If you think your city is old and not designed for cars, come visit Boston. You can take the train.
Comment on There's a new toll I'll have to pay to drive anywhere.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks agoEven in NYC (where driving is particularly slow) it’s still usually significantly faster to drive than it is to take mass transit unless you’re traveling within Manhattan or riding on an express train and not making any transfers. The trips I frequently take are about twice as fast by car as by mass transit, so from my point of view I am forced to take mass transit (when I have nowhere to park at my destination) while people outside the city have the luxury of driving everywhere.
I’m not going to get into my opinion of how pleasant (or not) taking mass transit is compared to driving, because that’s subjective. However, I will note that according to the MTA’s own survey, a little over half of the people who do take mass transit are dissatisfied by it.
I’m not going to claim that mass transit isn’t necessary here. The city has an old layout not designed for cars and so it wouldn’t be able to function if everyone had to drive. That doesn’t imply that mass transit is pleasant or convenient.
akilou@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I used to live in the Boston area, but out by I95. That’s actually where I learned how to drive. The Boston subway is a lot less gross than the New York subway, but I still only went to Boston about once a year. Frankly, there wasn’t anything in Boston that was worth getting on the subway. However, Cambridge and Somerville weren’t too bad to drive to, as long as I had a plan for where to park.
Sergio@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Fam, I felt kind of bad that your honest feedback about the new congestion toll has been downvoted so much. And if you truly found nothing in Boston (and presumably Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Allston, etc.) that interested you then… OK, I can respect people’s differences. And if you say walking to work through Manhattan would somehow be bad, and that the only reason you live there is to be close to work… sure, there are people like that, I get it.
But I think your situation is kind of like living in Hawaii and then saying it’s unfair that you can’t just drive to the mainland.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I want to clarify that I thought that Cambridge and Somerville were pretty nice - nicer than where I lived at the time. I had friends in Cambridge and I enjoyed visiting them, but I didn’t know anyone in Boston so I never felt like I had any reason to go there. I actually saw more of Boston earlier this year when a friend invited me to go there with her as a tourist than I ever did during the six years that I lived in Massachusetts. The waterfront was pretty, there was an Italian bakery with really good cannoli, and overall the city was cleaner and less crowded than NYC. I don’t have any particular desire to go to Boston again, but that’s because I generally don’t enjoy the things that people do in cities rather than because of anything wrong with Boston in particular.
I do see the irony in the fact that I live in a place that tens of millions of tourists visit every year but I really don’t like living here. I’m here because this is where my relatives are and they’re not going to leave. (I tried to persuade them to, but it really would be very difficult for them.) I admit that while I know that many people like being in big cities, I don’t really understand why. The tourist attractions presumably get boring quickly and after that, what’s left?
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 weeks ago
Move to Houston then where the city was designed for the car and you can drive in traffic every day and park in massive parking structures whenever you like. It’s a very odd opinion that you choose to live in the only city that focuses on people and mass transit in this country, and complain that one of the best things about it is the one thing that is unique. Go live in Texas if you like driving. Go live in LA and drive on the 5 where cars were at the center of their city planning. Sounds like your dream. You can have 20 lanes of constant traffic, 30 story tall parking garages, just like you dream of.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I live in NYC to support (and have the support of) my relatives, not because I want to. I also never said that I was rich. Even without the toll, driving in Manhattan is at the edge of what I can reasonably spend. Just the parking costs several times more than all my other discretionary spending put together.
I grew up in a Texas suburb and it was pretty nice (except for the humidity) but I don’t have first-hand experience with driving in a place like Houston or LA. I know that there’s a lot of traffic, but I’m genuinely curious about whether it’s really slower than mass transit in NYC is.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 weeks ago
If you live in Manhattan, congrats, you’re doing better than the vast majority of the country financially. Even with dependents, you’re doing much much better.
I’m genuinely curious about whether it’s really slower than mass transit in NYC is.
There’s no way to know because no other cities in North America have one like NYC. No where has mass transit. I’m in Seattle, we have 2 (disconnected) light rail lines. Houston has 3 light rail lines for the entire city. LA has a metro that doesn’t even connect to the airport yet. You want to know why you’re being downvoted to hell? It’s because you live in the only place in the entire country with an actual, working metro service and you don’t want to ride it because it’s slightly dirty sometimes, or you might be forced to interact with other people. Let me tell you, I travel to NYC regularly, and I wish we had a metro system like yours. I sit in traffic for 1.5 hours each way to get to work, and I live 7 miles away from it. And Seattle has a “good” metro system compared to the vast majority of the country. Last time I was in New York I happily stepped over a pile of human shit to get on the train, and I still got across the city in less than 30 minutes. How many people here have to tell you, you have a golden ticket with your metro service, the ability to go anywhere in your city at any time for $2 and change, and you’re trying to convince all of us that it’s actually not that great.
Do you know what I’d give to not have to drive? To not have to get in a car every day to go to work? Even if it took longer? To not have to white-knuckle drive, to not have to maintain a vehicle, to not have to sit there day after day. A train would be a godsend, and we’re finally starting to get a working one in Seattle but we’re decades away from a system that can get me to more places than the Airport, downtown, or the university.
The most ironic thing is that the tax you’re paying is literally to improve the subway, to make it cleaner, safer, to finish the second avenue line, and for maintenance, but you probably still will convince yourself that it’s not worth it.
Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Cities shouldn’t be designed for cars. They should be designed for people. I get it. They’ve added a tax and that’s inconvenient. I agree.
I live in a European city with a medieval layout. I’m happy they started banning cars. Our city is more liveable without than with cars.