The weird thing is that Europe doesn't just have more developed public transport systems, it also has a higher density of both roads and railroads. So the whole "we were built for cars" as a defence for underdeveloped public transport doesn't really hold up to scrutiny as the road system is lacking as well.
And, as an outsider just looking at the numbers publicly available, is literally every single branch of public infrastructure in the US. Besides Military.
100 years ago USA had no cross country road , there was something called Lincoln highway , series of roads , those that IKE used as young officer to move military unit from Washington DC to San Francisco , took like 3 months ... he got idea of interstates from Germany , where they had build concrete roads to move tanks . Road systems and how those are financed are pretty similar round wester world , local taxes pay local roads , fuel taxes pay highways , its just that in Europe fuel tax make more than needed to upkeep roads , in USA it has stagnated to 1980s level .
I disagree, the US is known for “car centric” cities and the reason why the US lacks public transportation is because it’s expensive and Americans don’t like to pay higher taxes to FUND public transportation. It also doesn’t help that the government has corporate lobbies like oil companies, which lobbies them to subsidize cars, which means you need more gas, which is more profits for the corporations. And, you do realize suburban sprawl encourages more roads to be built, which gives you the only transport option: CAR. As a result, you drive a car JUST to go the store.
@@alohatigers1199 You pay taxes , you may not realize that the pay to drive fees in Florida is a tax , to use the road and all those fines that cops write to poor people are collected to finance county projects , thats police collecting taxes . For many Americans car insurance cost them more than the car they drive and people are so poor that they cant afford to buy new tires , latest set to car i use was a bit over 50 per wheel , that too rich for lot of Americans , that why people drive with illegal worn out slicks . But all those billionaires need their tax cuts , so they can come and create all those jobs in middle of nowhere , in fly over country , where heir private jets wont never land .
Here in the UK most midsized towns/cities have what’s called a “Park & Ride” integrated service. Basically a series of special parking lots located in the outskirts, normally near main motorway entries into the city where you can park your car all day and and get a bus directly to the town’s centre, so you don’t add traffic on to the existing road network.
That is not a solution, it's a way pandering to the car industry, while seeming to solve a problem. The stations are often not built in accessible areas, but instead are a way of ferrying people into the city, without addressing the real issue. It keeps cars out of cities, but at the same time make cars a requirement to get to the station.
@@ultrademigod I see your point. Here in the UK this solution has been available since the 1960s, and of course it does come with consequences. I don’t think it works as a solution in itself, but as part of a wider transport network that is able to integrate trains, buses and even airports to disuade the use of the car.
@@ultrademigod They are generally located right on the periphery of cities that have good bus/train networks serving the suburbs, and are aimed at people coming in from the rural hinterland around the city where buses are infrequent. No, it isn't ideal, but in most cases it isn't a question of "do we have park and ride, or do we run more buses to the surrounding small towns and villages", the choice is "do we have a park and ride, or do we have more people from outside driving into the city centre". No, it isn't perfect, but it's generally a lot better than the realistic alternatives.
The argument that there is more freedom with cars is flawed. Public transport gives you the freedom to choose whether a car/ streetcar/ bus/ train/ metro... would be most appropriate for your journey. Yes, sometimes cars are the best option for travel but without public transport they are your *only* option. That seems like a loss of freedom to me.
I agree, it's really flawed. When you have more options in your live then you are free to choose instead of having to own a car and needing to drive otherwise you can't participate in society. That is not freedom, that is forcing you into owning a car. Also some people can't drive, so not having any option for them to travel except to get driven everywhere... I live in the Netherlands, I recently got my driving license. I'm 26 years old, and that isn't weird. Sure most get it earlier in life but enough people don't need it. I didn't need, still don't but finally decided to go for it anyway. The public transport is just good, even though I have my licence, I will still travel with public transport since the travel time is about the same and it's just relaxing.
Several years before I moved to the UK, I was making a 1000 mile trip across the Midwest (in a crazy roundabout pattern trying to get to where I was going) and there were multiple long delays where we just sat on the tracks in the middle of nowhere. After about the third long delay, a man stood up and went to talk to staff to find out what was going on. Out comes this English accent as he asked if there had been an accident on the tracks. "No, everything is fine. Freight trains take priority." Just imagine the most indignant English voice and you'll get how outrageous the concept of moving people being a lesser concern was to this man. And he's not wrong - without people, freight is f'ed. There's no one to make it, pack it, transport it... I've now lived in England over 20 years and I still don't have a license here. I don't need it. Maybe once every 3-5 years I'll get caught in bad weather, accidents or roadworks have delayed the bus or train, or the rare occasion that they just don't turn up or are running a little early and I miss the last bus - and then I rant about how I'm getting a car. But the reality is tax, MOT, maintenance, insurance and fuel are expensive. I'm not so well off that I can justify it. If I have to get somewhere in a hurry, there's always a taxi.
I think the problem is that you have been convinced by the the people selling cars and oil, that public transport is associated with poverty. Therefore everyone aspires to own a car, regardless of its practicality. I would not necessarily agree that the USA ever had the best public transport in the world.
"The trains are always on a schedule so they can't really get backed up...." Bless you! If only that were true. Sadly, in the UK, train delays are far more frequent than is ideal. Contributory factors include signalling faults (often caused by cable thefts), train faults, weather conditions, passengers taken ill, suicides on tracks, trespassers or livestock on tracks and many more. Often people compare rail punctuality in the UK with that of Switzerland, where trains are famous for being on time to the second. They don't realise that ,in Switzerland ,trains routinely have 15 minute stops at stations and are thus able to absorb any minor delays - in the UK that's not the case. The need to ship half a million workers in and out of London every day, for example, means that the network is loaded to capacity, with trains usually a few minutes apart, and so any delay can have repercussions that can last for hours.
That may be true for Switzerland but there are many other countries that have better reliability than the UK with the same mass transportation of workers and less time to stop at train stations. Off the top of my head of places i've experienced, The Netherlands and Japan.
@@terweeme Netherlands and Japan were able to rebuild their rail networks after the war. The U.K. is still running on track routes laid down in Victorian age.
When I worked in Germany a train wasnt late until after 15 minutes going int Frankfurt. Often they would squeak in under that time but i would miss my connection and that is no different to me commuting on the train to London in the uk just that people need to look at how stats differ and how they are recorded..
I live in West Yorkshire, and the trains were fairly unreliable before COVID, especially on the TransPennine route between Leeds and Huddersfield. But since COVID I have started commuting again in September, and although they have reduced the frequency of the trains somewhat, they are longer, less busy and more reliable. If only the trains would connect better with other lines at Leeds! Have you tried the trains since COVID stirred everything up?
As for the industrial revolution and America developing really fast, the US were still 60 years behind the rest of the world, in terms of public transportation, England had a network of horse-drawn coach based transportation from the 1400 onwards which linked most major cities across the country, I do think it's cute the way you Americans think you were first and best at everything. And we do have motorways and autobahns and the equivalent of your freeways as well. Every country in Europe has the train network bus network and a road network linking all their cities not just roads for cars and trucks, we are not asbackward as you might think
@@belindakennedy5828 The only time that the UK had good roads until Motorways was back in Roman times, after they left they deteriorated to what are marked on OS maps as BOAT's (Byway open all traffic), green lanes. Hence the rise in Canals and later railways to move goods and people. The maximum daily journey by Stage or Mail Coach was about 30 - 40 mile between Provincial/County towns and 60 -70 mile on main roads between major Cities, with several stops at Inns to change horses. London to Edinburgh or Truro took about a week.
@@tonys1636 the rise in canals wasnt for speed it was the shear amount of tonnage that could be moved on a canal at a slower speed vs the road. So that is misrepresenting it a lot. Also stage and mail coach isnt passenger transport it was relaying mail infrustructure.
The choob (tube/underground) provides a train every few minutes. PS. "London Underground, better known as the Tube, has 11 lines covering 402km and serving 270 stations. The Tube handles up to five million passenger journeys a day."
Added to that the fact you will rarely be waiting more than 2-3 minutes for a train. The Tube allows you to basically get anywhere in London from anywhere in London within like 30-40 minutes.
I'm from Motherwell, a town in Scotland that has 32,000 people in it and we have 2 train stations (with regular links to Glasgow and Edinburgh [every 10 to 20mins] as well as the London train pretty much every hour), and local buses every 10mins during the day (which are free for over 60s and as of January are free for under 22s)
I do not know exactly, but under 26 (almost?) whole europe has some kind of low fees for students (EURO26 card or some ISICS or other cards), we have here free transport for elders, disabled and children (rail roads are for elders only for symbolic price - not sure, but 200km to capital is for them for 2 or 3EUR)
The assembly line was invented way before Henry Ford. Versions of it are known to have existed in the ancient world, but Britain took it to another level when it started the Industrial Revolution.
Hey bud, I agree. The u.s need to research Adam Smith, a British pin manufacturer who invented the "modern " assembly line before they mention Henry Ford.
@@skasteve6528 1901 is too late, those old pin companies, even britons making ships during island vs. mainland naval wars (england /france/spain/netherland) had that stupid monkey lines (each person is making simple stupid step => low sallary, easy to replace) because of need of huge number of ships and lack of experienced woodworkers. Industrial revolution started sometime in mid 1600's (powered by watermills) and was steamed up by refined steam engine by James Watt about 1720 (not sure with dates) (I saw some doc about spliting pulley making into simple steps, but there was many products made that way)
I get so much reading and knitting done on my commute 1 hour each way. Love knitting on the bus as you can get into really nice conversations with the elderly and get totally ignored by others.
Another major issue is and i don't want to offend somebody, that the most people in the US can't really drive a car safety. You have little students with 16 in a pickup truck without real skills about the car. Having a few lessons and a couple of tests is definitely not enough. That's why a lot of Americans can't drive in Europe, especially in Germany, they can't handle all the things that happened around them and of course the smaller streets and cities. The lack of good transportation opportunities is one reason why i don't like to visit the US in future, i mean there are other reasons, but that's for my personal opinion one important point. The US has all that oil for the big car industry and if they don't have enough anymore they attack other countries like Iraq/Iran or destroying the environment somewhere until everything is damaged and gone forever, on the west coast of California is a huge broken oil pipeline and the beaches were full with that dirty oil, they had to close everything in front of Huntington Beach, Orange County CA.
@@charlestaylor3027 ..I know the family, lovely family but yes that car park thing in Florida is crazy ...Americans can't drive , but at least they have big roads to drive on so hopefully being safer for them as they would be a disaster if they had to think too much when driving...no offence 👍😂😂
There wasn't much mention of trains at all in the video you reacted to. I can drive to London in 2.5 hours, 3+ with bad traffic/roadworks. I can take the train to London in just over an hour. They're a lot better than buses in terms of time. On the contrary, I can drive to my university in the same city in 15 minutes (I don't drive because I don't own my own car, I just drive my mums but she needs it then), or I can take a bus that either runs once an hour directly there in a 25 minute journey, or I can take 2 separate buses that run every 10 minutes but takes 30 minutes (usually my option because the times the hourly bus runs at isn't convenient). Plus, with buses, any traffic amplifies the delay because it takes a longer route than taking your own car so it adds up more over the journey, whereas trains aren't affected by traffic in the same way at all. If I'm travelling locally (ie within half an hour), I'll want to use the car because it's a lot faster and more convenient. If I'm travelling further, I'll use the train because it's a lot faster (even if less convenient because it doesn't just leave whenever you want it to). London is the only place I'll travel to on holiday within the UK and not bring the car, since pretty much all destinations are easily accessible using the tube and/or buses once you get there, whereas most other places I'll use the car since they don't have the same level of public transport and places I'll want to travel to are not easily in reach, so having a car is a lot more important (although a day trip to somewhere in a city location will use the train and then the journey from the station will be figured out). My uncle has very weak sight to the point where he can't drive, and so if he can't get a lift to where he needs to go, he'll have to use public transport. I imagine ubers/cabs get very expensive if you have to rely on them as your main source of transport, I can't imagine how hard it would be to survive in the US like that if you weren't in a city with public transport already there
I live in Edinburgh (Scotland) and we have an amazing bus service, there's a bus atleast every 10mins and sometimes every 5min depending on the route between 6am and 12am and between 12am and 6am the night buses run every 30min. Edinburgh also has a tram (streetcar) system too and we're currently extending the line to cover more of the city too. I'm lucky enough that I have a bus pass due to a disability that allows me free bus travel across all of Scotland. So I can travel anywhere within Scotland for free anytime I choose to. Which is really handy for when I visit my parents near Glasgow. There's an Edinburgh to Glasgow bus every 15min. I personally have never needed a car as I've always lived in the city and have always had amazing public transport that's fairly cheap or free to me.
So do most towns and cities in England which are better. Edinburgh and Glasgow is full of drug addict's and alcoholic's who need help but that thief sturgeon ignores it and pump's English money into Scottish cities and still cries about freedom, good luck with that lol
@@chrispalmer2136 First it wasn't even him that introduced it to the Ford company, that was done by William Klann. Secondly Ford wasn't even the first car company in the US to introduce an assembly line to mass produce cars, that was Olds. Both the car and the assembly line have it's origin outside the US, the modern car and assembly line comes from Germany and the UK, but similar concepts can be found as far back as ancient Greece and China. To bad US education is what it is...
America didn’t invent the car, but the USA was the first country where cars were affordable for ordinary people. In Europe only the wealthy could afford cars in the early part of the 20th century.
I think two things that he covered very briefly in this video are actually very important: Zoning and parking minimums. If all the city centers were mixed zoning (including vertical mixed, which is what you describe where people live above shops) then more dense cities would become desirable. Nice apartments would become affordable, and it would no longer be the case that only the poor prefer apartments since they'd have increased amenities compared to rural or suburban living. Making them condominiums and rent-to-own instead of purely rental (which is a big leach on personal wealth) would also do a lot to help in this regard, but that's another big issue that ties into many other things. Now, that makes it desirable, but abolishing parking minimums is necessary to make it possible - you can't be close together if there's a whole parking lot between you. In addition, parking often costs more than the car in big cities; this would make small businesses a lot more viable, meaning that those businesses beneath apartments would do a better job at surviving, and this would also lower housing costs because neither businesses nor individuals would have to subsidize cars so much (beyond taxes for roads). Then, with increased density and generally decreased expenses (and corresponding increased prosperity), public transport becomes economically obvious, rather than a generally impractical hard sell as is the case in many cities now.
The fact that in America shops are separated from houses seems really insane and stupid, to me... Why do you accept that? Come in any country in Europe and see...
Where I live east of London there is a good bus service during the day and at rush hour. Plenty of buses for going to work, or shopping. However, try to travel in the evening or at night and it's not so good. When you have to make a connection because there is no direct bus route, and there is nearly a 2 hour wait for your next bus.
As a bus/coach driver in the U.K. I have worked in service buses and private hire coaching work. The amount of routes that are generally available in most cities and large towns will try and cover almost every area of the city. And the same goes for the larger towns and even some of the smaller ones. We also have bus services much like the American Greyhound service that runs from city to city etc. By Coach it would take roughly 13hrs to go from Cornwall all the way up to Inverness (Most Northern City of the U.K. last time I checked) But if you cannot get somewhere via the train network then there will usually be other forms of public transport such as a local bus except for in severely rural/remote areas (yes we do have those here as well)
The train from London to Edinburgh is usually about 4½ hours, for a journey of just under 400 miles, typically calling at 4 to 8 intermediate stations on the route, and these trains run every 30 minutes. Outside major cities in the UK, the majority of people still do have cars ... but the difference is that fewer people _rely_ on them for everything. I live in a small town (pop. about 15,000) in England, and we have 7 trains every hour in various directions, buses to nearby towns/cities running between every 15 minutes and every hour, and a bus every 30 minutes running to the housing areas around the town, and it's a compact town so I can walk to the town centre and the station in less than 15 minutes. That means I can make the choice between my car and the bus/train for each journey depending on what makes sense for that journey.
I was raised in Devon and we only had one bus per week to Exeter from our village, every Saturday. You have to have a car in rural areas! When we lived in Berlin for 3 years, we didn’t need a car at all. We had a 24hr bus at the end of our road that went right through the city, and a train station 5 mins walk away. It was great and very cheap too, rapid you compare the price to public transport in England.
Another great and interesting video. Thank you. I live approx 40 minutes outside of London. I work in west London - car journey is approx 35 mins as opposed to public transport which is an hour and a half (once I get into London I have to rely on the dreadful District line.) Something the UK has been trying to do for decades is to form an integrated public transport network. For instance, in the town where I live we have a little town bus - but it doesn't go to the railway station! It's absurd. None of the buses to and from town go to the railway station. In towns where buses and trains do meet up the timetables don't compliment each other. So, you'll arrive by train in the town next to me, but the bus you need to catch for your onward journey is timetabled to leave 1 minute before your train is due to arrive. So, you end up waiting 29 or 59 minutes for the next one. It seems to me that the bus and train companies don't consult each other. It's ludicrous.
I live in the UK, in a small town with a population of 16,000. Basically, I can, if I want to, walk to any part of the town from where my house is. I live in a mainly residential area built in the 1950s. From right outside my front door, there are four buses an hour to the centre of town and to other nearby towns. Within a five minute walk, there are bus routes into the town centre and to two larger cities. My town also has a railway station with direct routes to three major cities and to almost anywhere in the uk with only one change. About 12 years ago i went to visit friends in Indiana. They lived in a town with a population of around 200,000 about an hours drive from Indianapolis where I flew in to. "No, you don't need t meet me at the airport", I said, "it'll be fun to make my own way".' Over four hours, it took by public transport and fifteen miles of that was in a taxi! Total cost? $82. I take the bus everywhere, every day. I commute to work by bus, do my shopping, visit friends and family and socialise using the bus. Total cost? £72. per month.
I live in Vienna, which has one of the best public transportations systems in the world. We've got busses, trams, subways and trains passing through the city. It takes me about 30 minutes to get to work - around 15 of that on the tram, the rest on foot or, if the bus happens to be leaving soon, by bus (the bus takes a very winding route around the city centre, I am often faster if I walk). Driving a car into the city centre is crazy, since the streets are narrow and the many one way roads make it a maze. The transport system is constantly being optimised by introducing new vehicles or expanding the routes - they've recently started digging a new subway line, the U5 - which is kinda sad, as it'll result in tourists no longer asking why we don't have a U5 - seriously, they should have named this new line the U7. Going to Prague by train took me around 4 hours - it would have cost me about the same amount if I'd gone by plane. You can travel to any of the 9 capital cities in Austria by train. Small villages can be tricky to reach via public transport, though. Also, the fares are very affordable - you get a ticket for a year for € 365,- - which is only possible because the company that operates public transport in Vienna receives funding from the government.
15:00 Again, that's not the reason we got it like that. Huge number of cities in Europe was leveled to the ground in the two world wars. But we built them up in the *old* style, because that *works*. If building with cars in mind was better we could easily have done so, we took one look at the US and for the most part decided *not* to copy that design at all. Indeed we've torn up old highways etc to make our cities more walkable and dense. It's a concious choice of ours *not* to have a car centric society. Public transportation is far superior in the wast majority of situations. The only downside is during a pandemic like what we just had...
When I lived in London I didn't even have to check when a tube would arrive. Just drag my ass out of bed and show up to the station safe in the knowledge that unless there was a major issue, there'd be a train within 5 minutes. Even where I live now (about 60 miles outside London towards Cambridge) there's a train into London every 15 minutes. Every second train is what we call a "fast train" and if I get that I can be at London Kings Cross in about 30 minutes.
In the UK, here in a small country town, we have regular (every 15 minutes) buses into the big town, where there are regular trains to London and other big towns and cities. Except after 6pm on a Sunday when we are completely cut off. Lots of villages are lucky to get like 2 buses a day on only one or two days a week. So cars are still essential. Cities and big towns have great inter-city and intra-city transport, because otherwise their roads would just stop.
When I moved away from London in 2003, I was used to relying entirely on public transport to get around, and it was a huge shock to discover how bad the local bus service in even a major town in the country could be. My wife (returning to her roots) took me out for a nice meal and at the end, about 7pm, we crossed the road to catch the bus home at the railway station. After a long wait, a passer-by took pity on us and told us the last bus was at 6pm! Without a car, we are very limited in where we can go. The trains are expensive, unless you don't mind spending 4 hours on a 2 hour journey, and the National Express, which was ideal for trips back to London, changed all its routes and became totally unreliable. So aside from shopping trips into the town centre, we are pretty well stuck in one place. Unless you have (a) a car, and (2) a really pressing reason to leave the big city, it's best to stay where you are!
Not just bikes UA-cam channel might interest you, it has videos on American Roads, city planning, comparing experiences like how easy it is to cycle around a city.
I can help you out to answer if it were true if at one time the US had the best public transport network in the world. The short answer is no. The long answer is a bit more complicated but here goes. There was indeed a time when the US led the world in streetcars. Streetcars (or trams as they are called nearly everywhere else) is the form of transport that America done best, and yes, it was true that at one time the US had the most amount of streetcar track milage in the world. But that doesn't mean it had the best public transport network in the world... let me explain... At America's peak, when it had the longest Streetcar milage at 11,000miles in the world, the UK had considerably less - but keep in mind, the UK is a much smaller country. Pretty much every city and many small towns in the UK had trams- they were just as prolific in the UK (and other parts of Europe) as in the US. The simple fact that the US was bigger was one reason there was more tram milage, but there was another reason - sprawl. US cities, even in the time of the tram sprawled further out than UK and European cities, so there was simply more milage of trams. But that doesn't mean a better public transport network. While in both the US and UK you had a huge tram network, in the UK you had denser passenger rail infrastructure than the US - at the peak of both countries. Density of a public transport network is more important than quantity - a dense network means it is much more likely there will be a rail station or tram stop an easy walk from you. Now, America actually done this pretty well at its peak, because this was also before the real sprawl started. But it wasn't the best in the world. Cities in Europe generally had far denser networks and included not only a dense tram (streetcar) network just like America, but also things like dense subway/metro/tube networks and suburban rail. What this video you watched got wrong was that it assumed total milage was the important figure and didn't take into account the physically larger country and lower density of network
Part of the failure of trams in the US is because of the longer distances between stops. Trams are suited to short hop on hop off journeys due to their slow speed which you make up by the convenience of curb to curb travel but the moment it's quicker overall to get on an underground or overground train they become pointless.
@@darthwiizius in our city we were planned to install trams, but is is too sloppy here for them (some parts of city will be not accessible), then we chose troleybuses, which are not limited by that sloppy terrain
@@stanislavbandur7355 Yeah we in the UK have similar problems now, our towns and cities are largely unchanged in layout for hundreds and even thousands of years. Where we used to have trams now we have cars and there just isn't space now on our skinny streets to bring them back so we rely on buses instead. We have built a small modern tram system in east London but it more resembles a light railway as it is not really a roadside jump on and off system and relies on stations.
@@darthwiizius The Tram system is in South London Centered on Croyden. Which runs along roads. East London has the Docklands Light Railway. Which is separated from roads.
Eight hours between London and Edinburgh is about right but an over-estimate: it's just over five hours to get there and I think that it's about 350 miles, so it's faster than a car, and might be faster than by plane if you add in getting to the airport and checking in. However, it is extremely expensive. The UK also lost their tram systems in favor of buses in the 1950s / 1960s unlike European cities such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
I done Crawley to Glasgow in 6.5hrs in a car 3 weeks ago. Also I would say you're right about the plane. I've done the same journey by plane and from door to door it was 6 hrs.
With the question about intercity trains, remember that you would probably not build a railnetwork for cargo but a highspeed railnetwork. A modern high speed train goes between 218 - 248 miles pr hr. So even if you go a slight deture you will still arive earlier then with the car, and modern trains have internet connection so you can woork on the rail. Besides that you will not be stuck in trafic. Just win win win.
I’m from Peterborough in the UK. Buses here (theoretically) come every 10 minutes during weekdays and every 30 minutes on a Sunday. During nighttime the buses come once per hour.
if i wanted to photograph a sun rise in many places, it be impossible to get a bus where you want at that time. or some wild parts of the uk, no way i could walk the distance from the closest town just to get to the starting point of where i want to be . get much closer in a car. due to health issues public transport would limit me greatly
When i moved to a south coast town in England i very quickly realised i no longer needed a car when ther are buses that run every 7 mins stopping right outside my house and a train station a 10 minute walk away. All the buses have phone chargers on every seat and free Wifi so there is a lot of convenience. Cars are so expensive to run the UK. I'm saving many thousands of pounds per year now i'm using buses and trains.
I can't speak for Europe but I can speak reasonably knowledgeably of the UK, and I do think that the video you're commenting on is at least a little missleading. It starts off by comparing Scotland and Indiana and then spends most of it's time talking about tram systems. There are I believe around 10 modern tram systems in the whole UK, it then tells you how the US lost it's trams but doesn't mention that by 1964 there was only 1 tram system left in the UK. I'm prepared to believe that the EU and UK have better public transport than the US and I'm sure there is an argument for better public transport in the US, but this video needs a rework.
There is no doubt that Europe's public transport system is better currently but I agree comparing tram systems isn't right subway systems should be compared too
Trams have made a comeback in the UK though. Lots of places have trams and light rail nowadays and bus and rail services are much more extensive and comprehensive than in the US. :)
The overall programme is about public transport . It is not comparing trams or the lack thereof . It makes the point right at the start of how easy it is to get from Edinburgh to Cupar compared to the two American cities . Buses seem to work , or the train in the examples he gave for Scotland . Happily there seems to be a call for street cars again in USA which they seem to think is fight for them .
London could not be the size it is today without the Tube. The Tube connected what used to be London with lots of small towns and villages. This connection allowed these towns and villages to grow to the point that they merged together to become an actual part of London itself. The Tube allowed people to live away from the insanely crowded city centre where you'd be lucky to have only one family in a single room and live in their own house where it wasn't so crowded.
@@lolsaXx Take a look at doing split tickets. Can make a journey sooo much cheaper. I needed to get from the South East of England up to Liverpool. A straight single ticket (wasn’t coming back by train) was going to cost £95 but when I split the tickets it only cost me £23!
I live in the UK and my son uses a NoW card for buses. NoW cards are issued for registered disabled by your county council and the reciprocal agreement between all the county councils in England means he can travel anywhere in the country on a bus for free. As his carer I can travel with him for free within our local county and I just have to pay for myself outside the county. I once lived in a small hamlet out in the middle of nowhere that had just two dozen houses. There was still a bus service that came by twice a day.
When the steam train came, there were created a ton of small local train lines everywhere as you could haul all of the local products in a single cargo train. This meant that first wave of urbanisation centered around the train stations. Many of the small train lines became not profitable during the great depression and were closed. However Western Europe invested heavily in public transport with the marshal help money after WW2. As so many people struggled to buy anything in the immediate aftermath. It is around the early 50's that the huge intercity grid of trains really grows, with the new diesel engines instead of steam. The larger towns also get local commuting trains centered around the German S-bahn idea. The 1960's sees the building boom of Western Europe, with many of the tall housing buildings in the suburban areas being built, and the idea of commuting into town was already planned with more trains and more busses. The biggest defining factor that meant a point of no return for public transport planning was the oil crisis of the 1970's.
In 2013 I visited my cousin in Arlington, Texas. It holds the dubious record of being the largest US city (population 394,000) without any organised transport(ation) system. The residents keep rejecting voting for the introduction of a system. Here in my UK city, I live on a bus route where the bus passes my door every 15 minutes. It's a 6 minutes walk to the local railway station and 14 minutes by train into the city centre. Even so, we still need to get more people out of their cars walking and cycling more for their own health and the environment. The US has a lot to catch up.
Perhaps the best known, and most used, network in the UK is the London Underground. You're right that footage of the Underground shows it being packed, but it carries millions of workers and tourists every day. London simply could not cope if all of those people were in cars - or even on buses. When I first lived in London in the late 1990s, the Underground had suffered years of financial neglect. Trains were old and many stations were in disrepair. They were unsafe. When I first travelled on the New York Subway in 2014, it reminded me of the Underground in the 1990s (but it was even worse!). Many people moan about how expensive the London Underground is. They're not necessarily wrong. It is expensive. But when I think of the state of the Underground when I moved to London compared to when I left last year, it had improved massively. Increased revenue was part of the reason that improvement had been possible. Station upgrades, new rolling stock, and even new lines have improved the Underground massively. There are now quite a lot of stations on the network that are fully accessible, with 'step-free' access from the platform to street level for people who use wheelchairs. Things like train doors being level with platforms, and installation of elevators in those stations have massively improved accessibility. But the London Underground is facing massive challenge right now. From my perspective, there are two main reasons for this: 1. One of the Underground lines, the Jubilee Line was extended in the 1990s. There were 11 new stations on the extension. A major reason for the extension was that areas to the East of the City on the river Thames, known as Docklands (because it's where all the docks for international trade were located in the days when shipping, not air travel, was most common for trade) were being redeveloped. One such area, Canary Wharf; became not just the financial centre of London, but of Europe. At its height, over 100,000 financial sector workers were located in offices there and many of those commuted in daily, some from over 100 miles away (thanks public transport!!). The profile of businesses and the number of workers based at Canary Wharf is changing rapidly through. Many financial sector companies with premises at Canary Wharf are downsizing and moving into the EU because of Brexit. Fewer people may well be travelling to Canary Wharf in future. So Brexit is having an impact on public transport. 2. Covid-19. As the 'lockdowns' kicked in for Covid-19, most office based workers shifted to working from home. The number of daily journeys being completed on London Underground therefore fell massively. At the height of lockdown, quite a number of stations remained completely closed because there just weren't sufficient numbers of people using the stations to justify keeping them open. Naturally, with fewer people, revenue dropped massively as well. Despite emergency funding to keep the network open, which comes to an end this month, there is still a financial crisis at Transport for London (TfL) which manages the tube and bus networks in London. There is talk of having to close lines completely now, including the Jubilee Line. This would have a massive impact on London for years to come. London's newest line, the Elizabeth Line (or Crossrail as its known to Londoners) isn't even fully open to the travelling public yet. Given that it has cost almost £20bn to build, if it doesn't open fully (which I haven't seen suggested as being the case), that would have a massive impact too. London Underground could start to look very different in the future because of these things. So whilst it is an excellent example of how public transport can work, it is definitely not all easy. Incidentally, most trains from London to Edinburgh complete that journey in about 5.5 hours. It is possible to fly, but when you consider time to travel to the airport in London, time to check in (even for a domestic flight), time to pass through the airport in Edinburgh on arrival, and time to travel into the centre of Edinburgh from the airport, there probably isn't that much of a difference overall in the time of the journey.
23:19 I the smallest place I've lived in here in Norway had a population of 301 people, still had busses stopping every two hours with bus on one line. And a railway line with a train stop with several stopping trains each day. It wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. But even *there* it was still better then in some US cities of thousands... There's a lot of things that's great about the US... But there's definitively some things that *needs* reform in the US...
Major cities in the UK are really well connected for public transport, at least London, Birmingham and Manchester. Some of the countryside and branch trains to small towns leave a LOT to be desired even in the UK
Also USA: "freedom to carry guns, yay" UK: "Big deal, what about your child's freedom to go to school without a bullet proof backpack and confidence that their school wont be the 'next one'? USA: ... ... ...
A few cities in the UK have reintroduced trams (streetcars) and has proved successful. I live near Liverpool, with the tunnel toll under the river and the expensive car parking in Liverpool it is cheaper and less stressful to take the train.
I live in an edge of town location close to fields, farms and countryside. Within a 4 mile radius there are 5 railway stations and an underground station. Within 1.5 mile radius there are 15 bus routes plus 3 express bus routes. Nearest bus stop is 200 feet from my house. My brother in law worked for Kent County Council scheduling bus services. One of the most important aspects of his job was to marry up bus timetables with train timetables which sounds easy but is quite complex. He ended up working for the Railways scheduling replacement buses for when the railway lines were closed for works as the buses being scheduled were in the wrong place at the wrong time and leaving empty. By scheduling them properly the buses were in the right places at the right time for the passengers and saved £ millions in a 6 month period.
Here in the UK we also have Park and Rides. These are large carparks on the outskirts of a city where for a fee you can park your car then take a bus into the city centre so reducing the traffic in the city centre. Where I live the city we visit has 6. They are on the major roads leading in to the city. A family ticket is about £5 and that is for the whole day. Buses are normally 15 minutes apart
When we went to San Francisco we could get everywhere we wanted to go on public transport, it was very good. My sister-in-law went to Los Angeles and found it almost impossible to get anywhere without car. So even within the same state there appears to be differences. On the European mainland public transport is very good, I lived in a rural area in Germany for two years and could still easily travel around most of Western Europe without a car. In UK it very much depends where you live. It’s good in most places in England and Scotland, excellent in London, but in West Wales where I currently live it’s appalling. I couldn’t live without a car.
honestlyt love public transport...like here in the uk its atrocious at times, but...if your willing to put up with the delays you can easily get to scotland from the southern shore of england in no time...whats even better is due to the entirety of europe and asia having such great transport you can get from england to somewhere like china without using a car or a plane..it'll take you awhile but you can do it
Being interested in history, I purchased a Victorian Ordnance Survey map of my county (Durham). I believe you would call this a Geographical Survey map and this showed more railway lines than roads. Of course there were few cars back then. This came to a halt in the sixties when Dr. Beeching recommended the closure of many of the branch lines which had served villages and small towns. A very interesting and informative video from my favourite Mid-west couple.
we also have what we call bus lanes, the inner most lane on most city roads, are bus lanes only busses and taxis can use them between 8 am and 5 pm thus solving public transport getting stuck in trafic jams, simple solution to movie large amounts of people at rush hour cheeply.
Hello both. I live in South Wales and as I’m over 60 I get a bus pass provided by the Welsh Government that gives me free bus travel within Wales. We are about the size of New Jersey. I live in a village where the local bus station is small. It can only handle about 4 buses at a time. To get to my local hospital (it has a free car park) there are 3 bus companies that drive this route. Between them there are about 6 buses an hour and it’s about 10 minutes ride. My nearest train station is about 2 mile away and has some parking. I can get a train that takes 17 minutes to the city, the bus takes 50 minutes. To London by train (150 miles) with one change in Cardiff it takes 2 ¼ hours. I can get a return (round trip) for about £50, or less advance booking.
11:52 Yes, it's true. It's not enough to just have a few bus, tram, subway/lightrail or train lines... Sure there might be one going from the suburbs to the city, or from nearby cities or whatever... But that's not how public transportation works. You need to be able to find afordable housing near a stop for public transportation (so you need a walkable path rather then highways and gigantic parking lots, and a semi-direct route from your house to the stop, rather then having to take huge detours to even get out of the area with the housing. And the public transportation has to *stop* there rather then just pass through the area. Then you need another stop near the potential jobs. Rather then having to walk through a concrete jungle of highways and gigantic parkinglots to get to the job. And both the house and the job has to be available to you as a pedestrian rather then be taken by a car owner already. And the public transportation option has to actually fit you schedule. It's no good if there's a bus going in the opposite direction of towards your job in the morning and towards your job in the afternoon. Or half an hour after you're meant to meet at your job or whatever... The public transportation has to be connected. Having *a* bus stop near your job or your home doesn't help if those two stops are not connected in any way either directly or indirectly through a shared stop or stops where a connecting line stops. And no, having to go *all* the way to the city center and then out again isn't enough, you need connecting lines all over the city. And in the case of Phoenix... My ex lives there... Let's just say that you have a limited survivability in a outdoor bus stop in the heat there... Then there's the prices... And if you're in a wheelchair... In my home city in Europe you can easily get into a bus with a wheelchair, the busses I've seen over there so far leaves quite a lot to be desired by comparison to put it that way... And okey, lets say that by a miracle you somehow find both a job and a home near bus stops and they're connected somehow... Now you need food, clothing, dishes, a dishwasher, a kindergarten or school for your kids and so one and so forth... Since you don't have a car you have to take separate trips with the public transport for each of these to some of the *few* options you have available to you... And since no one in their right mind uses public transportation in the states you end up with a so-so clientel, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with sending any kids of on their own there, while it's common for 7 or 8 year olds to ride the same buses to school as people use to take to their jobs etc, you'll even find kids 7-8 year old waiting in bus stops on connecting busses all on their own here without issues... And both rich and poor people use this public transportation.
According to Google maps, London to Edinburgh a train takes 5hrs and 39 mins but can be as quick as 4hrs 16 mins on some express services. By car it will take you around the 7 hours mark. Traffic will also heavily effect this.
If it was so easy to develop self-driving cars, surely you would have started with trains first, which run on tracks with points which are already computer controlled, to timetables and would be so easy to map and virtualise and is thoroughly predictable (apart from maybe the occasional "passenger incident". In the UK we already have the Docklands Railway which is driverless but doesn't directly interact with ordinary public transport, with drivers.
DLR is totally segregated from uncontrolled things it could bump in to. Though I think it becomes a moot argument when you've got something so big & fast you can't rely on a driver looking through a windshield to avoid collisions in time.
London to Edinburgh is 4 hours, cheapest fare £30, runs 41 times a day. You can take the sleeper where you get a cabin with en-suite and can board at 2230 leaves at 1150, pulls into Edinburgh at 0700 vacate by 0800, after breakfast. £335 if you want a double room. Great for going to a meeting and saving on a hotel room.
In the uk, the horse and cart was the same as the taxi/cabs of today, I heard that the boot of a taxi in London is awkwardly small is because they are meant to have hay in it, and not the clients luggage etc.
Here in Nottingham, we have a superb public bus service. The buses all run on eco friendly bio gas and are incredibly efficient. Plus now we have reached state pension age we can travel on them totally free, and that concession means we can use any public bus service ANYWHERE in England or Wales. We are a smaller nation of course but we use our car if we want to have a trip to the coast for example, but our bus services are First Class.
Here in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, England we have buses local and buses to a few locations Lincoln (the only city in Lincolnshire), Louth (a market town in Lincolnshire) and Hull east yorkshire, taxis and trains it takes two trains to London, Liverpool, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Derby or Edinburgh and one to Manchester, Sheffield, Lincoln or Newark. There are cycle paths. There was talk of trams returning to Grimsby, the last tram here was in 1961 and it is now at The Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire where you can ride on trams from Britain, America and Europe including our longest ally Portugal (since the 11th century). There are trams in Manchester and other cities. The transportation in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Holland and Germany is excellent
great vid as always.Once took my Californian daughter in law to London Paddington from Gloucester by train..Speeding at 125mph through the countryside on a HST, on time,5min walk and on to a London tour bus.Having said that hats off to Amtrak and a trip on the Pacific surfliner from LA to San Diego....great value,staff superb, scenery incredible.
The first requirement of a successful public transport system is reliability. For instance I know that when I read the arrival time of a train into a Swiss city, the chances of that happening are about 99%. Therefore I can plan a business meeting for 10 or 15 minutes later and be confident I won't have to call the client and apologise for being late. Once you have a system that people have confidence it, it is easy enough to promote its extension and build up the network. I spent about 6 months travelling by public transport in the US (and visited all of the 48 lower states) and that was the killer - being told that the 2 hour stop over might not be enough to make a connection! We plan on 3 or 4 minutes in Europe.
In the UK, we often have "Bus Lanes", which are faster than a car during the commuter times. So, the Bus Service can allow you to have a drink after work and still get home more quickly.
56 1/2 million don't you know. Fun fact even at it's lowest estimate Greater London has a higher population than Scotland and Wales combined, if you believe the highest estimates you can add Northern Ireland too.
The UK had a similar history with public transport. Most cities and towns had electric trams but these were dismantled and replaced by buses. Now these same cities and towns are looking to put tram systems back but at huge cost London to Edinburgh by train takes about 4.5 hours
When trying to save for moving to London, I chose not to buy a car despite it being easier to get to work because buses and trains and so easy to get here in the UK and I knew I wouldn’t need one in London. My hometown isn’t huge but isn’t tiny and we have 3 train stations (one main station with trains to London and other cities in 1 hour and two smaller stations with local connections). The cost of a car and ongoing costs to keep a car, in my case, would be about the same as my annual tube/bus expenses.
Public transport sucks in my area of Wales, they're usually late, the schedule doesn't run early/late enough for work and sometimes the buses don't even turn up... And the icing on the cake... My town doesn't have a train station so I'd have to get a bus to the next town to catch a train
When it comes to public transportation, the US used to completely rely on it. Some cities never tore up all their street cars, like New Orleans, and have had continually running street car systems since the first half of the 1800s. It was purely to get around the cities, though. The entire country relied on trains to travel and move freight. A town wasn't a town until it had a train station, especially in the West. As frontier towns, train stations were the symbols of civilisation and a town was essentially on its own until it got one. Banks refused to open branches in towns that didn't have a train station in most cases, for example. The car took over after WW2, because the car had gotten cheap enough for the common man to be able to afford one. So they basically invented the suburb, where people had to commute to and from work, and they had to provide some way for people to do that. Considering suburbs are low density housing and people are too spread out to make mass transit through buses or trains effective, they basically had to use roads and let people make their own way in to town. UA-cam channel Not Just Bikes has a series of vids called Strong Towns named after the same named group who studies what it takes to keep a town or city solvent and liveable that goes into much more depth on the topic. Very interesting, and from them you can learn to easily tell which towns and cities are going to go bankrupt, and those that are going to be able to manage all the public infrastructure and services.
A major problem in the USA is the lack of ultra high speed trains that are common in European countries where they travel at 150 - 200 mph. I saw that the average speed of US inter-city trains is 79 MPH as the rolling stock and tacks are old. The London to Edinburgh service taking 8 hrs is the overnight sleeper service but there other faster trains available that don't take as long.
8:15 Having no yard etc is a *good* thing. The less space pr home the better in terms of sustainability of the infrastructure. The problem is that you can't drive or walk through the roads, they're all dead ends. And you can't really walk between them. As you can see in that picture the houses block the shortest route between those roads there. So if you want to visit someone one street over you'd probably take a car to drive there, instead of just walking over there like you would in most other countries. Also, it's all just homes. No local stores, local resturants or anything else like that. And ideally you'd also make better use of the space by placing shops on the first floor at the street level and homes on the second to fifth floor.
I live in a small village in North Lincolnshire (UK). We have one bus service, operating 7 buses a day between the village and the nearest big town. The last bus runs in either direction just before 6 o'clock in the evening. We do have a railway station but it's about 2 and a half miles from where I live and there aren't that many trains a day either, although the service is improving. It's not brilliant
I live in a very small town and it has two train stations at either end of the town the village next door also used to have its own train station but that closed down .We also have a frequent bus service . I can get on a train a few minutes walk away and get on a train and with one change of train I could be in Paris .
Manchester in the u.k for example introduced a Tram car system in the 1990's that covers the entire city, a total area of nearly 30 square miles and has revolutionised the transportation in the city.
Most places in the uk you are in walking distance to a bus stop. A bus stop is nearly always 10-15 miles from a train station. A train station will take you to nearly anywhere in the uk and there will always be a bus stop outside of a train station. Also I can walk to a bus stop 100m from my house, get the bus to a choice of two train stations, get the train to Paris france through the Channel tunnel under the English Channel, then get a train across Europe and in to Russia then ride the trans siberian train through Russia to their Pacific city, vladivodstock I think its called...that city is just past China. Russia over that way has a small corridor to north Korea around the top of China so in theory I can leave my house walk 100m and go to the Pacific ocean through Russia, around the top of China and near the North Korean border. Now that is good public transport.
Here in the UK I tried once to pass a car driving test, failed never bothered again. Reacting from your You-Tube reaction. Clip 4mins 32 second in showing incredible happy scenes Street Cars (Trams) people laughing joking, horses early cars crossing the street anywhere getting on with their lives. When I first saw this was then shocked when discovered looking at that all that moment in time was about to drastically change. What happened just 4 days later seems unbelievable as would never think it possible when the Earthquake hit. They then film from a Street Car on the same route again soon after the unbelievable distruction. Full footage on You Tube search is "San Francisco Earthquake 1906 before and after Journey Down Market Street". Maybe 115 years ago but still gets to me.
One huge reason for the differences between the U.S. and Europe is the Political way things are done. U.S. Senators tend to have huge amounts of lobbying going on, in 2019 there were 12,000 of them in Washington. And the two biggest kinds of Lobbyists are fuel and medical, which unfortunately means that Senators are pushed in a lot of ways that don't help the population. I love the openness of the U.S. mainly for the roads. But my wife and I couldn't live there. On our honeymoon we bought a couple of motorbikes in San Francisco and had a great road trip to Miami (she was so happy when I shipped the bike home, not). But the towns and cities are to spread out to be able to live without a car in a practical way. For example, here our oldest son can walk to 1 of 4 supermarkets in less than ten minutes (even better on the pub front). For the same size population town in the U.S. he'd have to drive or get taxis.
where i live in the UK about 13 miles from central London it can take 2 hours to drive home in rush hour as opposed to 20 minutes on the tube (that run every few minutes during rush hour)! Granted pre covid you might be stood in someone's armpit during rush hour!! Many UK cities don't have a lot of parking and charge all sorts of fees just to drive into the centre (downtown) and parking can be eye watering. Chatting to a tradesman who parked in central London with his work van at a cost of £20 ($30) an HOUR !!
It's shockingly amazing just how efficient trains are. A few years ago now our little town got a huge make over and the train station was rebuilt. To celebrate the opening we had a couple of the most beautiful steam trains ever made to join the festivities. The Mallard and the Flying Scotsman. At one point there was a strongman competition to pull rolling stock 50 meters in a race. And while they were quick doing it and made it look easy my EX Girlfriend, who has a degree in physics and engineering, stood up and exclaimed that what they were doing was easy. And bet anyone that she could pull the same rolling stock the same distance. Obviously not as fast but still pull it. I'll just say that she was just over 5 foot tall. She put on the same harness and it took her a while to get it moving but once it was moving she pulled it with ease. She walked away with over £8000 in bet money. And left 2 strongmen embarrassed and looking like frauds. Apparently there's very little friction and once you get over the first movement then it's easy. Luckily she was my GF or I would have been putting towards the £8000 instead of spending it later. lol...
I have travelled to a few countries, and the transportation system that really impressed me was in Malaysia. You can just about get anywhere in a train or a bus. Inside Kuala Lumpur, it's all centralised and it was amazing to someone coming from a country with a dysfunctional public transport system.
Living in the capital city of Prague with a dense 24/7 network of trams, buses a subway and reintroducing trolley buses as well + regular trains used as local and regional public transportation all under one roof and one ticket... I only pay 152USD for an annual no limits usage for all public transport .. If one needs a car, then there are many carsharing vehicles parked in the streets.. Use an app to unlock, drive, park and lock. Having a car is nuisance here and not so needed... Public transport should be cheap, accessible and most of all with very small intervals in between so you have it available anytime/anywhere.. and rush hors? you get a subway every 2 minutes and the same is for trams and buses having dedicated lanes, where cars are not allowed for speed and avoiding congestion.... Rural areas as well are connected by train and buses and quite frequently... easy mobility = live economy.
22:27 I never look at a schedule for the wast majority of my public transportation use. I just go to a bus stop and wait at most 15 min, usually less then 10 depending on the location. Most downtown locations have busses stopping every 3-4 min in my home city of 182 035, and in the denser urban areas around it perhaps every 10 min, with the less dense usually every 15 min, at the very least during the rush hour, and perhaps every 30 min at the lowest during the daytime, and once a hour at night. 22:38 Even in the US the total cost of ownership of a car is just too high. A lot of people simply can't afford it. I literally talked to a guy yesterday in Tennessee who's considering killing himself, he was home schooled, so he has no education, he's struggling mentally, has no job nor a car. And he has no way of improving his life without a car to get around places...
London-Edinburgh is (according to Google Maps) about 8 hours by car, about 5 hours by train, or about 2 hours by plane. London-Paris is about 6-9 hours by car (~40 minutes of which is sitting in your car on a train, or stretching your legs for a few hours on a ferry), about 2 1/2 hours by train, or about 2 hours by plane. London-Vatican City is about 20 hours by car, 20 hours by train, or about 3 hours by plane. During peak times in London, some bus routes are every 3 minutes and some Underground lines are every 90-100 seconds.
Iam wondering wich plane you take when it takes 2 hours between London and Edinburgh. I fly all the time from Bergen in Norway too Gatwick London and that is an 2 hours ride. So i tink your estimate is wrong and i guess its more like an hour from London - Edinburgh.
@@karstenstormiversen4837 I asked because when I lived in North London the journey time to the airport by foot/bus/tube/train was at least 90 minutes, probably a similar time at the destination. Plus these days the interminable time spent standing around in the airport whilst they fail to find any terrorist. So unlike the pleasant flights in the 80s/90s when we had the bombs going off - arrived at Heathrow and ten minutes later on the flight to Manchester. It's overall journey time that's important, not station/airport to station/airport!
@@alanmon2690 If that so,2 hours is not enough for London-Edinburgh beacause it depend on where you live in London! Which airport you use and you have too sheck in an hour before your flight as well!! So beacause of that they usual use the time in the air when they say how long it takes to travel from one place to another by plane!
I live in a country the same size as the United States, but with only around 25M people. I would consider our public transport as 'bad' but you can still get pretty much anywhere you need to go, even between major cities on public transport, relatively quickly. it wont necessarily be cheap, for example, it will cost you at least $500 to get from Melbourne to Perth by bus/train, but it is ~2100 miles and over that kind of distance plane is the most cost effective.
We got rid of street cars in Scotland too for the same reasons. Buses were less hassle to run and could go were the tracks didn't. But we brought street cars back to Edinburgh. If you want to travel in a horse car head for the Isle of Man. They are still running the oldest horse car system in the world.
Love the way they describe the suburban homes, like they have no yard and no privacy… ha, ha ha, ha… I live in England… those houses are all detached and actually have porches and front gardens… that’s more than 90% of Brits get. I personally live in a terraced house with concrete out the back door and the pavement is my front doorstep. I have one bedroom and live outside of a small city in a BAD area… that house costs me £500 a month… don’t complain about a house that has walls you can’t hear your neighbours banging through and can actually take a few steps out of the door without being in the middle of a road.
A lot of fewer malls in some parts of the USA are not in a single building but rather you park at each shop eg. Target, wallmart, home depot, restuarants, dress abrn etc all separate entrances and people drive between
I live in birmingham in uk and if you work in the city centre there less parking and they are trying to make city eco friendly by applying charging in city centre and people like to get buses or trains as expensive to park. . If you live out of the city centre a bit ur work may have parking.
I currently don’t have a car and use public transport. Even on holiday. I caught trains from the south of France all the way back to the next village to mine then a bus to the end of my street. I get trains all over the UK with my bike. I can get anywhere in Europe I want to go without a car or flying and I love it
22:21 Remember that you need routes the rest of the time too, not just during rush hours. Lets say that someone doesn't own a car, there's public transportation to and from work. But then they have to cross the city in the middle of the day to attend a meeting with another company and inspect their products or some such... If there's no public transportation then... All of a sudden they have to *drive* to work because they need a car in the middle of the day, even if they don't need one in the rush hours...
We also use an oyster or bus card system so it’s like a credit card where you put a certain amount of money on your card and so rather than having to wait in line to buy a ticket you simply tap and walk through security or pay for your bus and the only complaints would be the southern line which is a nightmare but that’s either due to delays or some moron sitting on top of the train
There is a problem with local trains and small towns. We have this here in Europe and these local lines are often deeply in loss and have to be heavily subsidized because the maintenance costs are just way higher than what ticket sales generate. It is a little bit better if your town/village is on a nation/international railroad BUT there is a problem with fitting your small slow train in between high speed international and national trains and cargo trains which is causing poor and sparse scheduling (like once an hour if you are lucky). These local lines are being slowly phased out in favor of busses. Figuring out good public transportation in rural areas is a headache even for European governments.
The weird thing is that Europe doesn't just have more developed public transport systems, it also has a higher density of both roads and railroads. So the whole "we were built for cars" as a defence for underdeveloped public transport doesn't really hold up to scrutiny as the road system is lacking as well.
And, as an outsider just looking at the numbers publicly available, is literally every single branch of public infrastructure in the US. Besides Military.
100 years ago USA had no cross country road , there was something called Lincoln highway , series of roads , those that IKE used as young officer to move military unit from Washington DC to San Francisco , took like 3 months ... he got idea of interstates from Germany , where they had build concrete roads to move tanks .
Road systems and how those are financed are pretty similar round wester world , local taxes pay local roads , fuel taxes pay highways , its just that in Europe fuel tax make more than needed to upkeep roads , in USA it has stagnated to 1980s level .
I disagree, the US is known for “car centric” cities and the reason why the US lacks public transportation is because it’s expensive and Americans don’t like to pay higher taxes to FUND public transportation.
It also doesn’t help that the government has corporate lobbies like oil companies, which lobbies them to subsidize cars, which means you need more gas, which is more profits for the corporations.
And, you do realize suburban sprawl encourages more roads to be built, which gives you the only transport option: CAR.
As a result, you drive a car JUST to go the store.
@@alohatigers1199 You pay taxes , you may not realize that the pay to drive fees in Florida is a tax , to use the road and all those fines that cops write to poor people are collected to finance county projects , thats police collecting taxes .
For many Americans car insurance cost them more than the car they drive and people are so poor that they cant afford to buy new tires , latest set to car i use was a bit over 50 per wheel , that too rich for lot of Americans , that why people drive with illegal worn out slicks .
But all those billionaires need their tax cuts , so they can come and create all those jobs in middle of nowhere , in fly over country , where heir private jets wont never land .
in europe alot of our roads are actually built on roman foundations as they were so good at it but made concrete as stone roads would be very bumpy.
Here in the UK most midsized towns/cities have what’s called a “Park & Ride” integrated service. Basically a series of special parking lots located in the outskirts, normally near main motorway entries into the city where you can park your car all day and and get a bus directly to the town’s centre, so you don’t add traffic on to the existing road network.
They also have 'park and ride' in the States. Not many but were used.
That is not a solution, it's a way pandering to the car industry, while seeming to solve a problem.
The stations are often not built in accessible areas, but instead are a way of ferrying people into the city, without addressing the real issue.
It keeps cars out of cities, but at the same time make cars a requirement to get to the station.
@@ultrademigod I see your point. Here in the UK this solution has been available since the 1960s, and of course it does come with consequences. I don’t think it works as a solution in itself, but as part of a wider transport network that is able to integrate trains, buses and even airports to disuade the use of the car.
@@ultrademigod not when you have train stations right in the middle of towns and cities
@@ultrademigod They are generally located right on the periphery of cities that have good bus/train networks serving the suburbs, and are aimed at people coming in from the rural hinterland around the city where buses are infrequent. No, it isn't ideal, but in most cases it isn't a question of "do we have park and ride, or do we run more buses to the surrounding small towns and villages", the choice is "do we have a park and ride, or do we have more people from outside driving into the city centre". No, it isn't perfect, but it's generally a lot better than the realistic alternatives.
The argument that there is more freedom with cars is flawed. Public transport gives you the freedom to choose whether a car/ streetcar/ bus/ train/ metro... would be most appropriate for your journey. Yes, sometimes cars are the best option for travel but without public transport they are your *only* option. That seems like a loss of freedom to me.
I agree, it's really flawed. When you have more options in your live then you are free to choose instead of having to own a car and needing to drive otherwise you can't participate in society. That is not freedom, that is forcing you into owning a car. Also some people can't drive, so not having any option for them to travel except to get driven everywhere...
I live in the Netherlands, I recently got my driving license. I'm 26 years old, and that isn't weird. Sure most get it earlier in life but enough people don't need it. I didn't need, still don't but finally decided to go for it anyway. The public transport is just good, even though I have my licence, I will still travel with public transport since the travel time is about the same and it's just relaxing.
Several years before I moved to the UK, I was making a 1000 mile trip across the Midwest (in a crazy roundabout pattern trying to get to where I was going) and there were multiple long delays where we just sat on the tracks in the middle of nowhere. After about the third long delay, a man stood up and went to talk to staff to find out what was going on. Out comes this English accent as he asked if there had been an accident on the tracks. "No, everything is fine. Freight trains take priority." Just imagine the most indignant English voice and you'll get how outrageous the concept of moving people being a lesser concern was to this man. And he's not wrong - without people, freight is f'ed. There's no one to make it, pack it, transport it... I've now lived in England over 20 years and I still don't have a license here. I don't need it. Maybe once every 3-5 years I'll get caught in bad weather, accidents or roadworks have delayed the bus or train, or the rare occasion that they just don't turn up or are running a little early and I miss the last bus - and then I rant about how I'm getting a car. But the reality is tax, MOT, maintenance, insurance and fuel are expensive. I'm not so well off that I can justify it. If I have to get somewhere in a hurry, there's always a taxi.
I think the problem is that you have been convinced by the the people selling cars and oil, that public transport is associated with poverty. Therefore everyone aspires to own a car, regardless of its practicality. I would not necessarily agree that the USA ever had the best public transport in the world.
That is the problem, the power of the auto lobby.
Henry Ford didn't invent the production line. The UK had that going for decades before Ford.
True! 👍🇬🇧
"the more I realized, like, there are other countries" A deep realization for an American. ;-)
"The trains are always on a schedule so they can't really get backed up...." Bless you! If only that were true. Sadly, in the UK, train delays are far more frequent than is ideal. Contributory factors include signalling faults (often caused by cable thefts), train faults, weather conditions, passengers taken ill, suicides on tracks, trespassers or livestock on tracks and many more. Often people compare rail punctuality in the UK with that of Switzerland, where trains are famous for being on time to the second. They don't realise that ,in Switzerland ,trains routinely have 15 minute stops at stations and are thus able to absorb any minor delays - in the UK that's not the case. The need to ship half a million workers in and out of London every day, for example, means that the network is loaded to capacity, with trains usually a few minutes apart, and so any delay can have repercussions that can last for hours.
That may be true for Switzerland but there are many other countries that have better reliability than the UK with the same mass transportation of workers and less time to stop at train stations. Off the top of my head of places i've experienced, The Netherlands and Japan.
@@terweeme Netherlands and Japan were able to rebuild their rail networks after the war. The U.K. is still running on track routes laid down in Victorian age.
When I worked in Germany a train wasnt late until after 15 minutes going int Frankfurt. Often they would squeak in under that time but i would miss my connection and that is no different to me commuting on the train to London in the uk just that people need to look at how stats differ and how they are recorded..
@@marcuswardle3180 that makes sense
I live in West Yorkshire, and the trains were fairly unreliable before COVID, especially on the TransPennine route between Leeds and Huddersfield. But since COVID I have started commuting again in September, and although they have reduced the frequency of the trains somewhat, they are longer, less busy and more reliable. If only the trains would connect better with other lines at Leeds!
Have you tried the trains since COVID stirred everything up?
As for the industrial revolution and America developing really fast, the US were still 60 years behind the rest of the world, in terms of public transportation, England had a network of horse-drawn coach based transportation from the 1400 onwards which linked most major cities across the country, I do think it's cute the way you Americans think you were first and best at everything. And we do have motorways and autobahns and the equivalent of your freeways as well. Every country in Europe has the train network bus network and a road network linking all their cities not just roads for cars and trucks, we are not asbackward as you might think
Back in the day the UK needed good roads to deliver the mail,the first to do so ..and the stamp😀
@@belindakennedy5828 The only time that the UK had good roads until Motorways was back in Roman times, after they left they deteriorated to what are marked on OS maps as BOAT's (Byway open all traffic), green lanes. Hence the rise in Canals and later railways to move goods and people. The maximum daily journey by Stage or Mail Coach was about 30 - 40 mile between Provincial/County towns and 60 -70 mile on main roads between major Cities, with several stops at Inns to change horses. London to Edinburgh or Truro took about a week.
@@tonys1636 the rise in canals wasnt for speed it was the shear amount of tonnage that could be moved on a canal at a slower speed vs the road. So that is misrepresenting it a lot. Also stage and mail coach isnt passenger transport it was relaying mail infrustructure.
Yes we created industrial revolution the first country in the world to do so
@@harrystones2522 you're talking about Britain, right?
The choob (tube/underground) provides a train every few minutes.
PS. "London Underground, better known as the Tube, has 11 lines covering 402km and serving 270 stations. The Tube handles up to five million passenger journeys a day."
Added to that the fact you will rarely be waiting more than 2-3 minutes for a train. The Tube allows you to basically get anywhere in London from anywhere in London within like 30-40 minutes.
I'm from Motherwell, a town in Scotland that has 32,000 people in it and we have 2 train stations (with regular links to Glasgow and Edinburgh [every 10 to 20mins] as well as the London train pretty much every hour), and local buses every 10mins during the day (which are free for over 60s and as of January are free for under 22s)
Is it only certain parts of Scotland that have free travel for under 22 as my 19 year old pays for his fares.
@@sylviamccombie2884 really? thats rubbish, I thought it was everywhere, hopefully they expand the area then if there is an uptake in bus uses
I do not know exactly, but under 26 (almost?) whole europe has some kind of low fees for students (EURO26 card or some ISICS or other cards), we have here free transport for elders, disabled and children (rail roads are for elders only for symbolic price - not sure, but 200km to capital is for them for 2 or 3EUR)
@@sylviamccombie2884 The free travel for under 22s starts January 31st (end of next month).
That will be a big saving on fares for him.
The assembly line was invented way before Henry Ford. Versions of it are known to have existed in the ancient world, but Britain took it to another level when it started the Industrial Revolution.
Hey bud, I agree. The u.s need to research Adam Smith, a British pin manufacturer who invented the "modern " assembly line before they mention Henry Ford.
Ransom E, Olds (Oldsmobile & REO Motors) invented the assembly line for automobiles in 1901. The Ford Motor Company wasn't incorporated until 1903.
@@skasteve6528 1901 is too late, those old pin companies, even britons making ships during island vs. mainland naval wars (england /france/spain/netherland) had that stupid monkey lines (each person is making simple stupid step => low sallary, easy to replace) because of need of huge number of ships and lack of experienced woodworkers. Industrial revolution started sometime in mid 1600's (powered by watermills) and was steamed up by refined steam engine by James Watt about 1720 (not sure with dates)
(I saw some doc about spliting pulley making into simple steps, but there was many products made that way)
I get so much reading and knitting done on my commute 1 hour each way. Love knitting on the bus as you can get into really nice conversations with the elderly and get totally ignored by others.
Another major issue is and i don't want to offend somebody, that the most people in the US can't really drive a car safety.
You have little students with 16 in a pickup truck without real skills about the car. Having a few lessons and a couple of tests is definitely not enough.
That's why a lot of Americans can't drive in Europe, especially in Germany, they can't handle all the things that happened around them and of course the smaller streets and cities.
The lack of good transportation opportunities is one reason why
i don't like to visit the US in future, i mean there are other reasons, but that's for my personal opinion one important point.
The US has all that oil for the big car industry and if they don't have enough anymore they attack other countries like Iraq/Iran or destroying the environment somewhere until everything is damaged and gone forever, on the west coast of California is a huge broken oil pipeline and the beaches were full with that dirty oil, they had to close everything in front of Huntington Beach,
Orange County CA.
I just watched someone in Florida get a license and the instructor just watched her drive in a car park. He wasn't even in the car.
@@charlestaylor3027 Ouch! UK viewer here and that just sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
@@charlestaylor3027 ..I know the family, lovely family but yes that car park thing in Florida is crazy ...Americans can't drive , but at least they have big roads to drive on so hopefully being safer for them as they would be a disaster if they had to think too much when driving...no offence 👍😂😂
Child driving a car is a recipe for disaster
It's the same everywhere Muppet. You must be after the likes for being anti American .
There wasn't much mention of trains at all in the video you reacted to. I can drive to London in 2.5 hours, 3+ with bad traffic/roadworks. I can take the train to London in just over an hour. They're a lot better than buses in terms of time. On the contrary, I can drive to my university in the same city in 15 minutes (I don't drive because I don't own my own car, I just drive my mums but she needs it then), or I can take a bus that either runs once an hour directly there in a 25 minute journey, or I can take 2 separate buses that run every 10 minutes but takes 30 minutes (usually my option because the times the hourly bus runs at isn't convenient). Plus, with buses, any traffic amplifies the delay because it takes a longer route than taking your own car so it adds up more over the journey, whereas trains aren't affected by traffic in the same way at all.
If I'm travelling locally (ie within half an hour), I'll want to use the car because it's a lot faster and more convenient. If I'm travelling further, I'll use the train because it's a lot faster (even if less convenient because it doesn't just leave whenever you want it to).
London is the only place I'll travel to on holiday within the UK and not bring the car, since pretty much all destinations are easily accessible using the tube and/or buses once you get there, whereas most other places I'll use the car since they don't have the same level of public transport and places I'll want to travel to are not easily in reach, so having a car is a lot more important (although a day trip to somewhere in a city location will use the train and then the journey from the station will be figured out).
My uncle has very weak sight to the point where he can't drive, and so if he can't get a lift to where he needs to go, he'll have to use public transport. I imagine ubers/cabs get very expensive if you have to rely on them as your main source of transport, I can't imagine how hard it would be to survive in the US like that if you weren't in a city with public transport already there
I live in Edinburgh (Scotland) and we have an amazing bus service, there's a bus atleast every 10mins and sometimes every 5min depending on the route between 6am and 12am and between 12am and 6am the night buses run every 30min. Edinburgh also has a tram (streetcar) system too and we're currently extending the line to cover more of the city too. I'm lucky enough that I have a bus pass due to a disability that allows me free bus travel across all of Scotland. So I can travel anywhere within Scotland for free anytime I choose to. Which is really handy for when I visit my parents near Glasgow. There's an Edinburgh to Glasgow bus every 15min. I personally have never needed a car as I've always lived in the city and have always had amazing public transport that's fairly cheap or free to me.
So do most towns and cities in England which are better. Edinburgh and Glasgow is full of drug addict's and alcoholic's who need help but that thief sturgeon ignores it and pump's English money into Scottish cities and still cries about freedom, good luck with that lol
@@britishpatriot7386 you will be nightly relieved when Scotland becomes independent ..won't you ?
LOL, no, America didn't invent the production of a car, nor a car itself.
she meant the mass production of cars that Henry Ford introduced
@@chrispalmer2136 First it wasn't even him that introduced it to the Ford company, that was done by William Klann. Secondly Ford wasn't even the first car company in the US to introduce an assembly line to mass produce cars, that was Olds. Both the car and the assembly line have it's origin outside the US, the modern car and assembly line comes from Germany and the UK, but similar concepts can be found as far back as ancient Greece and China. To bad US education is what it is...
I think Carl Benz was one of the first if not the first in the 1880s if memory serves me right, I stand to be corrected though.
@@RickZune ...yet still the Model T was mass produced than any other car 🤷
America didn’t invent the car, but the USA was the first country where cars were affordable for ordinary people. In Europe only the wealthy could afford cars in the early part of the 20th century.
I think two things that he covered very briefly in this video are actually very important: Zoning and parking minimums. If all the city centers were mixed zoning (including vertical mixed, which is what you describe where people live above shops) then more dense cities would become desirable. Nice apartments would become affordable, and it would no longer be the case that only the poor prefer apartments since they'd have increased amenities compared to rural or suburban living. Making them condominiums and rent-to-own instead of purely rental (which is a big leach on personal wealth) would also do a lot to help in this regard, but that's another big issue that ties into many other things. Now, that makes it desirable, but abolishing parking minimums is necessary to make it possible - you can't be close together if there's a whole parking lot between you. In addition, parking often costs more than the car in big cities; this would make small businesses a lot more viable, meaning that those businesses beneath apartments would do a better job at surviving, and this would also lower housing costs because neither businesses nor individuals would have to subsidize cars so much (beyond taxes for roads). Then, with increased density and generally decreased expenses (and corresponding increased prosperity), public transport becomes economically obvious, rather than a generally impractical hard sell as is the case in many cities now.
The fact that in America shops are separated from houses seems really insane and stupid, to me... Why do you accept that? Come in any country in Europe and see...
Where I live east of London there is a good bus service during the day and at rush hour. Plenty of buses for going to work, or shopping. However, try to travel in the evening or at night and it's not so good. When you have to make a connection because there is no direct bus route, and there is nearly a 2 hour wait for your next bus.
As a bus/coach driver in the U.K. I have worked in service buses and private hire coaching work. The amount of routes that are generally available in most cities and large towns will try and cover almost every area of the city. And the same goes for the larger towns and even some of the smaller ones. We also have bus services much like the American Greyhound service that runs from city to city etc. By Coach it would take roughly 13hrs to go from Cornwall all the way up to Inverness (Most Northern City of the U.K. last time I checked) But if you cannot get somewhere via the train network then there will usually be other forms of public transport such as a local bus except for in severely rural/remote areas (yes we do have those here as well)
The train from London to Edinburgh is usually about 4½ hours, for a journey of just under 400 miles, typically calling at 4 to 8 intermediate stations on the route, and these trains run every 30 minutes.
Outside major cities in the UK, the majority of people still do have cars ... but the difference is that fewer people _rely_ on them for everything.
I live in a small town (pop. about 15,000) in England, and we have 7 trains every hour in various directions, buses to nearby towns/cities running between every 15 minutes and every hour, and a bus every 30 minutes running to the housing areas around the town, and it's a compact town so I can walk to the town centre and the station in less than 15 minutes. That means I can make the choice between my car and the bus/train for each journey depending on what makes sense for that journey.
Shout out to Blackpool, which I think is the only town in the UK never to get rid of its "streetcar" system - it's been running constantly since 1885.
And it's awesome. Loved it when I holidayed there a few years ago. I wouldn't own a car if I lived there
Sheffield has it's streetcar system and so do other places in England
@@britishpatriot7386 My point was that Blackpool has had it's since 1885 and it has been in use ever since. Sheffields came into use in the 1990s.
The word 'freedom' always comes in somewhere. Lived in the States for 31 years and they are no freer than any other of us.
I was raised in Devon and we only had one bus per week to Exeter from our village, every Saturday. You have to have a car in rural areas! When we lived in Berlin for 3 years, we didn’t need a car at all. We had a 24hr bus at the end of our road that went right through the city, and a train station 5 mins walk away. It was great and very cheap too, rapid you compare the price to public transport in England.
Another great and interesting video. Thank you. I live approx 40 minutes outside of London. I work in west London - car journey is approx 35 mins as opposed to public transport which is an hour and a half (once I get into London I have to rely on the dreadful District line.) Something the UK has been trying to do for decades is to form an integrated public transport network. For instance, in the town where I live we have a little town bus - but it doesn't go to the railway station! It's absurd. None of the buses to and from town go to the railway station. In towns where buses and trains do meet up the timetables don't compliment each other. So, you'll arrive by train in the town next to me, but the bus you need to catch for your onward journey is timetabled to leave 1 minute before your train is due to arrive. So, you end up waiting 29 or 59 minutes for the next one. It seems to me that the bus and train companies don't consult each other. It's ludicrous.
I live in the UK, in a small town with a population of 16,000. Basically, I can, if I want to, walk to any part of the town from where my house is. I live in a mainly residential area built in the 1950s. From right outside my front door, there are four buses an hour to the centre of town and to other nearby towns. Within a five minute walk, there are bus routes into the town centre and to two larger cities. My town also has a railway station with direct routes to three major cities and to almost anywhere in the uk with only one change.
About 12 years ago i went to visit friends in Indiana. They lived in a town with a population of around 200,000 about an hours drive from Indianapolis where I flew in to.
"No, you don't need t meet me at the airport", I said, "it'll be fun to make my own way".'
Over four hours, it took by public transport and fifteen miles of that was in a taxi!
Total cost? $82.
I take the bus everywhere, every day. I commute to work by bus, do my shopping, visit friends and family and socialise using the bus.
Total cost? £72. per month.
I live in Vienna, which has one of the best public transportations systems in the world. We've got busses, trams, subways and trains passing through the city. It takes me about 30 minutes to get to work - around 15 of that on the tram, the rest on foot or, if the bus happens to be leaving soon, by bus (the bus takes a very winding route around the city centre, I am often faster if I walk). Driving a car into the city centre is crazy, since the streets are narrow and the many one way roads make it a maze.
The transport system is constantly being optimised by introducing new vehicles or expanding the routes - they've recently started digging a new subway line, the U5 - which is kinda sad, as it'll result in tourists no longer asking why we don't have a U5 - seriously, they should have named this new line the U7.
Going to Prague by train took me around 4 hours - it would have cost me about the same amount if I'd gone by plane. You can travel to any of the 9 capital cities in Austria by train. Small villages can be tricky to reach via public transport, though. Also, the fares are very affordable - you get a ticket for a year for € 365,- - which is only possible because the company that operates public transport in Vienna receives funding from the government.
15:00
Again, that's not the reason we got it like that.
Huge number of cities in Europe was leveled to the ground in the two world wars.
But we built them up in the *old* style, because that *works*.
If building with cars in mind was better we could easily have done so, we took one look at the US and for the most part decided *not* to copy that design at all.
Indeed we've torn up old highways etc to make our cities more walkable and dense.
It's a concious choice of ours *not* to have a car centric society.
Public transportation is far superior in the wast majority of situations.
The only downside is during a pandemic like what we just had...
When I lived in London I didn't even have to check when a tube would arrive. Just drag my ass out of bed and show up to the station safe in the knowledge that unless there was a major issue, there'd be a train within 5 minutes.
Even where I live now (about 60 miles outside London towards Cambridge) there's a train into London every 15 minutes. Every second train is what we call a "fast train" and if I get that I can be at London Kings Cross in about 30 minutes.
In the UK, here in a small country town, we have regular (every 15 minutes) buses into the big town, where there are regular trains to London and other big towns and cities. Except after 6pm on a Sunday when we are completely cut off. Lots of villages are lucky to get like 2 buses a day on only one or two days a week. So cars are still essential. Cities and big towns have great inter-city and intra-city transport, because otherwise their roads would just stop.
When I moved away from London in 2003, I was used to relying entirely on public transport to get around, and it was a huge shock to discover how bad the local bus service in even a major town in the country could be. My wife (returning to her roots) took me out for a nice meal and at the end, about 7pm, we crossed the road to catch the bus home at the railway station. After a long wait, a passer-by took pity on us and told us the last bus was at 6pm! Without a car, we are very limited in where we can go. The trains are expensive, unless you don't mind spending 4 hours on a 2 hour journey, and the National Express, which was ideal for trips back to London, changed all its routes and became totally unreliable. So aside from shopping trips into the town centre, we are pretty well stuck in one place. Unless you have (a) a car, and (2) a really pressing reason to leave the big city, it's best to stay where you are!
Our village has no busses. Nothing. You wanna go anywhere you walk or drive 🤣
Not just bikes UA-cam channel might interest you, it has videos on American Roads, city planning, comparing experiences like how easy it is to cycle around a city.
I can help you out to answer if it were true if at one time the US had the best public transport network in the world. The short answer is no. The long answer is a bit more complicated but here goes. There was indeed a time when the US led the world in streetcars. Streetcars (or trams as they are called nearly everywhere else) is the form of transport that America done best, and yes, it was true that at one time the US had the most amount of streetcar track milage in the world. But that doesn't mean it had the best public transport network in the world... let me explain...
At America's peak, when it had the longest Streetcar milage at 11,000miles in the world, the UK had considerably less - but keep in mind, the UK is a much smaller country. Pretty much every city and many small towns in the UK had trams- they were just as prolific in the UK (and other parts of Europe) as in the US. The simple fact that the US was bigger was one reason there was more tram milage, but there was another reason - sprawl. US cities, even in the time of the tram sprawled further out than UK and European cities, so there was simply more milage of trams.
But that doesn't mean a better public transport network. While in both the US and UK you had a huge tram network, in the UK you had denser passenger rail infrastructure than the US - at the peak of both countries. Density of a public transport network is more important than quantity - a dense network means it is much more likely there will be a rail station or tram stop an easy walk from you.
Now, America actually done this pretty well at its peak, because this was also before the real sprawl started. But it wasn't the best in the world. Cities in Europe generally had far denser networks and included not only a dense tram (streetcar) network just like America, but also things like dense subway/metro/tube networks and suburban rail.
What this video you watched got wrong was that it assumed total milage was the important figure and didn't take into account the physically larger country and lower density of network
Part of the failure of trams in the US is because of the longer distances between stops. Trams are suited to short hop on hop off journeys due to their slow speed which you make up by the convenience of curb to curb travel but the moment it's quicker overall to get on an underground or overground train they become pointless.
@@darthwiizius in our city we were planned to install trams, but is is too sloppy here for them (some parts of city will be not accessible), then we chose troleybuses, which are not limited by that sloppy terrain
@@stanislavbandur7355
Yeah we in the UK have similar problems now, our towns and cities are largely unchanged in layout for hundreds and even thousands of years. Where we used to have trams now we have cars and there just isn't space now on our skinny streets to bring them back so we rely on buses instead. We have built a small modern tram system in east London but it more resembles a light railway as it is not really a roadside jump on and off system and relies on stations.
@@darthwiizius The Tram system is in South London Centered on Croyden. Which runs along roads. East London has the Docklands Light Railway. Which is separated from roads.
Eight hours between London and Edinburgh is about right but an over-estimate: it's just over five hours to get there and I think that it's about 350 miles, so it's faster than a car, and might be faster than by plane if you add in getting to the airport and checking in. However, it is extremely expensive. The UK also lost their tram systems in favor of buses in the 1950s / 1960s unlike European cities such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
I done Crawley to Glasgow in 6.5hrs in a car 3 weeks ago. Also I would say you're right about the plane. I've done the same journey by plane and from door to door it was 6 hrs.
With the question about intercity trains, remember that you would probably not build a railnetwork for cargo but a highspeed railnetwork. A modern high speed train goes between 218 - 248 miles pr hr. So even if you go a slight deture you will still arive earlier then with the car, and modern trains have internet connection so you can woork on the rail. Besides that you will not be stuck in trafic. Just win win win.
I’m from Peterborough in the UK. Buses here (theoretically) come every 10 minutes during weekdays and every 30 minutes on a Sunday. During nighttime the buses come once per hour.
I live in the UK, I'm 48 and have never needed a car, only just got my first car this week due to work. Public transport here is great.
if i wanted to photograph a sun rise in many places, it be impossible to get a bus where you want at that time. or some wild parts of the uk, no way i could walk the distance from the closest town just to get to the starting point of where i want to be . get much closer in a car. due to health issues public transport would limit me greatly
When i moved to a south coast town in England i very quickly realised i no longer needed a car when ther are buses that run every 7 mins stopping right outside my house and a train station a 10 minute walk away. All the buses have phone chargers on every seat and free Wifi so there is a lot of convenience. Cars are so expensive to run the UK. I'm saving many thousands of pounds per year now i'm using buses and trains.
I can't speak for Europe but I can speak reasonably knowledgeably of the UK, and I do think that the video you're commenting on is at least a little missleading. It starts off by comparing Scotland and Indiana and then spends most of it's time talking about tram systems. There are I believe around 10 modern tram systems in the whole UK, it then tells you how the US lost it's trams but doesn't mention that by 1964 there was only 1 tram system left in the UK. I'm prepared to believe that the EU and UK have better public transport than the US and I'm sure there is an argument for better public transport in the US, but this video needs a rework.
There is no doubt that Europe's public transport system is better currently but I agree comparing tram systems isn't right subway systems should be compared too
Trams have made a comeback in the UK though. Lots of places have trams and light rail nowadays and bus and rail services are much more extensive and comprehensive than in the US. :)
The overall programme is about public transport . It is not comparing trams or the lack thereof . It makes the point right at the start of how easy it is to get from Edinburgh to Cupar compared to the two American cities . Buses seem to work , or the train in the examples he gave for Scotland . Happily there seems to be a call for street cars again in USA which they seem to think is fight for them .
London could not be the size it is today without the Tube. The Tube connected what used to be London with lots of small towns and villages. This connection allowed these towns and villages to grow to the point that they merged together to become an actual part of London itself.
The Tube allowed people to live away from the insanely crowded city centre where you'd be lucky to have only one family in a single room and live in their own house where it wasn't so crowded.
Train from London to Edinburgh is 4 hours 23 minutes. Really enjoying all your videos guys.
I never take the train because its too expensive. I used to take the bus from Aberseen to London for less than £5 and it took 12hrs.
@@lolsaXx If you are planning a trip in advance trains can be cheaper (but still not cheap) but so much more stress free than driving.
@@lolsaXx Take a look at doing split tickets. Can make a journey sooo much cheaper. I needed to get from the South East of England up to Liverpool. A straight single ticket (wasn’t coming back by train) was going to cost £95 but when I split the tickets it only cost me £23!
There's a new London to Edinburgh train company that's selling 60% of their tickets for less than £30.
I live in the UK and my son uses a NoW card for buses. NoW cards are issued for registered disabled by your county council and the reciprocal agreement between all the county councils in England means he can travel anywhere in the country on a bus for free. As his carer I can travel with him for free within our local county and I just have to pay for myself outside the county.
I once lived in a small hamlet out in the middle of nowhere that had just two dozen houses. There was still a bus service that came by twice a day.
When the steam train came, there were created a ton of small local train lines everywhere as you could haul all of the local products in a single cargo train.
This meant that first wave of urbanisation centered around the train stations.
Many of the small train lines became not profitable during the great depression and were closed.
However Western Europe invested heavily in public transport with the marshal help money after WW2. As so many people struggled to buy anything in the immediate aftermath. It is around the early 50's that the huge intercity grid of trains really grows, with the new diesel engines instead of steam. The larger towns also get local commuting trains centered around the German S-bahn idea.
The 1960's sees the building boom of Western Europe, with many of the tall housing buildings in the suburban areas being built, and the idea of commuting into town was already planned with more trains and more busses.
The biggest defining factor that meant a point of no return for public transport planning was the oil crisis of the 1970's.
I think you will find most of Europe before WW2 had very extensive railway lines
In 2013 I visited my cousin in Arlington, Texas. It holds the dubious record of being the largest US city (population 394,000) without any organised transport(ation) system. The residents keep rejecting voting for the introduction of a system. Here in my UK city, I live on a bus route where the bus passes my door every 15 minutes. It's a 6 minutes walk to the local railway station and 14 minutes by train into the city centre. Even so, we still need to get more people out of their cars walking and cycling more for their own health and the environment. The US has a lot to catch up.
Perhaps the best known, and most used, network in the UK is the London Underground. You're right that footage of the Underground shows it being packed, but it carries millions of workers and tourists every day. London simply could not cope if all of those people were in cars - or even on buses.
When I first lived in London in the late 1990s, the Underground had suffered years of financial neglect. Trains were old and many stations were in disrepair. They were unsafe. When I first travelled on the New York Subway in 2014, it reminded me of the Underground in the 1990s (but it was even worse!).
Many people moan about how expensive the London Underground is. They're not necessarily wrong. It is expensive. But when I think of the state of the Underground when I moved to London compared to when I left last year, it had improved massively. Increased revenue was part of the reason that improvement had been possible. Station upgrades, new rolling stock, and even new lines have improved the Underground massively. There are now quite a lot of stations on the network that are fully accessible, with 'step-free' access from the platform to street level for people who use wheelchairs. Things like train doors being level with platforms, and installation of elevators in those stations have massively improved accessibility.
But the London Underground is facing massive challenge right now. From my perspective, there are two main reasons for this:
1. One of the Underground lines, the Jubilee Line was extended in the 1990s. There were 11 new stations on the extension. A major reason for the extension was that areas to the East of the City on the river Thames, known as Docklands (because it's where all the docks for international trade were located in the days when shipping, not air travel, was most common for trade) were being redeveloped. One such area, Canary Wharf; became not just the financial centre of London, but of Europe. At its height, over 100,000 financial sector workers were located in offices there and many of those commuted in daily, some from over 100 miles away (thanks public transport!!). The profile of businesses and the number of workers based at Canary Wharf is changing rapidly through. Many financial sector companies with premises at Canary Wharf are downsizing and moving into the EU because of Brexit. Fewer people may well be travelling to Canary Wharf in future. So Brexit is having an impact on public transport.
2. Covid-19. As the 'lockdowns' kicked in for Covid-19, most office based workers shifted to working from home. The number of daily journeys being completed on London Underground therefore fell massively. At the height of lockdown, quite a number of stations remained completely closed because there just weren't sufficient numbers of people using the stations to justify keeping them open. Naturally, with fewer people, revenue dropped massively as well. Despite emergency funding to keep the network open, which comes to an end this month, there is still a financial crisis at Transport for London (TfL) which manages the tube and bus networks in London. There is talk of having to close lines completely now, including the Jubilee Line. This would have a massive impact on London for years to come. London's newest line, the Elizabeth Line (or Crossrail as its known to Londoners) isn't even fully open to the travelling public yet. Given that it has cost almost £20bn to build, if it doesn't open fully (which I haven't seen suggested as being the case), that would have a massive impact too.
London Underground could start to look very different in the future because of these things. So whilst it is an excellent example of how public transport can work, it is definitely not all easy.
Incidentally, most trains from London to Edinburgh complete that journey in about 5.5 hours. It is possible to fly, but when you consider time to travel to the airport in London, time to check in (even for a domestic flight), time to pass through the airport in Edinburgh on arrival, and time to travel into the centre of Edinburgh from the airport, there probably isn't that much of a difference overall in the time of the journey.
23:19
I the smallest place I've lived in here in Norway had a population of 301 people, still had busses stopping every two hours with bus on one line.
And a railway line with a train stop with several stopping trains each day.
It wasn't perfect, not by a long shot.
But even *there* it was still better then in some US cities of thousands...
There's a lot of things that's great about the US...
But there's definitively some things that *needs* reform in the US...
Major cities in the UK are really well connected for public transport, at least London, Birmingham and Manchester. Some of the countryside and branch trains to small towns leave a LOT to be desired even in the UK
USA: "Personal freedom!"
Also USA: "Sorry, you can't build a shop there!"
Americans are so free they go to jail for crossing the road! Murika!
@Michael Shaughnessy yeah that's exactly what it is mate. It's laughable really.
Zoning people zoning.
@@JLuke2oo7 They also go bankrupt if they get cancer, weird country.
Also
USA: "freedom to carry guns, yay"
UK: "Big deal, what about your child's freedom to go to school without a bullet proof backpack and confidence that their school wont be the 'next one'?
USA: ... ... ...
A few cities in the UK have reintroduced trams (streetcars) and has proved successful.
I live near Liverpool, with the tunnel toll under the river and the expensive car parking in Liverpool it is cheaper and less stressful to take the train.
I live in an edge of town location close to fields, farms and countryside. Within a 4 mile radius there are 5 railway stations and an underground station. Within 1.5 mile radius there are 15 bus routes plus 3 express bus routes. Nearest bus stop is 200 feet from my house. My brother in law worked for Kent County Council scheduling bus services. One of the most important aspects of his job was to marry up bus timetables with train timetables which sounds easy but is quite complex. He ended up working for the Railways scheduling replacement buses for when the railway lines were closed for works as the buses being scheduled were in the wrong place at the wrong time and leaving empty. By scheduling them properly the buses were in the right places at the right time for the passengers and saved £ millions in a 6 month period.
Here in the UK we also have Park and Rides. These are large carparks on the outskirts of a city where for a fee you can park your car then take a bus into the city centre so reducing the traffic in the city centre. Where I live the city we visit has 6. They are on the major roads leading in to the city. A family ticket is about £5 and that is for the whole day. Buses are normally 15 minutes apart
When we went to San Francisco we could get everywhere we wanted to go on public transport, it was very good. My sister-in-law went to Los Angeles and found it almost impossible to get anywhere without car. So even within the same state there appears to be differences.
On the European mainland public transport is very good, I lived in a rural area in Germany for two years and could still easily travel around most of Western Europe without a car. In UK it very much depends where you live. It’s good in most places in England and Scotland, excellent in London, but in West Wales where I currently live it’s appalling. I couldn’t live without a car.
A traction engine company in England had an assembly line production way before Ford
honestlyt love public transport...like here in the uk its atrocious at times, but...if your willing to put up with the delays you can easily get to scotland from the southern shore of england in no time...whats even better is due to the entirety of europe and asia having such great transport you can get from england to somewhere like china without using a car or a plane..it'll take you awhile but you can do it
Being interested in history, I purchased a Victorian Ordnance Survey map of my county (Durham). I believe you would call this a Geographical Survey map and this showed more railway lines than roads. Of course there were few cars back then. This came to a halt in the sixties when Dr. Beeching recommended the closure of many of the branch lines which had served villages and small towns. A very interesting and informative video from my favourite Mid-west couple.
I hear Barnard Castle is good drive when you need to test your eyes out :o
we also have what we call bus lanes, the inner most lane on most city roads, are bus lanes only busses and taxis can use them between 8 am and 5 pm thus solving public transport getting stuck in trafic jams, simple solution to movie large amounts of people at rush hour cheeply.
Hello both. I live in South Wales and as I’m over 60 I get a bus pass provided by the Welsh Government that gives me free bus travel within Wales. We are about the size of New Jersey. I live in a village where the local bus station is small. It can only handle about 4 buses at a time. To get to my local hospital (it has a free car park) there are 3 bus companies that drive this route. Between them there are about 6 buses an hour and it’s about 10 minutes ride. My nearest train station is about 2 mile away and has some parking. I can get a train that takes 17 minutes to the city, the bus takes 50 minutes. To London by train (150 miles) with one change in Cardiff it takes 2 ¼ hours. I can get a return (round trip) for about £50, or less advance booking.
11:52
Yes, it's true.
It's not enough to just have a few bus, tram, subway/lightrail or train lines...
Sure there might be one going from the suburbs to the city, or from nearby cities or whatever...
But that's not how public transportation works.
You need to be able to find afordable housing near a stop for public transportation (so you need a walkable path rather then highways and gigantic parking lots, and a semi-direct route from your house to the stop, rather then having to take huge detours to even get out of the area with the housing.
And the public transportation has to *stop* there rather then just pass through the area.
Then you need another stop near the potential jobs.
Rather then having to walk through a concrete jungle of highways and gigantic parkinglots to get to the job.
And both the house and the job has to be available to you as a pedestrian rather then be taken by a car owner already.
And the public transportation option has to actually fit you schedule.
It's no good if there's a bus going in the opposite direction of towards your job in the morning and towards your job in the afternoon.
Or half an hour after you're meant to meet at your job or whatever...
The public transportation has to be connected.
Having *a* bus stop near your job or your home doesn't help if those two stops are not connected in any way either directly or indirectly through a shared stop or stops where a connecting line stops.
And no, having to go *all* the way to the city center and then out again isn't enough, you need connecting lines all over the city.
And in the case of Phoenix...
My ex lives there...
Let's just say that you have a limited survivability in a outdoor bus stop in the heat there...
Then there's the prices...
And if you're in a wheelchair...
In my home city in Europe you can easily get into a bus with a wheelchair, the busses I've seen over there so far leaves quite a lot to be desired by comparison to put it that way...
And okey, lets say that by a miracle you somehow find both a job and a home near bus stops and they're connected somehow...
Now you need food, clothing, dishes, a dishwasher, a kindergarten or school for your kids and so one and so forth...
Since you don't have a car you have to take separate trips with the public transport for each of these to some of the *few* options you have available to you...
And since no one in their right mind uses public transportation in the states you end up with a so-so clientel, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with sending any kids of on their own there, while it's common for 7 or 8 year olds to ride the same buses to school as people use to take to their jobs etc, you'll even find kids 7-8 year old waiting in bus stops on connecting busses all on their own here without issues...
And both rich and poor people use this public transportation.
You can literly use the train to go from Lisbon, Portugal all the way to the sea of Japan.
According to Google maps, London to Edinburgh a train takes 5hrs and 39 mins but can be as quick as 4hrs 16 mins on some express services. By car it will take you around the 7 hours mark. Traffic will also heavily effect this.
If it was so easy to develop self-driving cars, surely you would have started with trains first, which run on tracks with points which are already computer controlled, to timetables and would be so easy to map and virtualise and is thoroughly predictable (apart from maybe the occasional "passenger incident". In the UK we already have the Docklands Railway which is driverless but doesn't directly interact with ordinary public transport, with drivers.
DLR is totally segregated from uncontrolled things it could bump in to.
Though I think it becomes a moot argument when you've got something so big & fast you can't rely on a driver looking through a windshield to avoid collisions in time.
London to Edinburgh is 4 hours, cheapest fare £30, runs 41 times a day. You can take the sleeper where you get a cabin with en-suite and can board at 2230 leaves at 1150, pulls into Edinburgh at 0700 vacate by 0800, after breakfast. £335 if you want a double room. Great for going to a meeting and saving on a hotel room.
In the uk, the horse and cart was the same as the taxi/cabs of today, I heard that the boot of a taxi in London is awkwardly small is because they are meant to have hay in it, and not the clients luggage etc.
Here in Nottingham, we have a superb public bus service. The buses all run on eco friendly bio gas and are incredibly efficient. Plus now we have reached state pension age we can travel on them totally free, and that concession means we can use any public bus service ANYWHERE in England or Wales. We are a smaller nation of course but we use our car if we want to have a trip to the coast for example, but our bus services are First Class.
Here in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, England we have buses local and buses to a few locations Lincoln (the only city in Lincolnshire), Louth (a market town in Lincolnshire) and Hull east yorkshire, taxis and trains it takes two trains to London, Liverpool, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Derby or Edinburgh and one to Manchester, Sheffield, Lincoln or Newark. There are cycle paths. There was talk of trams returning to Grimsby, the last tram here was in 1961 and it is now at The Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire where you can ride on trams from Britain, America and Europe including our longest ally Portugal (since the 11th century). There are trams in Manchester and other cities. The transportation in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Holland and Germany is excellent
great vid as always.Once took my Californian daughter in law to London Paddington from Gloucester by train..Speeding at 125mph through the countryside on a HST, on time,5min walk and on to a London tour bus.Having said that hats off to Amtrak and a trip on the Pacific surfliner from LA to San Diego....great value,staff superb, scenery incredible.
The first requirement of a successful public transport system is reliability. For instance I know that when I read the arrival time of a train into a Swiss city, the chances of that happening are about 99%. Therefore I can plan a business meeting for 10 or 15 minutes later and be confident I won't have to call the client and apologise for being late. Once you have a system that people have confidence it, it is easy enough to promote its extension and build up the network. I spent about 6 months travelling by public transport in the US (and visited all of the 48 lower states) and that was the killer - being told that the 2 hour stop over might not be enough to make a connection! We plan on 3 or 4 minutes in Europe.
In the UK, we often have "Bus Lanes", which are faster than a car during the commuter times. So, the Bus Service can allow you to have a drink after work and still get home more quickly.
Main reason: population density and tax revenue. England (not UK) is about the same size as North Carolina but has 55 million people!
56 1/2 million don't you know. Fun fact even at it's lowest estimate Greater London has a higher population than Scotland and Wales combined, if you believe the highest estimates you can add Northern Ireland too.
The UK had a similar history with public transport. Most cities and towns had electric trams but these were dismantled and replaced by buses. Now these same cities and towns are looking to put tram systems back but at huge cost
London to Edinburgh by train takes about 4.5 hours
When trying to save for moving to London, I chose not to buy a car despite it being easier to get to work because buses and trains and so easy to get here in the UK and I knew I wouldn’t need one in London. My hometown isn’t huge but isn’t tiny and we have 3 train stations (one main station with trains to London and other cities in 1 hour and two smaller stations with local connections). The cost of a car and ongoing costs to keep a car, in my case, would be about the same as my annual tube/bus expenses.
Public transport sucks in my area of Wales, they're usually late, the schedule doesn't run early/late enough for work and sometimes the buses don't even turn up...
And the icing on the cake... My town doesn't have a train station so I'd have to get a bus to the next town to catch a train
When it comes to public transportation, the US used to completely rely on it. Some cities never tore up all their street cars, like New Orleans, and have had continually running street car systems since the first half of the 1800s. It was purely to get around the cities, though. The entire country relied on trains to travel and move freight. A town wasn't a town until it had a train station, especially in the West. As frontier towns, train stations were the symbols of civilisation and a town was essentially on its own until it got one. Banks refused to open branches in towns that didn't have a train station in most cases, for example. The car took over after WW2, because the car had gotten cheap enough for the common man to be able to afford one. So they basically invented the suburb, where people had to commute to and from work, and they had to provide some way for people to do that. Considering suburbs are low density housing and people are too spread out to make mass transit through buses or trains effective, they basically had to use roads and let people make their own way in to town. UA-cam channel Not Just Bikes has a series of vids called Strong Towns named after the same named group who studies what it takes to keep a town or city solvent and liveable that goes into much more depth on the topic. Very interesting, and from them you can learn to easily tell which towns and cities are going to go bankrupt, and those that are going to be able to manage all the public infrastructure and services.
A major problem in the USA is the lack of ultra high speed trains that are common in European countries where they travel at 150 - 200 mph. I saw that the average speed of US inter-city trains is 79 MPH as the rolling stock and tacks are old. The London to Edinburgh service taking 8 hrs is the overnight sleeper service but there other faster trains available that don't take as long.
America has a lot to learn, it does seem like American people have been brain washed into thinking America has the best of everything.
They mostly do have the best of everything though as I've seen myself
@@britishpatriot7386 I think reality is telling us otherwise.
No doubts it’s a great country but far from being the greatest or best.
8:15
Having no yard etc is a *good* thing.
The less space pr home the better in terms of sustainability of the infrastructure.
The problem is that you can't drive or walk through the roads, they're all dead ends.
And you can't really walk between them.
As you can see in that picture the houses block the shortest route between those roads there.
So if you want to visit someone one street over you'd probably take a car to drive there, instead of just walking over there like you would in most other countries.
Also, it's all just homes.
No local stores, local resturants or anything else like that.
And ideally you'd also make better use of the space by placing shops on the first floor at the street level and homes on the second to fifth floor.
I live in a small village in North Lincolnshire (UK). We have one bus service, operating 7 buses a day between the village and the nearest big town. The last bus runs in either direction just before 6 o'clock in the evening. We do have a railway station but it's about 2 and a half miles from where I live and there aren't that many trains a day either, although the service is improving. It's not brilliant
I live in a very small town and it has two train stations at either end of the town the village next door also used to have its own train station but that closed down .We also have a frequent bus service . I can get on a train a few minutes walk away and get on a train and with one change of train I could be in Paris .
Manchester in the u.k for example introduced a Tram car system in the 1990's that covers the entire city, a total area of nearly 30 square miles and has revolutionised the transportation in the city.
Do you mean the trolleys? My godmother lived in Denton, Ashton under Lyme?
@@davidhoward2487 No a system of modern electric trams, that covers the entire city!
Most places in the uk you are in walking distance to a bus stop.
A bus stop is nearly always 10-15 miles from a train station.
A train station will take you to nearly anywhere in the uk and there will always be a bus stop outside of a train station.
Also I can walk to a bus stop 100m from my house, get the bus to a choice of two train stations, get the train to Paris france through the Channel tunnel under the English Channel, then get a train across Europe and in to Russia then ride the trans siberian train through Russia to their Pacific city, vladivodstock I think its called...that city is just past China.
Russia over that way has a small corridor to north Korea around the top of China so in theory I can leave my house walk 100m and go to the Pacific ocean through Russia, around the top of China and near the North Korean border.
Now that is good public transport.
Here in the UK I tried once to pass a car driving test, failed never bothered again. Reacting from your You-Tube reaction. Clip 4mins 32 second in showing incredible happy scenes Street Cars (Trams) people laughing joking, horses early cars crossing the street anywhere getting on with their lives. When I first saw this was then shocked when discovered looking at that all that moment in time was about to drastically change. What happened just 4 days later seems unbelievable as would never think it possible when the Earthquake hit. They then film from a Street Car on the same route again soon after the unbelievable distruction. Full footage on You Tube search is "San Francisco Earthquake 1906 before and after Journey Down Market Street". Maybe 115 years ago but still gets to me.
Well anyone that builds a city next to something called the san andreas fault really has got it coming 😂😂
also in the UK we have apps on our phone to show you live bus times.
One huge reason for the differences between the U.S. and Europe is the Political way things are done. U.S. Senators tend to have huge amounts of lobbying going on, in 2019 there were 12,000 of them in Washington. And the two biggest kinds of Lobbyists are fuel and medical, which unfortunately means that Senators are pushed in a lot of ways that don't help the population.
I love the openness of the U.S. mainly for the roads. But my wife and I couldn't live there. On our honeymoon we bought a couple of motorbikes in San Francisco and had a great road trip to Miami (she was so happy when I shipped the bike home, not). But the towns and cities are to spread out to be able to live without a car in a practical way. For example, here our oldest son can walk to 1 of 4 supermarkets in less than ten minutes (even better on the pub front). For the same size population town in the U.S. he'd have to drive or get taxis.
I'm curious, what out of the things you've discovered whilst hosting in this channel would be worth moving to the UK for?
where i live in the UK about 13 miles from central London it can take 2 hours to drive home in rush hour as opposed to 20 minutes on the tube (that run every few minutes during rush hour)! Granted pre covid you might be stood in someone's armpit during rush hour!!
Many UK cities don't have a lot of parking and charge all sorts of fees just to drive into the centre (downtown) and parking can be eye watering. Chatting to a tradesman who parked in central London with his work van at a cost of £20 ($30) an HOUR !!
It's shockingly amazing just how efficient trains are. A few years ago now our little town got a huge make over and the train station was rebuilt. To celebrate the opening we had a couple of the most beautiful steam trains ever made to join the festivities. The Mallard and the Flying Scotsman. At one point there was a strongman competition to pull rolling stock 50 meters in a race. And while they were quick doing it and made it look easy my EX Girlfriend, who has a degree in physics and engineering, stood up and exclaimed that what they were doing was easy. And bet anyone that she could pull the same rolling stock the same distance. Obviously not as fast but still pull it. I'll just say that she was just over 5 foot tall. She put on the same harness and it took her a while to get it moving but once it was moving she pulled it with ease. She walked away with over £8000 in bet money. And left 2 strongmen embarrassed and looking like frauds. Apparently there's very little friction and once you get over the first movement then it's easy. Luckily she was my GF or I would have been putting towards the £8000 instead of spending it later. lol...
I have travelled to a few countries, and the transportation system that really impressed me was in Malaysia. You can just about get anywhere in a train or a bus. Inside Kuala Lumpur, it's all centralised and it was amazing to someone coming from a country with a dysfunctional public transport system.
Living in the capital city of Prague with a dense 24/7 network of trams, buses a subway and reintroducing trolley buses as well + regular trains used as local and regional public transportation all under one roof and one ticket... I only pay 152USD for an annual no limits usage for all public transport .. If one needs a car, then there are many carsharing vehicles parked in the streets.. Use an app to unlock, drive, park and lock. Having a car is nuisance here and not so needed... Public transport should be cheap, accessible and most of all with very small intervals in between so you have it available anytime/anywhere.. and rush hors? you get a subway every 2 minutes and the same is for trams and buses having dedicated lanes, where cars are not allowed for speed and avoiding congestion.... Rural areas as well are connected by train and buses and quite frequently... easy mobility = live economy.
22:27
I never look at a schedule for the wast majority of my public transportation use.
I just go to a bus stop and wait at most 15 min, usually less then 10 depending on the location.
Most downtown locations have busses stopping every 3-4 min in my home city of 182 035, and in the denser urban areas around it perhaps every 10 min, with the less dense usually every 15 min, at the very least during the rush hour, and perhaps every 30 min at the lowest during the daytime, and once a hour at night.
22:38
Even in the US the total cost of ownership of a car is just too high.
A lot of people simply can't afford it.
I literally talked to a guy yesterday in Tennessee who's considering killing himself, he was home schooled, so he has no education, he's struggling mentally, has no job nor a car.
And he has no way of improving his life without a car to get around places...
London-Edinburgh is (according to Google Maps) about 8 hours by car, about 5 hours by train, or about 2 hours by plane.
London-Paris is about 6-9 hours by car (~40 minutes of which is sitting in your car on a train, or stretching your legs for a few hours on a ferry), about 2 1/2 hours by train, or about 2 hours by plane.
London-Vatican City is about 20 hours by car, 20 hours by train, or about 3 hours by plane.
During peak times in London, some bus routes are every 3 minutes and some Underground lines are every 90-100 seconds.
Iam wondering wich plane you take when it takes 2 hours between London and Edinburgh.
I fly all the time from Bergen in Norway too Gatwick London and that is an 2 hours ride.
So i tink your estimate is wrong and i guess its more like an hour from London - Edinburgh.
Do those times also include the journey times from home to airport, airport to destination?
@@alanmon2690 In my case it is only the time you are in the air!
@@karstenstormiversen4837 I asked because when I lived in North London the journey time to the airport by foot/bus/tube/train was at least 90 minutes, probably a similar time at the destination. Plus these days the interminable time spent standing around in the airport whilst they fail to find any terrorist. So unlike the pleasant flights in the 80s/90s when we had the bombs going off - arrived at Heathrow and ten minutes later on the flight to Manchester. It's overall journey time that's important, not station/airport to station/airport!
@@alanmon2690 If that so,2 hours is not enough for London-Edinburgh beacause it depend on where you live in London!
Which airport you use and you have too sheck in an hour before your flight as well!!
So beacause of that they usual use the time in the air when they say how long it takes to travel from one place to another by plane!
I live in a country the same size as the United States, but with only around 25M people. I would consider our public transport as 'bad' but you can still get pretty much anywhere you need to go, even between major cities on public transport, relatively quickly.
it wont necessarily be cheap, for example, it will cost you at least $500 to get from Melbourne to Perth by bus/train, but it is ~2100 miles and over that kind of distance plane is the most cost effective.
We got rid of street cars in Scotland too for the same reasons. Buses were less hassle to run and could go were the tracks didn't. But we brought street cars back to Edinburgh. If you want to travel in a horse car head for the Isle of Man. They are still running the oldest horse car system in the world.
Love the way they describe the suburban homes, like they have no yard and no privacy… ha, ha ha, ha… I live in England… those houses are all detached and actually have porches and front gardens… that’s more than 90% of Brits get. I personally live in a terraced house with concrete out the back door and the pavement is my front doorstep. I have one bedroom and live outside of a small city in a BAD area… that house costs me £500 a month… don’t complain about a house that has walls you can’t hear your neighbours banging through and can actually take a few steps out of the door without being in the middle of a road.
The train from London to Edinburgh takes 4 hours 16 minutes (not 8 hours). Cost $ 37. 332 miles at speeds reaching 125 mph. 41 trains a day.
A lot of fewer malls in some parts of the USA are not in a single building but rather you park at each shop eg. Target, wallmart, home depot, restuarants, dress abrn etc all separate entrances and people drive between
I live in birmingham in uk and if you work in the city centre there less parking and they are trying to make city eco friendly by applying charging in city centre and people like to get buses or trains as expensive to park. . If you live out of the city centre a bit ur work may have parking.
I currently don’t have a car and use public transport. Even on holiday. I caught trains from the south of France all the way back to the next village to mine then a bus to the end of my street. I get trains all over the UK with my bike. I can get anywhere in Europe I want to go without a car or flying and I love it
22:21
Remember that you need routes the rest of the time too, not just during rush hours.
Lets say that someone doesn't own a car, there's public transportation to and from work.
But then they have to cross the city in the middle of the day to attend a meeting with another company and inspect their products or some such...
If there's no public transportation then...
All of a sudden they have to *drive* to work because they need a car in the middle of the day, even if they don't need one in the rush hours...
We also use an oyster or bus card system so it’s like a credit card where you put a certain amount of money on your card and so rather than having to wait in line to buy a ticket you simply tap and walk through security or pay for your bus and the only complaints would be the southern line which is a nightmare but that’s either due to delays or some moron sitting on top of the train
The short answer is big oil money in US politics
There is a problem with local trains and small towns. We have this here in Europe and these local lines are often deeply in loss and have to be heavily subsidized because the maintenance costs are just way higher than what ticket sales generate. It is a little bit better if your town/village is on a nation/international railroad BUT there is a problem with fitting your small slow train in between high speed international and national trains and cargo trains which is causing poor and sparse scheduling (like once an hour if you are lucky). These local lines are being slowly phased out in favor of busses. Figuring out good public transportation in rural areas is a headache even for European governments.
Lots of Amtrak trains run services of 2 or 4 trains in a day, one every hour is still a million times better than that.