People seem confused, but this seems very reasonable to me. Consider flying to some far away location. Would you rather
A) A short flight from your local airport to a nearby hub and then transfer to a long haul flight to the far away location
B) A long flight from your local airport to a far away hub and then transfer to a short flight to get to your final destination.
If something goes wrong, its likely to happen at the transfer point. If something goes wrong, you want to be in a place where you have the most resources available to you. Usually being close to home affords you the most resources/options. Stakes are much lower for commuter train travel, but it still rings true for me.
I think you're on the right track, but I'd argue it's even more abstract than this. Assuming a transfer represents uncertainty in arrival time, do you want it early or later in your trip? If the transfer is near the end of your journey, it means the uncertainty is ahead of you for most of the trip. Even if the early part of your trip is going smoothly, you still don't know if you'll arrive on time. On the other hand, if you get your transfer over with early in your trip, you can experience the rest of your journey with more confidence you'll arrive as expected. It's not so much that you have more options closer to home, it's that less of your trip is in the uncertainty zone.
For me it's more about emotional fatigue broadly. Transfers are annoying for any number of reasons, risk of lateness being only one of many. I would much rather front-load the annoyance and then get to relax, than to have to deal with annoyance after already traveling a long time.
For me it's that I want the most inflexible leg of the trip first. I'll often get a local bus to a railway station then get a long distance train. The trains are infrequent and it's cheaper to book a specific train in advance, so if a journey is bus then train I have to get an early bus to ensure that bus delays won't make me miss my train. Whereas going the other way I can step off the train and get whichever bus happens to be next, so train then bus is a shorter journey time.
it is easier to sort out alternatives if i am already close to the destination. when i have transfers near the start i have to be very careful to ensure that i don't miss the main part of the trip. where as i often don't even bother to look up transfers at the destination until i arrive. i'll just take whatever is available.
on a recent long flight where i was in a different city than the airport i actually spent a night in the airport city to avoid troubles on the way to the city.
but the problem in the article seems to be just about this: very inflexible transfer options at the destination.
I can relate to what you describe from personal experience. I definitely want to mitigate earlier than later on my trip, even for a train ride from the suburbs where i live and downtown where I work, which is about 2 hours now (the train schedule is messed up with a new train line that is late on delivery and way over budget (public budget)). That's why I really enjoy remote work, I don't have to think about that stuff anymore.
I think its anxiety. A transfer near home is safe maybe even familiar. A transfer far away feels risky, even dangerous, where mishaps could be more likely.
On international flights, it’s not just familiarity, but the fact that I’ll be sleep-deprived and jet lagged at the end of a long flight. Making decisions about how to fix problems in unfamiliar circumstances with my brain half-functional is not fun. At least near home I’ve thought about alternative transit beforehand.
I live my life by front-loading the work. I work hard early in the day so that in the evening I can relax. I tackle the complicated part of projects first. Traveling isn’t any different. Is it anxiety? Maybe.
But I don’t think it’s about distance from home. I’ve got nearly as many options in Cincinnati as I do in Denver.
I think that there is something else at play - something like arrival anticipation paradox - the final descent and taxi to the terminal feel a lot more tense than the 8 hours in flight before.
100% of my flights from Europe to the SF are A) and 100% of my flights from the SF to Europe are B). Quite frankly the deciding factor here is that the factor that outweighs everything is that transferring at a European airport is speedy, luggage stays checked and I don't need to go through security. Transferring in most of the US from an international to a regional flight is a much more involved undertaking.
The same kind of thinking for me applies to a lot of public transport too. I pick based on how annoying transferring is.
But you are also in SF, so you are already at a Hub of sorts that is well connected and is going to get you at least to a close by airport in Europe. If you were living in Seattle which is less connected to Europe than SF, you would be doing B more often.
In scheduling a trip from Seattle to Tokyo, direct in the way there (as it should be!) but on the way back I have to transfer in Minneapolis. I don’t think I could have flown to Osaka or something to get direct at a reasonable price.
Do you have Global Entry? It’s open to citizens of many countries and you can feasible get off the plane and be going through security (past immigration) in under 10 minutes. I wish other countries offered a Global Entry experience.
I think programs like Global Entry are one of the main reasons American airports are usually so bad. When most frequent flyers can avoid the default experience, nobody really cares about fixing it. In a well-run airport, everyone gets an experience similar to Global Entry by default.
most other countries have a customs/security process that is as fast as global entry. So everyone gets a good treatment most of the times. It's not pay for convenience, its a fair treatment for all. I honestly think global entry is a backwards solution to the problem, and only makes it worse for non paying people
Other countries have a more straightforward entrance protocol, I've never been stuck too long (I mean, except in case of strikes) in a customs queue in Europe
I take your point for long-distance travel, but the same argument doesn't really make sense to me in the commuter context. if something goes wrong with the second leg of my commute, I probably want to figure out a different way to get to work, not turn around and go home. either way, I'd just end up taking a taxi, bus, or both. as long as it doesn't happen often, it's not a big deal.
personally, I am primarily optimizing my commute for low average travel time and variance. I'll always pick the fastest option that allows me to walk out of my door at the same time every day and get to work on time for >90% of trips. practically, that equates to planning transit where the second leg has very short headways, regardless of where the transfer happens.
Actually, with the week divided between in-office and wfh nowadays, my most common reaction to something going wrong with my commute is to turn around and go home to work from there.
What's your intuition for how many people do have this luxury, and what context do you think it holds in?
My company has fully embraced flexibility, so even though many do work in the office it is completely accepted that some days they just won't. Other people in my social circles seem to have similar setups, but I've got no idea how far that extends outside of my bubble - not even in the rest of my city let alone the country or wordlwide.
Something like 60% of jobs can't be performed remotely. And of the 40% remaining, I think it's safe to say not all of them are allowed to be remote (due to office politics / management bullshit).
Given that not all jobs that can be remote are remote, and that the majority of jobs can't be remote (retail, manufacturing, agriculture, etc), I see good reasons to believe the vast majority of people don't have the option of working remote at their current job, anywhere in the world.
For the commuter example (at least in the US), often the first leg is a drive (in a car) to the train station. When the commuter-rail train gets to its destination, you don't have the car anymore, so you want to be as close to your destination as possible. Even then, if I have to take a local train from there, and something goes wrong with it, at least I can probably get a taxi or something.
Regardless, in your airline example, I would probably want (B), not (A). If I were to choose (A), and there was a problem with my short-haul local flight, I'm probably missing my long-haul connection, which will be more difficult to re-arrange. If I take the long-haul flight first, and something gets messed up with the short-haul connection at the destination, I likely have more options, possibly even including a train or car. Sure, the worst case might be worse (I get stuck at the connecting airport and need to get a hotel overnight), but I think the average case is probably better.
Sure, if I want to bail on my trip if anything goes wrong, the short-haul-first approach works better, but I don't think there are many situations where I'd want to bail rather than finding another way to get there.
But overall I'm not sure the main issue is when things go wrong. For commuting, there are still benefits to the happy path when the connection is closer to the origin. If the train station is next door to my house, but the station on the other end is 15 miles from the office, that's still a pain to deal with. The opposite is much easier.
Transfer can also be exhausting. I would rather have it done early so when I get out of the long haul flight I can directly go to the hotel.
For all my EU->US (and back) flights, if I have to transfer I always do it in Frankfurt/Zurich/Heathrow, rather than US. The fact the airports and lounges are nicer helps.
If you're just talking about immigration lines, that seems not correct at all. I've definitely seen much longer wait times at quite a few non-US airports than the non-citizen lines at most US airports.
Aside from that, at least you don't have to clear immigration to leave the US. I always thought it was super weird that you need "permission" to leave many other countries, which adds a bunch more unpredictable time to the airport experience, beyond what's already there with the security lines.
And LAX is not exactly a great example; it's one of the worst airports in the US. SFO, EWR, IAD, and even JFK (to name a few) aren't anywhere near as bad, and are just-fine to good at some of them.
And Indonesia... having to pay cash in the airport in order to be allowed to leave the country? And if you're out of rupiah by that point, they charge you much more in USD? Hell, I'd probably take LAX over that garbage.
And Heathrow! Oh man, Heathrow. It's been years since I flew into, out of, or through Heathrow, so maybe things have gotten better, but what a terrible airport it was! Transferring between terminals was a pain in and of itself, not to mention the need to go through security again if you need to make a connection between certain terminals.
What makes European airports nicer to you? I'm usually annoyed by them due to the larger number of duty free shops and fewer seating at the gate. My experience with US airports is mostly with west coast airports plus main hubs like DFW and ATL.
Airports in the rest of the world tend to be more impressive and have better services (restaurants, lounges, bars, shopping). It largely comes down to different ownership models where the airport is trying to get you to spend money on entertainment. US airports may have more seating by the gate but I don't want to spend my time sat by the gate... Especially if I have a few hours between planes.
I think in practice there are reasonable and bloody awful airports in both Europe and the US.
One thing I do find to be better, in general, in European airports is that they have thought more about how people will actually get to and from the airport; generally, you get there, you follow a sign, and you get on a bus, train, or get to a taxi rank. US airports (my sample's relatively small, but at least SFO and SEA) seem to enjoy making this awkward. For instance, when you get off the train to SEA, you seem to have to walk about a kilometre _through a parking garage_; bizarre arrangement. If you want to get an Uber/Lyft from there, you go to a random poorly signposted place in said parking garage.
Actually, now I think of it, last time I was in SF I got a bus to the airport, and that _also ended up in a random parking garage_.
My guess is they’re referring to the business lounges as being better in Europe than the US, which agrees with my experience (to your point, yes, often the gate seating is lacking).
And chances are high something goes wrong during a transfer on public transit. I don’t know how anyone manages to use transit in Seattle effectively without some sort of backup plan (Uber, bike, walking, etc.) because I often found the buses would never show up, often due to undocumented/poorly documented route adjustments. Also, buses would very frequently not stop unless I basically jumped up and down to get their attention (just standing right next to the stop marker in broad daylight was not sufficient).
Make sure you report every such instance when they happen. If nothing else they need to get statistics about how many people are really annoyed by their failing. Likely they have options to fix things, but need complaints to back them up.
> Also, buses would very frequently not stop unless I basically jumped up and down to get their attention (just standing right next to the stop marker in broad daylight was not sufficient).
Does more than one route stop at that stop? If so, that's expected, surely?
I think it's because we want to transfer while feeling fresh, and then relax for the remainder of the trip.
Traveling is exhausting, and probably a factor is increased stress, and the stress of an upcoming transfer, and a transfer when exhausted just seems so much worse.
With airplanes in particulart , that's not a given.
Even when it is, returning home is less stressful than leaving for a foreign place, so the effect is not cancelled out. Almost anyone would prefer being stranded in a different city in their home country than being stranded on anther continent.
This doesn't make any sense to me in your scenario or in the commuting scenario.
I don't have any "more resources" in a city that's a 2 hr flight from where I live vs. 10 hours away. I use the same app to find a hotel and the same credit card to pay for it. The only relevant thing is which one interrupts my sleep schedule more.
And in daily commuting it makes no sense to me either. Whether you drive 10 min to the train station and take it straight to work, or live next to the train station and then take a subway 10 min (including wait time) to the office, I find it hard to believe anybody cares much at all, or that people's random preferences don't cancel each other out.
Plus for a commute aren't you always doing the reverse as well? If you have an "origin transfer" in the morning it becomes a "destination transfer" in the evening. So wouldn't any preference become entirely moot?
Or for an American, being stuck at JFK or Atlanta is boring and sucks.
While an unplanned day in Amsterdam or Paris is a lovely start to your trip, just from the food and architecture alone! I don't know a lot of people who would complain about being stuck in Paris for a day. ;)
> Obviously not a rail or commuter example, but same principal.
Not really, unless it's international rail, which is a bit of an edge case; it certainly exists, but the vast majority of rail journeys do not cross a national border.
Long flights are usually more expensive and require more advance booking. If you miss the transfer after the long flight, there are usually plenty of alternatives to get to your final destination.
Commuter trains are different because they usually don't require booking in advance. And in this case, I think I prefer origin transfers, because if there is a big problem, I would just go back home and take a day off, work remote, take the car, ...
I'd personally take B. If something goes wrong on the trip, I'd much rather be almost there, as there will be more ways to complete the journey.
But I think it flips for me when commuting, in that a short local ride is easier for me to mentally discount as it's part of my routine. E.g. I used to live one MUNI stop from BART, and I came to see that first leg as negligible in the same way that walking to the MUNI station did.
I initially felt the same as you, but then I thought about some of the times this has actually happened. After 18hrs on a plane I just want to be home or in my hotel. I’m not in a headspace where dealing with any level of inconvenience is welcomed even if the the rational response is “well at least you’re close to where you want to be and have a range of options to choose from, some of them possibly quite familiar if you’re coming home”. I don’t want options. I don’t want to think. I just want to collapse into a bed.
Sure, I too want to just get there. I'd rather it just worked.
But if I compare the disappointment of having a problem when I'm almost there versus one where I've just started, I'd definitely take the former. In either case I've already gone to the trouble of starting a long trip. A failure at the 90% point means I'm almost there and just have the work of finishing it, and short trips have many more options than long ones (e.g., short-hop flight vs transit vs renting a car vs taking a Lyft). But a failure at the 10% point means that I've gone to a lot of trouble, gotten very little out of it, and will have fewer options for finishing.
I get people's preferences are different here, and maybe this is just me making use of whatever drives the sunk cost fallacy to keep momentum up and not get discouraged. But I'd definitely prefer B.
Quite the opposite for me. I would start with the long haul segment, because missing the long haul flight because of a late local flight would mean more trouble than being already near my final destination which gives me more options for the final segment in case problems arising.
I feel like from experience I'd much rather (B). The things usually go wrong in a fixable way, and it's much better to be close to your destination where you have more options, like more local flights with more space vs daily long haul flights; ability to give up on a leg of a trip and drive there; etc.
Especially across countries, where there may also be visa/document shenanigans.
E.g. going to Venice from Seattle, in terms of getting there it's much better to be stranded in Amsterdam or Paris than in I dunno, Atlanta.
When transferring I can do things like visit the restroom or get dinner or even update people I am meeting in my final destination. Those have far more value to me after I've been traveling for a while.
Meanwhile, I don't feel like I have "more resources" in a close location to a far destination.
I don't truly get it. If I really want to get to my destination, I'd rather be as close to it as possible when things go wrong, rather than being farther away. If I'm nearly there it feels there would be more resources available to make the last stretch.
This analogy doesn’t resonate with me at all. Based out of the US I’d rather have a misconnection in Europe than in the US (EU261 is amazing). Also I like the connection after the long flight as it gives me a chance to shower and freshen up before continuing on to my final destination.
Also flights arriving into EU if operated by an airline licensed in an EU member state.
This was very helpful this winter while Lufthansa’s ground handling was in full meltdown mode. On three separate occasions Lufthansa failed to get my luggage to its final destination on time so I was able to get reimbursed for replacement clothes and toiletries while Lufthansa tracked down my bags.
There is no such guaranteed compensation in the US.
In my ideal commute I'd be sleeping, so I would prefer the long first, short second option. That way I can get in a longer period of shut-eye before transferring and waking up for the destination.
If I have significantly more resource available in one side of the trip than other, it almost always a round trip. So the effect according to your logic will cancel out.
I’d add another factor, safety (perceived or real). Most people are going to prefer a transfer to their car in a quiet suburban parking lot, than transferring to another form of transit in an urban city where there might be a high level of homelessness/vagrancy/drug use/ crime/harassment
Not sure if your experience is common inside the US, but in most of the world, most people, by far, don't live in the suburbs. And most cities in the world don't have an appreciable amount of homelessness/vagrancy/drug use/crime/harassment in the areas most businesses exist.
English is not my first language but I think I'm ok at it, however I still can't figure out WHICH type of ride the article says travelers prefer.
"Commuters Prefer Origin to Destination Transfers" would mean they prefer home->destination over destination->home? Does origin mean home?
"much more likely to make the trip if it’s near their home than near their destination" would mean they prefer the trip if the station is close to home, but it's ok for the other station to be far from destination?
"reluctant to take the train if they have any transfer at the city center end" would mean the exact opposite, they prefer station close to the destination?
Which one is it now? home->destination, station close to home, or station close to destination preferred?
Imagine if you can drive 3 miles, park your car, and get on a train that goes all the way to your office. You'd probably do it.
Now imagine instead that you live right near a station but, once you get to the other end, it's 3 miles to your office. You probably wouldn't take the train at all.
Part of the issue is that, once you get to the other end, you don't have a private vehicle, so you're subject to a bus schedule or whatever.
Very odd to count the private vehicle to public transit as a transfer on the same level as public transit to public transit transfer. Once this is pointed out the observation is almost banal.
Bus to the station would have the same effect. If you live near the station but need some other mode of transit to get there in a timely fashion, that’s easier to justify. If everything else fails, you can just go home.
If there’s a failure on the other end, you’re not exactly near work, and you’re much further away from your home now. Part of dealing with public transit on a regular basis is dealing with it failing: bus came 5 minutes early and you missed it and the next one is 25 minutes away; bus gets taken out of service; bus is too crowded to take new passengers; somebody jumps in front of a train. Whatever it is, you’re now subject to depending on a system that has failed you. There’s some psychological comfort in being able to just go home.
And unlike with the office, there’s less pressure to get home on time at a time when you would normally be out anyway. You just call in and make the walk back if you have to, or maybe get on the bus back if one is available.
Even if the two legs of the journey are on transit, the unsaid aspect of all this is that buses are an order of magnitude less reliable than a train. The train conductor won’t skip stops because they didn’t notice anybody at the station and has to deal with little to no traffic (traffic only existing for light rail/streetcars). I’d much rather have the risky part near home because if something goes wrong, it’s much easier to find an alternative like biking, car pooling, rescheduling, walking, etc.
Honestly, if we could make routes served by buses more reliable, this would all be much less of an issue.
This comment, maybe unintentionally(?), encapsulates the cultural angle of the article pretty well.
Suburban Americans, with exceptions, consider the "origin" of a trip on public transit not where they originate from, but where they get out of their car, because the sparse urban transit systems and job locations are oriented around extending car capabilities. It is easier and less stressful for an American to drive part of a commute and ride one train than to drive none of it and risk missing an infrequently operating transfer that strands them far from home.
Suburban Europeans, with exceptions, do not do this, because their denser urban transit systems and job locations are built around foot or transit access. It is easier and less stressful for a European to ride the train all the way because, even if a transfer is required, it is more likely to occur closer to home and with a more frequently operating service.
So, transit proposals in the United States that propose solutions based on European models without recognizing this American trait – often deeply rooted in experiences over years of bad transfer experiences in places that have transit, and operating against a cultural car-friendly bias in places that don't – are less likely to succeed.
Or, as the article puts it:
> To the extent that this relates to American commuter rail reforms, it’s about coverage within the city: multiple city stations, good (free, frequent) connections to local urban rail, high frequency all day to encourage urban travel (a train within the city that runs every half an hour might as well not run).
It's not about American or European. Where Americans can reliably take public transit the whole way, their thinking would be the same as the Europeans you describe.
It's just about how a car leg compares to a train leg or a bus leg. Of course the car-to-train transfer will seem relatively frictionless compared to the other options. It's the easiest of them. That the car leg is first when leaving in the morning is more about the circumstances of suburban commuting than the transfer point's distance from home/dest. Of course the car leg is closer to home, your car is at home. If you already lived in the city with better train access you wouldn't even be using a car.
On top of that, usually the whole idea of using a car is to make it a car+train commute, rather than a bus+train commute. Usually these distant car+train commuters aren't taking a bus as the last step, because then they would probably just drive the whole way (instead of bus+train+bus just do car). And they wouldn't take a bus as the first step because that was the whole point of using the car, and the only place than can use the car as part of a multi-mode commute anyways.
It really weakens the claim that it's about the transfer being closer to home that determines the decision.
This is a very common talking point, but it's not _as_ true as people think, depending on state. California, for instance, has a population density similar to France, though almost infinitely worse public transport _infrastructure_. The infra problem is likely more of a factory than the density thing, at least in the US's more populous states.
America is not to spread out if you look only east of the Mississippi, and the Pacific coast. Alaska and the great plains lack the population for good transit, but the rest is close to European density and European solutions could work.
What doesn't work is the bad service we get. Cars are expensive, but better than what passes for transit so of course we drive.
Even looking west, people don’t commute outside of their mega region.
IMHO what the California High Speed Rail got wrong was their ambitious attempt to build the main line from SF to LA where they should have stated in the North by connecting San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton and/or in the south by linking LA with San Diego. These corridors are going to be more used by commuters and it’s usage would drive the will to connect them.
High speed rail is about distances too long for commuting. Plenty of people do make that trip in their cars.
If only CA could build fast for reasonable prices. Their inability to do either gives transit haters plenty of ammo to show transit shouldn't be built. And if transit keeps doing things like second ave subway and cahrs the haters are right.
I think this is why the article is confusing. The interpretation with the least friction is so banal that it seems unlikely to be the intended meaning.
Dutch train stations have cheap parking for bicycles to solve that problem. Works great. I've had four different jobs over the years where I commuted by train (to four different stations) and used my bicycle on the office side for the last bit.
There are also rental bicycles for 4 euro / day to use on stations where you don't have your own stored.
Offhand, I can't think of any 'park and ride' style Car <> Transit (train or not) interface in the USA that _does_ charge anything to park there. Finding a spot might be an issue, but there's no cost as that's sort of built into getting someone to take the transit system at all.
As someone else pointed out, any additional friction (multiple transfers, etc) results in a direct all car route.
Most people are somewhat emotionally rational, but the models for calculating the emotional cost (friction) get everything wrong.
Delays past about 5-10 min increase the emotional cost exponentially. Stacking delays (multiple not-user controlled) legs grow even faster. Any uncertainty in the route also massively increases the emotional cost, more so if there's nothing the commuter can do. Contrast Japan's famously well run trains that will even issue an apology the commuter can take to the office of someone else being at fault (I remember this offhand, don't have proof offhand).
Also, the car is more than just getting the person there; it takes their stuff. Abandoning that car leaves behind the potential to move larger items or stacks of things. Plus the car might be critical for visiting friends, stores, etc after work.
> Offhand, I can't think of any 'park and ride' style Car <> Transit (train or not) interface in the USA that _does_ charge anything to park there. Finding a spot might be an issue, but there's no cost as that's sort of built into getting someone to take the transit system at all.
Almost every MBTA garage/lot in Massachusetts charges something. BART parking in the Bay Area also does. It's a pittance, though.
> Offhand, I can't think of any 'park and ride' style Car <> Transit (train or not) interface in the USA that _does_ charge anything to park there.
Many of the lots at train stations in the Chicago suburbs charge fees to park for the day, usually a couple bucks, and there are annual parking passes that you have to wait years to get at some of the stations (I think Naperville is a 5+ year waiting list at this point).
However, all of the park n'rides for buses in the suburbs, at least those that I'm aware of, have free parking. And at least in my experience there's usually enough parking spaces for everyone who's taking a bus.
But the train system is much more desirable than the bus system here, so the demand for parking there is much higher. I live in a suburb that's like 25 minutes from all train stations, so I take the bus from a park n'ride just a few minutes from me, when it's on time it's pretty great, but it's not super reliable...I had to wait an hour at the bus stop downtown last Friday before my bus showed up (with another one for the same route directly behind it, they got that backed up) and once I was on it took an extra 30 minutes just to drive down one street in downtown Chicago, the traffic was so bad.
EDIT: While double-checking a few things, I discovered that Naperville is getting rid of its parking permits this fall and going to daily fees only[1].
Bike park+ride is universally free for the first 24 hours, and after that only paid at major railway stations. The sole reason it is paid is to prevent people from leaving their bike there when they only use it once a week.
My local train station has a parking capacity of well over 20.000 bikes, and that still isn't enough.
> Imagine if you can drive 3 miles, park your car, and get on a train
I'm afraid you just lost all the Europeans. Why would you take the car for a 3 mile ride? Just hop on your bike!
As to the other end: public transport near train stations is usually dense enough that there will be a bus line - of course with a schedule matching train arrivals. Or just store your second bike there, of course.
Not universally; in the Netherlands, country of bicycles, it's not actually allowed to bring your bike with you during rush hour. Folding bikes at best. But even a folding bike is a bit of a ballache.
The legal alternative: last-mile bike rental, there's a scheme from the railways where you can rent a bike for the day, it was about €6 for the day.
Another alternative is to buy a cheap bike and just leave it at the train station overnight. That's allowed as long as the bike isn't abandoned for a month or so, after which it'll be removed.
Also worth noting to an American audience that transit-related bike parking in the Netherlands operates at a large enough scale that it's difficult to fathom. Utrecht's Central Station bike garage alone has more bike parking spaces (13-20k) than the entirety of most American cities' transit systems.
The last couple of years I lived in Beijing, there were many competing bike rental companies. IIRC the two most popular charged something like 1 RMB (about 0.15 USD) for up to 20 mins. It was great to be able to ride at both ends of a subway journey, at almost zero cost.
Awkward in a city center like Chicago (which has good public transit for a US city), where the train platforms are either underground or elevated. So you'll be hauling your bicycle up and down flights of stairs.
Consider UK- allowed on some metro lines, banned on others. Allowed on some trains, banned on others, requires booking on yet other trains. Suppose you got a full sized bike on a train, it often needs to be held for the entire hourney because acceleration of the train will overpower the kickstan and make it roll of fall over
In Holland foldable bikes were the main way to solve that for a long time. Last years on-demand ov-fiets (public transport bike) were created to solve that. Around 4,8 euros for 24 hours. Really impressive and great system and most larger station have enough to serve most people.
However I think at least in Holland the electric scooter (step) will transform this market. Beyond easy to take. Only 200-300 euros. Goes 25 km per hour.
Main issue is Dutch law got strict after few incidents with new vehicles. But e-scooters are amazing vehicles for this. Although bikes are better for health. New e scooters are coming to the marketing and I think will transform the way we transport.
Scooter are actually small enough to take them with you everywhere. A single fold makes a scooter compact enough, that they could be accomodated on public transport
I love bikes, I have 4, but they do not integrate with public transport - even folding ones require 3 folds, then fold of the pedals. The full sized ones take up loads of space on trains, and must be constantly held or they will fall over.
4 euros a day is great for for once or twice a week. They are in every city and you can use them whole day. Saving on taxi and public transport. Commercial rentals bikes are 10+ euro and not so fast and not located well
If you are a long term commute, it’s cheaper to buy a second hand bike for 100-200 and a good lock for 40. Will take around 10 weeks to get it back.
>Is this electric bike for 4.8? If not, it's way too expensive.
I don't know about that. Where I live[0] it's US$4 for 30 minutes.
As such, I think 4.8 for a whole day is pretty good. I don't use them, as I have my own bicycle, but people seem to really like them.
From the Citibike website[0]:
$17.08/mo ($205 billed annually)
Access to 1000s of bikes in NYC, Jersey City, and
Hoboken
$0 unlocks ($4.49 value)
Unlimited 45-min rides on classic bikes
$0.17/min ebike rides ($0.26/min value)
3 free guest passes per year
Eligibility for our Bike Angels rewards program
Single ride - $4.49/ride -- 30 minutes on a classic bike.
$0.23/min thereafter.
No kidding. If the author is on Hacker News: your spelling and grammar are impeccable, but you really need to lay out your ideas more clearly (which really is the most important part of a blog post!)
Just from the start:
> Garrett Wollman is giving an example, in the context of the Agricultural Branch, a low-usage freight line linking to the Boston-Worcester commuter line that could be used for local passenger rail service.
Imagine, just for fun, that a reader might not know who the famous Garrett Wollman is, what the Agricultural Branch is, or where the Boston-Worcester commuter line is? (Isn't Worcester in England and Boston in North America? Is there a transatlantic train service I'm ignorant about?) What do you think the above paragraph communicates to the reader?
> The more typical example of residential sprawl involves isotropic single-family density in a suburban region
Ah yes, isotropic density, that perennial scourge! The word isotropic of course means: “exhibiting properties (such as velocity of light transmission) with the same values when measured along axes in all directions”, which I didn't need to look up in a dictionary because it's such a common English word, and the meaning in the above sentence is self-explanatory, really.
Anyway, I think you get the point. This article is written in a way that's inscrutable to a general audience. That's fine if the blog is targeted at traffic nerds who talk about the isotropic density of the Agricultural Branch on the daily, but then why post it on Hacker News?
> What do you think the above paragraph communicates to the reader?
Nothing, really. I read the whole article and was constantly having the feeling that they were only a random sequence of overly technical words which after the fact hadn't conveyed any information. What an obtuse way of structuring ideas. I was thinking my English comprehension was nonexistent (which might be the case), until reading these comments here kind of confirmed me that "it's not me, it's them".
I have some expertise in this area and I had to read it twice to get the point.
Transit agencies want to attract riders traveling suburb-to-suburb on regional / commuter trains. These trains are lower frequency services mostly focused on moving people from suburban areas to city centers.
The reason these trains don’t work for suburb-to-suburb commutes:
Suburban offices aren’t close to suburban rail stations. This means making this trip requires a transfer to a bus. A car-train-bus trip isn’t more attractive than just driving your car the entire way because suburban traffic is lighter and you can route around the city. The author notes that driving to a commuter station is usually done to avoid city traffic and parking fees. The author thinks companies would need to site jobs near train stations to make suburb-to-suburb commutes work. However, US suburban density and land values favor residential property and companies would pay a high price for property near a station. With that prospect, they’d rather rent space downtown.
The author jumps into issues with topology and connections midway through that point:
US commuter lines don’t run through the city center to other suburbs and even when they do, it’s only ever possible to get to one other line without transferring. Moreover, the frequency of trains in the reverse direction (reverse peak) is lower meaning longer trip times when you transfer.
US commuter trains often serve only one station in the city and require a transfer to one or more extra services. For example, in Boston there are metro job centers which are far from the two commuter train stations. The locations listed require multiple metro transfers to reach from the commuter rail stations which aren’t served by all lines. European systems like the German S-Bahn avoid this by having many stations throughout the downtown core that are shared between lines and metro services. The closest example to the S-Bahn in the US would be BART and SEPTA. (The author doesn’t get into discussing those lines and focuses on Boston as it had the lowest share of work commuters on its commuter rail lines.)
——
My thoughts on the main development point: A more attainable goal would be to encourage development that allows employees to afford to live near their work or at least on the same train line. People shouldn’t need to live many miles from their job but they often do because property prices are sky high. Companies should locate offices near where their employees can afford to live.
It's more confusing because you're quoting parts of sentences.
"It’s an empirical observation that rail riders who are faced with a transfer are much more likely to make the trip if it’s near their home than near their destination."
Rewritten and removed the introduction part:
"Rail riders who need to do a transfer are much more likely to make the trip if the transfer is near their home than if the transfer is near their destination.
Of the two options below, first one is more liked.
Home -> 3 minute train -> station -> 15 minute train -> destination
Home -> 15 minute train -> station -> 3 minute train -> destination
I think it's just missing a word, and it should be "Commuters prefer origin transfers to destination transfers". Perhaps it's immediately clear to his intended audience.
I think they mean that a short transfer near home, like taking a bus or driving to a nearby station, is preferred to a short transfer at the end of the journey -- like taking a bus a few stops within the city centre, or a different railway line a few stops out.
I've actually done the city center to suburb commute where a shuttle bus was the final leg of the journey.
I walked 10 minutes to the train station, rode the train for 20 minutes, and then the shuttle for about 15 minutes. The shuttle waited for the train to arrive. In the evening, I did the reverse.
Interestingly, there was a core of about 10 other riders who started their journey in a different suburb. They drove to a train station, rode it downtown, switched trains, and then rode out to the suburb. The key for them was that it was time competitive with driving and the transfer didn't add nuch time. The conductor for the outbound train would hold it if the inbound was late.
It worked well for everyone, at least until the suburub stopped funding the bus. I was able to find a less convenient transit alternative, but it was slower and added a 1 mile walk on the end though a not quite pedestrian friendly environment. Everyone else ended up switching to their cars.
Did a similar commute myself (out of Minneapolis to an edge suburb, via a train, then a bus, then a smaller shuttle bus). Likewise, there was a core group of about 10 of us who had almost the exact same commute. In that scenario, though, we were living in a much smaller city than those discussed in the article. We commuted that way for a combination of reasons- folks either couldn't afford a car, couldn't drive for medical reasons, etc.
I bought a cheap car and cut my commute time in half, since I could take a much more efficient route to work than the bus could. The rail portion of my commute had been great. The shuttle worked well too, since all the jobs in that area were concentrated in a couple industrial parks. The only problem was the bus that took me out of the city, and to the shuttle. I'm left with many "what ifs" about commuter rail in small cities.
I yes, origin to destination transfers! Yes I greatly prefer those to origin to origin transfers. Or worse yet, destination to destination transfers! But nothing is worse than destination to origin transfers! After all, you've only just arrived! Or...had you just transferred?
This was written by Alon Levy, who is deep in the weeds of transport infrastructure and was writing for a technical audience. The habitual readers of their blog will easily interpret this as "Why commuters prefer transfers at the origin rather than transfers at the destination". This is the same conclusion that will be reached by readers who have never read Alon's blog before but do in fact read the first sentence of the post.
Clearly, Alon's title uses wonkish terminology and would have benefited from a title that was more easily understood by people unfamiliar with the field. I think it's fair to say that you're not the target audience.
I think it’s a cultural thing. The study was made with North-American commuters, it’s not ever a thing in dense metro areas with good subways, like Paris or London.
Edit: The article does mentions that’s it’s different over here :)
Most European commuters don’t live in metros with good subways, and so they drive. In France, for example, something like 4 times as many people commute by car than by public transit. Even in Paris, something like a third of all commuters drive a personal car.
Whenever we have a public transit thread on HN, I observe people having totally unrealistic image of Europe, probably based on hearsay or being a tourist in some of the top metros. Thus, let’s make a few facts about commutes in Europe very clear:
* European mostly commute by car, not by public transit, and the disparity is big, with something like 3-5 times as many people driving than riding public transit, depending on a country.
* Out of those who ride public transit, many if not most would prefer to drive, they just can’t afford it (regular Europeans are much poorer than regular Americans, most Americans have no idea how poor average European is, and vice versa)
* Most people don’t live in transit-heavy places like London or Paris. Most Europeans have little to no practical public transit around where they live.
* By far, biggest user of public transit are students and retirees.
* Finally, average European commute is much longer than average American commute, and in transit-heavy places like Paris or London, average commute is very long, something like 45-55 minutes one way.
I've lived in multiple countries in Europe, and in Japan, and in Canada, Australia and the US so I feel compelled to reply :P
> European mostly commute by car... In France ~4 times as many people commute by car
Yeah, because there's effall transit outside major cities? This is kind of a pointless statistic because overwhelmingly when we talk about this it's in the context of major cities. And the fact that smaller cities don't have transit isn't something desirable, it's a sad failure that those cities are trying to address.
> Even in Paris, something like a third of all commuters drive a personal car
Now we're talking - in major cities, the overwhelming majority of people do not commute by car. It would literally by physically impossible for everyone to commute by car.
> many if not most would prefer to drive, they just can’t afford it
> biggest user of public transit are students and retirees
> Even in Paris, something like a third of all commuters drive a personal car.
See [1]: to get to their work place, 72% of Parisians and 75% of Franciliens (residents of Ile-de-France, excluding Paris) use public transit. It's at most 1/4 using a car (number not quoted in the study). The "a third" number is quoted for people going from Paris to suburbs during the week by car (which I think includes off-peak trips)
> Out of those who ride public transit, many if not most would prefer to drive, they just can’t afford it
Sorry but that's just an opinion. I'm not aware on a study of that, but I and a lot of people I know would rather not drive. Driving in Paris is a terrible, slow and costly experience.
Thanks for that link, seems like I wasn’t careful enough while digging through the data. Your link does say that a third of the trips of Franciliens (who outnumber Parisians by a lot) are by car, but you are correct that when you restrict consideration from all trips to commutes only, car usage goes down.
And yes, driving in transit-heavy places like Paris or London is in fact often quite miserable. I probably overstated my case suggesting that maybe even most public transit users would prefer driving. However, in places outside of top metros like Paris or London, driving is relatively less painful, and public transit relatively more so (due to lower density of stops and lower frequency of schedule).
I grew up in an exurb of Warsaw, which is quite transit-heavy city, and a lot of people I knew commuted from the exurb to the suburb, which was halfway to the core of the whole metro. There was train line available, but driving was much preferable, because it was faster than commuter train, and was door-to-door, unlike the train. However, most people still took the train because driving every day was too expensive.
> Out of those who ride public transit, many if not most would prefer to drive, they just can’t afford it
I have serious doubts about that one. Take Dublin as an example. Traditionally, going back decades, about 35% of people working in Dublin City commuted in by car. This peaked in 2010 at 40% and has since been on a slow decline hitting 29% in 2019 (it _appears_ to have kept declining after that, but given that Ireland didn't really end covid restrictions until early 2022 the stats are a bit all over the place). It's not credible that this is due to people getting poorer; however it does coincide with improvements to the public transport system.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Ireland, which _is_ generally poorer than Dublin, and often quite a lot poorer, outside a couple of other urban centres, almost all commuting is by car; outside Dublin Ireland's commuter public transport story is not good (honestly it's not great in Dublin either, but it's better than elsewhere).
In Dublin, a lot of people would have a car, but not necessarily use it to commute to work. There does seem to be a cultural aspect to this; IME people who've recently moved to Dublin from a rural area are far more likely to commute by car even where it makes no sense (I know someone who lives in an apartment beside a tram stop, works in an office beside a tram stop on the same line, and _still drives to work_).
* Europe is a diverse place and such statistics vary a lot by country. You can't talk about the Netherlands and Romania in such a generalized way, you'll gloss over a lot of details.
Most people I know commute by bike. Trains are used wherever practical, and proximity to train stations is a major consideration in choice of job and home. At least in my bubble, commuting by car is only used as a last resort--necessary for many, but they'd use an alternative if there was one.
This might be true about you and people around you, but is very much false about Europeans in general. Even in the Netherlands, one of the most bike-heavy countries in Europe, two-thirds of commuters drive a car, which is almost three times as many as those who commute on a bicycle, and only 10% commutes by public transit.
If you live in place like central Amsterdam, then sure, you and most of your friends and colleagues likely cycle, especially if you are young and childless. However, living in central Amsterdam is very unrepresentative lifestyle for Dutch people, and even less so for Europeans at large.
Parents drive more often than other groups, because city centres are not affordable for families, so they commonly don't live walkable distances from daycares/preschools. Also with more than one stop along the way, public transport becomes a pain.
My daughter's daycare is 1300m from my apartment, so I walk pushing her stroller, but the building is swamped with cars belonging to people coming from a distance of 5km+, and that's just the first leg of their journey.
With two preschoolers you either invest in a proper type of cargo bike, which costs as much as a used car, or drive all the way.
Speaking for Canada (well part of it), Toronto and Montreal do a decent job of bringing people into the city from outside on commuter trains. While Ottawa is a joke. There is no commuter specific rail (like GO and EXO) only a few miscellaneous busses from outlying areas. And, related to the article, the Ottawa train station is at the dumbest spot possible in the east end of the city, near nothing.
Since they built the "o-train" (Ottawa's subway line) it's actually much easier to get into town from the station, but it's still an annoying extra destination transfer.
I live in Montreal and I do take the train to Ottawa sometimes but often driving makes more sense because the train doesn't get me anywhere useful. I'm sure lots of other people are making the same decision.
I tried to skim the whole thing and I still haven't seen whether the article actually answers the question ("why").
Also, what does "destination" mean in the context of the commute? The workplace, or does it mean home in the evening? Is he talking about people living in the city and working outside or the other way around?
Makes sense from a chaoticness standpoint as well. I have a transfer in my neighborhood and one downtown, where four rail lines and dozens of busses meet. The downtown transfer is an absolute zoo. Near stampedes on the stairs between the rail platforms. Absolute chaos with the dozens of bus lines on the streets above, easy to get turned around exiting the underground station taking the wrong stair out because the station is symmetrical. A lot more trash, noise, bad smells, and evidently crime from the level of police presence at this central station. I imagine most central transit hubs in places with more transit use are even more chaotic than my American example.
> He points out that American and Canadian commuter rail riders drive long distances just to get to a cheaper or faster park-and-ride stations, but are reluctant to take the train if they have any transfer at the city center end.
To me, it's more about the number of transfers instead of where the transfer is. If I'm traveling from mountain view to the mission, I have 3 options: drive whole way, drive short distance to Caltrain then switch to BART in Millbrae, drive long distance to Milpitas BART.
Transferring at Millbrae seems like the worst option just because I have to pay attention at intermittent intervals which feels more stressful.
> Transferring at Millbrae seems like the worst option just because I have to pay attention at intermittent intervals which feels more stressful.
It's not just the shorter intervals, but the fact that there's 50% more points of possible failure with one additional transfer. For example, maybe there are no parking spots available, or the Caltrain is delayed.
> How does this work, besides timetables and other operating practices that American reformers recognize as superior to what’s available in the US and Canada?
This feels like a huge "besides"; I'm not sure they've _really_ demonstrated their thesis that customers _universally_ prefer origin to destination transfers. How well the system works makes a huge difference; if either (a) you're virtually guaranteed that it'll be on time or (b) frequency is high enough that it doesn't really matter, this sort of journey becomes much less fraught.
Anecdotally, in Dublin, a few years back, I'd rarely make a journey involving connections unless there was no choice, and I'd usually be willing to walk up to about 40 minutes to avoid it. This was because it never worked (unless it was train-to-train, though even that was optimistic); the bus timetables were just too unreliable and the buses too frequent. However I'd think nothing of making a journey involving multiple connections in, say, London or a German city, because there was a high probability it would more or less work. Due to improvements in the Dublin bus system (Dublin City Council seems to have taken the opportunity to put in bus lanes everywhere during the pandemic while no-one was looking; it's really improved a lot), I'm now way more willing to make connections in Dublin, because _it is more likely to work_.
EDIT: Another big factor in making this more attractive was the simplification of the fare system. Today, you tap your card, you're charged 2 eur, and provided the last leg of your journey is started within 90 minutes of the first, you don't pay anything more. A few years back, for buses in particular you had to deal with arcane staging-based pricing.
It is just the car, right? In SF once I had to commute with Bart to the south bay. I stashed my car at the parking lot in the south bay. It was the only way to make the commute feasible.
It is like the bay area built a BART to nowhere. You can get there, but then what do you do? It seems to me that a transportation system must either allow you to control it - a car - or be utterly predictable and efficient once you enter the system. In Europe it is the last case. You can get on a train, then take a tram. They run. They don't sit there making you wait. Once you get to the train you know you are going to get to your destination X time later. I wonder if you put electric scooters that could be checked out for a day at BART stations what would happen to ridership? Or something like that.
> It’s an empirical observation that rail riders who are faced with a transfer are much more likely to make the trip if it’s near their home than near their destination.
Sorry, but what a nightmare of an opening sentence! What is "the trip"? What is "it" in "it's near"?
You're not alone, others have already pointed out how confusing it is and I'm confused by it too. I think what they're trying to say is, if a commute by transit involves a transfer, people prefer and are more likely to make the trip by transit if the transfer happens closer to home vs closer to the destination.
I believe one piece of missing context is that this is part of a debate in the U.S. about how/whether transit planners should serve commuters to non-downtown jobs, which are a large and growing percentage in some areas.
U.S. commuter rail is traditionally entirely oriented towards bringing people from suburbs downtown, but some American cities are getting less downtown-centric in their employment patterns, with various secondary job centers in the suburbs. Some cities' transit planners are trying to find ways to serve those commute patterns. A few European cities are able to do that successfully, and the article looks at whether their approaches are applicable to the U.S. The answer is mostly no, due to the American suburban jobs being more sprawling rather than built on top of / near train stations. People are willing to drive from their house to a park-and-ride for a train to downtown, but doing that in reverse is inconvenient and unpopular. But it might work in a few cases where the suburban job centers are in a compact cluster, like a few examples the article gives in the Boston area. To the extent the article has a take-away recommendation, it's basically, "planners should focus on better serving existing compact suburban job centers like those". One problem mentioned is that even where new transit-oriented development is built in the U.S., there is usually more economic demand for it to be residential rather than commercial, so it generally doesn't make economic sense to put offices on top of suburban train stations.
You might live in Luton, take the train to London, then use the Underground to get to a job at Canary Wharf.
Americans and Canadians apparently don't do this, since the 'new' just-out-of-the-centre development has residential buildings near the station, unlike Canary Wharf where the nearest buildings to the station are offices.
The suburban trains also run frequently and all day, so Brixton to Wembley is a reasonable journey by train. This would not be the case in the USA.
> American and Canadian commuter rail riders drive long distances just to get to a cheaper or faster park-and-ride stations, but are reluctant to take the train if they have any transfer at the city center end.
Are they saying that people prefer 2 long legs over 3 shorter legs?
Rail has a decent value proposition against single occupancy ice cars for commuting, especially American monstrosities.
But the EV revolution isn't "just cars, but electric". EVs are much more flexible as a platform because the batteries are already manufactured in a highly scalable flexible form factor: the cell.
Ultimately an ebike, escooter, e kei car, are going to be cheaper, faster, more convenient, environmentally better, and less infrastructure intensive.
So the article seems to reflect an old battle mindset: ice cars vs rail. Imo both are obsolete already, pending scale up of high density sodium ion and lfp cells. And if sulfur gets commercialized at 2x the density?
This doesn't even account for convergent infrastructure and self driving tech which has the ability to utilize transportation infrastructure to a higher degree than is possible now.
E-bikes and especially e-scooters are a great complement to trains, and potentially fix the problem in this article - if you have a scooter you can take on the train, then getting from the other end to your destination becomes a lot easier. Or even if you don't take it in the train, commuter-scale bike parking at stations is a lot more practical than commuter-scale car parking.
Trains are obsolete because of EVs? Lots of trains are already electric (and many have been for 100+ years). And there’s not really a better option for moving a huge amount of people short-medium distances.
A bike path filled with ebikes and scooters is better than rail, cheaper, more resilient, more easily repaired, more flexible, always in service.
Small e vehicles can do 30mph, which is likely effectively the same speed as a train when you consider lack of waiting, fare payment, intermediate stops, delays, transportation to/from the station.
EVs are much more flexible for modes and platforms than ices because all the motor form favors exist, they are simple (motor battery brakes) modular (removable batteries) and don't involve smelly gas and oil.
I’m very pro ebike, so I’d love more paths for the them. But they aren’t a complete replacement for trains.
Trains still have a greater capacity (see the Lexington Avenue line in NYC - 1.3 million riders per day, pre covid).
They’re also way better in bad weather, more accessible for people with disabilities, better for families, allow you to do other things while commuting, and way better for long distances.
The issue with cars in a dense area is that they're extremely space inefficient. If you took, say, central London, and ripped out all the public transport, no amount of electric cars would make that work.
Criticism against cars in urban areas have very little to do with ice vs electric. Cars simply aren't a good technology for moving lots of people in an urban environment.
Ebikes and Escooters don't solve the grocery problem: You live somewhere which isn't a small efficiency apartment downtown. Your city experiences what people outside of Southern California call "weather" which makes it difficult and dangerous to travel for extensive periods of the year. You are, perhaps, not even under thirty years old, as difficult as that may be to grasp. You, therefore, need a way to get as many groceries into your home as possible while the "weather" is tractable. This requires a vehicle with cargo space. Nothing you mentioned has that unless you buy a wagon or other trailer to pull behind the vehicle, which would destroy your mileage.
A) A short flight from your local airport to a nearby hub and then transfer to a long haul flight to the far away location
B) A long flight from your local airport to a far away hub and then transfer to a short flight to get to your final destination.
If something goes wrong, its likely to happen at the transfer point. If something goes wrong, you want to be in a place where you have the most resources available to you. Usually being close to home affords you the most resources/options. Stakes are much lower for commuter train travel, but it still rings true for me.