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Why People Don't Use Mass Transit

uwgb.edu — "Conclusion 1: Transportation Costs Less at High Speeds. Conclusion 2: Slow Transportation Penalizes Affluent Customers. Conclusion 3: Flat Fares Discourage Use of Mass Transit for Short Commutes." It's unfair to list the conlusions without the supporting arguments. read on for those...

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digitalgopher 2 years 7 days ago, made popular 2 years 4 days ago

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MiddleGirth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The real reason most people don't use Mass Transit is due to the people that use Mass Transit. Safety; Being asked for a quarter at every stop; the smell.
- tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I live in NYC and mass transit is used by everyone. I don't know anyone who has had safety problems on the train or bus, and I've lived here for a long time.
  
  The same goes for SF and DC.
  
  I grew up in Atlanta, and Marta sucked because there were too few trains, too few stops. People in many neighborhoods had too much FUD about stations being built too close to them. Lots of racial/class FUD in general.
anonymoustroll, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8> The real reason most people don't use Mass Transit is due to the people
> that use Mass Transit. Safety; Being asked for a quarter at every stop; the smell.

That's American mass transit (and other places I'm sure). I've used mass transit in three other countries (Japan, Australian and Europe) and the detractors you're referring to are far less prevalent.

American Mass Transit: proving karma exists every day.
- aroedl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"I've used mass transit in three other countries (Japan, Australian and Europe)"
  
  Yeah... Europe is the country I live in.
  
  ;-)
johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It used to take me 2 1/2 hours on the bus instead of 20 minutes by car. If the first bus was running late I couldn't make the transfer. It was a wasted trip, the next bus going to the college wasn't for another two hours. The only reason I put up with that is I was saving for a car. Time is a premium for many people. In Germany I could get to some places faster by taking the train.

There isn't any Mass transit that will take me even close to where I work. However, I do carpool, I could save half an hour a day by driving straight to work, but I'm lucky to have the time to carpool.
phreel0aderr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you live in a place like Miami, or even worse the miles upon miles of suburbs in Miami, you would know the mass transit here is horrible. The buses are rarely on time, they change/bypass stops randomly, the transfer system is dreadful among many other things. After living in the northeast and taking the Boston "T" and New York/New Jersey/Connecticut Mass transit system(by far the best i have used in the US) I find that quite a few people use, and actually like to travel via mass transit if it is implemented well.
dartmanx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1St Louis mass transit just jacked up fares to $2. Why would I want to pay $4 for a relatively short round trip, when gas is $2.50 a gallon, and said trip would use less than a gallon of gas?
dlbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Another factor is that many Americans live in rural areas where mass transit is not feasible. I've asked foreigners about their first impression of America, they almost all said it's big and everything's so far apart.
- kd1s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting comment. The northeast between Boston and New York is very European in the fact that everything is so close together. It makes rail based transit feasible but we concert our old rail paths to bike path. Oh well.
juneof44, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5One of the reasons I moved back to Japan is that I wouldn't have to deal with the pain of owning cars. The public transit here is incredibly convenient and cheap. I'm sure if the US public transit (outside of NYC) was decent, more people would use it.
aroedl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1When I was living in Los Angeles, I loved to travel by bus. Might be shocking for some of you, but it is better than the public transit system in some of the European countries.
OdinEye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with the general premise that not enough work is done, in general, toward understanding what conditions are, or are not, necessary to get people to use mass transit. I remember listening to an episode of NPR's Science Friday (I think) where they talked about a study showing that the more changes in transportation type (e.g from car to bus to train, cab to train to plane, etc) the less likely people were to use it.

In behavioral and industrial/organizational psychology we have developed a myriad of ways to increase productivity, decrease likelihood of workplace injury, reduce absenteeism, determine what store placement makes people more likely to buy your product, etc. There's a healthy scient of human behavior that would directly apply to this - it's unfortunate that it doesn't seem to be used more.
- kd1s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One encouraging development is the train station being built near TF Green airport. It'll be 1500 feet from the airport and have a light rail system that moves people from the station to the airport.
  
  The cool thing about that is that the MBTA has agreed to run to the station, they've pretty much said that when the Wickford and Westerly stations are built they'll even run there too, and CT transit has said that they'll extend into Westerly (And southern RI) when the MBTA extends southward.
  
  But back to my point, I'm a 15 minute walk from the Providence train station. It'd be so easy and cheap to get to the airport at that point.
YURiLOVER, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What about rush hours? I know for sure that the MBTA rapid transit lines go much faster to where I want to go during rush hours rather than driving there and having a 30 minute-1hour delay.
jmchez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The NYC Subway went through a bad period in the 70s and 80's which has molded outsider's impressions to this day (some TV shows and movies still show grafitti covered cars). However, there's no greater class equalizer anywhere else in the US, perhaps the world. Except for billionaires and super celebrities, every type of person rides the subways. You'll see wall streeters, lawyers, students, pennyless immigrants and so on. Also for $2.00 you get and unlimited ride to any spot, including free bus transfers. I couldn't believe that I was charged by distance and time of day in Washington DC. I ended paying over $3.50 for a short ride.
- sixlocal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not to mention a full pass for a month is less than $100. You can ride all day every day for that fee. Almost everyone I know that lives here gets monthly passes.
  
  How many people spend less than $100 per month on their cars after the car payments, insurance, gas and repairs?
jmchez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I forgot to add that in New York there are times when you can get a half priced round trip. If I'm going somewhere not too far and I'll spend less than two hours there (e.g., the gym) I'll take the subway and then the bus back with a free transfer.
preauxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Uh, no.

The reason that people in the USA don't use mass transit is because we've invested comparatively so little into it, and the government has done all possible to keep the real price of private automobile owernership and use unrealistically low, unreflective of its true cost. This has lead entire cities to be built completely around the concept of private transportation by automobile with a complete abandonment to, and even hostility towards mass transportation, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. So the real reason that people in the USA don't use mass transit is simply because it is not a viable, realistic and practical option in many cities (if it even is an option at all)

there's an excellent book out called "suburban nation: the rise and sprawl of the american dream" that really explores this issue quite well.
- dlm3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1preauxx, I'm sorry, but you are misinformed.
  
  We have invested BILLIONS in mass transit in the USA for over a century. But the country is enormous - too big for any government or even privately operated system to be even slightly competitive with the automobile. The only places it begins to work well are Manhattan, Washington DC and Walt Disney World - which are in themselves quite small or have highly focused points of departure and destinations.
  
  Books like the one you quote are written by fools who think that sprawl - the voluntary behavior of individuals to get away from the crowded cities and own a home without sharing one or more walls with their neighbors - is a hideous social disease that must be rooted out.
  
  People who want to live like rabbits in urban centers are free to do so. Why should those who choose otherwise not be likewise free ?
endekks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with several of the more well-traveled posters in that most of the arguments don't really hold up too well globally. I've seen my fair share of countries outside of the US and have been living in Japan for 4 years and I can say that virtually every argument listed is disproved here. And in major places in Europe. And in large enough cities in the US.

The reason why people don't use mass transit as much in the US is simple... The US is much more spread out and has far fewer convenient stops for most citizens. When I lived in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina you could pretty much only go to bus stops, which had pickups once every 15 minutes to an hour. Not convenient. Taking a series of buses to get from one side of town to the other could potentially take hours that way. But in Chicago, NYC, Tokyo and London (to name but a few) people can get from one point to another quite far away in a fraction of the time - and in many cases faster than those who travel by car.

There just isn't enough in the US, and a good deal of what is there just hasn't been planned out well. And I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't as many affluent people in the US not taking mass transit because whenever the possibility would arise to have a station built near to their homes, it is instantly shot down by people who don't want the "plebeians" having easier access to their neighbourhood.

(Sorry if I'm not too coherent... I'm on serious pain meds now. ^____^)
TheJon500, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0While I agree that people should be afforded the freedom to live where they want to, we must realize at what cost that freedom comes. I live in the affluent Columbus suburb of Dublin, Ohio, where amongst the subdivisions of McManisons one will find long traffic lines at most hours of the day. This is because the area has a severe lack of publicly developed roads. Private developers have built most of the transportation infrastructure, usually in the form of no-outlet cul-de-sacs, leaving a population of about 30,000 residents and several thousand commuting workers only a handful of arterial roads on which they can effectively travel. This is a perfect snapshot of what's wrong with mass transit in this country. There are hundreds of Dublins popping up across America, all of which are completely impractical for serving public transit. Low densities and poor planning and design keep the automobile the de facto mode of transportation in most of our urban and suburban communities. In order to make public transit viable, not only will we need to revamp the bus lines and commuter rail systems, we need to completely re-think how we've built up our car-centric cities over the past 70 years.
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Why People Don't Use Mass Transit

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