While public transport is undoubtedly fantastic, let’s not pretend that it’s a great option in many European countries. I’d love to take the train in the UK, but thanks to the Tories it would cost me more to take the train (when it works) than it would to drive and park.
Public transport in Europe is often in a sorry state, but trust me, it’s nothing compared to the US. Here in France, a lot of regional trains are very unreliable at best but at least high speed trains on dedicated tracks are fine (very expensive, but ok).
I don’t remember UK rail to be a shitshow and/or that expensive but my only experience is going to/from central London to/from neighboring counties and it was fine.
But in the US, oh boy. About 15 years ago I was living with some roommates in Campbell, CA and we went to SF one day. 1h drive mostly on shitty concrete motorways, including probably around $5 of gas. They were heading north for a romantic getaway so I went back to Campbell by myself. It took almost 4 fuckin hours, on maybe 4 or 5 different private companies, and cost me like $25 to get back.
Public transit in the US is so fucked up im almost convinced it’s by design.
I think you just underestimate how awful public transport is in the US. Beating what’s available here is not a high bar to clear, especially when it’s nonexistent in many places. It can also vary pretty widely across and within regions. I imagine public transport in London is a different beast from public transport in Manchester, for example.
When I was visiting Manchester in March, it was pretty great. I could get around the city via bus, tram or walking pretty easily, and trains between Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds were all pretty clean, even late at night, and the most I paid for two round-trip tickets was £48.40 going to Leeds and back. Everything else was below £30 for two people, round trip.i Wherever I got off, I could get an Uber to where I was going for less than £10 if I didn’t feel like waiting for a bus, or there wasn’t a bus nearby. For a similar trip here, for one person going from NYC to Philadelphia and back would run me in excess of £100 with Amtrak making the trip in about 90 minutes, or closer to £30 round trip, but with each leg taking nearly 3 hours without any delays on NJ Transit. A 15 minute Uber here to work would routinely run me close to £20 each way, before accounting for a tip.
Nobody was screaming in my face asking for “donations,” there weren’t people with amplifiers blasting music, or homeless folks left to stew in their own filth keeping entire cars unusable for anyone else due to the stench. Even walking about the cities at all hours of the night, I had a grand total of 3 people ask me for money in a week. Residents apologized a few times about how awful things were there, but it was absolutely lovely, even in the parts they thought were local embarrassments for allegedly being unbearably dirty or run down. Granted, it was nice and cool, so I didn’t get to see if Manchester gets the same lovely summer effect that NYC does, where every outdoor space smells like hot piss and garbage once the temperature clears about 27°C.
Granted, spending a week in a city as tourists isn’t the same as living there, but from folks I know who’ve made the move, it was a massive upgrade in terms of things like public transit and general quality of life compared to life in the US or Canada. I ran the numbers, and it would actually make sense for me to take over a 50% pay cut if I could move there. Heck, it was cheaper for us to eat out for every meal for a week straight for two people and me buying several coffees out a day than it is for me to shop and prepare every meal at home and make all my own coffee here. Even if things aren’t as good as they used to be, they’ve still got us soundly beat in many regards.
The UK just decided they’re not in Europe. The rest of Europe has better PT than the UK. In the UK it was cheaper to hire a van and drive to Exeter than to catch the train, absolutely ridiculous.
Sorry to hear neighbour. If it’s any consolation, on some of your highways, you can go hella fast.
In Switzerland we don’t even have high-speed rail. We have at best pendular high-speedish trains but they are quite neat. We do pay a steep price for it but it beats being required to drive everywhere US-like (minus some exceptions).
Yeah, your highways are not great. But I don’t really like to drive, so I’d prefer you trains. :) What use are high speed trains, if they are 2 hours late?
I never get this argument of US Americans against public transport. Even in europe most public transport happens within one city, I don’t regulary drive to another country
I think most Americans like the idea of public transport, and including a robust national rail network. The reason it doesn’t exist are the oil and automotive lobbies. (Mostly oil.). Poorly educated Americans (the ones wearing MAGA hats) are easy to manipulate by these groups, as well.
The MAGA people rarely travel outside of their county and think going to Applebees in the nearest college town of 5,000 is going to the big city. Why they hate it.
They act like it their tax dollars when in fact most of them don’t work and sit around in their Methlandia towns on fake fibromyalgia disability claims.
I’m genuinely curious if people actually use the phrase ‘US Americans’, or if it’s a reference to that Miss Teen USA contestant rambling about world peace
I spent a few months in Germany years ago, and “Americans” (Amerikaner) tended to be used to refer to people from the Americas (either NA specifically or NA and SA collectively) in my experience. If you wanted to say someone was from the US, you’d say something more like “aus den USA.”
Americans don’t generally have a negative thing to say about public transportation. Americans, however, prefer to drive their own vehicle for many reasons. For one, being independent, not relying on a schedule. Not worrying about missing their transportation and catching a later one, then being late to the arrival of their destination.
I don’t know where you live, but in the big cities of the U.S., public transportation… isn’t exactly hygienic. You will smell urine. You will encounter chitty people. You will be spending time reading all the random chit people write/scratch onto the walls and glass. You will sit on uncomfortable chairs, might even touch someone’s chewed up gum by accident.
I’ve seen some chit both in city busses and trains but this was in Chicago and some parts of NY. Never would I ever want to live that life. Ever.
More funding doesn’t necessarily work in this situation. There’s a big stigma about public transportation in the US where if you take it you’re seen as unsuccessful and poor. It’s also perceived as something like government intrusion whenever infrastructure is built to support it. Minorities would resist any kind of building of rail along their property because they were previously screwed over when several black and poor neighborhoods were bulldozed for the sake of placing freeways. Rich people simply lobby the government to stop construction or hold back on selling their property because they want to gouge them for all they’re worth and sap the project’s funds.
The solution of course would be a bigger willingness for the government to use eminent domain laws to force these projects through but because of the short term nature of their precarious elected positions, officials would rarely do that lest they get voted out in the next election cycle and the project simply stalls out. There’s been some success with private companies building rail, like Brightline, because building public infrastructure in a capitalist way seems to be accepted more by the public thanks to our conditioning of loving the free market.
That’s because on average, people in Belgium are more civilized than Americans. Do you have homelessness problems in your nation? No? We do. Yes? Do your homeless literally pull their pants down in broad daylight and take a chit on the sidewalk for everyone to see without a single fk given? Bet you don’t. We do.
I bet in your college towns and cities, if you have parking garages, you don’t have urine and or chit in the elevators and or staircase… we do.
You see… in our nation, we truly have the chittiest of chitty people overall, mainly in large cities. They are chitty in many chitty different ways. And we have to share public everything with these chitty people. So yeah, unfortunately, public transportation is going to be chitty on average, day in and day out.
Did you know, on the internet you are allowed to actually type out swears? You don’t have to act like a child and write “chit” everywhere instead of “shit,” we all know what you mean.
For one, being independent, not relying on a schedule. Not worrying about missing their transportation and catching a later one, then being late to the arrival of their destination.
This is my big problem with public transport. It might be an issue of funding, but this sort of scheduling gives me a huge amount of anxiety. I would rather drive and know that I can leave when I want, and that any delays won’t be a problem, than to worry about the making it to somewhere at a specific time lest I miss my bus/train/plane.
And the more modes of public transit we add to the journey the worse my anxiety. If any of those connections is delayed or late I have no control and will miss the next leg of my journey, which will push all the other steps around and suddenly I have to get a hotel or something because there’s no way to get to where I’m going until the next day.
At least if I’m caught in traffic I can try to route around it, or I can leave a earlier or later to avoid it, and the person who’s affected by these delays is the one who has some power over mitigating them. If it ends up that I’m driving overnight I can pull over and sleep in my car for a bit and then keep going.
My ADHD brain panics if I need to catch a scheduled train and if I’m not actually there at least 1/4h in advance I melt into a puddle of anxiety.
But city trams and metros are absolutely fine. If I don’t catch this one, there’s gonna be another one in a few minutes. No worries.
Busses that are scheduled every half hour at most drive me mad tho. Did I miss it because it was 10 mins early because fuck schedules or is it gonna be 15 mins late?
The larger the area you have to cover with rail is, the larger the cost. The US is much more spread out in general than European countries - some people choose to live hours+ away from significant population centers.
There’s no need to decide which system is inherently superior. Cars work for the US, trains work for Europe.
Yeah because driving 16 hours straight is stupid because you would just take the train and be driven 16 hours straight.
Car centric infrastructure should have never been introduced.
While public transport is undoubtedly fantastic, let’s not pretend that it’s a great option in many European countries. I’d love to take the train in the UK, but thanks to the Tories it would cost me more to take the train (when it works) than it would to drive and park.
The key is public ownership of public transport.
Public transport in Europe is often in a sorry state, but trust me, it’s nothing compared to the US. Here in France, a lot of regional trains are very unreliable at best but at least high speed trains on dedicated tracks are fine (very expensive, but ok).
I don’t remember UK rail to be a shitshow and/or that expensive but my only experience is going to/from central London to/from neighboring counties and it was fine.
But in the US, oh boy. About 15 years ago I was living with some roommates in Campbell, CA and we went to SF one day. 1h drive mostly on shitty concrete motorways, including probably around $5 of gas. They were heading north for a romantic getaway so I went back to Campbell by myself. It took almost 4 fuckin hours, on maybe 4 or 5 different private companies, and cost me like $25 to get back.
Public transit in the US is so fucked up im almost convinced it’s by design.
I think you just underestimate how awful public transport is in the US. Beating what’s available here is not a high bar to clear, especially when it’s nonexistent in many places. It can also vary pretty widely across and within regions. I imagine public transport in London is a different beast from public transport in Manchester, for example.
When I was visiting Manchester in March, it was pretty great. I could get around the city via bus, tram or walking pretty easily, and trains between Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds were all pretty clean, even late at night, and the most I paid for two round-trip tickets was £48.40 going to Leeds and back. Everything else was below £30 for two people, round trip.i Wherever I got off, I could get an Uber to where I was going for less than £10 if I didn’t feel like waiting for a bus, or there wasn’t a bus nearby. For a similar trip here, for one person going from NYC to Philadelphia and back would run me in excess of £100 with Amtrak making the trip in about 90 minutes, or closer to £30 round trip, but with each leg taking nearly 3 hours without any delays on NJ Transit. A 15 minute Uber here to work would routinely run me close to £20 each way, before accounting for a tip.
Nobody was screaming in my face asking for “donations,” there weren’t people with amplifiers blasting music, or homeless folks left to stew in their own filth keeping entire cars unusable for anyone else due to the stench. Even walking about the cities at all hours of the night, I had a grand total of 3 people ask me for money in a week. Residents apologized a few times about how awful things were there, but it was absolutely lovely, even in the parts they thought were local embarrassments for allegedly being unbearably dirty or run down. Granted, it was nice and cool, so I didn’t get to see if Manchester gets the same lovely summer effect that NYC does, where every outdoor space smells like hot piss and garbage once the temperature clears about 27°C.
Granted, spending a week in a city as tourists isn’t the same as living there, but from folks I know who’ve made the move, it was a massive upgrade in terms of things like public transit and general quality of life compared to life in the US or Canada. I ran the numbers, and it would actually make sense for me to take over a 50% pay cut if I could move there. Heck, it was cheaper for us to eat out for every meal for a week straight for two people and me buying several coffees out a day than it is for me to shop and prepare every meal at home and make all my own coffee here. Even if things aren’t as good as they used to be, they’ve still got us soundly beat in many regards.
NYC is also the tip top that US public transit gets.
The UK just decided they’re not in Europe. The rest of Europe has better PT than the UK. In the UK it was cheaper to hire a van and drive to Exeter than to catch the train, absolutely ridiculous.
First mistake, going to Exeter. /jk
Honestly the cost of rail travel in South Devon is eye watering. Went for a few days trip and had to rapidly rethink my budget after the first train
Be there faster too, with a high speed train.
Even non-high-speed trains go faster than most car highways and don’t have to negotiate traffic.
Reading this, while being in Germany.
Sorry to hear neighbour. If it’s any consolation, on some of your highways, you can go hella fast.
In Switzerland we don’t even have high-speed rail. We have at best pendular high-speedish trains but they are quite neat. We do pay a steep price for it but it beats being required to drive everywhere US-like (minus some exceptions).
Yeah, your highways are not great. But I don’t really like to drive, so I’d prefer you trains. :) What use are high speed trains, if they are 2 hours late?
Chuckles in Slovakian
The buses are often faster.
Sir, this is
a Wendy’sDetroit.I never get this argument of US Americans against public transport. Even in europe most public transport happens within one city, I don’t regulary drive to another country
I think most Americans like the idea of public transport, and including a robust national rail network. The reason it doesn’t exist are the oil and automotive lobbies. (Mostly oil.). Poorly educated Americans (the ones wearing MAGA hats) are easy to manipulate by these groups, as well.
The liberals are trying to take your cars!
The MAGA people rarely travel outside of their county and think going to Applebees in the nearest college town of 5,000 is going to the big city. Why they hate it.
They act like it their tax dollars when in fact most of them don’t work and sit around in their Methlandia towns on fake fibromyalgia disability claims.
I’m genuinely curious if people actually use the phrase ‘US Americans’, or if it’s a reference to that Miss Teen USA contestant rambling about world peace
Not in generally English speaking countries, though you will occasionally hear second language English people use it.
I spent a few months in Germany years ago, and “Americans” (Amerikaner) tended to be used to refer to people from the Americas (either NA specifically or NA and SA collectively) in my experience. If you wanted to say someone was from the US, you’d say something more like “aus den USA.”
Americans don’t generally have a negative thing to say about public transportation. Americans, however, prefer to drive their own vehicle for many reasons. For one, being independent, not relying on a schedule. Not worrying about missing their transportation and catching a later one, then being late to the arrival of their destination.
I don’t know where you live, but in the big cities of the U.S., public transportation… isn’t exactly hygienic. You will smell urine. You will encounter chitty people. You will be spending time reading all the random chit people write/scratch onto the walls and glass. You will sit on uncomfortable chairs, might even touch someone’s chewed up gum by accident.
I’ve seen some chit both in city busses and trains but this was in Chicago and some parts of NY. Never would I ever want to live that life. Ever.
Seriously.
Know how to fix those problems?
More funding
Never been on a public transport that smelled of urine in Belgium. It is obviously possible.
More funding doesn’t necessarily work in this situation. There’s a big stigma about public transportation in the US where if you take it you’re seen as unsuccessful and poor. It’s also perceived as something like government intrusion whenever infrastructure is built to support it. Minorities would resist any kind of building of rail along their property because they were previously screwed over when several black and poor neighborhoods were bulldozed for the sake of placing freeways. Rich people simply lobby the government to stop construction or hold back on selling their property because they want to gouge them for all they’re worth and sap the project’s funds.
The solution of course would be a bigger willingness for the government to use eminent domain laws to force these projects through but because of the short term nature of their precarious elected positions, officials would rarely do that lest they get voted out in the next election cycle and the project simply stalls out. There’s been some success with private companies building rail, like Brightline, because building public infrastructure in a capitalist way seems to be accepted more by the public thanks to our conditioning of loving the free market.
That’s because on average, people in Belgium are more civilized than Americans. Do you have homelessness problems in your nation? No? We do. Yes? Do your homeless literally pull their pants down in broad daylight and take a chit on the sidewalk for everyone to see without a single fk given? Bet you don’t. We do.
I bet in your college towns and cities, if you have parking garages, you don’t have urine and or chit in the elevators and or staircase… we do.
You see… in our nation, we truly have the chittiest of chitty people overall, mainly in large cities. They are chitty in many chitty different ways. And we have to share public everything with these chitty people. So yeah, unfortunately, public transportation is going to be chitty on average, day in and day out.
Did you know, on the internet you are allowed to actually type out swears? You don’t have to act like a child and write “chit” everywhere instead of “shit,” we all know what you mean.
I thought it was some kinda neo-cockney-esque slang going on and was kinda intrigued hahaha.
I’m still trying to navigate through the rules of Lemmy… sort of walking on eggshells.
Mostly just avoid slurs and you’ll be fine.
Noted!
Thanks for the tip.
This is my big problem with public transport. It might be an issue of funding, but this sort of scheduling gives me a huge amount of anxiety. I would rather drive and know that I can leave when I want, and that any delays won’t be a problem, than to worry about the making it to somewhere at a specific time lest I miss my bus/train/plane.
And the more modes of public transit we add to the journey the worse my anxiety. If any of those connections is delayed or late I have no control and will miss the next leg of my journey, which will push all the other steps around and suddenly I have to get a hotel or something because there’s no way to get to where I’m going until the next day.
At least if I’m caught in traffic I can try to route around it, or I can leave a earlier or later to avoid it, and the person who’s affected by these delays is the one who has some power over mitigating them. If it ends up that I’m driving overnight I can pull over and sleep in my car for a bit and then keep going.
My ADHD brain panics if I need to catch a scheduled train and if I’m not actually there at least 1/4h in advance I melt into a puddle of anxiety.
But city trams and metros are absolutely fine. If I don’t catch this one, there’s gonna be another one in a few minutes. No worries.
Busses that are scheduled every half hour at most drive me mad tho. Did I miss it because it was 10 mins early because fuck schedules or is it gonna be 15 mins late?
You can write shit on lemmy.
The larger the area you have to cover with rail is, the larger the cost. The US is much more spread out in general than European countries - some people choose to live hours+ away from significant population centers. There’s no need to decide which system is inherently superior. Cars work for the US, trains work for Europe.
Are you high?