Can you explain your math behind "$40 by car"?

Bart seems much more cleaner and safer now than in years past. I don't know if free mental space is the main benefit of transit. During rush hour, you can't do much outside of listen to something, which you can do while driving too.

Not having to deal with parking and the fact that driving is actually very dangerous seem like stronger points in transits favor.

Fwiw, driving also has some negative je ne sais quoi for me that goes beyond the functional advantages. Maybe it's the aesthetic onslaught of ugly concrete, noise, heat and smell of sitting in traffic for an hour on the highway. Maybe there's something about getting around on your feet that makes me feel viscerally connected to the city. Maybe it's just the exercise that compounds over time. But I hate driving.

This kind of gender politics is tiresome. You could easily point out that for women public transit is untenable after dark instead of bringing the OP’s identity into it.

Uber and Lyft both provide an option for women to request female drivers. In both cases, they say they can't guarantee it and that they may end up matched with a male driver. (In Lyft's case, they group "nonbinary" with women.) I suppose you could cancel if you see it's a man, and if that's rare enough, maybe that's workable. (Though, it seems, that would happen only if there aren't any female drivers available, and thus you'd have to fall back to other transportation.)

https://help.uber.com/en/riders/article/women-preferences-fa...

https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/all/articles/9030680293-Women...

I imagine that Uber can also be somewhat sketchy but with a different risk profile (getting into the car with a stranger, often a man, and needing to trust that they'll drive you to the right location), which means that self-driving taxis would be a potential safety upgrade over that as well.

Be serious. Its not a class marker, its a nessesity. Even the poor have cars

People clearly chooses the convenience and predictability of cars, and pay significantly to do so

In places where there is greater convenience/predictability from pubilc transit, they choose it. See london/ny

This is a huge difference between NYC and SF. There are certainly some in NYC who would prefer Waymo (direct route, no driver chitchat), but I don't think many New Yorkers would be proud of taking Waymo's. Most people feel embarrassed to admit they took an Uber somewhere!

Public transit in the US just mostly sucks. It tends to be sparse, slow, unreliable, and yeah sometimes there are crazies who make the environment feel dangerous.

You send Americans over to visit Tokyo and they have zero problems taking the train. The problems isn't with individual Americans.

If you are talking about a city where this makes sense like Phoenix, the public transportation is very poor. It can take 90 minutes to cover the distance you could drive in 20.

They have a light rail, but it only goes between downtown and a few suburbs. Your other option is several bus transfers.

If you’re thinking of cities like New York or London, public transport is more practical in many cases.

San Francisco public transportation is neither reliable or safe enough for my family. The only thing that’s remotely decent is Caltrain, but that has the last mile problem.

Not saying you're 100% wrong, but there are tons of markets where Uber is robust enough to rely on and get you where you need to go, and public transit absolutely is not. (I'm half an hour outside of Pittsburgh.)

The HN commentariat skews young and male so opinions seen here are often disconnected from average people in the real world. Many women feel unsafe riding on US public transit because other riders act out in antisocial ways. We can argue about whether this perception is rational based on crime statistics or whatever but you're not going to convince them to ride until the police and transit system operators start enforcing basic rules of behavior and cleanliness.

I'm much less likely to get randomly harassed or robbed or stabbed or catch COVID in a car where I am the sole occupant. I'm happy to pay extra to drop the chances of those things down to 0.00%.

If that makes me some kind of class supremacist in your silly world, then guilty as charged.

More like want to avoid being in an enclosed space with mentally ill, people smoking meth, people that smell of petrified urine, with uncomfortably hot temperatures and crowding.

When it's as bad as SF's then yes, trams/trains/busses can often suck. I used them but it was rarely plesant. Other cities (Europe, Asia) are much better.

Try living in Phoenix without a car...

I don’t think this is entirely wrong, in that there is a ‘class thing’ about riding the bus, but it’s more practicality than a class marker for a lot of people.

- In SF you can either walk 1-10 minutes to the bus, wait 0-15 minutes for the bus, tap on (while watching most other passengers evade the fare), get dropped off, and then walk 1-10 minutes to your destination… or spend an additional $5-10 to get Ubered door to door at a third of the time. First and last mile are real costs.

- In SF I Uber, unless Muni/BART is a straight shot. In NYC I take the subway. It’s not really a class thing. In NYC it takes longer to Uber much of the time and it costs several more times than the subway. You still have a 1-5 minute first and last mile problem, but headways on trains is decent and above ground taxis are incredibly inconsistent with traffic.

That about matches up with the experience with social groups in similar classes in these areas too. Most of my SF friends Uber. Most of my NYC friends take the subway.

Wealthy people in NYC have no problem with the subway. When the service is better than alternatives people use it.

Do you think people avoid the underclass because it depletes their aura, or because they like avoiding clearly mentally ill people, or people with no ability for personal hygiene, or people who need to smoke meth on the bus?

The first two are what I experienced today on a bus in SF, and the guy smoking meth was about 6 days ago

Nonsense. This is just the "last mile problem"

> It's a class marker

> autonomous 6000lbs tank

Hmmm. The meta here made me chuckle. Calling cars tanks is certainly a class marker.

I have a job where I fly frequently, my employer pays my way to/from the airport, and I take transit whenever possible because uber/lyft/taxi services seem to select horrible drivers.

I'd certainly consider a Waymo if I was flying to an airport they serviced though.

Or LA

This is a great post. Very practical.

This part:

    > If you need to go to Brisbane from Powell, the 2 mile car ride is worth the effect.

For just the two daily BART trips that I do within SF, it would be $1200+/mo for Waymo/Uber/Lyft. So from that perspective perhaps the extra $30/mo for the small convenience of getting priority and being able to cancel a few rides could be seen as “cheap” by comparison.

If I include the walks of 30+ minutes and bus rides, it’s probably pushing $2k/mo in rideshare costs.

It's $30/month for these extras. You're still paying per trip, just with a de facto 10% off.

    > I live 3h walk from central London - I know because I've walked it, for fun

> most people trade their money for time, and things like this are one of the most obvious ways.

Non-sequitur but that reminds me I lived in Tokyo where the trains stop around 12am to 5am. It is (was?) a commitment to decide to stay out late because I knew I'd have to say out until morning. Eventually though, 4-5 years after living there, I realized $50-$75, 2 or 3 times a month to cab it home at 2am or 3am was better than not going out because I didn't want to stay out until 5am. And even then, my total transportation expenses were below a car.

My current car, owned for 5 years, not including electricity, but including replacing the tires once, and paying car ins, effectively costs $1350 a month, $337 a week. In other words, a train/bus pass + a few cabs/uber/waymo rides is generally less than $337 a week. At 10yrs, assuming no repairs, and no change in car ins, the car would be $216 a week. Remember, that's not including fuel/electricity.

If I used it to commit my fuel bill would be $75 a month currently (short commute) so add that in.