If those 50 people are all going to same places than the bus goes. At the same time.
A coworker was taking the bus to get home. 2 hours due to two line changes where they can wait up to 30 minutes for the next bus. I started giving him a ride home when I could.
5 minutes out of my way and cut his commute down to 20 minutes. From 2 hours. That's 120 minutes down to 20 minutes. With just that extra hour of sleep he's much happier.
An extra hour and a half of each day wasted on public transportation.
Public transport is great in cities, but as soon as things get more sparsely populated, you get diminishing returns. Everything takes longer, runs infrequently, and still barely gets you close.
But then if they run more frequently, they'd be empty.
Yet, where I live, they keep introducing hostile rules, new houses can only have one parking space, at a time where kids are having to live with their parents for longer, so their mobility, job opportunities, etc are really hampered. It would be one thing if there was decent public transport infrastructure, but there's literally nothing, just people becoming 'stuck' because those who make the rules often don't think about areas as a whole.
30 mins is pretty jarring even for U.S. standard. Especially during commute time.
In other countries I have been to most buses take at most 15 mins to come. Trains typically take around 5 mins, and much more frequent during rush hour (around 2 to 1 mins per train).
Another problem with U.S. transportation system is the poor investment on train (somehow people are into those "Hyperloop" when a normal subway system has been demonstrated time and time again to already be way more efficient than car). For buses, its speed is limited by traffic, so it is unlikely for bus to be faster than cars.
Another thing I would like to point out is that time is not "wasted" on transport, you can read, browse social media, news, watch videos, things you cannot do in a car. And you can enjoy music with a much better sound system (aka head phones), which is not safe in a car.
Traffic jams would be a whole lot less damaging if they were all electric. Just sitting there with the AC and radio on is a whole lot less emissions compared to fossil fuels.
I prefer a rock solid public transport system, and plenty of safe walking areas and no-car zones. EVs help minimally in the grand scheme, since they are costly to produce, especially the batteries.
I find it more infuriating that there is usually no other option than traffic. If only there was a long distance mode of transit that wasn't prone to frequent traffic and collision
If only there was a long distance mode of transit that wasn’t prone to frequent traffic and collision
If you're in the US, even trains won't help. De/under-regulation means there are over a thousand collisions and/or rail failures every year. Even if passenger trains were given priority, the lax safety and maintenance standards allowed on freight lines would cause monumental delays.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but research shows that adding an extra lane does not typically reduce this kind of traffic. It just makes it wider.
Been there before. We recently had a semi truck tip and spill thousands of frozen French fries across all lanes of the highway. They closed it completely down for hours. People were literally reversing on the highway to back up to the nearest exit. It was terrible
See, as much as I hate Texas and especially TXDOT, I will give it props for it's access roads that run alongside the interstates. Stuff gets too backed up, folks can just drive over the grass to the access road. It'll back the access road up, too, but it'll be moving, at least. Hell, out in west Texas you can see where the locals have made their own exit because the nearest one is a 10+ mile drive out of the way.
I don’t know if this counts as “mildly” infuriating, I’d be freaking OUT with a traffic jam that long, especially if I had somewhere to be at a certain time!
Any large city period.
Seriously, I live in The Netherlands which is the size of a post stamp, even we cannot make public transport work (especially outside of the larger cities), thus we also have to deal with traffic jams. All the comments of the "Fuck Cars" community are quite ignorant on the issue that public transport can only work efficiently in cities, not to connect rural areas to those cities.
This isn't mildly infuriating. Now, if you took a second shot of the traffic in front and there was nothing - just the echo of a brake check an hour earlier. That would be mildy infuriating.
Which is why electric cars will reduce this kind of thing. When you are using a high regen that slows you down you are less likely to hit the breaks which won't trigger people behind you to break.
Electric cars won' make a difference. Braking/accordioning is a human pilot failure. Self-Driving (autonomous) vehicles will reduce this because lidar doesn't get distracted by incoming text messages or road trance.
...until you go plowing into that guy who just whipped in front of you and locked 'em up. I bet he braked at well more than .3 g. Additonally, you'll likely get rear ended since your brake lights won't light. (Technology Connections discusses this in better detail.)
Back in 2017 or whatever that North American solar eclipse was, I drove down to Bend Oregon to view it. After, there was bumper to bumper traffic almost the whole way north, back to Seattle, WA. There was literal bumper to bumper traffic from Bend, OR to Issaquah, WA. That was almost 350 miles and took basically an entire day. It was horrible having to pee on the side of the road in bumper to bumper traffic in the middle of nowhere. Protip? Don't try to drink the Gatorade just to have a pee bottle.
Man, got to love the ability to work from home and not have to deal with this on a daily basis.
There is so much time wasted being caught in stuff like this. One of those F Cars moments.
My last job when Covid hit I got to work from home. It was great but the job sucked and was soul sucking. I got back into my dream job and took up firefighting. I now only commute 8 times a month and it’s before rush hour. Love it!