2016 US Presidential Election Thread - VII

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by LuckyNumber7

Why is it that you DCers hate your subway so much? I never experience notable issues when I'm there. And I'm there quite frequently.

Honestly? I'm kind of a fan. For my specific commute, it works beautifully. It's also pretty comprehensive for a not-that-huge city.

However, we did have a horrific crash in 2009 and someone died over last summer because of smoke on the tracks. The system is just ageing, and needs to be updated. I don't get the intense hatred some have for it, but it could definitely be better.

I think it's what happens when you actively use any system on a daily basis. Whenever I've used BART, I always think it's pretty great. But if I lived there, I'm sure I'd see some horrors.

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

I'll put up the MTA against anyone for sheer incompetence. Wanna fight?

Originally Posted by anitram

Not even close. The TTC is the worst. I've lived in both cities, the MTA and NYC subway transit is like a dream in comparison.

Yea the TTC is by far worse than the MTA in literally every single way.

You know how you were making fun of Bernie for thinking the subway still used tokens? He wouldn't be wrong up here. It's tokens, cash, or monthly pass for 90% of us.

Like, you didn't even have the option to use a prepaid card until about six months ago and even still it's only rolled out to about half the subway stations, all the streetcars and zero buses, so it's about as useful as a garden rake on a sinking ship.

I'll stop here for the sake of brevity, but yea...no comparison. I would kill for Toronto to have a system like the MTA has.

[LuckyNumber7]

That's what I love about the DC metro. It's not a huge metropolis but you can still get anywhere you want easily and quickly. The only bad thing I routinely hear is the constantly broken escalators.

BART is fucking disgusting though. It's legit the filthiest transit I've ever been on, and I've been on the Cairo metro. And it's mad expensive.

[trojanchick99]

Y'all are making me feel better about the LA Metro. Granted we have like 5 lines, but still. I'm just excited because we are finally getting cell service underground and in May I get to take the train to the beach. #ThanksObama

That said, the NYC Subway is by far my favorite public transit system. I could go anywhere in Manhattan and it was only marginally confusing (thanks to Google Maps). That said, some of the older entrances were bonkers.

[Mack_Again]

well I grew up riding this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Municipal_Subway


does that count?

[LuckyNumber7]

I grew up waiting until I was 16 to borrow the car.

I still don't live in a mass transit capable location.

[Oregoropa]

SEPTA for the dippers (drug hazed folks nodding off)


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[BigMacPhisto]

MUNI in San Francisco is by far the worst. We're talking about an extremely congested city that leads to MUNI being the slowest public transit system in North America. The city has started to make improvements with bus only lanes and the like, however, but it really is the only city I can think of where moving five-to-seven miles across the city can take an hour or more. That is slow.

BART is very reliable. Its biggest issues stem from all of the creeps that hang around the stations and then illegally board the trains to either cause trouble or sleep in the seats...bigger problem for me since I usually am taking it into San Francisco late at night.

[BigMacPhisto]

Originally Posted by BVS

You've accused women and black people of blindly voting, you've pretended to read minds, and now you're accusing myself and others of not being genuine. But no, never condescending

Bang up job helping your man out


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I still don't see what's offensive in saying that Clinton has a lot of older women supporters that really want to see a woman in the white house or that a lot of black voters see Clinton as the third-term of an Obama Presidency (something of which there has been ample evidence to support and it's exactly why Clinton went through the trouble of mentioning the guy constantly in the South Carolina debate and the ones right before that). Whites in the South voted for the Republican nominee for President by a nearly 9-to-1 margin recently, but I don't think anybody will call me out on mentioning that.

As for Sanders, I'm not on here to help his cause or anything else. Trying to convince a handful of people on Interference would be fruitless. I'm merely here to observe the horse race like most everyone else and I enjoy the back-and-forth and various positions represented in here. That's it.

[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

MUNI in San Francisco is by far the worst. We're talking about an extremely congested city that leads to MUNI being the slowest public transit system in North America. The city has started to make improvements with bus only lanes and the like, however, but it really is the only city I can think of where moving five-to-seven miles across the city can take an hour or more. That is slow.

BART is very reliable. Its biggest issues stem from all of the creeps that hang around the stations and then illegally board the trains to either cause trouble or sleep in the seats...bigger problem for me since I usually am taking it into San Francisco late at night.

Maybe it's MUNI. I don't know the difference. I thought they were all BART.

[BigMacPhisto]

Bay Area Rapid Transit is a commuter rail system that extends out to locations ranging from thirty minutes to almost an hour out of the city (where I live). The one underground rail in San Francisco's MUNI system utilizes most of the same stations as BART and sits on top of it under Market street.

MUNI is comprised of street cars, historic cable cars (which you can now only ride by paying a single ticket special price), an extensive train system that goes underground from West Portal through to the Embarcadero and overground through a lot of the rest of the city and, finally, the extremely slow and unreliable buses that make up the bulk of the network.

Beyond the city's small size (and weirdly twisting streets in some areas), it's the traffic that is the major issue. Despite an influx of hipsters in the past and carless techies now, the city has still attracted too many yuppies that want to drive, including morning commuters that spend two or more hours driving into the city (even though a lot of them could just ride BART instead). San Francisco's game plan for years now has been to do everything they can to make it miserable for these drivers, but it still hasn't stopped congestion from rising. Meanwhile, the highways outside of the city and San Jose continue to see some of the nation's worst commute times and they're only getting worse.

[Hewson]

I drive but had to throw the MBTA into the mix.

Their incompetency last winter added 20 minutes to my morning commute for 2 months because so many folks had to drive who normally took the train for that period of time coming from south of Boston.

MBTA’s February emails show problems went beyond snow


Despite loud protests, MBTA board OKs fare hikes | Local News - WCVB Home

MBTA official says service cuts still an option | WWLP.com

[Mack_Again]

In Osaka, only one line of the subway is making profits. and there are 7 or 8 lines total. see? Asian people aren't always productive or efficient.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

I still don't see what's offensive in saying that Clinton has a lot of older women supporters that really want to see a woman in the white house or that a lot of black voters see Clinton as the third-term of an Obama Presidency (something of which there has been ample evidence to support and it's exactly why Clinton went through the trouble of mentioning the guy constantly in the South Carolina debate and the ones right before that). Whites in the South voted for the Republican nominee for President by a nearly 9-to-1 margin recently, but I don't think anybody will call me out on mentioning that.

Except that's not what you said, you accused both groups of not knowing the issues and blindly voting. Your implication was that the only people who knew the issues and were thinking were Sanders supporters.


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[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Mack_Again

In Osaka, only one line of the subway is making profits. and there are 7 or 8 lines total. see? Asian people aren't always productive or efficient.

That is a stereotype. We're taught to tremble in awe at Japanese public transportation. Bullet trains and such.

I've never been. It's quite high on my list of places to go.

[Mack_Again]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

That is a stereotype. We're taught to tremble in awe at Japanese public transportation. Bullet trains and such.

I've never been. It's quite high on my list of places to go.

yeah the fact that there is virtually no delay and all that is pretty impressive, I must say. But outside of Tokyo, the craziness of public transformation isn't all that extreme (there aren't insane crowds or swarm of people in train stations if you're not at Tokyo).

[Mack_Again]

Originally Posted by BVS

Except that's not what you said, you accused both groups of not knowing the issues and blindly voting. Your implication was that the only people who knew the issues and were thinking were Sanders supporters.


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come on, BVS, this thread is about public transportation now, why are you talking about politics?

[PhilsFan]

SEPTA is fine. The design of its railways doesn't exactly match the way the population has settled in (my hometown of 105,000 has no train, for example), and it runs way too slow and too infrequently on its regional rails, but the downtown subways are pretty reliable and efficient.

Amtrak in Philly is the problem, safety-wise. Two significant incidents in a year. Things aren't going well.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by Mack_Again

come on, BVS, this thread is about public transportation now, why are you talking about politics?

I have a jet pack, I don't commute with the common people.


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[Mack_Again]

also, this happens in Japan: Japan tube drivers seek damages after bonuses trimmed in beard row | World news | The Guardian

still, I love subway in Osaka; no way I can hate my hometown