Insanity

people should be reminded that posts like these aren't really critical of people for not taking the bus. they're critical of systems and planning that don't make you want to take the bus.
if the bus is always packed people will not want to ride it. that's not on you.
if the bus is unreliable, that's not on you.
if there's no bus or public transit that goes where you want to go out somewhere of a reasonable walking distance, that's not on you.
if where you're going is not walkable in the first place, then taking the bus is pointless since once you arrive you'd need a car anyway.
demanding change however is on you.
it's not like cars are awesome by the way. they're inefficient, pricy, troublesome, there's traffic, parking... it's stressful and it's deadly to boot. if people are not taking the bus, the city has work to do.
- I'm critical of all the people driving over sized SUVs by themselves in NYC when I'm trying to get a loaded box truck though a gridlocked intersection. Even if the city instruction doesn't have mass transit, you do not need Escalade over a commuter car.
  
  yeah just because you're not riding a bus doesn't mean you should get around with a Gigantus Pollutinator 9000 or a private jet, obviously.
  
  An SUV in NYC is especially egregious. They could have taken the train from Yonkers, and used the bus/subway. You guys are the one city in the US that actually has decent mass transit.
  If you actually live in the city, and own an SUV you are an idiot spending way too much on parking.
  
  Blame marketing (propaganda.) Our government has given control of our information networks to corporations and corporations use those channels to blast us with consumerist propaganda 24/7. People are taught that the type of car they drive defines who they are as a person so they do what they were taught and they buy a giant tank of a vehicle so that people will see them as dependable, manly, successful, outdoorsy, etc.
  
  Valid complaint, but not really the focus of this post imo
- I think (most) cars are awesome but want better public transit because there's way too many people who are terrible drivers.
  If driving required licensing like an airplane pilot I'd still get one. And probably enjoy driving more because I could expect people to know how to zipper merge.
  
  I just want people to learn how the fucking stop signs work.
- Semi solve by carrying passengers. Become the bus you wanna see.
  
  piggy back rides for $1.99!
- I lost my drivers license for a false positive drug test for two weeks. I took the bus to work, which was completely fine and no big deal. But in the morning and in the evening my bus was packed to the brim with high school children, which was easily the worst part of my day.
- people have designed the systems you are crying about and people use the systems you are crying about. People make the systems and engage them, you cant keep crying about systems or nothing will change

If this is America/Canada while it could be carrying more people the sad truth is that it's probably carrying half a dozen people because it's likely going from one unwalkable neighborhood to another. Especially up here in BC there's a stark difference between downtown buses running between unis, skytrain and the dense core of Vancouver to the ones you'll see in a suburban hell like Burnaby.
- Or it takes prohibitively longer than a driving.
  My wife considered taking the bus to work, but it would take 2 hours to get 20 minutes down the road.
  Also add the fact that a bus pass is more expensive than our car insurance.
  
  Yea, these are some of the hardest things we need to address to make non-driving more popular in North America - overseas the increased density lends itself a lot more naturally to public transit.
  
  Where I recently moved to, everything is a 10-20 min drive away, but buses can be over an hour because how poorly they're done. Apparently they used to be quite bad, but recent changes made them awful and no one understands how the new routes and timetables managed to be approved and implemented.
  
  This is a massive part of the problem here in the UK too.
  I just checked with Google Maps how long it would take my wife to get to work tomorrow morning. In the car it would take between 45 minutes and an hour, but public transport would take an hour and 52 minutes, with 29 minutes of that taken up by walking to bus and train stops. She would have to leave the house before 5:30 am, whereas the car would give her another hour in bed.
  At the moment we're under a yellow warning for rain too, so she would need to take waterproof clothes and probably a change of clothes too.
  Until things like this are improved, it's easy to see why lots of people still take the car :(
  
  Wow, that's a bummer :-/ For me it's 15-20 min by car assuming a few minutes walk to where I've parked. 25 min by bike (20 min by road but I take a safer 'scenic route') and about 40 min by bus and about 10 minutes of that is walking to/from the bus stop. And the bus fare gets capped at 8 trips per week so every trip thereafter is free meaning if you commute to work every day, Friday and all weekend will be unlimited free trips.
  
  Dedicated lanes make a huge difference there!
- Also, more frequent and convenient bus trips probably means less people on board per trip.
- Ya outside of Vancouver metro area it's not uncommon to see buses with like 4 people or less on it, sometimes no one.
  I would use it more if I could do everything I needed in one bus ride there and back but you would need to take a bus to one area to do something, then a bus to a second area to do another thing, then a bus to a third area to do something else, then a bus back home.
  Way too much hassle if you have multiple things to do.
- Burnaby isn't so bad as long as you're on a transit corridor. Granted it sucks outside those corridors though.

Well, I need to stop by fedex, go the the grocery store, and pick up dry cleaning all before I get home. Then I need to make dinner. So, if the bus takes 1.5 hours and driving takes 15 minutes… the car wins.
We should really say fuck urban sprawl. I’d love to walk to work 🤷
- I can do all of those things with a 5 minutes walk in my European city. And I don't even live in the city centre.
  Mixed zoning and walkable cities are the solution.
  
  That sounds like a dream. What country do you live in?
  
  Not living in the city is my solution. It's great.
  
  Part of the solution. Public transit needs to be much faster, more reliable, and more efficient too. But it needs proper investment.
- ex Londoner here, I can plot that route in my head by walking around Clapham Common station where I used to live.
  
  Lucky
  
  In Munich and I’m the same, work to home is 20mins on PT, and everything I need is available at the home end of the journey. If I need to go to a bigger supermarket or something less regular I can take a different way home and stop in the middle. The problem isn’t PT, it’s urban sprawl and poor amenity planning.
- Well those things are like in the same mall where the parking absolutely sucks, so bus was way easier.
  
  For me it's an 11 minute drive, 16 minute bike ride, or 58 minutes walk according to Google. Not sure about the bus since it doesn't calculate time for multiple stops.
  
  Mall?
  
  how is a grocery store in a mall?
- My city started a program using taxes to pay for half the bus fares of citizens
  So I looked things up.
  Going to the nearest grocery store:
  35 minutes walk 15 minutes bike ride 6 minutes car trip 90 minutes bus ride somehow
  
  Yup. Takes forever. If busses didn’t exist in traffic, having their own dedicated lanes… well, then we would have a light rail.
  
  My city also seems to have a weird focus on lowering fares to increase ridership. Going from $2/ride to $1/ride isn't going to convince anyone to turn their 30 minute drive into a 90 minute bus ride. Or deal with the uncertainty of whether the bus will be at the bus stop on time.
- Even if there's only two or three things a month that transit is better for, you're gonna get reductions in traffic. It doesn't have to be a full car replacement to be worth bigtime investments.
  And it's the only thing that scale.
  
  Seriously, tho!
  Madison, WI just launched Bus Rapid Transit only on one route so far. But that route goes right past the stadium and arenas where the UW Badgers play their games, the city and university performing arts centers, the state Capitol, many popular music venues, and the State Street pedestrian mall. It has free park-and-ride lots at each end of the route. Lots of people say that they will ride in for events at these venues, so BRT hasn't solved all our issues, but it's lessening congestion and helping even drivers get around more quickly.
- Current citty dweller here, having 200 people within 30m (in three dimensions) of my bed at night is unsustainable. Trust me theres a middleground somewhere
  
  Well…. Having fewer people is a good solution.

Lets assume we disqualify the cars going left ro right, and if we also assume each car only has 1 person per car, that means the cars is 32.
A bus that size is usually built to fit around 50ish people using every seat, but none standing.
I ride my local bus everyday. It's NEVER full like that. I might have 6 people on the bus. Sometimes I'm the only rider.
So, yeah, a bus CAN hold roughly as many prople as cars, (again assuming only 1 person per car, which probably isn't the case 100%), the reality is that's not functionally true.
- Even if it's only carrying 6 people it's still doing a better job than the cars which on average probably have 1-2 people in each of them.
  
  Yes, but it's also the length of 4 cars, and uses diesel.
- The bus I ride every morning is always so full you struggle to get past the standing people to get to the door. The bus home is usually a little less busy, but I'm currently writing this comment while having to stand on that bus.
  
  I absolutely avoided riding the bus in my native city. If a place wasn't within a mile from a subway station then it might as well be in a different country because I'm not taking the bus there. The buses were always crowded and hot. Subway got crowded during rush hour, but at least there was good AC no matter where you stand.
  
  Wow, that actually sounds awful.
- Badly designed transit is not a condemnation of all public transit. Specially when in most of the world public transit is vastly more occupied than in the US and Canada, by the simple fact of actually connecting places people want to go, where people can then walk around when they get there. Parking lots are not destinations.
  
  I lived in a European capital until 28 and never got a driver's license because public transport was faster than driving through horrible traffic.
  Moved to the US and in less than a year had to buy a car because it was impossible to do anything without one. And that was in am area with considerably better public transport than usual for the US. It was just my wife driving, but after a few years I had to get a driver's license too and buy a second car. I like walking, I prefer good public transit to driving, but it's simply not an option in most of the US.
  Oh, and another story. In my hometown I absolutely loved the subway as THE way to get around. It was cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and average wait was 2-3 minutes. I visited New York one summer and as per habit I went to take the subway to my destination. It was sweltering hot and I waited 20 minutes for a train. Up to that point I considered NYC to be the closest US city to what I'm used to, but that would have been a deal breaker.
- tbf, it's only possibly not true because of intentional choices in city design and general social attitudes.
  That being said, I live in a pretty shitty area for bus transport (I'm in the USA, no less) and the busses are still usually mostly full when I use them.
  
  There are many other reasons why a bus might not be used at full capacity beyond just city design combined with the general attitude of "society".
- is it not packed because all those people who could be inside are outside driving their own cars?
  is it not packed because the bus line doesn't have much demand?
  either case is not an argument against public transit. the point is to make public transit more convenient and utilized.

insane that the bus gets its own lane \s
- True! 10-12 more cars could have fit on that road if it wasn't for that stupid bus.
  But the poors have to get to their jobs serving me...
  I got it! Let's widen the road! Nobody uses the sidewalk anyway. /S

True but people have less of a problem when I masturbate in my car.
- Honestly? I judge you every time man, but I can't tear my eyes away
  
  Majestic, isn’t it? I don’t send dick pics because they just can’t capture its grandeur.

I'm starting to develop a vigor for public transit to match the one forced on us for car infrastructure in the 60s. Bigger, taller, more, I want 3 bus lanes and a tram line to any town in the country. We can do no wrong taking back all the space we gave to the car, as long as the garbage truck fits on the street, car users can share 1 lane both directions. Take their parking, take their license for rolling stops and using their phone, gift them e-bikes.
Make transit free, let the highways rot, expand the railways. Sorry for that pothole, all the money was used up by rail.
Just anything better than we have now. If we have to act fast and break things, so be it.
- , car users can share 1 lane both directions.
  Oh God, I don't trust them with that.
  
  I visited India 30 years ago and (in the southern part of the country at least) the major highways between cities had a single paved lane in the middle and then just dirt and gravel on the steeply-sloped sides. So on bus trips the drivers would stick to the middle until the last possible second and then veer off so that just the right wheels were on the pavement as they passed each other while tipping crazily to each side. I made the huge mistake on my first trip of sitting in the front seat; I later corrected my mistake by always taking the fucking train, which didn't have this problem.

- lmao, I know that feeling. When I was younger, whole of body, and lived in a shittier area, there were multiple times that no amount of sprinting, shouting, and waving my arms after the bus which REFUSED to make its scheduled stop at the location I was very clearly standing at could penetrate the inscrutable thought processes of the fucking bus driver.

And I am sure drivers are furious about that bus lane.
- Because bus lanes are usually poorly implemented. Usually they just take out a car lane, call it a bus lane, and wash their hands of it. Car congestion is now worse, and buses still have to wait at the same lights.
  My city did a bus lane right: they took a 3 lane road (2 lanes each way plus dedicated left-turning only lanes), eliminated the turn lane and turned that into a dedicated bus lane with dedicated switching. The bus lane switches don't correspond to regular traffic lights, so drivers don't pull into the bus lane to use it (think weird slashes and circles) and the buses don't have to wait at stoplights next to regular cars. Buses fly by the traffic, and cars didn't lose a lane. They did extensive traffic surveys and found that only a small portion of traffic was turning left across oncoming traffic and those cars spent a long time waiting anyway. So now cars have to drive a few more blocks to turn but it's almost the same travel time since they were waiting so long before anyway.
  They also added bike lanes with raised concrete medians between them and the cars, which double as platforms for bus stops.
  It was a huge win for everyone and works really well.

Require better utilization of the cars or you have to take the bus. Pretty simple.

But how else will the oil companies increase profits for their shareholders?
- by increasing prices while suppressing wages like everyone else?

Yeah, and that's why I prefer cycling or skateboarding wherever I need (depending on the distance). In Russia those MFs get pretty packed at times, sometimes to the point it gets hard to breath in there 😬

Depends if it's full or not. I live in a city with decent public bus transport. Outside of rush hour those buses are just mostly empty and sometimes we have a grid lock of empty buses.
- Yes this this is clearly a picture of an empty bus at 2AM when nobody is trying to get anywhere.

In my experience (lived in four countries, ~30 cities / towns), public transport just feels unsafe. It’s always a choice between crazies shouting, groups of teenagers playfighting and blasting their mobile phones on full volume or just the good old rapey stare from strangers. I’d rather not be exposed to all the worst elements of society at close quarters in a metal tube I can’t escape from.
- Isn't that a bit self-fulfilling, though? If more people rode the bus, then it wouldn't be all creeps and teens.
  For my part, having lived in Philly where the people on the busses are actually quite pleasant, it was still too inefficient to make it work. A ten minute drive would be over an hour on the bus, and god help you if the bus was running late (I'm kidding, the bus was always running late). That's a problem that gets worse when there are more riders. As soon as it got too cold to ride a bike, busses would be completely full and unable to take more riders, which meant you'd have to wait for the next one.
  Employers aren't very understanding about being late. Even if you had a direct route from your house to your job, you'd still need to account for extra time for delays. Taking the bus means you pack on two extra hours onto your commute every day, which even at minimum wage is $3,770 worth of time every year. At a living wage, it's over $10,000 per year. Even with upkeep and insurance, anybody getting paid enough to live practically needs a car. And that's if you live and work in the city, which is the ideal situation for public transit. Move to the burbs, and that bus ain't going where you are.
  
  It seems like it would be a self fulfilling prophecy, you are right.
  At the same time, having lived in London for 10 years... This is from today: https://red.artemislena.eu/r/london/comments/1fprfcy/i_cant_even_take_the_bus_in_peace_due_to_sexual/
  The argument that more people taking public transport would somehow fix this makes no sense in a place like London. It’s a gigantic city with public transport permanently bursting at the seams.
  A bus through a dodgy area at midnight won’t feel safe unless it’s policed somehow. I don’t know where the resources for that could possibly come from.
- Hi, which countries did you live in? I've also lived in several countries throughout my life and only experienced what you're describing in the US (at least in the city I live in, maybe it's a bias)
  
  Public transport in London was probably the worst. Case in point: https://red.artemislena.eu/r/london/comments/1fprfcy/i_cant_even_take_the_bus_in_peace_due_to_sexual/
  The argument that more people taking public transport would somehow fix this makes no sense in a place like London. It’s a gigantic city with public transport permanently bursting at the seams.
  A bus through a dodgy area at midnight won’t feel safe unless it’s policed somehow. I don’t know where the resources for that could possibly come from.
- City seems to have some bias, if mostly the worst elements drive public transport.

The bus has 33 people on it? Even buses in Korea don't get that packed in most places.
- 33 is packed??
- Try riding the bus when the children go to school. It will be so full, that combined with emptier busses you are sure to get the 33 on average.
  
  Yea. The bus I take when I go to vocational school is one of those long double busses with bellows in the middle. If you get there at the wrong time, it’s packed to the point the doors won’t close. It has like 50 seats or so alone and at least the same amount of people standing, if not more. It’s crazy how many people you can squish in a single bus. Luckily the ride is only like 10min because it does get uncomfortably full at times.
  Also, as a nice extra, the busses are fully electric, also.
- Russian here, the main routes are always packed here (esp during rush hour)
- Doesn't matter, if it was carrying 25% of the people that the cars are it'd be baller.

I talk as a person who rode the bicycle and walked more than driven a car that in a typical city centre designed for cars I prefer to live poluting with my car rather than die hit by one while riding the bicycle in a hurry to work.
- Your sentiment is fine. The reason you're being downvoted isn't because of your desire to drive a car for your own safety, it's because it appears as if you feel that is the only solution.
  This community is interesting because despite the name many users here understand a significant change does need to occur before vehicles can be drummed out at bigger percentages. Many also know that modern infrastructure and working expectations means that a car is the only way a lot of people can make ends meet.
  In your case there may be an alternative route, a bus you can take, or even car pooling, amongst other options depending on the location. The answer isn't continuing to pollute, that's just the easy response. But you're right, biking is dangerous and there are motorists out there who have an unhealthy emotional relationship with the road, and against bicyclists. So stay safe, alright?
  Just maybe also look at alternatives whilst doing so.
  
  Wow, I never expected that elaborated answer, thank you. To be honest I love the bicycle and can't wait until the autumn rains stop and the good white finnish winter starts for some cool rides. It just requires more preparation and shower time each morning, but twice a week is great.
  I have been so close to an accident several times that makes me think, what a sad way to end my life in a hurry to get my ass into work. I even love my job, but still it's so absurd to precipitate an accident by hurrying to make it for 8 o'clock in the morning every damn day.
  I've also used the bus a lot, but despite the last technology pros like vehicle gps tracking it takes three times longer to get to work than by car and is quite boring too.
  To sum up I think the best solution would be to remove like 90% of the asfalt roads. If you want to drive, then get you some vehicle that can ride the mountains around the city.

I wonder if they'll all end up in different places? 😉
- Yeah, busses only pick people up at stops; they're not allowed to get off until the end of the route...

Sure, but I'm not going to get on any conveyance with a bunch of strangers if I can avoid it.

Walk > Cycle > Tram > Train > Car > Bus.
Buses always seem like the worst possible option from a personal standpoint.
- Walking is easier than driving for you?
  
  I much prefer it. I don't have to worry about parking or vehicle security. Fewer concerns about careless or asshole drivers.
- Why is that?
  
  Waiting by the roadside tends to be an unpleasant experience. Then the bus ride itself isn't usually pleasant. This is all from my recollection from many years ago.
- I don't feel like you can rank all of these on the same level, they aim to solve different problems in different contexts.
  I'm not going to walk across the country, I'm going to take a train if possible, or a plane if the trains don't exist or I'm on a really tight schedule. But I won't take a train, a plane, or even a bus to go a couple blocks to the corner store, I'll walk. If it's storming, however, I might take the bus or a tram despite the short distance and the wait for it to show up.
  If I'm going eight blocks to a doctor's appointment and it's nice out, I might bike, unless it's raining literal cats and dogs, because then I'll absolutely leave super extra early and walk so I can pet each and every one of them on the way (and still be late, because priorities).
  If I'm going to visit a nearby city, I might take a train or a bus, but if I'm moving to a nearby city, I'm going to rent a moving truck and drive. It's all contextual.

From my experience bus is carrying just the driver

People get stabbed on busses here. I'll drive everywhere, thanks.
- I’m with you on this one, not sure why you’re being downvoted. Until public transport is safe, which it has never been in my experience (as a lifelong public transport user in many countries), I’ll walk or cycle. Or, well, now I live rurally so there’s no public transport, and I’m reluctantly driving everywhere.
  
  Really? I'm also not sure why exactly he's being downvoted, but only bc there's many possible reasons.
  There's no way transit-stabbings are a real problem, anywhere. Even in the grungiest places, it has to be a fake problem like elevator cables snapping or plane crashes and it's all fear-mongering.
  You can make these comments everywhere and they're always unhelpful. Oh, a "bus is high capacity" post? Yeah, but they're unsafe here, I'll pass. Oh, a "bus is super safe" post? Yeah, but they're very infrequent here, I'll pass. Oh, a "bus is super frequent post"? Yeah, but we only have small ones, I'll pass.
  The comment implies smug dismissal, yet that problem and the post's problem have the same solution: more investments in public transport.
- When everyone has to take the bus, it might become safer. Until then, it will be neglected.
- Bet you good money that the risk of getting stabbed on the bus is far lower than the risk of getting in a car crash.
- People get shot when driving too, you wanna walk now?
  
  Not where I live.

PSA: There is no such thing as "car lanes." I understand how easy it is to fall into the trap of calling them that, but we should really try to avoid it.
There are only "general purpose" lanes and lanes that exclude cars in favor of vehicles that don't suck, such as bicycles or buses. Calling general-purpose lanes "car lanes" is car-supremacist loaded language because it implies that other types of vehicles using them are interlopers, rather than valid road users who are also being entitled to be there.
Edit: any of you downvoters care to explain what reason you have for doing so that isn't car apologism?
- People refer to them as car lanes because they are designed and prioirtized for cars. Can a bicycle fit in the lane? Sure, but the lane was not designed for bicycle and in most places the lanes are not designed to share with a bicycle. Many people feel unsafe on a bike with 60+km/h traffic flying by them with barely enough room to pass.
  
  None of that makes them "car lanes." They are intended for all road users and car drivers have no more right to them than anybody else.
  (Source: my traffic engineering degree)
  
  They seem just as well-suited for busses like in the post.
  When there's no bike lane available I'll bike in the middle of the next general lane, so they'll need to use another general lane to pass. They won't give us barely enough room, it's safer to just take the whole lane.

- What does this have to do with anything