> Why would 30 minutes by car become 1.30 hours by public transport.

My city has "great" public transport. It's been appraised multiple times, which I guess means that average public transport must be worse than what I've grown up with. I take 20 mins by car from home (in an outer neighborhood) to my workplace (in a central area), 55 mins otherwise. When you consider roundtrips, it adds up (and if we add a middle stop coming out from work to somewhere else for some shopping, the time counting goes out the roof).

The 30 mins vs 1h30 comparison was assuming a trip from a nearby dormitory city 25 kms away, which is the minimum (insisting: minimum) distance everyone nowadays is being pushed out in order to being able to buy any home at a reasonable price. For example: where my parents live to my work is further away 30 Km: that's 30 min by car and 1h10 by p.t., but that outer city had reasonable prices 15 years ago, not today, so nowadays you would go live somewhere farther than that.

I find that typically people talk about public transport benefits from the perspective of being able to buy a home within the centre that is well connected. Yeah, the subway is great here if you live in a 10 Km radius, but talking about it is out of scope for most.

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epolanski 3 days ago | parent [-]

How praised the public transport of your city is irrelevant. What matters is how close/connected you are to it, and it to your workplace.

Trains don't have stop lights nor traffic. They don't care about rush hour. They are always going to be the fastest connection to a city center.

I live 4 minutes by foot from the Colonna Galleria train station, in a village 30 kilometers outside Rome, Italy. The train to Termini (Rome central station) takes 28 minutes, and Termini is the crossway of the 2 main metro lines and the most important city bus lines.

It's 33 minutes at night with empty streets and it's 1:15 at rush hour. Leaving work at 5:30 can easily cost you 2 hours in your car.

But sure, put me 3 miles from the train station, put my office in a place that is just 10/15 more inconvenient from metro/termini and it's drammatically different.

	▲	j1elo 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Leaving work at 5:30 can easily cost you 2 hours in your car. Woah yeah that changes the calculations, I had a similar situation before, andof course I preferred the subway by far. But you know, it depends. I work late into the evening and when getting out of the office, the streets are empty. So it's a hard sell for me to use a transport option that will cost me 1 hour of my already short free time before bed. But everyone's situation is different, that's why I am in favor of keeping all options open.