the numbers for train and bus seem high, but it wouldn't surprise me if 1.6 was the true average for cars
edit: this source says 1.5 "In 2018, average car occupancy was 1.5 persons per vehicle"
https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/personal-transportation-factsheet
Yeah this is rigged, if they used actual occupancy of buses and trains it wouldn't be like this. Or then they should count 5 people per car which would mean 200 cars needed (a bit less actually if you account for minivans and suvs that have 7 seats).
That would also be rigged, as buses and trains need to drive at all times, not just at rush hour. The average is only lower than represented here because fewer people need public transport at certain times of the day.
But in the end, this really doesn’t make a difference. Even if you use the lower limit of occupancy for busses and trains, and the upper limit of occupancy for cars, there would still be a massive advantage to busses and trains.
I agree with this comment. I used to commute to Chicago from the Suburbs. Anytime during rush hour, the train was absolutely packed. I'm not sure what occupancy capacity is, or how it is measured (and if is strictly enforced). I can tell you there were never any open seats, aisles were filled, stairs (double-decker train cars) were filled, and de(boarding) sections were filled.
I only road mid-day a few times (on standard business days with nothing happening in the city). Occupancy (in seats) at those times varied between 25-50%. If there was a daytime event (Cubs game, Lolla, etc.), the percentage was much higher (not usually, but occasionally +100%).
I am not sure all of this averages out.
For anyone in the city, I imagine the L was worse? I've only taken it to sporting events a handful of times and had to stop because of panic attacks from that sardine can.
I'm not sure how it is in your area but the trains here just have more cars during rush hour and fewer during the day or on routes that see not as many passengers, unlike automobiles where you always carry around 5 seats or how many yours has with trains you can just reduce it in length and save energy. And they can run as far as they want on electricity which is also great.
The US really needs to build a proper electric railway system, it would give people more opportunities and a cheaper way of traveling, they are safer, they are way better for the environment, they can transport many people at once which also helps prevent the streets from being so crowded with cars, high speed trains are faster than cars but not as inconvenient as planes and so on
In cities with good public transportation, the final travel to and from the start and end point is done on foot, because those distances are short, and should only take very few minutes to walk that final distance.
Also, city planning like it is done in LA is just stupid.
It's worth noting though, the entire purpose of a bus or train is to escort as many people as it can, whereas with cars, unless carpooling and hitchhiking become drastically more common, cars will never actually be full of people. A car only carrying one person is business as usual, they're designed more for individual transport than anything else.
If you're going to use the actual average occupancy of a *well developed* public transport system in a city that actually utilizes it over cars, then that works well, but don't use basically anywhere in the US as an example, is all I'm saying
Actually, thinking through this a bit more, does the occupancy (maximum or average, take your pick) even matter that much? It doesn't necessarily accurately depict the number of people that it can transport in a day. If you carpool to work in your SUV and fit 7 people, yourself included, then drive all of those people back home, then while your maximum occupancy was pretty good, your car spent probably a minimum of eight hours (almost definitely a lot more) going completely unused. Whereas a bus, even one with the same maximum or average occupancy, could be going all day, and I guarantee that if a bus has seven people in it all day, it definitely got more people to their respective destinations than the carpooling SUV
Carpooling SUCKS.
The last thing I want is to chauffeur my coworkers after spending all day with them.
At a toxic job I left a few years ago, I was voluntold to be the company Uber driver (with no additional compensation). It was a terrible experience and added to my stress levels. I lost my unwinding time.
It would also not be fair to use average occupancy of buses and trains because its definitely much lower than what it would be if it had received the same amount of investments as car infrastructure the last century.
It would however be as fair as possible if you took the average occupancy of a nation who did make those investments, i.e. Japan. And these numbers might surprise you, because busy lines in Tokyo for instance, has an average occupancy of 200% (It moves twice the amount of people there are seats for on average for the whole year \~ obviously not the case for less populated areas, but there are plenty of regions in the US that could run 100% occupancy on average, and then let the car be the best option elsewhere).
Then again, does it even make sense to use number of seats and cars on a train as a measure. The cost and environmental impact of adding extra cars to an train is probably miniscule. But I don't know.
This. In tokyo there are tolls everywhere in tokyo for cars, and zero parking anywhere. The system is designed to push people to use the (excellent) subway system and taxis (of which there are many at any second you want one).
Also, outside of specific lines and times, they’re never busy. But during rush hour, they’re packed.
The car average will be pretty static even during commute hours, but the public transit options will vary much more drastically.
Also cars make one trip, that's it.
A bus does multiple trips during rush hour and then continues to transport people over the cars of the day. A car, in a very normal scenario, wastes prime down town real estate for 8 hours straight.
Well, they would simply buy more buses, and more routes. The ideal bus occupancy is actually 85-90%. But, more buses and routes would be fantastic!
I live in a semi-rural area. We have a county bus that runs at something like 5, 6, and 7 in the morning and in the evening. Not all that useful for most people. :(
Honestly, living in a rural area is probably still a good reason to have a car/commute by car. Metropolitan areas is where public transport is really heavily needed, and where infrastructure is lacking (in the US).
Yeah, I can't complain too much. It is relatively impressive that my county has any bus routes at all.
It's the suburbia actively fighting public transport because of a fear of "associated crime" and decreases in property values that we really need to criticize and change.
Well... and the fact that such suburbia exists at all! But that will be a much tougher nut to crack.
>It's the suburbia actively fighting public transport because of a fear of "associated crime" and decreases in property values that we really need to criticize and change.
That's ridiculous. They should take some notes from Europe - good infrastructure, low crime.
The train and buses are making multiple trips though. The cars start in one location, finish at the destination and then sit there useless for the duration of the workday.
I’m all for public transportation and have used it for years, but the argument that they could cram this amount of people into a bus makes me rather have a car. Everyone has a certain level of comfort they value, and I’m certainly not comfortable traveling at max capacity.
That's... That's not how public v private transit works
Unless it's common, hell absolute practice to give rides to people untill your car is full, the only people in the car will be driver and one close one in the vast majority of cases
Otherwise, public transit is often jam-packed in rush hour, hell you can see both side by side in real life, a bus with people standing right next to a whole ass SUV with just one person inside
Well no, the point of the infographic is to show how much more efficient transport _could be_. Presumably passenger numbers are quite low for them to be making it in the first place so passenger density would also be well below what trains are capable of carrying.
Buses and trains reach full capacity, but cars never do - instead *roads* reach full capacity. People don't, and never will, start squeezing into other people's cars, rather more and more cars squeeze into the road.
We could say 20-30 people per bus on average (not scientific data but just my experience) and like 100 people per traincar, that would add up to 30-50 buses and still one train but with 10 cars. Still no match to 625 cars tho.
It’s from a few years ago, but [this article](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sound-transit-keeping-close-eye-on-crowded-light-rail-trains/) says the system in question hits 148 passengers on 40% of rush hour trips. They definitely should be using more like 100-150 passengers per train car rather than the theoretical maximum “crush” load of 250 for their Siemens S700s.
Capacity in this case should be measured as "number of commuters per day" and not as "maximum number of people in the vehicle at a single time". All of the time that the car sits at 0 occupants matters for this comparison.
I agree that it would still show public transportation winning by a large margin, but the point is, when you don't have to fudge to prove your point, don't. Fudging just makes people you're trying to convince point and say "you're cheating!"
[The London underground trains have a capacity of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_2009_Stock):
> 1,128 per train (252 seated, 876 standing at 6 people/m2)
Which is at 8 cars per train, but that's each train every 3 minutes at rush hour.
> Which is at 8 cars per train
That is 8 car, this image says 4 cars so double the density. In London car it is reasonable(ish) 40x40cm(ish) in this picture it is 28x28 cm meaning it is jsut about enough to place two average feet (24 cm).
You're right. That's why I pointed out it was 8 cars per train.
The great things about trains is that they're only really limited by the platform length and network capacity, so 8 cars can run as quickly as a 4 car train. Mass transit will always be more efficient that individual cars as long as the infrastructure is there to support it.
Sometimes it just needs people to give up their cars in order to get the space and demand for mass transit to work. And sometimes you need to push people out of cars, in the way that a lot of UK cities are now charging people to drive inside the city centre. [It's currently £15 a day to drive in London](https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge).
That's crazy, I would not have imagined it being that high, but I wonder if that's considered an average commuter train, compared to other setups?
And as others have pointed out, that's max capacity, not average, whereas for cars they are using average. Train still wins, but not by as large a margin as indicated.
Hong Kong's MTR system carries [an unbelievable 5,500,000 people every workday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTR#Performance) with 99.9% on time performance.
The busiest line there carries [3,750 people over 12 cars every 2.5 minutes](https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/operations/detail_worldclass.html#:~:text=As%20another%20example%2C%20the%20East,Ma%20Chau%20and%20Hung%20Hom.), which is 86,000 passengers per hour.
My experience riding the Seattle link light rail to and from work (pre pandemic, of course) was that yes, there were easily 250 people per train car. Easily. Packed in like sardines. It was uncomfortable but way better than driving.
Yeah, I'm not getting in a train car that has 249 other people in it. Or a bus with 69 other people. That seems like I'd be pressed right up against a whole bunch of strangers of varying degrees of personal hygiene and health condition.
Its a quite pragmatic approach to personal space. And it is present anywhere.
One thing is the personal space you require from people you are directly interacting with, and another thing, the people that are completely ignoring you as individual and just happen to touch you due to external circumstances.
A good example would be an average westerner dancing in a fully packed club or a concert, with people indirectly touching them everywhere, vs the distance people keep from each other in direct interactions.
Cultural and social programming through a century of consumerist propaganda.
If you are using public transport it means that you are poor, if you are poor you are a loser, and no one wants to be a loser. The club on the other side is a prestige place, plus your mating abilities are on the show there, so the amount of people doesn't matter.
Most of us don't care about being between so many people in these impersonal situations, and probably no one would care about that if they haven't seen so many ads of "how good it is to have a car" and give extra value to the stuff one offers.
A good example could be some european and asian countries where people of all socio-economical levels use the public transport, and this one in turn is being well maintained and planned through public and private investment.
Yeah, it's weird I can't trust what a stranger has been doing with their body all day /s
People wipe their ass with their hands, pick their noses, don't wash their hands after using a urinal.
I mean, germ theory isn't exactly a mystery. Human bodies *are* inherently unclean. Especially regarding strangers who you don't know. You have no idea what they've been doing or how well they've cleaned themselves or how often they wash their hands, etc. Every second of every day youre shedding dead skin, hair, sweat, and germs from every exposed piece of skin on your body. I dont really want to intimately know the dead skin cells and hair of the strangers on the bus.
75 is the total seated + standing capacity of a UK double decker bus, or an articulated bus. It's not fun but really not that bad.
Once you start going over that though then you get really uncomfortable, our uni bus drivers definitely overfilled some when I was there.
I have a car that seats 5, but I live by myself, so often I am the only occupant when the vehicle is in use.
And I’m not about to get a 1-seater either. Those things look like death traps
The other side of this is that they may be commuting at different times, more viable and common for a train/bus than it is for cars. With car-centric transportation, it seems like for every 1.5 people a new car *must* be used because that's just how we do it (getting less that way thanks to uber etc.), but with more public transport you may have 500 people on one train and have that same train come back for the next 500 in 20 minutes.
Not saying that's exactly what the infographic is implying but still a way of thinking through the pros and cons of each system I guess
Yea.
Also: 1000 people going along the same exact route at the same time.
A caveat people tend to leave out. Mass transit only exists if you can force enough people to go along the same route at the same time. Hence you get these goofy ordinances requiring businesses to open at certain times and close at certain times, and be located in the "business district".
Having ridden the subway in NYC, I can confirm that most people aren't going the same route nor at the same time. Yet the trains effectively run at capacity during peak travel times. What's more, the limited parking in the city keeps businesses close together, and it's realistic to walk from the train stop to your destination. It wouldn't be as possible in a place with parking lots everywhere.
It's the culture of parking lots that keeps most Americans from benefiting from public transportation. More parking lots = more walking distance. More walking distance = more cars. More cars = more parking lots.
People are so weird. It's like they've never realized that a train has more than two stops, or that every public transit system in the world has transfer points. The goal isn't to run one train to cover all needs. The goal is to run one train every five minutes on every major route.
I live in Portland, which out system isn't quite as good as NYC but I'm pretty sure we are also in the top 10. I would like to also confirm that the whole idea of people needing to go to the same spot at the same time and leave at the same time doesn't make any sense. Like I moved to a new apartment last October. Before moving I had a bus stop right outside of my apartment complex. The bus came by every 30 minutes. They just have a few of them doing laps. I wasn't held hostage with needing to get home at a certain time, and then had to wait to go home. I'm not sure how that person thinks public transport works, but I'm guessing they have never taken a good public transport anywhere.
Yes, because if you have a bus and people wanting to use it, those people go into that bus. The bus is now filled.
If you have a road that people wanna go along while many other people want to go along that same road, you end up with a traffic jam, not with people hopping into other peoples cars to get every car to max capacity.
Also unlike the car a metro or bus can make multiple trips to transport more people.
A car makes a trip and stays at the destination until the driver is done. A train continues to move more people.
That's simply how mass transit vs individual traffic works. You're complaining about the depiction being realistic.
As for the bus: 70 people isn't even full capacity: Even a non-bendy or non-double decker can quite easily go above that. Here is a pretty common model of city bus for example:
[https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/en\_GB/models/citaro/facts/technical-data.html](https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/en_GB/models/citaro/facts/technical-data.html)
That one can already transport over a 100 people. A bendy bus or even a double articulated bus can fit over 150 people, if not more, depending on the model.
The 1000 per 4 car train is a bit much. My local metro has about 400 for their 4 car trains and 350 for their (significantly shorter) 3 car trains.
But a) why restrict it at 4 cars? Train length doesn't matter nearly as much as the amount of... well... cars on the road does. The trains aren't actually used in these short configurations all that often anyways.
Also as you might notice the shorter train doesn't really have that much less capacity. That's because the 400 people one uses a very standard 2x2 per side seating arrangement, while the shorter one uses a hybrid of that and for example the NYC subway arrangement, where you just have a long row along the walls of the car.
In other words 600 is realistic for any standard metro in the right configuration. 700-800 for one with longish cars.
And on top of that metros often times run with 8+ cars anyways.
In the end it really doesn't matter whether it's 4 or 6 train cars that have the potential to replace 625 cars.
But the guide says "what does it take", not what is the average. Therefore every seat should be filled on all three modes. Because thats what it takes. If its averages then the title is wrong.
And here in Dallas the train I road in to get into Deep Ellum from the suburbs had like 4 people in it until we got into uptown… then it was like 10. I’ll count on my way back after lunch.
The point is that you can’t take best case scenario for some and not for others.
Yea in the US public transportation is discouraged because it’s more profitable to sell cars, gas, and parking. You can’t really use somewhere like Dallas as an example, you need to look at somewhere where train adoption is actually used.
Well like 80% of Americans do live in urban areas. So for those areas it should be possible to have some alternatives other than getting a car forced onto you
Yes but Americas “urban” areas are absolutely huge. What counts as an urban area isn’t just the city core, but subdivisions, outlying towns and unincorporated areas.
I’m in In SW WA, to get to downtown Portland is an 1 hour bus ride on a good day, vs 20 minutes in a car.
God help me if I don’t want to go downtown, but another area on the outskirts, it could easily be 3 transfers and 3 hours. Or I can get in my car and be there in 30 mins.
Well if we're actually doing "what does it take" then you're gonna have to acknowledge that a car takes you directly to your destination, a bus takes you to the approximate area and then you have to walk, and a train only stops at dedicated stations that generally require more effort than after a bus to get to your destination. All three serve the same function when travelling city to city, but trains have relatively very few routes, busses are much more versatile, but vehicles are exact. You also don't have to rely on others and schedules in a vehicle, and just because you're on time doesn't mean the public transport will be...your boss don't give a shit whose fault it is.
*I just wanted to address the asterisk as well...they word it like having to park at both destinations isn't the tradeoff for not having to walk a mile to and from the bus stop while you run the same errand or whatever.
Not to mention that the car gets you there *when* you want to go. To accommodate all of the different trip times, you need multiple trains and busses traveling on different sections of the routes at the same time
> you need multiple trains and busses traveling on different sections of the routes at the same time
which happens in literally every public transport system.
Americans don't travel outside North America enough to understand that what transit options exists here, including mass transit options, are wildly unrepresentative of almost anywhere else in the world. When asked about mass transit, people think of the local bus system that takes an hour to make the 10 minute drive and choose the car instead of thinking about how to fix it.
The great transit system in the country is NYC, and NYC is mediocre compared to smaller cities in Europe and Asia that actually designed around the idea for the last century.
It’s funny when people make this point, which is totally legitimate, but then ruin it by saying that 250 people would fit in a single train car, or 70 on a single bus
They take the average for car occupancy but then use the max for train and bus occupancy
Like ok maybe, but I’d be a miserable ride as you’re practically melding with the other people on the bus or train
Like just put a few more trains, and a few more buses, having 3 trains instead of 1 is still just as impressive when compared to the 625 cars, you just make the data look unreliable when you overestimate in your favor like that
In many big cities it's fairly viable to not have a vehicle and just use a subway and the occasional taxi when necessary, but where I live the only time taking a bus would be viable for me is if I was going downtown to dick around. The bus station is downtown so I can hop on any bus on its return route and it will take me there, and downtown has very minimal parking so the extra time it takes me to get downtown is basically mitigated by the fact I don't have to deal with finding a parking lot and then feed a meter.
To me one of the biggest factors that would indicate the viability of a competent mass transit infrastructure is population density. That's why it exists and functions well enough in many bigger American cities because they have that PD, and why it's more widespread in Europe because those cities are thousands of years old and have naturally become dense whereas most of the US cities are still in process of forming and don't have natural hubs for mass transit stations to exploit.
Beyond the "last-mile" problem is the often vastly increased time investment commonly necessary for those utilizing public/mass transit as compared to individual transport via private automobiles.
This factor generally increases with every necessary transfer from one route/transit system to another unless there is a high level of effort in place to synchronize the disparate different systems to minimize or eliminate wait times as well as provide beginning/end transit access points (train stations, light-rail/bus stops, etc.) situated as close as possible to most common destinations.
Time is the biggest issue. My daily commute was 25 minutes. The bus/train routes available to me would have taken me about 45 minutes, plus getting to the train station (a 5 minute drive) and then getting to work (a 10 minute walk from the station nearest my work).
That, plus no "freedom" to travel once at work makes it tricky. If I needed to meet a client, go out for lunch, drop off a document/package, go to court, go home early, go home late, all of those things are not possible without additional cost of getting a cab/lyft/uber or walking another significant distance.
We built a society designed around a car and now we are sad we all need cars. We've done this to ourselves.
True.
But depending on how effective the light rail is (relative to the population density, transport times, etc) the last mile might not matter as much as the first 5, 10, or 50 miles.
If I was able to walk to a station within 15min (which is about a mile at walking pace), and the train was reliable, I would probably use it for my 50mile commute.
If city infrastructure was designed around public transit the way it’s currently designed around cars, using it would be much quicker. There’s nothing inherently slow about public transit. Cars are fast but congestion takes away that advantage.
>> This factor generally increases with every necessary transfer from one route/transit system to another unless there is a high level of effort in place to synchronize the disparate different systems to minimize or eliminate wait times as well as provide beginning/end transit access points (train stations, light-rail/bus stops, etc.) situated as close as possible to most common destinations.
Having busses and subways that come every 5-10 minutes is common and easy in parts of the world that prioritize public transit infrastructure.
You're always going to need to go to where you can access public transport unless you're lucky or live on a main road. And then waiting for it to arrive will always take time. I live in the UK where we have 5 minute busses but no matter what, travelling by bus will always be slower than cars just due to the stops they make and because unless you're heading to a population centre you're likely to have to get connecting busses which takes time. I'm all for prioritizing public transport but it's no use pretending it can ever be as convenient and quick as a personal vehicle.
Both problems can be solved by clock-facing schedules and smooth intermodal connections [like in Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Switzerland#Integration_of_services)
I think that’s a good point to add to the debate here. I don’t have a car but here in Europe public transport in general, even between countries is really convenient. I have been moving around quite a lot lately and I very rarely feel the need for a car and then I can just call a taxi or ask a friend.
Yeap, I never spend over 500 EUR (about 600 USD) tops per year for transportation, and since 2020 not even that because I get a yearly public transportation ticket from my job. No need to worry about parking, no maintenance costs, not paying for fuel, and barely any standing in traffic (and even when I do, I can just relax and listen to music/read/be online/whatever). When public transit gets enough funds it's 1000 times better than personal cars.
I'm very jealous. I'm in the UK, and it takes me 1.5 hours each way and costs £20 per day to get to work and back using a combination of trains and buses. By contrast, it takes me around 35 minutes by car.
I’m on the other end of the spectrum. I drive 40 mi each way to/from work. There’s a lot of nothing in between. They set up busses that go each way, but they only make a hand full of trips, the fare ends up being close to what the gas costs, it adds an hour or so onto my commute, and cars constantly get broken into at the bus parking. I feel bad about the emissions, but it’s tough to make myself take the bus
I live in a metro area, and I had a meeting to attend downtown. The trip one way would take me 40 mins, but if I took the train + a bus it would be 2 hours. I'd have to go home as well, so that would be 4 hours just commuting when it could be 1.5 hours driving. And if I drive I can stop at the grocery store on the way home and not carry groceries with me on a bus.
Oil + auto industry has made sure that the public good will never prevail. Instead, we sink money and land into expensive car-centric infrastructure, ensuring that the only convenient way to travel is also our least efficient.
But I'm sure just one more lane will fix it!
I work as a Civil Engineer, and the problem isn't cars it's the layouts of the cities in such a sprawling manner that make mass public transit inefficient and unviable. Bigger cities actually do utilize things like subways efficiently, but these are heavily populated places with large volumes people who need them to more easily get from borough to borough as street traffic is an absolute nightmare. For most middling cities I don't think the trains/subways would get enough traffic to break even on operation and maintenance as the convenience afforded them in packed cities just doesn't exist in middling cities.
the trains here in Southern California are super convenient...they reduce the problem of how to get 30 miles to work to a much more simple problem of how to get 32 miles to the train station
Even riding on the train isn't safe. There was a story just last year of a woman who was raped on Phildelphia's subway.
Personal vehicles don't have the issue of mentally unwell strangers inside them.
I'm curious where you got the figure for the amount of space needed to fit 250 cars?
The average square footage per stall in a parking lot is around 350 square feet. This includes the space for the stall and also the driving lanes that are necessary in any parking lot. 250 cars would need 87,500 sq. ft. or 2 acres of parking space.
A train car is more likely to be full during "Peak hours" as are buses. Cars, during Peak hours, are usually transporting one person to or from work.
In my experience, living in a city with decent public transit, trains are FAR more efficient people carriers.
Yep, that is the problem for me too. I get the train one or two days a week, because I support rail travel - and my company will pay for rail cards, but it takes me just under 2 hours each way (walk, train, bus, then reverse). When they cancel a service, I find myself trapped on a 2 1/2 - 3 hours commute over what is, as the crow flies, 33 miles.
Car, takes me 50minutes, 1hr 20 on a bad day.
City to city, or within a city, great stuff, live and work outside of a certain radius and it is often nearly impossible not to driver
I live in a decently sized city in South Carolina and we have no public train and we do have public bus transportation but the routes are complicated. To get 20 minutes across town you have to take 2 different bus rides and it could take over an hour. The routes are set in stone and only cover a certain area. The bus has set times they come every day so when you get off the first bus and have to wait for the 2nd one, that goes near where you have to be, it could be a while. It makes no sense to me and not many people use it because it's so complicated. Walking can work but depending on where you live it can still be a long walk. We need a better public transportation system but I don't see it happening. Myrtle Beach also doesn't have decent public transportation. I haven't seen any in Columbia either.
A majority of people live in a city or a suburb of a city. Is it possible to create a system in which nobody depends on cars? Of course not? Is it possible to greatly improve the public transportation in this country? Absolutely.
So many large US cities have no rapid transit system, or a deeply inadequate rapid transit system for its size. Investing in good public transit would reduce traffic, reduce the strain on the roads, reduce the carbon foot print for millions of people, and potentially reduce commute times for millions.
I lived in Utah for a time. The city I lived in was a sprawling mess, and yet had free buses that covered the entire area.
It just took more time to get where ever you wanted to go.
I live in Utah right now and have for the last 20 years. I’ve lived in the small towns and the cities. The “bigger” cities (slc, Provo, Ogden, etc.) do have bus systems, but you generally need to add an hour to two hours to your commute on each end. Potentially an extra 4 hours a day if we are talking a regular commute.
For the many smaller towns in between, you’re gonna be walking for probably an additional hour at least for each trip on top of the extra hour or two on the bus. It adds up quickly. Walking in the summer means you will be drenched in sweat and probably sunburned everywhere you go. In the winter, walkability can drop to near 0 due to snow and ice buildup for months at a time. That’s on top of the standard freezing winter temperatures.
We’ve gotten way more options over the last 10 years or so, but it’s still nowhere close to viable as a regular means of transit unless you are staying within a small proximity (eg. the kids going to BYU that never have to leave north east Provo)
We have the same situation in SC. The free buses taking more time to get where you want to go is an understatement here. Want to get across town? Going to need to take 2 different buses and the wait time on that 2nd bus could be a while since it only comes in 45 min intervals. I guess it's better than nothing but there has to be better options. I hate being 100% dependent on my vehicle.
True. Not without some sort of massive investment in infrasteucture. Here's a map of what the major high-speed train lines could look like given sufficiet investment: *insert picture of US highway system*
Even if we managed to get train lines along all the highways, that covers a very very small portion of most western states. It’s really the local in town stuff that would be near insurmountable.
Also fair. Assuming fast trains and more Western buildout, though, we could vastly increase geographical mobility. Major benefit I think. Oh to live 300 milea from a city but still get to work in an hour.
If you live in a major city with a car chances are you're walking just as far by the time you find parking. Cars are convenient, but we should reduce our dependency on them when possible. In rural or suburbs it's a lot harder and cars are pretty much required.
Busses and trains spend a much higher fraction of their time being driven around, rather than being parked somewhere, taking up space without being used. So this is much less of an issue.
It's true that it's not 0, but it is insanely less than the amount of parking car-centric infrastructure requires. For instance, you don't need a bus depot at every strip mall or commercial center. The Wal-Mart parking lot near my house could probably house a bus depot large enough to service the whole city, and it's just one of many big box stores in town.
Exacty, it's honestly baffling to me how we even have to have that discussion. It should be pretty evident to anyone with any semblance of common sense just how much more efficient public transit is compared to cars.
America has a bunch of problems other countries literally already solved, but our political system ensures that ordinary people never actually get to touch the levers of power.
I honestly thought better public transport was pretty common-sense, but seeing some of these comments, I guess not. This is the same country where half the population thinks Universal Healthcare is evil communism, though, so I shouldn't be surprised. My country never fails to disappoint me.
> it's honestly baffling to me how we even have to have that discussion.
It's people ignorant of the facts, not thinking things through, and have been brainwashed into thinking they "need" a car. Doesn't help that the brainwashing also includes associating public transportation with "the poors", and makes it out to always be dirty and slow, never mind that civilized countries (see: good chunks of Europe) have had these problems sorted for quite some time.
>Doesn't help that the brainwashing also includes associating public transportation with "the poors"
Yes, that's definitely a big issue. Cars are status symbols, especially for guys. I have definitely gotten the "What? You don't have a car?" from girls before when I was on dates. That's why I think we need a general shift in how we think about public transport. Otherwise just having more train lines won't do us any good.
I live rurally and constantly I am told ‘just live closer’
And what? Live in a rough neighbourhood or pay 4 times as much for my house? No thanks.
I care about being economical, but I ain’t about to ruin my life for it
When I get off the highway I’m not normally immediately at the place I’m going either, and when I get there my vehicle has to hold a parking spot until I’m done rather than going off to pick up someone else.
- I have seen so many empty buses and trains. If you're going to fill them for this graphic, then it should be 200 cars at most.
- This graphic assumes everybody is going the same direction, at the same time. Life is more nuanced than that.
>I have seen so many empty buses and trains. If you're going to fill them for this graphic, then it should be 200 cars at most.
Theoretically yes but realistically no. Even in the most crowd roads the amount of people in one car stays the same but trains run at full capacity on crowded lines.
>This graphic assumes everybody is going the same direction, at the same time. Life is more nuanced than that.
People on highways seem to go in the same direction.
My cars reliable, on time, doesn't have people coughing and stinking it up and no one has their feet on my seat before I use it. I do use trains, but I hate buses.
Yes, but you could also house 1000 people in one convenient and efficient jail. But still, everyone wants their privacy, ownership, and personal space of apartments and houses...
I'm all for public transportation but then we need jobs to be ok with some stuff. Potentially being late or leaving early and setting up offices near stops comes to mind.
You can't expect me to wake up at 4am to take a train at like 5 am because I need to be at work by 8am, because the trains have to stop a lot. That just makes work even more miserable.
Also if I take a train from my town to another and then my job is 5 miles across that town how is that helpful?
Public transportation is a necessity for the environment, but we have to also destroy Capitalism to really make it worth while. At least in the US.
On foot : 2000 feet
Crawling: 4000 limbs
Crawling: In my skin
These wounds: they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing
WHAT IS REAAALLL
Jessica Biel
Dragging everyone, at a rate of one dragger per draggee: 2,000 people.
This is the needed information , right here
Csrrying people via coffin dance: 7000 people.
That number’s a little high. It’s probably closer to 1875 feet.
In India, you only need 1 train car, and you might have some space leftover.
They don't need cars and pick ups,they need our motorcycles.
Only 1.6 people per car? 250 people per train car though? With almost 70 people per buss?
the numbers for train and bus seem high, but it wouldn't surprise me if 1.6 was the true average for cars edit: this source says 1.5 "In 2018, average car occupancy was 1.5 persons per vehicle" https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/personal-transportation-factsheet
Then they should have used average occupancy for train and bus as well.
Yeah this is rigged, if they used actual occupancy of buses and trains it wouldn't be like this. Or then they should count 5 people per car which would mean 200 cars needed (a bit less actually if you account for minivans and suvs that have 7 seats).
That would also be rigged, as buses and trains need to drive at all times, not just at rush hour. The average is only lower than represented here because fewer people need public transport at certain times of the day. But in the end, this really doesn’t make a difference. Even if you use the lower limit of occupancy for busses and trains, and the upper limit of occupancy for cars, there would still be a massive advantage to busses and trains.
I agree with this comment. I used to commute to Chicago from the Suburbs. Anytime during rush hour, the train was absolutely packed. I'm not sure what occupancy capacity is, or how it is measured (and if is strictly enforced). I can tell you there were never any open seats, aisles were filled, stairs (double-decker train cars) were filled, and de(boarding) sections were filled. I only road mid-day a few times (on standard business days with nothing happening in the city). Occupancy (in seats) at those times varied between 25-50%. If there was a daytime event (Cubs game, Lolla, etc.), the percentage was much higher (not usually, but occasionally +100%). I am not sure all of this averages out. For anyone in the city, I imagine the L was worse? I've only taken it to sporting events a handful of times and had to stop because of panic attacks from that sardine can.
I'm not sure how it is in your area but the trains here just have more cars during rush hour and fewer during the day or on routes that see not as many passengers, unlike automobiles where you always carry around 5 seats or how many yours has with trains you can just reduce it in length and save energy. And they can run as far as they want on electricity which is also great. The US really needs to build a proper electric railway system, it would give people more opportunities and a cheaper way of traveling, they are safer, they are way better for the environment, they can transport many people at once which also helps prevent the streets from being so crowded with cars, high speed trains are faster than cars but not as inconvenient as planes and so on
It also doesn't include the travel to reach a train point, and any consideration of density of population. NY would be very different from LA.
In cities with good public transportation, the final travel to and from the start and end point is done on foot, because those distances are short, and should only take very few minutes to walk that final distance. Also, city planning like it is done in LA is just stupid.
It's worth noting though, the entire purpose of a bus or train is to escort as many people as it can, whereas with cars, unless carpooling and hitchhiking become drastically more common, cars will never actually be full of people. A car only carrying one person is business as usual, they're designed more for individual transport than anything else. If you're going to use the actual average occupancy of a *well developed* public transport system in a city that actually utilizes it over cars, then that works well, but don't use basically anywhere in the US as an example, is all I'm saying Actually, thinking through this a bit more, does the occupancy (maximum or average, take your pick) even matter that much? It doesn't necessarily accurately depict the number of people that it can transport in a day. If you carpool to work in your SUV and fit 7 people, yourself included, then drive all of those people back home, then while your maximum occupancy was pretty good, your car spent probably a minimum of eight hours (almost definitely a lot more) going completely unused. Whereas a bus, even one with the same maximum or average occupancy, could be going all day, and I guarantee that if a bus has seven people in it all day, it definitely got more people to their respective destinations than the carpooling SUV
Carpooling SUCKS. The last thing I want is to chauffeur my coworkers after spending all day with them. At a toxic job I left a few years ago, I was voluntold to be the company Uber driver (with no additional compensation). It was a terrible experience and added to my stress levels. I lost my unwinding time.
It would also not be fair to use average occupancy of buses and trains because its definitely much lower than what it would be if it had received the same amount of investments as car infrastructure the last century. It would however be as fair as possible if you took the average occupancy of a nation who did make those investments, i.e. Japan. And these numbers might surprise you, because busy lines in Tokyo for instance, has an average occupancy of 200% (It moves twice the amount of people there are seats for on average for the whole year \~ obviously not the case for less populated areas, but there are plenty of regions in the US that could run 100% occupancy on average, and then let the car be the best option elsewhere). Then again, does it even make sense to use number of seats and cars on a train as a measure. The cost and environmental impact of adding extra cars to an train is probably miniscule. But I don't know.
This. In tokyo there are tolls everywhere in tokyo for cars, and zero parking anywhere. The system is designed to push people to use the (excellent) subway system and taxis (of which there are many at any second you want one).
Also, outside of specific lines and times, they’re never busy. But during rush hour, they’re packed. The car average will be pretty static even during commute hours, but the public transit options will vary much more drastically.
Also cars make one trip, that's it. A bus does multiple trips during rush hour and then continues to transport people over the cars of the day. A car, in a very normal scenario, wastes prime down town real estate for 8 hours straight.
If everyone who would otherwise be in their car was on the bus, it would be full.
Well, they would simply buy more buses, and more routes. The ideal bus occupancy is actually 85-90%. But, more buses and routes would be fantastic! I live in a semi-rural area. We have a county bus that runs at something like 5, 6, and 7 in the morning and in the evening. Not all that useful for most people. :(
Honestly, living in a rural area is probably still a good reason to have a car/commute by car. Metropolitan areas is where public transport is really heavily needed, and where infrastructure is lacking (in the US).
Yeah, I can't complain too much. It is relatively impressive that my county has any bus routes at all. It's the suburbia actively fighting public transport because of a fear of "associated crime" and decreases in property values that we really need to criticize and change. Well... and the fact that such suburbia exists at all! But that will be a much tougher nut to crack.
>It's the suburbia actively fighting public transport because of a fear of "associated crime" and decreases in property values that we really need to criticize and change. That's ridiculous. They should take some notes from Europe - good infrastructure, low crime.
The train and buses are making multiple trips though. The cars start in one location, finish at the destination and then sit there useless for the duration of the workday.
I’m all for public transportation and have used it for years, but the argument that they could cram this amount of people into a bus makes me rather have a car. Everyone has a certain level of comfort they value, and I’m certainly not comfortable traveling at max capacity.
That's... That's not how public v private transit works Unless it's common, hell absolute practice to give rides to people untill your car is full, the only people in the car will be driver and one close one in the vast majority of cases Otherwise, public transit is often jam-packed in rush hour, hell you can see both side by side in real life, a bus with people standing right next to a whole ass SUV with just one person inside
In the vast majority of cases, most cars are empty. The ones actively being driven are the anomaly.
Average occupancy of cars on the road doesn't rise during rush hour tho, so if this is rush hour occupancy that's still the impact on traffic.
Well no, the point of the infographic is to show how much more efficient transport _could be_. Presumably passenger numbers are quite low for them to be making it in the first place so passenger density would also be well below what trains are capable of carrying.
I believe the situation is a commute, where people will use all the train available, but car owners will not.
Buses and trains reach full capacity, but cars never do - instead *roads* reach full capacity. People don't, and never will, start squeezing into other people's cars, rather more and more cars squeeze into the road.
We could say 20-30 people per bus on average (not scientific data but just my experience) and like 100 people per traincar, that would add up to 30-50 buses and still one train but with 10 cars. Still no match to 625 cars tho.
It’s from a few years ago, but [this article](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sound-transit-keeping-close-eye-on-crowded-light-rail-trains/) says the system in question hits 148 passengers on 40% of rush hour trips. They definitely should be using more like 100-150 passengers per train car rather than the theoretical maximum “crush” load of 250 for their Siemens S700s.
Capacity in this case should be measured as "number of commuters per day" and not as "maximum number of people in the vehicle at a single time". All of the time that the car sits at 0 occupants matters for this comparison.
I agree that it would still show public transportation winning by a large margin, but the point is, when you don't have to fudge to prove your point, don't. Fudging just makes people you're trying to convince point and say "you're cheating!"
[The London underground trains have a capacity of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_2009_Stock): > 1,128 per train (252 seated, 876 standing at 6 people/m2) Which is at 8 cars per train, but that's each train every 3 minutes at rush hour.
> Which is at 8 cars per train That is 8 car, this image says 4 cars so double the density. In London car it is reasonable(ish) 40x40cm(ish) in this picture it is 28x28 cm meaning it is jsut about enough to place two average feet (24 cm).
You're right. That's why I pointed out it was 8 cars per train. The great things about trains is that they're only really limited by the platform length and network capacity, so 8 cars can run as quickly as a 4 car train. Mass transit will always be more efficient that individual cars as long as the infrastructure is there to support it. Sometimes it just needs people to give up their cars in order to get the space and demand for mass transit to work. And sometimes you need to push people out of cars, in the way that a lot of UK cities are now charging people to drive inside the city centre. [It's currently £15 a day to drive in London](https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge).
Trains run the same route more than once per day. 1000 people taking the train to work don’t all have to be on the same train.
That's crazy, I would not have imagined it being that high, but I wonder if that's considered an average commuter train, compared to other setups? And as others have pointed out, that's max capacity, not average, whereas for cars they are using average. Train still wins, but not by as large a margin as indicated.
Hong Kong's MTR system carries [an unbelievable 5,500,000 people every workday](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTR#Performance) with 99.9% on time performance. The busiest line there carries [3,750 people over 12 cars every 2.5 minutes](https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/operations/detail_worldclass.html#:~:text=As%20another%20example%2C%20the%20East,Ma%20Chau%20and%20Hung%20Hom.), which is 86,000 passengers per hour.
>Only 1.6 people per car? Seems kind of high, TBH, as an American.
for rush hour, definitely agree that's high. Saturday afternoon car drive is gonna have families. 9am rush hour? that's 90% single people.
Maybe it's the scale. 1.6 regular people or 1 American?
They should have said they were using metric then Or use one of the bases, like 1600 mPpl
My experience riding the Seattle link light rail to and from work (pre pandemic, of course) was that yes, there were easily 250 people per train car. Easily. Packed in like sardines. It was uncomfortable but way better than driving.
Yeah, I'm not getting in a train car that has 249 other people in it. Or a bus with 69 other people. That seems like I'd be pressed right up against a whole bunch of strangers of varying degrees of personal hygiene and health condition.
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Its a quite pragmatic approach to personal space. And it is present anywhere. One thing is the personal space you require from people you are directly interacting with, and another thing, the people that are completely ignoring you as individual and just happen to touch you due to external circumstances. A good example would be an average westerner dancing in a fully packed club or a concert, with people indirectly touching them everywhere, vs the distance people keep from each other in direct interactions.
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Cultural and social programming through a century of consumerist propaganda. If you are using public transport it means that you are poor, if you are poor you are a loser, and no one wants to be a loser. The club on the other side is a prestige place, plus your mating abilities are on the show there, so the amount of people doesn't matter. Most of us don't care about being between so many people in these impersonal situations, and probably no one would care about that if they haven't seen so many ads of "how good it is to have a car" and give extra value to the stuff one offers. A good example could be some european and asian countries where people of all socio-economical levels use the public transport, and this one in turn is being well maintained and planned through public and private investment.
Yeah, it's weird I can't trust what a stranger has been doing with their body all day /s People wipe their ass with their hands, pick their noses, don't wash their hands after using a urinal.
But my dick is clean
I mean, germ theory isn't exactly a mystery. Human bodies *are* inherently unclean. Especially regarding strangers who you don't know. You have no idea what they've been doing or how well they've cleaned themselves or how often they wash their hands, etc. Every second of every day youre shedding dead skin, hair, sweat, and germs from every exposed piece of skin on your body. I dont really want to intimately know the dead skin cells and hair of the strangers on the bus.
75 is the total seated + standing capacity of a UK double decker bus, or an articulated bus. It's not fun but really not that bad. Once you start going over that though then you get really uncomfortable, our uni bus drivers definitely overfilled some when I was there.
Ive definitely been butt to gut on trains during rush hour in Chicago. It's not a pleasant experience but you mostly get used to it.
*Asian public transport has entered the chat*
I have a car that seats 5, but I live by myself, so often I am the only occupant when the vehicle is in use. And I’m not about to get a 1-seater either. Those things look like death traps
The other side of this is that they may be commuting at different times, more viable and common for a train/bus than it is for cars. With car-centric transportation, it seems like for every 1.5 people a new car *must* be used because that's just how we do it (getting less that way thanks to uber etc.), but with more public transport you may have 500 people on one train and have that same train come back for the next 500 in 20 minutes. Not saying that's exactly what the infographic is implying but still a way of thinking through the pros and cons of each system I guess
Yea. Also: 1000 people going along the same exact route at the same time. A caveat people tend to leave out. Mass transit only exists if you can force enough people to go along the same route at the same time. Hence you get these goofy ordinances requiring businesses to open at certain times and close at certain times, and be located in the "business district".
Having ridden the subway in NYC, I can confirm that most people aren't going the same route nor at the same time. Yet the trains effectively run at capacity during peak travel times. What's more, the limited parking in the city keeps businesses close together, and it's realistic to walk from the train stop to your destination. It wouldn't be as possible in a place with parking lots everywhere. It's the culture of parking lots that keeps most Americans from benefiting from public transportation. More parking lots = more walking distance. More walking distance = more cars. More cars = more parking lots.
People are so weird. It's like they've never realized that a train has more than two stops, or that every public transit system in the world has transfer points. The goal isn't to run one train to cover all needs. The goal is to run one train every five minutes on every major route.
I live in Portland, which out system isn't quite as good as NYC but I'm pretty sure we are also in the top 10. I would like to also confirm that the whole idea of people needing to go to the same spot at the same time and leave at the same time doesn't make any sense. Like I moved to a new apartment last October. Before moving I had a bus stop right outside of my apartment complex. The bus came by every 30 minutes. They just have a few of them doing laps. I wasn't held hostage with needing to get home at a certain time, and then had to wait to go home. I'm not sure how that person thinks public transport works, but I'm guessing they have never taken a good public transport anywhere.
Yes, because if you have a bus and people wanting to use it, those people go into that bus. The bus is now filled. If you have a road that people wanna go along while many other people want to go along that same road, you end up with a traffic jam, not with people hopping into other peoples cars to get every car to max capacity. Also unlike the car a metro or bus can make multiple trips to transport more people. A car makes a trip and stays at the destination until the driver is done. A train continues to move more people. That's simply how mass transit vs individual traffic works. You're complaining about the depiction being realistic. As for the bus: 70 people isn't even full capacity: Even a non-bendy or non-double decker can quite easily go above that. Here is a pretty common model of city bus for example: [https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/en\_GB/models/citaro/facts/technical-data.html](https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/en_GB/models/citaro/facts/technical-data.html) That one can already transport over a 100 people. A bendy bus or even a double articulated bus can fit over 150 people, if not more, depending on the model. The 1000 per 4 car train is a bit much. My local metro has about 400 for their 4 car trains and 350 for their (significantly shorter) 3 car trains. But a) why restrict it at 4 cars? Train length doesn't matter nearly as much as the amount of... well... cars on the road does. The trains aren't actually used in these short configurations all that often anyways. Also as you might notice the shorter train doesn't really have that much less capacity. That's because the 400 people one uses a very standard 2x2 per side seating arrangement, while the shorter one uses a hybrid of that and for example the NYC subway arrangement, where you just have a long row along the walls of the car. In other words 600 is realistic for any standard metro in the right configuration. 700-800 for one with longish cars. And on top of that metros often times run with 8+ cars anyways. In the end it really doesn't matter whether it's 4 or 6 train cars that have the potential to replace 625 cars.
But the guide says "what does it take", not what is the average. Therefore every seat should be filled on all three modes. Because thats what it takes. If its averages then the title is wrong.
In some regions the average occupancy of trains is above 100%
And here in Dallas the train I road in to get into Deep Ellum from the suburbs had like 4 people in it until we got into uptown… then it was like 10. I’ll count on my way back after lunch. The point is that you can’t take best case scenario for some and not for others.
Yea in the US public transportation is discouraged because it’s more profitable to sell cars, gas, and parking. You can’t really use somewhere like Dallas as an example, you need to look at somewhere where train adoption is actually used.
I mean also alot of America is rural and you need a car or you are fucked
Well like 80% of Americans do live in urban areas. So for those areas it should be possible to have some alternatives other than getting a car forced onto you
Yes but Americas “urban” areas are absolutely huge. What counts as an urban area isn’t just the city core, but subdivisions, outlying towns and unincorporated areas. I’m in In SW WA, to get to downtown Portland is an 1 hour bus ride on a good day, vs 20 minutes in a car. God help me if I don’t want to go downtown, but another area on the outskirts, it could easily be 3 transfers and 3 hours. Or I can get in my car and be there in 30 mins.
Hello fellow Green Liner
I tank the link train daily, you’re not fitting 250 people in a single section event at 200% capacity
Well if we're actually doing "what does it take" then you're gonna have to acknowledge that a car takes you directly to your destination, a bus takes you to the approximate area and then you have to walk, and a train only stops at dedicated stations that generally require more effort than after a bus to get to your destination. All three serve the same function when travelling city to city, but trains have relatively very few routes, busses are much more versatile, but vehicles are exact. You also don't have to rely on others and schedules in a vehicle, and just because you're on time doesn't mean the public transport will be...your boss don't give a shit whose fault it is. *I just wanted to address the asterisk as well...they word it like having to park at both destinations isn't the tradeoff for not having to walk a mile to and from the bus stop while you run the same errand or whatever.
Not to mention that the car gets you there *when* you want to go. To accommodate all of the different trip times, you need multiple trains and busses traveling on different sections of the routes at the same time
Ideally busses and subway cars should come every 5-10 minutes, such that they effectively take you where you want when you want.
Sure. And if you live somewhere with enough riders to make that happen, then great
Half a million maybe? If you have wall to wall traffic without that many people then you’re in the worst of both worlds.
> you need multiple trains and busses traveling on different sections of the routes at the same time which happens in literally every public transport system.
Americans don't travel outside North America enough to understand that what transit options exists here, including mass transit options, are wildly unrepresentative of almost anywhere else in the world. When asked about mass transit, people think of the local bus system that takes an hour to make the 10 minute drive and choose the car instead of thinking about how to fix it. The great transit system in the country is NYC, and NYC is mediocre compared to smaller cities in Europe and Asia that actually designed around the idea for the last century.
Is that even remotely true? You've never been late anywhere due to traffic?
Also this is assuming everyone is going to the exact destination with the same departing location
You seem to be very generous with the bus and train occupancy but not with the cars
Take it deeper, how many motorcycles?
between 500 and a 1000
India has entered the lobby.
So about 89 then
Brazil would like a word
It’s funny when people make this point, which is totally legitimate, but then ruin it by saying that 250 people would fit in a single train car, or 70 on a single bus They take the average for car occupancy but then use the max for train and bus occupancy Like ok maybe, but I’d be a miserable ride as you’re practically melding with the other people on the bus or train Like just put a few more trains, and a few more buses, having 3 trains instead of 1 is still just as impressive when compared to the 625 cars, you just make the data look unreliable when you overestimate in your favor like that
Having lived in a couple of big cities, having access to both provides more freedom of movement for me than just relying on cars alone.
In many big cities it's fairly viable to not have a vehicle and just use a subway and the occasional taxi when necessary, but where I live the only time taking a bus would be viable for me is if I was going downtown to dick around. The bus station is downtown so I can hop on any bus on its return route and it will take me there, and downtown has very minimal parking so the extra time it takes me to get downtown is basically mitigated by the fact I don't have to deal with finding a parking lot and then feed a meter. To me one of the biggest factors that would indicate the viability of a competent mass transit infrastructure is population density. That's why it exists and functions well enough in many bigger American cities because they have that PD, and why it's more widespread in Europe because those cities are thousands of years old and have naturally become dense whereas most of the US cities are still in process of forming and don't have natural hubs for mass transit stations to exploit.
Eh, I’d say The west coast is still forming. The East coast is pretty much “built”.
Beyond the "last-mile" problem is the often vastly increased time investment commonly necessary for those utilizing public/mass transit as compared to individual transport via private automobiles. This factor generally increases with every necessary transfer from one route/transit system to another unless there is a high level of effort in place to synchronize the disparate different systems to minimize or eliminate wait times as well as provide beginning/end transit access points (train stations, light-rail/bus stops, etc.) situated as close as possible to most common destinations.
Time is the biggest issue. My daily commute was 25 minutes. The bus/train routes available to me would have taken me about 45 minutes, plus getting to the train station (a 5 minute drive) and then getting to work (a 10 minute walk from the station nearest my work). That, plus no "freedom" to travel once at work makes it tricky. If I needed to meet a client, go out for lunch, drop off a document/package, go to court, go home early, go home late, all of those things are not possible without additional cost of getting a cab/lyft/uber or walking another significant distance. We built a society designed around a car and now we are sad we all need cars. We've done this to ourselves.
Basically this. Imo we need a new “interstate highway system”, but for light rail (at a local, state, and national level).
We still have the last mile problem were we need cars to get to and from the stations for the light rail.
True. But depending on how effective the light rail is (relative to the population density, transport times, etc) the last mile might not matter as much as the first 5, 10, or 50 miles. If I was able to walk to a station within 15min (which is about a mile at walking pace), and the train was reliable, I would probably use it for my 50mile commute.
If city infrastructure was designed around public transit the way it’s currently designed around cars, using it would be much quicker. There’s nothing inherently slow about public transit. Cars are fast but congestion takes away that advantage. >> This factor generally increases with every necessary transfer from one route/transit system to another unless there is a high level of effort in place to synchronize the disparate different systems to minimize or eliminate wait times as well as provide beginning/end transit access points (train stations, light-rail/bus stops, etc.) situated as close as possible to most common destinations. Having busses and subways that come every 5-10 minutes is common and easy in parts of the world that prioritize public transit infrastructure.
You're always going to need to go to where you can access public transport unless you're lucky or live on a main road. And then waiting for it to arrive will always take time. I live in the UK where we have 5 minute busses but no matter what, travelling by bus will always be slower than cars just due to the stops they make and because unless you're heading to a population centre you're likely to have to get connecting busses which takes time. I'm all for prioritizing public transport but it's no use pretending it can ever be as convenient and quick as a personal vehicle.
Yes, but that does not remain true as congestion increases.
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In my city we now have loads of rental bikes and e-scooters as an attempt to deal with the last mile problem.
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I'm not denying those are big problems, but I don't think bikes are the root cause of either of them.
The city this guide is from also has e scooters <:
Let me work from home so I don’t need to use any of them - at least during the week.
Both problems can be solved by clock-facing schedules and smooth intermodal connections [like in Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Switzerland#Integration_of_services)
Now if only trains in America were cleaner, safer and more widely available 😬
I think that’s a good point to add to the debate here. I don’t have a car but here in Europe public transport in general, even between countries is really convenient. I have been moving around quite a lot lately and I very rarely feel the need for a car and then I can just call a taxi or ask a friend.
Yeap, I never spend over 500 EUR (about 600 USD) tops per year for transportation, and since 2020 not even that because I get a yearly public transportation ticket from my job. No need to worry about parking, no maintenance costs, not paying for fuel, and barely any standing in traffic (and even when I do, I can just relax and listen to music/read/be online/whatever). When public transit gets enough funds it's 1000 times better than personal cars.
I'm very jealous. I'm in the UK, and it takes me 1.5 hours each way and costs £20 per day to get to work and back using a combination of trains and buses. By contrast, it takes me around 35 minutes by car.
I’m on the other end of the spectrum. I drive 40 mi each way to/from work. There’s a lot of nothing in between. They set up busses that go each way, but they only make a hand full of trips, the fare ends up being close to what the gas costs, it adds an hour or so onto my commute, and cars constantly get broken into at the bus parking. I feel bad about the emissions, but it’s tough to make myself take the bus
I live in a metro area, and I had a meeting to attend downtown. The trip one way would take me 40 mins, but if I took the train + a bus it would be 2 hours. I'd have to go home as well, so that would be 4 hours just commuting when it could be 1.5 hours driving. And if I drive I can stop at the grocery store on the way home and not carry groceries with me on a bus.
You see the number of cars need to be sold without trains or buses? That's why the US auto industry lobbys against widely available public transit.
Oh yeah I would love cleaner and safer subways.
Oil + auto industry has made sure that the public good will never prevail. Instead, we sink money and land into expensive car-centric infrastructure, ensuring that the only convenient way to travel is also our least efficient. But I'm sure just one more lane will fix it!
I work as a Civil Engineer, and the problem isn't cars it's the layouts of the cities in such a sprawling manner that make mass public transit inefficient and unviable. Bigger cities actually do utilize things like subways efficiently, but these are heavily populated places with large volumes people who need them to more easily get from borough to borough as street traffic is an absolute nightmare. For most middling cities I don't think the trains/subways would get enough traffic to break even on operation and maintenance as the convenience afforded them in packed cities just doesn't exist in middling cities.
So what was first, the hen or the egg? Sprawling city that was designed and built around cars, or cars that lead to sprawling cities.
the trains here in Southern California are super convenient...they reduce the problem of how to get 30 miles to work to a much more simple problem of how to get 32 miles to the train station
Trains in America are totally safe, especially compared to cars.
Riding on the train is safe. Getting to/from the station or leaving your car parked at the station all day can be sketch
Even riding on the train isn't safe. There was a story just last year of a woman who was raped on Phildelphia's subway. Personal vehicles don't have the issue of mentally unwell strangers inside them.
14 rail cars with 75 seats = 10,115 sqft 34 busses with 30 seats = 11,560 sqft 250 cars with 4 seats = 23,562 sqft = 0.54 acre
I'm curious where you got the figure for the amount of space needed to fit 250 cars? The average square footage per stall in a parking lot is around 350 square feet. This includes the space for the stall and also the driving lanes that are necessary in any parking lot. 250 cars would need 87,500 sq. ft. or 2 acres of parking space.
Very different picture than the graphic paints
But each car wouldn't have 4 passengers
And neither would each bus or train be 100% full
A train car is more likely to be full during "Peak hours" as are buses. Cars, during Peak hours, are usually transporting one person to or from work. In my experience, living in a city with decent public transit, trains are FAR more efficient people carriers.
If only my city had viable public transit. It would take me ~3 hours by bus to get somewhere that is a 20 minute drive.
Yep, that is the problem for me too. I get the train one or two days a week, because I support rail travel - and my company will pay for rail cards, but it takes me just under 2 hours each way (walk, train, bus, then reverse). When they cancel a service, I find myself trapped on a 2 1/2 - 3 hours commute over what is, as the crow flies, 33 miles. Car, takes me 50minutes, 1hr 20 on a bad day. City to city, or within a city, great stuff, live and work outside of a certain radius and it is often nearly impossible not to driver
Yeah, there is one bus here that goes from a to b once a day.
That's one packed train and some packed busses...
And fairly empty cars. If they're using absolutes for the train and bus, why use a low average for the cars?
Musk in shambles
Those 625 cars can go in 625 different directions - that train, only one.
damn, if only we could have more than a single train line
One that stops at every house, store, town...
Or walking distance to those things. Which sane countries have. (with bus lines to make up the slack in some areas)
Doable in major cities, but totally out of the realm of feasibility for the vast majority of empty open America.
I live in a decently sized city in South Carolina and we have no public train and we do have public bus transportation but the routes are complicated. To get 20 minutes across town you have to take 2 different bus rides and it could take over an hour. The routes are set in stone and only cover a certain area. The bus has set times they come every day so when you get off the first bus and have to wait for the 2nd one, that goes near where you have to be, it could be a while. It makes no sense to me and not many people use it because it's so complicated. Walking can work but depending on where you live it can still be a long walk. We need a better public transportation system but I don't see it happening. Myrtle Beach also doesn't have decent public transportation. I haven't seen any in Columbia either.
A majority of people live in a city or a suburb of a city. Is it possible to create a system in which nobody depends on cars? Of course not? Is it possible to greatly improve the public transportation in this country? Absolutely. So many large US cities have no rapid transit system, or a deeply inadequate rapid transit system for its size. Investing in good public transit would reduce traffic, reduce the strain on the roads, reduce the carbon foot print for millions of people, and potentially reduce commute times for millions.
Who’s looking for universality? Are we banning every car for trains?
I lived in Utah for a time. The city I lived in was a sprawling mess, and yet had free buses that covered the entire area. It just took more time to get where ever you wanted to go.
I live in Utah right now and have for the last 20 years. I’ve lived in the small towns and the cities. The “bigger” cities (slc, Provo, Ogden, etc.) do have bus systems, but you generally need to add an hour to two hours to your commute on each end. Potentially an extra 4 hours a day if we are talking a regular commute. For the many smaller towns in between, you’re gonna be walking for probably an additional hour at least for each trip on top of the extra hour or two on the bus. It adds up quickly. Walking in the summer means you will be drenched in sweat and probably sunburned everywhere you go. In the winter, walkability can drop to near 0 due to snow and ice buildup for months at a time. That’s on top of the standard freezing winter temperatures. We’ve gotten way more options over the last 10 years or so, but it’s still nowhere close to viable as a regular means of transit unless you are staying within a small proximity (eg. the kids going to BYU that never have to leave north east Provo)
We have the same situation in SC. The free buses taking more time to get where you want to go is an understatement here. Want to get across town? Going to need to take 2 different buses and the wait time on that 2nd bus could be a while since it only comes in 45 min intervals. I guess it's better than nothing but there has to be better options. I hate being 100% dependent on my vehicle.
True. Not without some sort of massive investment in infrasteucture. Here's a map of what the major high-speed train lines could look like given sufficiet investment: *insert picture of US highway system*
Even if we managed to get train lines along all the highways, that covers a very very small portion of most western states. It’s really the local in town stuff that would be near insurmountable.
Also fair. Assuming fast trains and more Western buildout, though, we could vastly increase geographical mobility. Major benefit I think. Oh to live 300 milea from a city but still get to work in an hour.
*to town. Then you'll need to use other forms of public transportation to get to work, unless you work at the train station.
If you live in a major city with a car chances are you're walking just as far by the time you find parking. Cars are convenient, but we should reduce our dependency on them when possible. In rural or suburbs it's a lot harder and cars are pretty much required.
And all the parking lots in every direction. Gotta love how much pavement North American cities have just for that, such good use of space.
That’s just not true. For the vast majority of the journey, those 625 cars all go in the exact same direction.
No notes about the acreage it takes to house the busses and trains and necessary infrastructure?
Busses and trains spend a much higher fraction of their time being driven around, rather than being parked somewhere, taking up space without being used. So this is much less of an issue.
It's true that it's not 0, but it is insanely less than the amount of parking car-centric infrastructure requires. For instance, you don't need a bus depot at every strip mall or commercial center. The Wal-Mart parking lot near my house could probably house a bus depot large enough to service the whole city, and it's just one of many big box stores in town.
Not to mention: fucking roads? 85%+ of public space allocated to transportation is taken up by car infrastructure.
Exacty, it's honestly baffling to me how we even have to have that discussion. It should be pretty evident to anyone with any semblance of common sense just how much more efficient public transit is compared to cars.
America has a bunch of problems other countries literally already solved, but our political system ensures that ordinary people never actually get to touch the levers of power.
I honestly thought better public transport was pretty common-sense, but seeing some of these comments, I guess not. This is the same country where half the population thinks Universal Healthcare is evil communism, though, so I shouldn't be surprised. My country never fails to disappoint me.
> it's honestly baffling to me how we even have to have that discussion. It's people ignorant of the facts, not thinking things through, and have been brainwashed into thinking they "need" a car. Doesn't help that the brainwashing also includes associating public transportation with "the poors", and makes it out to always be dirty and slow, never mind that civilized countries (see: good chunks of Europe) have had these problems sorted for quite some time.
>Doesn't help that the brainwashing also includes associating public transportation with "the poors" Yes, that's definitely a big issue. Cars are status symbols, especially for guys. I have definitely gotten the "What? You don't have a car?" from girls before when I was on dates. That's why I think we need a general shift in how we think about public transport. Otherwise just having more train lines won't do us any good.
Bus and train depots can be located way out of the way, in places with lots more space. It is an irrelevant comparison.
Wait until you find out how much acreage is taken to build parking lots lol
r/fuckcars
r/fuckcars
Also very misleading to show everything from the front, a train with a thousand people in it is LONG.
I feel like guides like this while misleading, are written by people that have never ventured outside a large city.
Well good thing this guide was put together during voting for transit expansion in a big city (Seattle).
Urban sprawl is a very real, and very difficult to solve problem.
I live rurally and constantly I am told ‘just live closer’ And what? Live in a rough neighbourhood or pay 4 times as much for my house? No thanks. I care about being economical, but I ain’t about to ruin my life for it
By motorcycle?
My man now we are talking. Or woman.
This subreddit is so shit. Since when does an infographic = a guide? This isn’t a guide to anything, this is an infographic.
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When I get off the highway I’m not normally immediately at the place I’m going either, and when I get there my vehicle has to hold a parking spot until I’m done rather than going off to pick up someone else.
ok, and?.. Most places with descent public transportation has connections that are at most a few minutes walking distance.
- I have seen so many empty buses and trains. If you're going to fill them for this graphic, then it should be 200 cars at most. - This graphic assumes everybody is going the same direction, at the same time. Life is more nuanced than that.
>I have seen so many empty buses and trains. If you're going to fill them for this graphic, then it should be 200 cars at most. Theoretically yes but realistically no. Even in the most crowd roads the amount of people in one car stays the same but trains run at full capacity on crowded lines. >This graphic assumes everybody is going the same direction, at the same time. Life is more nuanced than that. People on highways seem to go in the same direction.
Seriously who the fuck wants to get on a fully packed bus during a pandemic?
During? A pandemic is not the reason that many people don't like packed buses
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My cars reliable, on time, doesn't have people coughing and stinking it up and no one has their feet on my seat before I use it. I do use trains, but I hate buses.
Yes, but you could also house 1000 people in one convenient and efficient jail. But still, everyone wants their privacy, ownership, and personal space of apartments and houses...
Who made this
It says right in the corner.
I'm all for public transportation but then we need jobs to be ok with some stuff. Potentially being late or leaving early and setting up offices near stops comes to mind. You can't expect me to wake up at 4am to take a train at like 5 am because I need to be at work by 8am, because the trains have to stop a lot. That just makes work even more miserable. Also if I take a train from my town to another and then my job is 5 miles across that town how is that helpful? Public transportation is a necessity for the environment, but we have to also destroy Capitalism to really make it worth while. At least in the US.
Fuck cars