You have speed, cost, and safety to contend with.

Cars are faster (direct to destination), cheaper for some trips (even including maintenance), and about equal in safety; more accidents, but much fewer muggings.

So, want to boost public transit? Start beating cars in those categories.

• Speed - Making roads suck in order to prioritize public transit is a low blow and not giving this cause credibility. It’s stirred up a ton of animosity. Cities have adopted a “can’t win so let’s be a dick” strategy. But where this can beat cars is high speed rail. As a car guy, I really look forward to that! Whoa, I know.

• Cost - Make it all free. Seriously, it’s public infrastructure. Pay for it with taxes. Our county already spends $150+ million a year making streets suck for a miniscule minority. Dump that crap into busses and light rail and we got ourselves a functioning town. Hell, the Bay Area already earmarked $1.4 TRILLION with a T for the next 25 years.

• Safety - My female friends ALL have stories about public transport. They range from forced conversations, sexual comments, and even overhearing detaills of how the two men in the seat behind will attack her. Yeah, she drives everywhere now. Point is, safety has to be enforced and it hasn’t had a good track record here. Not to mention there is a huge public service campaign right now plastering busses with banners that say “Human trafficking happens here”.

facepalm

Yeah, that’s the message you want to send…

So public transport, pick 2 of 3 categories and do better than cars and you’ll attract riders. Oh, and stop being a jerk to everyone else pretty please with a cherry on top.

Public transit is a service. In an ideal world it would be free. In a less than ideal world it should be as cheap as possible.

I think there’s a reasonable debate about having a token fare to make vehicles feel safer for passengers but, tbh, the bus only becomes an unsafe place when cities don’t offer places for people without anywhere to go someplace to avoid the rain/snow/cold/heat if a city has public spaces for folks without a place to call home public transit could probably be free without any ill effect.

Honestly public transport should be free

Reducing the fare wont get me on the bus. In my city there is a catch 22. There isn’t enough riders to justify routes and there isn’t enough routes to justify riding. I would save $150 a month if I took the bus. But I would spend 100 more hours a month on my commute.

It takes me 2 hours to travel by bus where it takes me 30 minutes by car in my city. I can’t afford to drive so I cycle. Badly planned routes by for profit bus companies is not how to create a useful transit service.

The real kicker is that the same company does the buses in the neighboring cities with more social clout and they are really good and win awards. People with cars there bus most of the time. They know how to make a good bus network. They choose not to. Our city has more people, even, but they alienated the drivers so thoroughly, it would take a generation of completely overhauled good service to rebuild a trusting ridership base beyond the desperately poor. They’ve built themselves this super expensive problem just to save a few bucks 40 years ago.

I’m in Kenmore WA. My commute is to Everett WA. Taking my Prius it’s like $3 bucks (average $1.5 both ways) from my house to my job in 25 minutes. To take the bus it would take 3 hours. I know this because a co-worker does it due to DUI driving from a slightly different location obviously. And it costs more. So yeah if I save some money I might do it. Like if it was 1 dollar, then I would have like 50 or 60 bucks at the end of the month.