I totally concur with the OP and the solution is NOT public transit. Public transit is designed to maximize the service to cover majority of the population but NOT 100% of the use cases and population due to the limited funding and resources governments are allowed to allocate to public transit.

I've been to 20 out of 30 world's mega cities. None that I've seen has a "reliable public transportation" that covers all the edge cases like what OP raised and yet have more than decent availability and punctuation. NYC's the closest and best of the bunch with 24/7 MTA subway/bus services together with LIRR/Metro North rail services. However, there are tons of pockets of places where public transit doesn't reach or VERY inconvenient to get to. This is true for tourists and visitors as well as regular commuters.

I've been a commuter riding America's third largest public transit system NJ Transit bus/rail for almost 14 years. And I have many many stories to tell you that public transit is far from perfect and it NEVER WILL BE. But for the 80% of the time when it functions well and punctuate it gets the job done. When it doesn't, I picked the lowest fair of ride for hail service, be it Uber or Lyft or anyone else who can help me get my commute's last-mile problem done. That's the consumer's perspective.

For all of your mega city visits, have you been to Tokyo? If so what did you find unreliable about it? The one criticism I can see is when transport is slowed/halted due to typhoons.

I found that the public transportation in most of Japan was well enough, such that I never thought to myself "If only I had a car/rental right now..."

Not to mention how punctual the transportation is. Compared to where I live, where delays of 10-45+ minutes are expected, the trains in Japan would apologize for being even a single minute late. The three weeks I took the JP Rail I never had a single train be late.

On the Yamanote Line, the longest I had to wait to catch a train to another part of town was 4 minutes. To me, that's absurd. My local station only runs a train once every few hours and if you miss your train you're waiting 3-4 hours for the next one to arrive. Missing a train in Tokyo is a mild inconvenience instead of a waste of most of your day.

It should be noted that Tokyo's subways do not operate between midnight and 5am. Having 4-5 hours of downtime every night dramatically reduces the complexity of infrastructure upkeep and cleanliness, and taxis pick up the slack for the night shift and bar/club crowd.

There are myriad reasons why Tokyo's metro outpaces (for one example) NYC in reliability and sanitation, but not having a 24/7 schedule is a big one.

How can these trains possibly be profitable with that kind of schedule? In fact I remember reading somewhere that they lose money...

Which made me wonder whether that kind of loss is OK and can be waived off as a govt. benefit in lieu of private car ownership. I don't know how the economics would work out, but it would be interesting to see how they compare.

Some lines lose money, but other lines make more money than is lost. The losing lines are still important because if the system doesn't have enough coverage, people won't trust it.

It also happens to be the case that the lines with "that kind of schedule" are the most profitable lines. That's why they run so often.

JR East (All of Japan above Kanto) finances: http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/ar/2016/pdf/ar_2016-02.pd...

According to Wikipedia Tokyo Metro made ¥63 billion in 2009.

Tokyo also has the biggest Taxi economy in the world, but as a parent said, they're more for special occasions, and cost about as much as you'd expect to pay someone to be your personal driver.

Public transit doesn't need to be profitable. It's a public good. It's one of the things we all pay a little for to have access to as part of living in a city or community.

They shouldn't lose too much money or be too expensive to run, but that's the conversation to have, not how much profit they generate.

It is exactly this attitude that leads to cost disease. If the government absolutely must handle some need, I still expect them to be efficient and constantly improve productivity:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

You can be as efficient as possible and work towards improving productivity and still lose money. That's exactly why those sorts of things are supported by taxes.

And with how much Japan has innovated and improved their railways over the years I don't think this really applies to them. Maybe more of an American thing where we've spent $400,000,000,000 (and expected to spend $1,500,000,000,000) on a "one size fits all" fighter jet for our military that's been a complete failure in nearly every regard.

It's public transit, it should be a reliable service for the public primarily supported by taxes so that we all benefit.

That's only because America is shitty at implementing public transportation. Tokyo and Seoul are fucking amazing.

NYC subway is actually amazingly convenient despite being run down and disgusting. There's no reason to take an Uber in NYC unless you're drunk late at night, want to feel fancy, or are going to the airport.

So not true. Try going east <-> west.

Not true. I've been to Tokyo and stayed in an airline operated hotel 10 miles from NRT. The cloest rail station is like 4 miles away and you can't get to downtown Tokyo without hailing for a Uber/Lyft or taxi to transfer to the rail station. (Hotel shuttle doesn't runs to rail station unfortunately. And forget about taxi-ing directly to downtown Tokyo due to the traffic congestion and exorbitant taxi fare.)

Narita isn't anywhere near Tokyo (it's an hour away by express train). It's like complaining about the NY subway in Newark.

The Airport is the Train Station so you catch the airport shuttle to there!

Also, Uber is a just a taxi hailing app in Tokyo... so what are you trying to say? They are $4/min, which is an outrageous $300 to Tokyo...

Uber's pricing is definitely too low. I paid $3.75 for a 20 minute ride at one point and decided to stop using it entirely because that just seems like exploitation. I'm completely willing to pay more to give workers better wages. Lyft (and other competitors) not only charge more, but drivers keep more of it.

Isn't Uber heavily subsidizing fares with capital funding? I thought that was part of their monopoly strategy.

Yeah they've slashed fares and a huge part of their losses are driver subsidies. It's all a farce.

Yes, yes they are. You are only currently paying about 40% of what each ride actually costs, overall.

yes it's too low but if it were higher pretty much no one would use it. that's why it's unsustainable.

> private vehicle for everyday transport is a luxury

This is called a car and the vast majority have one.

Ride-sharing is actually less luxurious than your own car. It's still shared transit, designed to lower costs and increase affordability by pooling resources and increasing total utilization. It is not meant for only the wealthy.

> This is called a car and the vast majority have one.

Not if the vast majority don't live in the USA.

I got by with taxis for the last 9 years before moving back to the states.

> Having a private vehicle for everyday transport is a luxury and it shouldn't be an easy or sustainable option. Unless you are wealthy.

What? There are plenty of people living in the suburbs (in the US) that own a car (even 2) and use it for daily commuting and they are not 'wealthy'. And public transportation isn't even an option in those places.

The solution to some problems is reliable public transport, and I am all for improvement, but not a solution to all transport problems.

For instance "I want to get from A to B when I want and in comfort" is not one of those problems in a large number of cases.

Public and private transport have different tradeoffs. I use both when the venn diagram of my requirements and the provision of the transport variety overlaps most.

Eg.

Car to the next town because a bus would be too slow/costly (once you own a car in the NW England busses cost a lot)

Train when I go to Manchester (faster, parking is a problem)

Train when I go to London (faster, though perhaps more expensive, comfortable, parking again)

Car when I go climbing. I don't have much gear, but I do tend to not know in advance exactly when I want to go.

Taxi when I stay out past my last train in Manchester.

You can make public transport better, but it's going to be very hard to make it on-demand, or with the same comfort level as a private car.

This only works in what, 5 - 15% of the US? Public transport isn't viable for commuting in most of the country. If you factor in time and the raise in tax required to subsidize it there it is likely that it is more cost effective to own and maintain a used car.

Perhaps not for most of the country by surface area, but far more than 5-15% of the population could be effectively served by better public transportation.

I agree but the issue becomes any sweeping legislation or tax increase to fund such a program will negatively many millions of people without any benefit to them. These people are marginalized already and can't take a hit like that so their more wealthy counterparts in the cities can have a higher standard of living. It can only really be implemented at the city level in a fair manner, thus it isn't really a national solution.

>I agree but the issue becomes any sweeping legislation or tax increase to fund such a program will negatively many millions of people without any benefit to them.

Except, you know. Less drunk driving, less traffic, less pollution, fewer road fatalities, and less tax money spent on road maintenance. Those little things.

And what "many millions of people?" Public transit is mostly paid for by municipal taxes, not federal. Federal taxes paid for a bloated highway system that negatively impacts many people even though we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns on more highway infrastructure.

> Except, you know. Less drunk driving, less traffic, less pollution, fewer road fatalities, and less tax money spent on road maintenance. Those little things.

How do people who are not served by public transit feel any of these effects?

> And what "many millions of people?" Public transit is mostly paid for by municipal taxes, not federal.

My point exactly, this is how it should be but municipalities are rather cash strapped at the moment so you likely won't see increased spending on anything. Thus "more public transit" isn't really possible without federal intervention.

> Federal taxes paid for a bloated highway system that negatively impacts many people even though we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns on more highway infrastructure.

This ignores the positive impacts. If only local roads existed very little trade would be able to take place vastly lowering GDP. Can the system be run in a more cost effective manner, certainly but that would require pushing out the public sector unions that demand unrealistic wages. Pick your poison.

>How do people who are not served by public transit feel any of these effects?

What? You realize air tends to circulate right? And people tend to know other people in their lives who get hurt by accidents? And less traffic on roads is an externality that benefits people who drive. As does giving drunks a safe way to get home.

>My point exactly, this is how it should be but municipalities are rather cash strapped at the moment so you likely won't see increased spending on anything. Thus "more public transit" isn't really possible without federal intervention.

Road infrastructure and sprawling development are the reasons they're cash strapped. If they had adopted more transit-centric development patterns they would have raised their tax base to pay for it rather than exporting the people who use their infrastructure to unincorporated 'bedroom communities' where they don't pay into anything.

If we subsidized transit to the extent that we subsidize sprawl this wouldn't be a problem.

>This ignores the positive impacts. If only local roads existed very little trade would be able to take place vastly lowering GDP. Can the system be run in a more cost effective manner, certainly but that would require pushing out the public sector unions that demand unrealistic wages. Pick your poison.

Please review what I wrote. I didn't say not to have highways. I said we hit the point of diminishing returns long ago and additional spending in this direction is no longer beneficial.

If only local roads existed: Trains would have continued to serve most locations cheaply. The federal highway system did great damage to the far more efferent but far less subsidized train network. Trans take less land, less capital, fewer workers, less fuel, and cause fewer deaths.

I suggest you look into the history of that. Rail lines created massive monopolies that had a stranglehold on American businesses until the creation of highways. Why are goods even transported via trucks if rail is such a viable and cheaper alternative? Are business owners simply dumb?

> Why are goods even transported via trucks if rail is such a viable and cheaper alternative?

Multi billion dollar subsides subsidies. Markets are only rational when left alone, toss more than $425 billion dollars just to build something and then maintain it with government funds and efficiency takes a back seat.

What roads would public busses use if the ones created by those subsidies didn't exist exactly? Do you propose some sort of all terrain bus? Or shall we build train tracks to everyone's home? Won't that be lovely in the dead of night.

FYI: a great deal of the funds for highways come in the form of tolls or gasoline taxes. A great deal of the cost of public transit on the other hand is subsidized by state and local sales taxes and income taxes. It is public transit that is subsidized in the real world not the other way around.

Current federal funds are only a small part of the overall picture especially when you start including the gas subsidies. The system is designed to be complex to hide overall costs, but toll roads are a great reminder of the actual cost per trip. Further, only 1/4 of miles driven are on the highway system so people have plenty of other ways of getting around.

Anyway, public transit is not what I am talking about, the US rail system continues to exist due to efficiency not subsides. Passenger rail is currently a tiny and largely ignored minority of overall traffic.

> Passenger rail is currently a tiny and largely ignored minority of overall traffic.

Exactly. Why do you assume it can scale to the point that it can replace all other forms of transportation? Rail is only cheap and efficient because those are the markets they selected to service, it won't scale up.

If it can why not get some investors and prove everyone else wrong?

> Multi billion dollar subsides subsidies.

Well, lots more people live in those small areas you refer to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...