Genuine Question. Even if I look at hungarian Transport, and they to this day use trains from the UdSSR, they come more consistantly then the DB.
They are really Bad sometimes, with like 20 seperate prices: Theres the bayernwald ticket that only works in the alps, then theres the official ticket to the destination. Theres a special offer, but only in the very special APP. You can use a d-ticket, but look! Some random ass slum in the middle of the worlds ass dosent accept that, but it does the MVV zone Tickets. But then you need the MVV zone 11-M, a ticket to the beginning to the Nürnberg zones, and a ticket for the Nürnberg zones.
And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?
I happen to be a prime example of how bad US Rail is this week. I’m taking my son from near Fredericksburg (the real one), up to Ballston for a summer camp. We have a couple options:
- Drive
- Distance: ~70 miles one way, ~140 round trip
- Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes one way, with traffic. ~3.5 hours round trip.
- Cost:
- 4 gallons (US) of gas @ $3.50/gal: $14
- Wear and tear: estimate at 0.5 gas cost: $7
- Parking: $11
- Total: $32/day
- Distance: N/A
- Time:
- Drive to Fredericksburg station: 20 minutes
- VRE (Fredericksburg to L’Enfant station) - 1 hour 20 minutes
- WMATA (L’Enfant to Ballston) - 20 minutes
- Total: 2 hours one way, 4 hours round trip
- Cost:
- Drive: we’ll just ignore this, it’s close enough to zero.
- VRE: $23.56/person * 2 people: $47.12
- WMATA: $3.45/person * 2 people: $6.90
- Total: $54.02/day
So, for the low, low cost of about 1.68 times the cost of driving, we can take slightly longer to get to our destination and have zero control over our schedule, which makes the actual time devoted to travel considerably longer. We tried the public transit route last year, and it meant leaving earlier in the morning (about 30 minutes) to catch a train to get us there on time, and getting us home around 45 minutes later. And this is right around the US Capitol, which has some of the better transit options. Needless to say, we’re driving this year.
I really want to be able to take transit, but it’s basically dead in the US. Earlier this year, I needed to go to Boston for work. Catching a train from Washington, DC to Boston meant an 7 hour train ride (using the “high speed” Acela line) at ~$500 round trip. Flying was 1.5 hours and cost ~$300 round trip. Wanna guess which option I used?
Basically, all of the incentives are stacked against transit options in the US. Except within certain metro areas, driving or flying is always cheaper and faster. Yes, inside those metro areas, public transit can be great. I used to work in Washington, DC and used the VRE I mentioned earlier to get there and then WMATA or the Capital BikeShare to get to my office. That was great, since I didn’t have to drive into DC every day, which sucks big donkey balls. But it probably wasn’t cost effective and wasn’t really time efficient either.
American public transport
The what now?
I mean, it’s three words. You can put any two of them in a sentence. But not the third.
American Public? Public American?
i mean, can you get where you want to go, and back, by transit? if so it’s kilometers better than most american transit.
eta: wait, you’re talking rail specifically? then if you have any passenger rail, that’s already way better than most american cities.
I live in an area know for having some of the better public transport in the states. My drive to work is about 25 minutes. I can bus to work, but it takes almost three hours and three separate busses, and then I cannot bus home after work.
I live in a bigger US city that does have a metro. It’s not bad for doing longer trips in certain directions, when it’s working. But it breaks down at least a few times a year, and if you have to make a transfer to another train to make it to your destination, it’s often literally faster to walk.
What rail? We have Amtrak but it’s laughable even compared to the poorest European countries. It’s cars or nothing baby.
Amtrak doesn’t own the rail line in most areas, so the trains are regularly halted to allow commercial cargo to pass. I think the Zepher is last to its destination most of the time.
“American public transport”
Good joke! Best joke I heard since “American democracy”!
American public transit doesn’t exist outside of a couple major cities.
So yeah. Probably the absolute worst Europe has to offer is a world altering step up.
Yep. I’ve lived in 9 states so far. The only place I consistently used public transit was when I lived in NYC
Am American: this is correct
Hell, I’ve heard of Americans coming to Vancouver Canada and being pleasantly surprised about our public transit. We don’t even technically have a proper heavy metro, and the SkyTrain is classified as automated “light” metro, AKA the kind they have in tiny German towns that are too small for heavy metro or S-bahn, AKA basically the same as an airport peoplemover but built out for a metro area of 3 million people.
Red head kid “y’all have public transit?” Meme.
If it exists, it is better than American public transit. Here is my daily commute to work, as estimated by Google Maps:
Even Google goes “lmao use a fucking car, peasant.”It’s technically possible for me to take public transit, but it would be about the same as walking. Here is a quick sketch of the route I’d need to take, compared to my drive:
That route is because there are no east/west lines between me and my job. It starts by walking/riding my bike the wrong direction to get to the nearest bus stop. Then it takes me south-west through two cities, then north-west through two more cities. Then I’d have a ~20 minute walk to transfer rail lines, because my job is serviced by a different rail system than the one that my bus service touches. After that walk (and waiting for the next train) I take it north and then have to walk another 10-15 minutes to finally get to work.
Not counting wait times, it would take me nearly 2.5 hours to use public transit. When you consider the fact that some busses and trains only run once every 20-45 minutes, it actually stretches closer to 3-4 hours, if the schedules don’t line up. Or I could just fucking drive 10 minutes. Yeah, it’s no wonder Americans use cars for everything.
USA.jpegright there. That image is for everyone who lives there except for like three cities. And the bike route is actually crossing several major roads.And the bike route is actually crossing several major roads.
It’s worse: The bike route is on a two lane highway with no shoulder. I’d be dead on Day 1 if I actually tried to walk/ride a bike.
I used to just walk 1.5 hours to work sometimes because it was the same time the bus would take, to only drop me off 75minutes early for my shift, or ten minutes late. So I’d just walk.
Come to Greece we will make you cry
(3 whole lines of metro (U-Bahn) and buses that come once every 30 minutes)
if there is some kind of service to the general benefit of the public, you can presume America either does not have it, or will lose it within 5 years
What is public transport? I think we need to establish that first. You mean like…the school bus? That’s the only kind I’ve ever seen.
Kids get public transport, education, and sometimes even food
Old folks get walkable communities
College kids (at great expense) also do
The revealed preference is that we could have an excellent quality of life except for voters hating 18-65 year old adults
The infrastructure is set up for cars, and then everyone has to drive their own car because we can’t share a space respectfully. The only time I’d consider riding the bus is if I didn’t have a car and if I had to for work. In the states the view towards public transportation is that if you depend on it you’re not doing too well, which is sad. I commute 70 miles 1 way to work and would love to have a bullet train or something as an option. But as it is now, no, it’s not even an option. I had a previous coworker that took 2 buses to work every day, and he was always telling me about the “interesting” people he’d run into on the bus, like a guy with a puppet at 7:00 in the morning, or the drivers that didn’t know the schedule so they couldn’t tell him when another bus would be coming. No thanks.
