No Stupid Questions

Western United States. I used to try to commute via public transport. To get to where I needed to go, I needed to get on a bus, a train, and another bus. My walk to the bus was about 15 minutes from my apartment. The bus came about every 30 minutes, but was often not on time. The bus to the train was about 10 minutes. The train only ran every 30 minutes, so sometimes I'd get dropped by the bus and have to wait 25 minutes to continue my journey. The train took about 25 minutes to my stop. The second bus ran every 15-20 minutes, took about 8 minutes to get to my final destination.

All together, my commute could be from 50min - 1h 30. In my experience it was usually closer to 1h 30.

Driving? 35min, 45 with traffic.

United States has got to start really investing in public transportation.

Where I live, if I took transit my twenty-ish minute commute would become an hour and thirteen minute commute according to Google maps.

I'm Polish so I'll speak about here.
Before the Iron curtain fell cars were seen as a symbol of prosperity, at the same time the roads were empty, so having a car was also massively more convenient. Then the PRL ended and suddenly everyone was able to buy a car. So everyone did. People stopped using the busses and trains, so they received less and less funding, leading to reduction in service frequency and available routes, leading to more people buying cars.

Public transit is so slow where I am. A trip in a car that would take an hour takes 2.5 hours with the bus/train.

The biggest reason is my local public transportation. I live near a large city in northern West Virginia. The only bus that comes close to my address runs twice a day. Once at 7am and then again at 5pm. On top of that it would be a 20 minute walk, 10 minute bike ride, or 5 minute car ride to the bus stop. If I had to I could make it work but I can't get groceries after work because I would miss the last bus by the time I got off work and finished my shopping. This means I would have to go out on Saturday at 7am and do my shopping and then catch the bus back at 5. Add on top of that having two kids and it's just impossible. Unfortunately a lot of the US is like this. I wouldn't mind if I had to pay more and my local government put more effort into public transit but that seems to be low on their list of priorities.

I will say that electric bikes and self driving cars in the future may change everything for the better.

I prefer public transport but I've been tempted by a car.

Even in the UK in a city with decent transport links, some commutes are massively faster by car. Travelling at night. Public transport sometimes has wild enough prices that taking a car solo is a better value proposition.

Commuting in a car versus a sardine bus is also more pleasant.

Unfortunately some of us have no reliable public transportation and essentially need cars. I wish I had access to good public transit.

I either walk miles in 100 degrees or -40 degrees or have a car

I live 5 miles out from the city im WV. I would need to walk/bike up and down hills for 2 miles at a minimum just to get to a local transit stop.

Public transit is almost never the fastest option. Even when I lived in New York City, it wasn't the fastest option. If you were running late, you'd spend the extra money on a taxi to get to the airport or to get across town and except for the very peak of rush hour, it was faster. That's broadly been true in my travels in Europe, as well: taxis are almost always faster, from London to Rome.

Add to that, in the US, the actual experience of using public transit is often quite bad. Public transit is, well, public. You share a limited space, sometimes a very limited space, with literally anyone. Women are groped. The smell of urine is common. The seats are sticky. It's just gross, even in wealthy areas.

In contrast, with a car, you have a private, controlled environment. The temperature is what you want it to be. There's music. You can have a private conversation with your spouse. The chair is comfortable. Maybe you even have heated seats with a massage function. But whatever car you have, it's probably more luxurious than even a great public transit option.

So:

• Faster
• More personal space
• More private
• No perverts, no bodily fluids, no body odor, no one on the way home from the fish market

I think most covered it all why they use a car.

I just want to add that it all depends on where you live. I don't know what you mean by "most". I would say most in cities with good bike lanes like Paris and Amsterdam would say most take the bike, or cities with great public transport like Tokyo would say most take public transport. If you live in a place like USA where it is dangerous to walk and the public transport is almost none existing then most would take the car. I think New York has ok public transport. But I don't know, when I was there were sandy coming in so all of the subways were closed off.

I live in a very small city in the USA. You aren’t going anywhere without a car. Lots of rural communities surround us and you have to drive past corn fields. A car is a necessity in a place like this.

I'm from the Philippines. My preferred method of public transit is booking a motorcycle ride because traffic can get so bad depending on the time of day. A 15m jeepney ride 8 years ago can take double or triple that time these days.

Really depends on where you are.

Well it depends on where you live... Someone in Los Angeles can't rely on public transportation.

Can't answer for all of humanity, but for me I basically live somewhere that has absolutely shit public transport. My village has a total of 5(!) buses a day. But that's rural life.
I'm planning on moving to The Big City™️, so when I will I won't be using my car daily. But I won't get rid of it because for any trip which is beyond the central city routes it'll be hell to get to without a car. (I expect it to be once a week-ish).
E.g - to get directly from where I'll be moving to my mom's house is like 40minutea by car. It's 3+hours by public transport.
Also if I'll want to do anything that requires carrying stuff (like let's say, going to the supermarket to buy more than one handful of stuff...) - a car would make that practical as I'll be able to put the things in the car rather than carrying it across the city.

I definitely aim to reduce my car usage by a lot, but in my country I'll still benefit from using a car. Maybe in a decade or two the state of public transport will be much better and I'll be able to consider dropping the car all together.

The bus in my town arrives every 90 minutes. For my usual 13 minute drive to the grocery store, it would take 52 minutes according to Google Maps. That's IF I somehow found myself at the pickup(3 miles from my house), boarded right away, and hopped right back on after shopping. We're a family of 4, so how many groceries would I be carrying through this ordeal? Probably more than I'd prefer. It's just not feasible in rural America, and incredibly inefficient.

In Greece, many areas are almost completely uncovered by public transport.
And even in the peak hours there aren't enough vehicles, so they get so packed that people are basically hugging each other some times.
Also, public transport was a pretty common place to be harassed as a woman, but I think the situation has improved the past few years.

Despite that, the roads of the city center are so crappy that driving in that traffic is even worse than public transport, so I actually prefer it :P
I also enjoy seeing lots of different people and listening to some conversations now and then

Personally, I am a huge fan of public transport (also without a driver's license), but there are certain downsides to it that really can't be ignored. The biggest of them all: dependability/dependancy. As a user of public transport I am dependant on that mode of transport to operate. If they don't, I'm stuck. Say the public transport you wanna take operates only every one or two hours, that significantly changes how flexible you are and also alters the way you can plan. Instead of committing to, say for example, leaving at 8am and returning at 4pm, I may have to leave at 9am and return at 3pm (effictively cutting my visit short by 2 hours) if those are the only times with service. And then of course construction can be a nightmare, depending on where it needs to be carried out.

Car users don't have these issues. They can travel whenever they want and wherever they want on whatever route they prefer. No need to change between trains, no danger of missing the bus or running into construction, no restrictions caused by the train schedule.

My freedumbs. It's stupid.

I got 3 kids and we got two cars. One big for everyone and luggage and a small electric one. We don't use public transport much due to:

• a lot of time lost (busses go every 30mins but only to the small city centre/train station). So to go shopping is 5 mins vs 30 mins one way. To go to work: 45 mins vs 2 hours).
• if one kid is sick, it's hard enough to get them to the doctor in the car, now try that in busses.
• I need to transport a lot of food for 5 people. And then there's also garden waste which I could not transport with busses
• get the kids to their games on the weekend. No chance to go there by busses in a sensible amount of time. We try to do car sharing with his mates though.

We do try to also replace the big gasoline car with an electric one in the next 1-2 years, but I don't think using more public transport is viable. To the local city centre (to get an ice or bakeries) we do walk most of the time.

when i lived in southern california there were almost zero public transportation options. local buses were scarce. california is huge and vast and takes time to get anywhere. it’s really built around owning a car.

now i’m in seattle and at first i had to learn how to take public transportation. i’ve been working at the same place for 5 years and i primarily take transit. when i move i make sure i’m along a transit route. my employer also pays for a commuter card so it’s free! and with gas approaching $5/gallon, it’s a no-brainer. if i go downtown on the weekends, i’ll take transit because it free! and i’m usually drinking…

i wish the US would invest more into public transit or even better, promoting cities where you live and work instead of having to commute 1+ hrs one way.

I think it very much depends on where you live.

I'm in the UK have never felt the need to have a car. I can get anywhere I want on public transport. If I want to go into the city, there's bus or metro, if I want to travel the full length of the country there's trains every few hours. My nearest shops are walkable distance (1/2 mile), my nearest 24 hour supermarket also walkable, about a mile

Going into the city or town by car? Got to sit in traffic, find a car park, it's just a hassle

But, if I lived in the US where the nearest store was 5 miles away, and my job was 20 miles away, and there was 1 bus a day passes through my town, sure. Different situation