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If the streetcar connection is more convenient than the metro stops, they may consider doing the park and ride. From the maps, it looks like it is designed in part to serve locations in between Metro stops. You can drive to a park-and-ride, but you generally only have your feet on the other end.
I was talking about people living in the dense, urban areas where the streetcar is supposed to run. How many of those residents have such a strong aversion to riding a bus that they will gladly hand over $20 a day to a parking garage to spare themselves the ignominy?
Washington, DC is as Black as Atlanta and the bus there doesn't have any stigma at all. It is true that the rail ridership is whiter, but it's also true that Metrorail serves the metro area at large, which is whiter than the city proper. If you go to any popular core neighborhood in the city, you will often see buses that are 80-85% White.
I just don't see the bus stigma in the real world. I think it's probably more of an issue in places where driving is a very real alternative to transit. But for many people in denser cities, it's not, which means they need to quickly get over any bus/rail snobbery. Land use and job concentration drive transit, not preferences.
I do. People are always suprised when I mention I arrived by bus. We have "fancy" commuter buses run by the regular transit agency that are coaches with wifi. People ask why I do not take the train to work. It is a no brainier: the odds of getting a seat are high and there is wifi.
We think only poor people ride the bus and no one would choose to ride.
Is it really that the buses are horrible? Or is it more the case that sprawling, low density cities rely almost exclusively on buses, thereby reinforcing the association between buses and poor transit quality?
In such cities buses are designed to be unattractive. They run infrequently, routing circuitous, in many cases uncomfortable. Often the drivers are discourteous. Finally they require cash fare, at a time few carry cash.
1) They don't want to be around stinky people with bedbugs and risk having their pockets picked.
2) They don't want to wait at a bus stop for 15 minutes just to spend one hour on a bus to go 10 or 12 miles to Downtown. When my office was Downtown, I used to take the bus one way and ride back on a bike trail (about a 30 mile hike) a couple of times a week, so I am well aware of how long it takes to get anywhere with a bus.
Last edited by WheresTheBeef; 03-18-2015 at 10:58 PM..
Thanks for the interesting link. All in all, the percentage of households without a car is staggeringly high. It makes one wonder how many of those households are just completely destitute and how many could afford a car if they wanted to have one, but have chosen of their own free will to forego car ownership.
Thanks for the interesting link. All in all, the percentage of households without a car is staggeringly high. It makes one wonder how many of those households are just completely destitute and how many could afford a car if they wanted to have one, but have chosen of their own free will to forego car ownership.
Detriot has a very blue collar workforce and no blue collar jobs. There are nit many jobs at all. Housing costs are in decline, the city can't afford its services and there are few grocery stores. Everything that can go wrong has, people have to be ultra creative to survive. We think it is a very isolated case, but that is not accurate either.
The article is written from a Manhattan perspective. It is worth noting that in that location, most people in fact don't own cars, unlike the rest of the country.
In many areas the stations are too few and far between, trains/buses are too far apart in time, or routes take too long either due to low speeds or too many transfers. For these reasons many find it inconvenient to use transit in those areas.
And also some people think driving is cheaper (though mistaken) because they look only at the cost of gas and leave out the escalation of maintenance/repair and depreciation costs that go with mileage being put on a vehicle...
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WheresTheBeef
Why people don't use mass transit?
1) They don't want to be around stinky people with bedbugs and risk having their pockets picked.
2) They don't want to wait at a bus stop for 15 minutes just to spend one hour on a bus to go 10 or 12 miles to Downtown. When my office was Downtown, I used to take the bus one way and ride back on a bike trail (about a 30 mile hike) a couple of times a week, so I am well aware of how long it takes to get anywhere with a bus.
I just got off the bus and it was packed like sardines, standing people filling the aisles, on the trip from our city of 45,000 with median family income $135k to downtown Seattle. Most people taking it have 2-3 cars (we have 3) but appreciate the speed at which the bus gets us to work using the transit lanes, with our nasty traffic, and the cost savings since major employers subsidize the bus pass. We have no issues with stinky people, bedbugs, or pick-pockets, because routes going to the eastside suburbs run only at commute times, and are not of any use to people moving within the city of Seattle. We may trip over a few homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk when walking from the bus stop to the office, but that's about the extent of the negative side. The route I take runs every 10 minutes, so waiting 15 minutes would be very unusual.
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