[huytersd]

No. Public transportation sucks. There’s no privacy and I have to walk to and from a bus stop. I have nothing against walking, I love it but I don’t want to do that when I have an upcoming appointment or return from grocery shopping. This pedestrian whatever only works in dense urban areas and if you live in apartments. What the hell do people in apartments even do? Just sit around quietly and watch TV so there are no noise complaints. I can farm, raise goats, woodwork and still drive to a city center in under 15 mins. Why would I want to give that up.

I’m an environmentalist and the solution is electric vehicles powered by renewable electricity. It’s not cooping people in tiny apartments and foisting dense living on people that don’t like it.

[icedistilled]

Well if you're objection is that public transportation currently sucks, yes that's the problem. It doesn't have to. That's the point.

That might be the first time I've seen privacy as a main objection. Not sure how serious that should be taken considering how much privacy has willingly been given up in the last couple decades in the name of convenience. And also how few cases where it would matter. Like does it matter if a rando can see one sit on a bus? It's not going to make a difference with companies and governments since they have so much electronic location data available, not to mention license plate scanners for private cars which also have electronic location data.

[huytersd]

It’s not that it currently sucks. Even if it was the cleanest, safest, most connected system it still sucks compared to a personal vehicle (ideally electric and fully powered by renewable energy). It also means people have to live in dense apartments instead of spread out suburbs and semi rural living.

I don’t mean privacy as in personal data, I mean not having to be in close quarters with other humans.

[WillDaSilva]

Even if we accept that the personal vehicle provides a better experience for an individual in a vacuum compared to ideal public transit, we're left with the critical problem that if a significant number of people choose to use personal vehicles instead of public transit, then there will be so much traffic that the experience will be awful for everyone. This traffic will cause travel delays, noise, pollution (from exhaust, brake dust, tire dust, etc.), and create an unpleasant dangerous environment for pedestrians and cyclists.

[xnx]

> then there will be so much traffic that the experience will be awful for everyone.

Perhaps. It's also possible that current roads could carry vastly more traffic driven by autonomous drivers instead of people. As a regular cyclist, I would be ecstatic if even if every human driven car on the road were replaced by 2 autonomous ones. Buses are some of the worst vehicles to be around on city streets (huge, poor visibility, frequent stops, filthy diesel emissions).

[huytersd]

Public transport has its place, especially in dense city centers and especially metros/subways. Those will always be more efficient and a better experience in cities. I’m not even opposed to completely banning personal vehicles in city centers. But only about 5% of the US population live in densely packed downtown areas of cities. For the rest of the folks we should have more cars and improve our road systems.

[icedistilled]

> "It also means people have to live in dense apartments instead of spread out suburbs and semi rural living." > "I mean not having to be in close quarters with other humans."

Suburbs tend to be sterile and devoid of character, but I do agree that they promote living in a bubble away from other humans.

Why that is desired or a widespread model for living needs more explanation. Sure some people like to be hermits, but as a social species it seems odd and also a highly inefficient way to accommodate a larger population. Also peculiar if one likes true "wilderness", because more suburban sprawl means less of that.

And suburbs have got to be one of the key factors in the reported loneliness epidemic. With the reports of increasing prevalence of loneliness, seems odd to want the default way of life to be one that we both agree means living spread out and not close to one another.

And yeah some people do like suburbs. On the other hand, Irvine ca despite being such an upscale and model suburb, is like living in the set of the truman show: artificial feeling and boring. People often describe it as sterile or like living in an office park. The landscaping of suburbs, such as irvine, also tend to be environmental disasters on top of being utterly bland. It's lose lose.

Not to mention, car transport being the paramount design concern makes for truly miserable pedestrian life and running trails. Running next to 6 lanes roads with 55 mph speed limits is just a terrible experience - irvine is crisscrossed with them.

Not sure how one can have a better road system than irvine - but it doesn't end up saving the residents time - things are just more spread out and they have to driver further between them and then fight for parking.

We've tried a car oriented transportation plan for decades - it gets one LA traffic. Parts of the 405 have 12 lanes. If you build it, congestion comes. We've tried it for decades, it's horrible. What is it they say about trying the same thing over and over and expecting another outcome? Oops actually the i5 - 405 merge near irvine has 26!!! lanes amongst all the ramps and truck bypasses. Needs more, right?