| > Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge. Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially. One of the clear downsides to transit oriented cities is that you do need to pay attention to transit access when renting. A unit being “luxury” is no guarantee that it’s in a convenient place for transit, nor that the trip will be short. > Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up I find the need to make commute time productive quite an odd but common impulse. How about just making your commute suck less? Reading a book is better than driving in traffic. > I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit. Again, experience varies. For a lot of people it would be cheaper to abandon the car and pay for deliveries when necessary. Regardless, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you relegate your car trips to just when you need bulk goods, that is far more efficient than the current habit of using a car fo every single trip. > Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places. We could, but we’ve built our infrastructure with the opposite assumption in mind. Most other rich countries use a mix of regional rail, bus, and cars to solve this problem. The issue of “mass transit doesn’t go to the burbs, therefore I must use a car everywhere for everything” is an entirely self inflicted wound. > Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent Maybe we could solve that problem instead? Because that seems like a rather silly rationale for designing a transit system around. Also, it’s not like all car drivers are sober. In fact, a drunk driver is almost certainly a far bigger risk to your safety than a belligerent drunk on the train. > I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it. It’s almost like I’m arguing that we should make public transit more convenient than using a car for urban transit or something. |
I got a taxi from Gare du Nord to a hotel on Champs Eleyse this evening -- took about 40 minutes to go 2 miles. That's ridiculous, but it's apparently a thing.