[lordnacho]

Would be really interesting to see this done on a map of Europe. You'd think there's a lot more public transit used.

As a visitor to the US, the main thing that strikes me is always the vast amount of car related space there. Wider roads, massive car parks. Places with no sidewalk!

And I'm also surprised at the two places I thought would have more public transport usage. Really, only 30% of NYC? I guess it's sparse outside Manhattan? SF I kinda understand because what I saw of the underground looked way too small for a city of several million.

[alchemism]

The mass transit systems outside of NYC proper are designed to feed people in and out of the city core in two large waves, and [are] not designed to move people around the larger urbanized region (the "Tri-State area") outside of those two waves.

So for the large majority of residents, a car will still be a necessity. Even Manhattanites will eventually feel the need buy/rent a car so they can do things like go to a forest or a quiet beach for a day.

[jermaustin1]

When I lived in Manhattan, I used ZipCar regularly. It was provided free as a "benefit" by my employer. If I had to pay for it or monthly parking or anything like that, I would have just stayed in town.

[ghaff]

In my experience a lot of people only find Manhattan tolerable because they can get out of the city on a regular basis. Assumes a certain income level of course. But those I know who live in Manhattan, SF, etc. without cars rent Zipcar and conventional rentals a lot. As well as Uber, etc.

Many people are just largely stuck to public transit lines of course. But the demographic that is actually moving into cities (college educated professionals) mostly doesn’t think that way.

[hannasanarion]

That is true of all public transit systems, period. If you want to get from Bayonne to Yonkers, you're going to have to go through the central hub of Manhattan, just like if you want to get from Garching to Unterschleißheim, you're going to have to go through the central hub of Munich.

This is just the nature of public transit outside city centers: they will have a hub-and-spokes shape. That's because this shape suits the needs of pretty much everybody: travel from one spoke to another is way less common than travel to and from the center, and if you really need that route and can't afford the time of going through the hub, most metros cover the concentric routes it with lighter options (like two-digit NJTransit busses and the Hudson-Bergen light rail).

The corner cases of suburb-to-suburb trips and short distance vacations aren't important enough to necessitate complete infrastructure capitulation to drivers.

And for the vast majority of New Yorkers, a car isn't necessary. Car ownership is around 45% in New York City, and that number goes way down if you exclude Staten Island and the outer parts of Queens and Brooklyn that don't get subway service.

[HanayamaTriplet]

The population of San Francisco itself was actually only about 880,000 as of 2017. The Census Bureau calculated a net 20% increase in SF's daytime population from commuters in 2010[0], so that would bring the number of people up to just over a single million at the lower bound.

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-weekday-population-increas...

[JoshTriplett]

> And I'm also surprised at the two places I thought would have more public transport usage. Really, only 30% of NYC?

Taxis don't count as "public transport" here.

[marcosdumay]

I think the less ambiguous name is "collective transport". Taxis are public transport almost everywhere.

[dullgiulio]

There is also the term "mass transit" that excludes taxis exactly because they don't help solving the congestion and pollution problems.

[njarboe]

"collective transport" is a great name for it. Has the same root as collective farming and similar problems to that enterprise.