I’m 25 and I don’t have a drivers license. I mean, I’ve never really felt the need to go and get one. Public transport is usually the fastest option where I live, and it takes a lot less responsibility to use it.
But most people would still prefer driving, rather than using the public T. Why?
In the US, public transit is almost universally unavailable. If it is available, it’s a massive luxury (or strictly necessary, like NYC).
Here in Jacksonville, FL, there’s essentially 0 public transport. No bus stop near the neighborhood or to the grocery store (which is 20 minutes away).
…or completely inadequate.
Or forced to be inadequate, in the case of Baltimore.
We were supposed to get a new east-west light rail line. It was shovel-ready and federally funded. However, our wonderful governor Larry Hogan, in his push to punish those Baltimore ni- I mean, apply his fiscal conservative bona fides, canceled it, calling it a “boondoggle”. Instead of this “boondoggle”, Hogan threw his support behind the Purple Line, a similar light rail proposal to connect the whiter, wealthier suburbs in Montgomery and PG Counties. It was funded by public-private partnerships and ended up the subject of land disputes, went billions over budget, and is only just finally getting off the ground.
He also pushed for highway expansion projects that just so happened to benefit his real estate investments, but we don’t begrudge him for that for reasons of…
Took my comment right out of my head. As someone who lives east of the city the redline would have been nice to have but racism took it away. I was just talking to my gf about it last weekend when we went into the city for a ballgame and how nice it would be to ride the train instead of driving.
I remember having a bus come every hour. If you miss that bus, then oops you’re an hour late for work.
If you run 5 minutes late in your car, then you are 5 minutes late for work.
Also if you have to take 3 or so busses to connect somewhere, depending on how the scheduling worked out, you could get unlucky and have an hour wait between bus 1 & 2 and an hour wait between bus 2 & 3.
Taxis cost a decent amount of money here.
Uber/Lyft/etc are hit and miss. App says if you need to be somewhere at 9am, to request the ride at like 8:30 or whatever. And when you do, you don’t get anyone showing up or someone will grab your ride, not come to you for 10 minutes, and then put your request for a ride back out there for someone else to grab.
Or in the case of NYC, strictly necessary and completely inadequate!
Agreed, the only cities that I’ve been to that had decent public transport were Chicago (The L) and New York City.
Salt Lake City is coming up in public transit. There’s a decent light rail and a pretty well spaced bus network. Frequency is a major issue though.
I’ve heard public transit is pretty good in DC, too. My fiancée and I are planning a trip to DC at the end of August. I plan on parking my car at the hotel and just use public transit, so we’ll test that theory.
EDIT: Also, I’ve never been to Salt Lake City. Seems like a really cool place though!
It has its blind spots (NW is underserved because the NIMBYs didn’t want the Metro to bring
black peoplelower property values) and it has infrastructure issues, but it’s on the whole pretty goodSeattle is decent til like 10pm and then it goes to shit.