alt Hacker NewsIt'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.
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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.
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...
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.
> 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?
Ring lines around which center? Midtown? It's already a criss-cross of lines, NQR does a semicircle..
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"
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.
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.
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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…
>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