[kulahan]

Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"?

A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. Mathematically impossible to run on time. It never gets you where you want to go, just kinda close usually. If one doesn't show up, there is no real feedback without an extensive background metadata system. Never as clean as your own car (unless you're one of those carbage-loving people I suppose, but then you're just going to litter on the bus anyways). Obnoxious, loud, smelly, or crazy people you have to deal with.

I'll never understand the crowd so desperate to have them, but I'll still support the cause if it cleans up the highways for me I guess.

[hamdingers]

> A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car.

I never have to clean a bus, or put gas in it, or change its oil. I don't even have to drive it.

I don't have to dedicate a big portion of my property to storing it, just to pay to park it somewhere else when I go out. I'll never get a ticket for leaving it in the wrong place, and I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong.

I don't have to worry about it getting stolen, or crashed into. I don't have to worry about being unable to afford the insurance or registration. I don't have any wealth tied up in it, so its deprecation doesn't matter.

Having to walk a few minutes at the start and end of my journey is a small price to pay for such convenience.

And if I ever do need one, I can rent one for less than the average American's monthly payment. In fact, I can rent the exact one I need that day, which might be a pickup today but a minivan tomorrow.

[keeda]

Also:

- Not having to perform the repetitive, mind-numbingly-dull-yet-somehow-simultaneously-stressful cognitive task of driving.

- Instead, having the freedom to engage in more relaxing, productive or creative pursuits in this era of smartphones; do work, watch videos, read books, sleep, or even just look out the window.

- Never having to deal with traffic jams. Or road rage.

- Getting a chance to walk places for free instead of paying to do the same thing on a treadmill in a gym.

[watersb]

> I'll never have to go to court because I used it wrong.

Technically, it's possible to be required to go to court, for some value of "used it wrong".

Or so I'm told.

[NegativeK]

In most places I've lived, busses are for poor people. Because anyone else will pay whatever it takes to get a car and avoid something like a _three hour_ round trip for something 10 miles away. I'm not kidding; my work commute is 10 miles each way, in a city of way more than 1M, and it's 1.5 hours total for me to get to work on time.

I've lived in one place where they were great. Dense urban environments can do that, though. So nuh us busses can be great (the trains were even better), but it seems like the US has zero actual drive to make public transit not crap.

[mothballed]

I've lived in a couple places with public transit way faster and more efficient than cars.

But because it's public, people can't be easily kicked off. Once I was caught between a knife fight; another time a schizophrenic person started to aggressively trap me in the corner while going on an increasing paranoid tirade.

Not long after that I bought a bicycle.

[jeffbee]

A bicycle is pretty much always going to beat a bus over reasonable distances, on performance alone, not even counting the crazy people.

[rsynnott]

Always amused by HN on buses. It seems that the median HN is basically okay with trains, but is convinced that if they ever set foot on a bus they will immediately be stabbed by 47 drug addicts, and then their soul consigned to Bus Hell. It's kind of comically hyperbolic.

I wonder where the dividing line is. Are HNs afraid of trams? Very Light Rail systems? Trambuses? Trolleybuses? BRTs? Railbuses? Someone should do a survey.

[rsynnott]

(Though thinking about it further, probably _should_ be afraid of railbuses, which are a bus chassis on rails; kind of amazing they were ever allowed really. Bizarrely, some were actually still in use in the UK til 2021 or so. Even more shockingly, there don't seem to have been many/any documented fatal incidents; one of the UK railbuses was destroyed more or less completely in a crash, but it was empty at the time.)

[jeffbee]

Nobody denies that if we all chip in to build a door-to-door freeway and free parking for you it will be cool for you. The question is whether we have better things to do with our money.

[kulahan]

Than spending it upending the entire transportation infrastructure when we have much more pressing problems? Then I agree.

If you think buying a whole bunch of busses is going to solve some major problem... I have a bridge to add to your purchase.

[ponector]

>>It never gets you where you want to go.

As well as the car. Unless you destination is a parking lot.