/s
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Iām lucky enough to have a bus stop ~200 m from my house. But itās exposed on the side of a highway. Not fun. Then the transport system is designed to go to the city center, but thereās no āringā service. So going from a southeast spur to a south spur only ~10 miles away requires a trip downtown with 2 hub transfers to head down the other spur. With the last mile either hiking or biking. With transfer delays, it adds up to 3 hours.
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Yeah, sounds about rightā¦ itās almost like they try and make public transit as inefficient as possible! 
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This is an interesting exploration. My commute would be:
- Walk 1.5 miles to the closest bus stop.
- Take bus for three miles to train station.
- Take train to Chicago union station.
- Leave train station, walk 10 minutes to Chicago Ogilvie station (or take two buses)
- Ride train to Northwest chicago burbs
- Use the company-proveded schoolbus for the last two miles (or walk). Lucky me
Total time: three hours and 15 minutes. One way.
Total cost: about $40 round trip
By comparison my driving commute is under two hours round trip, and costs $15-$20
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What do you pay to own your car, and all its associated upkeepā¦such as license/tags, gas/oil, tires, repairs, carwash (or soap/water and your time), depreciation/loss upon resale, additional cost of your house if you have a garage/or otherwise loss of useful space because you store the car in your garage. How much time do you have to work to earn the money to support your car?
Loss of valuable exercise that would have been built into your day by walking/bikingā¦
Not saying those cancel out your concerns, just saying thereās a lot to remember in the calculations.
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All valid points, and long considered, but the main point I was lamenting is that the public transportation option is currently unviable. I also cannot afford to live where I work, and the schools in the area where I work were insufficient for my sonās unique needs.
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Yes, the word āunviableā for three hours and 15 minutes one way is putting it mildly.
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I think this is very true for probably the vast majority of us who live near a major city, too. Iām guessing NYC is an outlier in that regard, but most of us struggle with good public transit, in part thanks to phenomenon like white flight (white people leaving cities, and then voting down public transit).
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Yeah, even living right in a city, Iām affected by it too. Iām 2.5 miles from downtown Minneapolis, and for years I walked to work downtown. After that I biked to work in a different section of town. But now, jobs that match my skills have moved out to the suburbs, where they can offer free parking as an employee incentive. One job I was looking at, I could have gotten about a mile from it by bus(es), butā¦there were no sidewalks to walk on between the last bus stop and the businessās location in an office park. I was not gonna walk in the road in the winter after dark near a freeway entrance.
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Iāve moved from even more rural, but currently the closest bus stop is a 2h20m walk (7 miles) to catch a bus that would take about 45 minutes to get to a train and then that would be another hour when the train got there, plus whatever I would need to do once I made it to the Loop.
Itās not the right lifestyle for me, thatās for sure.
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Wissing is trying to deflect from how heās in the pocket of the car lobby. Heās holding up bills to expedite rail and bridge repairs and expansion because he wants to include autobahns in the expedition process. Because in his twisted logic, more autobahns is somehow good for the climate.
Sure, the current transportation minister is a damn sight better than his corrupt predecessors, but heās still a libertarian fan of fast cars, and everyone knows it. Saying Wissing is better than Scheuer or Dobrint is kinda like saying spilling red wine vinegar on the carpet isnāt as bad as spilling sulfuric acid. The guy is still a corrosive stain on society.
As for the main topic, I consider Munich a truly livable city. I got rid of my car because I can go anywhere via public transportation. The city has a healthy mix of underground, trams, busses, and light commuter rail, and if the Deutsche Bahn and the Bavarian government werenāt such asses, the system would be even better. Munich also still has a lot of places that need improving, but I like it better than, say, London, or Boston, or Austin (comparing only to places I could have worked at and have visited).
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The Philly area is an outlier, too. Here public transport is being expanded or updated, and with more people moving into suburbs thereās a push to bring some older, defunct lines back. When the major and minor arteries around the city and county commercial corridors get jammed with cars, suddenly better public transit looks much more attractive!
I moved from a suburb where it was a five-minute walk to a bus that would take me to a trolley or regional rail 10-15 minutes further away. Riding either one of those would get me into the city in one hour. Now Iām in an area where itās just the bus (a ten minute walk) and regional rail, but the commuting time is the same.
My main complaint is similar to what @DukeTrout mentioned. We have a hub and spoke layout for rail - without the tire. A ring connecting the endpoints would save a lot of time and help more people to avoid using cars. Bus service fills in those gaps in some areas, but remains too slow because they have to deal with all the car traffic, too.
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They wonāt even build enough housing to account for population growthātheyāre definitely not building extra units on transit corridors for people who are already housed out in the boonies 
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I have a much better project than the proposed Saudi long-city: Build a bridge across the Strait of Gilbralter. Tack buildings to its edges. Voila! Instant super-city, financed by charging tolls on passing ships, sure. 
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Some disused rail lines in USA (and likely elsewhere) have undergone Rail-To-Trail conversions, opening the old routes to bikers and hikers. Inclines are not steep, so human-powered travel is easy.
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That was an enjoyable video, thanks for sharing! Iāll be watching more of his videos now.
Unfortunately I think Iām kind of out of the equation on the sort of direct action he talks about due to where i live, but this sort of thinking does give me optimism for the future, as well as perhaps a slight pang of melancholy given the political & monetary weight put in by the powers that be to resist any sort of substantive change.
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