On 29 Nov 2005 00:24:00 -0800,
[email protected] wrote:
>It is as easy to live in the US without a car just as easily as it is
>in any other country without a car. How easy depends on what type of
>terrain, how built up the area is, and what level of discomfort/hassle
>a person is willing to endure. The myth that public transportation in
>the US sucks and is so great in the rest of the world is hooey. In the
It's not a myth that public transport in the US sucks more than in the
rest of the world. It's not exactly a chauffeured limo here either, but
even the New York or DC subways versus the London, Paris, or Berlin
systems (which I've all seen firsthand) is not a favorable comparison, and
those are supposed to be the places in the US were public transport is
good.
In the cities where PT is not so good, it's generally pretty damn awful.
Many acquaintances of mine in such cities complain about hub-and-spoke
arrangements that make it much, much easier to go in and out that to go
around, so that a 10 minute drive to the next neighbourhood entails taking
the bus to city centre and another one out, for a time of an hour or two
(which is not entirely unknown here). Another problem is the number of
buses that go. I live next to a double-spoke bus line here, that has 4
buses an hour from, 6 am or so to 12 pm, with 6 an hour during rush hours.
That means that if I have to use the spoke system, at least I can get
decent connections, instead fo spending an hour at the hub waiting for the
next bus.
PT in the US has been systematically dismantled, because almost everybody
can afford a car, therefore there are few passengers, and the ones that
there are are the *really* poor. That's a recipe for unprofitability. It's
also a recipe for intense political ignoring of the issue -- poor people
don't vote, so nobody cares.
For example, if there is a scheduling issue (and the US is big, so
scheduling issues arise frequently), Amtrak trains have to wait for cargo
trains, they get precedence in being sorted out. That's something that
politics could easily fix -- train cargoes are typically
non-time-critical, so a little bit of delay is a lot less aggravating than
for passenger trains. But still, small delays on cargo trains are
considered to be more important than making passenger rail useable.
Jasper