My understanding as an average American (in this context) is that in European cities there are nice, fairly frequent, commuter trains and rail; and often also busses.

In the US, mostly the only 'good' bus service is geared for 9-5 workers in big offices in big cities. Anything outside of that tends to run across the economic divide that: people who take the bus _have_ to take the bus, while taking the car is a luxury in time, freedom, and isolation from possibly literally unwashed masses (who might also literally be taking the bus in the summer for a place to have some AC and safety with a seat).

The issue is very much related to classism and a lack of social safety nets and inclusion.

You say classism like it was extrinsic. But the classes (in smaller cities, not like NYC) are people who can afford a car and people who can't, or have some other reason they can't drive.

In the sort of place I'm used to, an urban area of about a million people, taking the bus is not logical if you have a car anyway. You don't get an economic benefit if you own and insure a car at all. And you pay a big penalty in time and flexibility.

That's what creates the class divide, not something arbitrary in peoples' heads. The people who ride the bus because it's economically rational are inherently the people who have no choice.

Talking about general social problems as the source of the issue is misguided, in my opinion.

You're conflating being able to afford a car with having a car. Ideally more people would choose not to have cars. Or, easier, a household could only have one car instead of multiple.

And a good transit system can beat many car trips, even for people that do have cars. Especially if parking spaces stop being subsidized.

Another factor to consider is the age of the cities involved. Most European cities predate cars, while many American cities were built up after or during the the rise of the automobile.

"Most European cities predate cars"

I suspect that only applies to the cores of European cities - most have got much larger since the car was invented and the newer areas were definitely designed with cars in mind.

e.g. Maps of Edinburgh over a few centuries:

https://maps.nls.uk/towns/edinburgh-city.html

Even in the 1920s Edinburgh was pretty small compared to its current extent.

I worked for a few years in London, in a place with no tube (Chelsea). Busses were a pain. Slower than walking in most cases.

Massive difference between “I visited and took a couple” and “I rely on them to get to work every day”. I can spin up a few VM’s on any cloud provider in the world and they’ll all work fine. That doesn’t mean every provider will be equally suitable for my production load.

I lived in SF for a period. I was lucky enough to be able to walk to work, but my roommate had to take two busses both ways. At least once/week one of those would go offline and they’d have to walk.

You are greatly minimizing the problems that most Americans face. Most American cities are not dense enough to require good public transportation options (the exception being NYC); without enough density (and lack of public funding), public transportation is short on cash and often very inconvenient. If you miss your bus, you have to wait an absurd amount of time for the next available one. Also good luck with hauling in all the groceries and stuff you need into your suburban home using only buses.... simply not possible.

So there are multiple factors at play. Short of a massive change in the way American cities are designed or some innovation that greatly reduces the cost of building public transportation, cars will continue to be something Americans absolutely need for surviving.

> when I visited I took several and they were consistently good, and were never empty, just the frequency could be a lot better. They were a lot noisier than the buses in Europe, though.

If "noisy and infrequent" doesn't mean "not good" to you, what does?

Taking a bus would add anywhere from 15-45 minutes to my ~5mi commute, with the uncertainty mainly due to the infrequency. That's not good.

> If "noisy and infrequent" doesn't mean "not good" to you, what does?

It's inconvenient / not ideal. I took a loud, full, public transport bus to school in my home town every day. It was not always on time. It got me to the destination every day though.

It was not great, but it was good enough. Sure, a car would be better, but if everyone did that everyone would be even later and busses would be even more infrequent.

My main issue with bay area public transportation is the public. I've had a person threaten to stab me because I was white. He got away. I've had someone smoke meth and then scream in my face, wanting to fight me because I was being racist. He got away. I've had someone pull out a taser and start playing with it. He was arrested, fortunately. One of my acquaintances has been robbed at gunpoint. Not sure if they ever caught the guy.

In addition to the risk of violence, there are also the annoyances. Smelly homeless people. People smoking. People blasting music. (The buskers are the worst.) In a car I have none of those issues. I don't even have to listen to someone loudly talking on their phone. It's quiet. It's clean. It leaves when I'm ready. It's far less stressful.

Nowadays there are only a couple of commuter bus lines that I'll take. Though with the lockdowns and the curfews, it's been months since I've used them.

More specifically, the problem is that public transportation is public and therefore can't or won't enforce the standards for ridership that any sane private company would--the violent, the antisocial, the mentally ill, the people who believe personal hygiene is optional. When my girlfriend of a few years ago was forced to take the bus to work regularly, she was harassed on a daily basis. Public availability doesn't have to mean no accountability, but somehow it devolves to that. And as long as that holds, folks who have the means will pay to avoid it.

There's something wrong about this. I grew up in Scotland where we had plenty of smelly, drunk, drugged and violent people, but they'd be dragged off the train by the police.

Police have been ordered by the city government to avoid enforcing certain laws. It basically means that homeless people can get away with theft and any nuisance. Also criminals are quickly released re-offend.

Here are some examples.

This guy has been arrested, charged, and released on his own recognizance five separate times. None of the cases have been closed yet: https://twitter.com/SFPDTenderloin/status/123955010416546611...

This guy was arrested, charged, and released without bail several times before he hacked someone up with a machete: https://twitter.com/SFPDTenderloin/status/122409012050613452...

This guy has been breaking into cars for over a year. He was caught multiple times and released on his own recognizance: https://twitter.com/SFPDTenderloin/status/121391498699874713...

Most of the bay area is like this and criminals know it. It's hard to describe just how bad property crime is here. Everyone I know has given up reporting when their bike is stolen or when their car has its windows smashed. They know the police won't do anything.

Or this guy, in Seattle, charged three times for violent assaults and released because he was deemed not competent to stand trial before attempting to throw a woman off a 40-foot overpass into rush hour traffic: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/article/Charge-Man-att...

> the problem is that public transportation is public and therefore can't or won't enforce the standards for ridership that any sane private company would

It is weird that most of the world seems to manage that just fine. At least in Germany they also have no issue with calling the police on misbehaving passengers.

And if you are female, you also get to deal with perverts trying to grope you [0].

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/f92kp7/pub...

Buses are a great place to catch airborne disease. As a whole, the deal with public transportation is a lot less rosy than some of the proponents would like one to believe.

The problem with buses isn't that you can't use the ones that exist, it's that the ones you need don't always exist. The bus goes where it goes but not everywhere.

Then you have to go places the bus doesn't go often enough that you need a car, and once you've already paid for a car and taxes and insurance, it costs more to take the bus than the incremental cost of driving everywhere.

"once you've already paid for a car and taxes and insurance, it costs more to take the bus than the incremental cost of driving everywhere"

I agree and mentioned this in my other comment, but I'd also add that in my experience there are arbitrary* gaps in what routes are available.

Nearly all the buses in the city where I live go west to east, from a certain midpoint to down town. But I live about 10 minutes south of a point on the western side and there are really no routes that go north-south here. And I work for a major employer.

*Seemingly arbitrary to me, but of course they might rationally determine there's not enough riders.

I used to live 5 miles from work with a straight shot down a bus corridor. It was cheaper to drive it. Occasionally I'd set out for work by bike at the same time the bus arrived at my stop and still beat them there.

Buses is unreliable even in Japan because it uses jammed public road, so we avoid using buses.

A typical city bus weighs 8-10x more than of a car and causes a multiple of that in pavement wear. There are many cases where a car would be the more efficient option. The only question is what the car is doing when you aren’t in it.