> the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation.
I'm wagering that most everyone who thinks this way is mentally comparing against their most familiar American city. In Germany and Switzerland (and probably others), the trains and buses run on a schedule, and if a train is more than about 30 seconds late, you'll see the locals starting to anxiously cross-check their watches with each other.
When you can plan down to the minute, using public transport becomes much more convenient and efficient (This is easier with trains than buses, though the buses do stop and wait at stops until it's time for them to proceed).
>> the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation
>With a set schedule, I can just go to the stop, wait a minute, and a bus will come – most lines are running every 5 or 10 minutes anyway (or 15 to 20min in the suburbs).
Your European is showing... ;)
In Canada and the US, except some core routes in the urban centre of major cities, you will never see 5 to 10 minute frequency. I feel like this lack of schedule would have far more benefit for North American commuters.
I used to take the bus every day in Prague (Czech Republic) for about 6 years. It was almost always on schedule in both the morning and afternoon.
I don't know anywhere near enough to argue why in general. But not having drivers sell tickets, and route planning certainly help. For example, shorter routes are guaranteed to reduce variance. But I'm not sure what the downsides are.
>The next time a New Yorker feels like complaining that they had to wait 20 whole minutes for a 7 train in far out Queens, they might do well to remember that most cities in the world wouldn’t have a station there at all.
Living in Germany, almost all the far out places have train stations. And 30min to 1h wait times between trains.
>they run so frequently no one bothers to check the schedule
Great if you live on a route popular enough that they do that. You are screwed otherwise. Even if you do live on a popular route, it also doesn't solve the problem if you want to go somewhere unpopular.
>I do not find it particularly urgent to make long-distance trips - presumably for leisure - within ten minutes of making the decision.
Good for you, but not that relevant for people that do. Waking up Saturday morning and deciding to drive out to a destination like this, spend the night, and then drive back the next day is not considered unreasonable.
>The bigger question is - why is it strictly necessarily to have to use it for ten minutes - just to get milk?
Because I need milk for a recipe I just found online and I don't want to wait 15 minutes for the next train, ride for 10 minutes, shop for 5 minutes, wait 15 minutes for the return train, and then ride for 10 minutes. And those times even generously assume I live right on a stop and there is a store right on a stop.
> the claim that public transit only really serves commuters is not universally true.
It is always partially true, but each city is different. People who travel in the very early hours (like 2:30am) always have problems, (even the best cities run reduced and thus inconvenient service for maintenance reasons, most give up on transit completely). While those hours are not common it is safe to bet everyone reading this has had reason to travel at those times at least one night in their life.
In far too many cities, (and not just in the US) additional service is run during the peaks. By additional service I mean they run more buses/trains as opposed something with more seats (that is longer). This means people who travel at non-peak hours have to be careful about when they travel to ensure there is service without waiting. Of course if the wait is still less than 5 minutes nobody cares, but as waits get longer - humans don't have time for that.
> They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives.
So you're suggesting… they shouldn't follow a schedule?
The bus only ever needs to wait when there are no people getting on/off the bus at multiple stops in a row (e.g. at night-time), so then those stops will be skipped. As a consequence, the bus will be a few minutes ahead of time and so at some point the driver will stop and wait to make sure the bus is still following the schedule.
Sometimes the bus also needs to stop because drivers take their mandatory break. This usually happens at the end of the line, though, before they return or go on under a different line number.
In any case: I have yet to see a public transport system as good as Berlin's. Yes, it might still take you a while to get from A to B (it is a big city after all) but which other major city in the world offers reliable 24/7 public transport with great coverage and is not completely overloaded all the time? The only thing I dislike is the price for single tickets which is between 3.00€ and 3.80€ depending on the zone. (That used to be a kebap!) IMO they should finally put an end of all the free-riding (by both Berliners and tourists alike) and introduce electronic ticket checks at every stop.
Sure, but using public transport is a heavy trade-off in time. Where I am now, at peak hour a train (to my chosen destination) arrives every 15m. The bus/shuttle to the nearest station arrives as often as they can, which can be between 10m and 15m.
My last trip (from suburbs to a CBD +-20km away) during peak hour involved 30m total of waiting for the next shuttle/bus/train. That's 30m without the actual time in transit (on the train its quite fast - about 10m transit. On the bus, it is not, about 15m transit because it has many stops to make).
The next day I drove instead, and took a total of 30m to get to my destination.
Commuter transit systems work wonderfully for people who want to do things during transit but otherwise have no other use of their time.
For me, and a lot of people who opted to live in child-friend homes in child-friendly suburbs, an extra 60m-90m spent in transit is 60m-90m of time we lost with our family.
I don't care that I can read during that time; I can always simply read after my kid has gone to bed after all. I care that I get to spend those few extra hours per day with my kid.
Although I've only visited, I thought the public transportation in France was very good. Those buses move super fast. In America it's common to have to ride a bus for over an hour to get to your destination that's not that far by car standards. Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say this?
These two really depend on the system and frequency; non-issue for high-frequency underground systems, say. There'll be another one along in 3 minutes.
> Staying at the party after the last subway: the crowd changes a lot.
This depends a lot on the system as well. In Dublin, traditionally, we only had night buses on weekends, they were infrequent, and they used weird Frankenstein routes (they'd take like five normal routes, and make a route that passed _all the stops of all five_) so they took hours. In the last few years, a bunch of normal routes have started going 24 hours; makes things a lot easier. I was recently out inconveniently far from home, at 4 in the morning, resigning myself to an hour walk home, or else trying to somehow get a taxi, when I noticed that there was a bus coming in ten minutes at the stop outside the bar, which would bring me to five minutes walk from home.
> Well have you heard of these things called buses and trains? They're awesome.
They ARE awesome, but often come at the expense of time. I live in Tokyo, which has an amazing public transportation network.
Including walking to/from stations and bus stops, taking the bus/train costs me around 80 minutes of my day each way -- that's over 2 1/2 hours of my day.
If I take a taxi directly from my apartment to work, it takes about 15-20 minutes to get directly to work. Let's call it 40 minutes of my day.
I can get back two hours of my life every single day with point-to-point transport. That's two hours I could be catching up with friends, reading a book, cooking, exercising, etc. It matters so often to me that I end up paying the 4000 yen or so it costs to take a taxi twice a day a horrifying number of times.
This is to say nothing of the fact that I can sit in the taxi and read a book or something rather than being crammed and crushed in public transport.
> You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result.
You should meet some of my old coworkers in large cities in Asia... (you don't SIT on the train at all in rush hour!)
In a smaller city it can work great! But in a small NA city, everything is a 5-to-10-minute drive from everything and everyone's also happy about that. That's easy mode. But London, NY, Paris, Beijing, etc - those are the cases that are somewhat broken everywhere, affordability-wise and commute-wise.
> I don't understand why America hates rail so much.
Because in America, transit is welfare for poor people, and acts like it. Busses in small cities in Germany coordinate schedules to optimize transfers. Busses in secondary US cities just don’t shown up sometimes because the driver decided to clock out early. There is no accountability, due to the potent combination of the fact that the primary constituency is politically marginalized to begin with and also are not paying the taxes that fund the systems.
> Of course they shouldn't follow a strict schedule.
> Maybe it's just a cultural thing. You value how much the ticket costs and whether the timing is accurate. I value my personal time.
What an interesting clash of cultures. I don't fully understand your point though, if you can't be sure the bus arrives at 10:23 h, you have to come earlier to the station and wait, no?
See what he means. There is no reason transport needs to force a schedule life on you. Good transit is frequent enough that when you decide to go you just walk out the front door to the station and wait for the ride to show up - it will be soon enough.
But you have never seen that so it hasn't occurred to you that it is possible.
I'm wagering that most everyone who thinks this way is mentally comparing against their most familiar American city. In Germany and Switzerland (and probably others), the trains and buses run on a schedule, and if a train is more than about 30 seconds late, you'll see the locals starting to anxiously cross-check their watches with each other.
When you can plan down to the minute, using public transport becomes much more convenient and efficient (This is easier with trains than buses, though the buses do stop and wait at stops until it's time for them to proceed).
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