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Comment by mousethatroared | Hacker News Reader

And they smell like urine, are generally filthy and they are the most likely place a middle class person is to be trapped in a small environment with a mentally ill person.

If:

- America solved its mental health crisis

- Americans became cleaner

- Americans became better behaved in public

Then Americans who can afford not to take the bus would reconsider it.

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I'm strongly convinced that economic precarity, homelessness and the stressor that brings, is more likely to manifest itself as "mentally ill" than just, "well for some reason we have a lot of crazy people now", it's not too hard to maintain minimum hygiene if you have a roof over your head, three squares, and a bit of positive socialization from work/school/church/library/whatever

Sure, and this is a very interesting question whose absence in American political discourse is an indictment against us.

But this meta question is not why I don't ride the bus. The structural inconvenience of it, and the odors inside are.

Being homeless and not having a place to shower excuses you looking unkempt and smelling bad, but that's not what people are upset at homeless people for. There's plenty of people who smell bad despite being housed (eg. teenage boys, gamers, or anime convention attendees), but they get nowhere as much flak as "homeless people". People are upset at antisocial behavior like urinating in public, aggressively approaching others, and setting up encampments. Except for maybe the last item, all of those things are a homeless person chose to do.

Or mentally ill dog owner, who defecates and urinates on public bus! And then attacks child, because "it provoked him" by eating food or making eye contact!

And there is not a chance to get any compensation for hospital bills, because dog never attacked before (haha), and "first bite is free"!

You don't even need to go this far.

Passenger cars-- heck, even coach buses-- are engineered for passenger comfort and convenience.

City buses are engineered to secure the driver against passengers, to be simply maintained and hosed out as needed, and to accommodate overcrowding standing-room-only discomfort. Seats are hard, leg room is deficient, shoulder room is deprived, and that's even before we talk about trying to time an irregular arrival or departure time on a wobbly bus schedule.

You only ride a bus if you're indifferent to personal inconvenience, have firm principles, or have no choice.

I wouldn't mind the plastic seats if someone took the opportunity afforded by these materials to pressure wash the cabin every now and then.

Imagine the bus smelled like detergent and was spotless.

Piss, the occasional feces and I have to celebrate profane graffiti calling for cops' death as art.

I agree. If you're going to make the bus completely plastic, at least wash it down at night when it heads back to the depot.

My pet peeve is all the rattle. You are basically inside a giant guitar. Everything resonates or produces low frequency rumble that causes anxiety. Dunno if they can make it more stiff using carbon or aluminium. Probably would have to remove most of the windows.

Or you could spread people out more, by putting more buses on the routes. Fewer people per bus, buses are more conveniently timed, and more middle class passengers will want to take the bus. They'll save money by ditching their cars.

A bit more money can find more cleaning, as well as giving places for the mentally ill to go other than riding around all day.

Ya know, as long as we're making up fantasies. Americans are not noticeably different on our levels of mental illness, but no power on earth will compel us to spend money that might help someone other than ourselves.

> putting more buses on the routes. Fewer people per bus, buses are more conveniently timed

I think Uber is attempting exactly this.

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