301–310 of 619 posts
Two months ago I switched jobs and started to go to work on my bycicle because the office is just 1 metro station away from home and I have bycicle way from home to work (which is very unusual in Madrid, by the way). This is probably the best job perk I ever had.
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Not sure why you're getting down-voted as having people talking (often loudly) on their phone on public transport makes it unpleasant for everyone else. I try and save calls for the car part of my commute, but then get accused of only calling cause I have nothing better to do... You do appreciated the relative silence (no one on their phone or talking above a whisper) on trains in Japan. Brisbane trains on the other…
> Not sure why you're getting down-voted Maybe because just speaking on the phone in traffic makes a lot less attentive so you're prone to create accidents.
There are worst things like eating or talking to someone else in the car. (look at the road not the person when you're talking)
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Are you talking about shuttling your kids to school? I know in Japan most kids 6y+ just take themselves on public transport or walking. How is it done in other countries?
Germany: Most (all?) cities have special tickets for pupils. There are separate bus lines in the morning which pick up the pupils from the bus stops and take them directly to school. In the afternoon there are some special lines too, otherwise you just take a normal line with your pupil ticket. That's at least how it worked in my time, like 20+ years ago.
Spent the last 6 months in Seoul and the surrounding cities in Korea. Never needed a car. You can literally do everything without a car, everything is a short walk. I truly believe it makes a huge positive impact on happiness when you can just walk anywhere instead of having to drive. Also you'll notice that in Korea/Japan there are way more small businesses and things to do (eg. karaoke, cafes, etc) because people o…
When I moved to the USA for a few months from Europe, I was surprised by the fact that you simply can't walk to places. There are so huge spaces between things except for maybe city centers. (I was mostly in CA and FL)
I was saved by Uber and Lyft many times just because both my hotel and the office were really far away from public transport.
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Don't let be fooled by the "tourist impression". Staying for some days isn't the same as living in a place, involving commuting to work, bringing children to school, etc Every city looks nice as a Tourist, but then it's hard if you live there and in the false zone of the city (=farest away)
Public transportation is also full of impolite people, un-assimilated people etc... which makes the commute very unpleasant. Taking the bus/metro everyday at the worse hour, in summer, with rednecks all around you is definitely not the good side of transportation. As soon as i'll get a car, i'll never get back into public transportation
I think people on HN seem to underestimate how small of a cross section, the fashionable opinions on HN appeal to and how unrealistic they are, once you bring into full view the jarring realities of modern life and how people cope with them.
Edinburgh has some pretty cool plans for making more streets pedestrianised. It also helps that these streets are popular with tourists so doesn't make sense for cars to be going around a medieval city centre.
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American cities definitely don't look nice as a tourist. SF for example is terrible if you don't Uber everywhere.
Really? SF is one of the best, IMO. You can actually take long walks, it actually has a subway (plus busses, trams), it has sidewalks almost everywhere..... sure, less parks than one would like/ a bit too much concrete, lots of homeless people, etc. but hey, it's a big USA city, what did you expect? Compare it to e.g. the nearby San Jose - SF is so much better that it's not even funny. What US city would you consider…
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I'm personally uncomfortable driving even really nice cars, 'cause you have to pay careful attention to not kill someone. I mean, driving can be fun or exciting - but it's not comfortable or relaxing, I would argue, at least not driving in places where there are other people. On public transit, on the other hand, I can relax and read and pretty safely ignore the world. Worst case someone grabs my kindle or my phone a…
> On public transit, on the other hand, I can relax and read and pretty safely ignore the world. Worst case someone grabs my kindle or my phone and runs. That surely isn't really the worst case. This happened last Friday in Madrid, just days after someone pushed a mother and her child in front of a train in Germany (and killed the child): https://twitter.com/el_pais/status/1157564725015851008 ? Granted, it's still a…
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I like to call my family and girlfriend during my commutes. It’s much nicer to do that in the privacy and comfort of a car than in public transportation. There’s also audiobooks and music.
Oh, so you're that weirdo who always makes everyone around him in the vehicle listen to his loud phone conversations, making it next to impossible to focus on a book, or whatever else they were trying to do. :)
I’m personally not a huge fan of driving everywhere. But I wonder whether HN’s view on this isn’t out of touch with the average middle class American’s. The average American commute is 48 minutes round trip, significantly shorter than France (71 minutes), Italy (65 minutes), or Spain (61 minutes): https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling... That’s mainly because Europe has higher public transit us…
Car ownership rates in cities have nothing to do with being rich enough to own a car. New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the country but has the lowest rate of car ownership. > Viewed from a different perspective, a country where most people can spend 48 minutes a day commuting, because it’s rich enough for everyone to afford a car,[1] might be considered better than one where many people have to endure two-…
I think that's part causation too. Cars are expensive things to own and operate with most of that money disappearing from the local community. The money that would have been spent on cars still goes somewhere and I'm betting most of it goes locally.