this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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American rail doesn't exist outside of like two cities. To take public transit to work, I'd have to walk about 12km to the train station. From there, I could catch a train that runs every hour to downtown. I think that train takes about 45m, but I have no idea how often it runs. From downtown, I could transfer to light rail for 20m, transfer again to a bus for 15m, and then I could walk the last 6 blocks or so. Not counting the 12km walk, it would take at least 1:20 plus time spent waiting on transfers.
Or I could drive there in 45m of horrible traffic.
The part a lot of people miss in these threads is that European commutes are often also an hour on public transit, but that one hour radius is wider and there is actual useful last mile service in the suburbs. That's the big thing the US frequently lacks - the development patterns mean there's no way to run frequent busses that don't just get stuck in traffic. So in the US that one hour transit commute can easily turn into 90 minutes or more if you don't make connections, whereas in European cities it's much easier to plan around.