This led to a very confusing discussion in the replies about the varying fares and systems of public transit in the Oakland-San Francisco area
a year ago by destructdisc to c/fuckcars
As it turns out it doesn't actually cost that much on regular transit, there's an AIRPORT SURCHARGE because it's an "airport train".
No wonder Americans don't use public transit, even when the system exists it's ridiculously difficult and expensive to use.
I've been wondering why this hasn't become a thing yet. Probably lobbying from all the Verkehrsverbünde.
Yep, train tickets are ridiculous here. It kills me on the inside whenever I have to go to London.
Let's hope nationalisation brings ticket prices down. I was happy to see the South Western is the first to be taken back.
Edit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceqg73znzzeo
The government cannot guarantee train tickets will get cheaper under renationalisation, as South Western Railway (SWR) was brought into public ownership on Sunday.
Oh well.
Seeing as government has directly set all ticket prices for the past 5 years, that’s not going to happen.
Rail prices in Britain are set largely to manage demand, as there is significant congestion. If tickets were reduced, too many people would try to travel at peak hours.
It’s also been the philosophy of every government since the 1950s that railways should fund themselves as much as possible, so central funding is lower than elsewhere.
But if you don't have the D-ticket, good luck figuring out how the local ticketing machine works haha
In SF its a hundred dollars a month, but you can only go to 4 stations in the city, so you end up paying regular fare on top of that all the time, and usless for commuters.
The busses frequently dont exist even though google and the signs say they should be arriving, so youre frequently an hour or more late because you had to get an uber because the bus never came.
If youre going to a connecting train or flight you need to leave hours early to account for delays.
bart is quite expensive, some people cant afford the muni fees, or dont want to so they just fare evade. the inspectors are extra aggressive in giving people the ticket, but many people will give fake details so it doesnt get sent thier house, NEVER give your ID that can identify you r personal details.
as long as there is no peace officer(police) you can just try to walk off the bus and exit on a stop they dont chase you. might be harder on a BART station though.
NYC is much more reasonable
Which 4 stations? Back when I was there before Covid I was paying the monthly bart card but I could go anywhere as long as it was Bart. Did that change?
I want that in the Netherlands as well. Much smaller country, so less value for your money. But now you pay even more (€66) for a return ticket from the east border to the west border (Winterswijk - Scheveningen).
No wonder Americans don't use public transit, even when the system exists it's ridiculously difficult and expensive to use.
Here is my daily commute to work:
The Public Transit option is literally greyed out, and Google goes “lmao get a fucking car, peasant.”
If I were going to minimize my car usage and strictly use public transit, it would be a ~20 minute bike ride (in the opposite direction of where I work) to the nearest bus station, to get to a public transit service that doesn’t even cover where I work. Then I’d take a bus to a train station, and ride it south through two cities. Then I’d make a transfer to a northern line, and ride it back north through those same two cities (and a third additional city) in order to get near another rail line. Then it would be another ~20 minute bike ride to transfer from one rail system to another, because the public transit in the southern cities doesn’t service the city where I work. Once I’m transferred to the service that covers where I work, it’s another ~20 minute rail ride, followed by a ~10 minute bike ride after getting off the train.
All in all, it would be about 2.5 hours of public transit riding, (and about an hour of riding my bike in +100°F/38°C weather), just to avoid driving 10 minutes. It would also require maintaining two separate transit passes, because the southern and northern transit systems don’t work with one another. Yeah, it’s no wonder I take my car to work.
10 minutes by car but 53 minutes by bike?? Do you live literally on the autobahn?
A lot of roads arent bike legal in America
I thought that was just most freeways?
And stroads. I don't know if it's legal, but definitely a death wish.
I'm guessing the trains are in kind of a hub/spoke design and they live and work on different spokes which the transit system isn't designed to accommodate
That's why I said bike, not trains 😅
I can read! Honest!
May I ask how car is 10 minutes and bike 53? And walk over 2 hours? I ride the electric bike to work and it's about 10 minutes ride, vs 4 minutes by car, so roughly double. 20 minute walk, not brisk. It's hot here too, that's part of why I got the electronic bike, walking was making me arrive sweaty.
American roads rarely have sidewalks. You have to have a different route entirely.
Depending on state, you may need to defeat varying regional wildlife (at least one full game with multiple generous DLCs, spanning the US) in order to complete the journey, and this does accrue XP as one might expect.
It does also produce players attached to min-maxed builds to adhere to one or another strategy, so play the meta-game carefully.
70 MPH via car, vs… What, like 15 MPH on a bike? Also, there’s no way I’m riding my bike on a 70 MPH highway; I’d have to take a different (much longer) route entirely, just to avoid getting killed by a truck.
so you live next to a highway ramp and your work is also next to a highway ramp?
This is actually an extremely common design. Businesses will consider where most of their employees live, and try to consider the commute when moving, so placing themselves just off a highway or major road theoretically makes it easy for their employees to get there. Nevermind the fact that said major road/highway chokes up from every employee commuting to their convenient exit to get to/from work 5 days a week
70 MPH is the standard highway speed limit around here. And functionally, the traffic tends to flow ~10% higher than whatever the posted speed limit is. So a 70 MPH highway will tend to flow anywhere from 75-80 MPH instead. Cops won’t even bother pulling you over unless you’re well into the low 80’s.
We even have an 85 MPH highway. Since it’s mostly through a rural area and has an extremely fast limit, people 100% treat it like the autobahn.
The only time people actually respect highway speed limits are when it drops to 55 MPH. Lots of small towns will drop to 55 MPH, and the rural cops tend to set up speed traps for anyone doing over 55. They’re brutal, (and fighting them usually requires showing up to court in the middle of fucking nowhere,) so speed trap towns are basically the only time that drivers will actually go slightly below the limit.
(another user) I live in Spain, in a city where most of the region come to work. We have the vet in a nearby town, so we usually go there by car. Getting out of the city into the town takes around 15 minutes, of which around 10 are spent on a 120KMH highway. Bikes can't go on that road, completely banned, so they would need to go through another, way longer route. Yeah, it would take over an hour to go on a bike.
The people that live in that town that come to my city to work basically need a car, and it's not like they can't do their living in walking distance for every necessity but work. It is what it is.
also what the fuck 112 km/h is extremely fast
120KMH is the max here, but it's pretty common for highways to have that cap. Same for france iirc (130?) and germany, besides their funny uncapped road. In fact, sweden has very similar limits, where "motorways" go around 110 to 120. https://en.wikipedia.org/...
I'm surprised you don't know this, do you have a license?
You drive 70mph to work? Your home and work are both right off a highway? Then car seems efficient as heck, I would drive too.
That map is just so weird. There is no road next to the highway? Like, why does that transit loop exist if there's nothing in the middle of that circle, or around the outside of it?
Correct, there’s no side road, sidewalk, bike path, or shoulder on the highway. It’s just a two-lane highway that cuts through an otherwise barren area. There’s a gas station near me, and a gas station near my work. Aside from that, there’s just a few warehouses. That openness also means there’s zero shade if I wanted to ride my bike.
The routes are usually different for biking, walking, and driving. The speeds on the highway are also often several times the rate of speed you'll be able to achieve on an e-bike and certainly much higher than you'll be able to achieve on a manual bike.
Might be better getting a moped/motorcycle and taking the car route. It's more environmentally friendly than the car, anyway, but it doesn't take your entire day away from you.
That car route is likely on an interstate that mopeds can't ride on. Motorcycle is ok, but again, safety is a concern for a lot of people on an interstate.
Likely an alternative side road route but depending on the place that could literally be twice as long with all the red lights you hit on the stroads.
I think you underestimate how hostile the infrastructure can be to anything other than individually owned cars for much of the country. Some folks are lucky enough to have the option of standing next to a sign that's desperately trying to blow away in the wind on a small patch of pavement next to a drainage ditch for the 50MPH speedlimit 100+ foot (30 meters or more) wide road to wait for a bus which comes once an hour give or take 30 minutes
Imagine taking anything other than a car here. And for context, here's a better view of what the surrounding area looks like. Notice the school on the east side of the railroad tracks and how anyone on the west side must use that road (which at least has a sidewalk) to cross the tracks if they're trying to get to the school. And anyone who lives on the east side must cross the same bridge if they want to get to the grocery store
Is Rockford a fair example to pick from? Maybe. Its the 5th largest city in Illinois, with 300k people living in the metro area, but also every person I know who grew up there moved away as soon as they could and generally agrees the place is a shithole, but also I live about 2 hours drive away from Rockford so its a pretty biased pool of people to poll
Also worth noting that the listed bike route requires riding on a 70MPH highway, which doesn’t have a shoulder, sidewalk, side street, or bike path. If I were going to avoid that highway, (because let’s be real, I’d be dead on day 1 after being hit by a car,) then it would be about two hours of cycling.
I live within a very reasonable distance of work. But there is literally no safe route to get there. Not even a longer alternate route, just no way to get there without a significantly hazardous stretch of road. Riding that as a one-off would be one thing, but riding it 240 (give or take) round trips per year for years on end are not odds that I am interested in taking.
I would love to cycle to work, which would both help the environment and improve my physical health with some much needed exercise.
As a counterpoint here is mine
Except way off peak it's faster to take bart than drive (north berkeley to downtown SF). I usually take a trans bay bus when going to office (closer to my house) which is $6 one way. BART is like $8. (So round trip under $20). Vs driving is $8 for the bay bridge and then somewhere between $20 and $60 to park for the day (no free parking at my office).
I feel your pain.
When I was in college, it was a 2mile bike ride to campus from my office campus housing, conversely it was a 6h Transit ride on buses metros and all sorts of stuff. The lack of lockers ment carrying several bags to and from school on a bike, which sucked. I ended up driving cuz it was easier.
Seems to be more of a problem of your city or township having just crappy public transit systems. A problem that most cities, and nearly all townships, in America share.
Why do Americans think everything has to profit?
That's not the definition or foundation of capitalism, it's the definition of a market economy.
The foundation of capitalism is a system where investors can pool small amounts of money together on big projects, to share risk and reward. Historically to fund trading ships on their way to the indies.
So it destructures ownership, which has a million ripple effects on the organization and economy.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
In the context of "Why do Americans think everything has to profit?", then the point is that the train is considered only for the profit it can make, and not for the environmental etc benefits. This is a result of the market economy as you rightly state (and private ownership of transportation).
Not at all, corporatism is a system where interest groups have a high amount of power : guilds, syndicates, unions, etc...
Capitalism literally refers to pooling capital together from multiple sources to allow shared risk taking and allow for the creation of companies that can get bigger by having more than one owner.
This eventually leads the way for pension funds and multinational corporations whose sole purpose is to extract maximum value for pensioners and billionaires.
Not only must everything profit, it must profit MORE than it did previously. If you make $10 million selling widgets last year, and make $10 million again this year, well that's a failing business and you should be fired.
If you predict that your business will be up 5% this quarter, and it's only up 3%, that's considered a disaster, and the stock price will drop, and that CEO is still in trouble. Repeat every quarter.
I just got to Panama City, buses are a flat $0.25 regardless of distance and the Metro is a flat $0.50 regardless of distance.
took the train for ~8 mi into town to get to my hotel for $0.50.
I'm in Mumbai. The 37km north-south journey from one end of the city to the other costs 20¢ on the local train. $1.20 if you want to ride the fancy train with AC. East-west is 13km and costs 50¢ on the elevated metro line.
The poorer the country (not on average) the more demand there is for low-cost transit, that demand brings down the price of public transport tremendously because less public money is spend on other (more private) forms of transit. The 'problem' isn't only people loving cars it's also people being able to afford them. In general it also isn't the rich asking for public healthcare and education. The lack of public transport shows the power of the wealthy over the power of the masses.
Yep, I use it every time I need to get to the airport
I remember 5 rupee tickets on the Chennai Suburban.
They're still there
But I'm not!
Took a 3 day train in India from the south up to Nepal. I think it was $30
India trains are the best trains in the world.
India trains are the best trains in the world.
Ehhhh...no, not really. There's a lot of room for improvement there, honestly. They're absolutely pretty inexpensive, but even then they're sorely lacking in basic amenities, and successive governments (especially the current one) have steadily been ignoring the railways more and more in favor of roads and airlines -- because rich people tend to either drive or fly, and mostly only poor people take trains. I guess the powers that be think that means the railways aren't worth caring about.
It's causing a runaway effect where more and more people are being forced to use roads because the trains are either in terrible nick or overcrowded or both, which means there's even less focus on actually improving the trains, and so on and so forth.
I'm glad the trains aren't luxurious. Then they would be unaffordable.
They have toilets, running water, and cheap beds. What more could you ask for?
I wish more countries would emulate Indian trains. Trains should be for everyone, not just for the rich.
Metro is $0.19 for me, so are trolleybuses. Our exchange rate is fucked, but hey, at least it makes it sound impressively cheap
I hear she's running for governor of California! That would be amazing. Fuck Newsom.
Good grief no....Porter is extremely car-brained. Her first run for office was based entirely on opposing the gas tax. She then went on to support some dumb freeway projects:
That's some light criticism considering the alternative is flirting with fascists. Newsom had Steve Bannon on the first episode of his podcast.
Newsom is term limited, he ain't coming back. That's also the reason he's turning right IMO, gearing up for a presidential run and thinks hariss' biggest mistake wasn't going on right wing podcasts.
You see, we will become the opposition party by moving to the right of the republicans (fox will still call us communists)
Ohhhh I didn't know that. It certainly explains why he's taking this turn.
Newsom
I see him angling for senate or a whitehouse run..... not succesfully but yeah
Newsom isn't running for Governor (he is termed out).
Ohhhh. I didn't know he couldn't run again. That certainly explains his recent turn. I really like Katie Porter overall though, and wish her luck. I love watching those clips of her grilling CEOs. She seems like a no nonsense type of person. A little car brained is something we can work with.
I'm not a huge fan of Porter. But between her and Kamala fucking Harris, whose big takeaway from the 2024 election seems to be "we didn't run far enough to the right..."
I'll admit I don't know much about her outside of those videos of her grilling CEOs when she was part of the Progressive Caucus. If she's as pro average citizen as she seems, she's better than most. What don't you like about her?
She traveled by airplane to San Francisco -- while campaigning against building a HSR system for the state. She also said she lost the CA Senate race because the election was "rigged". She is not a progressive -- just a stupid populist.
I've never been to Toronto but I'll be there next week. Parking is a mess where I'm staying near downtown, I may use this!
Parking honestly isn't terrible but a lot of it is residency based, so yeah it's harder as a visitor. I think you can get a temporary visitor parking pass at City Hall depending on how long you're staying for.
For the TTC (titty sea!), download the Presto app ahead of time or buy a Presto card when you get here. Also be sure to check out the PATH!
You picked a lovely time to visit, the weather is wonderful right now! (Aside from the week of rain we just had)
I actually lived there for most of my life, NY's metro does not compare. Only in-station transfers are free, one every 2hr. If you need to transfer from the 2 to the C in Brownsville, godspeed. Half the time it charges you anyways when it's not supposed to. Don't get me started on the lack of connection between the G and Atlantic, and the non-existent M loop.
Toronto is still about 50 cents cheaper via the exchange rate. Transit is far more reliable, and the average subway station is waaaaay nicer.
Fuck the MTA
You only get unlimited transfers in NYC until you leave a station. You get 1 reentrance or switch to / from a bus per 2 hours.
Here in Kansas City our transit was free for the past four years.
The downer is that, since we subsidized the public transit here in the city, the various suburbs opted to stop funding the routes that went into their various towns and cities, so now fares are going to be re-introduced.
At least the streetcar is going to remain free here, for now, and likely through 2026 due to the World Cup.
You're not wrong. Those two cities love their cars and their shitty chain stores.
goddamn you know you live in a fucked up society when the missouri side of your city is the more progressive.
This is more of a "city vs suburb" issue than the difference between 2 adjacent states.
eh, I just despise missouri more for having to live there repeatedly. not that kansas is utopia, but living in missouri was uniquely depressing.
When you have free public transport it ceases to be strictly public transport, and becomes half homeless shelter. No one wants to ride around with people who are all too often drug riddled, mentally ill, and just all around awful to be in an enclosed space with. I have sympathy for and want to help that demographic, but turning public transport into extremely expensive homeless day rooms ain't it.
Edit: down vote me all you like, free fares is an awful idea. If we want functional and useful public transport in this country we have to have it be safe and clean. I say this as someone who hasn't owned a personal auto in 12 plus years. I love and use public transport every day. Drug addled assholes are a problem.
Any critique of homeless people gets insta-downvoted unfortunately. The KC transit system, which I like, is rife with homeless people and many of them are visibly maladjusted and the people downvoting you would be instantly afraid of them. I've had one try to physically intimidate me, so now I carry a pocket stun-gun everywhere.
In fact, our streetcar is getting armed security guards because of said maladjusted homeless people.
Oh, I know.
That's partly why I carry a stun-gun everywhere now.
This conversation was just had in another thread but you're far better off with pepper spray. Get a friend to zap you with the stun gun, then ask yourself a question. If I was intent on being violent, would this stop me or just piss me off? For me the answer is the latter, and I've been stun gunned, even cattle prodded, messing around being stupid when I was younger.
Where do they cover your commuting costs? I've never heard of that.
In Brazil, it's pretty common for the employer to pay your transit fare to/from work. Often you can receive the same value directly instead if you choose to use another form of transportation.
Gosh that would be nice. Unfortunately we are stuck on simpler issues like "do kids deserve to eat at school", so it'll probably be a while before we get paid commute time.
Pretty rarely, far as I know. I've seen some that cover public transit costs at least. It's more common for them to only reimburse costs for travel during work hours or for business related trips.
Where do employers cover the cost of sommuting?
Many do: I believe there is a tax incentive for them. I’ve only had it while working downtown, and in a white collar job. So not where you’d usually drive to work and not for hourly pay.
Given that there are very few required benefits, it can be fairly regressive. You don’t get help with transit unless you’re an aid enough. You don’t get better health coverage unless you’re paid enough.
Not required. SF does have an ordinance to cover some costs depending on the number of employees. But its not some nationwide law.
If you're a fancy tech bro in SF all your costs are covered, health/dental/vision/life insurance, commuting stipend or govt subsidized account you get to put pre-tax money in and the company might match, matching contributions for your retirement 401K. The techbro class doesn't care about the cost of BART, many of them take an UBER for 3-4x the BART faire and not bat and eye at the bill (or use the company UBER account for free). If you're just some random minimum wage worker, you'd be lucky to live within an hour or two commute of SF and afford housing.
Surprisingly it is a national law, but it’s in the tax code as an optional benefit so it’s usually the better part paying jobs that get it, weirdly enough. Scroll to “commuter benefit)
I was a techbro in sf. I worked from home most days, but when I went to the office, I used Bart and my bicycle. It was great. I hate cars.
And, yes, I got the State to refund me for my monthly Bart pass
They do. You have to apply for it, and there's a ceiling per month.
There is a significantly reduced fare available. https://www.sfmta.com/fares/clipper-start
I walked off the train into a depowered station at night and couldnt scan off at the station, so I got on a bus and it depleted my card, then the next day I got a ticket for riding the bus without paying because the computer stole all my money and the guy giving me a ticket couldnt care less that I actually payed more than I should have but just kept repeating that I "should have had more money on the card"
Use cash.
Toronto’s UP express checking in. $12.35 from down town to the airport. Sub way in the city is cheap and affordable but that dam airport thing is in its own world.
Next topic is toll roads. 407. Full there and back trip during main business hours. 274km = $173.50
FYI, airport surcharges are very common. Across the bay at Oakland has an airport surcharge. Sydney has them too, which I was happy about because Melbourne doesn't have a train (AU $25 for a bus ticket, which was sold out) nor did Hobart. I recall AREX in Incheon also having a significant fare jump for the airport stops.
For argument purposes, BART is $0.18/mile (19th Oakland <> Berryessa). That's still pretty high for regional public transit, which is mostly due to BART's high farebox recovery. That high recovery is now a problem with the whole pandemic and subsequent slow return of ridership.
The Narita Express also costs significantly more than the regular train into Tokyo. Airport trains have to account for travelers with a lot of luggage and thus can carry fewer people than regular trains.
BART trainsets are uniform. No special airport trains.
It has been a long time since I've been to Tokyo. Narita trains are nice but I never managed to catch the express. Even so, the local is still really nice. :)
The Sydney airport line uses the exact same rolling stock as the rest of the suburban network (and the airport stations are just stops along the line, not their own dedicated line). The surcharge is just revenue raising because the train is the easiest way to get to the airport, so fuck you, pay up.
I didn't use them, so no idea if they are nicer - but they were quite a bit faster, yes.
Pro tip for London: You can swipe your credit card at the entry and exit points of your underground travels and it will cost you much less then any tourist tickets they sell.
You worried about nice train seats instead of just getting to where you're going lmao
But in Sydney you will pay the surcharge only when you get off or on at the actual airport station. Just using that line and passing the airport will cost you nothing extra. Usually less than 4 AUD for the whole trip.
Edit the listed fare in the post is nearly 4x the actual fare.
As it turns out it doesn’t actually cost that much on regular transit, there’s an AIRPORT SURCHARGE because it’s an “airport train”.
If she's not going to an airport (the pictured station is in SF and not SFO) this is just strait up wrong. As a regular BART rider who's used transbay service for years BART can't tell what trains you ride. They bill purely on the entry and exit station. I've pulled some transfers that on other systems would be wildly expensive to work around occasional systemwide issues without increased cost.
Within SF it costs the fixed Muni rate which is a lot cheaper. It is disturbingly fast and reliable especially as parts of the system date from the Nixon administration. It can be annoying to get to and from though.
Edit: The furthest fare from Oakland (Coliseum) to the station in the photograph (Montgomery) is 5.20. Using the OAK connector does bring it up to 12.65. Going to SFO from Coliseum is 12.10. Going for some reason airport to airport is 19.55. Not sure where she got $16 from.
Even the listed price is cheaper than cabs or car rentals tho. Cabs charge about 3.50 and then 0.55 for every 5th of a mile. So about $35 for 13 miles.
I think the point is that public transport should be cheaper than driving your own car. That's the only way to encourage adoption.
Unfortunately our country is being run by the cartoon villain from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
Well, you also pay for parking in SF.
And a brand new car is like a 5 to 15 year loan. You have to subtract more than just fuel costs.
BART, Muni and others are staring down the gun of drastic cuts right now due to COVID gutting their finances. The feds won't help and the state is preparing to have the budget gutted by the Trump administration and is looking for things to cut that won't hurt (these generally don't exist). I find more expensive programs unlikely right now.
I'm just hoping BART doesn't collapse at this point
Kansas City had free busses for 2 months.
And, as usual, the state stepped in.
Just like the roads!
When people say "free" with regards to a public service, they usually take it as understood that maintenance costs should be collectively shared via something like taxes. Better understood as "free at point of usage".
Yeah, roads are insanely expensive, we'd live in a very different world if they weren't free to use for everyone in most countries and all the money that wouldn't have ended up in road maintenance (because usage costs of heavy trucks wouldn't make them cost effective) went to rail and shipping. And let's not even count the insane networks of high speed roads that most rich countries built after 1945 that cost trillions of dollars globally.
Road maintenance is funded by the people that use them, in the form of tolls, registrations, and gas taxes. Public transport is mostly taxpayers that don't use it, subsidized by riders. That's a massive difference.
They didn't say ''not funded by any means'' they said ''free'' meaning ''free to ride'' the upside of free to ride is that it's accessible to everyone all the time. The funding for public services can come from a lot of different revenue, for instance ad space on the transit, concessions, taxes on luxury items, even state lottery systems.
There's a lot of reasons public transport isn't popular in the US. Where I live the homeless, some of whom are mentally ill, occupy the light rail trains and stations to escape the brutal cold during the winter. My friend's wife came home crying after finding a turd on a train seat. The cost is $5 for a day pass, far less than a downtown parking spot and it's not confusing at all though service is sparse
i thinks purposely designed that way, because the auto-companies have killed public transportation in the past, local govt simply never had the motivation to build out the infrastructure. the most famous is LA history.
i wondered, who is this person who is so out of touch that she thinks that is a reasonable price, and... she is a former member of congress from orange county who is currently campaigning to be governor of california 🤡
I mostly agree with you but this is in one of the most expensive places in the country. Public transport should be free of course but everything must profit in the USA.
JFK rail transfer to Jamaica Queens is like... Shit like 8.50? Then you can get on the 'regular' subway. It's way cheaper (and can take about the same time from Manhattan) than using a taxi or an Uber.
So your airport transportation is 8.50 on top of your metro card (34 a week which easily is covered if you are about the city at all).
WAY cheaper using the subway in NYC than owning a vehicle. A month for the metro is 132 for comparison.
for bart, it charges by the distance, for muni, they recently up thier fees for tickets, they are also have a budget mismangment issue which causes thier budget problems. they waste twice as much as they bring in through fare evasion fees, and transit fees, last i heard they are cutting some services in the summer. and there has some justification for fare evasion(just dont discuss this on reddit, because its mostly been infiltrated by do-gooders conservatives)
caltrain is a seperate agency than, bart, muni.
the mismangment parts: 1 of the problem is they spent twice as much as they are recouping in transit fees, lik 6+ million hiring inspectors over 2-3 million in fees. visit the reddit subs for more info.
Pretty sure must of us aren't going anywhere near Reddit. Muni seems a mess from my perspective, but when I visit there from sac the $8 or whatever it is for all day transit seems reasonable to me. Might have the price wrong, last time I was there was Chinese New Year and I rode the cable cars all day which was totally worth the $8. But I might as well be a tourist so I don't know just how fucked it all is.
oh yea cable car is always more expensive than a single transit ride. pandemic really did a number of people riding the subways, it never fully recover so they have to do everything else to increase the "riders" lost instead of actually attracting more ridership.
like spending and aggressively pursuing fare evaders, spending twice or more than twice in hiring than recouping some fees from them. in reality fares make up less than 20% of thier budget. im guessing federal (washington)wants to see more initiative in justifying thier budget?
Now that trump is in power again, there might not even be money .
In case anyone is wondering, a one way trip from Oakland International Airport to the Civic Center station in San Francisco (the stop next to City Hall and the city's largest open air fent market) is exactly $12.65.
The trip from Oakland to Civic Center is "just" $5.20, but like OP said, there's a fuckass stupid airport surcharge for the last half mile or so.
Isn’t the idea of such a surcharge to encourage an alternate transit mode?
Apparently they believe they don’t have enough taxis clogging the entrance? Every driver trying to reach my local airport should thank me for taking the airport shuttle.
I don't know if I used the right term by saying "surcharge". They built an extraordinarily expensive trolley line from BART to the airport about ten years back and are charging high fees to cover expenses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
The San Francisco Airport, on the other hand, has an actual surcharge - the main BART line goes direct to SFO but they charge like $5 extra. But SFO also has the same surcharge on taxis and rideshares :/
They built an extraordinarily expensive trolley line from BART to the airport about ten years back and are charging high fees to cover expenses.
'Extraordinarily expensive' doesn't begin to describe the boondoggle that is the OAK airport connector. Local bus service and basic BART maintenance got eviscerated to pay for the $500 million construction cost (BART lost a Federal civil rights lawsuit over this). Prior to the connector, BART ran a dedicated shuttle bus every ten minutes to the airport. That bus was actually faster than the connector and made a small profit despite the tiny $2 fare.
But look on the bright side, I bet some politically connected contractors in Oakland made a whole lot of money off building it. That's called investing in the local economy 😆
Damn, I just rode the connector and really enjoyed it. Nice engineering in it's mechanisms too.
But I did note how it's only got two trains on the whole system..
MARTA is fairly nice. It's a flat $2.50 to get on the train/bus and it includes three bus transfers. Anywhere that makes it just a flat fee is nice. The Chicago L was similar. I don't remember the individual price but their weekly rate was a great deal.
I had to go through SF a few times this year. I have no idea how much the transit cost, but it was fucking expensive and I just rode a few times per day across town or to the airport.
I love public transit systems and being free to move around a city using them. It's a truly liberating experience to have real freedom, but damn SF was tough to understand and weird in places. They've got to unify the system and start paying for it or it's going to just keep crushing their downtown areas when no one uses the transit to visit.
Unifying the system might actually hurt it more then help. MUNI the bus and light rail system within the city is relatively cheap, $2.75 fare to ride any where. That's because it's funded mostly by the city because people in the city use and value it more. BART, the metro that's posted in the picture is funded by all the suburban and urban municipalities that it serves in the metro area, and since the suburban cities don't use/ value it as much it's hard to get funding for it passed through taxes so they rely more on fares.
If they unified it then the minority of people in the city wouldn't be able to pass taxes to improve, or at this point maintain, service and we'd get stuck with high fares and low service.
For example in the last election a majority of people voted to tax rideshares to pay for the bus in the city, it didn't pass because another ballot measure that passed had some fine print nullified it, but that kind of measure would never have passed throughout the whole bay area.
The current toll to cross the bay bridge by car from Oakland to sf is $8, and like someone mentioned it's only $4.25 from Oakland to sf without the airport charge, so you are still saving by using bart, just not as much as you probably should.
Bart is expensive, but some of the best transit in America unfortunately. Why I generally just hop the gate by pushing through before the things close
One of the reasons I don't want to live anywhere else in the US is NYC had public transit that mostly works. Even if this weekend I had to do a Q to the N to the 7 to back to the N to get to queens. I played a whole game of Lords of Waterdeep on my phone and read some of my book.
I used to sit on the Prospect Park<->Franklin Ave S shuttle on Saturday mornings and just ride it back and forth while reading a book because it was so calming. Gliding through green backyards in the springtime.
I couldn't handle living in NYC long term, but I did stay, mostly in Brooklyn, for four months. The subway is amazing. I will never drive in that city again if I can avoid it.
The alternative is higher taxes and everyone scoffs at that so...
People pay to ride the train?
Some good-two shoes do, most do, but alot of people dont. hence reddit had whole host of people being, caught,evading fares,, you got people on there being a know it all, and you should be paying your fare share.
Oh for bay area, there are specific times of the year, that inspectors come out in droves to "ticket" as much people as possible, usually its around summer-to fall, and then maybe winter. there has been discussion how the evasion tickets are much more than TRAFFIC tickets/parking tickets. right now is about 135$ for each violation, and there are all sorts of tricks to avoid that even if yuo get ticketed. there is alot of justification for evading fares.
I pay my taxes, which I’m told goes to public transit, and there was a huge scandal with the transit department in my state a while back where we found out they were fucking everyone over and skimming a fucked up amount of money and the state did pretty much nothing about it, so when the transit department is stealing less from public transit than I am I’ll consider it, but I also feel that public transit should be free, especially if I’m already paying for it.
our taxes pay for it already, only amount to under 20% in fares of the budget. but federal govt decided it wasnt enough to give them money for the budget, so all these underhanded inspections have occured over the years. now with trump in power, the money coming from federal is even less certain.
As I said, if they decide to stop fucking us over I’ll decide to stop fucking them over. Also, my state was taxing enough to line the pockets of the conservative representatives that are bleeding the state dry on every other front of politics and social structure and ecology on top of this, which is why nobody had to face any music over the bullshit they’re continuing to pull, if they have problems with people not paying five bucks to go ten blocks then that is a problem they created and a problem for them to solve. And with the price gouging they are doing with the sea of university students having to bus or train from three districts away because they can’t afford dorms or housing in the city, my 8 block jump to work isn’t taking the food off of anyone’s table.
This is the norm where I live too, AND my city has a relatively good public transportation system.
people pay for public transport?
tallinn
Way less in taxes than road construction and maintenance.
dw it was a silly joke
Unfortunately. At least ours is cheap
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@lemmy.world
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
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Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
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Meanwhile here in Germany I can use any bus, tram, U-Bahn, or train (excluding high speed) anywhere in the country for 58€/month
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