How do I get from my house to the train? Do I have to make transfers? How long will they take? What if I have to carry groceries, or take young children with me, or my elderly grandma?

If I have a car, I load everyone and everything up, and we go. We get to our destination and unload, ta-da! Is this not an order of magnitude more useful than taking a train?

Sometimes I think HN is filled with young people with uncomplicated lives :).

>Sometimes I think HN is filled with young people with uncomplicated lives :).

No, if these are big issues for you, you likely live in an American low density area where public transportation is scarce. In large metropolitan areas (which is after all, where most of the world already lives, and will live), getting on and off public transport is usually not a problem.

I have relocated to Tokyo for example about a year ago, and for me, a trip to the grocery store is usually done by foot (same is true for other appliances), and multiple forms of public transport are in walking distance.

I live in a city with about 700,000 residents inside the official limits, and 3,000,000 residents in the metro. The nearest bus stop is approximately a quarter mile away.

With all due respect, the number of people who live in cities as dense as Tokyo are the minority, most of us don't.

No offense but if you think walking a quarter mile is a hindrance to access public transport then the car culture has done even more damage than I thought.

On the contrary, I think a quarter mile is perfectly reasonable for a public transit stop in my city. Sorry to suggest otherwise.

However, when I think about loading up my young children with all of their stuff, loading me up with everything I need, etc, and then dragging that down the street a quarter mile, then waiting for the bus, boarding it, riding to the transit center, transferring, riding another bus to the light rail station, riding that downtown, and then doing it all again the other direction... well, I'm pretty confident in my original point that the car is a hell of a lot more useful. Sure, you can exist with only the public transport option, but I was not asserting otherwise. But a lot of people on HN seem to think that not only is it possible, but that it is the superior choice.

So, no offense taken, in fact I appreciate you affirming my original comment about so many folks on HN commenting from the viewpoint of someone with a young, uncomplicated life :-).

Many people with kids do what you describe in cities. It's far better for everyone, and even if it's not the superior choice for an individual (though I'd contend it is when you adjust your lifestyle), it is the superior choice for everyone together as it avoids pollution, traffic gridlock and huge fuel inefficiencies.

As it is those with cars push off these negative externalities onto those who choose not to have them, or can't afford them. So your comfort does have a cost, which you don't pay directly.

Perhaps I'm sheltered or naive, but it seems to me that in a well designed system you shouldn't really have to take two bus connections to get to your nearest light rail station. More like zero, or one max if you live on the outskirts. This is how it is in London, and while I realize that's not a typically sized city, it's not unusually dense either. I think that kind of system is possible anywhere, it just requires motivation.

¼ mi is a 5min walk. Often you need to walk as far or further to and from the parked car. I literally yesterday just took 2 kids, a toddler and a baby, on a multi connection trip, and it's easy, simple, and less stressful then driving.

Also, tour last paragraph just makes you sound pompous and liek you have no intention of having a discussion but instead only wanting to put others with a different point of view down.

I think you're making it more complicated than it is in many places. In many you'd need not get in a bus at all, because the rail stations are dense enough to always be a couple blocks away. That requires having more than just 1 train line though, which is only really true in NYC (and maybe Chicago? You have to squint really hard for but to be the case even in sf) if you're looking in the us.

Nailed it.

A quarter mile to the closest route typically means a far more complex combination of transfers, each with its own delays, to actually get to your destination of choice.

A quarter of a mile is a long distance for a bus stop in a city with good transport. But sounds like your city doesn’t have enough transport density. Tokyo is pretty dense but its still not abnormal.

> What if I have to carry groceries, or take young children with me,

I exclusively use public transport, and regularly do both of these without any problems.

Because trains don't go door to door. Obviously.

Except in lucky places with great underground railways you basically have awkward last-mile journeys where you have to take a taxi or hit a car or take a bus and that adds a lot of time to the journey.

It would be great if there were trains everywhere but frankly that's even harder than making a reliable driverless car.

Which is why driverless cars are great for bringing people from and to public transport. They are a great ingredient for improving public transport, but they don't replace it (at least as soon as road capacity becomes an issue).

I doubt that a train is significantly more energy efficient than an electric car with 3-4 people in it. Most people will probably use pool type autonomous cars which get you to your destination door to door much faster than trains.

Trains can fit far more people than cars.

Being more comfortable is useful to me.

Trains can be extremely comfortable, actually. You can have things like food/drink service on them, not to mention WiFi.

The lack of comfort people refer to usually involves the other passengers, not the amenities. But everyone knows you're not supposed to talk specifically about that aspect of public transportation.

Ha, I will! I once had a guy behind me on the train whip out his penis and pee on the floor. Looked right at me in the reflection of the window as he did it. He wasn't even crazy, either, as far as I could tell, just antisocial.

And yes, before you say it, that isn't an everyday occurrence. But jackasses refusing to take their bag off the seat so you can sit down is. As are people who can't be bothered to take a shower, or think that cologne will make up for it. The list goes on. Many people are just unpleasant to be around, and I don't see any problem with that observation.

For me, public transit comfort comes down to a couple things. First, the hard plastic seats make my butt hurt, and standing makes my left foot ache. Sorry, I'm getting old :). Second, the 2x time it takes to get anywhere means I'm on that terrible seat for even longer. And third, because yes, it's absolutely true, I find that perhaps one in ten people is unpleasant enough that I want to be out of visual and/or aromatic range.

> First, the hard plastic seats make my butt hurt,

Yeah, same for me. And I've heard that the ~80s crop of NYC subway cars were made in Japan. Except there, they have upholstered seats. But that wouldn't work out well in NYC, so they got hard plastic. But on the other hand, the oldest LIRR cars (refurbished for the 1966 World's Fair) had upholstered seats, and they were ~OK.

Some Finnish trains have play-areas for children on them. I was pleasantly surprised the last time I rode a train with my 1.5 year old child. He had a lot of fun going up and down the slide, sitting in the toy-train (on a train!) and reading books in the "library".

Never in my life have I experienced a puddle of urine in my personal vehicle. This happens about 5% of the time with my city’s public transport.

Similarly, never have I been given religious literature or panhandled. This happens about 90% of the time.

Sounds like you just have poor public transport. It doesn't have to be that way, and I've never experienced anything like it in Europe.

Yes,precisely. I found Vienna and Tokyo’s subway pretty immaculate. But London, Paris, Bilbao, Amsterdam all had some experiences similar to my other post. Much smaller sample so hard to say how frequently it occurs in any useful way.

Or maybe a dysfunctional society :(

5% is a staggering number! I rode the trains for four and a half years in NYC and just avoided the empty cars and never had too many issues.

Also people seem to focus exclusively on the negative interactions which is a very human thing to do, but this discounts the positive interactions.

It can be really nice seeing people offer their seats to the elderly, or kids meeting and playing, or the occasional furry companion in a cute bag.

But I enjoy people watching in general. It can be neat to try to imagine a persons world and how it looks.

I still think public transport is a net positive. But completely understand the allure of my own car. Or an Uber managed self driver where each rider rates the past.

My car has WiFi, and it is not even automated yet. And food & drink are perfectly feasible as well, remember we're talking about automated cars now. All kinds of options suddenly make sense when you don't have to worry about the chore of driving.