The bus system in Taiwan is amazing. You see all ages represented from school kids to the elderly. They don't smell and have dedicated lanes in places. There are so many of them that you rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes at any stop. It's a great alternative to the subway for shorter rides.
It seems like cities like NY and San Francisco have the density to support similar systems.
There is a dramatic difference between most European & Asian public transport systems and most non-NYC American public transport systems, though.
Once I stayed with my in-laws in Sanxia Taiwan, an exurb of Taipei. When we wanted to get to Taipei 101 (37km away), we took public transit. When we wanted to get to the historic district (26 km away), we took public transit. When we wanted to get to Tamsui (a bucolic oceanfront suburb, 42km away), we took public transit. When we wanted to get to Banqiao (the main shopping district, 16km away), we took public transit.
From the mid-peninsula, this is equivalent to going to San Francisco; going to downtown San Jose; going to Half Moon Bay; and going to Stanford Shopping Center. You can actually get to the first two through Caltrain, but you'll walk about a mile to get to the Caltrain station, rather than half a block to get to a bus that comes every 10 minutes. You can't effectively get to HMB, Stanford Shopping Center, or any of the other non-city-center through public transit in the Bay Area.
That's what foreigners tend to complain about with the walkability of American cities. It isn't the difficulty of getting from dense, built-up city centers to top tourist destinations. It's the difficulty of getting from common, ordinary residences to the next tier of destinations.
I find cities in Taiwan frustrating to navigate without personal transport, at least a bicycle.
Having lived in Kaohsiung for a bit, I observed that very few people use public transport unless they go to/from intercity rail or airport. Buses in particular are unreliable (mostly used by older people), and MRT alone is obviously not enough for the sparse city.
That has more to do with the middling state of public transit in the US than it does with public transit itself.
In Taiwan, when you land at TPE, there is an express MRT line that connects directly to Taipei Main Station. You can also hop on the High Speed Rail and connect to southern destinations. Bypasses all of the traffic and congestion.
Fantastic way to travel and makes it so much more convenient.
Arrived in Singapore recently and I'm quite impressed with the public transportation system here. My base is the slow Metro transit in Los Angeles and the over crowded system in Manila.
Agreed. I live in Hong Kong which has arguably some of the best public transport in the world - which is great until you are out of a service area of the MTR, then it's undersized packed busses mixed with convoluted bus routes - which even without the heavy road traffic leave you feeling exhausted.
Doing the same commute by car has been a significant quality of life improvement - not least because I have a few square feet to myself while I'm in transit!
I spent a week in Berlin recently, and it shows how a comprehensive mass transit system ought to work. There are subways, trains, streetcars, and buses all linked together. It's a marvelous system. You can get anywhere in the metropolitan area quickly. There's no need to have a car at all.
I am not suggesting that the bus service is essentially for daily life in HK, just that it is remarkably efficient for getting from Sai Wan Ho to Central and back again, for example. It's efficiency would amaze more US residents, who've never seen a bus system so well-funded and well-operated.
FWIW, Sai Wan Ho to the New Territories took me MTR and light rail, where I was ultimately picked up in a car by the person I was visiting. People living in the New Territories seem to find a car nearly-essential, but that seems to be because MTR doesn't run out there, and the bus service is not nearly as well-developed as Hong Kong Island or Kowloon.
Even the best bus systems are slow and inconvenient compared to cars. I went to see Taylor Swift in Tokyo this year, and took the bus to the subway. It was timely, clean, and efficient—far better than anything America could ever be able to do. But I still took an Uber back, because I wanted to get home quickly.
> a major North American city that is known for having good public transit
Compared to most large East and Southeast Asian cities (Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore), public transport in American cities is generally lousy, especially if a 15-minute drive (that's about 10 – 15km, maybe) turns into a multiple-hour affair. At that rate, one might as well walk.
Bus vs car is just a miniature version of hub-and-spoke vs direct flight. Outside of very dense cities (Seoul, Tokyo, New York, etc.), mass transit isn't a very good idea because humans care about trip latency. A lot.
That being said, there's probably still a place for busses during rush hour in a lot of places.
Buses on dedicated lanes have found to be cheaper and as fast as subways in some cities. But they're not as prestigious and it's harder to ensure that the next government won't destroy the system by opening it up for other vehicles.
Trains make sense for longer distances (more efficient) but in cities, buses work as well and can be used more flexibly.
SF has bus-only lanes everywhere. The bus is still very slow, even if you don't have to wait, because of all the extra stops. I'm looking at visiting parts of western Europe where supposedly public transit is good, but actually it's far slower than driving. The only way driving ever ends up being less convenient is if there's constrained parking. It's just very hard to beat a car that can go directly from point A to B.
What also beats mass transit is walking, if a city is laid out such that you don't usually need to walk very far.
It seems like cities like NY and San Francisco have the density to support similar systems.
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