This has been true for me wherever I've lived. If you just happen to live near a major bus line or subway station, and just happen to go somewhere where a transfer is not needed, then maybe public transit is faster. Otherwise, not a chance.
From my previous apartment it would take about 2 hours to get to the airport using public transit, because I had to transfer twice - that's waiting three times. By car it would take 30 minutes without traffic, and the worst time with a car would be just under 2 hours.
From my current residence it takes about 8 minutes just to walk to the bus stop.
It takes 10 minutes to drive to work (fairly close). It takes 30 minutes by public transit (walk to stop, transfer somewhere).
Whenever I talk to someone who doesn't own a car and really touts public transit, and I dig into the details, I always find that this person has a limited number of places he goes, with the rest being inconvenient to get to.
The only real benefit of public transit is you can read during the commute.
If you include second order effects beyond your individual experience the benefits are plenty:
- better for the environment
- safer (especially for pedestrians)
- more people can move using less space, resulting in less traffic/higher throughput
- if public transportation was prioritized over cars, city layouts could be dramatically overhauled, with more streets used for pedestrian/bike traffic instead of cars
These are the reasons I take public transportation instead of driving. I’d rather contribute in some small way to the society I want instead of settling for a local maximum of convenience.
If we’re listing externalities let’s at least be honest:
- Lost productivity or quality of life for rider.
If we suddenly double the amount of commute time someone experiences, how do you think that will impact their personal life? Their professional life?
Take it a step further and look at how the misery cascades: Imagine that person is a neurosurgeon and we doubled their morning commute so they now have to wake up an hour earlier. Will they be operating at their highest level?
I understand that the “anti-car” movement is probably well intentioned, but you know what they say about the road to hell…
> The only real benefit of public transit is you can read during the commute.
I think there is more to it than this. When driving, your nervous system is continually activated as your attention is (should be!) focused on everything going on around you for the entire time. 10x this when stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, making thousands of micro-decisions about when to break, how fast to speed up, how much room to leave ahead of you. The difference between 30-45 minutes of this and 1.5 hours of sitting peacefully on public transit is dramatic.
But on all your other points I fully agree. The answer though is not to throw out public transit because of these pitfalls - it is to massively double down on improving public transit to mitigate these pitfalls.
Even that is assuming the public transit has enough capacity and safety. I remember the Seattle E-line before the pandemic for example. Packed in like sardines so you have to stand and maybe be able to hold on to something. Almost always someone at least yelling incoherently or starting a fight with an unlucky passenger. It was certainly not a relaxing reading nook. Not to mention having to often wait for 2 or more buses to fit inside at all.
In many EU countries public transit is excellent even in the suburbs/exurbs. But it’s an order of magnitude difference in funding that I don’t see the US really ever doing.
Your nervous system is activated even more when walking: firing dozens of muscles for gait, even more for balance, reacting to sounds and movement around you, adjusting to different surfaces, wind, inclination, stairs, avoiding obstacles etc. Yet most people manage to take relaxing walks somehow.
I ride motorcycles and that intense focus for me is meditative. I feel more engaged and alert after a 30 minute motorcycle ride than I do riding an Uber. The motorcycle riding has a similar counterintuitive effect (for me) as Ritalin. (Ritalin is a stimulant used to treat ADHD.)
When I ride public transport or have a driver — I feel relatively more lethargic than when I ride the motorcycle (and to a lesser extend driving a car.)
> it is to massively double down on improving public transit
Why? Private transport represents freedom, public transit represents control. Furthermore, getting public transit to a level of perfect will cost tens of billions of dollars and for what benefit? To have cities and towns shut down each time there is a transit strike, a superstorm, or the government decides we should stay home?
Cars, motorcycles, bicycles, scooters — those work. Let’s make that better. I definitely don’t like spending my time sitting next to strangers of an indeterminate mental status in a temperature that isn’t of my own choosing going to a destination that isn’t necessarily the precise place I want to go. I want to interact with strangers as little as possible.
Raise the fares to $20 (and enforce it) and perhaps I’d consider riding public transit. But after my experiences with the BART and piss-soaked, rat infested NYC subway stations, no thank you. If I want thrills hanging out with a bunch of psychotics waiting for an excuse to push you onto the tracks, I’d rather BASE jump the Met Life building instead.
For a young single person carrying nothing more than their Manhattan Portage satchel to some hipster haunt in Brooklyn, public transport can be great. For people with stuff to carry, small kids, wheelchairs, or mobility issues, or tight schedules, not so much. Add the safety aspects to it and public transport becomes less attractive — unless of course they start allowing those with firearms permits to carry on public transport. But even then, not sure why people would want to give up point to point freedom for public options.
I took a train for the first time in a while yesterday (normally I ride everywhere where feasible, though still end up driving more often than I'd like), and was struck by how peaceful and relaxing it was. I honestly didn't care how slow it might be - I had a book, and took pleasure in just watching the world scroll past. If all PT journeys could be like that one suspects they'd be a lot more popular. But service interruptions, poorly connected routes, infrequent services and random overcrowding are the main reality most PT users in many cities around the world have to deal with every day. I don't blame many for preferring to pay eye-watering petrol prices to sit in gridlock instead.
You must live in Japan because you would never relax on the public transport around here, except for the bus before it gets to town and after it leaves.
The micro-decisions you're referring to are trivial and no more of a cognitive load than deciding where to put your feet while walking.
If you're an anxious or unskilled driver, sure, it's probably stressful. But most people reach a point where they are as comfortable driving a car as walking down the street.
30 minutes of driving in my private, climate-controlled car, with a comfortable and highly-adjustable seat, listening to music or podcasts of my choice? And the ability to carry whatever I want? I'd choose that over 30 minutes of sitting on bus or train - which is likely to have uncomfortable seating, too hot or too cold, loud, obnoxious, smelly, or mentally disturbed other people - with no ability to transport anything more than you are willing to carry. Even at par, I would rather have my car - let alone if public transport takes 3x longer.
Last time I took BART into SF a guy sat down in the seat in front of me, opened up a plastic bag, and pulled out a needle and started injecting himself with something. I don't believe it was insulin. Uh...rather stick with my car, thanks.
> I always find that this person has a limited number of places he goes, with the rest being inconvenient to get to.
This is just a description of traffic patterns in the US, in general. You presumably don’t cruise through random suburbs on the other side of your city on your way to work, or while running errands, or really for any reason other than needing to.
Where I live, it’s both faster and cheaper for me to not own a car. It hasn’t hurt my traveling much, either, although you’ll have to take my word for that (until I figure out how to anonymize all the location data I collect for myself).
> This is just a description of traffic patterns in the US, in general. You presumably don’t cruise through random suburbs on the other side of your city on your way to work
That's the normal traffic pattern in many parts of the country. For example, in the DC metro area, 90% of the jobs are outside the city. It's routine to live in one suburb, commute to another suburb, and have a spouse commute to a third suburb.
It's a mixed bag. I don't drive, so whenever I have to go somewhere I don't really consider how long it would take to drive there. But whenever I do get there by car (eg: friend or family member) it's amazing how much extra time goes into stuff that i never have to think about. Like where to park, how much the parking costs, what if we meander half a mile shopping and grab lunch? Now we have to walk back to the car instead of having a bus straight home.
I guess you have the transit map, and all the schedules, memorized? Because for most people, getting to an unfamiliar location at a specific time by public transit alone is quite a project. And then if you "meander half a mile", does the bus change its route to come get you?
I think this is only really true for subway routes. The stop and go nature of buses slows a commute down and you don’t have a traffic-free route to make up for it. Subways are so much faster between stops that you can make up for the delays due to stopping.
In general, I feel once you make the conscious decision to build for cars and allocate vast amounts of space to parking everywhere then you’re going to generally do better with a car. Transit will only be more in line as you drive the % of drivers down and reduce the resource allocations for cars.
There are of course several stages of improvement possible between "bus sharing the road with cars" and "fully grade separated rail": dedicated bus lanes up to "bus rapid transit" lines, tram/light rail with more or less separation from other traffic, etc.
Many years ago when I was sharing a single car with someone who worked the complete opposite direction of me, I looked into the public transit thing. I lived in the west side of one city, worked in the east side of another. By car, it was 20-40 minutes depending on if you were in rush hour or not. While I would have hated it, 2x time commute by public transport would have been fine. But it wasn't even close.
I would need to walk a little over 2 miles to get to the nearest bus stop by my apartment, then I would need to take that bus into the downtown area, transfer to another bus to the central bus depot. From there I could pick up an "express commuter bus to a massive office park about half way between the two cities, where I would need to pick up another "express" bus to get to the next city. From there I would have to pick up another bus, which would take me luckily directly to my work place.
The problem was, none of these schedules were well coordinated. If I left around the time I would normally have to leave to make my shift on time, I would make it to my work place 6 hours later after accounting for all the waiting and transfer times. If I was willing to leave much earlier and arrive an hour before my shift (and if doing so met with the more frequent bus scheduling) I could get there in just 4 hours.
If you aren't directly on, and going almost exactly point to point for public transport outside big cities like NY, it can be so much worse than even "twice as long". I hated the wear and tear going all the way one way and then completely back across the cities the other way doing the shared commute required. I hated the sometimes hour or two wait before or after a shift to make the commute work with the other person. But using public transport was effectively impossible.
That’s definitely frustrating, but what did you expect? You lived in one city and worked in another. The “simple” solution to this is to live and work in the same city.
I live in Germany and have a different experience: it takes forever to find a parking space and the cost could be prohibitely expensive. In contrast, I can take the subway or bus and walk one or two block and don't ever have to worry about parking.
Travel time with public transport and by car are mostly the same, with car having a higher risk of taking longer.
Travel outside the city though, is certainly much easier with a car.
In a lot of places, if everyone using public transport were to use a car instead, they definitely wouldn't be faster than before; most likely much slower.
In London, you often see from route planning apps that the time for using a car (including waiting for an uber) would be less - except during the rush hours, which is when most people need to.
It depends. In most places in the US, bas transit shares the same road space as cars. If almost all bus users switched to cars, not only would driving be slower, but riding the bus would also be made slower as well. So driving would still end up faster than taking the bus.
There's also less people that have to own cars. If NYC didn't have subways it would be unlivable given the density.
Also for what you've described to be true, you likely lived in a high income area since they provide easier access to where most offices are situated. If you're commuting in from the outer boroughs into Manhattan, driving is way slower given the traffic (and way more stressful, and then there's the parking situation).
If NYC did not have subways, it wouldn’t be as dense. It would be a totally different city with respect to culture and who lives there.
Something that is often overlooked in the transit vs private car debate is that modes of transportation affect urban design and ultimately different ways of living.
Driving in a transit oriented city is totally different than riding transit in an auto oriented city.
Perhaps we should instead be researching how to get more fuel cheaper. Much of the “cost” is self inflicted. Gasoline could be almost as cheap as bottled water if we wanted it to be.
Its a commonly held belief that private cars are less energy efficient and are less environmentally friendly per passenger mile than mass transit. But that’s a myth. On average the American passenger car is more energy efficient than mass transit. In fact, there are only two mass transit systems in the US more efficient (in cost, energy and carbon) than driving a Prius.
Which of public transit or driving is faster depends on the city, i.e. it depends on how congested the streets available for private cars are, in comparison with what is available for public transit.
I live in a city with subway and going by subway to any place that is not too close (so that the time to walk to a subway station is not a too large fraction of the total time) is much faster than driving a car, with the possible exception of late in the night, when the streets might be empty. In most cities with subways where I have been, this was also true, because they also had congested street traffic.
I have also been in several cities where the buses had their own street lanes, which were forbidden for private cars. In such cities, I have also seen frequently cases when going by bus was faster than driving.
> The only real benefit of public transit is you can read during the commute.
I use audiobooks so it works out for driving or taking public transit. The only difference is the noise level is higher in general with public transit.
If I'm going somewhere on the network (~50% of journeys) it's great. Primarily because of traffic congestion, mind - in the early morning travel time is about the same by both methods.
If I'm going anywhere else? Car hands down.
The main problem is that the entire network of places is available by car by definition. Worst case is car and then the rest by foot (e.g. into a national park).
By contrast public transport just doesn't serve the majority of places at all. Every train station has a road, not every road has a train station.
That. Most cars today contain one person – the driver.
Until we have full autonomy, they have to keep their focus on the road.
I read about four books/month.
Whenever I used public transport to commute that number doubled.
Not so when I commuted by car.
And don't tell me I can listen to audio books. This doesn't compare in reading speed.
And it is also is a dangerous distraction for most driving situations that are not an empty highway or a traffic jam.
I do not think discussions about transportation environmental cost usually sufficiently consider the productivity lost because of how long it takes to get places by public transport. We get a number of hours of productive work from each person every day, and so that productivity required all of the resources that the person consumed in a day. An extra hour of commuting every day, because I need to go from A to B, but because I take public transport I need to go A to C and then C to B and along the way need to make lots of stops, means that an extra fraction of the resources I consumed for that day will not be used for productivity.
Also, the diagrams showing public transport being more space efficient often seem to assume that the public transport will be at capacity. On my 30 minute bus ride, to/from a major downtown, I am not infrequently the only passenger on the whole bus.
Same for me. It is approximately 5.8kms from my apartment to work.
I have walked it before during a bus driver strike, took just over an hour at a leisurely pace - 11mins per km.
Normal days - it takes me around 6 to 8 minutes to walk to the bus stop. There is a waiting period for the bus to arrive since you want to get to the bus stop before the scheduled stop - sometimes the bus is early.
Then it takes nearly 30minutes to get to work - frequent stops along the way, 5 minutes waiting at the bus/rail interchange etc.
Finally 7 minute walk to the office from the bus stop.
Total of usually 50 minutes door to door via public transport and it costs $8 both ways.
If I took my car, it would take me 15 minutes and $17 parking fee.
I used to love taking the bus when I lived a block away from a major bus line. It took maybe 25-50% longer overall but I could actually use that time rather than driving and sitting in rush hour traffic.
Honestly I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that public transit takes around twice as long. It’s self selected. The people who are going to use it live close and us it because that worthwhile. So on average it makes sense that it would be some multiple of the time it takes to drive.
Yes, and walking takes about twice as long as riding transit. I know that I am fortunate to live about 3 miles from work. But the moment I started riding transit instead of driving, I found my temper much improved and my wallet fatter by the difference between bus fare and downtown parking rates.
We do own a car. Grocery shopping relying on public transportation would be difficult, though I did manage it when much younger.
I commuted 80 km (as the car drives) every day for 5 years. This was in Germany and I used public transport most of the time. Driving by car was about 1h, public transport was 1:30h but I really prefered going by bike->train->tram over going by car. If have to go that long every day, just napping in the train is a huge benefit over a stressful car ride for me.
> This has been true for me wherever I've lived. If you just happen to live near a major bus line or subway station, and just happen to go somewhere where a transfer is not needed, then maybe public transit is faster. Otherwise, not a chance.
That sounds like a great reason to build public transit infrastructure and housing near public transit infrastructure.
It does take longer for most destinations, but not for my work commute. The traffic between work and home is quite bad, so public transport is equally fast, or faster.
> For New York metro residents who take public transportation, a door-to-door commute averages about 51 minutes. That’s much longer than the 29 minutes typically spent by those who drive alone.
I mean, is this really an apples to apples comparison that is at all meaningful? The NY metro area includes NYC with its subway, but also suburbs in long island, New Jersey, and Connecticut with long commuter rail trips where you go to a different city, and short car commutes where you don’t.
> Don't even get me started about the time it takes to find parking in this city... I am guessing that that time consideration is not in this study.
For a while when I lived in Austin, cycling to work from where I lived would be comparable to driving in terms of time. That's despite the fact that I was only going roughly 15 mph when in motion. I'd often catch up to drivers at stop lights, and I could park directly in front of my building. No time spent finding parking and walking to the building. Some drivers are quite arrogant about the advantages of driving and are quick to dismiss the time spent parking, but time spent parking is a significant factor in many places.
>As a NYC resident of 20 years I can assure you public transportation much much faster than a car in most cases.
Surely you jest. Even in Manhattan this is rarely true. Outside of Manhattan it is practically never true. In some circumstances in Manhattan the subway can indeed be faster, but it’s really only true for traveling north/south along an express line during peak traffic.
For instance I can get from 96th to Chambers in about 25 minutes on a subway if I’m lucky with my timing. That’s faster than a car during peak traffic, but slower than a car during any other time of day. But if I need to get from 96th to basically anywhere else that isn’t on the 1/2/3 there is no way the subway will ever win, much less by any significant margin.
Even the idea that subway is “much much faster” defies basic logic. If that were universally true few people would ever take a ride share or taxi.
And this ignores the almost comical problems and lack of reliability with the subway system in NYC. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had to give up, exit the subway station, and hail a cab. I imagine for many people it’s happened one too many times and they’ve exclusively switched to rideshare/taxi.
For me personally I’ve switched to electric bike. I gave up on the subway earlier this year after one too many negative encounters with vagrants and criminals. A good question to ask is how visitors feel about the NYC subway system. When friends or family come to visit, what do they think about it? I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a healthy combo of amazement at the scale of the system, and amazement at how atrocious and disgusting it’s become.
I've never lived in NYC, but I've both driven and taken subways there. Not real recently, though, so this could be out of date.
On "finding parking": it's all a question of $$$. If you're willing to pay through the nose for a commercial lot, it's reasonably quick. If you insist on cheap parking... well, you'll be hunting for a while.
See also, from the article: "Commuter rail passengers spend an average of 69 minutes traveling to work, far longer than those taking bus or light rail." Gee, could that be because they're traveling longer? (It's certainly not because commuter rail trains travel slower than a typical New York City bus!)
This is also a natural result of how much more pleasant taking rail is compared to driving. Sort of a induced demand and Jevon's paradox effect going on here.
Since you don't need to actively pay attention to the road you can multi-task, and that means that you can buy a house farther away. If there is no way to commute by rail, the house that you will select will need to be closer to your work, and will therefore likely be more expensive.
As someone who used nyc transit for years you could often walk faster given the number of delays and issues. Driving is definitely faster throughout the city unless things are gridlocked. Parking is the problem. I moved to seattle for work but also to escape the hell of logistics in nyc. To go anywhere outside immediate walking distance was a 40+ minute affair each way, making things like dropping down to buy a pair of pants a half day affair. On the way you’ll probably get to see someone assaulted on the subway, an insane person squeezing feces down their pant legs onto the floor (true story!), or any number of other mildly traumatic experiences folks from outside nyc never fully believe or understand.
But the transit system is also the beating heart of the city. I wish every city had their transit system.
I’m sorry that you had to see those things, but the idea that the average person will “probably” see them is a persistent myth. I’ve lived here my entire life, the entire time riding subways and buses for school and work, and I’ve never once seen an assault or someone defecate themselves.
I have seen lots of homeless people, most of whom were sleeping or minding their own business, and I have seen people urinate in subway stations (but not since I moved to Brooklyn). But both are a far cry from the mental image of general mishegaas that assaults and defecation projects.
Long time NJ to Midtown commuter - 1 hr 50 mins each way for almost 18 years.
Now, with hybrid and office barely 20 mins away - my stress level has dropped off so much
Taking public transit/CTA in chicago has become unbearable.
Trains don't follow any schedules, they keep announcing on overhead speakers that next train is not coming because of covid related labor shortages.
My 15 min train ride has taken me anywhere between 15mins - 2 hrs in past 2 months. So i have to plan to be somewhere 1 hr in advance of my appointment so i don't miss it due to 'covid related labor shortages'.
I suspect most of the commenters here that come out in support of public transit everytime don't actually use public transit. They are wfhers in suburbs who like the idea of compact cities packed to the brim, where cars are banned, take public tansit or better yet bike through blistering cold with kids in tow.
I think this problem is bigger in many US cities compared to Europe, because of the urban sprawl. There is almost no way to make it efficient to go from most people's houses to the city using public transport, since the area to cover is so great.
To me, the solution is to re-think why everyone needs to go somewhere by car to get anything done. Why not have a grocery store closer? Some restaurants? Everyone having to travel from their house to the city centre to do basically anything is so wasteful. Most of this is because of zoning laws.
I live in Denmark, have pretty much ideal public transport for my work (one bus, very little walking on either end) and it still takes about twice as long.
Which would be fine, except when you bring this up lots of people start talking about how to make cars take more time, or making public transport free.
Neither of which solves the problem.
I probably would be more willing to take the bus if wasn't also less comfy than my car. Not only does my car have better seats than the bus, but I am guaranteed one.
But why does the bus take twice as long? Because it's stuck in traffic, take a different route, too many stops?
I do think the best way of course is to make public transport a viable option by itself. But it's hard to do without actually limiting the use of cars as well. It's a chicken-and-hen problem, as long as too many rely on cars, it's hard to have a very good public transport. For instance because of what I mentioned, people choosing places to live based on cars making it hard to cover with public transport.
Also, disincentivise car usage makes the city much better for those living there. I hate that people outside the city drive to work every day. Those cars are loud, takes so much space (which could've been cozy instead of asphalt), are a danger to kids, pedestrians, cyclists etc, pollutes the local air.
> Not only does my car have better seats than the bus, but I am guaranteed one
at the expenses of everybody else.
there is nothing more wasteful than turning up a very heavy, powerful and polluting machine to transport a single non disabled human for a few kms.
anyway, your seat would be guaranteed also on a bike, a moped, a horse, a donkey, a 20 tons truck, a bulldozer and an helicopter. Doesn't mean they are all equally good options.
Doesn't mean city planning should consider the comfort of your bum a priority.
Yes but people seem to have this backwards. Denmark and Netherlands are actually one of the best countries in the world to drive a car, because so much of other traffic has been shifted away from roads. Even in large cities, people are surprised that you can drive somewhere within few minutes and there usually is parking - it's specifically because all the other infrastructure is so good that people are incentivised to cycle, take a bus or a train - so there's fewer people on the road.
So from that perspective - yeah, of course driving is going to be faster for you than public transport.
I also suspect a lot of people who argue to completely replace cars with public transit either haven't tried traveling with young children on public transit, or haven't had the luxury of using a car when traveling with young children. Because taking young children on public transit is pretty miserable.
> lots of people start talking about how to make cars take more time
Why is this Harrison Bergeron-style "solution" to things so common these days? "A lot of people choose X over Y, but we want more people to choose Y over X instead. Make Y better? Unthinkable! Let's make X worse instead!"
Zoning laws and more importantly NIMBYs. I used to live in a city that's currently being taken to court after they cancelled the construction permits for mixed use buildings because a few very vocal citizens didn't want to live next to 4+ floor buildings and managed to get elected to the city council.
For a while I lived in an area in th US where I had a grocery store, a library, and several grocery stores within a mile. But my commute was 10 minutes by car, and almost an hour by bus. And the buses took a pretty direct route and there was a bus stop pretty close to my home. Part of it was just all the stops the bus made, and a big part of it was just waiting. The bus times weren't very reliable, so I had to show up pretty early, because if I missed the bus I would have to wait an hour for the next bus. And the bus just stopped and waited 20 minutes for a light rail to get there. And depending on the day, I might have to switch buses there.
And half a mile is still a long ways to carry groceries, especially in the heat or cold. But taking the bus required timing how long you shop so you are done in time to catch the bus that only comes once an hour.
And that doesn't even get into the hours the bus didn't run, or the inconvenience of having to carry all your groceries.
So while I think having such amenities closer to where people live, would be good, and would help. I don't think it is sufficient to solve the problems with public transit being slower.
Your idea is actually how car-dependent cities are laid out. Look at a map of Phoenix for a textbook example: the city is laid out on a square mile grid with retail/offices on the grid corners. People may drive to go shopping, but that's a choice, they could walk there (if they want to brave the heat) since for most of the city the nearest shopping area is less than a mile (1.6 km) away.
First: I agree with the overall conclusion of the article. We absolutely should invest to make public transport faster, and thereby attract more riders.
Second: At least for NYC, some of this data is slightly misleading. NYC has (at least) three public transport networks: the bus and subway within the city’s borders, and commuter rail between the city, Long Island, and the rest of NY/NJ/CT. It would probably be most interesting (and correct) to compare car commuters that could take each; my intuition is that the subway generally outperforms driving within the city, the bus slightly underperforms versus driving (since it gets stuck in traffic, and there’s no meaningful enforcement of bus lanes). I don’t have an intuition for the commuter rails.
We should invest in making public transit more consistent and frequent rather than faster. If something comes every 5 minutes… you don’t need to worry about schedule and the expected wait time from end of task until end of transit is lower.
Plus if you have transfers, it really drives down the time.
If the segment is really fast but only happens hourly, now you have to plan :( If it only happens hourly AND the timing is inconsistent or segments get cancelled, now you just have to possibly wait for hours.
This is complicated by the physical reality that different trains can't occupy the same physical space concurrently. One line coming more frequently displaces another.
There is a fair deal of complexity to this, that the common populace seems to assume isn't being implemented already. Transit is a very complicated prediction/optimization problem
> We absolutely should invest to make public transport faster, and thereby attract more riders.
People don't use public transport because it is faster, but because it is consistent, it is cheaper than many other options and it reduces the stress of commuting. Being a passenger is much more relaxing than being the driver. Not having to find a parking spot is liberating for your mind. Not getting fines is good for your finances.
Public transport doesn't attract more people because almost everywhere is at peak.
NY subway, for example, moves 5.5 million people a day (the peak capacity is slightly above 6) but it is harder to make new lines or increase the number of rides, while with cars you just ride yours to the highway and stay stuck there in traffic for as long as needed. You can't stack trains like that or the delay of a single ride will cascade to the entire rail line possibly for many hours.
People who prefer cars IMO are either outside of the public transport coverage, bad at planning or anxious.
It still has to be fast enough. It also needs to evolve beyond just the hub and spoke model that expects everyone to commute to the big city from the suburbs.
I live in an exurb in the US. Transit tries to serve a lot of single family homes. That said, I've got two bus routes nearby which connect to the light rail to go deeper into the metro area and out to the airport. Despite there being a bus stop close to my door I still take my car most of the time.
I could get by with living an only public transit lifestyle, and that's a part of why I chose to live here as opposed to elsewhere. But in the end this really limits my choices. Yeah, there is a daycare a few stops away, but that wasn't the one we wanted to send our child to. There is a grocery store, but it's not the ones we like to shop at. There are places I could work, but the place I want to work is a less than 10 minute drive but a 45 minute bus ride. To get to the places we do want to go, it's easily 2-5x as long of a travel.
Just the other day a friend invited me to dinner. The restaurant was on the same bus line as one of the lines just outside my house. A great chance for transit, I wouldn't even have to change busses. It was a less than 20 minute car ride and a few dollars of tolls each way. Or a little over an hour on the bus each way. Sure, riding the bus would have been cheaper than the cost of my car, assuming my time is valued at $0 and everything is devoid of scheduling conflicts. But I value my time quite highly, and I often have pretty tight schedules.
I was interested in the company publishing this and found that governing.com is operated by e.Republic, a media company founded, owned, and operated by scientologists [1]. It's founder is Dennis McKenna (not the brother of Terence) who was a spokesperson for the Church of Scientology during Operation Freakout [2], "a Church of Scientology covert plan intended to have the U.S. author and journalist Paulette Cooper imprisoned or committed to a psychiatric hospital."
Given past events [3], I find the idea of a scientology media company trying to get the ear of state and local governments to be very concerning.
Is the purpose of public transit to get you there Quicker, or to get you there Cheaper? Transit allows me to avoid owning a car, and the monthly parking charge at home, daily parking by work, etc costs that come with— that’s the principal benefit as a city dweller.
I live in Chicago (city) and the 2-1 time ratio is what I use to decide whether I take a cab or not. I look up the time to my destination -a store, friends house, the beach, whatever- and if it’s twice as long or quicker to take the train/bus then I will. (That’s not totally true, I use shared bikes to get most places these days.) When I was poorer, I used 3-1.
For my office, when I go, it’s about 2-1, and has been for any of the half-dozen different places I’ve lived here. I consider that a sign of Well-Done Transit, not the opposite.
It’s not surprising to me that transit takes longer, because you have to walk to a transit stop and then walk from a transit stop. Why would you expect it to be faster?
If you want it to be faster than driving, you have to eliminate all parking minimums.
It's always important in these conversations to take into account the Downs–Thomson paradox[0]. If public transit gets stuck in traffic and takes longer than taking a car, people will take a car. And since taking a car is the least efficient way to use a lane, things will continue to get worse and worse as more people decide to use a car. You need to ensure that your public transit is not getting stuck in traffic.
That is why I proposed to eliminate parking minimums (I might add to tear down existing parking garages). Even a free-market equilibrium under the Downs Thomson would have less cars than what we have now
In London it’s not uncommon for transit to be 2:1 faster than driving. It’s only ever really faster going from suburb to suburb without going through the center. It all depends on what kind of infrastructure you have.
In the other hand in Dublin Ireland I only once saw a trip that was more that 10min faster by bus than walking (according to Google Maps and I walk faster than Google Maps predicts).
The exception is the DART train which speeds things up if you happen to be going in the right direction but all of the other public transit is rubbish.
I check Google maps for any journey where I have a choice of driving or riding in London. The variability is pretty wide. But agree with your point about suburb to suburb: in a choice of car vs bus (because there's no rail option for the journey) the car inevitably wins.
I live in a Rust Belt city and bike everywhere. One of my common rides is five miles one way.
It's very common for me to be riding along the same cars from my house to destination, with a little back and forth leapfrogging. Turns out their average speed is similar to cycling.
It's not clear to me that this is an apples-to-apples comparison. Specifically: is the same commute by public transport longer by car? For example, you might be comparing a ride from Garden City to Lower Manhattan by train to a ride from Garden City to JFK Airport by car. If so, then this is completely meaningless.
There are also socioeconomic factors to consider. If you're poor then driving into Lower Manhattan just isn't an option for you. Car ownership is already expensive. Insurance in the NY metro area is particularly expensive. Parking anywhere in Manhattan is going to be really expensive.
So you may end up using data like this as a reason to eliminate what is for many people their only option.
At the other end of the spectrum are places like Houston, with a 26 lane freeway. It's also currently building the largest urban ring road in the world (IIRC) at >180 miles. Those are eyesores by themselves but it's absolutely criminal not to eliminate 2 lanes of a 26 lane freeway to run light rail along the length of the freeway. Stations are pretty easily combined with parking structures and integrated with bus routes.
What you realize after awhile is being car-centric in America is not only a question of profound selfishness but it's also de facto segregation. Not from inorities per se, just "undesirables" ie poor people. It's why wealthier neighborhoods like Santa Monica tried to fight rail expansion into their area.
The cost of car ownerships, much like most of the US outlawing building anything other than single family houses (typically on ridiculously large lots) is a deliberate economic barrier. US cities are really no different to Cape Town.
Readit News
From my previous apartment it would take about 2 hours to get to the airport using public transit, because I had to transfer twice - that's waiting three times. By car it would take 30 minutes without traffic, and the worst time with a car would be just under 2 hours.
From my current residence it takes about 8 minutes just to walk to the bus stop.
It takes 10 minutes to drive to work (fairly close). It takes 30 minutes by public transit (walk to stop, transfer somewhere).
Whenever I talk to someone who doesn't own a car and really touts public transit, and I dig into the details, I always find that this person has a limited number of places he goes, with the rest being inconvenient to get to.
The only real benefit of public transit is you can read during the commute.
- better for the environment
- safer (especially for pedestrians)
- more people can move using less space, resulting in less traffic/higher throughput
- if public transportation was prioritized over cars, city layouts could be dramatically overhauled, with more streets used for pedestrian/bike traffic instead of cars
These are the reasons I take public transportation instead of driving. I’d rather contribute in some small way to the society I want instead of settling for a local maximum of convenience.
Edited for clarity
- Lost productivity or quality of life for rider.
If we suddenly double the amount of commute time someone experiences, how do you think that will impact their personal life? Their professional life?
Take it a step further and look at how the misery cascades: Imagine that person is a neurosurgeon and we doubled their morning commute so they now have to wake up an hour earlier. Will they be operating at their highest level?
I understand that the “anti-car” movement is probably well intentioned, but you know what they say about the road to hell…
Like delivery works as their are a small number starting locations and no one cares about the max travel time.
Or transporting people between a small number of hub locations and not caring that much about how long it takes.
But public transit that transports every address to every other address is almost infinitely less efficient than just giving everyone a car.
there are plenty of ways to lose efficiency.
for instance, what if your whole society is n% less efficient?
This is arguably not true. It's not uncommon to find yourself on foot and alone in situation/places where it is not a good idea to be either.
I think there is more to it than this. When driving, your nervous system is continually activated as your attention is (should be!) focused on everything going on around you for the entire time. 10x this when stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, making thousands of micro-decisions about when to break, how fast to speed up, how much room to leave ahead of you. The difference between 30-45 minutes of this and 1.5 hours of sitting peacefully on public transit is dramatic.
But on all your other points I fully agree. The answer though is not to throw out public transit because of these pitfalls - it is to massively double down on improving public transit to mitigate these pitfalls.
Sitting peacefully isn’t really possible on a lot of public transit, especially during rush hours.
When I ride public transport or have a driver — I feel relatively more lethargic than when I ride the motorcycle (and to a lesser extend driving a car.)
> it is to massively double down on improving public transit
Why? Private transport represents freedom, public transit represents control. Furthermore, getting public transit to a level of perfect will cost tens of billions of dollars and for what benefit? To have cities and towns shut down each time there is a transit strike, a superstorm, or the government decides we should stay home?
Cars, motorcycles, bicycles, scooters — those work. Let’s make that better. I definitely don’t like spending my time sitting next to strangers of an indeterminate mental status in a temperature that isn’t of my own choosing going to a destination that isn’t necessarily the precise place I want to go. I want to interact with strangers as little as possible.
Raise the fares to $20 (and enforce it) and perhaps I’d consider riding public transit. But after my experiences with the BART and piss-soaked, rat infested NYC subway stations, no thank you. If I want thrills hanging out with a bunch of psychotics waiting for an excuse to push you onto the tracks, I’d rather BASE jump the Met Life building instead.
For a young single person carrying nothing more than their Manhattan Portage satchel to some hipster haunt in Brooklyn, public transport can be great. For people with stuff to carry, small kids, wheelchairs, or mobility issues, or tight schedules, not so much. Add the safety aspects to it and public transport becomes less attractive — unless of course they start allowing those with firearms permits to carry on public transport. But even then, not sure why people would want to give up point to point freedom for public options.
If you're an anxious or unskilled driver, sure, it's probably stressful. But most people reach a point where they are as comfortable driving a car as walking down the street.
30 minutes of driving in my private, climate-controlled car, with a comfortable and highly-adjustable seat, listening to music or podcasts of my choice? And the ability to carry whatever I want? I'd choose that over 30 minutes of sitting on bus or train - which is likely to have uncomfortable seating, too hot or too cold, loud, obnoxious, smelly, or mentally disturbed other people - with no ability to transport anything more than you are willing to carry. Even at par, I would rather have my car - let alone if public transport takes 3x longer.
Last time I took BART into SF a guy sat down in the seat in front of me, opened up a plastic bag, and pulled out a needle and started injecting himself with something. I don't believe it was insulin. Uh...rather stick with my car, thanks.
This is just a description of traffic patterns in the US, in general. You presumably don’t cruise through random suburbs on the other side of your city on your way to work, or while running errands, or really for any reason other than needing to.
Where I live, it’s both faster and cheaper for me to not own a car. It hasn’t hurt my traveling much, either, although you’ll have to take my word for that (until I figure out how to anonymize all the location data I collect for myself).
That's the normal traffic pattern in many parts of the country. For example, in the DC metro area, 90% of the jobs are outside the city. It's routine to live in one suburb, commute to another suburb, and have a spouse commute to a third suburb.
If there's no car-sharing car nearby, you can take an e-scooter to the car-sharing car, and then go to your car.
In general, I feel once you make the conscious decision to build for cars and allocate vast amounts of space to parking everywhere then you’re going to generally do better with a car. Transit will only be more in line as you drive the % of drivers down and reduce the resource allocations for cars.
That 2 hour trip to the airport? At least 1.5 hours of that is subway/train.
I would need to walk a little over 2 miles to get to the nearest bus stop by my apartment, then I would need to take that bus into the downtown area, transfer to another bus to the central bus depot. From there I could pick up an "express commuter bus to a massive office park about half way between the two cities, where I would need to pick up another "express" bus to get to the next city. From there I would have to pick up another bus, which would take me luckily directly to my work place.
The problem was, none of these schedules were well coordinated. If I left around the time I would normally have to leave to make my shift on time, I would make it to my work place 6 hours later after accounting for all the waiting and transfer times. If I was willing to leave much earlier and arrive an hour before my shift (and if doing so met with the more frequent bus scheduling) I could get there in just 4 hours.
If you aren't directly on, and going almost exactly point to point for public transport outside big cities like NY, it can be so much worse than even "twice as long". I hated the wear and tear going all the way one way and then completely back across the cities the other way doing the shared commute required. I hated the sometimes hour or two wait before or after a shift to make the commute work with the other person. But using public transport was effectively impossible.
Travel time with public transport and by car are mostly the same, with car having a higher risk of taking longer.
Travel outside the city though, is certainly much easier with a car.
In e.g. London or Paris public transport is almost always the fastest way to get from A to B
In London, you often see from route planning apps that the time for using a car (including waiting for an uber) would be less - except during the rush hours, which is when most people need to.
Also for what you've described to be true, you likely lived in a high income area since they provide easier access to where most offices are situated. If you're commuting in from the outer boroughs into Manhattan, driving is way slower given the traffic (and way more stressful, and then there's the parking situation).
Something that is often overlooked in the transit vs private car debate is that modes of transportation affect urban design and ultimately different ways of living.
Driving in a transit oriented city is totally different than riding transit in an auto oriented city.
https://theicct.org/planes-trains-and-automobiles-counting-c...
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-615.pd...
I live in a city with subway and going by subway to any place that is not too close (so that the time to walk to a subway station is not a too large fraction of the total time) is much faster than driving a car, with the possible exception of late in the night, when the streets might be empty. In most cities with subways where I have been, this was also true, because they also had congested street traffic.
I have also been in several cities where the buses had their own street lanes, which were forbidden for private cars. In such cities, I have also seen frequently cases when going by bus was faster than driving.
I use audiobooks so it works out for driving or taking public transit. The only difference is the noise level is higher in general with public transit.
I live close to a tube station.
If I'm going somewhere on the network (~50% of journeys) it's great. Primarily because of traffic congestion, mind - in the early morning travel time is about the same by both methods.
If I'm going anywhere else? Car hands down.
The main problem is that the entire network of places is available by car by definition. Worst case is car and then the rest by foot (e.g. into a national park).
By contrast public transport just doesn't serve the majority of places at all. Every train station has a road, not every road has a train station.
Until we have full autonomy, they have to keep their focus on the road.
I read about four books/month. Whenever I used public transport to commute that number doubled.
Not so when I commuted by car.
And don't tell me I can listen to audio books. This doesn't compare in reading speed. And it is also is a dangerous distraction for most driving situations that are not an empty highway or a traffic jam.
Also, the diagrams showing public transport being more space efficient often seem to assume that the public transport will be at capacity. On my 30 minute bus ride, to/from a major downtown, I am not infrequently the only passenger on the whole bus.
I have walked it before during a bus driver strike, took just over an hour at a leisurely pace - 11mins per km.
Normal days - it takes me around 6 to 8 minutes to walk to the bus stop. There is a waiting period for the bus to arrive since you want to get to the bus stop before the scheduled stop - sometimes the bus is early.
Then it takes nearly 30minutes to get to work - frequent stops along the way, 5 minutes waiting at the bus/rail interchange etc.
Finally 7 minute walk to the office from the bus stop.
Total of usually 50 minutes door to door via public transport and it costs $8 both ways.
If I took my car, it would take me 15 minutes and $17 parking fee.
I lived in New York City for thirty years. The subway is always the fastest way to get everywhere, except in the middle of the night.
Now I live in Amsterdam, and public transportation isn't quite as fast as taking my bike, but it's still everywhere, and faster than driving.
> The only real benefit of public transit is you can read during the commute.
Crazy carbrains, destroying our planet. So sick of you.
Honestly I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that public transit takes around twice as long. It’s self selected. The people who are going to use it live close and us it because that worthwhile. So on average it makes sense that it would be some multiple of the time it takes to drive.
We do own a car. Grocery shopping relying on public transportation would be difficult, though I did manage it when much younger.
That sounds like a great reason to build public transit infrastructure and housing near public transit infrastructure.
I mean, is this really an apples to apples comparison that is at all meaningful? The NY metro area includes NYC with its subway, but also suburbs in long island, New Jersey, and Connecticut with long commuter rail trips where you go to a different city, and short car commutes where you don’t.
I came here to say this. When you bundle NYC (which is one of the largest systems in itself between subway and bus) that represents a skewed average.
As a NYC resident of 20 years I can assure you public transportation much much faster than a car in most cases.
Don't even get me started about the time it takes to find parking in this city... I am guessing that that time consideration is not in this study.
For a while when I lived in Austin, cycling to work from where I lived would be comparable to driving in terms of time. That's despite the fact that I was only going roughly 15 mph when in motion. I'd often catch up to drivers at stop lights, and I could park directly in front of my building. No time spent finding parking and walking to the building. Some drivers are quite arrogant about the advantages of driving and are quick to dismiss the time spent parking, but time spent parking is a significant factor in many places.
Surely you jest. Even in Manhattan this is rarely true. Outside of Manhattan it is practically never true. In some circumstances in Manhattan the subway can indeed be faster, but it’s really only true for traveling north/south along an express line during peak traffic.
For instance I can get from 96th to Chambers in about 25 minutes on a subway if I’m lucky with my timing. That’s faster than a car during peak traffic, but slower than a car during any other time of day. But if I need to get from 96th to basically anywhere else that isn’t on the 1/2/3 there is no way the subway will ever win, much less by any significant margin.
Even the idea that subway is “much much faster” defies basic logic. If that were universally true few people would ever take a ride share or taxi.
And this ignores the almost comical problems and lack of reliability with the subway system in NYC. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had to give up, exit the subway station, and hail a cab. I imagine for many people it’s happened one too many times and they’ve exclusively switched to rideshare/taxi.
For me personally I’ve switched to electric bike. I gave up on the subway earlier this year after one too many negative encounters with vagrants and criminals. A good question to ask is how visitors feel about the NYC subway system. When friends or family come to visit, what do they think about it? I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a healthy combo of amazement at the scale of the system, and amazement at how atrocious and disgusting it’s become.
On "finding parking": it's all a question of $$$. If you're willing to pay through the nose for a commercial lot, it's reasonably quick. If you insist on cheap parking... well, you'll be hunting for a while.
Since you don't need to actively pay attention to the road you can multi-task, and that means that you can buy a house farther away. If there is no way to commute by rail, the house that you will select will need to be closer to your work, and will therefore likely be more expensive.
But the transit system is also the beating heart of the city. I wish every city had their transit system.
I have seen lots of homeless people, most of whom were sleeping or minding their own business, and I have seen people urinate in subway stations (but not since I moved to Brooklyn). But both are a far cry from the mental image of general mishegaas that assaults and defecation projects.
Trains don't follow any schedules, they keep announcing on overhead speakers that next train is not coming because of covid related labor shortages.
My 15 min train ride has taken me anywhere between 15mins - 2 hrs in past 2 months. So i have to plan to be somewhere 1 hr in advance of my appointment so i don't miss it due to 'covid related labor shortages'.
I suspect most of the commenters here that come out in support of public transit everytime don't actually use public transit. They are wfhers in suburbs who like the idea of compact cities packed to the brim, where cars are banned, take public tansit or better yet bike through blistering cold with kids in tow.
Or, a bit more charitably, maybe they live where public transport actually mostly works. I.e. not in the US (by all accounts).
To me, the solution is to re-think why everyone needs to go somewhere by car to get anything done. Why not have a grocery store closer? Some restaurants? Everyone having to travel from their house to the city centre to do basically anything is so wasteful. Most of this is because of zoning laws.
Which would be fine, except when you bring this up lots of people start talking about how to make cars take more time, or making public transport free.
Neither of which solves the problem.
I probably would be more willing to take the bus if wasn't also less comfy than my car. Not only does my car have better seats than the bus, but I am guaranteed one.
I do think the best way of course is to make public transport a viable option by itself. But it's hard to do without actually limiting the use of cars as well. It's a chicken-and-hen problem, as long as too many rely on cars, it's hard to have a very good public transport. For instance because of what I mentioned, people choosing places to live based on cars making it hard to cover with public transport.
Also, disincentivise car usage makes the city much better for those living there. I hate that people outside the city drive to work every day. Those cars are loud, takes so much space (which could've been cozy instead of asphalt), are a danger to kids, pedestrians, cyclists etc, pollutes the local air.
at the expenses of everybody else.
there is nothing more wasteful than turning up a very heavy, powerful and polluting machine to transport a single non disabled human for a few kms.
anyway, your seat would be guaranteed also on a bike, a moped, a horse, a donkey, a 20 tons truck, a bulldozer and an helicopter. Doesn't mean they are all equally good options. Doesn't mean city planning should consider the comfort of your bum a priority.
So from that perspective - yeah, of course driving is going to be faster for you than public transport.
Why is this Harrison Bergeron-style "solution" to things so common these days? "A lot of people choose X over Y, but we want more people to choose Y over X instead. Make Y better? Unthinkable! Let's make X worse instead!"
New-York subway network is impressive for its sprawl, but not really for its efficiency.
And half a mile is still a long ways to carry groceries, especially in the heat or cold. But taking the bus required timing how long you shop so you are done in time to catch the bus that only comes once an hour.
And that doesn't even get into the hours the bus didn't run, or the inconvenience of having to carry all your groceries.
So while I think having such amenities closer to where people live, would be good, and would help. I don't think it is sufficient to solve the problems with public transit being slower.
Second: At least for NYC, some of this data is slightly misleading. NYC has (at least) three public transport networks: the bus and subway within the city’s borders, and commuter rail between the city, Long Island, and the rest of NY/NJ/CT. It would probably be most interesting (and correct) to compare car commuters that could take each; my intuition is that the subway generally outperforms driving within the city, the bus slightly underperforms versus driving (since it gets stuck in traffic, and there’s no meaningful enforcement of bus lanes). I don’t have an intuition for the commuter rails.
Plus if you have transfers, it really drives down the time.
If the segment is really fast but only happens hourly, now you have to plan :( If it only happens hourly AND the timing is inconsistent or segments get cancelled, now you just have to possibly wait for hours.
There is a fair deal of complexity to this, that the common populace seems to assume isn't being implemented already. Transit is a very complicated prediction/optimization problem
People don't use public transport because it is faster, but because it is consistent, it is cheaper than many other options and it reduces the stress of commuting. Being a passenger is much more relaxing than being the driver. Not having to find a parking spot is liberating for your mind. Not getting fines is good for your finances.
Public transport doesn't attract more people because almost everywhere is at peak.
NY subway, for example, moves 5.5 million people a day (the peak capacity is slightly above 6) but it is harder to make new lines or increase the number of rides, while with cars you just ride yours to the highway and stay stuck there in traffic for as long as needed. You can't stack trains like that or the delay of a single ride will cascade to the entire rail line possibly for many hours.
People who prefer cars IMO are either outside of the public transport coverage, bad at planning or anxious.
I could get by with living an only public transit lifestyle, and that's a part of why I chose to live here as opposed to elsewhere. But in the end this really limits my choices. Yeah, there is a daycare a few stops away, but that wasn't the one we wanted to send our child to. There is a grocery store, but it's not the ones we like to shop at. There are places I could work, but the place I want to work is a less than 10 minute drive but a 45 minute bus ride. To get to the places we do want to go, it's easily 2-5x as long of a travel.
Just the other day a friend invited me to dinner. The restaurant was on the same bus line as one of the lines just outside my house. A great chance for transit, I wouldn't even have to change busses. It was a less than 20 minute car ride and a few dollars of tolls each way. Or a little over an hour on the bus each way. Sure, riding the bus would have been cheaper than the cost of my car, assuming my time is valued at $0 and everything is devoid of scheduling conflicts. But I value my time quite highly, and I often have pretty tight schedules.
Given past events [3], I find the idea of a scientology media company trying to get the ear of state and local governments to be very concerning.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.Republic
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Same goes for any religious group IMHO. Separation of church and state.
I live in Chicago (city) and the 2-1 time ratio is what I use to decide whether I take a cab or not. I look up the time to my destination -a store, friends house, the beach, whatever- and if it’s twice as long or quicker to take the train/bus then I will. (That’s not totally true, I use shared bikes to get most places these days.) When I was poorer, I used 3-1.
For my office, when I go, it’s about 2-1, and has been for any of the half-dozen different places I’ve lived here. I consider that a sign of Well-Done Transit, not the opposite.
It’s not surprising to me that transit takes longer, because you have to walk to a transit stop and then walk from a transit stop. Why would you expect it to be faster?
If you want it to be faster than driving, you have to eliminate all parking minimums.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox
The exception is the DART train which speeds things up if you happen to be going in the right direction but all of the other public transit is rubbish.
It's very common for me to be riding along the same cars from my house to destination, with a little back and forth leapfrogging. Turns out their average speed is similar to cycling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity#/media/File%3...
Chicago has "good" public transport by US standards and it is still dog ass slow & often very crowded and unpleasant.
There are also socioeconomic factors to consider. If you're poor then driving into Lower Manhattan just isn't an option for you. Car ownership is already expensive. Insurance in the NY metro area is particularly expensive. Parking anywhere in Manhattan is going to be really expensive.
So you may end up using data like this as a reason to eliminate what is for many people their only option.
At the other end of the spectrum are places like Houston, with a 26 lane freeway. It's also currently building the largest urban ring road in the world (IIRC) at >180 miles. Those are eyesores by themselves but it's absolutely criminal not to eliminate 2 lanes of a 26 lane freeway to run light rail along the length of the freeway. Stations are pretty easily combined with parking structures and integrated with bus routes.
What you realize after awhile is being car-centric in America is not only a question of profound selfishness but it's also de facto segregation. Not from inorities per se, just "undesirables" ie poor people. It's why wealthier neighborhoods like Santa Monica tried to fight rail expansion into their area.
The cost of car ownerships, much like most of the US outlawing building anything other than single family houses (typically on ridiculously large lots) is a deliberate economic barrier. US cities are really no different to Cape Town.