I have an avarage travel of 45-55 minutes from my home city to the city I work in. By car and by train, while the train is usually on the slower end. It takes about 20-30 minutes to get from my home to the train station by taking the bus or riding the bike. When taking the bus I also have to factor in about 15 minutes between arrival at the station and departure of the train. Then there is another 20 minutes from the train station at destination to my place of work. So it takes me 40-65 minutes longer taking the train… twice a day, making it 1:20-2:10h a day (when Im lucky bc trains over here have frequent delays). One hour ish doesn’t sound like much? Well you’ll feel it if you working 11-12h a shift or a 9-10 hour a day in a normal 9 to 5 job (starting work at around 7 a.m.).

Then there is a neat little think called night or late shifts. There is no way I’m gonna take the train here. They either take an hour longer or the bus at my home city does not drive anymore on the way back.

Demand better public transportation. Demand functioning trains and frequent bus and tram connections. But do not tell people that need to take the car for whatever reason, that they should just take the worse option and make them feel like the problem.

I hate cars. I hate driving. And I love taking the train or taking the bike within my city. But sometimes I just have to take the car. That is not my fault tho, since public transportation is not the main focus of politics over here. And thats what needs to change globally.

[–] zerofk@lemm.ee 20 points 11 months ago (20 children)

When I switched from using the bus to going by bike, i cut my commute time by more than half. If I were to take the car, it would halve again. Public transport is great, and necessary. But it will never be faster than a personal car for anything but large distances.

[–] KillAllPoorPeople@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Nearly every city on the planet with a subway system disputes your bullshit.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It sure is nice that everyone gets to live in New York, London, and Washington.

A better solution is to reduce how much people need to travel. Instead of building trillion-dollartransit systems so people can to to the office we should be taxing the everloving shit out of office spaces for jobs that can be worked remotely.

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why not both? I live in Stockholm and work from home. I have amazing trains that I could take to work, and I've never had a commute longer than 40 minutes. But a 0 minute commute is still shorter than 5minute commute.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Because not everyone can live in fucking Stockholm.

An apartment within 40 miles of my office in the city costs 5x as much per month as where I live. I can't get a fucking pizza delivered to my house, much less a bus. And unless I want to smell like a gym at work the 5+ months a year it's over 100° outside, I need to drive to the nearest bus station if I want to take transit. So I'm already having to drive and park somewhere. Then I have to pay to park at the bus station and pay again to ride the bus that drops me off 9 blocks from my office, where I'd have to walk the rest of the way.

All told it'd add 2-3 hours to my commute and be more expensive than driving.

But if 100% of the work I do is on the computer at the office. The real solution is to not have the fucking office at all.

[–] TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are obviously other systemic problems. Cities being designed around cars isn’t the only one.

But your rage shouldn’t be directed at the people who want to make public transit options suck less.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

His solution isn't to make it suck less. His just says how great it is to live somewhere that was designed around walking because when the city was established that was pretty much the only option.

The Southern US is designed around cars because until fairly recently it was very sparsely populated, so everything had to be designed around cars and air conditioning in order to develop. It was the correct decision at the time, and changing it now is much more difficult than simply saying "be like this city that was established before the steam engine."

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah that's definitely a challenge, and I believe it is a failure of city planning.

My condo is worth $300k and is within 15min of central Stockholm. The housing crisis is definitely a problem around the world, but European cities that don't have the missing middle problem are in a much better place.

Back on topic, even if you could work from home, it would still take you over an hour to go grocery shopping or buy a pizza, which is a huge problem. Both of those things are within a 15 min walk for me.

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