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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

So I’m a big anti-car advocate but walking to a bus, taking the bus to a train, and taking the train to Paris (and maybe taking the metro around Paris?) and of course going all the way back sounds like a thing a car person would bemoan as a failure. Must be nice to get to Paris so easily I’ll admit.

Personally, if I have to take more than 2 modalities of transit to get where I have to go then I just use a car (taxi).

Maybe the French are a bit different, but in America no one would want that. The idea that you’re beholden to the others schedule (or multiple others!) and it could be late or off or whatever or if you miss it you’re screwed is exactly what Americans fear most about communal transit. The American independent mindset would kill that.

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My commute time is fairly long, it's 76 minutes, and is about the same time in car. The thing is, public transit for me is more reliable, as I don't rely on specific hours, at peak hours you get your bus/train every 10-15 minutes at most and there is a metro every 3 minutes.

If there are issue on a line, there are apps that will route you away from it.

And the other big thing is, these 76 minutes are not lost, you can do something in this time, for me it's reading a lot on the net.

Now, if you want to do this commute in car, well it won't be good for your mental health, then the traffic will vary a lot, and can add 30-45mins at worst on your commute.

I commute about an hour into Manhattan, NYC, supposedly one of the few places in the US with decent public transit. It’s 50:50 odds that that hour is not only completely lost but spent in complete misery standing up and holding a tight pole on a swaying and swerving bus or train.

In isolation I would much prefer to drive in, traffic and all. But it costs too much, and I know that’s not a realistically scalable solution for many reasons. But that I even wish I could is representative of just how much I hate NYC’s public transit system.

Now I’m not a transit hater. I loved Seoul’s and Tokyo’s for example. But to get NYC’s transit, let alone any other American city’s transit to that level is completely impossible due to cultural and social reasons. And no - cars have little to do with those reasons.

The New York subway has a ridership of 2-3 million per day.

https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership

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