Do yall use public transport?

46 comments

1. It usually takes longer than driving where I am and the few times I’ve tried there is either a dude masturbating or doing drugs.
   So I stick to my car

2. In large cities it’s popular but anywhere else no can’t imagine doing that

3. I live out in the country. My county doesn’t even have a red light much less public transport. Many many folks outside of large/larger cities simply don’t have access to public transport.

4. There isn’t reliable intra city public transit in most of the country.

   I was in LA and San Francisco last month. And for US cities, the public transport there is pretty decent and it still usually means taking 2-3x as long then if I had just called an Uber.

   There is no public transit in my county at all.

5. America is large and contains multitudes. Many large cities have well-used public transit systems. Many smaller cities have none whatsoever, or certainly not a well-developed one that goes where you need it to. Making generalizations about why people do or don’t use it wouldn’t have much value.

6. A few times a year. If I’m going into DC for a sporting event or concert, I’ll hop on the metro just for convenience. Otherwise I have a car that gets me here I need to go.

7. For me I like the independence of my car. I don’t want to deal with bus or trains and all that bullshit. I just want to hop in my car and go. I live out in the suburbs, I’m not in the city with everything around. In NYC or Chicago public transport is a good option, hell I even used it in Philly.

   Could I take a bus to work? Yeah it would probably take 4X as long with multiple switches of buses. Could I take a train to certain places? Sure but I’d rather fly or drive depending on how far. Sometimes for work I have to drive 2.5 hours south just to go see my customer and make a sale or visit a job site. I can’t imagine how much of a pain in the ass that would be via public transport.

   edit: I was just curious so I checked on google maps. It says my public transport option via Bus would take 3 hours and 7 minutes to get to work. It takes me 20-25 minutes to drive here.

8. I used public transport when I lived and worked in Seattle. Transit isn’t great where I live now so I don’t usually use it

9. I like my privacy. I like being in control of where I go, when I go, how I go, where I stop, when I stop. You can’t do any of that with public transport.

10. This is a commonly asked question, if you perused the subreddit at all youd already know the answer.

    Which is, public transportation sucks in america. Outside of a few large cities, like New York, its basically non-existent. In the last city i lived in a 15 minute drive would probably take around an hour by bus, when you include the time it takes to walk to the bus stop, and there were no other methods of public transportation.

    Where i live now there are literally zero methods of public transportation, unless you count kids riding the school bus.

11. The short answers is: it depends. I grew up in NYC and mass transit options abound. In fact many times you’d be a fool to drive rather than take the subway or bus.

    Where I live now in northwest NJ, mass transit simply does not exist. If you don’t own a car you are stuck.

12. I live in a city of 1 million people and buses are only available in the city center but most people live on the outskirts, so buses are not available anywhere within 20 minutes drive of where I live. That is not unique in the US. In many cities we simply don’t have the public transportation infrastructure that Europe has. It has nothing to do with status or class. It’s literally not an option.

13. It’s easier to drive a car than to get on a bus honestly. Plus I like the added fact of not having to be near people. Also crazy homeless people is a negative against it

14. It’s not for the poor. It’s for the big cities.

    In my small city (60,000 people), it would be nearly impossible for me to just use public transportation.

    I have a 8 minute drive to the gym. Then a 5 minute drive to work. Then a 12 minute drive home.

15. Nope. Doesn’t exist where I am.

16. I’m 42 and have never used public transit in my own city.

    The layout of most of our cities makes public transit inefficient, and to make it efficient would then in turn not be cost effective. Our population density is just too low and this part of the country really grew *after* the invention of the automobile so the cities are built around that mode of transport.

17. Only in a few cities is public transport remotely efficient. I live in a city of 120K and I am about 4 miles from the nearest bus stop. It takes me 13 minutes to drive to work. So I do that. The buses are fine here, but anyone who has a car would drive, so only poor people take the bus, which reinforces itself.

18. I go places to find monumentation and property corners that have been buried under dirt, rock, sand, and gravel for decades. So no.

19. We have public transportation in Denver, Colorado and I used to use the bus to get to work pre-pandemic. However, I still had to drive to the bus stop.
    Now I have a job much further away and it would mean taking the bus then a train and would take twice as long. Oftentimes it’s not convenient to take public transportation

20. Lol at a European using “y’all”

21. No. Because my area just doesn’t have public transportation. There is one bus line that has very limited service. It would take 1.5 hours to get to work, which would include me having to drive 1/3 of my commute miles just to get to a bus stop, and my time is worth more than that. It takes me a half hour of driving so it’s a no-brainer. I’d also rather not be around other people for my commute – back when I lived in an area where I could use public transportation, I got sick all the time including pneumonia that lasted for months. That doesn’t happen if I’m driving my own car. I would also rather not have my schedule dictated by a train or bus. I had to take a train that left at 5:45am to get to my desk by 8am, so on time per my company, back when I was train commuting. Then I had to time my departure just right to get a train home because they were not frequent. Not worth it. You do you, I’ll be in my car.

22. If you’re in a big city, then it really sucks to drive a car. If you’re not in a big city (like the majority of Americans), then it really sucks to take public transportation.

23. Ahhh the daily transit thread.

24. No.

    We have a nice bus system in the city I work and in theory I could save gas by driving into town and taking the bus in to work and around the city. In practicality, it just doesn’t work. The problems are:

    * Staffing. Busses come every 15-20 minutes, but when they are short staffed, they will adjust the schedule dramatically and there is no way to communicate that. So if I want to take the bus from work to grocery shopping, for example, I have no way of knowing if it will be a 10 minute, 15 minute or 60 minute wait. This is a problem.

    * Homelessness – we have 3 _really_ nice homeless shelters right in this area. One is City run, one is Salvation Army and one is a mental health center that runs a really efficient shelter. The problem is then that all the homeless are bussed in from across the state. The beds at the shelter will be empty and the bus stops will be full, often with drug paraphernalia on the ground. It’s a problem..

25. Many cities just dont have the public transportation infrastructure. New York, San Francisco, Boston, DC, maybe Chicago… but thats about it. Most other cities, its going to take you much longer to get where you want, if you can get there at all, and the consistency and cleanliness may be problems.

    For example, I live in a suburb of St Louis. The city has ONE light rail line, which connects the airport to downtown, to some suburbs across the river in Illinois. If you dont live near that line, its useless; and even if you do its known for never being on time and having a high crime rate. Bus lines are limited and never on time.

    If I wanted to take public transportation to get to a baseball game, for example, I would have to drive about five miles just to get to the nearest bus stop, where I could take an express bus. That would get me to a hub in the south of the city, where I could switch buses to get downtown. Total time would be about two hours, assuming the buses were on time. Driving I can get there in under 30 minutes.

26. In most of the US, there is no public transport or only a very poor and limited system.

    In the largest cities, public transportation may be more like what you’re used to in Europe.

    In most of the smaller and mid-sized cities, it’s a mediocre system that exists to get poor people without cars from their apartments to the major employers and back. It’s vastly inferior to the systems of major cities or countries with highly developed public transportation system.

    In other smaller cities and towns and rural areas, there is no form of public transportation at all, and society generally expects you to have access to an automobile of some kind for transportation needs.

    It’s not about pride. . .it’s that it’s time consuming (a trip that might take 20 minutes by car may take 2 hours by public transport in many areas) and that limited in coverage. Also, someone commuting 2 hours by car to work probably can’t take public transport because it doesn’t reach as far as you’re imagining. In a 2 hour commute I could be at a city on the other side of my state or into the next state over, and there’s not even remotely any form of public transportation that would get me there and back.

    Public transportation is a way to get around within a city, and in all but the very largest cities it’s mostly oriented towards people who can’t afford cars of their own.

27. I ride the bus & train twice a week when I have to go to the office. But I live in a city where it’s somewhat convenient.

28. I don’t think my city has public transport outside of school busses

29. The reason most people don’t use public transport is because it’s either non-existent, or a complete joke.

30. If you live in or near a major north east city (nyc, Boston, Philly, DC), you have probably been on public transport atleast handful of times, if not regularly.

    Otherwise, a car is much more convenient and public buses aren’t stopping anywhere you need to go. In suburbs, the only people I see taking the bus are typically poor workers who seemed to get dropped somewhere random and then need to walk a mile plus to work.

31. >Do yall use public transport?

    I am in NYC, and yes. Majority of New Yorkers don’t own a car, so we rely on public transportation and on our feet to get around.

    >I’ve heard a few americans on reddit saying shit like “it’s for the poor”. And I know many people commute by car, even for like 2 hours.

    With the exception of older cities like NYC, SF, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston, the US is spread out, has lots of urban sprawl, and is designed for car use with little to no accessible and depending public transportation, so a car is a necessity to many. And yes, in some places, public transportation is for poorer people, and also there are two or three hour commutes. My family in Los Angeles has these multi-hour commutes (which made me look for highly walkable and public transportation-rich cities because I don’t want to continue living life like that).

32. I live in Seattle. I LOVE public transportation. I have a car of my own, but it is my last option to drive somewhere. If I can help it, I will take the light rail. The light rail is amazing. Occasionally I will take a bus if needed but it’s a little more of a pain in the ass. I also use other services that aren’t public transportation, like Lime/LINK/Bird E-scooters/Bikes, or I’ll rent a Gig car (Seattle has hybrid cars parked all over the city that you can walk up to and rent for $.65/min or something.)

    WE NEED MORE TRAINS/LIGHT RAIL/SUBWAYS

33. Yes. I live in the fourth largest city in the U.S. and we have commuter buses that I can use to get to and from work. Since I work in the downtown area of the city, I also use the light rail to go further away from my office building to get lunch, but that’s maybe twice a month at most right now.

    As far as quality is concerned, the commuter buses are mostly all white collar professionals so they’re not bad. Buses that go on routes through poor areas are going to be dicey inside. The light rail can be bad sometimes as well but it’s easy enough to hold your nose and not touch anything if necessary.

34. I live 15 minutes from the nearest train station and the (public) bus comes by once every 30 minutes

35. Charity versus public good.

    In the US, public transit is essentially a form of charity outside of a handful of cities where it is used widely. The bare minimum is done to give people without a car the ability to move around.

    In Europe, public transit is seen as a public good for everyone to use.

    I’d love decent transit, so I could give up my car. To some extent, older, mid-size cities used to have it with large streetcar networks. But those were torn out, so a car is hard to live without, even in a city of 400,000.

36. No. I live in a pretty major city and public transport is still generally inaccessible. I mapped a public transport route to work one day just to see what it would be, and it was almost 3 hours and involved walking multiple miles, not to mention all the transfers. I’ll stick to my car where I can control the music, temperature, timing, and get there in a quarter the time, plus door to door service.

37. I live in a city about the same size, public transit is only the bus and it’s not something an average person would use, there hasn’t been a tram here since the 60s.
    I was in Europe in the military years ago and only used public transit, the cities here are not designed the same though. Also, very easy and cheap to get a license and a vehicle here.

38. Most things are too far to walk, esp in the suburbs (20 minute drive to closest grocery), our buses suck, a 20 minute drive is a 2 hour bus, there’s no tram, train, or subway.

    We can’t even get Uber out where I am, but it works pretty well in most parts of the metro, but that still just a car.

    America built itself for car traffic. We have trains, but very few passenger lines since air travel is cheaper and faster to move the 200k+ who fly through a given airport in a day, no train station can handle that amount of traffic.

    Unless you live in the heart of the city, and work in the same 1-2 square mile, you drive. It’s not safe to walk or bike in most places because again- we were built for cars.

39. > So why not use public transport?

    Because public transportation is terrible.

    You can’t actually get anywhere in your city by tram or bus. It goes where it goes and if it doesn’t go where you want to go then you’re walking from the nearest stop. It also goes when it goes and if it’s not going when you want to go then you’re either showing up very early or very late.

    It’s not really like Europe invested in public transport because it’s a great way to travel. You just didn’t really have a choice. Your cities were built long before automobiles were even dreamed of. You also tax gasoline to the point where it’s just prohibitively expensive for anyone but the very rich to drive. Neither of those things really effect Americans.

40. There’s no public transportation near me. I use the free one at the ski resorts otherwise I haven’t since I lived in NYC 20+years ago. I also put my kids on the school bus this year and am in close walking distance to the stop, others drive to the stop and idle, which is common for anyone living more than a block away. Outside of large cities, Public transportation is found in more concentrated areas for those of lower economic means or hose who need to go into the city. Larger cities in the south will also have the divide. We are set up for cars and anyone who can’t afford one is at a disadvantage in the majority of the country.

41. I had never used public transit consistently in my life until about a year and a half ago when I moved to a big city. I grew up in the largest city in my state, but it was a southern state so not New York City or anything. I tried to use the public transit there to get to a job at one time. Driving to the job was a 25 minute drive, taking public transit was a two and a half hour process. Now that I live outside of a major city that has reliable public transit, I take it to work every single time.

42. US public transit is quite bad. Even NYC, the best city in the US for it, is not on par with European cities of similar size such as Berlin, Paris, London, Barcelona, and Madrid. Cities like DC, Chicago and LA barely even have qualifiable systems by European standards compared to other similarly sized European cities. US public transit is just miles behind that of European countries in efficiency, coverage, and cleanliness.

    The US is culturally car centric, it has nothing to do with rural vs urban. The funding isn’t there because no one rides it, and because no one rides it, the funding isn’t there. Plenty of rural areas in Europe still have fantastic train connections, look at Switzerland for example.

43. Several things to take into account…

    First, the vast majority of the US is rural. In contrast, the majority of the population is urban. This results in the odd election dynamics, where electoral districts are divided by map regions, and in effect allows a smaller population to have a larger voice in voting. Discussions as to how to fix this are ongoing, unless you happen to be a Republican. How this translates to public transport is that by surface area, the majority of the US has no public transport or is woefully underserved. In some cases, gaps of public transport can be weaponized via gentrification to force an area into poverty and allow for buyouts by developers or banks. Even some larger cities lack service to residential areas, which defeats the purpose of commuter transport.

    In larger cities where public transport exists, what kind is often varied. Some cities only have bus lines (Knoxville, TN), some have trams (San Fransisco, CA), and some have buses, trams, and subways/elevated metro lines (Chicago, IL). Additionally, service between cities is usually limited to air travel, a single bus company (Greyhound), or trains. Trains are also rare, as passenger service is really only provided by a couple of companies, and they have not been investing in service. Also, we have no high speed rail lines at all. A trip from Fort Wayne, IN to Chicago, IL (161 miles / 259km) would take at least 5 hours with current service. You can drive a personal vehicle via interstate and get there in 3.5 hours.

    Quick note on the passenger train service issue. It is something that came up recently as part of the federal infrastructure plan. I’m unsure how it is handled in anywhere but the US, but here, rail lines are owned by companies, but the land they are on is owned by the local governments. As a result, running a new line requires gaining the permission of the local municipality, often involving things like Eminent Domain or outright municipal purchases of land from private land owners, then the costs of equipment and materiel to construct them. This is in contrast to the federal interstate program as rolled out by FDR, where the land, the road, and the easements for construction, maintenance, and policing are owned by the federal government, constructed by the federal government, and maintained by them using federal tax money. This arrangement allowed the interstates to be completed quickly. The same will not be true of rail lines, no matter how much money they throw at the problems.

    The last issue is maintenance and safety. Most public transport is safe, for certain relative values of “safe”. You are unlikely to be involved in a collision, fire, or hijacking (no matter what Speed has to say), but you are more likely to be mugged, groped, peed on, sh!t on, catch whatever variety of illness is ongoing, or shot. Intercity bus travel is more dangerous than a job disposing of chemical waste. Additionally, as far as cleanliness goes, most public transports are enough to make a CDC infectious disease specialist weep with joy at the cultures.

    Overall, driving a private vehicle is generally safer, faster, cleaner, and offers amenities like air conditioning and privacy. Given the choice, why would you take public transport then?

44. Having lived in Europe and had access to public transport, even the towns outside the metro of a city have better public transport than the metros of the US that I’ve lived in. I now live in an area with zero options but generally no, in the US I go by car.

    When I lived in Europe I didn’t have a car (though probably would have eventually but getting a license was something else and COVID hit which hastened our return to the US). Definitely miss the public transport system.

45. Why would I want to take a bus when I have a car in my garage I can just drive?

46. No. I live in a small town of about 12,000 in the middle of nowhere. We don’t have public transport.