For a small segment of the trip. The problem with public transportation is that all these people are going to different locations and a bus being more efficient for 50% of the travel doesn’t really help you for the other 50%
The problem is not with public transportation, the problem is that the area surrounding this highway was designed so that more cars and more lanes were the only possible solution.
Cars create problems that only cars can solve.
Edit: and to add more context: those 50 different locations are all separated by massive mandatory parking lots which make them miles apart from each other when they could likely all be contained in the same building in front of a single bus stop.
Unless there’s another bus for the other 50% of the travel. The point of a public transportation system is to be just that - a system. To get from anywhere to anywhere else.
Where I live this will cause what would be a 15 minute car ride into 1.5 hours of hopping on different busses and then walking 1/2 mile to your destination on either end. I don’t have a problem with effective public transportation but outside of major population centers like Manhattan, I haven’t seen one that really works all that well here in the US.
Well, that’s the thing you could have it if you invested all the money that currently goes into highways. The amount of money is always limited (everybody hates taxes for a reason), so building large quantities of both is impossible.
Roads are always going to cost more in the end, but they’re easier to build incrementally. Boiling the frog situation.
Even if policy of your local government changes (which is at least a little up to you) you will still have to suffer the current situation and keep driving for a while before a better system is built. But that’s no reason to throw good money after the bad.
It wouldn’t be a 15 minutes car ride once the traffic jams start. The point of public transport is not to completely replace cars, but to provide an alternative for people. A good public transport system will cover most destinations so people won’t have to worry like you do about reaching your destination. By doing so, it will reduce cars on the road which will also benefit the people who do need to drive to where they want to go.
Eventually it will be robotic cars doing the last mile on systems like that. Most trips will still be in individual cars or maybe minivan size things, but people who are following very popular shared paths will be asked to step into a bus. When it’s all roboticized, we won’t need stations for that though. Cars will be able to
match bus speed and passengers can step from A to B while the whole thing’s in motion.
Next time on Beyond 2000, we’ll talk about decentralized DNS
As someone who has lived alone for eight years using only public transport in an area with excellent public transport, I can tell you that you are both right and wrong.
You are right in that if there is just one bus line, then it would only serve a small subset of people in this photo.
But if you only make one bus line then the public transport system is doomed to fail.
A good public transport system will have multiple lines converging to the same interchange, and in the opposite direction it will have multiple lines departing the same interchange, following the same route and branching off when needed, this way you have added capacity and redundancy at the start of the line, and it gets reduced as the need is reduced.
Then add lines that are circles in higher density areas, this means that no matter the direction all passengers can get on all departures, you csn also quickly add capacity by adding busses that goes in alternating directions.
All of this means that travellers can define their own route along different bus, train, tram, metro and ferry lines.
Public transport is not ment to be point to point, it builds a framework where people decide what parts the want to use.
Cars are just more precise in space and time. In a car you go from your origin to your destination, within lot-to-door distance, and you go exactly when you want to.
With public transportation, you travel a block
or two to enter the system, arrive a block or two from your destination, and you can only leave at certain intervals.
At my last job the commute was:
10 minute walk to the bus, 50 minutes on the bus, walk across parking lot to office.
You are technically correct, but you miss the great part of frequent departures in a public transport system.
During peak hours I have a buss departing my local stop every 10 min, it takes me 7 min to walk to the busstop, when I arrive to the metro my train usually departs within less than 5 minutes, it takes 2 min to walk down to the platform from the bus, if I miss the train, the next train will depart 5 min later. When I need to switch lines I just walk over the platform and my train will usualy arrive with in 2 min, though it is not unusual for the train to be at the platform and I have time to cross the platform.
When I then get to my destination I exit the metro and walk 100m to get to my office, my desk is actually just above the entrance/exit of the metro.
Obviously this is under optimal conditions, but it isn’t that uncommon either.
When you have public transport departures that frequent, you don’t really have to took at the timetable, you just walk down to the bus stop and with in minutes you are on the bus.
There are also dedicated buslanes along 97% of the way I take the busses, so traffic jams are seldom an issue.
And should there be an issue with my normal bus, I can walk 15 min to a different bus stop with other busses, or I can walk 20 min and get to the train/bus station and get on a train or yet another bus.
This is fine since large disruptions are quite infrequent.
Living in a city with actually good public transit, it is used to achieve exactly that. To get any one passenger from any one point within the metropolitan area, to any other. To work for everyone, even though every single person is starting from a different point, and going to a different destination.
It doesn’t matter where you’re going or from where. There is a public transit stop nearby at both ends.
The fuck do you mean “a small segment of the trip”? I share this city with a stupid number of other humans, only a small number of which I go to work with every day, yet a significant portion of of the entire city population travels to work, entertainment and shopping, using the exact same transit network.
Your trip may overlap with a varying number of entirely different individuals along each segment of the route, and at each end it might just be you walking a few dozen meters… But come on! The fact that it adds up is beyond obvious!
Your argument is only valid for mass transit, that isn’t actually mass transit.
And as density goes up (read less roads and carparks), the overlaps INCREASE and the whole thing gets more efficient.
There is a train station in Tokyo, that serves the same number of people every day, as there are citizens in my entire country.
Can you even imagine what a highway interchange that could serve 5 million people within 24 hours would look like? No, because it’s a physical impossibility.
The only reason the number can get so high, is because transit systems consolidate travellers even when they aren’t going to the same places.
I walked through a place that, at first, I thought
was a regular metro station. But then it just kept opening up more and more, into more and more spaces. It was like a mall. I guess it was like an airport terminal. Businesses all over.
When I finally left it, I thought I was underground and then turned a corner and there was open daylight, no door, not even a wall just like the opening of a huge cave.
Is that Cost in terms of building the system, or the time cost of using it?
Utility (or Time Cost, basically) seems like it should be up there, and I think that’s what you’re getting at with Frequency and Availability?
I think the time cost of using the system is the most important factor in designing a transit system.
Because every human has a finite amount of time. It’s our most precious resource.
Honestly if you’re willing to count a premature death in terms of a life containing X number of hours, I think that Safety factor can be put into perspective.
Obviously there’s also the enjoyability factor. A five minute trip during which your sunburn gets scratched mercilessly might not be better than a 15 minute trip in a jacuzzi.
But barring huge differences in comfort countering the effect, Time Cost of using should be the main thing, since everyone’s time is valuable.
For a small segment of the trip. The problem with public transportation is that all these people are going to different locations and a bus being more efficient for 50% of the travel doesn’t really help you for the other 50%
The problem is not with public transportation, the problem is that the area surrounding this highway was designed so that more cars and more lanes were the only possible solution.
Cars create problems that only cars can solve.
Edit: and to add more context: those 50 different locations are all separated by massive mandatory parking lots which make them miles apart from each other when they could likely all be contained in the same building in front of a single bus stop.
Unless there’s another bus for the other 50% of the travel. The point of a public transportation system is to be just that - a system. To get from anywhere to anywhere else.
Where I live this will cause what would be a 15 minute car ride into 1.5 hours of hopping on different busses and then walking 1/2 mile to your destination on either end. I don’t have a problem with effective public transportation but outside of major population centers like Manhattan, I haven’t seen one that really works all that well here in the US.
Well, that’s the thing you could have it if you invested all the money that currently goes into highways. The amount of money is always limited (everybody hates taxes for a reason), so building large quantities of both is impossible.
Roads are always going to cost more in the end, but they’re easier to build incrementally. Boiling the frog situation.
Even if policy of your local government changes (which is at least a little up to you) you will still have to suffer the current situation and keep driving for a while before a better system is built. But that’s no reason to throw good money after the bad.
It wouldn’t be a 15 minutes car ride once the traffic jams start. The point of public transport is not to completely replace cars, but to provide an alternative for people. A good public transport system will cover most destinations so people won’t have to worry like you do about reaching your destination. By doing so, it will reduce cars on the road which will also benefit the people who do need to drive to where they want to go.
Eventually it will be robotic cars doing the last mile on systems like that. Most trips will still be in individual cars or maybe minivan size things, but people who are following very popular shared paths will be asked to step into a bus. When it’s all roboticized, we won’t need stations for that though. Cars will be able to match bus speed and passengers can step from A to B while the whole thing’s in motion.
Next time on Beyond 2000, we’ll talk about decentralized DNS
As someone who has lived alone for eight years using only public transport in an area with excellent public transport, I can tell you that you are both right and wrong.
You are right in that if there is just one bus line, then it would only serve a small subset of people in this photo.
But if you only make one bus line then the public transport system is doomed to fail.
A good public transport system will have multiple lines converging to the same interchange, and in the opposite direction it will have multiple lines departing the same interchange, following the same route and branching off when needed, this way you have added capacity and redundancy at the start of the line, and it gets reduced as the need is reduced.
Then add lines that are circles in higher density areas, this means that no matter the direction all passengers can get on all departures, you csn also quickly add capacity by adding busses that goes in alternating directions.
All of this means that travellers can define their own route along different bus, train, tram, metro and ferry lines.
Public transport is not ment to be point to point, it builds a framework where people decide what parts the want to use.
Cars are just more precise in space and time. In a car you go from your origin to your destination, within lot-to-door distance, and you go exactly when you want to.
With public transportation, you travel a block or two to enter the system, arrive a block or two from your destination, and you can only leave at certain intervals.
At my last job the commute was:
10 minute walk to the bus, 50 minutes on the bus, walk across parking lot to office.
The same commute by car was 15 minutes.
You are technically correct, but you miss the great part of frequent departures in a public transport system.
During peak hours I have a buss departing my local stop every 10 min, it takes me 7 min to walk to the busstop, when I arrive to the metro my train usually departs within less than 5 minutes, it takes 2 min to walk down to the platform from the bus, if I miss the train, the next train will depart 5 min later. When I need to switch lines I just walk over the platform and my train will usualy arrive with in 2 min, though it is not unusual for the train to be at the platform and I have time to cross the platform.
When I then get to my destination I exit the metro and walk 100m to get to my office, my desk is actually just above the entrance/exit of the metro.
Obviously this is under optimal conditions, but it isn’t that uncommon either.
When you have public transport departures that frequent, you don’t really have to took at the timetable, you just walk down to the bus stop and with in minutes you are on the bus.
There are also dedicated buslanes along 97% of the way I take the busses, so traffic jams are seldom an issue.
And should there be an issue with my normal bus, I can walk 15 min to a different bus stop with other busses, or I can walk 20 min and get to the train/bus station and get on a train or yet another bus.
This is fine since large disruptions are quite infrequent.
Oh sorry, 20 buses to cover all the sectors these people are going to then.
So what?
Living in a city with actually good public transit, it is used to achieve exactly that. To get any one passenger from any one point within the metropolitan area, to any other. To work for everyone, even though every single person is starting from a different point, and going to a different destination.
It doesn’t matter where you’re going or from where. There is a public transit stop nearby at both ends.
The fuck do you mean “a small segment of the trip”? I share this city with a stupid number of other humans, only a small number of which I go to work with every day, yet a significant portion of of the entire city population travels to work, entertainment and shopping, using the exact same transit network.
Your trip may overlap with a varying number of entirely different individuals along each segment of the route, and at each end it might just be you walking a few dozen meters… But come on! The fact that it adds up is beyond obvious!
Your argument is only valid for mass transit, that isn’t actually mass transit.
And as density goes up (read less roads and carparks), the overlaps INCREASE and the whole thing gets more efficient.
There is a train station in Tokyo, that serves the same number of people every day, as there are citizens in my entire country.
Can you even imagine what a highway interchange that could serve 5 million people within 24 hours would look like? No, because it’s a physical impossibility.
The only reason the number can get so high, is because transit systems consolidate travellers even when they aren’t going to the same places.
I think I may have been to that train station.
I walked through a place that, at first, I thought was a regular metro station. But then it just kept opening up more and more, into more and more spaces. It was like a mall. I guess it was like an airport terminal. Businesses all over.
When I finally left it, I thought I was underground and then turned a corner and there was open daylight, no door, not even a wall just like the opening of a huge cave.
That’s why frequency is one of the most important factors for public transportation.
And good coverage.
They’re all up there. I’d probably go with
Is that Cost in terms of building the system, or the time cost of using it?
Utility (or Time Cost, basically) seems like it should be up there, and I think that’s what you’re getting at with Frequency and Availability?
I think the time cost of using the system is the most important factor in designing a transit system.
Because every human has a finite amount of time. It’s our most precious resource.
Honestly if you’re willing to count a premature death in terms of a life containing X number of hours, I think that Safety factor can be put into perspective.
Obviously there’s also the enjoyability factor. A five minute trip during which your sunburn gets scratched mercilessly might not be better than a 15 minute trip in a jacuzzi.
But barring huge differences in comfort countering the effect, Time Cost of using should be the main thing, since everyone’s time is valuable.
Cost of using it
You know, buses… They make more than one stop.
And that accounts for why they take so much longer than a car to get you from the same point A to the same point B.