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by danans 405 days ago
> Anyways do you have any examples of "rich countries" that have solved this problem?

Rich countries that have good public transit? Sure, that's easy.

Denmark Singapore Japan Germany Switzerland France UK ...

Here are some middle income countries that have good public transit also:

China Spain Portugal Italy Taiwan

1 comments

Okay, so to come back to the goal posts, do "rich people" ride the public transit in those countries?
Yes, because it's faster. Doesn't really matter if you can afford a 400,000 dollar Rolls Royce if you're stuck in downtown London traffic for 30 minutes. You could've just taken the underground in 5...
They sure do. The ones that can't or don't want to hire a personal driver or go everywhere by taxi anyway. Because driving yourself isn't much fun in a city and you need to be sober every time, too.
I'm skeptical. For nearly any definition of "rich", someone can afford to take an Uber/Lyft/taxi everywhere, at least.

I think the real reason your average rich person would take transit is because in some places, at some times of day, it's significantly faster than driving. But I do believe there's some -- probably fairly small -- subset of rich people who ride public transit simply because they prefer to.

Yes rich people take the Tube/trains in London. It's convenient and often faster than driving, especially at rush hour. Basically everyone uses the Tube except for like, royalty or billionaires or whatever. In fact, people pay a premium (in rent) to live close to Tube stations.

Also, planes are a form of public transport and rich people take them all the time.

This part of your earlier comment confuses me:

> I can't think of any situation where people of greater means accept more limitations.

What "limitations" are you talking about here?

Probably not billionaires, but millionaires do. I know multi millionaires (6-7 figures) in the US who ride public transportation in places like SF and NYC.
> I know multi millionaires (6-7 figures)

Er, 6 figures is a hundred-thousand-aire, not a millionaire. Perhaps you meant 7-8?