They pretty much do have to suck. They arrive infrequently, stop frequently, accelerate like an overloaded lorry, and are only remotely feasible if your start and end points are on the same route. Switching buses is a huge time penalty. They only approach usability in urban hellscapes that are so densely populated, it makes my skin crawl.
Yet they keep putting them in small cities and towns where they take 3x as long to get anywhere as driving because of indirect routing, while causing traffic congestion because of frequent stops and low performance. Seriously, fuck buses.
None of this is inherent to buses. Poorly planned and managed bus routes may have some of these features. And in the US this may be common but there are many many bus routes that do not resemble this at all.
Also the idea that buses make traffic worse than cars is absurd. Buses are a solution to traffic, not a cause of it.
I swear this is a no-true-Scotsman argument: “you don’t hate buses/apartments/transit, you just have never lived anywhere that has the good stuff”.
I’ve lived many places and traveled plenty, and I’m convinced there’s no good stuff. To have transit that works, you need density that’s oppressive. I did it in NYC, which is a best-case scenario for transit facilitated by high density. NYC has transit that runs frequently, and 24/7/365. Buses, subway, trains, and even ferries. It’s so dense most people don’t own a car (I certainly didn’t). Everyone lives in apartments. Walking and biking is the norm. Even pizza delivery is done by bike instead of car. Catching an Uber was still much faster for many point-to-point trips, because transit necessarily can’t go direct from everywhere, to everywhere.
Now that I’m back in suburbia, a trip to the grocery store takes 1/4 as long by car (same distance). I don’t have to spend a ton of time waiting to catch a connecting train or bus that I missed by 30 seconds. I don’t have to ride though stop after stop, packed in with other people. I can just go direct from origin to destination in quiet comfort, without the headaches
I’m not claiming your bad bus experiences aren’t true buses, so that phallacy doesn’t apply in any way I can tell. You described what you said were universal features of bus routes. I pointed out that those are not at all universal. And indeed, you now admit that you yourself have used buses that run frequently, which undermines your original argument, even if they had other flaws in your view.
I’ve never lived in New York but I think there’s still lots of room for improvement even there. But regardless, I’ve used transit that was better and faster than driving many times. So that remains my point, even if you haven’t experienced that.
It sounds like you just don’t like cities or being around too many other people. Which is fine for you but tons of people do or at least it does not bother them. And for those people, buses, when run properly (clean, on time, frequent, with dedicated lanes so they don’t get stuck in traffic, and directly connecting places people need to go) are an excellent way to get around. I’ve even used some buses in rural areas that beat out car travel, though that’s more rare obviously. So yes, it can be done well. Maybe not to your standards of zero wait time ever and zero tolerance for being around other people but most people aren’t that picky.
Me: but it says here that a Scotsman committed the crime
You: No true Scotsman would commit such a crime…
Compare:
You: buses are great!
Me: I take buses and they suck!
You: good buses are great, you just aren’t taking the good ones…
It’s exactly the same. You get to decide who is a true Scotsman for the purpose of argument, and what constitutes a good bus service. You can simply declare that the bus service isn’t a good one and therefore doesn’t reflect badly on bus services, just as you can decide the criminal wasn’t a true Scotsman, and therefore you’re always right.
you now admit that you yourself have used buses that run frequently, which undermines your original argument, even if they had other flaws in your view
I have used buses which run frequently for buses, but which are still too infrequent and thus add lots of unnecessary time.
I think NYC is an excellent representative of transit done well. It may not be world-best, but there aren’t many places that are as dense or more dense and that creates a best case scenario for running at all hours and with maximum frequency. Also, most people don’t own cars and don’t drive there. There are few places with so many built-in advantages for transit as NYC.
It sounds like you just don’t like cities or being around too many other people.
It applies to generalized statements, which I never made. You even had to falsely paraphrase my statement to make it more applicable (that phallacy is called a straw man by the way). But I never said all buses are great. In fact I think you’re right that most buses in the US are terrible. I’m just saying that they don’t have to. It’s a totally different type of claim. If anything your argument is more logically similar because you are making a universal claim that buses are always bad.
Part of the issue is that we probably don’t have a common definition of a good or bad mode of transit. I would say cars are a terrible way to get around in most urban areas, but you obviously don’t agree because we have different definitions of what makes something a good or bad way to get around.
But I will maintain that bus systems, when properly managed and implemented would be preferable over driving for that majority of people in urban areas, and even in some rural or small towns too.
I read the link I posted, which is the same one you linked. I think some of the way you presented your argument suggests to me that you’re making a distinction between well-executed and poorly-executed transit, and saying that because I find transit/buses to be inefficient and an unbearable mode of travel, I must be using a poorly-executed system. That sounds a lot to me like no-true-scotsman, because you seem to be judging whether I’m experiencing the “real thing” based on whether I thought it was efficient or not. Clearly I must be experiencing a bad version of it if it was inefficient or otherwise not to my liking - or at least that’s what you seem to have implied.
I agree that we probably don’t have a common definition of good or bad transit.
I also think you should read up on what a phallus is.
Yeah, try living in an impoverished town, where it’s the housing on the right, spread out like the housing on the left. There are, like, no jobs (none that are actually sustainable long-term for living in this economy), but they just leveled a huge area of forest for more low-income housing (AKA Projects)
Give me a European style apartment with high ceilings and generous space and you have yourselves a deal!
That said, I’ve been working in my local building industry for almost 20 years and the trend that I see is that though there are more apartments being built, the quality has tanked. We have huge issues with mould, flammable facades, exploding glass, alternatives are rampant through the roof and price gouging.
Unfortunately this has fed the idea that apartment living is no good.
For my local industry, at least, generally houses are built better (not that they’re that great compared to houses built in the 80s or earlier) because the materials aren’t bought in bulk like they do for apartments and there’s less opportunity to ‘off spec’ (cheap alternative products).
That’s not to say that cheap materials aren’t used but there’s a lot less pressure to go bottom of the barrel. Plus, the home owner also has a bit more control than an apartment owner during construction.
There’s also a lot more that can go wrong in an apartment than in a house. Lifts, for example. We had an issue in one of the high rises in the city where a lift was broken and there was a huge queue. Whereas in houses, the main issue I’ve been seeing in housing is poorly built housing extensions from unqualified builders.
All in all, it’s more liveable to be in a poorly built house than in a poorly built apartment.
Assuming the needs of a living space is the same across both populations, this graphic seems disingenuous. The pixel count of the apartment suggests it could fit 6½ of the homes per floor. Across 9 floors that’s 58 homes worth of square footage.
I assume the homes have garages, which would not account for living space. But garages don’t account for 42% of a homes’ size.
True, but what I’m saying is that there are losses in livable square footage represented in the apartment. A home’s SqFt excludes the garage, so a 1500 SqFt home is actually 1740 SqFt with a 1-car garage. I.e. a 1-car garage only takes up 14% of the area underneath a roof of a 1500 Livable-SqFt house. Yet, the represented apartment has lost 42%.
That implies that if the the houses in the picture are 1500 livable square feet, then the apartments are 1009 livable square feet; a ⅓ loss in livable area.
<span style="color:#323232;">Apartment Complex = 58 Homes' worth of area including garage (1,740 × 58 = 100,920 SqFt)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">100,920 / 100 apartments = 1,009 SqFt per apartment
</span>
Ugh… looks like rivian and range rover made an ugly baby.
How long until they start making these things the same size as buses? These vehicles getting bigger and bigger is sure gonna help ease traffic, and absolutely totally not occupy more space on the road for no good reason… ^^/s^^
Have you seen the Hummer EV? 9,000 lbs fully loaded.
It’s close to a type A school bus which starts at ~10K lbs.
The smallest school bus is known as a Type A. It carries only 10 passengers and comes in at the lower end of 10,000 pounds. Type B buses can seat up to 24 people but are the same standard size as Type A. This leads them to weigh around the same as Type A buses
I wish :( The city centers are very walkable and there's plenty of safe bicycle infrastructure, but cars are still very clearly the dominant mode of transport. Every weekend there's queues to the parking garages in every part of the city.
I like the way most city centers are set up but I think public transport coverage should be improved in most places before the government starts trying to push people out of their cars. My local municipality is trying the same thing and making the same mistake, they’re not improving public transport but they are trying to discourage people from coming by car. How is that supposed to work if you can’t even get there properly if you live in a part of town that either has no connection or it takes you 3 to 4 times as long as it would take you by car to take the bus?
Yeah, these strange ladies made me nervous because they were distributing swords, claiming possession of which was the basis for a system of government. If you ask me, supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Oh, and then one of these strange ladies took me in and made me breakfast.
first few minutes, talking about all the amenities that I do not have, because I live in the U.S. Then they go on about how some cities in the U.S are getting better. but oh wait, those are also the most expensive cities to live in. Also, the average life expectancy for adult males in the U.S. is 73. so if you’re in your mid 30’s, congrats, you’re middle aged. Pointing that out just to say that I don’t want to live in a walkable, bikeable, mass transit-able city in 20 years (if republicans don’t tear everything down first), I want to live there now, during my lifetime.
It’s always nice to get a positive take on how things are improving in North America. I’m excited to see where things will go in the next 10 years. I just had a conversation with someone the other day about not just “running away” from the problems we have, and actually working to solve them.
Some days the battle feels unwinable when you have rich people and governments brainwashing the masses into acting against their own self interest in the name of looking successful. Some days it seems easier to just let them have it and go to where the life you desire is already established and let the people who are too blinded to know better get what they asked for.
Those are the days I have to remind myself I was one of them. I was willfully ignorant to the problem because I was doing well enough to not care. I ignored the consequences and still I was given the opportunity to change. If I deserved the ability and opportunity to change then so do the rest of the herd. And then the die hards who refuse to change can be the ones who can leave if they don’t like it.
Also, did everyone just forget about the pandemic we just went through? Haven’t we decided as a society stuffing lots of people in a small space is bad for our health?
Micro mobility is great if you plan on never leaving a 5 or 10 square mile area. The problem with that is the majority of Americas have at least 1 trip a month that’s 30+ miles.
No one is making that kind of trip with a micro mobility solution. Especially not in the heat and cold extremes we have now.
The problem with that is the majority of Americas have at least 1 trip a month that’s 30+ miles.
That trip is almost invariably traveling into a major city center. Like living in/near Buffalo and needing to go to NYC for a service that is not available in your closest city. Which will be extremely well connected by transit to everywhere in the peripheral area and paradoxically, will probably be very easy to make with a system of micromobility connecting into a rapid transit trunk line system.
Might go something like this: Say you live in one of the suburbs of Buffalo. You might bike to a local train station, get off at the main terminal and transfer for an intercity train to New York, get off at Grand Central Terminal, transfer for the subway, get off, and bike to your destination.
Might go something like this: Say you live in one of the suburbs of Buffalo. You might bike to a local train station, get off at the main terminal and transfer for an intercity train to New York, get off at Grand Central Terminal, transfer for the subway, get off, and bike to your destination. A transit system that integrates microbobility will let you bring your bike on the train.
So you just turned a 45 minute trip into at least a 3 to 4 hour one with layovers. Worse, you’re going to be exposed to the elements for a big leg of it.
You can put micromobility devices on a bus or train (or have one at either end). Or travel at 25km/h in a larger vehicle once a month until you get out of the micromobility path network. Or go to a car parked outside the network.
yup. point out how people can ride transit safely, they don’t want to hear it. cars are literally destroying the only ecosystem we have in the universe, and we’re letting the car chuds do it because…?
trust me, if the situation was reversed, they’d happily run everyone else down if it meant saving their way of life.
they don’t even fucking care about their own kids.
fuckcars
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