Why Public Transportation Sucks in the US
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Published 2017-09-26
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Animation by Josh Sherrington (youtube.com/heliosphere)
Sound by Graham Haerther (www.Haerther.net/)
Thumbnail by Joe Cieplinski (joecieplinski.com/)
Streetcar POV footage courtesy David Lemon
Portland streetcar footage courtesy Schrodinger's Press
Modern streetcar POV footage courtesy Ramsay County
Music: "Slow Lights" by Lee Rosevere, "Namaste" by Audionautix, and "Enigmatic" by Bensound
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All Comments (21)
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I live in Los Angeles, and the first question i got asked in a job interview was "Do you have a car to commute to work?"
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When I stayed over at my american relatives‘ place in California, they were dumbfounded that I (a european) wanted to try out what little of public transpo L.A. offered. They were dumbfounded of course but still let me. After my day tour, they mentioned how riding public transpo in the their state is generally stigmatized and serves to signal others that you‘re either crazy or poor. Sigh.
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"Owning a car = freedom", it only is freedom as long as you can choose to own a car, when it becomes a requirement for the most basic things in life it turns into a burden. Being able to reach your office fast via public transport and shop for groceries in walking distance, while using your car to go on a trip on a weekend = freedom. Having to use your car every single day to get to ANYWHERE is not.
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I live in the Netherlands, most of my friends are in their late 20's and almost no one owns a car. And no one is ever thinking about buying one. It's just not a thing you need.
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and then you have the Japanese rail system, that posts federal apologies for a single train that showed up 6 seconds late
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Car: personal freedom. Freedom to be stuck in traffic jams for hours! :)))
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"Cars are about freedom, they let you go where you want when you want!" Yeah but...so do good public transit systems. That's the whole point.
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Funnily enough I think the whole "personal freedom" thing is starting to work against cars now. With the rise of smart phones, people now pretty much always have something they'd rather be doing than driving. Certainly I know I'd rather be doing stuff on my phone during my commute than having to pay attention to the road. That's probably why we're finally starting to see people push for better public transportation in the US.
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"Access to transportation is the single most important factor in the individual's ability to escape poverty" I live 10 minutes walk from a train station in Sydney, Aus. I have used it since 2007 to get to high school, to get to the two universities i studied at, to travel to the two jobs i've had. I have possibly taken up to ten thousand trips on the train in my entire life and thanks to it, I went from having nothing to eat at lunch every day at school, to a comfortable full time job.
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You realize how bad the situation is when your car breaks down
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when you randomly start having seizures without health insurance and get fired from your job , you realize how important public transportation actually is
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one of the biggest mistakes i made when i travelled to the US was not realising how car-reliant their society is. i wasn't old enough to rent a car, so i could barely visit anywhere cos I had to rely on either walking or the only bus route in the entire town that ran every hour or so, only from 9-4pm. i was completely shocked.
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In Japan if the train runs late, they officially apologize and try to fix it in the future In America, if the bus runs late, they say "Welp, S.O.L! Shouldn't've been poor!"
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When Boston's, NYC's and DC's public transit are considered "Good" by American standards, that's says alot about how low those standards are 😬
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I‘m from Germany and I‘m very glad that I can travel almost every where by bus and train!
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Even though I love my car, this video basically gets it right. Especially with more and more people living in cities, designing a society around cars makes no sense.
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As a British person I was wondering wtf a streetcar was throughout the whole video so I searched it up at the end and found out that it was just a tram 🤦♂️
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I live in Switzerland and when I visited the US I was shocked how hard it was to go anywhere with out a car. I do everything with my bike or with public transport. I regularly commute from one city to an other. (About 70 miles) it takes me about 1.15h from door to door. I grew up using public transportation. I was using it by self and alone when I was 7 or 8. And no my parents aren’t irresponsible. Public transport in Switzerland is safe.
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Anything with the word "public" is shunned in the US, baffling how the country still lives its very own red scare to this day.
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Our cities weren’t built for the car…they were blown up and completely rebuilt for the car.
