And where each person (in the country) consumes twice as much energy as an average French person does [1] and more than 3 times as much water [2]

The "American way of life" is not sustainable.

Mind you, many French can afford a house with a pool as well. The problem is in fact that they do buy houses with pools these days... There were 700k private pools in France in 2000, 1.7 millions in 2012, probably more than 2.5 millions in 2018, making the country the 2nd market after the USA. [3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263156/water-consumption...

[3] https://www.planetoscope.com/habitat/1002-les-ventes-de-pisc...

[4] http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2018/07/23/97002-20180723FI...

What's also important to remember as well is that commuting by car doesn't scale well. As population density rises, commutes become exponentially longer due to grid lock. So in some ways you can see the direction of movement and France is just further along that direction - as population density increases you're forced to move to more efficient forms of transport.

That's a meaningless statement unless you're comparing the Paris metropolitan area to some similar area in the US. France doesn't have a sparsely populated continental interior to drag down the nation wide population density.

But even in rural Netherland (it exists!) you need a car. We're really talking about cities here. In a well-designed city, you shouldn't need a car unless you need to go to a rural area outside the city.

I admit for me personally it's mostly aesthetics, but this is also the direction that many professional city planners are working towards. At least in Netherland. It wasn't always like that; the 60s and 70s were very car-oriented, until people started to realise what the impact of cars on living spaces was.

To look at two extremes, 45 minutes of bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go driving is a lot less compelling than 45 minutes of reading on a commuter train with a comfortable seat.

My knowledge of "popular" underground (London) or metro (Paris) lines makes that very unlikely, they're hot, way overcrowded, and odd-smelling when they don't outright stink.

Very useful and convenient, and can be pleasant outside of peak hours, but back when I worked in Paris despite not being a morning person I switched my work hours to take the metro way off-peak (between 6 and 7) so I could commute with some fresh air and have more than "no room whatsoever".

On the most populated lines, the trains are packed line sardine cans, and I don't know now but 20 years back there was no AC let alone AC which could handle a car packed to the brim in high summer.

Just to be clear: I didn't regret not having a car one bit, and given my commute was directly through Paris (from one near suburb to an other on the opposite side of the city) I don't think commuting by car would have been more pleasant. Couldn't have commuted reading books for starters, that's an advantage of a somewhat lengthy train commute (bus is less comfortable for reading especially if you tend to get car sickness, and obviously you can't read in your car though I guess audiobooks might be an option these days).

The Central line during summer is so hot it wouldn't be legal to transport cattle on it.

The Northern line regularly has packed platforms going north in the morning.

The Metropolitan has been undergoing "modernisation" for over a decade...

EDIT trains also frequently run late OR early

They break under the slightest deviation in nature - rain, snow, heat and leaves on the track all caused breakdown in service every year

And let's not forget the dreaded "signal failure".

By comparison my experiences in Munich, China, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore and Hong Kong have all illustrated what an efficient metro system can be. Though they obviously have 50+ years less infrastructure baggage to lit around

The reason for this is clear tho - those lines are sometimes upwards of 100\80 years old.

It’s still probably the one of the best public transport systems I’ve ever encountered, and imo perhaps one of the best ones in Europe.

edit I haven’t been to Munich but I’ve been to Cologne & Berlin, I found London beat their transport systems particularly in clarity and signage. I find TfL signage systems to be some of clearest in the world, and I give them great credit for that. Their design is excellent and makes it virtually impossible to get lost.

- late

- a service was skipped

- broke down half way through the journey

Come to think of it actually just last week I was forced to take the train and ofc the next service "zug fällt aus". Then after some ~40 mins of waiting there was the next service. A group of kids shouted "Oh mein Gott, s-bahn!". Great summary of the quality of the service.

Just because the vehicle traffic also sucks doesn't redeem S/UBahn by any factor!

On top of that, unexplained, sudden, irrational waiting time extensions until finally 'zug faellt aus'.. really? if the train doesn't exist, just tell us so we can make other plans now and not in 30 mins. Besides, the posters communicating all of the recent schedule changes due to work are horribly complicated, written in long essay form when all they really need to say is what stops are out of service when (how non-german speakers navigate this nonsense is beyond the imagination). On top of that, the MVG's recent absurdist claim that all schedule changes will be conveniently available per MVG app :DDDD riiiiight... if you read the thirty page long yellow text!

I just did a quick vote with my coworkers who travel by S-Bahn/train every day: Out of all their trips they take one got cancelled or was late this and last week. That's for ten people and using it every day.

I have the feeling you almost never use S-Bahn and think because you had bad luck with the few trips you do all of S-Bahn must always be late/broken.

edit: Full disclosure, there seems to be a breakdown in service (because of a problem in the tunnel) right now.

The trains were always on time in Seoul and Osaka when I had to take them (though to be fair, not very often) but in the first week of being in Berlin, like 60% of the time the "trains are running at an irregular interval". I definitely don't trust the U/S-Bahn in Berlin, but it's still one of my most favourite public transport systems in a city I've lived in. Lived there for 2 years and never had to use a car.

Even the best metro systems in the world are going to be hell when full to the brim (e.g. Tokyo's attendant pushing people so they pack tighter and the doors can close).

edit you’re right I’ve just changed the post above.

I've been taken trains at around 06:30 for about four years and it's such a big difference to a more standard office hour. I can relax, I can sleep without having somebody sat next to me, I can work and best of all I don't have to drive.

Yeah, I did the same, and sometimes I feel this is the second most productive time of the day.

I remember once, at Denfert-Rochereau, I had to let two RER go to the south without me, as there was litteraly no place for me to go inside. Could not even put a foot in.

I worked out in the UK it costs (after allowing for tax) £10k pa to commute the 70 miles to central London - and thats not counting the costs of the extra hour and a half out of your day.

Plus house prices/rents are cheaper too.

I'm so glad I live basically on the East Coast mainline, it's the only decent line in the entire country.

I've never seen that train. The ones I am in - when I am in them, I avoid them as much as I can - are crowded and reading is definitely not going to happen, standing is more common than sitting.

It's a shame that study only shows a mean aggregate. I'd be interested to see the raw distribution in commute times. Just anecdotally I've known many people in the UK who spend only ten minutes "commuting" to work each day. That rarely seems to be possible in the US from what I've seen.

But, yes, European people don't understand the American way of life. The amount of waste and unsustainable consumption would shock them to the core.

It is worth it to not have to drive, but the car is faster by far at no loss.

Lets agree to disagree

In my own city, car was almost always faster than public transportation. I had different commute time, from 1h30 to 10 minutes, and I could have always shave some of it by taking the car.

But for me, the 10-15 minutes I could have gain from taking the car was nothing compared to the comfort I was gaining by using the public transportation. I can just hop in a tram or in a bus, listen to my music, read a book, ... I don't have to do any of the mental effort that driving require, which is very valuable for me after a day of work. I also feel more safe, if my bus or my tram has an accident, I know I am more protected. And in general, I really do enjoy my city a lot more the less car there is. I grew up mostly in the country side and next the the amazonian forest. The noise, and most importantly, the awful smell created by car traffic is very disturbing to me. Staying for too long next to a busy street will usually give me nausea very quickly. I also feel safer as I don't have to worry about my surrounding has much. Since there is no car, I don't have to check if I am going to be run over. Finally, road are just plain ugly, I rather have green area, pedestrian way, and art lying around.

Its for these reason that I accept all the inconvenience that public transportation brings. I rather have a slightly longer commute by feel good in the city than the opposite.

You are probably correct that the average American, however, doesn't see it from that perspective.

The walking parts of my Bay Area transit commute, on the other hand, were urine vapor mingled with pot smoke, harsh direct sunlight bouncing off concrete, dozens of homeless people in varying levels of distress, shitty decaying $1.5 million houses, random commercial and industrial facilities with no windows or public access, lifeless expanses of "open space." A $22 parking fee is well worth it to avoid being a pedestrian anywhere near Civic Center Station.

The homelessness problems in the US vs EU is a whole other topic.

Urban planning and public transportation also feed back into homelessness by prohibiting cheap housing types (like SROs) and making it nearly impossible to hold a job without owning a car in good repair (bus delays and cancellations will get you fired).

I don't know if the definitions of homelessness plays a part in the different %s but the suffering of homelessness seems higher in the US than EU.

LMAO. Try Ligne 13 or Ligne 1 for your commute. Or any RER.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b22yKsTvynQ Pleasant is not the first word coming to my mind. And you're gonna enjoy the experience a lot more during the winter (lot of homeless people live there because it's 30°C) or summer.

http://aqicn.org/map/paris/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48762911

But you can do old style, work offline and then profit from train stop at a station to sync the data.

You do appreciated the relative silence (no one on their phone or talking above a whisper) on trains in Japan.

Brisbane trains on the other hand - you need to wear noise-cancelling headphones (music optional) to block out other people's conversations - even in the quiet carriages.

Maybe because just speaking on the phone in traffic makes a lot less attentive so you're prone to create accidents.

There are worst things like eating or talking to someone else in the car. (look at the road not the person when you're talking)

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-18024-008

>The results indicate that passenger conversations differ from cell phone conversations because the surrounding traffic not only becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, but the driving condition also has a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, thereby mitigating the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving.

Yes, when talking to someone in the car they should be aware of the traffic and pause the conversation, where you have to tell the person on the other end of the phone that you need to go.

That affects your attention on driving.

It has happened for me, but only if I board at the beginning of the line or commute several hours off peak.

Besides, the French may have lower disposable income, but they have much longer holidays and work way fewer hours on average.

Every time someone says "we should forbid cars in cities", I hear "we should take away 1 hour a day from your family, you should sit in bus instead". (or more likely stand, since the bus is always full)

I'm not fan of that.

I still take public transport. In a car I need to be focused for the full 45 minutes and be stuck in traffic, having nothing to do. In the train I can put my laptop on the table and work for 35 minutes straight before I need to switch to the subway. I can also recline the seat and take a 35 minute nap instead. It's amazing and really adds to my quality of life.

Presumably your commute is so much longer on public transport because neither your home nor your job is in the city center and there are fewer lines out there? Not saying that you deserve to suffer if that's the case, but also probably people aren't coming for cars in your neighborhood first.

What's good for individuals might not necessarily be good for society.

In 100 years, we'll look back at our car obsession as some sort of temporary societal madness. The environmental impact of cars alone is a compelling argument in favor of public transport

You're kind of neglecting the advertising-led pressure to own a car. Car companies spend literally billions of dollars convincing you that cars are cool, and that they somehow indicate your status.

I look at the pictures from 100 years ago of little resorts, and little resort towns. You take a train, spend a week in a pleasant atmosphere. Maybe you own a little cottage near the railway tracks, in a small village. It was more communal and more enjoyable. You can walk into the village in 15 minutes.

On public transit, on the other hand, I can relax and read and pretty safely ignore the world. Worst case someone grabs my kindle or my phone and runs. I can afford a new phone. (which hasn't happened to me; I'm just saying, that's the biggest risk I see on public transit from relaxing my vigilance. In a car, well, a lot of people have killed other humans because they let their attention wander or decided to change the radio station at an unlucky moment.)

I mean, I'm not saying that your view of comfort is invalid... I'm just saying it's not universal.

That surely isn't really the worst case. This happened last Friday in Madrid, just days after someone pushed a mother and her child in front of a train in Germany (and killed the child): https://twitter.com/el_pais/status/1157564725015851008?

Granted, it's still a rare occurrence, but it seems to happen more often lately. The closest I personally came to this kind of public transport experience was standing in the first subway car when some drunk guy fell on the tracks and got killed around 20 years ago. It's not really a reason why I prefer the car these days, but also not exactly a fond memory.

As for feeling uncomfortable driving cars out of fear - most modern cars have good safety measures: https://youtu.be/cMiZa3HgRVE?t=125

My sister's best friend being killed at age 17 walking on a residential road wasn't news. It isn't even rare, it's a leading cause of death for teenagers.

The dead motorbike rider I saw lying in the road didn't make the news. This is so common ambulance staff call bikers "organ doners".

The "accident" (gross negligence, IIRC) when about 15 were killed on the motorway, including one of my dad's colleagues, did make the news.

Railway (and even bus) deaths are orders of magnitude less frequent.

I think driving without that consciousness that you could kill someone else is extremely dangerous.

Did you watch the video? It's (also) about pedestrian/biker safety measures. All new crash tests cover this and you can see very well that cars brake automatically these days.

I do have a reasonable knowledge of modern car safety features, and yes, high end (well, high trim level; these features are optional at additional cost on many cars I would call low end.) cars bought in the last few years have automatic braking systems that function reasonably well at low speeds, and that's a great thing that has probably saved many lives.

Certainly, if I buy a car again I will be sure to pay extra for these features

But these features don't make driving safe. These cars are not even close to being self-driving, and these features don't absolve the driver of vigilance.

Now, this doesn't apply to me ('cause I have a good job and can afford a recent car and can pay extra for the requisite options) but most cars still don't have those features. The vast majority of cars that are on the road today, and even many cars on the new-car lot don't have any sort of automatic-braking system.

I wish I knew what some people find so worthy of downvoting about suggesting to watch a crash test video that demonstrates the current state of pedestrian safety measures in cars. Or, what is scary/offensive about videos in general. But I suppose I don't need to understand every personality on the Internet...

I think you got downvoted because it's ridiculous to suggest that current safety features make cars safe compared to most other common methods of transportation, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists.

European cities are for historical reasons less practical to commute to by car, because they are dense, have never been planned with cars in mind and there is literally no space for your car. In such a setting a well funded public transport system makes all the sense in the world, because it uses the space more efficiently than the usual one-person-car-commuter.

And I don't think in my entire college life of taking public transit to and from school did I ever really encounter anyone or anything that made my day worse. In fact it was the opposite, since one of the things that still stands out in my mind is the day a complete stranger decided to give out roses to men and women aboard the bus I was riding, myself included.

It was such a small thing, but something that really stuck with me.

For many of us it’s a quiet time or when we read a book, crossword, game, or catchup on news before (and after) work.

Even if driving were a bit faster you can’t do that at the same time.

(My current commute is 25 min and I think it’s too short)

https://www.iau-idf.fr/fileadmin/NewEtudes/Etude_1371/NR_745...

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

By the way, is having 50% more disposable income really being richer if you may need to pay six-figure amounts if you need surgery?

> Viewed from a different perspective, a country where most people can spend 48 minutes a day commuting, because it’s rich enough for everyone to afford a car,[1] might be considered better than one where many people have to endure two-hour public transit commutes

You are misinterpreting the data, the 113 minute figure is for ALL public transit travel, not just commuting.

> That’s mainly because Europe has higher public transit use, and public transit is slow.

Where's your evidence for that claim? It seems plausible to me that these countries have a larger fraction of the population living in large metro areas, and big cities inevitably involve longer commutes whether you drive or take transit.

Public transit is not intrinsically slow. If your city has decent transit it is usually much, MUCH faster than driving in rush hour traffic. I live 10 minutes away from work by train; the corresponding drive would take 30 minutes during rush hour. If you want to get from the suburbs to downtown for work, it would take you only 30 minutes on the suburban rail whereas driving would take 90.

You're also missing one the main points of public transit, which is that it is compatible with density whereas auto culture is fundamentally not. In denser cities it is physically impossible for every person with a 9-5 job to be in a single occupancy car on the road at the same time. There is literally not enough space for that to happen. It's not about deciding, as a matter or public policy, whether you want everyone to be able to drive or not. You literally CANNOT, within the laws of physics, accomplish that feat.

I think that's part causation too. Cars are expensive things to own and operate with most of that money disappearing from the local community. The money that would have been spent on cars still goes somewhere and I'm betting most of it goes locally.

Comparing salaries is also quite a broken. You can turn what you says around. Maybe Paris has a great transport system because of better investment in public infrastructure and distribution of wealth. I have no idea if what you say about Houston is true, but if it's the case, maybe the lack of public infrastructure is due to the lack of investment in public transportation, causing the obligation to have car, which is expensive for the most vulnerable households and causing all the environmental issues we all know.

I live in LA and people drive like assholes. In rush hour people merge no blinker from edge to edge of the highway if one lane is moving a mile an hour faster, causing even more traffic in the process downstream from everyone slamming on the brakes to avoid killing the prick. No one ever lets you in unless you threaten to hit them. You are forced to engage in the ruckus, because if you drive at all defensively you will not go anywhere.

Then there is the streets themselves. Highways peel lanes like onions, forcing constant merging and therefore inevitable traffic. Commonly there are 4 way stops with multilane streets and no one knows who should go first, so with any traffic at all it immediately gridlocks. Visiting friends without a parking space means factoring in circling their entire neighborhood if you aren't blessed with a nearby parking structure.

The whole experience is profoundly frustrating and stressful. On public transport, I can read a book. Maybe I'll learn something instead of fighting in the pits.