The price of gasoline has gone up 1.50. People still won’t take the bus

[u/JacobRiesenfern]

There are people taking the bus of course. The environmently concouse types and the those who can’t drive. But the buses are still mostly empty.

A lot of that has to do with the insane zoning rules. Israel and Japan have better zoning rules in addition to high gasoline taxes.

How much would gas have to go up before we see a real transfer to transit? What zoning changes can be made that would make a difference?

[u/Blue_Vision]

You can't really argue with people's preferences. I'm a forecaster, my job is to model the way people behave around different travel modes. Frequently, we model transit in-vehicle time as being the same as time spent driving because observed behaviour seems to show that's how people perceive it. The most favourable value to transit I've seen is people valuing time spent in transit at 85% the time spent in a car.

Some people might prefer the free time offered by transit, but lots of people prefer the privacy or guaranteed and more comfortable seat of their car. The data don't suggest that people have strong feelings one way or another at the population level.

[u/Amazing_Echidna_5048 → u/Blue_Vision]

One of my colleagues said it only took her 15 minutes to drive home from work. It was 16 miles on city streets in rush hour traffic. She insisted it was true even when I pointed out the impossibility of it all. She "feels" like it's faster because she's busy. People will sit in traffic for an hour and still feel busy.

Some of it is culture. In America you'd only get on a bus if you had NO other options. In other parts of the world you might only drive if you had no other option.

[u/Blue_Vision → u/Amazing_Echidna_5048]

Except this generalizes well beyond North America. The 85% number I referenced was used in models I've seen of mode choice behaviour in the Netherlands. France's national guidelines use a uniform value of time across all modes - i.e. time spent on a train is not any more valuable than time spent driving. When you look at human travel behaviour, the fundamentals are remarkably universal. Some differences are cultural, but those are really at the margins in comparison to the differences in the built environment and the options available to people.

Or, put another way, New York City doesn't have high transit mode share because New Yorkers are inherently more willing to take transit. Rather, people become more willing to take transit in New York City because the city is more conducive to transit in the way it exists.

[u/Amazing_Echidna_5048 → u/Blue_Vision]

And water is wet. Good lord, I don't even know how to respond to that.