In Ho Chi Minh City (and probably Vietnam in general but not 100% sure). Our commercial district is very concentrated.

The busses in general are some form of public-private partnership. Several private bus companies operate the city busses. There are some annoying edge cases. For example, pre-purchased tickets are a mess -- better pay cash. If another operator takes over your route, even temporarily, your tickets can't be used.

Mostly it seems to work though, I take the bus fairly regularly and it's quite nice. It's clean, has OK air conditioning, and arrives frequently enough that I don't have to check the schedule. There's someone to help elderly people and children on and off the bus. Elderly people ride free, reduced price for students, etc. It's pleasant.

Some of these busses are mini-versions for less popular routes. I think I've even seen a couple of other vehicle types, like some form of van (rarely). One or twice a sort of truck with benches.

How has the new metro line worked out? I was there all the time it was getting built, but I left before it finished.

Oh, it's quite OK! I haven't used it myself, but my wife has. We don't often head out the way it goes.

It's really great for tourists though, it does a good job of connecting one of the major tourist areas (Thao Dien) to the city center.

I'm hoping that later extensions will do more to alleviate traffic, e.g. head out towards Nha Be or something. Although I hope to move to a quieter city long before any of that.

>>> I'm curious, do other larger cities where commercial is concentrated into one area not have a private mini-bus(es)?

It turns out, there are some private buses. Take for example, Santiago, Chile. It succeeded in terms of profits and customer satisfaction. The problem is they do not survive. There comes a time when they don't pay sufficient "political capital" and get taken over (nationalized) by local politicians.

The result of the private bus system nationalization by socialists is macabre, at least this the Santiago case. First, the newly minted public bus service went from $60M USD profits, to massive $600M in losses [1] overnight. That is a negative 10x return. And service declined as well. [1] But that in itself is not a new story.

Now, fast forward ~12 years. The system bleeds so much money that the govt is forced to increase bus fares. The increase in fares activates the biggest riots the country has seen in decades [2]

Out of the riots, one young protester rises to the top. He comes with ideas of a new constitution. He is a young socialist leader. A certain Gabriel Boric [3], who had ran and won for president of University of Chile Student Federation against the leader of the Communist Party of Chile [4]

So now we come full-circle: A working private bus service was replaced by socialist politicians into a public bus system that hemorrhaged 10x more money than it earned previously in actual profits. The public bus funding crisis and subsequent fare hikes led to massive riots, which were a direct on-ramp for a socialist to ascend to power as president of Chile. In short, successful private local bus enterprise was replaced with a socialist bus system, which then proceeded to implode. This implosion of a socialist idea led to the spread of even more socialism, but now at a national level.

This chain of events from beginning to end, only took 20 years.

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-the-political-economy-of-...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3033688/cha...

[3] https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-12/gabriel-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_boric#Role_in_the_Esta...

Lots of places in the world run public bus systems - it seems by far the most common to me. It's hardly a thing of 'socialism' (always a bad word on HN).

I don't know about Chile, but I think the issue isn't so much the system being public, as in run by some form of government. Rather, the issue is in how "socialists" tend to run systems: everything is great until they run out of other people's money.

Now, I'm not in the "free market will solve all our woes" camp, either, especially when it comes to what we call "public service" in France. Over here, transit systems are facing a push from the EU bureaucrats for "opening up to competition". I'm bracing for the shit to hit the proverbial fan.

Sure, our national rail company is world-famous for being on strike all day every day and twice on Sunday. But, when they do run, they work fairly well and serve most of the country, including random, middle-of-nowhere towns. New companies coming in for the competition only serve the most profitable routes. Of course, I don't know all the laws, but I haven't heard of any obligation for new companies to serve the less profitable routes. So, the SNCF will have less money from the profitable routes to subsidize these lines. This means that either service will degrade, or the State will have to increase funding [0]. Now, I'm generally fine with paying (reasonable) taxes and whatnot, but I'm less fine with having to pay more taxes just so that some random foreign company can make money.

So, what will become of these people? When, at the same time, there's a push to restrict private vehicle ownership, and, especially, to limit access to town centers for older cars? Think these people can afford brand spanking new electric cars? Think again.

---

[0] I think the EU doesn't allow States to directly subsidize the rail company, it would be some form of unfair competition or similar. But the State is allowed to spend on social programs, so there could be some kind of program to help with transit, which, in the end, is the same thing: the people will have to subsidize service for less profitable routes because a chunk of the income from profitable ones has moved to a private company which doesn't care.

EU does allow states to subsidize transit (including trains) but the subsidies are subject to all sorts of regulations. They have to be of "public interest" and to not generate (excess) profits for the companies. At least in theory.

Look, if you're that uninformed, why bother commenting at all? Especially if you're in France, your takes on what constitutes socialism are weird to say the least.

SNCF operate those unprofitable routes in the middle of nowhere only because they get told and paid to do so by the state (Intercités) or the regions (TER). Private operators can bid to operate those routes too, and some do (soon Keolis, an SNCF subisdiary operated as a private company, will operate the first non-SNCF TER network).

Besides that, any operator with a license can apply to operate any route they deem profitable. And so far this has been a roaring success, with Trenitalia on Paris-Lyon (and now Marseille) and Paris-Milan being better and cheaper than SNCF. SNCF added low cost (Ouigo) trains on multiple popular routes mainly because they knew competition is coming (postponed by Covid), they probably wouldn't have bothered otherwise. This is a win-win-win for the average user.

The services that need to be maintained will be, regardless of who is the operator. Some of the profits of the private operators will pay for them (because they pay for network access, which covers the costs of the infrastructure + profit margin).

> the issue is in how "socialists" tend to run systems: everything is great until they run out of other people's money.

That would seem true of any organization other than a self-funded one. All corporations, banks, governments, etc. use investment by others (including taxpayers) and cease operations if that investment stops.

The bland generalization about 'socialists' isn't meaningful without some evidence and a specific falsifiable claim. We can make statements like that about anything.

If one failed public transport project can be used as evidence against the viability of all public transport projects, will you accept my example of one failed privately owned transport project as evidence against the viability of all such projects?

In other words, why are you trying to use one cherry picked example of gross mismanagement to argue that all publicly run projects are doomed?

Yes, if you can name 1 example of a failed private transport project that led to

1) the biggest riots in 4 decades. 2) the requested resignation of all cabinet ministers 3) a new (socialist) constitution.

My point was not "you will die every time you play russian roulette" .

Because that's not the point. My point is, Santiago was playing it safe for many decades. Then they switched to russian roulette. Bad idea, and it showed in less than 1 decade (9 years, to be exact)

>>> I'm curious, do other larger cities where commercial is concentrated into one area not have a private mini-bus(es)?

Hong Kong has public and private mini busses. They are distinguished by the color of their roofs, green or red.

The parent is almost perfectly timed with Uber's announcement. Suddenly it's a hot topic, though without mentioning Uber.

In Moscow there are 2,5 cases of commercial buses: routes that differ from city-owned ones (both local and between parts) and downtown-to-satellite-city_name where there is no other public transport. Both mini and normal buses are being used, as you might guess they are still operating because they fill the niche and are faster than public buses because those have stops each 2-3 minutes. Subway there is far more preferred if it's even remotely an option, due to congestion and reliability.

I don't think London has private mini buses like that, just a huge amount of buses.

They are operated by companies for TFL (though they are all red, you can read the company name).

I'm not sure at what point that arrangement happened, somewhere between the outright privatisations of the 80s, or the stealth ones of the black years, which used PFI.

I think citymapper ran an experimental private bus line because they had identified a gap. But their article doesn't have a date, and I seem to remember this was years ago, so not sure where it's at.

https://citymapper.com/news/1800/introducing-the-citymapper-...

2017 according to their facebook post about it.

I vaguely remember hearing about it but never tried it out. Not sure when it was canned. The software part sounds very interesting but could also be sold to existing transit companies and government agencies to improve their network.

The existence of private minibuses is a clear indication that the transit authority has failed.

The experience of bus deregulation in Britain outside of London tended to go one of two ways. In most of the country it simply created a private monopoly while in a few cities like Manchester there were routes so popular (busiest bus route in Europe!) that multiple companies competed for custom and the city council had to employ stewards to ensure fair play.

This level of success was really an admission of failure. Anywhere else would have built a subway or at least a tram. (Metrolink is great it just doesn't even attempt to serve the busiest transit corridor in the city.)

London was of course treated differently. While the operators were privatised they remained regulated by government. Public transport in London is simply too important to the UK to be allowed to fail as it was in other parts of the country.

Anyway it's good to see central government allow Greater Manchester to regulate its buses again. After smashing it up local transport in 1986 the Tories finally relented in 2023 and allowed Greater Manchester control. Quite what Labour were doing for local transport outside of London between 1997 and 2010 is open to question. But it certainly resulted in renaissance of London public transport.

A lot of the UK did this in the 1980s and it’s turned into such a disaster, most mayors and local authorities are trying to move to the London model: companies can bid a flat rate to deliver a bus service (effectively, they commit to providing drivers to deliver the timetable). TfL collects all fares. They also - I think - supply most of the buses to ensure they are of a certain standard, but the companies need to lease them, and maintain them.

This means you get private companies trying to lower costs and so costs are privatised, but the profits (if any) are socialised into a public authority.

This then allows TfL to offer system-wide passes making bus travel over all 43 boroughs cost effective.

I don't know about London, but many places systems like this results in terrible working conditions for drivers. Pay is lousy, shift arrangements are in some cases insane, like work from 5:30-10:00 and then 14:00-17:00. Minimal time in between routes to go to the toilet and so on.

Workers, especially drivers, have rights in the UK.

How else are you going to lower costs?

Yep, it does! However the net benefit to society at large - and being public transit, to the less privileged in particular - is still gigantic compared to any of the alternatives, and this is blatantly obvious if you've been in multiple countries/locations that use this system, as well as ones that don't use it. The job is generally still better than driving for e.g. Amazon, as well as honestly a whole load of 3D jobs[1] that we rather forget exist and people carry out every day, including in "wealthy" countries.

Perfect is the enemy of good. This is the #1 thing other progressives need to learn. Everything is a tradeoff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty,_dangerous_and_demeaning

That sounds divine. Does it also work in practice?

It has been a huge improvement in places like Manchester which the OP mentioned has switched to the London model. Before it was unbelievably expensive and fragmented in terms of the service with different providers requiring different fares or weekly/monthly passes. Also never knowing when a bus was going to show up.

Now their an app which shows you when your next bus will arrive tracked by gps so you can leave the house on time to get there, and fares are standardised at £2 per trip or £5 all day. Before the standardised pricing you had people on minimum wage who would be paying an hour or two of their wage just to get to work.

All this came due to the local Government mandating it, these things could have been implemented before by private companies as they have existed in London for years but they simply chose not too.

As a former Mancunian, this was the city I was thinking of.

I remember having a meeting about a completely unrelated matter with TfGM many years ago, and they bemoaned not having the same sort of sway as TfL to fix public transport - buses in particular.

The bus situation was madness for decades: there was weird operator specific passes on the Fallowfield/University corridor (the busiest bus route in Europe when I was a student there), so you had to choose at the start of the week if you wanted a Stagecoach or a Finglands pass and then you were stuck with it. The North/South operator divide meant that everyone trying to get from say Cheetham Hill to Rusholme, had to pass through Piccadilly Gardens because that's where different companies "owned" different stands. That just led to all the problems of... well, Piccadilly Gardens...

I've not tried the Bee Network myself yet on any of my recent visits, but it looks like the fix that was needed, and it sounds like they have at least one happy customer in you. I genuinely believe it will contribute to better working conditions, cleaner air, and even economic development for Manchester.

And all it took was fixing the buses, something everyone knew needed doing more than 20 years ago...

It's curious but unsurprising that privatization of public transport is considered an answer to congestion when existence of good (or great) public transport is the working answer one can find in many places around the world.

When I visited NYC two years ago, I was blown away by how unbelievably bad public transport infrastructure is.

The most flabbergasting thing was the absence of Metro ring lines around the center. The fact these have not been built, in 2025, when Metro transport networks in most cities are now over a century old, is telling.

IMHO the real problem is cars. The US still can't imagine itself without cars.

I live in Berlin center. The only reason for me to own a car is prestige. So I don't.

During rush hour any destination I go to, even outer city, would take me the same time by public transport as by car. At least.

During non-peak hours going by car can be from 25-40% faster than by public transport if you trust Google Maps & co.

But these estimates only consider travel time. When you add finding a place to park at the destination (and walking to the destination as the place may not be right in front) this shrinks to either negative numbers or max. savings of maybe 25%.

My average travel time is around 30mins by public transport. This includes walking to and from the station.

Why would I own a car to save maybe, on a lucky day, 5mins?

At the same time bike infrastructure is being improved. Lots of side streets have been declared bike streets, cars may only enter if they have business there (you live there or deliver something).

The city has enforced this with blocking off intersections on such streets with permanent structures that let only bicycles pass.

Big streets have bike lanes that are often separated by a curb or bollards from car traffic.

This makes it also less nice to drive a car. You can't use Waze any more to guide you through side streets to avoid congestion because these streets can't be passed through any more by car, only on foot or by bike.

Which means the chance of being stuck in traffic increases. When at the same time you have options to be there just as fast with public transport and almost as fast but more healthy and with less likeliness of being ran over by a car, by bike.

These ideas are not new. And there are many more things other cities do to reduce car traffic/need for cars.

If you think of private mini busses, the best examples IMHO is actually ridepooling, e.g. Volkswagen's Moia in Hamburg and Hannover.

Part of the reason is that public transit for whatever reason appears to be unusually sketchy in many places in the US. For example, a few years ago, there was an incident with a man with two chainsaws threatening passengers [1] in the local transit system.

In contrast, the transit systems I've seen in Europe and Asia appear well maintained, clean, and relatively safe.

Biking is also safer in European cities that have proper bike infrastructure.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/man-armed-chainsaw-threatens-bart-r...

? Japanese subways were infamously the site of a nerve gas attack in the 90s. 33 people were killed in mass knife attacks in Kunming, China in 2014. France has had a handful of subway and train attacks.

However, the point is that these incidents, along with the BART one, are unusual. Avoiding public transit because of them would be like avoiding flying because of air accidents or avoiding going to a theater or musical event because of the various massacres that have happened at them over the years.

That’s rare enough to not keep people away from public transport. Speaking from experience in Portland OR, it’s more the daily low level stress of having to keep an eye out for the meth crazed lunatics around you. There always seems to be one and they’re wildly unpredictable.

That's another way of saying that we need more public investment (in addiction intervention programs, for one), not less.

BART crime is up over the past decade. People don't avoid BART because of that headline with the chainsaw man. They avoid it because of everyday crime and violence.

I'm sure it's similar for many other metro transport options in the USA. California in particular has a rough go for many reasons.

It doesn't even have to be something bad or happen to you. One "my buddy had his bike stolen off the light rail" and several people will be turned off of ever trying to use it.

The "crime" story has been so twisted by propaganda and lies-by-statistics that you'll have to forgive me for saying that I can't take your word for it and will need numbers. Truthiness certainly can drive people to make poor, (unfounded) fear-based decisions.

> Part of the reason is that public transit for whatever reason appears to be unusually sketchy in many places in the US.

Police and policing culture is heavily biased in the United States to the protection of property and the interests of capital, so it makes complete sense they wouldn't give a fuck about keeping public transit or spaces that aren't highly trafficked by the wealthy very well protected. Maybe a little tinfoil hat, but if you take that into account, I think it makes perfect sense.

It’s funny how the one time it has ever happened that someone wielded a chainsaw on the subway it’s memorable news, and becomes evidence of a narrative that all of public transit is ‘sketchy’. That article’s from 7 years ago, and nobody got hurt and the guy was arrested. (BTW, I wonder why they used a photo from 2009?)

In the mean time, the number of shooting deaths by private car drivers in the US has more than doubled since 2018, to more than 1 per day. That doesn’t count threats with other weapons, nor any other kind of road rage, nor does it count accidental crashes. There are more than 120 deaths per day in the US in cars (the vast majority of “private transit”), and more than 2 million ER visits by injured riders per year.

And public transit is sketchy? Not compared to driving cars it isn’t.

As an outsider (Australian) living in the USA there's non stop propaganda for anything that could make a dollar if privatised. To the extent that many don't believe public run systems can function at all.

Anything disparaging public transit is played up to the extend even sitcoms will have disparaging scenes that are essentially "you took public transport? Are you poor?". The tax system is basically privatised, it's a pain to do anything without paying for tax software now with a lot of lobbying and propaganda that it's the only way. A lot of US citizens actually seem to believe that anything government run is inefficient (despite the lack of academic data on this) and demand the dismantling of all government institutions (see DOGE). Even utilities are often privatized with no competition (you just pay what you're told).

It's a bit crazy coming from a country where i had fibre internet at my regional home (the recently rolled out national broadband network) which is faster than the best connection i can get in the middle of silicon valley, i had affordable public transit with a universal tap on/off card that worked for all of them so no change/cash needed. Universal healthcare. A free online tax system that would start pre-filled by the numbers my employer+stockbroker entered in, i just had to quickly check through any federal or state specific exemptions i might qualify for. Etc.

Like it's madness the level of propaganda for this viewpoint that privatization is better and it's blatant why that propaganda is there - you privatize something essential like healthcare and you can leach vast amounts of money from everyone.

To this day my home country pays a fraction of US salaries yet the median wealth per capita is more than double the USA (Australia's 261k wealth per capita vs USAs 112k wealth per capita) since we don't get leached at every turn by privatized essential services. Yet in the USA they are clamouring for more of this as if that makes them wealthier.

Fairly recently: https://nypost.com/2025/04/15/us-news/cause-of-death-still-a...

A man died while riding the train, one person robbed the corpse, then another had sex with it..

I heard about that one too, very unique and weird for sure! But we could go through the stories of each of the few hundred fatalities that happened on public transit last year, and it wouldn’t even be a blip compared to the tens of thousands of people killed in gruesome accidents in cars. Incidentally I still remember the description of Paul Walker’s death for kinda the same reason that subway chainsaws and necrophilia are so memorable… it was freaky.

Except that wasn't a fatality. How often do people get robbed while driving in the highway.

For that matter, how many who came to harm on the highway were speeding vs random subway assaults.

People get robbed at gas stations, convenience stores, parking lots, and streets at fairly high numbers. I’m not sure what we’re comparing or debating here, but does your example actually count as a “robbery” if they died first? Would it not have happened if they hadn’t died? The anecdote you brought doesn’t seem to reflect on safety at all, it’s unclear what relevance it has.

Speed is absolutely a huge factor in driving injuries, one of the biggest. Again not sure how or even why to compare that to assaults on the subway, but googling briefly, the result I got suggests there were around 2k reported assaults of any kind. It’s a drop next to the nearly 3M ER visits, which may leave out large numbers of unreported, uninsured, or less serious injuries.

> People get robbed at gas stations, convenience stores, parking lots, and streets at fairly high numbers

Not where I live. the comparison/debate is:

> In contrast, the transit systems I've seen in Europe and Asia appear well maintained, clean, and relatively safe.

I think the point is, although (public) necrophilia is rare, so presumably is access to dead bodies, so the fact this happened is telling.

> does your example actually count as a “robbery” if they died first?

Of course it fucking does. picking someone's pockets is also robbery even if no confrontation is involved, and I'm pretty happy this guy is being charged with "attempted rape"; the fact the guy was dead doesn't make it not rape.

> The anecdote you brought doesn’t seem to reflect on safety

you don't see a correlation between safety, and the presence of people you cannot trust to be around?

> speed is absolutely a huge factor in driving injuries, one of the biggest. Again not sure how or even why to compare that to assaults on the subway

Speed, or speeding i.e. inappropriate levels of speed. The comparison is that an individual can control their speed, and the authorities can police it. There's not much you can do if you run into the wrong person on the subway.

Sure people have the option to control their own speed, and authorities can police speeders. The accident rate we have already accounts for that. Speeders are still dying, and they’re taking out more non-speeders with them than the total number of public transit deaths, by multiples.

Still not sure what the argument even here is. You’re being pretty forceful about one single, weird incident. Fine, but the fact of the matter is that driving in cars is causing a lot more injury and death than public transit, by several orders of magnitude.

>IMHO the real problem is cars. The US still can't imagine itself without cars.

All of the US except NYC. In NYC 45.6% of households own a car. In Berlin it's 49%.

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/u-s-cities-with-th...

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/car-free-berlin-li.113268

You’re kind of proving the point here. NYC has fewer car owners and yet NYC doesn’t have a single pedestrian street or street closed to through traffic. Sounds like a city that can’t imagine itself without cars even though it’s completely realistic.

There is a street in Williamsburg that has been pedestrianized. I cant remember which one.

Broadway has had large expansions to its curbing from the flatiron building to union square.

Its a slow process but its getting there.

Which one? Berry is semiclosed, but people routinely remove the wooden barriers so they can drive on it and delivery app e-bikes/motor bikes routinely blast down it at speeds that make it uncomfortable to walk.

Broadway has expanded the sidewalk but it is definitely not closed to traffic. Also 2 partial closures in a city of 10 million kind of proves the point.

> There is a street in Williamsburg that has been pedestrianized. I cant remember which one.

One street in a city the size of NY?

I thought you were joking when I read that reply. I thought it might have been straight out of a Monty Python sketch. ;)

On that note, if you want to get an idea what pedestrianization does to cities, enter "Barcelona Superblocks" into your fav. search engine.

GP's premise was there "Are none" -- I shared the progress I'm aware of.

NYC needs more, but I think the tide is turning the right way.

You’re either exaggerating or don’t spend much time in NYC. Half of Broadway is closed to cars now, same with Wall Street. We have summer streets where they close many on weekends. Lots of dedicated bike lanes and a few isolated paths throughout the city. Could there be more? Sure. Are they completely absent? No.

I think we just have a different idea of what it means to be closed to cars. I live right by the stretch of Broadway you mention, so I’m very familiar. This is what it looks like: https://flatironnomad.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/4.2-Pla...

There is no restriction of through traffic. Effectively pedestrians are still confined to tiny and overcrowded sidewalks.

By comparison, here’s what a pedestrian street looks like in the non-US city I grew up in: https://sana.ae/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Corso-Italia-Stre...

Keep in mind that cars are still allowed for emergency services and (night time) deliveries. But the difference is night and day.

This is exactly what “the US can't imagine itself without cars” means to me.

The entire country of Italy is only twice the size of the state of New York.

And they can manage it, why can't New York?

New York City has more people in it than the 4 most populated metro areas in Italy. Italy has ~3x the population of the state of New York, half the population of the state lives in NYC area.

So they need it more than Italy. You can handle wayyy more traffic without cars on the road than you can with.

in context, i am specifically talking to “the US can't imagine itself without cars” point here and in my other reply upthread. I live ~36 hours from Los Angeles, driving at legal highway speeds, assuming no stops or delays. It's all about perspective. California is larger than germany. New York isn't a small state by any stretch of the imagination, unless you're comparing it to texas, alaska, or california. The car/public transportation stuff in the US is partly because of the ruralness of the country in general, plus culture. A lot of people have the idea that public transit is for the poors.

I live in Canada, a bigger country with less people and better public transport. A bunch of provinces are bigger than Texas, doesn't stop the public transport from being decent inside the cities.

The obvious answer is more public transport infrastructure & bike lanes.

If you think population density is an excuse for public transport infrastructure not coping or need for more people owning cars I suggest taking a long hard look at e.g. Japan to have that hypothesis reality-checked.

I'm btw. not saying you did, just reading between the lines.

As I wrote in an earlier reply to parent, NYC hasn't managed to even build ring Metro lines around its city center – since a century!

And that is for one reason and one reason only: not nearly enough (political) pressure from the public to improve public transport infrastructure.

And that in term gets us to the root cause again: the US can't imagine itself without cars.

This is not a critique. It's just an observation that is very plain to see if you grew up in Europe (and possibly many other places, too).

When/if that changes, ever, the above things will just happen naturally.

What would a ring metro look like in NYC? Manhattan is an island. Directly west of it is a body of water, then land that is not NYC, in fact is not NY.

It doesn't have to be a closed ring. Or resemble a ring.

Many metro systems in other big cities with comparable topological constraints have metro lines that are orthogonal to those going out in roughly a star pattern from the center.

But NYC almost only has the latter.

Underwater sections are not an issue, really. There are many cities that have metro lines going under bodies of water.

And even the length or depth required is not an issue if you want to build it.

That's why you can go from England to France, by train, in roughly half an hour, under the English Channel.

That is a seriously hand-wavy response to a complex task.

Man, there are street that are closed to traffic, and you just are either lying or being dumb.

They just don't look like streets anymore, as they are turned into plazzas or parks.

EG: E25st at Lex, Baruch College is truned into a plazza/walkaway. No cars. 8th/st Saint Marks, by A Ave, is off cars, (It is part of the Tompkins park). Irvin Avenue is part of a park (gets interrupted by Grammercy Park)

etc...

There are plenty of places like that, but over time they turn into plazzas or parks, and you think they were not streets at some point.

Ps https://maps.app.goo.gl/Df6U3DkPpUxirG5B9

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZivSNhiEnn2Q4pjr6

You can see throw time that it used to be a street at some point.

Anyways, there are plenty of examples like that. Just stop exaggerating.

Those photos say it all. The NYC reduced street still manages to park a Chevy Silverado smack in the middle of it all, and all those planters aren't there for the sake of having plants, but rather as crash barriers protecting the patios from traffic.

Also, many of the cars we see in the city are bound to be from outside the city (like New Jersey). Just look at the traffic in the Lincoln and Holland tunnels at rush hour.

A less abrasive approach than congestion pricing might just be pedestrian streets or narrower streets/wider sidewalks. If you make the city unattractive for cars, there will be fewer of them, and I am willing to bet that programs like these are less likely to trigger the outrage congestion pricing has, because it doesn't target car owners directly and en masse. You can sort of pick away at it, street by street. There will be less of a show of solidarity, because, hey, it's not my street.

The only thing that seems silly is penalizing delivery trucks. This only raises the costs of goods and services. This is one reason I would favor narrower, one-way streets over pedestrian streets. You still want vehicles. The issue is that many if not most vehicles in NYC are a luxury item and do nothing but negatively impact the common good. They don't even make transportation easier for their owners, on the whole. Of course, this should be combined with other policies that improve public transportation and improve availability of good and services in the city to reduce the burdens that cars alleviate.

I feel like that’s the path San Francisco has been on. Over the last decade they’ve made it more and more painful to drive anywhere in the general downtown area. Market street and a few others are closed to cars, more and more streets don’t let you turn, many of the traffic lights have been replaced by insanely inefficient pedestrian-favoring traffic lights that seem hell-bent on making the traffic worse.

That being said, it takes me nearly an hour to take public transit between my home near Forest Hill and my office in the dogpatch whereas it takes 20-25 minutes to drive (plus an extra five minutes to park and walk from the parking lot to the office). This is not a long distance, on a map it looks like it should take me 10 minutes but San Francisco is so incredibly inefficient.

I would love to not own a car but it’s just not realistic. Also when going to Costco or when the weather is bad, public transit becomes a lot less of a fit as well. I got a bike, only to find out that you’re not allowed to bring bikes on the Muni train which is frustrating, and in the end means my commute isn’t any faster than not involving biking at all. I tried a scooter, and I got in an accident because apparently the brakes don’t work well in the rain, especially when there’s an intersection at the bottom of a hill, so I’m not doing that anymore. I guess they’re trying to make driving as bad as all of the other bad options. I wish instead we could make some good options.

I don't know about elsewhere, but here in Ireland pedestrianised streets are usually open to deliveries in the early hours of the morning. I think they open to one-way traffic some time after the pubs and clubs close, and late-night foot traffic is reduced. Then the bollards go up at the entrance end at around 7am, and go up at the exit a little later.

Certainly I've seen delivery vehicles on Grafton Street in Dublin and Shop Street in Galway in the early hours.

I don't think they were trying to disprove the point. They admit that the US is largely car centric EXCEPT NYC, which is why congestion pricing has worked well. Also, car ownership rates are probably extremely correlated with density/efficiency of public transportation.

There is probably no other city in the US where you can truly eschew car ownership (this includes metro "dense" regions like San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston). Maybe you could include Chicago where there is a heavy amount of density/walkability in most of central Chicago neighborhoods.

You could eschew car ownership in NYC because the public transport network is better than in the rest of the country but it's still shite compared to what is considered 'barely ok' outside the US.

E.g. I. Berlin metro timing is about 5mins between trains and that is long compared to Tokyo metro timing.

But when it comes to density/how direct a public public transport connection exists between two arbitrary points in the city, Tokyo and Berlin are very close (and far ahead of NYC btw.).

What I'm saying is that the feasibility public will be seen as a real alternative or even improvement over using a car only if both topological as well as temporal improvements are blatantly obvious to commuters.

Not true. E25st by Baruch college has turned into a plaza. There are some more, that I can think off. (8th/St Marks by A Ave, is a park) etc.

This used to be a regular street at some point https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZivSNhiEnn2Q4pjr6

There are plenty of other examples, just now they look more like plazas, and not streets.

This only showcases how bad the US is in this area, when the city that most relies on public transportation still has such a bad service.

It's not the only reason, but in general in American history, "why is this weird thing this weird way?" is usually answered in part by "racism".

Avoiding public transit has historically been one way affluent white people avoided contact with poor people in general and black people specifically; underfunding or shutting down public transit in turn disproportionately hurts those populations.

Again, not the only explanation, but it's the simplest for a number of things.

In northern cities, the black population is quite recent, and urban renewal programs predate much of the Great Migration. The Great Migration was itself weaponized by WASP elites against the European and very often Catholic ethnic neighborhoods in northern cities (who were out-procreating the WASPs given their stance on contraception, for example, which differed from the Protestants who had began to accept its use in the 1930s).

To disguise the project, terms like "white flight" were invented in order to frame the disintegration of these European neighborhoods as a racist reaction. This worked especially well during the Civil Rights movement, because it played on black/white categories in the forefront of everybody's minds. But were these European ethnic groups "white"? We already know that the Irish and the Italians weren't considered "white" until recently.

Perhaps you've seen videos of "white people" in Chicago throwing rocks at black marches led by MLK into these ethnic neighborhoods? These were people, like Lithuanians, who were defending the integrity of their neighborhoods from an invasion. That the marching masses entering their neighborhoods were black is completely irrelevant: any mass migration of another cultural group into a host population harms and destroys the integrity of the host population. And that was the point. White flight destroyed the ethnic neighborhood through mass migration and the subsequent dispersal of them across the newly created suburbs. This process hastened their assimilation into an amorphous mass shaped by the mass media. These assimilated groups formed a buffer between WASP neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of the new black arrivals from the South. The construction of highways played a similar role by erecting psychological or physical barriers between these neighborhoods. They were also used as excuses to demolish "undesirable" neighborhoods.

> That the marching masses entering their neighborhoods were black is completely irrelevant

LOL. sure it was.

Oh, that's very much so. In new york, several bridges were explicitly designed by Robert Moses so that they were too low for buses in order to prevent public transit from getting to certain parks and beaches. In Chicago, several expressways were routed to separate "black" areas from other parts of the city.

I claim it's normal to hate public transport. Online, there are some loudmouthed public transport enthusiasts. To them, everyone who isn't doing public transport is a racist, boomer, redneck, luddite, and whatever aspersion you've got.

The real reason America has so many cars is people like cars better, and America developed in a time where people were rich enough to make it happen. People don't like public transport. I asked someone who grew up in another country, in a huge city with only public transport--and reputedly good, clean public transport at that--what they think of public transport, and they said it's gross and for poor people. (It wasn't a code for racism, their country was ethnically monotone.)

People like that don't visit threads like this though. You just get this echo chamber of young, childless, cosmopolitans who only care about a certain kind of efficiency in transport.

Yet your example purposefully sabotages cars by blocking streets to cars, and by not having city planners enforce enough parking spots for cars.

The system can prioritize either method of travel. It's no surprise that when this happens, one is faster than the other.

You can never build enough parking spots if the cost of parking is $0. Optimally managed parking charges variably so that there is always about 10% of spaces free in a block.

The entitlement of drivers to think they have a right to park a metal box wherever they want for free in the middle of the most expensive real estate in the world is staggering.

As an anecdote about any amount of parking winds up being used if it's free: there's a guy a block over from where I live in dense, transit-connected Brooklyn who has, at any given moment, at least 6 cars parked on the street, that he tinkers with and seems to occasionally buy and sell. The houses on that block sell for around $3-4 million these days, but the parking is free.

The neighborhood is also quite clearly full of cars that basically never get used—given there's no cost to store them, the owners save them for an occasional trip and in the meantime they accumulate snow/leaves/pollen etc the rest of the year, in proportion to how long they sit without being used.

The dysfunction of this system is particularly aggravating when you have an actual need to park nearby your home, e.g. if you're loading/unloading heavy things, and there's never any space. I would love if every block had temporary loading zones, but people freak out about the idea because it requires taking away some free parking.

Ring lines around which center? Midtown? It's already a criss-cross of lines, NQR does a semicircle..

The decline public transportation, in my view, reflects a shift in priorities within the Democratic Party. Back in the 1990s, Democrats were more focused on tangible public services—things like infrastructure, roads, transit systems. Today, the emphasis seems to have moved toward issues like environmental policy, DEI, and gender identity.

As someone who’s deeply frustrated by the lack of progress on projects like high-speed rail between SF and LA, completing the BART loop around the Bay, improving public schools in San Francisco, and addressing homelessness, I find it maddening. These are real, urgent issues, and yet they often seem sidelined.

Of course, Republicans generally oppose these kinds of initiatives altogether.

Trying to push for change within the Democratic Party has been incredibly difficult for me. It often feels like the space is dominated by highly educated, well spoken, intellectually confident people (far more so than myself) which can make it hard to even participate, let alone influence policy.

So I just think: screw it, I’m a Republican now. And that is not going to make public transport any better.

So this is why…

This whole comment is insane but I’ll just say the last administration helped fund transit, but is of course being rolled back by the new one.

https://www.transit.dot.gov/about/news/biden-harris-administ...

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-ad...

So what should I do?

How can I blame Trump for what is happening with public transport in SF and CA? Both CA and SF are 100% democrat for last 20 years.

Wasn't Musk's whole hyperloop project determined to be just a way to sabotage the SF-LA high-speed rail?

California's so-called Democrats are in love with the idea that private industry (i.e., Silicon Valley) will swoop in and do the government's work for them. And they'll sideline any government project if they think someone else might shoulder the burden. LA almost elected a real estate billionaire as mayor whose solution to homelessness was to build a bunch of "housing" out in the middle of the desert.

How can any political party get anything done when they have one hand tied behind their backs as they fend off attempts by other parties to undermine them.

Also the average voter is a flip-flopping idiot who throws temper tantrums when they don't get low or no taxes, when costs rise for them right now even if lowering them is at the expense of later generations, etc.

Also US politics are a lot more complicated than who held majority within and area or state. As far as I can see if senate/congress has a huge bearing and those lip between majorities constantly.

I mean keep propping Trump up though, as a foreigner it's interesting to watch the show. It's a shame that countries are making deals with the US now, I would've loved to see us ban export of pharmaceuticals, weaponry, rare earths to the US just to educate Americans on why we should all be working together.

Don't get me wrong, China & Russia are much worse for it. And NK is an absolute disgrace, all those millions of people...in a thousand years we're going to look back on this period of history as "they had the means for peace but chose oppression and violence". Future humans will look at us as barbarians as we do many of those who lived hundreds of years ago.

Ezra Klein talks about everything bagel liberalism where the left tries to layer every cause (diversity, unions, low income housing) onto a core good idea like building more housing or transit infrastructure. It gets in the way of the goal. housing is good because otherwise people would be homeless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/opinion/democrats-liberal...

> So I just think: screw it, I’m a Republican now.

Complain and vote all you want but the best way to fix the government is to become the government.

What a stupid self centered excuse for supporting fascism.

The Democratic Party of 2025 is the Republican Party of 1992.

Not every city needs a ring line, or has a geographical shape where it would be practical.

Manhattan is a long rectangle, whilst Berlin has a more rounded shape.

Its faster to cross the small width of the rectangle than to go all the way around.

It's perceived as a problem around NYC that a lot of people might want to go from Brooklyn to Queens or to Harlem and the Bronx but public transit funnels everyone through downtown or midtown Manhattan. NYC doesn't need a ring but it could use a supplementary arc.

Yes! I'm going to see Underworld[0] play tonight in Brooklyn, exactly 7500 feet from my house, and according to google maps the options are a 14 minute taxi ride or 53 minute train + bus journey. I think it's insane that we don't have efficient intra-boro public transit outside of manhattan.

0. https://www.underworldlive.com

In the 1990s the RPA proposed reviving an abandoned rail line connecting Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx into the Triboro X line as a supplementary arc. The truth is the boroughs were well connected. In the postwar era the many of light-rail lines connecting Brooklyn and Queens were demolished. As were three elevated lines in Brooklyn/Queens and four elevated lines in Manhattan.

The MTA still has a gap in the funding for the 2020-2024 capital plan due to Andrew Cuomo's raiding and Kathy Hochul's incompetence, so I wouldn't expect much from the 2025-2029 capital program! It is $48 billion short of maintaining existing levels of service, "with a focus on areas in need of urgent investment".

its hard to really get how culturally tied to cars Americans are. Politicians in NYC essentially act like 'a car' is the unit of citizenship in the country, and not 'a person'. We make laws so cars dont get offended, we prioritize them over lives and safety. Its honestly pretty crazy.

I live ~33 miles away, round trio, from the nearest grocery store. No trains, no uber, no bus. The US is massive. It doesn't look like it on the mercator projection, but the US is massive. It takes days to drive across it at highway speeds.

I tire of "you guys just love your cars too much". I've lived in several states and only when I lived in Los Angeles county was there ever a bus within "walking distance" - but still that was a 25-30 minute walk.

Oh, and in case you were curious, California is about 60,000 square kilometers bigger than Germany.

And I live 36 hours away from California in the United States. At highway speeds.

That's why we "love our cars"

Most of the US population lives in metro areas of large cities. You are an outlier, that’s fine for rural areas.

I would not call ~20% of the US population an outlier. It's a very different situation from urban areas, but just as valid

And even cities in the US are vast sprawls compared to organically grown very old cities in other parts of the world. That makes a huge difference for walkability.

Furthermore, the 80% urban stat from the US census gets routinely misinterpreted. Just going through some property line details with a couple neighbors on collectively about 75 acres plus adjacent conservation land. The census considers this urban.

And, as you say, Urban != dense city downtown.

yes, the cutoff for "urban" to not is 2000 housing units in an area. I don't consider that urban, 2000 homes is a decent "town". This is just "othering" of people who live more than 25 minutes from a metro which is what i consider "urban". i am 25 minutes from my nearest metro, and the metro population is smaller than the city i grew up in in california, population-wise.

my point is, talking about Berlin and then carrying that thought over to "americans just love cars" is silly. Germany is smaller than CA, and double the population of california. Most people "in california" live in the "san angeles" range or in the "bay capital" area. a half hour outside of any of those areas and it's either sand or farms or mountains.

and i wish i was "rural", there's ~600 houses within 6mi radius, that's not very rural. It's rural compared to Manhattan, i guess.

Without looking it up, I think it's also related to adjacency to a significant metro. But, yeah, the US census uses a binary classification that makes a lot of people assume "urban" means a big walkable city when, in reality, it often includes very dispersed exurbs (including places many would consider basically rural) that are never going to be serviced by public transit among other things.

So a lot of people tend to translate 80% urban into 80% cities which is manifestly not true, and even less dense cities.

> Consistent with previous decennial censuses, changes were made to criteria classifying urban areas following the 2020 Census. Key changes to the Census Bureau’s urban area concept and criteria include:

> The use of housing unit density instead of solely population density. The minimum population threshold to qualify as urban increased from 2,500 to 5,000 or a minimum housing unit threshold of 2,000 housing units.

> The jump distance was reduced from 2.5 miles to 1.5 miles for 2020. Jump distance is the distance along roads used to connect high-density urban territories surrounded by rural territory.

> No longer distinguishing between urbanized areas and urban clusters. All qualifying areas are designated urban areas.

We agree (i think), i'm just quoting the census bureau document.

I hadn't looked in a while and, yeah, the definition seems to have switched a bit though the overall result seems to be fairly similar. The bottom line is that "urban" in the census has a lot broader definition than what a lot of folks think of as urban colloquially.

Yes, designing a city for cars will make cars the most convenient way to get around. That is part of the whole "americans love their cars" thing.

You "love" your car because you live in the middle of nowhere. There is no "we" in that sentence.

> when I lived in Los Angeles county ... bus within "walking distance" ... a 25-30 minute walk.

> I live ~33 miles away, round trio, from the nearest grocery store.

So you've explicitly chosen to live far away from everything, in effect you've chosen to have to own a car. What bearing does this have on anything?

> The US is massive. It doesn't look like it on the mercator projection, but the US is massive. It takes days to drive across it at highway speeds.

Unless you drive across the US on a regular basis, this point has precisely zero relevance.

Everyone knows the US is massive lmao. Outside the US people are relatively educated about the world.

The topic was about public transit in cities, where many millions of people gather. Nobody has said that the US needs to ditch cars and only use public transport between states or cross-country.

> The most flabbergasting thing was the absence of Metro ring lines around the center. The fact these have not been built, in 2025, when Metro transport networks in most cities are now over a century old, is telling.

I'm having trouble imagining where a useful ring line could exist in the New York metropolitan area or within the city itself, given its geography, longstanding commuter movement patterns and other characteristics. Maybe you could have a relatively small ring just in midtown Manhattan?

The Interborough Express is one example. Going from southern Brooklyn on the water up to queens. Previous proposals had it also connecting to the Bronx. If you want to be really ambitious, connect Bayridge to Staten Island and continue on with branches to Elizabeth and Bayonne. Up north, it's surprising there isn't rail from the Bronx, through Manhattan, across the GW Bridge to NJ.

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

That's not what I'd understand as a "ring" though. I guess something like that could be useful in providing an alternative to what's mostly been car options for travel between Brooklyn and Queens. Edit - your more ambitious idea could be a "ring", yes, but I'm not seeing how it would be especially useful. Why would it be helpful to provide a single line allowing someone in Bayonne to get to Jackson Heights, for example (given what are probably more pressing transportation improvement needs)? As a visionary means of facilitating a longer term integration of eastern New Jersey communities to New York City, maybe.

In Japan there are almost only private buses. many are run by and around the private train companies as a way to get their trains to be more useful to more people like when a 25 minute walk from the closest station is a 10 minute bus ride and the busses come often enough to be convenient

The train companies in Japan, while private in name, can only be described as hybrid. They have massive gvmt concessions for land to build their malls and make profit. The gvmt also has a lot of direct and indirect influence on them (and the other way around). In fact I'm literally now in one cafe in one of those malls, I haven't used the train today but still a part of my money goes to the train company thanks to these concessions.

I'm not complaining BTW, love the train system here, it's only when someone tries to describe them as either a purely "private" or "public" company it's never so straightforward IMHO, so wanted to clarify.

Yeah, the big JR (Japanese Railways) companies that were created when the JNR (Japanese National Railways) state owned company was privatized really do seem to operate in some form of hybrid way - not really either private or public/state owned.

But its also important to note there are other still big but much more private players like Kintetsu, Hankyu, Keio or Tobu that also follow the same playbook - having not just rail lines but also malls, hotels and other businesses, like: * cableways (like the Kintetsu Beppu Ropeway) * zoos (Tobu Zoo) * theaters (Takarazuka Revue - all-female musical theatre troupe based in Takarazuka - a division of the Hankyu Railway company - all members of the troupe are employed by Hankyu)

And you can see this replicated on the smallest level - when we went to Izumo, we found out the Ichibata company does not just run the line to the Izumu shrine, but also owns a hotel next to the Izumo station, runs local buses and even runs the gift shop in the Izumo museum. :)

I think this can to a degree explain why public transport is so well connected with other services in Japan & why the stations are clean and convenient - it has a direct benefit for all the many side businesses the public transit companies have.

How is buying land a consession and building on it a consession? Any normal private company can by land and build on it. Are you sure you're not considering it a consession because you're used to "public" transporation (in which case it would be a consession) and not just the normal things any private company can do (in which case it's not a consession)

Even if they are consessions I think they are a positive. They provide a positive feedback loop for the train companies. Better trains = more customers for their other interests and visa versa. If the trains start to suck people don't want to be on that line and choose a different line for their businesses, houses

Compared to public transporation where it's just politians who decide budgets and with few exceptions (Netherlands for example) they almost never decide well.

That's interesting - the main Dutch train company provides dirt cheap bike rentals for the same reason. (For arrivals only; people can use their own bikes to get to the station.)

Growing up in Jersey we called them jitneys. And no, they don’t have them in other cities.

Yes, the jitneys. There is the Hampton Jitneys which transport folks from NYC to the Hamptons during summer months. Those jersey buses are better than NJ Transit.

Jitneys could be found all over the country but they've largely fallen out of favor.

There is in Atlanta. An informal system of cash only mini buses without fixed routes and a focus on Spanish language.

Last I checked, which was admittedly, a few years ago there were jitneys in San Francisco.

After communism fell in Poland there was a period of privatization of public transport. It was reverted in last 2 decades in most big cities because it usually had worse quality standards (only competed on price), only served the few most profitable routes, and was uncooperative regarding the schedule (for example city buses were speeding to get to the bus stops before the time to get more passengers ahead of competition).

So in theory there was a schedule with buses from lines 1,2,3 interleaving every 5 minutes - but in practice line 1 was going slower and line 3 was going faster and all buses were there at the same time and then you had to wait for 15 minutes for the next round :/

The worst part was that people outside the most profitable routes had no access to public transport - because public transport had to be subsidized more because the profitable routes were taken over by private buses.

Basically it was a mistake, don't do it.

What are the brands/types of busses you're talking about? In my city, Greyhound, Chinatown busses, etc., handle city-to-city connections, but they don't connect the residential areas to the city center. It's not lucrative enough (one reason being car use is so heavily subsidized). This is one of the reasons the concept of public transit exists. Like delivering mail to Americans who live in remote areas, we spread out the costs because the benefits are necessary to a thriving society.

These minibusses or dollar vans don't have strong brands that you would recognize. They often operate in a legal grey area, so they're deliberately anonymous looking if you aren't in the know.

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

I volunteered to do some work in a rural village in the Dominican Republic years ago and got instructions to take several forms of public transportation from the airport to downtown Santo Domingo and then the town of Ocoa and finally either walk up the hill to El Limon or ride on a motorcycle with somebody.

I saw motorcycle taxis and minibuses that run between cities and have the cobrador hanging out the side to rustle up passengers and where you might sit next to somebody holding a chicken. I rode in a "public car" which was painted red and drove in a circle and got out at a place that I thought was a bus station until I realized the tickets on the wall had the names of US college football teams and it was really a sportsbook.

In the developing world it is common to see many forms of less formal transit. Maybe standards aren't that high and maybe I'd feel different if I'd missed the last bus to Ocoa, but it struck me as an economical, fast and efficient system.

This is my experience travelling as well--Latin America has public transit that is an order of magnitude better than anything I've used in Canada or USA.

The success in s.a. highlights how much of a problem cars are causing in n.a. cities. Even if a well financed public or private bus service wanted to run frequent lines at rush hour, those buses would be stuck in slow car traffic. In nordic countries, the bus and trams have dedicated lanes, and mass transit is generally faster than cars.