this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Americans don't generally have a negative thing to say about public transportation. Americans, however, prefer to drive their own vehicle for many reasons. For one, being independent, not relying on a schedule. Not worrying about missing their transportation and catching a later one, then being late to the arrival of their destination.
I don't know where you live, but in the big cities of the U.S., public transportation... isn't exactly hygienic. You will smell urine. You will encounter chitty people. You will be spending time reading all the random chit people write/scratch onto the walls and glass. You will sit on uncomfortable chairs, might even touch someone's chewed up gum by accident.
I've seen some chit both in city busses and trains but this was in Chicago and some parts of NY. Never would I ever want to live that life. Ever.
Seriously.
Know how to fix those problems?
More funding
Never been on a public transport that smelled of urine in Belgium. It is obviously possible.
More funding doesn't necessarily work in this situation. There's a big stigma about public transportation in the US where if you take it you're seen as unsuccessful and poor. It's also perceived as something like government intrusion whenever infrastructure is built to support it. Minorities would resist any kind of building of rail along their property because they were previously screwed over when several black and poor neighborhoods were bulldozed for the sake of placing freeways. Rich people simply lobby the government to stop construction or hold back on selling their property because they want to gouge them for all they're worth and sap the project's funds.
The solution of course would be a bigger willingness for the government to use eminent domain laws to force these projects through but because of the short term nature of their precarious elected positions, officials would rarely do that lest they get voted out in the next election cycle and the project simply stalls out. There's been some success with private companies building rail, like Brightline, because building public infrastructure in a capitalist way seems to be accepted more by the public thanks to our conditioning of loving the free market.
That's because on average, people in Belgium are more civilized than Americans. Do you have homelessness problems in your nation? No? We do. Yes? Do your homeless literally pull their pants down in broad daylight and take a chit on the sidewalk for everyone to see without a single fk given? Bet you don't. We do.
I bet in your college towns and cities, if you have parking garages, you don't have urine and or chit in the elevators and or staircase.. we do.
You see.. in our nation, we truly have the chittiest of chitty people overall, mainly in large cities. They are chitty in many chitty different ways. And we have to share public everything with these chitty people. So yeah, unfortunately, public transportation is going to be chitty on average, day in and day out.
Did you know, on the internet you are allowed to actually type out swears? You don't have to act like a child and write "chit" everywhere instead of "shit," we all know what you mean.
I thought it was some kinda neo-cockney-esque slang going on and was kinda intrigued hahaha.
I'm still trying to navigate through the rules of Lemmy.. sort of walking on eggshells.
Mostly just avoid slurs and you'll be fine.
Noted!
Thanks for the tip.
This is my big problem with public transport. It might be an issue of funding, but this sort of scheduling gives me a huge amount of anxiety. I would rather drive and know that I can leave when I want, and that any delays won't be a problem, than to worry about the making it to somewhere at a specific time lest I miss my bus/train/plane.
And the more modes of public transit we add to the journey the worse my anxiety. If any of those connections is delayed or late I have no control and will miss the next leg of my journey, which will push all the other steps around and suddenly I have to get a hotel or something because there's no way to get to where I'm going until the next day.
At least if I'm caught in traffic I can try to route around it, or I can leave a earlier or later to avoid it, and the person who's affected by these delays is the one who has some power over mitigating them. If it ends up that I'm driving overnight I can pull over and sleep in my car for a bit and then keep going.
My ADHD brain panics if I need to catch a scheduled train and if I'm not actually there at least 1/4h in advance I melt into a puddle of anxiety.
But city trams and metros are absolutely fine. If I don't catch this one, there's gonna be another one in a few minutes. No worries.
Busses that are scheduled every half hour at most drive me mad tho. Did I miss it because it was 10 mins early because fuck schedules or is it gonna be 15 mins late?
You can write shit on lemmy.