Have you seen the central line at rush hour in London? It's horrendous[1]. We are talking >7people per sqm, plus significant waits to even get on the trains. But yet, 100k+s use it every day of all socioeconomic backgrounds. I'd imagine mostly middle class/upper middle class professionals.

Why?

1) Traffic is terrible. It will take 1hr+ to do a journey the central line does in 15-20m.

2) Even if you want to drive, parking costs around $1500/month in the square mile.

3) On top of that, you have the congestion charge for entering central London (£11.50/day - soon to be £25/day if you have a particularly polluting vehicle).

You're looking at about $2000/month if you want to drive, which takes 4x as long and costs about 15x more than the train.

This is what happens when you price effectively for the externalities of traffic congestion. People will switch to transit en masse, and 'loud music' will not be seen as a problem.

[1]this also means there is the political will to build massive transit infrastructure, like crossrail, which will relieve the central line at a cost of around $20bn.

London sounds terrible to live in, way too many people.

Commuting at rush hour can be pretty awful in just about every major city--New York, London, Paris, Tokyo... I wouldn't call any of those places terrible but, yes, there are a lot of people and it can be pretty mobbed if you try to travel at peak times.

How about extra pay for distributed commuters? Start your day early, end it early, start late, end it late and receive a bonus?

Many cities (including London) have peak fares for transit, trains, etc. The problem is that if you're a typical commuter you probably don't have a lot of control over your schedule. If you're asking why don't companies do this, why would they? If anything, they probably prefer people to be in the office at the same time.

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded, as they say.

Actually it's not so bad - the central line at rush hour is abnormal.

It's much nicer when you cycle to work. Many parts of London are not built that densely, at least compared to other European cities.

London isn't very dense, which is part of why traffic is so bad.

London hasn't adequately priced the externalities of traffic congestion. Air quality is still rather poor by European standards! The more recent changes are well overdue, but still don't go far enough.

Air quality is poor because the UK government gave tax breaks to diesel vehicles in an attempt to cut carbon emissions. But they didn't realize at the time how harmful diesel particulate emissions are.

That's mostly caused by buses though, not private cars. Eg Oxford Street is one of the worst but has no cars on it.

Not sure how productive it is taxing buses...

Oxford Street is packed with black cabs, they always seemed smellier to me. I used to work in Zone 4, and there'd be lines of them outside the station, with engines idling all day, next to the "Buses must switch off engines while on stand" signs.

The new taxi regulations are a welcome improvement [1], but they're weaker than they should be. Why are Euro IV cars still allowed as new taxis? Why is it only voluntary for >10 year old vehicles to be replaced? No doubt it was the best deal Kahn etc could get, but it's disappointing that London/Britain can't do better.

The buses[2] at least, are all Euro 4 standard or better, with the majority Euro 5 or better, i.e. made since 2010.

[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/tax...

[2] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/bus-fl...

While I do empathise that people are making a living, I look forward to the day when the black cabs are gone. The amount of pollution they put out is awful.

They are working on improving the busses, replacing them with hybrids and the like. Taxis too. https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/pollution-a...

Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street seems to be inching up the agenda. One of the big political objections is that buses are the only disabled-accessible public transport to that area but once Crossrail is operational that will no longer be true.

The buses still have to go somewhere though - the huge number of routes along Oxford Street is not about serving Oxford Street per se so much as about getting them across town. Honestly I'd be surprised if buses were the big source of pollution though - the fleet is quite modern and many of them are hybrids that deliberately run electric-only through the most polluted areas.

Electric buses then.

Already started, several lines run on electric buses. But you'll only see improvements once black cabs are electric, too.

Yes I've seen it as a tourist several years ago. Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there: too crowded.

I have sat next to plenty of people who "smell bad or play loud music or act out in inappropriate ways" in London or NYC. The differentiating factor (for me at least) is that those cities provide a legitimate service level with public transit that can get me to almost any place in their city in a reasonable time frame. That allows more "regular" people to forgo cars completely in favor of public transit. In LA it is much more difficult to live without a car and rely totally on public transit. Therefore many have already invested in a car. This makes the choice between using that car over public transit for any individual trip much more slanted in favor of using your car.

Seriously? You see more awful things in a single day in a SF or LA bus than 6 months in London

Am I horrible person to want higher end trains again (like there used to be)? So I can pay double but have the confidence that my fellow passengers have jobs and families they care about and don't have voices in their head. Does this make me a bad human to want this?

if you seek reassurance that your wants are shared by millions of other people, look out the window of your car at all the other folks who buy and fuel their own, expensive private cars so that they can sit in traffic in LA rather than sit in traffic in buses in LA.

Everyone is selfish to some extent. Your view probably makes you more selfish than people who would be happy to ride a train with every class - but still less selfish than people who insist on a private car. Up to you what level of selfishness makes someone a bad person.

Bad is subjective. Implicitly in this, you want to pay money to avoid seeing the problems of other people instead of seeking to fix them. That might be worth thinking about.

There's no easy fix. Americans pay more than enough money in taxes alone for the problems to be handled better. The issue is political, legal, and cultural; and it's systemic. There are plenty of countries that treat their mentally ill populations more humanely while also maintaining much cleaner and more comfortable public spaces.

I don't see what's wrong in pointing out the obvious. If public transit organizations are prevented from even recognizing the issue because of misguided shaming, they sure as heck won't lure more drivers to public transit. And we can't expect people to fix all the world's problems before we allow them to address their immediate issues.

In my opinion the best long-term solution to poverty and mental health (which are often related) is technology. I could quit my job and dedicate my life to being a social worker or to working for charities, and those would be good and noble things to do. But I firmly believe that an affluent global society where the essentials in life are so cheap that they are essentially (if not literally) free is the best way to fix those problems.

So, I think by being a technology working I am doing my small part in helping, and I don't think not wanting to feel threatened on my commute contradicts that.

I think the long term vision for the future free of these problems is an interesting conversation to have. The challenge inherent in getting there is being aware there is a problem and working towards fixing it.

By advocating for legislators and public administrators to hide the problem from their constituents, you create a situation where "out of sight, out of mind" takes the pressure off the government to solve the problem at all.

This is independent of personal occupation or hobbies. I'm not impugning your goals of solving the problem through your career in technology. It's about enforcing the accountability of the people who have the ability to make the changes to solve the problems at scale.

How is he, personally, going to fix those problems? Those problems are only "fixable" (or ameliorated) by societal action, which basically means you need government social services.

As far as we know, he might vote for candidates who promote such social services at every election. But there's nothing he can do if the politicians don't do what they promise, or other voters vote for politicians who work against this goal.

If it's a 20 minute commute by bus, or a 1hr commute by car then it's easy. You don't care what the next guy smells like.

Or if the first 2h pay of your day is used to pay for parking, then a bus ticket is attractive.

Problem is, in LA at least, the bus and the car are about the same amount of time. Maybe a smidge longer for the bus. So most people that can afford to will take a car to avoid the cranksters, shockingly rude bus patrons, and the chance of a 'piss bus' on their way home.

A bus anyway in LA is substantially longer than driving. LA traffic is so annoying that a lot of people would likely take the bus if it was faster.

If there were 10x more busses, and I could pay $10 for an all day pass, I'd take the bus every other day. Especially if the higher cost limited those who unfortunately use mass transit as temporary shelter. (And find some alternative temporary no strings attached shelter for them.)

Depending on traffic, the bus is typically about the same, maybe 5 minutes more on the hour long ride I took for 2 years under the 405 everyday. You have to add in the time it takes to find parking for your car, which a bus does not do. Yes, some days are worse, some are better, but for me it was about the same for a hour+ commute.

According to Google maps, taking the bus to my job would increase my travel time by at least 50 minutes each way.

Well then don't take the bus

That is only true if you don't have a transfer.

Something needs to be done about the bus lanes then. Buses should drive in dedicated lanes, that's the whole point. If you are stuck in traffic on a bus then something isn't right.

In LA, there are little to no bus lanes. Trying to introduce them is nonsense. You'd have to rip up the sidewalk too make the room. If you try to convert the street into having just one bus lane each way you have now converted 2/6 lanes into bus lanes, sometimes 2/4 lanes. The car traffic already extends for blocks/miles if you are trying to get onto the 405 from the Westside, bus lanes would extend it to a third to twice as long as it is. People would flat ignore the bus lane too, probably a Beemer driver. And if you think that the cops are going to ticket anyone, you have never driven in LA traffic at rush hour. You could kill 10 people in broad daylight, as long as you did not cause gridlock, and the LAPD could care less. LA is just plain super messed up with traffic from a structural level. New developments can be more dense, and many are. But if your job, your kids' schools, your spouse's job, and your grocery stores are not within walking distance (and are suuuuper stable) then you must have a car as the system currently is. These problems are not going to go away anytime in the next decade to half century.

> you have now converted 2/6 lanes into bus lanes

Which only works if you can reduce traffic by an equivalent amount. Hence the congestion fees. The fee should clear up the lane AND pay for the bus to drive in the lane. Obviously, if there is no (reasonable) tariff that would actually make people not drive or change commute hours, then all you did was make it expensive to live in LA, while the public transit didn't improve. There is always a risk of that in the case of LA. But it might be worth trying at least.

> These problems are not going to go away anytime in the next decade to half century.

I completely agree - I think cities that are structurally messed up like LA have a long way to go, but that doesn't mean there aren't things that can be done. The question is what drives these changes. I think tolls, new zoning regulation, expanded public transit etc all have to be done, and no one action will solve the problem.

The problem is bus lanes are hopelessly inefficient, because there aren't enough buses to fully utilize them. And if you are stuck in traffic in anything then something isn't right.

If you want to spend resources to make buses more attractive, start by eliminating fares.

> The problem is bus lanes are hopelessly inefficient, because there aren't enough buses to fully utilize them

That means there is a lot of capacity to add buses without causing congestion in the bus lanes. That's good.

Obviously it might be tempting to say "look we can't sacrifice one lane of 4 here to buses when cars are jammed bumper to bumper in the other 3 lanes" but that's how bus lanes work. With too few buses, they are just an ineficcient demonstration to the people in cars that they really should be riding the bus.

> If you want to spend resources to make buses more attractive, start by eliminating fares.

If petrol taxes, parking and tolls are high enough, then the buses are already almost free in comparison. Whether it costs $0 or $4 to ride the bus to work shouldn't matter - if parking, gas and tolls are 10 times that for one day of driving. Eliminating fares is one way of making the bus relatively cheaper compared to cars - but there is very little room there. The room to increase the cost of driving is almost infinite and it can be tweaked with gas taxes, congestion fees and parking costs.

Btw: do people in US metro areas usually pay to park at work in inner cities? If metro area parking is a taxable comp then that's also a cost (e.g. if my marginal tax rate is 50% and free parking would be valued at $100 so I'd be taxed $50 per day for that benefit).

> That means there is a lot of capacity to add buses without causing congestion in the bus lanes. That's good.

Only if you actually add the buses, and people actually ride them, neither of which is a given.

> Obviously it might be tempting to say "look we can't sacrifice one lane of 4 here to buses when cars are jammed bumper to bumper in the other 3 lanes" but that's how bus lanes work.

That's the problem.

> With too few buses, they are just an ineficcient demonstration to the people in cars that they really should be riding the bus.

That only works if they can ride the bus.

The problem in most of the US is that you have a big congested highway, and then you get off the highway and drive another five or ten minutes on side streets to your destination.

You can't just tell those people to ride the bus, there aren't regular buses on the side streets because there isn't enough traffic there to justify them. And a bus that only takes you to the edge of the congested highway and then leaves you with an hour walk to your destination is useless.

> Whether it costs $0 or $4 to ride the bus to work shouldn't matter

It does matter to the tune of $4, and eliminating fares increases efficiency because you don't have to pay for a fare collection infrastructure, as opposed to bus lanes which dramatically decrease it because you're paying the full cost of a lane and then wasting most of it.

> if parking, gas and tolls are 10 times that for one day of driving

Stop trying to make driving worse. First you have to make the alternatives to driving better, and as soon as you do that, you don't need anything else.

Nobody actually likes driving to work, the only reason anybody does is that the alternatives are broken and terrible.

In order to make driving as bad as the alternatives without making the alternatives better, you would literally end up causing people and companies to move out of the city to avoid the expense. It's the same logic as arguing that burning down the city will reduce traffic congestion. Even if it does, that doesn't make it a good idea.

> The problem in most of the US is that you have a big congested highway, and then you get off the highway and drive another five or ten minutes on side streets to your destination.

> there aren't regular buses on the side streets because there isn't enough traffic there to justify them

That is the usual problem. But it's usually possible to have freeway buses connect to local buses that drive around an area. Driving around nearly empty buses might seem like a bad idea - but it's the best idea there is when people aren't in a car (because they just jumped off the train or freeway bus). A second solution is having people drive a short distance on local roads from their home to a public transit hub such as a train station, if there is no bus to take them near their homes - The problem is that once you get off a train or freeway bus you might not be at your destination. But that's where public transit can't solve the problem. Zoning and building also needs to change. Without that, people might still have to walk 30 minutes to the office.

The situation where a company puts up an office with a large parking in an "office park" (or whatever it's called) which might be 15 minutes from the closest public transit is the root of the problem. Since people have to use the car to their office anyway, they wouldn't be using the bus even if it existed, as you point out. So the solutuion has to be in both ends: offices and housing needs to be in denser, more walkable areas, for example. I don't think the traffic problems in LA can be solved without fundamentally changing how and where people live and work.

> But that's where public transit can't solve the problem. Zoning and building also needs to change. Without that, people might still have to walk 30 minutes to the office.

This is my point. There is no amount you can add to the cost of driving that will get people to take a bus to a place the bus doesn't go.

And once you build high density office space next to a train station, people will take the train all on their own without any need to waste resources collecting regressive and privacy-invasive road tolls.

> the chance of a 'piss bus'

Oh my. Is this a regular enough occurrence that there's a name for it?

Then it is the problem with the society that such people are allowed to ride on a bus and disturb other people.

yes. i agree. and transit policing to enforce basic regulations (like not trashing, vandalizing, noise polluting the space) is too expensive. police are just too expensive. so we don't have enough of that sort of regulatory enforcement.

They also often take considerably compared to driving.

Do you really think this only happens in LA?