[jnicholasp]

Public transportation is obviously WIB: one solution "fits" all, monolithic, logistically complex, not amenable to rapid & piecemeal innovation, good enough for basic function but doesn't & can't offer excellent function either in UX or non-core use cases. Advocating for the superiority of public transport in the same comment as you're espousing the virtues of bespoke software is cognitively dissonant.

[lispm]

Not where I live.

Public transport is not monolithic. Public transport is a complex evolving system of trains, busses, ferries, car sharing systems, car leasing, on demand mobility, etc. This is coordinated, integrated and has a various forms of innovation: technically and service.

The most recent radical innovation is a nation-wide public transport ticket (as a subscription) for all of Germany.

[jnicholasp]

Amazing, Germany has radically innovated a way for people to travel throughout the country via a (logistically) complex system requiring multiple stops, transfers, waiting for vehicles to arrive, unload & reload, where transporting large or heavy items or managing children is extra hassle & stress, where you're exposed to hundreds of strangers' behaviors & germs and the enforcedly generic environment that has to accommodate everyone by not being particularly well-suited to anyone.

Public transport is a good thing to have, but extolling it as a desirable-in-itself, convenient way to travel as compared to personal transport is simply not viable.

[lispm]

Most Deutschlandticket owners use it in their region, not for "travel throughout the country". When people travel beyond their region, it does not mean they are traveling throughout the whole country.

> Public transport is a good thing to have, but extolling it as a desirable-in-itself, convenient way to travel as compared to personal transport is simply not viable.

Mobility is an important need of people. Public transport provides a large part of the mobility needs in Germany and Cities compete by providing good services. Whether people prefer it to "personal transport" is their choice. If you personally have problems using mobility services together with "strangers", that's your thing and there are alternatives for you. Many people don't have these problems, which can be seen by the amount of people using public transport. There should now be more than ten million owners (10m was reached after one month of availability) of a Deutschlandticket (which is a subscription ticket) - out of a population of 80+ million. Additionally people use public transport with other tickets. The public transport is also not there in isolation. It is meshed with car usage, flights, long-distance trains, ... people walk and bike...

[lproven]

> extolling it as a desirable-in-itself, convenient way to travel as compared to personal transport is simply not viable.

Another fallacious argument.

It is desirable in itself.

It results in human-scale cities, more accessible for all regardless of disabilities.

It makes more efficient use of resources. It uses less energy, emits less pollution, means less space must be devoted to roads and to parking.

It makes streets more pleasant places to be, so one might choose to eat or drink on the street, free of traffic fumes.

It means one can drink alcohol and not have to pay a lot for a taxi home, and thus, reduces the motivation to drunk drive.

Car-free streets are better for cycling, which is better for public health, which is better for healthcare infrastructure.

In fact, there is no real disadvantage to it, as your rather ridiculous attempts to construct negatives show:

> a (logistically) complex system

That's a good thing. More options. E.g. one can choose step-free routes when moving luggage or infants in prams, or if a wheelchair user, versus faster alternatives when travelling unencumbered.

You may not have noticed but most people have smartphones now, which can do the routing for you.

Your claimed disadvantage is in fact a win.

> waiting for vehicles to arrive,

Better than waiting in traffic jams.

> unload & reload

False; cars must do this too.

> transporting large or heavy items

You make it increasingly clear you've no experience of this and the biases of someone to whom it is alien and scary.

I've moved furniture this way. I've moved rackmount servers and 21" CRT monitors this way.

It's cheap.

> where you're exposed to hundreds of strangers' behaviors & germs

You sound like the increasingly deranged and irrational Elon Musk, whom I once admired.

> enforcedly generic environment

Utter lunacy. American cities, covered in freeways, and still congested, are the ultimate example of this.

You seem to think you are making a logical case.

You are not. You are making it plain you are a bigot who lacks experience of the thing they are attacking, though.

[kunley]

Mr lproven, at this moment I regret upvoting your previous quite interesting reasonings about Lisps and software, because you so easily went into zealotry and ad personam, just because someone disagreed with you about a public transport.

Please, can you separate "religious " issues from the discussion if sofrware. Thank you.

[lproven]

:'(

Genuinely dismayed to hear that.

I put it to you that it's one of these things the depends entirely on your personal background, specifically including the country (or countries) that you grew up in.

I have been told, to my face, that it is absolutely impossible to live life in a modern American city using a bicycle as your only form of transport. (Let alone as a pedestrian!) This may be true; I don't know, I've never lived in America.

But as an adult, I've lived in London, Brno, and Prague, with bicycles as my only regular form of vehicle, used in combination with public transport, and it's been absolutely fine. Not even inconvenient, not tolerable, not bearable, but pleasant, easy, cheap, convenient, and fun.

I didn't get a car driver's license until I was 37 years old. I never needed one. (I did have a motorcycle license from the age of about 22.)

I have often faced out right incredulity when I told people this but it is not exaggeration.

Similarly, I have often been told that life as a vegetarian is inconceivable. People have cited a multitude of reasons, from lack of ingredients, the lack of culinary skills, the lack of availability of restaurants where they live, to simple inability to face the prospect of life without eating meat... but I've been a vegetarian for over 40 years now. It is not some miserable, puritan, ascetic life of self-denial. I've travelled to many dozens of countries, and never had a real problem, and I've never ever, not once, let it lapse for any reason, especially not because I was abroad. It doesn't mean austere self-denial. I love my food, as my waistline shows, unfortunately.

When I say that somebody's national background is probably a motivating factor in their lack of belief that, for example, designing entire nation states around public transport as the primary way of getting around, that is not an ad hominem attack. It is a plain and simple statement of fact.

Sometimes, people's lifestyles and background mean that they cannot imagine a life that is so radically different to their own… and that can mean even people that have travelled extensively in their own country. I don't think that it is rude to point that out.

[lproven]

Precisely this. :-)

[lproven]

Thus speaks someone unfamiliar with it, it would appear.

The reverse is in fact true, as @lispm points out.

It's complex, it's diverse, it's tailored to each individual town and city. Big cities have urban rail or light rail or both, smaller ones have trams or trolleybuses, smaller ones may have just buses. To get to and from the stops, some cities have footpaths, some private bicycles, some public cycle sharing schemes.

And any combinations of the above, of course.

Every system bespoke to that city. Every city's system totally unique.

Outlier cities, such as very mountainous ones, integrate cable car systems into the mix, such as La Paz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi_Telef%C3%A9rico

And Medellín:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrocable_(Medell%C3%ADn)

Chongqing has a remarkable system because the city spans a set of mountain ranges and valleys:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing_Rail_Transit

The exact reverse of your statement is the case.

The simplistic one-size-fits-all answer is: "get everyone to drive, give them loads of big roads and pave half the city for parking."

https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-a...

[jnicholasp]

Cities don't use public transport,people do. The public transport system for a given city, as compared to the personal transport choices made by individuals, is Worse Is Better in all the ways I said.

[lproven]

> Cities don't use public transport,people do.

Straw man argument. Nobody is saying they do.

> the personal transport choices made by individuals

Also fallacious; people's choices are constrained by the options available to them. If you live somewhere with excellent public transport, as I have most of my life in the 3 major cities I've inhabited and indeed most of those I've visited for work or pleasure, you have more choice. You can choose to drive, or to ride a bike, or to ride pubtrans.

If there is no pubtrans, or little and inconvenient, then you are being deprived of choice, deprived of diversity of options: the result is a car monoculture.

You are attempting to argue the inverse of the position you claim. I don't know why.