the ones you'll see in a suburban hell like Burnaby.
Or it takes prohibitively longer than a driving.
My wife considered taking the bus to work, but it would take 2 hours to get 20 minutes down the road.
Also add the fact that a bus pass is more expensive than our car insurance.
Yea, these are some of the hardest things we need to address to make non-driving more popular in North America - overseas the increased density lends itself a lot more naturally to public transit.
Australian manages pretty good urban public transport, with a much lower density than the US
(Our rural public transport effectively doesn't exist though)
Where I recently moved to, everything is a 10-20 min drive away, but buses can be over an hour because how poorly they're done. Apparently they used to be quite bad, but recent changes made them awful and no one understands how the new routes and timetables managed to be approved and implemented.
I'm starting to develop a vigor for public transit to match the one forced on us for car infrastructure in the 60s. Bigger, taller, more, I want 3 bus lanes and a tram line to any town in the country. We can do no wrong taking back all the space we gave to the car, as long as the garbage truck fits on the street, car users can share 1 lane both directions. Take their parking, take their license for rolling stops and using their phone, gift them e-bikes.
Make transit free, let the highways rot, expand the railways. Sorry for that pothole, all the money was used up by rail.
Just anything better than we have now. If we have to act fast and break things, so be it.
, car users can share 1 lane both directions.
Oh God, I don't trust them with that.
I visited India 30 years ago and (in the southern part of the country at least) the major highways between cities had a single paved lane in the middle and then just dirt and gravel on the steeply-sloped sides. So on bus trips the drivers would stick to the middle until the last possible second and then veer off so that just the right wheels were on the pavement as they passed each other while tipping crazily to each side. I made the huge mistake on my first trip of sitting in the front seat; I later corrected my mistake by always taking the fucking train, which didn't have this problem.
insane that the bus gets its own lane \s
True! 10-12 more cars could have fit on that road if it wasn't for that stupid bus.
But the poors have to get to their jobs serving me...
I got it! Let's widen the road! Nobody uses the sidewalk anyway. /S
Well, I need to stop by fedex, go the the grocery store, and pick up dry cleaning all before I get home. Then I need to make dinner. So, if the bus takes 1.5 hours and driving takes 15 minutes… the car wins.
We should really say fuck urban sprawl. I’d love to walk to work 🤷
I can do all of those things with a 5 minutes walk in my European city. And I don't even live in the city centre.
Mixed zoning and walkable cities are the solution.
ex Londoner here, I can plot that route in my head by walking around Clapham Common station where I used to live.
My city started a program using taxes to pay for half the bus fares of citizens
So I looked things up.
Going to the nearest grocery store:
35 minutes walk 15 minutes bike ride 6 minutes car trip 90 minutes bus ride somehow
Even if there's only two or three things a month that transit is better for, you're gonna get reductions in traffic. It doesn't have to be a full car replacement to be worth bigtime investments.
And it's the only thing that scale.
Well those things are like in the same mall where the parking absolutely sucks, so bus was way easier.
Lets assume we disqualify the cars going left ro right, and if we also assume each car only has 1 person per car, that means the cars is 32.
A bus that size is usually built to fit around 50ish people using every seat, but none standing.
I ride my local bus everyday. It's NEVER full like that. I might have 6 people on the bus. Sometimes I'm the only rider.
So, yeah, a bus CAN hold roughly as many prople as cars, (again assuming only 1 person per car, which probably isn't the case 100%), the reality is that's not functionally true.
Even if it's only carrying 6 people it's still doing a better job than the cars which on average probably have 1-2 people in each of them.
The bus I ride every morning is always so full you struggle to get past the standing people to get to the door. The bus home is usually a little less busy, but I'm currently writing this comment while having to stand on that bus.
Badly designed transit is not a condemnation of all public transit. Specially when in most of the world public transit is vastly more occupied than in the US and Canada, by the simple fact of actually connecting places people want to go, where people can then walk around when they get there. Parking lots are not destinations.
tbf, it's only possibly not true because of intentional choices in city design and general social attitudes.
That being said, I live in a pretty shitty area for bus transport (I'm in the USA, no less) and the busses are still usually mostly full when I use them.
Normally I would wholeheartedly agree but today I'm only at 95% agreement because the bus was a complete fucking no-show and I had to run down 2 blocks to get back to my buildings' lot to jump in my car and drive to work to get there on time. A big part of the reason I'm mad though is that I hate driving so that's still a point in favor of the bus.
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