This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The pro-car post was not that good and deserving of quality contributions IMO. Really shows the biases of this place. Insane pro car legislature was a thing here long before cities became the dismal wrecks that they are today. I think honestly people also just need to grow a bit of a spine. I live in Baltimore where we have a limited public transit system that I sometimes use (I prefer to bike). There's always an unsavory character using it at the same time as me, but absolutely nothing has ever happened. Maybe this would not be true if I were an attractive young woman, but I doubt there are many users here who fit that description either. People need to learn to be a bit more inconvenienced and uncomfortable. Biking is always a suitable alternative in major eastern urban areas (Boston, NYC, and DC all have good bike infrastructure) if you really don't want to deal with public transit. I get that cars are convenient and make people feel powerful and in control, but they impose such a big negative externality on the rest of us non-car users (pollution, taxes, use of public space, not to mention the very large amount of deaths caused by accidents, far higher than that caused by urban villainy on public transit) that I have a lot of sympathy for NYC trying to price car use correctly. I get that this is not feasible in Texas or in most parts of California, but posters here are so car-brained that they can't get on board with the government trying to address the problem in place where it is actually feasible to fix it. Guys, the subway is not very dangerous during work hours, and the problems with it (congestion, speed) can all be fixed with investment.
The problem, at least in major cities, is no that the public finds public transport “inconvenient”. They’re quite frankly unsafe for normal people to use. Full of homeless people, gang members, insane people, it’s just not something that is going to catch on as long as getting accosted on a train is a reasonable possibility. Europe has a wonderful train system that seems pretty easy to use. But tge biggest draw is that day or night, a person can get on a train and be sure that it will be safe and sanitary. And because it isn’t full of homeless and criminals, people don’t think about the trains as a pipe of such people coming to their area. In the USA, trains are limited to parts of the city that nobody wants to go to — in large part because property owns do not want to import those problems. In my area, it is confined only to a small portion of the city center. You can’t ride it to work because it doesn’t go to the county where most office workers live — and they absolutely do not want it to come anywhere near them.
Until subways and trains are as safe in America as they are in Europe or Korea, Theres just no there, there. You can’t build more because people paid a handsome some to get away from criminals, drug users, and homeless people and have no intention of allowing trains near them because they don’t want a pipeline for such people to come into their neighborhood. Car centric neighborhoods are in part a defense strategy — one way to keep criminals out is to require a car to get there. Poor people generally don’t have cars, homeless and druggies definitely don’t, so you can keep your area low crime be requiring a car for access.
I am pro car, and think the anti-car people are generally correct about the safety issue not being as big a deal. But I think they are utterly stupid about the convenience part. Most of my car rides to see friends/family are 20-60 minutes. With public transit, assuming 0 minutes wasted at transfers, those balloon to 60-200 minutes, often with a required taxi at at least one end of the trip. This is not merely about underfunding or city design, its about the fact that people don't live in segregated ethnic communities in America. As much as you might love it, your mom doesn't live 3 blocks away, and even if magically she did, your wife's mom almost certainly does not. Mass transit is exactly that, MASS. It can't operate niche routes such as "MaiqTheTrue's house to his sister's house", but you need to make that trip 10, 15, 20 times a year. And that is just one of many.
More options
Context Copy link
Define "major." Living in the NC Triangle, I wouldn't be hanging around the main bus depots for safety/annoyance reasons, but primarily the bus system is kinda useless if you're not going on fairly limited routes or have hours to waste.
When I first moved here from a city with much better transit (SLC, also vastly more bikeable), I tried mapping it out- I could almost walk my commute as fast as the bus system was going to take.
More options
Context Copy link
I want to chime in and say that, while you're not wrong for some people, that's not always the problem. For me in my 20s, living in a midsize American city, I felt plenty safe riding public transit. The real problem was it was just so damn inconvenient. Riding a bike was faster, especially if i needed a transfer. And of course it totally shut down at night.
But i do appreciate how bad the safety is in some places.
One of my least favorite memories from when I lived in Seattle was any time there were big events like hempfest and pride, bus transit slowed to a crawl. I worked close to the Space Needle, and lived near 26th and Madison, and the bus already took a slow 30 minutes or so on a good day. On days like when hempfest was going on it was literally faster to walk over Capitol Hill to get home, by a huge margin. Yet even on these days, cars were clearly traveling waaaay faster than the bus.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link