• Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    The thing that never ceases to astound me in the US is that the barrier for entry to public transport is so hilariously low, they have effectively nothing in most places so it’s absolutely trivial to quintuple the amount of public transport users in a few years if they just tried, and yet most places do NOTHING

    There is such an unmet demand for public transport that a bus startup should be eminently viable, but nope, no one even seems to be trying.
    Meanwhile in europe we already generally have at worst decent public transport and yet companies like flixbus exist, which i don’t even understand how they have ridership when they run routes parallel to railways that take like twice as long while obviously being less comfortable…

    • hono4kami@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      flixbus exist, which i don’t even understand how they have ridership when they run routes parallel to railways that take like twice as long while obviously being less comfortable…

      Would you mind explaining more? How’s Flixbus?

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        so the way public transport generally works —in sweden at least— is that the bulk of it is managed by the regional government and uses a zone system (like the oyster cards in london i think). Then ontop of that there’s SJ, the national train operator, which has its own generally separate ticket system that is more traditional where you book a specific departure between two stations.

        Then outside of this you also have fully private public transport companies, of which the major ones are VR trains between stockholm-gothenburg, snälltåget which runs night trains from the north to south (sometimes down to hamburg/berlin), and flixbus which runs a bunch of routes throughout sweden.

        so the strange thing about flixbus is that it runs a bunch of routes that take you between the same places as the trains can, in a less comfortable vehicle, and absolutely fucking hilariously slower.
        For example gothenburg-stockholm is 3-4 hours by train and flixbus takes 6-7 hours.

        There are some reasons i can see to opt for flixbus, most obvious being that it does serve places where getting to the trains is otherwise inconvenient and it can be like half the price, but it still astonishes me that a completely for-profit company finds that a sensible thing to operate here.

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    The problem it can’t solve is that rich people might have to interact with mere humans. The car in a tube seats four and locks, so there’s zero chance you’ll have to sit next to a minority.

    I wonder if rail would be more appealing to them if the coaches were designed as multiple isolated cells that seated 4-6, rather than straight-through corridors that permit mingling. (I’ve seen some old designs like that, in German narrow-gauge form)

    • hono4kami@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      The problem it can’t solve is that rich people might have to interact with mere humans.

      I can relate. We, in Indonesia, have a problem where politicians, whose never even ride a train before, gets to decide the policies about public transport, and those who gets the consequenece is low-middle class who uses public transport. There was a meme from a year ago where a tone-deaf politician says the overcrowded trains in Jakarta doesn’t exist even though it overcrowding is clearly a problem in regional line (KRL) due to lack of trains.

      I wonder if rail would be more appealing to them if the coaches were designed as multiple isolated cells that seated 4-6, rather than straight-through corridors that permit mingling.

      Assuming we’re talking about short distance trains, absolutely no, lol. It’s just space inefficient. I will understand if it is a long distance trains, and it is a thing.