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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30068 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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t it would be fast, clean, cheap and wonderful and all the junkies and mentally ill people belligerently bothering people on it would disappear, despite it being the very same people who push for everyone using public transport that are also pushing for complete tolerance of every nuisance in public spaces in the name of compassion.

What a specific breed of Intellectual Yet Idiot fails to grasp is that good public transit is a function of density, not the other way around. Rich people in London use the tube because of the density makes it the best option speed wise. Not because they wouldn't prefer a point to point solution or can't afford one. But congestion and death are the great equalizers for majority of people. And you only have so much time here and wasting it in Ferrari in a congestion is a stupid utilization of one's time. And because rich people are there it is clean and safe.

I do live in a city dense enough for mass transit, and I do use it all the time (having no car myself). It is usually fast enough, but the infrastructure is decaying, there's trash in busses and trains, constant visible, water infiltration in the concrete walls of subway stations that have been left unfixed for years. And the experience of using it in the last 5 years has become notably worse. There's the tolerance of disruptive behavior I've mentionned: mentally ill people screaming, groups of rowdy loitering late teens/young adults. But also the service itself is also getting worse, a mix of desperately hiring whoever is available and strong public service unions puts us far from the kind of pride and conscientiousness of, say, the Japanese rail system. We have busses showing up late (from the yard, not from traffic) regularly, sometimes not showing up at all with no indication at stops. The subway is somewhat more reliable, except for the daily service interruptions. Obviously, the cost has also kept increasing. All of this is of course overseen by politicians who are not in the least incentivized to solve the issues.

And this is one of North America's top public transit systems, and one of if not the most popular (as in % of population using it regularly).

There's plenty of rich people on the NYC subway and it's neither clean nor all that safe.

And because rich people are there it is clean and safe.

I doubt it. You don't have to be rich to Uber/Bolt everywhere. In fact by the time you can actively shape what the public is allowed/encouraged to vote for you can have a private driver.

To be honest I don't know why American cities appear so dysfunctional while other places do just fine, when I don't see how the decision-making is remotely democratic. Or maybe it is democratic but ordinary urban Americans are way more brainwashed somehow. I don't know, I know that where I leave we have very nice and cheap public transportation that is used exclusively by people who can't afford cars, but it's nice because it has these social ads playing, telling that if there's some smelly hobo (literally the ad is showing green noxious fumes!) you should immediately call the police and they will remove them. Which they do and if any politician tried to run on the platform of not infringing hobo rights, they would be laughed at by everyone.

I doubt it. You don't have to be rich to Uber/Bolt everywhere. In fact by the time you can actively shape what the public is allowed/encouraged to vote for you can have a private driver.

In extremely dense cities like London and Tokyo, it is faster to catch an underground train, than it is to travel in a Taxi/Uber. The only option faster than train is "charter a private helicopter", which admittedly some do, but not in great numbers.

And because rich people are there it is clean and safe.

Citation needed. Certain lines are quite good, but other lines are absolutely not clean, and these days I encounter roughly 1 beggar on the trains every time I go to/back from work.

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