I am looking from the point of view of physics. Transit runs buses and trains, each making frequent stops to load/unload passengers, and, busses, at least, obey the same traffic laws the cars have to obey, e.g. they cannot run red lights or drive against traffic on a one way street. Even not counting the suboptimal route, a bus will always be slower than a car, it's just physics. Trains might travel faster since they don't use roads but their routes are even less optimal because the railroad is a giant nuisance on top of being expensive so you are likely to spend more time getting to/from a station than you can win on a faster travel.
But I see that your suggestion is actually to degrade the infrastructure to the point that you need to spend a lot of time to park. That's quite an "improvement".
> busses, at least, obey the same traffic laws the cars have to obey, e.g. they cannot run red lights or drive against traffic on a one way street. Even not counting the suboptimal route, a bus will always be slower than a car, it's just physics.
Have you ever sat in traffic? I used to commute downtown Portland and driving took 1 hour during rush hour but taking the bus took 30 minutes AND I didn't have to park AND I got to read instead of curse at other drivers. Driving will always be faster when traffic is good but as we all know, traffic gets pretty bad in most places and would be much worse if it wasn't for alternative transit modes. Here is a good example of this working: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
Watch that video and then tell me driving is still faster because of physics
> But I see that your suggestion is actually to degrade the infrastructure to the point that you need to spend a lot of time to park. That's quite an "improvement"
Yes actually. I want wider sidewalks, bike paths, parklets, gardens, housing, and shops over automobile parking infrastructure for people who don't even live in my neighborhood.
I watched a video of several seconds of a bus driving past cars stopped at a red light, then the bus stopped and video cut off. I wonder what happened? Could have all these cars passed the bus? Hmmm, would not get upvotes on Reddit, would it? So yeah, physics still rule out reality outside Reddit as far as I am concerned and Google maps seem to agree with me. What was your Portland route, I can check it out too.
Do you really think all of those cars passed the bus? I have been on that route and I can tell you that the likelihood of that happening is 0. Also, the buses have priority signaling so they never have to wait at red lights for long
The route in Portland was downtown to approximately 42nd Street and powell. The bus drives on bus only roads and crosses a transit only bridge so it beats cars sitting in bumper to bumper traffic every time
Yes, the cars appear to be waiting on the red light and not in a jam. Google maps shows 14 min by car and 28 min by transit between SE 42nd Ave and Powell Blvd to the Pioneer Courthouse Square. I imagine there might be times when car traffic is impeded to the point it takes 60 mins, but Portland buses with dedicated lanes are not everywhere, they have the same problem as trains: the routes are limited and getting around Portland on transit is extremely slow in general.
I am getting 12-28 minutes to drive during rush hour and 27 minutes to take the bus. The car travel time also doesn't factor in walking to the parking garage (10ish minutes when I lived there) and was typically longer than what Google maps is predicting.
You are right that the routes are limited and that's it's a problem. However, this isn't because cars are better, it's because we built the city for cars. It's pretty telling that given all of the hostile car-centric infrastructure, buses can still be competitive to driving. I was resistant to taking the bus at first but then once I tried it, it was the obvious choice for me.
Buses are competitive to driving because they are subsidized, obviously. Poor or frugal people will choose a bus because they either cannot or don't want to afford a car. Ill people also might not be able to drive at all. This is why you don't see private buses. If they really had been competitive on their own, businesses ran them for profit.
And what would be an example of such a neighborhood? The afore mentioned SF and NYC do not appear to be so, other, often mentioned in such thread locale, Tokyo in Japan appears to be also quite large too (Tokyo proper is 850 square miles).
Compare a car-centric city like Houston to city center designed before cars. The entire historic center of Siena with a population of 30,000 people and hundreds of businesses fits in the space of one highway interchange in Houston[1].
There's more worth going to within a 10 minute walk in Siena the there is within a ten minute drive in Houston.
NYC, London or Tokyo also work as examples since traffic moves at a snail's pace. It's trivial to beat a car on transit and a moderately fit person could jog faster than a car there.
Google maps shows 29 min by car and 46 min by transit from HND to Skytree (these are few things I know in Tokyo, 5 hours by foot, btw) so I would not trust something you read on Reddit, much less in a community called literally "fuckcars", seems that it might be exaggerating to support its bias.
Same with Siena (I picked just random points "Hotel Athena" and "Farmacia Ravacciano" as they were highlighted on the maps) 17 mins by car, 26 mins by transit (though walking is faster than transit and biking is faster than car, apparently you cannot drive through the city, very progressive).
Change the time to rush hour in Tokyo on Google maps and the commute is the same. Cars are great if there is no traffic and you can park, which is something we can't just engineer ourselves out of without supporting other modes of transit.
> 17 mins by car, 26 mins by transit (though walking is faster than transit and biking is faster than car, apparently you cannot drive through the city, very progressive).
Walking is almost as fast as driving and biking is faster? Not sure how this proves your point, sounds like it is working as intended
My point is that transit is never faster than car, obviously if you close the streets to vehicles you can make places reachable only by foot. You can as well ban bicycles and biking won't be faster than anything. That is also the easiest way to fix a the daily HN thread about cars being too big and scaring cyclists:)
> My point is that transit is never faster than car, obviously if you close the streets to vehicles you can make places reachable only by foot.
This just isn't true, everything breaks down and driving becomes much slower during rush hour due to inherent limitations of, you guessed it, physics.
See my other comment about my rush hour bus commute in Portland, the bus was faster than driving because of dedicated bus lanes. Driving is only fast if there isn't traffic AND there is ample parking close to your destination.
That is obviously not true. Try driving through central London or central New York during rush hour. Subway will be much faster. Jogging will be faster for a moderately fit person.
Siena bans traffic out of necessity, not just on a whim. There simply isn't space for cars.
But I see that your suggestion is actually to degrade the infrastructure to the point that you need to spend a lot of time to park. That's quite an "improvement".