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Comment by Sacho | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine how bad public transport must be to increase your commute time by an order of magnitude. I use public transport precisely because I value my time - it takes longer(around x1.5) than using a car, but that time is relaxing, can be used to read a book, listen to a podcast or just order your thoughts. Time spent in a car is stressful and requires your focus and attention.

I'm not sure what kind of population density you need to make public transport workable, but it's a blessing when you have it available. There's some sample math at the end of this article(https://www.ptua.org.au/myths/density/ - technical appendix) which concludes that you don't really need that high a density(it focuses on Melbourne), as long as people actually prefer to use the public transport service over their own cars.

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Crappy public transit is pretty common in the Bay Area.

Looking at my own home in the South Bay.

My 10 mile commute takes 15 minutes driving.

By public transit, it's walk five minutes to light rail, wait ten minutes, ride 50 minutes, transfer, wait ten minutes for the next bus, ride 15 minutes, walk 10 minutes.

Admittedly, 7x isn't quite an order of magnitude, but close enough.

I really don't see anyway to get busses economical down here unless you had much more traffic and higher density.

Not really bad public transport, but we have no traffic.

For me to go to work on the bus route I have to go pretty far away from my home to then work my way back due to the way the bus route flows.

or I can get in my car, drive to 10 mins traffic free, and be a work

Around here people use Public Transport because they have no other means of travel, not because on congestion or anything else

It depends on local details. In most large cities public transit assumes you live in the suburbs and work downtown. Jobs are moving to the suburbs, to get to them means a ride downtown, and then a ride back out. I know of people with a 4 mile commute who drive (why they don't bike is a good question) because they bus ride would be 3 hours each way.

As a Chicago native, I can definitely see a case for like a north-south suburban Metra line, being potentially amazing. But our rail system primarily piggybacks on freight lines which all are concerned about going to/from Chicago proper.

I don't feel buses are nearly as productive because of traffic. There are some nifty routes around Chicago where buses are allowed to drive the shoulder in traffic jams, and hence, do better than cars on travel time, but the north-south suburban expressway doesn't have that arrangement.

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