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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

One thing missed by most of these post-auto stories: transit used to be sooo boring, and no longer is.

I'm old enough to remember riding the bus before mp3 players and smart phones. Your only options were to read or to bring a CD player. Walkmans (Walkmen?) were a pain: batteries got expensive, and carrying more than 1 or 2 CDs was a pain, so you ended up listen to a few tracks over and over. Newspapers and books were good, but not as stimulating as the internet or email or Words With Friends. I still remember waiting for the train with no music, nothing to read, and nobody to talk to; it was excruciating.

Nowadays, I prefer transit to driving, even when it's a bit longer, because I can just zone out on my iPhone the whole way.

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Actually it has seemed like this is the primary point most of these stories have been making for a while.

"The percentage of young drivers is inversely related to the availability of the Internet, Mr. Sivak’s research has found. Why spend an hour driving to work when you could take the bus or train and be online?" (from the article)

"...[A]lmost everything about digital media and technology makes cars less desirable or useful and public transportation a lot more relevant." [from May 2010, http://adage.com/article/digital/digital-revolution-driving-...]

I wish I could say this about transit in Beijing. The subways are so crowded you barely get to sit down, perhaps you would have enough room to fiddle with your smartphone if only there was signal for it in the tunnel (damn China Unicom), and standing for 45 minutes kind of sucks.

Taxi!

That's an economic issue, the roads in beijing are most likely croweded too and to boot most of those people are using public transport because they can't afford cars.

(I am using genaralisations about China to make these statements)

True. The subway is actually very nice, and in Beijing, very cheap (just 2 RMB a trip, no distance limit!). Those who can afford cars aren't using transit, and many of us in the middle are using taxis anyways because they are still not that bad (50 RMB = ~$8 taxi vs. 2 RMB subway...).

I would prefer nice public transit though, or better yet, the ability to bike without getting killed by a car.

I think it's a shame that private automobiles were introduced in China. There are too many people in large Chinese cities for them to all want to ride in a car. Imagine how much more livable these cities would be if everyone was either riding a bike or the subway.

I don't know about Beijing but in Shenzhen, lots of the newer apartments are located in "no car" gardens that can span over a few blocks. There are lots of trees, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. Quite livable places actually.

All nicer apartment blocks are like that, actually; they usually have a garage underneath but even this is too expensive for most people (whose work unit will give them a Mercedes even if they can't afford a parking space!), so they park on the street...fun stuff.

I've actually always wondered about that. I often see loads of Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Porsche cars parked around old buildings where the rent is less than 150$/month. If what you say is true (companies giving Mercedes to their employees), why is this? Or do some Chinese prefer owning an expensive car rather then living in a nice place?

I said "work unit" and I'm talking about government employees :) The government gives them the car and they use their connections to "qualify" for subsidized housing (the kind they are building for the poor!). So the result is a lot of Audi's parked around public housing.

Whatever works.

Not me. Most of my life I lived in cities with very good public transport systems, but I know that once I am done getting educated, I will live in a city that one can't live in without a car.

Public transit and bikes are cheaper and cleaner, I agree. But goddammit, they are so inconvenient. Public transit is annoying because it's never close to where you live or work - your destination gets averaged with everybody else's destination in the area and therefore involves walking to subway, waiting for subway, going places, getting out, walking to work... ugh. Biking is annoying due to whether (both winter and summer is super annoying) and security (locking bike, unlocking bike, findign place to lock it...). you can just leave a car somewhere and press a button and be pretty sure it won't be stolen.

I much prefer a world with big garages, big roads, lots of free parking spaces, spread-out low-rise cities, driving to huge stores for shopping (walmart, costcos, home depot) instead of malls and little shops.

Disagree utterly, but upvoted anyway.

Or you could just take a nap...

What about chatting with fellow passengers? What happened to simple human interaction?

Small talk with strangers every single day would get boring extremely fast.

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