Why American public transit is so bad

[chris08876]

Last time I took NJ Transit was Dec 2019. Its been ages since I've taken the PATH. Always prefer to go right into Penn (Direct shot from New Brunswick).

No trains and planes, but many automobiles during 2020.

Just driving for now if I gotta go to the city.

In terms of transit being bad, I somewhat think of North Eastern NJ/NYC as its own bubble. Transit is nice from how its incorporated into the urban fabric, but we are a positive bubble in the Red White and Blue of Bad Transit. An outlier per say where its good in this area.

But I suppose for highways, the US is king. Drive your heart away.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Chicken meet Egg.

The 'normal' people riding doesn't happen because the system is otherwise empty and ridden by no one.

You have to choose to use the system, setting an example for your fellow 'normies' LOL..........

Then things fall into place.

Of course, that requires sufficiently attractive service; and likely some disincentives on the other side (cost of parking for example).

Houston Metro did a piss poor job right from the start of trying to keep vagrants off the rail until it was too late and it garnered a negative reputation. They routinely kick them off but still find their way on and freak out the occasional suburban rider. There are new lines with more on the way and hopefully they can overcome some of the stigma of the original line.

[MolsonExport]

Transit in SF is terrible.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Stay Stoked Brah

when was the last time any of you took public transportation? I had to think about it, for me it has been about 21 months.

Every day for the past 20 years or thereabouts.

I do recognize that a majority of Americans view public transit as something you're forced into taking because you can't afford a car. So there's definitely a stigma attached to it in a majority of Americans' minds.

But there are places (New York, Boston, SF, DC come to mind) where this isn't the majority view. I had a doctor for a mom and a university administrator for a dad, and we rode the Boston commuter rail and subway all the time as kids. All my friends did too. So did their parents. And this was in the 80s and 90s. As teens and college kids, we all knew it made no sense driving in central Boston (very scarce and very expensive parking, plus Big Dig construction at the time). We'd take advantage of the T's many inner-ring suburb park-and-ride setups like Riverside and BC Stations in Newton, Alewife in Cambridge, and Oak Grove in Malden.

I've seen weird people do weird stuff on the T, but not as weird as what you see in Tokyo. At least Americans will intervene in sexual assaults, random fist-fights, or dudes furiously masturbating in public, and Americans will help people passed-out drunk who are throwing up on themselves. Japanese generally just let that stuff go down as though nothing were happening; just stare straight ahead or stay focused on that phone screen. If you must, casually move away to another part of the car or into the next car while checking your phone, as though you had always intended to do so.

Despite all that, Tokyo's combined rail network still sees 21+ million daily weekday trips. The Yamanote Line alone see 4 million daily weekday trips. People who own a car or who can afford a car (like me) still use transit every day, because there is no negative social stigma attached to doing so in Japan and because it's faaaar more convenient. The built environment strongly dictates this and always has. I've heard it argued by Japanese academics (and I agree) that built form necessarily made using public transit socially acceptable and widely adopted from its inception. Maybe this is why transit doesn't have the usual American stigma in places like New York and Boston.

[Shawn]

I'll add that of course funding for public transit in Japan is on a whole other level than anywhere in America, so of course the stations are nicer, the trains are newer and cleaner, etc. A few American network facilities like LA's look great, but most are either small/afterthought-ish or ancient/overcrowded (NY, Boston). Point being that in most cases, the American facilities aren't helping their cause.

[Fresh]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Good service is part of it, as is built environment.

those roads are pseudo-highways. very few cross streets, few stoplights, probably little traffic, wholly residential uses (from which to draw riders, while truck and commercial traffic is far less), and relatively high speeds. optimal for buses.

all those warehouse and light industrial jobs are in the same location.

Really? Brampton looks pretty disperse to me, especially those industrial/warehousing districts.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Br....7624177?hl=en

Looks like a pretty good example of a suburban form doing great with bus ridership.

Doesn't look too different to Plano.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Every day for the past 20 years or thereabouts.

I do recognize that a majority of Americans view public transit as something you're forced into taking because you can't afford a car. So there's definitely a stigma attached to it in a majority of Americans' minds.

But there are places (New York, Boston, SF, DC come to mind) where this isn't the majority view. I had a doctor for a mom and a university administrator for a dad, and we rode the Boston commuter rail and subway all the time as kids. All my friends did too. So did their parents. And this was in the 80s and 90s. As teens and college kids, we all knew it made no sense driving in central Boston (very scarce and very expensive parking, plus Big Dig construction at the time). We'd take advantage of the T's many inner-ring suburb park-and-ride setups like Riverside and BC Stations in Newton, Alewife in Cambridge, and Oak Grove in Malden.

Suburban Bay Area is exactly like that too. I know many many suburbanites that heavily prefer taking BART or Caltrain into the city because it's just way more convenient. Driving around and parking for me isn't an issue but most suburbanites aren't used to narrow lanes with many hills, double parkers, cyclists, buses/streetcars, and pedestrians to distract them, and they don't know how to parallel park, especially on hills. And parking garages are very expensive. In the outer neighborhoods of SF, it can still be hard to find parking. But most of all they are afraid of the hills. So it's just easier to BART into the City and either walk or take MUNI around town, or more recently Uber/Lyft. All the museums and ballparks and concert halls are easily accessible by walking or public transit, so it really is the best option. You don't have to deal with the Bay Bridge traffic or tolls either. Back in the day the A's offered $2 tickets and $1 hot dogs if you took BART to the game, so overall the Bay Area has a pretty good culture of encouraging public transit.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Fresh

Really? Brampton looks pretty disperse to me, especially those industrial/warehousing districts.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Br....7624177?hl=en

Looks like a pretty good example of a suburban form doing great with bus ridership.

Doesn't look too different to Plano.

Brampton and Plano are socioeconomically very different, and this likely plays a major role in modal share differences. Oakville is probably a closer demographic equivalent.

Why would any non-poor person utilize transit in Dallas? The metro is incredibly sprawled and auto-oriented, driving is cheap, incomes are relatively high, weather is oppressively hot much of the year. Who would trade air-conditioned comfort of a private vehicle for waiting on the side of a sweltering highway for a bus or train? Also, the Dallas rail system, while extensive, used existing rail rights-of-way through industrial/warehouse areas, so it doesn't even run along routes convenient for most commuters.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Stay Stoked Brah

when was the last time any of you took public transportation? I had to think about it, for me it has been about 21 months.

last week.

[kool maudit]

I would say Montreal and Toronto edge out SF.

[niwell]

Haven't been to SF since 2014 but I also find the transit in Toronto/Montreal more usable on the whole. BART has decent suburban coverage but getting around the city itself seemed pretty difficult and slow.

I think I've used the subway once since March, no streetcars or buses since then. Prior to COVID I'd use transit 2-3x a week dependent on weather and pretty much only for commuting. Otherwise I cycle or walk for the vast majority of trips. Been working from home since March with no end in sight, so... That being said, transit vehicles I see in the central city seem fairly busy, even if not at the crush loads that were becoming the norm pre-COVID.

[PhilliesPhan]

I've been seeing that video a lot on my social media accounts in recent days. After watching the entire video, I've come to the conclusion that I hate the premise of the video: public transit isn't the issue; rather, the issue is that companies choose to locate themselves in transit-inaccessible areas without consequence.

Most transit systems were built to transport people to the urban center of a metro area from its fringes. To me, this isn't an issue at all, as I believe that most jobs should be within the boundaries of the metropolitan center. For example, here in Philadelphia, I believe that most positions should not only be located in Center City and University City, but other transit-accessible nodes throughout the city--such as Broad and Lehigh, Broad and Erie, Germantown and Chelten, etc. Unfortunately, as highways paved their way through city centers across the nation and people followed them out into less-populated areas, the jobs followed.

I know this wouldn't work for every city and its associated metropolitan area, but there should be major tax disincentives at the federal level for companies that choose transit-accessible locations. While this probably wouldn't work for the Phoenixes, Houstons, and Oklahoma Cities of the world, it would work for cities with established transit systems, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Transit systems shouldn't have to waste money to build out new suburban connections due to the fact that some companies decided to drop their flag out of the proximity of legacy urban and suburban transit systems.

[kool maudit]

That is a really good point. I know that in Denmark, the development of the Nordhavn project and its incentives to e.g. the United Nations was inseparable from the metro expansion. I am not sure how the underlying laws worked, but reading about the project always gave the impression that the government was taking a "we can put new corporate buildings here now that the train will be coming" approach. Obviously they didn't have total control of the corporate decision-making process, but there were incentives and such up for grabs.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan

I've been seeing that video a lot on my social media accounts in recent days. After watching the entire video, I've come to the conclusion that I hate the premise of the video: public transit isn't the issue; rather, the issue is that companies choose to locate themselves in transit-inaccessible areas without consequence.

I agree with this comment. Rail makes land more expensive than highways do.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7267...7i16384!8i8192

a bus route on this street carried over 20,000 passengers a day in 2019.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6516...7i16384!8i8192

This bus carries 15,000 daily passengers

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6559...7i16384!8i8192

This street is currently getting an LRT built on it.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6724...7i16384!8i8192

This bus carries 10,000 people a day.

If that isn't proof that good service delivers ridership, I don't know what is.

Canadian suburbs somehow manage to be even worse than sunbelt suburbs. All the soul sucking banality of sunbelt suburbs without any of its charms or good weather. AND you get to ride the bus everywhere too? What fun!

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Canadian suburbs somehow manage to be even worse than sunbelt suburbs. All the soul sucking banality of sunbelt suburbs without any of its charms or good weather. AND you get to ride the bus everywhere too? What fun!

I’ll concede that. If this wasn’t an urbanism forum, but a “suburbanist” forum, American cities would crush Canadian cities for suburban living standards.

American suburbs in the eastern half of the continent are exurban and sprawly, but from a suburban homeowner perspective, that’s kind of the point: you get a lot of living space, a bigger house, nicer landscaping, trees, and, in many exurban areas, a small, tidy prewar village with a Main Street atmosphere within easy driving distance. You don’t get much of that in the suburbs of major Canadian cities.

Here in the GTA, the western lakeshore suburbs like Port Credit, Oakville and Burlington kind of have that, but at a big price premium and they’re not quite as nice as a north shore Chicago suburb or Connecticut/Westchester county.

[Handro]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, everything except work is within walking distance.

Same, I've been riding my bike to work. I last took transit the week before the lockdown in Chicago.

[softee]

I've been using the TTC at least once a week through the whole pandemic. Subway, streetcar and bus.

With Regards to all the Brampton bashing, while most of it is mind numbing suburbia, it does have a decent little pre-war downtown area, although it's vastly undersized for what is now a city of 650,000 people. https://goo.gl/maps/sE2Ye5WF5g3zyBug9

I was recently in downtown Brampton, and was pleasantly surprised by how urban it felt, albeit it seemed like the downtown of a city with no more than 150,000.

More downtown:https://goo.gl/maps/Df4qW2tYxgbLk7AD8

Brampton Transit centre/GO/VIA rail terminal:https://goo.gl/maps/nXh5VF7aVPt34KZ2A

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I’ll concede that. If this wasn’t an urbanism forum, but a “suburbanist” forum, American cities would crush Canadian cities for suburban living standards.

American suburbs in the eastern half of the continent are exurban and sprawly, but from a suburban homeowner perspective, that’s kind of the point: you get a lot of living space, a bigger house, nicer landscaping, trees, and, in many exurban areas, a small, tidy prewar village with a Main Street atmosphere within easy driving distance. You don’t get much of that in the suburbs of major Canadian cities.

Here in the GTA, the western lakeshore suburbs like Port Credit, Oakville and Burlington kind of have that, but at a big price premium and they’re not quite as nice as a north shore Chicago suburb or Connecticut/Westchester county.

I agree. I'm extremely urban, but if you go the suburbs, big gardens and even private forests in your backyard like the ones in Atlanta, is the way to go. There are horrible examples in Toronto and Brazilian gated communities where the houses take the whole plot while you rely 100% on cars. What's the point then?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Stay Stoked Brah

when was the last time any of you took public transportation? I had to think about it, for me it has been about 21 months.

Used to take it almost every day. Now I work from home most days, so only every once in a while. I'd take it more now if mask compliance on the CTA was 100% instead of 90-95%...