A computer upgrade shut down BART

I lived mostly car free in Atlanta because the Marta station is one flight of stairs down from the airport terminal, and I could get to my lab in GSU in downtown Atlanta in less than 30 minutes, midtown Georgia tech campus in similar time, my first apartment in Lindberg in 40 minutes, and my second apartment in Sandy Springs on the other side of the city in less than an hour from the airport. Commute to and from my school/lab/apartment was always under 30 minutes and always faster by train compared to car.

These days I fly to the bay area to my office in East Bay. It's 2+ hours commute from either SFO or even OAK because you need to change buses 2 or 3 times. Add 1 more if you count taking the airport shuttle to the BART station. And SJC does not even have a BART connection.

There's fundamental design flaw in public transportation in the US, they almost never connect the population centers. Part of the reason why people are discouraged from using them and they don't get the funding to stay up to date.

I don't think this is a very big reason. I'm absolutely convinced people in the US are just used to cars, and like with any new piece of software, it has to be 10x better in some way for people to start using it en masse.

Maybe it's a matter of breaking down the costs for everyone to see, or maybe it's a matter of the city providing bus wifi so you can get some guaranteed access to the internet while riding, or maybe it's a matter of putting a police officer on every train.

But busses, aside from rush hour in probably the 10 largest cities in the nation, are always going to be way less convenient than a car. It has to stop a million times, there's no good way to guarantee you'll arrive on time (it's impossible to create a bus route where they stay evenly spaced like a train might handle better), and they never actually get you where you're going - just kinda nearby. Maybe you can transfer onto a bus now, but that's two modes of transportation. And God forbid there's a number of people combining their bus usage with a bicycle. Gotta wait for them to walk around front, unhook it, and hopefully put the bike rack back up so the driver doesn't have to get out and do it himself... etc, etc, etc.

Plus, I'm too busy to find it at the moment, but there's a study showing most people just want public transit so some other people use it and get off the highway. As in, they just want public transit so their car commute improves.

This will almost certainly never get major support; it's just too miserable of a system to overtake our already-crazy-convenient cars.

That's a depressing take.

First off, you're not too busy to find it. Because you're probably not used to doing it. All you have to do is to tell your favorite map app where you want to go, then switch to the public transit tab. You should try it.

Right now if I look at routes from Newark to OAK or SFO, it shows around 40 minutes by car and 1:40 hour by public transportation. If I had a plane to catch in 2 hours, I'd never take the bus. Here's why.

About 40 minutes of that 1:40 involves walking to the nearest bus stop. You could take an Uber instead and cut it down to 10 minutes. But that's problem A, public transportation doesn't have enough coverage.

There are 2 bus changes involved. The first one, Newark to Union City or Palo Alto, depending on whether you're going to OAK or SFO, runs every 30 minutes. That's problem B, the routes are not frequent enough.

The last bus change, very close to OAK/SFO, are design flaw- problem C. You really should be able to get off BART and take a short walk or shuttle to terminal. Instead, it's another bus ride that'll take 40 minutes.

From a regular commuter's pov, problems A/B/C are the issues that'll discourage someone from taking public transportation. Like other comments mentioned, it's not really a resource, infra or tech issue. It's a social/political issue that's preventing public transportation from expanding, both in coverage, frequency and in terms of connecting big population centers where it matters. All the issues that you mentioned, like stopping million times, guarantee of arriving on time, bicycles, and even safety and cleanliness, will go away if you solve the problems I mentioned- speaking from my experience taking public transportation for 30+ years in the US and abroad.

Huh? I’m too busy to find the study supporting the point I was making. I think you may have misunderstood?

Anyways, maybe if we solve all these issues, things will improve, and I hope it does! Still, I’m with those survey respondents - I really do not care how hard cities work to overcome public transit issues. I’ll never take it. I just have no incentive to do so, and I like my car. It’s private. It’s fast as hell. It’s pretty. It’s comfy. I wouldn’t get even one of those in a bus. I’d be pretty shocked if this wasn’t a standard response.

As an aside: it’s weird and disconcerting that you’re finding a different opinion to be depressing. Is it possible you’re just really disconnected?

There's a reason why US has higher rates of depression and mental health issues than other high income countries. Your thought process demonstrates why.

I think it’s probably because so many people invent fake solutions in their head that they think will solve a problem, and just get upset when it turns out to not work in their society.

More roads and cars are fake solutions in itself.

This is a completely illogical take. It reminds me of people who think induced demand means “no matter how many roads we build it can only get worse” lol.