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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Imagine having a credit score of 300 and a $542/mo loan payment on a used car. Cursed. Americans need buses more than ever.

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I live in a city with lots of buses, they are great. The problem is that they are neuropsychiatric units on wheels, there is always some crazy person being clinically crazy (like talking to imaginary friends), so that makes the whole ride something you don't want to experience often if possible.

Eh, that discourse is usually being advanced by people who never ride the bus, don't intend to start riding it, and have a personal interest in selling you a car. In real transit preference surveys, and historical outcomes, it is clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard. So if a transit agency faces a choice of spending limited resources on policing the inside of the vehicle for lunatics, or adding a bus to the schedule, they should always choose the latter.

“it is clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard”

If you believe this, it would be cause to doubt your sanity.

I'm from a 3rd world country who rode the bus everyday to everywhere.

Me and my wife don't feel safe riding the bus in the West Coast of the USA.

We take the bus all of the time here in DC. I’ve literally never once encountered someone like that.

I’ve been panhandled a couple of times (in as many decades) and there’ve been a few people yelling at each other, but they left everyone alone.

On the driving front, though, I’ve had a bunch of people with anger management issues threaten to kill me and the only times in my adult life that I’ve credibly been threatened with a fistfight were by people driving who resented being expected to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk. The bus crowd is a lot more chill.

> We take the bus all of the time here in DC.

Right, now try the same in Seattle and take a bus going to 3rd avenue in Downtown. I've also tried it in SF, it's not nice.

Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"?

A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. Mathematically impossible to run on time. It never gets you where you want to go, just kinda close usually. If one doesn't show up, there is no real feedback without an extensive background metadata system. Never as clean as your own car (unless you're one of those carbage-loving people I suppose, but then you're just going to litter on the bus anyways). Obnoxious, loud, smelly, or crazy people you have to deal with.

I'll never understand the crowd so desperate to have them, but I'll still support the cause if it cleans up the highways for me I guess.

Nobody denies that if we all chip in to build a door-to-door freeway and free parking for you it will be cool for you. The question is whether we have better things to do with our money.

Than spending it upending the entire transportation infrastructure when we have much more pressing problems? Then I agree.

If you think buying a whole bunch of busses is going to solve some major problem... I have a bridge to add to your purchase.

> A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car.

I never have to clean a bus, or put gas in it, or change its oil. I don't even have to drive it.

I don't have to dedicate a big portion of my property to storing it, just to pay to park it somewhere else when I go out. I'll never get a ticket for leaving it in the wrong place, and I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong.

I don't have to worry about it getting stolen, or crashed into. I don't have to worry about being unable to afford the insurance or registration. I don't have any wealth tied up in it, so its deprecation doesn't matter.

Having to walk a few minutes at the start and end of my journey is a small price to pay for such convenience.

And if I ever do need one, I can rent one for less than the average American's monthly payment. In fact, I can rent the exact one I need that day, which might be a pickup today but a minivan tomorrow.

> I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong.

Technically, it's possible to be required to go to court, for some value of "used it wrong".

Or so I'm told.

Also:

- Not having to perform the repetitive, mind-numbingly-dull-yet-somehow-simultaneously-stressful cognitive task of driving.

- Instead, having the freedom to engage in more relaxing, productive or creative pursuits in this era of smartphones; do work, watch videos, read books, sleep, or even just look out the window.

- Never having to deal with traffic jams. Or road rage.

- Getting a chance to walk places for free instead of paying to do the same thing on a treadmill in a gym.

In most places I've lived, busses are for poor people. Because anyone else will pay whatever it takes to get a car and avoid something like a _three hour_ round trip for something 10 miles away. I'm not kidding; my work commute is 10 miles each way, in a city of way more than 1M, and it's 1.5 hours total for me to get to work on time.

I've lived in one place where they were great. Dense urban environments can do that, though. So nuh us busses can be great (the trains were even better), but it seems like the US has zero actual drive to make public transit not crap.

I've lived in a couple places with public transit way faster and more efficient than cars.

But because it's public, people can't be easily kicked off. Once I was caught between a knife fight; another time a schizophrenic person started to aggressively trap me in the corner while going on an increasing paranoid tirade.

Not long after that I bought a bicycle.

A bicycle is pretty much always going to beat a bus over reasonable distances, on performance alone, not even counting the crazy people.

>>It never gets you where you want to go.

As well as the car. Unless you destination is a parking lot.

Always amused by HN on buses. It seems that the median HN is basically okay with trains, but is convinced that if they ever set foot on a bus they will immediately be stabbed by 47 drug addicts, and then their soul consigned to Bus Hell. It's kind of comically hyperbolic.

I wonder where the dividing line is. Are HNs afraid of trams? Very Light Rail systems? Trambuses? Trolleybuses? BRTs? Railbuses? Someone should do a survey.

(Though thinking about it further, probably _should_ be afraid of railbuses, which are a bus chassis on rails; kind of amazing they were ever allowed really. Bizarrely, some were actually still in use in the UK til 2021 or so. Even more shockingly, there don't seem to have been many/any documented fatal incidents; one of the UK railbuses was destroyed more or less completely in a crash, but it was empty at the time.)

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