I remember going to a job interview when I was younger. My dad dropped me off there on his way to work and then I took the bus home after my interview was done. It took my dad about 13 minutes to drive me to the interview and it took me TWO AND A HALF hours to take transit home. That includes bus travel time as well as time spent waiting for buses. I have also biked that route before and it takes about 25-30 minutes one-way.
The North American approach (because Canada is guilty too) to transit is to just throw a bunch of busses at the problem and act like they've "solved traffic". Meanwhile those buses are noisy, stinky, often unsafe things which spend most of their time stuck in traffic and are almost always late, if they even arrive at all. Most of the bus routes in my city stop at midnight so if you were out at the bar for the night and needed a way to get home then you better have funds for a cab or Uber or you're going to be stranded. (something something car-centric cities encourage drunk driving deaths somethingsomething)
Depending on the distance you need to travel - it's often faster to just walk. That's right, we have created a method of transportation that is actually slower than walking. And all the while our city planners, officials, and politicians pat themselves on the back for their "commitments to public transit".
And don't even get me started on how the war on unhoused people has lead to almost all bus stops being uncovered and with no seating. Raining? Fuck you! Snowing? Fuck you! 35c+ outside? Fuck you! Disabilities? Fuck you! What few covered stops I have seen usually have glass roofs so the sun still cooks you under them.
Maybe more people would use this method of transportation if it literally wasn't intentionally made to be as miserable and useless as possible.
I was excited because I thought the bike path extension construction was going through, federal funding had been secured. I’d have been able to bike my kid over to daycare in a year. Well I guess the time to start building ran out and the funding expired. I don’t precisely know why, but I heard a council member was being petty. I’m so very disappointed In addition, that daycare closed down as well, so moot I guess
The US needs so, so, so much reform. Especially regarding public transit. In most parts of the nation anything that isn't a car stuck in traffic is for poor people who are also disregarded across volumes of needs issues.
We're falling back to where we were in the great depression, and it still seems nothing short of violence and bloodshed will stop our ownership class from exploiting the rest of us.
This is why we Americans may be happy to hang out and chat on /c/fuckcars, and try to vote for sane transportation policies, but then also be like lol no I can’t actually get rid of my car.
Every big American city you’ve ever heard of is solid “car” except for the heart of New York. Now just imagine what it’s like for the folks in rural areas or even in the suburbs of medium cities.
This is a pretty sparsely populated country on average, and it’s all designed assuming everybody is in a car. Sidewalks and bike lanes get sprinkled around where there’s room and desire for them.
Did San Francisco sink into the bay? It looks like the map didn't include it, shame since that's probably the only place outside NYC that may be a different color.
EDIT:
Looks like someone else noticed it to and did a close up on the original. It shows SF is public transit and also shows that dc is missing on this map as well and also is more public transit then driving, so not just New York. You can also see it by borough in NY and Staten Island is cars but Hudson county NJ is public transit too.
USA should play a bit of OpenTTD or other public transit simulators on their country map to get some ideas ^^
I'm surprised the Chicago area isn't orange/red..
I do walk to work when I can, but right now I'm sitting here stuck because it's pouring (like it does every afternoon/evening in the summer here). If I could have brought my car, it would be waiting for me in the covered parking garage!
Getting an electric bike this month and that will let me arrive not sweaty, but it won't solve the getting home in the rain. There are actually THREE separate bus routes I can take from my house to work with about a block of walk on each end but whenever I could bus or bike I could walk, once I leave the house I never feel like spending the fare, it's only a mile.
In the other half of the year it's easy to get here without a car but only because I refuse to work anywhere that is not on a bus line and close by.
Here, the city tries but unfortunately transit is run by the county not the city.
See there are some problems here.
I can't get to my doctor, or dentist, or grocery store, or pharmacy, or bowling alley, or friend's house, or closest pond, or my parents, or the airport without driving to each of those places.
The only way this gets solved is if there is a huge network of buses going to every neighborhood at tight intervals then each business Park and public attraction, etc at tight intervals. In a town of what 150k-200k?
Outside of metro areas, this doesn't work. At all.
Reform alone will not be enough. It needs a new revolution.
