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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I live on the western edge of Oak Park and our office is on top of the Jackson blue line stop; that stretch of the blue line is one of the better, faster public transit runs in the US.

Meanwhile, my driving connection to my office is I-290, the Ike, one of the most congested highways in the US.

I'm pretty optimally situated to take advantage of public transit.

And yet a commute on the blue line, in addition to being much less pleasant than the freeway (the trains at peak time are packed) takes roughly an hour. Even in rush hour, driving to the office is so much faster it makes a meaningful difference in my morning logistics. After hours, the train still carves an hour out of my life, and the drive is practically like teleportation.

I've done the blue line for months at a time (car trouble, &c) and I don't mind it and I'm happy I have the option, but there's a litany of car unpleasantness on this thread, and I want to contribute an honest counterpoint.

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>> I'm pretty optimally situated to take advantage of public transit.

I don't doubt that public transit is the worse choice for you, but I wanted to comment on an attitude this line reminds me of. People expect that public transportation will, when it "works," be better than having their own vehicle. If driving to a destination is faster and more pleasant, then the system has failed.

In general, there are two problems with this. First, the system was not designed for your trip - your car is. You car will (almost) always be better than any general purpose transport system. The measure of a transport system is how many places you can get to in an acceptable time frame with acceptable reliability. Obviously, as reliability increases and the time frame shrinks, the system improves. Think about the cost of your vehicle (both up front and continuing) and multiply that by the population of your city. We pay quite a lot for the quality afforded by a private vehicle.

Second, I think that many people judge trips from a point of view that's heavily conditioned by experiences in private vehicles. I like taking the subway to work because it lets me read for 25-30 minutes. I like it because I don't have to pay attention and can safely think about other things while I'm traveling. Many people aren't used to the different texture of traveling with a crowd of strangers, and I think that effects their assessments of the overall system.

(Picking your comment to respond briefly to).

I want to avoid giving the impression that I'm arguing against public transit, even in my case. Public transit is by far the more cost-effective option, even if you factor the cost of my time. It's also more responsible, and less error-prone.

What I was responding to was a series of comments along the lines of "cars suck, I can't imagine why anybody uses them". Well, I use them to save a couple hours of my day every day. I have a 12 year old whose middle school bus doesn't come by until 8.30; if I took the train, I'd get in to work every day at 10:00AM.

I'm actually a huge car fan too. My friend and I drove around the south-western US during a summer in a way that would be impossible without a car. Though I take BART to work, my girlfriend drives (and it makes sense for her).

I guess I was trying to point out the differences in philosophy between private ownership and a public system - your post seemed agreeable enough that I wouldn't incite an argument :).

You also have to deal with the segment of the homeless population that seeks shelter on the trains, and the ones that aggressively panhandle. I have rarely ridden a CTA train without being accosted with demands for money from people who "just got out of prison and am trying to get on the right path" etc.

Oh. Please. You must either be an overly sensitive person or a fiction writer. Your description is a little rich in the drama department.

He's not being even a little bit over-dramatic. You clearly don't ride the CTA.

That's not unique to CTA. That is the nature of public transportation - you will always deal with those characters.

Its no big deal. The usual response is to ignore them and generally they will go away (unless you are up very late at night). Nothing too different from ignoring the beggars coming up to you during a traffic stop. I am not sure why the OTP is making an issue out of it.

I'm a fan of the idea of public transit, but, like tptacek, I don't end up using it much. Mainly the trouble is this:

- In many situations, even with good public transit available, you're going to want to own a car.

- If you do own a car, it's a sunk cost.

- The cost is substantial.

- Due to a substantial sunk cost, you might as well get your money's worth, and drive. (i.e., Loss aversion)

So basically, I am stuck driving because I can't "not have a car" and if I'm going to pay into having a car, I might as well realize the benefits of owning one.

Taking it a step further, unless I can live in an area with good enough transit sufficient to not own a car at all, I'm better off economically in the suburbs, where rent is cheaper.

There's plenty of cases where transit beats driving, especially during rushhour, though admittedly there are many more where it doesn't. For example, getting from Midtown Atlanta to the airport during rushhour takes about 40-45 minutes driving, or 30 minutes by metro. The 20-minute light-rail trip from downtown LA to Pasadena can also easily take 2x as long by car. And the 30-minute Pacific Surfliner trip from downtown LA to Orange County beats even the off-peak driving times on I-5, easily crushing the rushhour trip times.

The variance is also typically less; I've gotten stuck in 2-hour commutes home due to a freeway accident much more often than I've been waylaid for over an hour by a train delays, though that probably varies based on the freeway and transit system.

Are you a young American?

Depends on who's asking. Most HN'ers would call me old.

Yes, he is young.

Speaking as someone who has chosen a life of public transit and walking over driving (I did have a drivers licence at one point), there are considerations more important to me and society as a whole than "pleasantness", like the air we all breathe, rediculous car insurance costs, my sanity and my time.

P.S. Everyone who voted the parent comment up is a lazy bastard. Get off your fat arses and walk once in a while.

The overall cost of car ownership and driving (gas, insurance, maintenance/repairs, YOUR TIME to wash/re-fuel/maintain your car, parking fees, stress, environmental factors that not many seem to care about) vs. some of those same factors in public transit do it for me.

A bike is also a small fraction of the cost of a car, and great for pretty much everything if you live in a city. I'm moving to SF in a few months and I'll only take a job within a few miles of where I'll be living (SOMA area) because I'd like to commute via bike year-round (and ideally telecommute at least some of the time.)

Really, with how much "work from outside the office" tech we have, it's crazy to me that millions of Americans are risking their lives every day /just to get to work/. Can we stop this unnecessary, costly, dangerous, polluting madness please?

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