People in cities don't like to ride with strangers if they can help it, generally. This isn't absolute - if density gets high enough and people get used to it, they will absolutely do it, but if they have the choice to avoid it they generally will.

No amount of self-driving busses fixes that.

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bluGill 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus - which is probably not usable for them anyway. Too many people do ride the bus all over the world (even in the US) to think that is really true. Statisticians and Psychologists have long known people lie about their reasons for doing something.

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lotsofpulp 3 days ago | parent [-]

idiotsecant wrote "if they can help it". Which means people take into account things like travel time, congestion, safety risks, general comfort, etc.

>The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus

Is this supposed to be a tautology? Obviously people who justify it are people justifying it. I would bet real money that the vast majority of women will choose a private vehicle over a bus if they were the same price.

	▲	bluGill 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The important part is that there is no way to know if women really will choose a private vehicle over the bus. We have examples all over the world of women who could drive if they wanted to (they could get a license and afford a car), but they don't. Is this a small minority or not we really cannot say. Given same price is false - a car is always more expensive, but many of the costs of a car are fixed, gas itself is cheap while you still have to make the car payment even if you ride the bus and let the car sit - so it seems like a car could be cheaper. I believe that given transit is a reasonable option for most trips (not just getting to work) most women will decide over 5 years that transit is safe and will start using it. However there is no real way to know except to try it meaning your bet is not really possible - there are too many variables allowing me to say you didn't do enough.
	▲	3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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GuinansEyebrows 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i was curious so i looked this up: LA Metro (combined bus and rail) has a monthly ridership of like 25 million [0]. that's nearly a million people taking shared public transit every day. anecdotally, i chose to ride metro rail over driving when i had a "real" commute. lots of people do.

people in NY and Chicago are fiercely defensive of their mass transit options. the bay area would be a terrible place without BART and Muni.

for all its problems, shared mass transit is a net good and there are millions of people in this country who prefer it.

[0] - https://opa.metro.net/MetroRidership/

	▲	thegrim33 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think you went too far with the "prefer it" conclusion. Just because lots of people do something doesn't mean it's proof that they prefer it. They may take the bus because that's what they can afford, whereas they'd prefer to walk or drive or something else if they had the means. Also, the 25 million figure is number of rides per month, not a measure of people who ride transit. Somebody might ride the bus to work 5 days a week, and that counts as 20 rides. The count of "people" that ride those transit methods drops to well below 1MM, factoring that in.

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owisd 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

People seem happy to get short-haul flights when driving is an option, so riding with strangers can’t be the issue.

	▲	jerlam 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Short haul flights are usually faster than driving, and there is much more policing of strangers than with a train or bus.
	▲	asdff 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It is because the airline ticket price filters out homeless people that scare suburbanites.