Originally Posted by
KraneXL
If I might add Americans have a love of cars, and to most, the car is a symbol of success and wealth.
Most of our cities were built around an infrastructure dependent on the private vehicle; and unlike many cities in Europe and around the world, America is sparse relative to populations in Europe and its narrow roads built thousands of years ago.
But it goes even further than that. Nevertheless, you hit the nail on the head with the most prominent causes, and for lack of interest and support in public transit.
Now this is pretty civil. Still with all of the reasons we stick in words like equitable transportation as if that is a real goal. In this country and culture or cultures it is just the most comfortable transportation. The bus comes when someone in an office decides it is best to come and leaves when someone in an office says it should leave. And that is how the drivers are trained and evaluated by supervisors that may be following them around. The mass transit mantra is, “there are reasons a bus can run late, but no excuse for one to run hot.”
Such limitations directed at the customer are not the only ones that fall on deaf ears. Often bus companies seem impotent to deal with customer complaints on issues like these. To be efficient the bus cannot seem to go from point A to point B it must stop at all 26 letters picking up and dropping off human cargo in the rain or hot sun maybe even snow or wind, blocks from where people are trying to get to.
And what do the cousins in cars get? A place for the coffee they got at the drive through. A sound system almost as good as the one at home. And yes at a cost. But a cost most have already budgeted for.
With 8 to 9 households having access to a vehicle 8 out of ten might see Personal vehicles as equatable.
But more than that there isn’t a big difference between how we haul people in a bus and how we ship cattle or sheep. The driver isn’t there as a monitor but simply to haul the cargo and get back to the yard.
I don’t know what the solution is or if there is one. Updating buses more often, headsets like on airplanes. Assigned seats and individual controls for heat or cool might help. Maybe add a bus marshal who knows? But while it may be better than walking the bus leg of mass transit may need the most work to improve its image.
Just thinking here. My sister was a bus driver and is now retired. She doesn’t ride the bus now at all. For at least one of the reasons I mentioned, not leaving when she is ready nor coming back when she wants.