I looked up and wrote up my “what if I tried to commute on public transit to make a 9AM meeting?”
It’s ugly to the point where no one would voluntarily choose it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31723197
In my case, in Rīga (the capital of my country, Latvia), it was approximately:
- leave apartment at 7:45
- walk to stop in around 5 minutes
- wait 5 - 10 minutes for a trolley bus
- ride in it for 20 - 30 minutes
- walk from stop to work for 10 minutes
With a car, the same trip would be around 20-40 minutes.
For comparison's sake, walking would mean upwards of 100 minutes for that trip.
Regardless of whether in a car, or using public transportation, coming home in the evening often included waiting in traffic jams for close to an hour. In comparison, when coming home before 4-6 PM, the streets were relatively empty and there were no such traffic issues. Fewer cars, fewer issues of that sort.
But what holds here true doesn't hold true elsewhere and vice versa. Once you go past a certain scale of the city in question, transfers and other complications become unavoidable. Just how much of an issue it is, depends on many other factors as well (car ownership cost, possibility of accidents, the disadvantage of not being able to easily transport things when not owning a car and so on, lack of freedom without a car, especially when you want to visit less popular rural areas).
Neither beats rolling out of bed at 8:45, turning on the computer and brewing some coffee or tea, doing a morning shower and "being at work" 10 minutes later, though.
The best way to beat traffic right now without having to wait for anybody else to change is to get a motorcycle - if the climate where you live permits.
> That you think the car is always better
Make your arguments without inventing what other people say and you will make better arguments.
It seems to me it would be preferable to have mass transit for regular commuting, combined with perhaps some sort of rental system for those times when you need greater flexibility, or need to haul lots of stuff, etc.
It's arguable whether all of this is needed everywhere in the world, to such a degree as is presently done.
In the cities, the transportation needs of most folks can be covered by public transportation (depending on the country, admittedly) - it is more efficient, more green and also results in fewer traffic jams.
Furthermore it scales up and down better: whether at 50% or 80% of capacity it will do its scheduled route, as opposed to all of those people otherwise needing cars and parking spaces for those and so on, which isn't always entirely feasible in densely populated cities.
I guess it's just a different take on things, but if there's commute, we might as well make it more efficient, as opposed to spending 1-2 hours per day in traffic, which is essentially wasted time. Or not have the commute altogether.
In more rural areas or many places in the US as opposed to EU it's a slightly different story.