[rahimnathwani]

  you can live well without

Imagine you and your spouse both work full time, and you have 1-2 children. And your definition of 'living well' includes having those children learn to swim well, and do some sort of after-school sport, and also do math supplementation because SFUSD teaches math at a really slow pace.

I don't believe any of the above are outlier or unreasonable positions to have.

Yet a family in that situation would severely struggle to fit everything in if they had to rely solely on public transport to get between home, school and after-school activities.

(I grew up in London, where public transport is often faster than driving. In San Francisco, most of my car journeys would take 3-4 times as long by public transport.)

[renewiltord]

Admittedly, public transport is garbage. And for the time we'd go to La Petite Baleen, a car is 0.5x the time. So in that respect I agree. In Mission Bay everything else is close by.

But I think perhaps if someone told me "We don't live well. I can only take my child to swim class on the weekends" I would think that somewhat strange.

[rahimnathwani]

Re: La Petite Baleen: 34 mins vs 1 hour 11 mins for me.

My son's swim school is 20 mins away by car, or 60 mins by public transport.

I take your point that these are first world problems.

But my point is that not having access to a car in San Francisco is a significant inconvenience and it's incorrect to say 'you can live well' without that access. You might not be so inconvenienced that you would say "we don't live well", but there's a 'meh' zone in between the two.

[renewiltord]

I wouldn't say it's "meh" that you can take your kids to swim school only on weekends.

LPB is 23 vs 39 for me but I do drive. Either way I wouldn't think it "meh".

But I suppose standards of living in the US are by default so far ahead of other places that these are considered the minimum to not be "meh" here.

[rahimnathwani]

  LPB is 23 vs 39 for me but I do drive. Either way I wouldn't think it "meh".

The 39 minute journey time doesn't include:

- the time between now and the journey start time

- delays

So you would need to budget an hour each way, i.e. a total of 2.5 hours for a 30 minute swim lesson.

Imagine doing that for every single thing you need to do.

[renewiltord]

Normally I'd agree with you, but I can pick my swim lesson time and I don't have to worry about headway timing because I know when to leave and the train is timed. For untimed services, certainly I'd believe it.

These are complaints of generality that don't have relevance in the specific case.