Driving is just one mode of transportation. Buses can take 3 or 4 times as much time to reach any destination, which is far too much to be a viable alternative to people with a choice.
Ask yourself if you would like to spend 45 minutes aboard the bus system as opposed to 15 min. in a car
> Ask yourself if you would like to spend 45 minutes aboard the bus system as opposed to 15 min. in a car
Ask yourself how the options would be different if cities weren't so focused on cars.
Edit: To be less vague - my choices to get to work are 20 minutes on bike basically for free, 25 minutes via metro for ~$100 a month, or 40 minutes by car for about $500 a month in tolls and parking plus thousands a year for the car itself and maintenance. There's no reason this can't be the norm in the US aside from local politicians deciding they don't want it.
Yes I acknowledged this in my previous comment. But it could be normal for every city with some pretty simple changes that no mayor is willing to make.
If a full lane is dedicated to buses instead then that bus would be much faster than the cars stuck in traffic, while moving significantly more people.
In general, I agree with you. In specific, I drive almost everywhere despite being a supporter of public transit, because I can't afford to live near a skytrain station and the 'last mile' adds an hour to a trip. If we had more buses, and most routes had dedicated lanes, sure. But since we're half-assing it all, more gridlock is just more gridlock. Which, among other things, means more pollution.
edit: compare to a city like Seattle, which has similar weather, hills, density, etc. A notable feature of the transit centers there is a Park & Ride: a place where folks can park their cars (for free, when I lived there) and get into transit. Vancouver does not have anything of the sort. If you want to park somewhere and take transit into the downtown core, there are extremely limited options. So you get too many drivers. Disincentivizing cars usage is great when there is a viable alternative -- in the absence of such an alternative, it's just flagellation for its own sake.
Sure, you're making a reasonable choice given the current reality. But it doesn't have to be that way. When I say driving should be difficult, I don't mean just make the roads worse without any other changes. I mean improve active transportation, transit, and housing density/affordability. In the short term, each improvement here will cause some pain in making driving slightly harder, but after sufficient time the other options will be good enough that nobody will miss driving.
Great. Driving should not be convenient in cities.