I live in a city with solid public transportation and bike infrastructure, easily top 10 in North America. Almost everyone I know takes public transit only when it’s convenient (ie they want to drink) but otherwise drives everywhere. I don’t know a single person who advocates for more public transportation or bike infrastructure.
People need to grow up with this infrastructure being in place, seeing it used by regular people for basic tasks like going to work or the grocery store. Seeing it in movies and other media (in a positive/neutral way). It needs to be normalized. Unfortunately, that takes a long time and a ton of money.
The truth is, right now, in the United States, most public transit is absolutely horrible. It doesn’t serve many locations, it’s usually crappy old buses with stains on their seats, there’s often one or more individuals with overt mental health issues, and public transit in general is associated with poverty.
You’re not going to get people using public transit regularly if it’s not normalized, incentivized, clean, safe, etc. It’s a tough problem, to be sure. Some places are making a lot of progress on it, such as where I live in Seattle, but it’s an uphill battle due to the way the United States was built to be car-centric.
By the way, if you don’t know anyone who advocates for public transit and uses it more regularly than you say, I doubt you are in the top 10.
I live in a city with solid public transportation and bike infrastructure, easily top 10 in North America. Almost everyone I know takes public transit only when it’s convenient (ie they want to drink) but otherwise drives everywhere. I don’t know a single person who advocates for more public transportation or bike infrastructure.
Top 10 in North America is still pretty bad.
People need to grow up with this infrastructure being in place, seeing it used by regular people for basic tasks like going to work or the grocery store. Seeing it in movies and other media (in a positive/neutral way). It needs to be normalized. Unfortunately, that takes a long time and a ton of money.
The truth is, right now, in the United States, most public transit is absolutely horrible. It doesn’t serve many locations, it’s usually crappy old buses with stains on their seats, there’s often one or more individuals with overt mental health issues, and public transit in general is associated with poverty.
You’re not going to get people using public transit regularly if it’s not normalized, incentivized, clean, safe, etc. It’s a tough problem, to be sure. Some places are making a lot of progress on it, such as where I live in Seattle, but it’s an uphill battle due to the way the United States was built to be car-centric.
By the way, if you don’t know anyone who advocates for public transit and uses it more regularly than you say, I doubt you are in the top 10.