Anything more than 10 minutes between vehicles during peak time is absolutely unacceptable for a transit system, no matter how low the ridership is. From (at the very least) 8am-6pm you should be able to walk out at any time and catch a bus/train without planning

And I say “no matter how low the ridership is” because if it’s longer than 15 minutes your ridership is going to stay low because it’s easier to drive.

Transit stops that are actively hostile to people wanting to use them. Removing shade/shelter/benches and generally making them unpleasant as possible. They always says it's to "save money" or "improve safety" but it's always clear it's to prevent people who are homeless from using them for the smallest bit of comfort.

Recently they started renovating transit stops near me to remove any enclosed warm places (important when it regularly reaches 0°F or colder) where someone could wait, and it's not unusual to have 15 minute+ waits.

Two hour beaks in schedules. It sucks if your teacher out of nowhwhere decides to run class for an extra 15 minutes.

Frequent lack of TOD in America. Building new transit should be an opportunity to build whole new dense neighborhoods, and instead we make park and rides.

In USA, there isnt consistent funding to build new lines. This leads to great inneficiency and more cost overruns when a new workforce needs to be built from the bottom up and properly trained to complete one project, and is then disbanded.

In SD, we recently (well, its been like 2 years now) finished a long awaited extension of one of our 3 light rail lines. But once it was complete, the contractors involved disbanded because we can only build one line every 30 years i guess. There is talk of the next line, but it probably wont break ground until 2040 or later. Land wont get cheaper, wages wont get lower, and now the entire apparatus of contractors to build it will have to be built back up.

If we could preemptively fund and plan multiple extensions and new lines to be built consecutively, according to a comprehensive plan, things would be done much faster and cheaper. The way it typically is in the USA though is just comrpomosed piecemeal additions every decade or two, that will never add up to a comprehensive transit system

Shutting down every night for maintenance.

Like I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, I'm sure it's important to regularly maintain tracks and cars but dang couldn't it be open a little later to allow people to take the train home from the club

The two payment options being either cash (with some absurd non-whole dollar amount fare and no change given) or having to download a specific app for the specific transit agency and having to make an account etc. to buy a ticket.

Just support tap-to-pay.

I also dislike schedules that don't indicate or include timed transfers. If I wanted to travel car-free to my local ski mountain, it's possible, but it includes two transfers to buses that are scheduled within minutes of each other, but they're not timed transfers. One will not wait for the other if it's late. And the frequency on those buses is hourly at best.

Buses. Fuck buses. Replace all buses with subways, separated street cars, bike lanes, and trains accordingly.

No regional trains for most of the night. I should be able to get home from the big city between the hours of 22 and 6

Oh my god, there are far too many to name and I'm always looking for someone to listen to my ranting about terrible transit. Sorry, but for asking this question you're now going to get a very large wall of text.

1: A lack of signal priority. Countless hours of collective human time have been wasted in transit vehicles waiting at completely empty intersections for a red light to change because the traffic signal uses the state of the art technology called a timer.

2: Terrible right of way. Way too many transit agencies place their transit lines not based on where demand is highest or where transit will be most effective, but just where land is cheapest or where the transit agency already owns. The principal rapid transit line in my city runs along a river because the city already owned the land, but it means that literally half of the area surrounding the transit line is just completely useless because it's water. Highway median transit is another example of this, which can often lead to…

3: Terrible land use surrounding stations. Almost without fail transit stations in North American cities are surrounded by parking lots, highway interchanges, or just straight up undeveloped land.

4: The North American light rail obsession. Nearly every single new or recently built rapid transit line in the US or Canada is done using trams, often running partially on the street, with absolutely no consideration for if this is the right transit solution for a given city. Link in Seattle is a good example. It's absolutely absurd for a city the size of Seattle to have light rail. A city of 4 million people in any other developed nation would have a proper metro, but because Seattle is in America it gets a shitty light rail.

I may return to update this later but this was all I could write for now

Specific pet peeve of mine for the transit in my city is building a Bus Rapid Transit line right along the path of an already existing network of rail lines which are under-utilized by the rail company, at a cost comparable to building a whole new LRT line, through an area of the city which used to be empty marshland that was conveniently purchased and started development by a friend of the mayor when the BRT line did rather than along one of the actual main corridors of the city, to a part of a the city that was already the best serviced by existing transit rather than one of the parts that are impossible to navigate without a car, in a city where we get a huge amount of annual snowfall and have a ridiculous deficit of road maintenance already (BRT route being another road that has to be plowed and maintained vs trains where u kinda can just put a plow on the front), while you are constantly litigating with the transit driver union and refuse to pay even close to an acceptable wage while simultaneously complaining that pre-covid service cannot be restored due to lack of drivers, and then proceeding to mostly abandon or stall any of the other proposed transit expansion in the city for almost a decade.

Outside of that specific example it really bothers me when people stand directly in front of the doors of a subway or tram car waiting to get on. Not only is it stupid and illogical if you want to actually get on the train but everywhere has ample arrows and signs indicating where you should stand to wait to get on so as to allow other people off.

The unending ambiguity of how to pay at an unfamiliar transit system.

You don't all have to use the same system but it'd be nice if your websites all actually said it somewhere easy to find. And said it at all.

transit line that is sorely needed by also 20 years away

A ton where I live but it's all because of lack of funding and car centric infrastructure. My top would be how unsanitary it is when you're forced to pile up with others in a really small space that shouldn't have so many people inside.

• Massive train/metro station platforms with just a couple of benches and a small fraction of it covered. Most people have to wait in the rain / baking sun.

• Buses / trains not running at night.

• On-level pedestrian crossings of railroads with ridiculously loud "incoming train" bells

In my area it's that we only have buses and the maximum frequency is 30 minutes, which the system only achieves on a few lines M-F from 6-18:00. Otherwise it's like a 1-2 hour frequency.

Oh, and we have a train station but there's only 2 trains in the morning and 2 in the evening and they're so slow and cost so much fucking money that there's no point in ever taking them into the city. There's legitimately no use case for them as a commuter train because they wouldn't get you downtown early enough and leave too early to catch after work and a round trip is like $34. The only use is if you're taking a long distance trip and even then it costs so much more than any other option while being 2x slower than driving and 6-7x slower than flying. Why, yes, it is Amtrak. How did you know?

When the transit security people ask for my train ticket. I never pay to ride the train. Last time I pretended to fumble with my phone because I was getting off at the next stop anyway and the guy was like ehh forget it because I was taking too long. I don't even know if you can pay with your phone lol

When I'm walking up to the platform and the light rail train leaves

I never check the schedule

the train on my rural line doesn't run at 3am when i have to go to work

London underground is just thoroughly unpleasant all the time but that's more the fault of capitalism forcing pointless commuting to pointless offices where we pretend to work.

UK bus system is a disaster.

Train toilets are always out of order when i need them

This isn't 100% public transit's fault, but I hate how expensive living anywhere that has even a little public transit is. Despite the old stigma of public transportation, the truth of the matter is that here in the US: the poor drive cars and the rich live in walkable cities with public transit.

They replaced my regular commuter bus with a snakeybus, which is cool I like snakeybusses, but ever since they did that somehow it's constantly full during my commute. I used to get to sit on regular bus - there is only standing room by the time snakeybus reaches me.

Which is still a little nicer than when I had to take the light rail? Like the max is fine 99% of the time, but also every time something bad has happened to me on transit, it has been on the rail. Been assaulted twice in the last two years, and both times nobody intervened (I can't really blame them for that, given we've also had some high-profile stabbings of Good Samaritans in recent years!). The bus feels way safer, since the driver can at least notice when someone is being belligerent.

Also for an actual pet peeve, they recently raised fare by 30 cents but didn't adjust the payment system, so you can still only load your bus pass in whole dollar increments (minimum $5). Used to be $5 a day, easy peasy, now it's $5.60 and you always have a weird amount left over afterwards. Like oh no I only have $2.60 on my card, 20c short, better load another minimum $5.

When it's cold out so you bundle up but they blast the heat in the cars so you have to strip off all your cold weather clothes to avoid sweating through them

I get why they do it like that. But maybe just not so hot? Just normal temperature?

i don't like that when i look down at the tracks the only things i can see in the track zone are rats and roaches. they should introduce some biodiversity down there. no one on inaturalist wants to see more pictures of rats and roaches.

The escalators in some stations are way too long. Being on the escalator for more than 5 minutes is scary. These ones are always very steep too. Feels like I am being escalatored down to hell.

Another pet peeve of mine is a service that is branded incorrectly. A "frequent service" that only runs every 20 minutes. A surface tram being called a Stadtbahn with a U sign indicating rapid transit. A regional rail network that has trains every hour or worse with no central frequent section being called an S-Bahn.

Jerking off on the bus/train.

death to america