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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Did the streetcar line serve city hall, and did it run reasonably often at the time the meeting was set to end?

Depending on the answers, there are two totally different lessons to be drawn there!

That's the issue with public transportation in the US. Cars, gas, and land are cheap, therefore personal transportation is cheaper than public transportation. When it's more affordable to drive into a city and park for free than take a train/bus and be limited to their schedules and locations, personal transportation wins every time, like in the OP's anecdote. Personally, I think this is a wonderful thing, but I also know public transportation services in other countries are much better at overcoming these problems than in the US.

There are two competing issues, one is what you say, and the other is that public transportation often sucks pretty hard. Some places lean heavily one way, and some lean heavily the other way. My point is that without knowing this context, we don't know if that story is an example of "people say they want public transportation but don't actually use it" or if it's an example of "public transportation is set up badly and then the people who run it are somehow surprised when people don't use it."

Also, are the type of people who attend city hall meetings the type of people who are most benefited by public transportation?

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