Genuine Question. Even if I look at hungarian Transport, and they to this day use trains from the UdSSR, they come more consistantly then the DB.

They are really Bad sometimes, with like 20 seperate prices: Theres the bayernwald ticket that only works in the alps, then theres the official ticket to the destination. Theres a special offer, but only in the very special APP. You can use a d-ticket, but look! Some random ass slum in the middle of the worlds ass dosent accept that, but it does the MVV zone Tickets. But then you need the MVV zone 11-M, a ticket to the beginning to the Nürnberg zones, and a ticket for the Nürnberg zones.

And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?

  • miridius@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Ok yeah DB has been woefully underfunded for decades thanks to auto industry lobbying and so now half the trains are late or cancelled, but the fact that you even can get from any city to any other city by train and then get to anywhere within each city by bus/tram is mind blowing to some of us that didn’t grow up in Europe. There are lots of places where you basically can’t live without a car, it’s insane.

  • Rookwood@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    In a lot of areas it’s virtually non-existent. In my medium size’d city. A bus stop is about 2 miles away and comes every 50 minutes.

  • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Public transportation doesn’t work in the endless suburbs and stripmalls we’ve built. It’s too spread out, and we’ve been doing it for a few generations now. It’s difficult for my countrypeople to imagine living differently, to imagine that our current existence may not be their birthright.

    People think nothing of living 20 plus miles from where they work or go to school, can’t imagine a world where such a thing is a ridiculous notion. We could have all these nice things. People want a better world, a more functional city.

    But ask people to change, to live a smaller life, and be prepared for a deluge of excuses and justifications. We all wake up and collectively decide the world we’re gonna live in today.

  • IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I live in a smallish town with decent public transport in the US. Free, highly reliable busses that go to nearly every part of town and a couple of the connected suburbs as well. The locals hate it, I guess they’re still mad it messed up traffic? Idk I just tell them if they hate the traffic so much use the free bus that is supposedly making their life so much harder.

    This is abnormal in the US, having decent public transport. Its basically only available in MAJOR metro areas like NYC, LA, Seattle, Chicago. Most of the country barely has functional public transport, let alone reliable.

  • PTSDwarrior@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    It may be bad in Germany but its worse in the USA. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has better transit options than the rest of the country. But its limited just to the city of San Francisco itself and maybe some parts outside the city. I just came back from a short trip to Germany, where my family lives. They live in Kassel, a mid-sized city in the north central part of the country. Even a mid-sized city has an extensive tram network and bus system. And a monthly transit card doesn’t cost as much. Getting to Kassel itself was easy by train, though the train was 1/2 hour late. I am very, very jealous of my family.

    • ...m...@ttrpg.network
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      2 days ago

      …i tried to live with public transit in marin county: just commuting to my job was three hours each way, with a very narrow window of opportunity for walking to a grocer at my transfer hub and no recourse on nights when i had to work late…

  • figjam@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    I live in the largest city in a Midwestern state. To access amtrak (the only passenger rail in the us)I need to drive 3 hours to the nearest station.

    The city is shaped like a lopsided clock. I live in the burbs around 1 o’clock. I work for a fortune 50 company headquartered at 10 o’clock. To take the bus to my job I need to take the bus downtown and wait for an out bound. This would take 90 minutes when I could drive in 25.

    America has not made public transit a serious option unless you are in Chicago, NYC or DC.

  • niftybeaks@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Where I live, there are literally zero public transit options. There are a few bus stops closer to the downtown area, but honestly I have never actually seen the buses that supposedly go there. Usually there are just homeless people hanging out at the bus stops. We do have a small Amtrak station, which is nice, I guess, but it’s way more expensive than driving and takes 4-10 times as long to get anywhere. Then when you get somewhere, you have to figure out how to rent a car. And this is the largest city in my state; most places don’t even have well-paved roads, much less public transit.

    • Luffy@lemmy.mlOP
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      4 days ago

      Really? Like… How do you move around then? Only cars? But if you dont want / have a car? If youre still doing your drivers license?

      • Balerion6@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Fuck you, that’s how. It’s pretty much only cars. Not having a car isn’t really an option here, unless maybe you live in the heart of a big city.

        • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          A big city not in the South. Houston and Dallas are #4 and #9. There’s public transit but it fucking sucks both places.

          • zeldakong64@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            I think Boston’s is pretty extensive as well, but that’s more of a mid-sized city and the infrastructure is certainly older

      • In many places it’s illegal to walk on the side of the road for motorist safety, and no they don’t see value adding sidewalks. Other places don’t like people that’s not from that area walking in front of their house and will call the police every single time.

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        Outside of like NYC you have a car. It’s a bad system economically, ecologically, and socially, but many people are kind of stupid and reactionary. You show them how putting in a bike lane and adding a bus stop will lower car traffic, improve air quality, and increase economic activity and they just go “no because I feel so”. Or, “one time I had to move a refrigerator so we need to prioritize large privately owned vehicles”.

        • Zahille7@lemmy.world
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          When I worked two jobs, I’d take the bus from one to the other and it would always take like an hour and a half. One day I decided to walk it, cause it was only a couple miles (also cause the bus driver straight up passed right by me while I was sitting on the bus stop bench waiting for them), maybe a little more than a mile and a half. Took me 45 minutes, maybe.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        We do have it in Germany and the local public transport is perfectly good, albeit a bit expensive in some cities, but its the interregional, long distance train network that has massive issues in Germany. Trains are constantly delayed or even cancelled, pricing is absurd, still no level boarding on the high speed trains, etc.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Not German, but close enough - there’s usually at least one bus within walkable distance, even if it’s only like 4 times a day or something, that connects to a larger hub.

          I lived in a place where I had to be by the bus stop at 7h30. If I missed that I’d have to wait for the next at 8h15, and if I missed that one, I’d better call to say I wasn’t able to go that day.

          However, in smaller towns and in the countryside, with no cars, life is so different to the frenetic chaos of big cities that it’s hard to put into words.

        • auraithx@piefed.social
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          4 days ago

          I would imagine they all have busses? All rural areas in Scotland do at least.

          And rural areas tend to be situated around villages with main streets - rather than random houses built outwards.

        • Luffy@lemmy.mlOP
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          Dont know, I live in a pretty walkable City where I can bike in 5 Minuten from one end to the other, with a tech store, School, Beach, Bank, etc. Everything you would need. I have a train coming hourly if I want to go to the Beach or munich, but its admittadly way worse (20-30 mins) to bike to the next bigger City.

          • 🔰Hurling⚜️Durling🔱@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Last time I visited the Netherlands I thought I was in walkability heaven

            Edit: shot, sorry. Forgot you said Germany… But my comment still stands, although I bet Germany is at least as nice as well.

        • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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          We aren’t just talking small towns though. Any city that isn’t New York, Chicago, or Boston might as well not have any rail service at all. Houston has 22.7 miles of passenger railway that is only located downtown. Columbus Ohio has a metro of 2.2 million people and doesn’t have a single inch of passenger rail. Cleveland has an OK system by American standards, which i use whenever i go to Cleveland, but the only option for me to take a train into Cleveland from where i live in NW Ohio would take an hour longer than just driving there outright.

      • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 days ago

        Most cities have a bus service, but they only rarely connect to smaller towns (“smaller” being relative here, like 30,000 people).

        To put it in perspective, I live in a suburban apartment outside of a medium-sized city in Ohio. There is a single busline that goes through my neighborhood (which thankfully has a stop right outside my complex). A bus comes by once an hour between 7 AM and 7 PM.

        This can get you to work if you’re lucky enough to work a 9-5 next to a bus stop. My work has a bus stop, but I work a 4-12, so no luck.

        My favorite bar is in the next town over, a college town about 15 minutes down the road. If I wanted to get there by public transit, I would need to wait for the hourly bus outside of my apartment, get off at a grocery store, wait about a half an hour for a connecting bus from the college town’s bus service, and that’s not even counting the drive time.

        And if I don’t leave the bar by 6 PM, of course, I’m stranded without an Uber or something, because even on weekends (not that I have weekends off work) the busses only run till 7 PM.

        And there’s other towns nearby that I literally cannot take public transport to. I had to work an event in a smaller city (but still probably within the top 20 in the state for population) about half an hour drive away. There is no bus service that connects me to them. The only options are driving or Uber.

  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 days ago

    If it exists, it is better than American public transit. Here is my daily commute to work, as estimated by Google Maps:

    Even Google goes “lmao use a fucking car, peasant.”

    It’s technically possible for me to take public transit, but it would be about the same as walking. Here is a quick sketch of the route I’d need to take, compared to my drive:

    That route is because there are no east/west lines between me and my job. It starts by walking/riding my bike the wrong direction to get to the nearest bus stop. Then it takes me south-west through two cities, then north-west through two more cities. Then I’d have a ~20 minute walk to transfer rail lines, because my job is serviced by a different rail system than the one that my bus service touches. After that walk (and waiting for the next train) I take it north and then have to walk another 10-15 minutes to finally get to work.

    Not counting wait times, it would take me nearly 2.5 hours to use public transit. When you consider the fact that some busses and trains only run once every 20-45 minutes, it actually stretches closer to 3-4 hours, if the schedules don’t line up. Or I could just fucking drive 10 minutes. Yeah, it’s no wonder Americans use cars for everything.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      4 days ago

      USA.jpeg right there. That image is for everyone who lives there except for like three cities. And the bike route is actually crossing several major roads.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        And the bike route is actually crossing several major roads.

        It’s worse: The bike route is on a two lane highway with no shoulder. I’d be dead on Day 1 if I actually tried to walk/ride a bike.

    • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 days ago

      I used to just walk 1.5 hours to work sometimes because it was the same time the bus would take, to only drop me off 75minutes early for my shift, or ten minutes late. So I’d just walk.