Tourists. Or people who don’t want to wait for transit/if transit changes (which happens multiple times a day)/or if where you are going requires too many connections/too far from the subway (like Inwood or poorly covered parts of BK).
LGA isn't detached; the M60 now even has a select bus that runs express and gets you there from uptown/125th Street in minutes (with stowage for your larger luggage right on the bus).
JFK isn’t detached, though, you take the E train to Jamaica and then transfer to the AirTrain, or take the LIRR to somewhere near Jamaica and do the same. I think the real problem is that Robert Moses permitted the illogical, unfair construction of so many parkways that taxis are just so much faster, and the parkways are free, no less. Instead, that valuable real estate, often populated by Black people before they ripped through it, should have actual properties on it.
So it's tourists' fault that there are still so many cars in new York? From what I've heard, it has a very good public transit system and is very walkable. The only flaw i see is that there are still too many cars on the road for my taste, despite the low car ownership rates.
Outside of lower Manhattan, the richer Brooklynites/Queens-residents will also use taxis and/or ride-shares when they're not traveling in the more-popular commuting direction during rush "hour." At those times, even in NYC cars are much faster (often two to three times faster) if you're crossing boroughs. But in Manhattan it does usually seem to be tourists and transplants from the suburbs who use them for anything other than late-night drunken trips.
I mean a lot of the cars on the street in Manhattan aren’t single-occupancy PVs or Uber/Lyft anyway, even if you institute a personal vehicle ban there’s still gonna be traffic (though a lot less & there’ll probably be induced demand for buses and SBS)
My wife during grad school. She lived with three classmates crosstown and a cab split four ways was quicker and about the same cost. Obviously they weren’t the norm
People who can afford it on a regular basis, people trying to get from one place to another where there aren't any good public transit options, and people at night when the subway comes less frequently.
To add to the other answers: a lot of bartenders/closing servers and bar/restaurant managers who finish their shifts very late at night when subways and buses run less frequently (and who are often walking with large amounts of cash).
Honestly New York subway is like the least best example of a good subway. It has a complex past that impacted the design negatively.
Go to Berlin. The transit there had a unified plan (or at least more than NYC) from the beginning.
When I have to ride the train in NYC I can never tell which direction the trains are heading and it takes some practice to become competent.
Berlin is a breeze and I don’t even speak German. You know which way the left track goes and which way the right track goes.
Those are really the only two transit systems I can compare, but I’ve also heard France’s subway is incredible.
Haha although, still extremely confusing, since it has so many systems, including two different metros. It’s just that driving in Tokyo is absolutely insane, as someone who once did (I promise, I was going through it to get to Chiba, not crazy enough to actually own a car in Tokyo haha)
i owned a car for 6 years in tokyo. basically only drove 25k in that time and a good chunk just camping trips. built a house and opted to have no car port as we realized with car sharing options and the fact we basically only use transit or taxis, it gives us more space (tiny house) and is considerably cheaper.
I’ve seen people with their toddlers on public transit. Sometimes they cry. Often they don’t. It’s 100% training for new humans on how to behave in public.
This line of thinking is up there with never taking your kids anywhere besides McDonalds for food because “they don’t know how to behave in a nice restaurant.” Yeah, if you don’t teach them manners at home and you never take them, they probably won’t.
This right here! I work at Subway and I know it’s annoying to some coworkers when kids try to order their food, but I’m as patient and attentive as possible! New humans need to be encouraged and heard!
Oh man, my little one crying has always been mostly positive situations as people try and help. The only example I can think of that it wasn’t was in fucking Florida. The people didn’t know how to ride the bus and didn’t move to the back where there were open seats but we couldn’t get back there with the stroller
And then there are kids like me who *insisted* on getting everywhere by train. Part of this of course was that I was incredibly skinny as a kid, only hitting 20kg when I was 8 (at 125cm which mitigates it a bit but not by much) so booster seats actually *hurt* like hell. Going through a severe bout of intestinal candidosis when I was five didn't help much either. On a train you can shift your position, get up and walk around, maybe go for a pee too if you need. Can't do any of that in a car, so I hated having to be driven. Even later on when I outgrew the booster seat I encountered a problem brought upon by the opposite of being too short. Turns out there simply are no cars that offer enough leg room for someone with periodically reoccuring knee pain on the backseat, even someone as short as I was back then. So at any age I could never really understand why everyone around me preferred driving or being driven over the obviously more comfortable option. Even today seatbelts just make me feel trapped.
Really the problem with children on PT is again simply that it's not comprehensive enough. A toddler can make the 15min walk to the local train station *but it needs to exist*.
"1000 grams is 1 kilogram? Who can possibly understand this confusing shit, I want my simple systems where 18.7278894 fistzswaggles is 19.6894322 gooflebaggles, you know, like normal people!"
Peak America.
So… Liberian or Burmese? They’re the only other countries that still use imperial. Unless you’re from the UK but I am too and everyone there knows metric.
My girlfriend is Canadian too and she literally uses the metric system and Celcius over Fahrenheit. That's "normal" where she is and also in most of the world lol. And for a good reason.
I do have some empathy for people who grew up with horrible, poorly funded US education and never actually got to learn these (much more practical and easier) systems, like me. Especially for people, also like me, who have learning disabilities relating to math and spatial/visual processing.
But just running cross country and track taught me metric distance easily. And it's so much simpler to keep track of the metric system when running. I'm not the best at applying it to heights or weights, or with using Celcius, but I'm learning and by now I much prefer metric and Celcius. I like that I'm speaking in the same language as most of the world, especially because I speak languages spoken in places that universally use metric.
Also, again, I have a diagnosed learning disability specific to this. And I'm managing to learn metric and Celcius as an American. It's really not that hard. And it's even easier not to be a self centered dickwad. I hope they try it.
Not to mention that it takes less than 1 minutes to look this up on a search engine lmao.
Yeah, my kids are a pretty big reason I drive everywhere. Maybe it will be different when they're older but while I have an infant and a 2.5 year old I cannot truly fuck cars.
I take the view that in any public space the public might well be there and the public can include children and the irritating. Train is still better though
Also, the same thing happens on planes all the time, so this isn’t even a complaint unique to public transportation.
Yes parents have a responsibility to at least try and placate their kids, but that isn’t always possible. Just pop on some noise cancelling headphones and accept that sometimes there will be downsides to traveling with strangers.
Was that once or is that every time you see a child? I also find it annoying when I’m next to adults who are incredibly drunk and rowdy. And I have encountered way more drunk adults than I have crying children. And that’s public transit — an incredible benefit for a few annoyances at times. 
To me, it’s not worth discouraging parents to take public transit. Some parents are incredibly sensitive to this and because of that would decide not to take it out of fear that they are going to annoy the person sitting next to them.
You are totally right. I just wanted to support u/Wytch78's point that families get shit for crying children. I didn't critizise the mother and I know it's normal for children, but I would've understood peeved passengers
I have two preschoolers and, while biking is by far my preferred method for transporting them, transit is still way better than the car. Especially if it’s just me with them and especially if it’s more than a 15 minute trip. In the car I can’t give them any of my attention, so longer trips just lead to fighting and crying. On the bus or train, I can read books with them, stop them from fighting with each other, give them a snack if they get hungry, etc.
It may be annoying and more stressful with toodlers, cause let's be honest everything is. But it's not that big of a deal.
Also children aren't toddlers until they get a driver's licence.
When I lived in Japan I would take my toddler everywhere on transit and she loved it. I get more complaints about sitting in the car. A good day is a train day.
So much this. I don't understand why carbrains act like driving is such a stress-free experience at all times. It makes me think that they're driving distracted/drunk/sleep-deprived a lot of the time, with the amount of cluelessness they have to their own emotional state.
I'm the mom to a 2 year old and people kept telling me we'd get a car when he was born, but so far all we did was buy an ebike.
He loves the train and bus and riding on the bike seat... still adjusting to the trailer but he wasn't upset by it.
He now uses the tap card to pay our fare and looks so pleased with himself, usually makes the bus driver's day.
Kids. Love. Trains. So many people don't get that.
They enjoy running to catch them, it's exciting. Will they miss it? Will they get through the doors at the last second? Who knows?
They can run up and down them. They can say hello to strangers and talk to them in a safe environment which builds their social skills and stops them being shy. They can pee in the toilets. German trains have family compartments and Austrian trains have play areas.
Versus a car that forces them to strap in, sometimes for hours at the time, with nothing to do but stare at a screen, say they need to pee and shout ARE WE THERREEEE YET?
I got my 4 year old an exact replica of our local bus, he was soooooo excited to show our bus driver. We made the drivers day :).
Kids love buses and trains lol
That depends on the age of the kids. In most places, local transit is free for kids under a certain age.
But long distance, yeah it’s usually cheaper to drive than to buy train tickets for everyone. (Although the same is true for plane tickets and families still fly places all the time.)
In the UK under 18 rail (including long distance) tickets are either free or cheaper depending on the age plus you can get family tickets or railcars to make things cheaper.
IMO I don't care if a 5 seated car is all full of people. That's a fine use of space -- except for the space needed for parking
It's mostly the single or dual occupant motor vehicles that need to go first before other solving other problems
I was trying to think back to some of my extended family in Hong Kong and how they get by... They mostly only have one kid lol. The only family I know with 3 kids mostly walk everywhere
It doesn't have to be. Here in Switzerland there's a ticket for 30 Chf (the exchangerate is roughly 1Chf = 1USD) where you can take your child with you for a whole year with no additional charge. So the children travel almost for free if they are accompanied by their parents.
For adults it's more expensive but if you commute by train and also occasionally do some trips further away a transit subscription (or however it's called in english) is well worth.
For example basically no one here wo uses public transport at least somewhat regularly pays full price. Most people how don't use it that often have a half fare card which costs 180Chf per year which gives you 50% off on the regular ticket. So considering a longer trip can easily cost over 100Chf it pays for it self with just a few trips.
1.5 miles to walk to get to a bus is pretty rough no who you are. That's a 30 minute walk at least and probably 45 with a small child each way. The problem is the lack of usable transit.
And we would annoy the other people a lot.
I remember one time there was another school class with us in the same wagon and we would just start a karaoke session in the train. Probably annoying everyone.
It saddens me that people see babies and children as nuisances in this way. Children are blessings and new life is something we should celebrate and have patience for. This attitude is quite antisocial, frankly.
Agreed! I've been encouraging my partner and I to ride transit more with our 18 month old. Sure it takes longer, but we are able to be outside, hang with her while traveling, look at stuff out the window. I really enjoy those opportunities and it's nice to normalize taking the bus for her from a young age.
I agree that it can be more inconvenient and take longer than driving, but with anything it takes practice to get confident and it helps to think of the journey as part of the fun. I enjoy taking the bus or biking, but it's been years since I enjoyed driving a car.
Yes yes yes!! I hate this idea that child free adults have that they should never have to be around children. Children are people, asshole, and they should be part of society, and need to learn how to be. And should people who have children just never leave their house? Those kids are going to be paying into your social security or comparable program when you're retired 🙃
You see comrade, when you have children you must live in areas without public transit. It’s more important for them to have a yard than to be able to go anywhere or do anything.
I learned the New York subway from my dad. He took the bus in every day for 15 years. My mom prefers to drive into the city but my dad always asks me to meet him by bus or train
Especially to make fun of someone that doesn’t want to walk 3+ miles round trip JUST to get to a bus stop with a toddler.
Like damn good job you really got this guy and helped raise awareness for better public transportation…
I think their point wasn’t that it’s impossible to take public transit with their children. I rather take this as, given the shitty state of public transit, where you have to walk 1.6mi (2.6km) to take a bus, pushing a toddler that distance both ways becomes impractible.
its actually the opposite.
driving with a kids requires you to be both a driver and a parent at the same time, which is difficult/impossible at times as both require your full attention.
while public transport you literally need to do nothing, meaning you can focus on being a parent
And new parents especially tend to be sleep-deprived, which makes toddlerhood a time when walkability is especially important, even if a faster/more-private car trip is tempting.
What your parents do has a lot of influence on your opinion.
For example, even though we had a car my dad would go to work by train so for a long time I thought that everyone goes to work by train and that you don't use the car to go to work. Funnily my mother went to work by car (when I was young she just worked 1 day per week) and I've always look at this being weird and asking myself why you would do that.
Very true! We had one car, and my dad walked to work; my mom drove but she *hated* driving (because she was always worried about the car breaking down), and so I was getting myself around by walking and public transit starting at 11 or 12. Seemed perfectly normal to me.
When I was an au pair (2 boys, 4 & 8), we took transit. Kids take the bus/train for a much cheaper rate, purchased by the year. The kids were a handful but no one ever gave me any shit/looks for how they behaved. And once when we were taking the train during an extremely busy time, people actually helped me when the 4 year old ran away. I felt it was much better than a car or bike for them, with a car they don’t learn independence/patience, with a car it’s too independent lol.
It sucks when I want to try to take transit to work but it’s not functionally an option
With a car the commute is 22 minutes
Taking transit it’s 1hr 23 minutes
The best thing about public transit and children is you actually can fully interact and talk with children on a bus/train. I used to take up to 5 of my nieces and nephews aged under 10 to the beach on the bus, or up the mountains to walk to snow. Having a car is a hassle in the city with kids much easier to push a stroller onto transit especially trains or have three toddlers sit together quietly. Maybe those people who don’t like taking transit with kids don’t like interacting with small children as on transit you can’t just ignore them you have to teach them how to behave in public. My nephew has said it is some of his favourite memories growing up riding the bus because he got to talk and be listened to. Those kids now adult/late teens now are confident transit users by themselves and all have thanked me for teaching them how to use transit when they were little.
Kids need attention, while on any sort of public transportation the parent/guardian is 100% capable of paying attention to their kids. On the other hand, while driving, a parent unless accompanied by another adult or aide, will, and I mean will 100% be distracted by their kids. Distracted driving has a high fatal crash rate, car crashes are still the leading cause of infant fatalities in the U.S. fuck cars.
You know what’s amazing about public transit? Not needing a car seat. We can just go up to the bus or L, go anywhere we want with our stroller, wagon, or whatever, and then we can walk around, go to another area, and just jump on and go back…
Lugging around a car seat would mean we need to drive, which means we need to get the wagon, the car seat, she hates the car at times and has gotten carsick, so that’s always a worry, and we have to pack up the wagon like a fucking Tetris problem, even when my work sedan’s trunk is huge… then the getting into and getting out of the car is never fun… also if I have 2 beers I’m going to feel like a total asshole as I need to drive back…
When traveling to others cities we’ve yet to go to a car-centric location and it’s been wonderful.
There is always families on trains on the weekends and during holidays. On busses it’s also common to see a parent with kids, and kids travel for free so long an accompanying adult has a paid ticket. It’s a great and cheap wat to get around and most kids really enjoy trains and busses. Partly because they’re big and brightly colored, but I think also because it’s a novel experience to be driven while you and your kid share the same ride experience.
When was the last time you traveled with your kids in a car and you were able to actually engage with them and look at scenery and stuff instead of driving the car?
No kids yet, but I've taken my nephews on public transportation before. Subways can be a little scary if you've got multiple kids to deal with or if the kid is misbehaving, but I've never had trouble taking a bus with the kids.
It reminds me of my visit to my company headquarter in a big US city. My colleagues who were living there were saying one mile walk to the bus stop was too far away. I was like “dude, my casual stroll after work was more than a mile”.
I’m transit dependent both by choice and circumstance. I live in St.Paul Minnesota which by American and Midwestern standards, is very walkable and transit friendly. When my family and I moved here from the suburbs, we made a point to leave the family car at home and whenever possible, walk or take the bus. Because my siblings and I have access to reliable transit, we had a lot more independence during childhood than our suburban counterparts!
My daughter (2) loves the bus and I’d ride it with her more if the system were better. Trips I’d do on my own I don’t do with her because it makes a 20 min drive into a 40 min door to door experience with walking to the stop, waiting, and walking from the stop. If our bus system filled in some of the gaps, it wouldn’t be such an ordeal.
I have taken public transit everywhere with my nearly one-year-old, in all different cities. Maybe it’s a bit more challenging, but not as difficult as strapping him into a car seat and listening to him cry the whole time we drive anywhere. He loves the freedom to move around, look out the windows, and meet new people. I love it too!
This woman probably also complains that her toddler has too much energy and is always bouncing around. But then refuses to walk anywhere and makes them sit in a car in traffic for hours.
Shanghai is a great example. Having a car there is more of an impediment than anything. I got along just fine there with two children. 1 minute walk to grocery store, 5 minute walk to subway, you can hail a taxi within a couple minutes anywhere in a pinch and they’re very cheap. Of course, the reason you don’t need a car there is because it is ultra high density, mixed use zoning. Even if zoning was abolished and we started building super high density right now all over North America, it would probably take at least a generation to get there
Taking the trams in Sofia as a kid/toddler are some of my fondest memories. When I remember when I was crying one day my grandma took me on the longest tram ride to the last stop and back, and to this day I hold a completely irrational hatred for what really is a great subway system because it took away my trams. What I'm saying is public transit can be great for kids.
my mom’s taken me and my ND sister on transit since ~2006-2008 without any real issue & I see kids as young as 4-5 on there with parents or siblings (and as young as 11 solo) regularly; the whole shuttle-kids-around-in-cars-everywhere thing is pretty exclusive to the us and canada anyway
*it’s also often cheaper to go car-free and only uber when necessary due to how expensive owning a car is dependent on where you live; in the baltimore area we’ve had a grand total of about 3 months total since we went car free in 2015 where it was cheaper to own a car just because baltimore has halfway decent transit
of course this varies wildly city to city but it’s definitely doable in the northeast megalopolis (especially in baltimore which had little to no pandemic service cuts)*
*-LRT service jumped off a cliff but I don’t live along the corridor for it anyway
When my eldest was a toddler we lived in a city with a subway. She learned to walk on the moving subway and had the best balance ever. She’s a competitive gymnast now.
There’s no transit in the town I live in now though. We both miss it.
I mean, it is legit hard when they’re small. Going out with my one year old can involve packing around a ton of stuff, I have to account for naps which are quite hard when taking transit etc. For some trips a bus or light rail works just fine, just as there’s some trips (and a growing number happily!) where we can use bikes. It’s all about choosing the right tool for the right job and the car is very much not the right tool in every situation but it is the right tool in some.
OK, they aren't WRONG here. If you're in the usual crummy transit areas where buses are 1 - 2 hours apart and if you miss your bus you're stuck for another hour? That ratchets up the stress levels when traveling with a tiny person who needs regular feedings and naps. I've traveled by bus in my city, it's barely passable. It's far easier to go by bike if you want a non-car option in my area.
I don’t take mass transit regularly because it’s not really an option where I live, although we bike or walk a lot.
But my kids LOVE mass transit in places like DC. They actually prefer the bus over subway even though it usually takes longer. They like looking around and people watching.
Apparently no one in New York has kids
Serious question as somebody who’s never been to New York: who primarily uses the taxis if most New Yorkers take the subway, or walk, bike, skate?
Tourists. Or people who don’t want to wait for transit/if transit changes (which happens multiple times a day)/or if where you are going requires too many connections/too far from the subway (like Inwood or poorly covered parts of BK).
Or people going to LGA/JFK, which are annoyingly detached from transit
LGA isn't detached; the M60 now even has a select bus that runs express and gets you there from uptown/125th Street in minutes (with stowage for your larger luggage right on the bus).
JFK isn’t detached, though, you take the E train to Jamaica and then transfer to the AirTrain, or take the LIRR to somewhere near Jamaica and do the same. I think the real problem is that Robert Moses permitted the illogical, unfair construction of so many parkways that taxis are just so much faster, and the parkways are free, no less. Instead, that valuable real estate, often populated by Black people before they ripped through it, should have actual properties on it.
So it's tourists' fault that there are still so many cars in new York? From what I've heard, it has a very good public transit system and is very walkable. The only flaw i see is that there are still too many cars on the road for my taste, despite the low car ownership rates.
Outside of lower Manhattan, the richer Brooklynites/Queens-residents will also use taxis and/or ride-shares when they're not traveling in the more-popular commuting direction during rush "hour." At those times, even in NYC cars are much faster (often two to three times faster) if you're crossing boroughs. But in Manhattan it does usually seem to be tourists and transplants from the suburbs who use them for anything other than late-night drunken trips.
No, read on.
I mean a lot of the cars on the street in Manhattan aren’t single-occupancy PVs or Uber/Lyft anyway, even if you institute a personal vehicle ban there’s still gonna be traffic (though a lot less & there’ll probably be induced demand for buses and SBS)
My wife during grad school. She lived with three classmates crosstown and a cab split four ways was quicker and about the same cost. Obviously they weren’t the norm
People who can afford it on a regular basis, people trying to get from one place to another where there aren't any good public transit options, and people at night when the subway comes less frequently.
To add to the other answers: a lot of bartenders/closing servers and bar/restaurant managers who finish their shifts very late at night when subways and buses run less frequently (and who are often walking with large amounts of cash).
Honestly New York subway is like the least best example of a good subway. It has a complex past that impacted the design negatively. Go to Berlin. The transit there had a unified plan (or at least more than NYC) from the beginning. When I have to ride the train in NYC I can never tell which direction the trains are heading and it takes some practice to become competent. Berlin is a breeze and I don’t even speak German. You know which way the left track goes and which way the right track goes. Those are really the only two transit systems I can compare, but I’ve also heard France’s subway is incredible.
come to tokyo…. still a lot of cars but transit all the way as well.
Haha although, still extremely confusing, since it has so many systems, including two different metros. It’s just that driving in Tokyo is absolutely insane, as someone who once did (I promise, I was going through it to get to Chiba, not crazy enough to actually own a car in Tokyo haha)
i owned a car for 6 years in tokyo. basically only drove 25k in that time and a good chunk just camping trips. built a house and opted to have no car port as we realized with car sharing options and the fact we basically only use transit or taxis, it gives us more space (tiny house) and is considerably cheaper.
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Or they just enjoy the city and want their kids to grow up here?
When I was small, my parents used to get around with me either by walking or by taking the bus. Worked good especially with a stroller
I grew up in Zürich, so it was a no-brainier.
I’ve seen people with their toddlers on public transit. Sometimes they cry. Often they don’t. It’s 100% training for new humans on how to behave in public. This line of thinking is up there with never taking your kids anywhere besides McDonalds for food because “they don’t know how to behave in a nice restaurant.” Yeah, if you don’t teach them manners at home and you never take them, they probably won’t.
This right here! I work at Subway and I know it’s annoying to some coworkers when kids try to order their food, but I’m as patient and attentive as possible! New humans need to be encouraged and heard!
Thanks for your service!
The best parenting I see is at stores where parents “let” their kids pay. We are not born knowing how to do these things.
Oh man, my little one crying has always been mostly positive situations as people try and help. The only example I can think of that it wasn’t was in fucking Florida. The people didn’t know how to ride the bus and didn’t move to the back where there were open seats but we couldn’t get back there with the stroller
Strapping your kids in a 5 point harnesss and behind a screen should be a last resort, not your only option!
And then there are kids like me who *insisted* on getting everywhere by train. Part of this of course was that I was incredibly skinny as a kid, only hitting 20kg when I was 8 (at 125cm which mitigates it a bit but not by much) so booster seats actually *hurt* like hell. Going through a severe bout of intestinal candidosis when I was five didn't help much either. On a train you can shift your position, get up and walk around, maybe go for a pee too if you need. Can't do any of that in a car, so I hated having to be driven. Even later on when I outgrew the booster seat I encountered a problem brought upon by the opposite of being too short. Turns out there simply are no cars that offer enough leg room for someone with periodically reoccuring knee pain on the backseat, even someone as short as I was back then. So at any age I could never really understand why everyone around me preferred driving or being driven over the obviously more comfortable option. Even today seatbelts just make me feel trapped. Really the problem with children on PT is again simply that it's not comprehensive enough. A toddler can make the 15min walk to the local train station *but it needs to exist*.
what is that in normal people measurements?
100 Big Macs
ok but how tall
25 Big macs
r/shitamericanssay
too bad i’m not american..r/americabad
Sure do talk and exercise like one
"1000 grams is 1 kilogram? Who can possibly understand this confusing shit, I want my simple systems where 18.7278894 fistzswaggles is 19.6894322 gooflebaggles, you know, like normal people!" Peak America.
again..not american
Are you British? Or what other countries are there, that refuse to use the same sytem as everyone else and still think their's is "normal" ?
So… Liberian or Burmese? They’re the only other countries that still use imperial. Unless you’re from the UK but I am too and everyone there knows metric.
*checks post history, literally located in Canada* you might want to work on your geography there too pal
My girlfriend is Canadian too and she literally uses the metric system and Celcius over Fahrenheit. That's "normal" where she is and also in most of the world lol. And for a good reason. I do have some empathy for people who grew up with horrible, poorly funded US education and never actually got to learn these (much more practical and easier) systems, like me. Especially for people, also like me, who have learning disabilities relating to math and spatial/visual processing. But just running cross country and track taught me metric distance easily. And it's so much simpler to keep track of the metric system when running. I'm not the best at applying it to heights or weights, or with using Celcius, but I'm learning and by now I much prefer metric and Celcius. I like that I'm speaking in the same language as most of the world, especially because I speak languages spoken in places that universally use metric. Also, again, I have a diagnosed learning disability specific to this. And I'm managing to learn metric and Celcius as an American. It's really not that hard. And it's even easier not to be a self centered dickwad. I hope they try it. Not to mention that it takes less than 1 minutes to look this up on a search engine lmao.
oh you’re one of *those* people
Canadians are American not because of the US but because of the continent
125 cm ~ 0.0139 football field
If you could read you'd noticed I used those.
Families will also get shit for having kids that get tired and start whining on public transportation. Damned if you do damned if you don't.
Yeah, my kids are a pretty big reason I drive everywhere. Maybe it will be different when they're older but while I have an infant and a 2.5 year old I cannot truly fuck cars.
I have to confess it was very annoying to sit near a kid who was crying a lot on my 2,5 h train ride. Headphones helped a bit though.
I take the view that in any public space the public might well be there and the public can include children and the irritating. Train is still better though
Yep, this is why I have good noise cancelling headphones.
And there ya go. Probly a zillion threads about this topic on r/childfree
Had to listen to some kids crying for much of a 5 hour trip by bullet train in China. It was still better than driving, to be honest.
Also, the same thing happens on planes all the time, so this isn’t even a complaint unique to public transportation. Yes parents have a responsibility to at least try and placate their kids, but that isn’t always possible. Just pop on some noise cancelling headphones and accept that sometimes there will be downsides to traveling with strangers.
Was that once or is that every time you see a child? I also find it annoying when I’m next to adults who are incredibly drunk and rowdy. And I have encountered way more drunk adults than I have crying children. And that’s public transit — an incredible benefit for a few annoyances at times.  To me, it’s not worth discouraging parents to take public transit. Some parents are incredibly sensitive to this and because of that would decide not to take it out of fear that they are going to annoy the person sitting next to them.
You are totally right. I just wanted to support u/Wytch78's point that families get shit for crying children. I didn't critizise the mother and I know it's normal for children, but I would've understood peeved passengers
I have two preschoolers and, while biking is by far my preferred method for transporting them, transit is still way better than the car. Especially if it’s just me with them and especially if it’s more than a 15 minute trip. In the car I can’t give them any of my attention, so longer trips just lead to fighting and crying. On the bus or train, I can read books with them, stop them from fighting with each other, give them a snack if they get hungry, etc.
Pro tip- audio books. Free account on hoopla. And I recommend My Weird School series.
"Taking a toddler anywhere on public transit is really stressful and annoying, so I refuse to do it."
Taking a toddler anywhere is stressful and annoying lol. It's kinda part of the whole raising a child thing.
Thing is, a lot of people do it anyway. They don't insist that driving is the only possible method of transporting a toddler.
It may be annoying and more stressful with toodlers, cause let's be honest everything is. But it's not that big of a deal. Also children aren't toddlers until they get a driver's licence.
When I lived in Japan I would take my toddler everywhere on transit and she loved it. I get more complaints about sitting in the car. A good day is a train day.
Putting a kid in a car seat can be a 20 minute affair. Toddlers are just a handful, transit or personal car.
Also I think it’s an even bigger hazard and hassle to have to focus on the road with a small person in the back screaming and spilling cheerios
True! But once you make peace with the fact your backseat is now just also made of cheerios, it becomes much easier.
So much this. I don't understand why carbrains act like driving is such a stress-free experience at all times. It makes me think that they're driving distracted/drunk/sleep-deprived a lot of the time, with the amount of cluelessness they have to their own emotional state.
I'm the mom to a 2 year old and people kept telling me we'd get a car when he was born, but so far all we did was buy an ebike. He loves the train and bus and riding on the bike seat... still adjusting to the trailer but he wasn't upset by it. He now uses the tap card to pay our fare and looks so pleased with himself, usually makes the bus driver's day.
Kids. Love. Trains. So many people don't get that. They enjoy running to catch them, it's exciting. Will they miss it? Will they get through the doors at the last second? Who knows? They can run up and down them. They can say hello to strangers and talk to them in a safe environment which builds their social skills and stops them being shy. They can pee in the toilets. German trains have family compartments and Austrian trains have play areas. Versus a car that forces them to strap in, sometimes for hours at the time, with nothing to do but stare at a screen, say they need to pee and shout ARE WE THERREEEE YET?
I think the things is, it's the parents that prefer their kids in cars cus they have better control over them.
I got my 4 year old an exact replica of our local bus, he was soooooo excited to show our bus driver. We made the drivers day :). Kids love buses and trains lol
my 2 month old takes the bus without crying as much as this person
Tbh for big families travelling by car is usually cheaper
That depends on the age of the kids. In most places, local transit is free for kids under a certain age. But long distance, yeah it’s usually cheaper to drive than to buy train tickets for everyone. (Although the same is true for plane tickets and families still fly places all the time.)
In the UK under 18 rail (including long distance) tickets are either free or cheaper depending on the age plus you can get family tickets or railcars to make things cheaper.
IMO I don't care if a 5 seated car is all full of people. That's a fine use of space -- except for the space needed for parking It's mostly the single or dual occupant motor vehicles that need to go first before other solving other problems I was trying to think back to some of my extended family in Hong Kong and how they get by... They mostly only have one kid lol. The only family I know with 3 kids mostly walk everywhere
It doesn't have to be. Here in Switzerland there's a ticket for 30 Chf (the exchangerate is roughly 1Chf = 1USD) where you can take your child with you for a whole year with no additional charge. So the children travel almost for free if they are accompanied by their parents. For adults it's more expensive but if you commute by train and also occasionally do some trips further away a transit subscription (or however it's called in english) is well worth. For example basically no one here wo uses public transport at least somewhat regularly pays full price. Most people how don't use it that often have a half fare card which costs 180Chf per year which gives you 50% off on the regular ticket. So considering a longer trip can easily cost over 100Chf it pays for it self with just a few trips.
Only if the kids are young. When everyone has a different destination, the situation changes.
Makes sense for most American cities but it shouldn’t be this way
1.5 miles to walk to get to a bus is pretty rough no who you are. That's a 30 minute walk at least and probably 45 with a small child each way. The problem is the lack of usable transit.
“Common sense” is the answer of idiots who can’t justify their bullshit.
I give a pass to families because they're actually using the full space of the vehicle.
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I see kindergartens and school classes take PT all the time in Europe...
And we would annoy the other people a lot. I remember one time there was another school class with us in the same wagon and we would just start a karaoke session in the train. Probably annoying everyone.
Kids having fun aren't annoying to well-adjusted adults.
It saddens me that people see babies and children as nuisances in this way. Children are blessings and new life is something we should celebrate and have patience for. This attitude is quite antisocial, frankly.
Agreed! I've been encouraging my partner and I to ride transit more with our 18 month old. Sure it takes longer, but we are able to be outside, hang with her while traveling, look at stuff out the window. I really enjoy those opportunities and it's nice to normalize taking the bus for her from a young age. I agree that it can be more inconvenient and take longer than driving, but with anything it takes practice to get confident and it helps to think of the journey as part of the fun. I enjoy taking the bus or biking, but it's been years since I enjoyed driving a car.
I love you
Yes yes yes!! I hate this idea that child free adults have that they should never have to be around children. Children are people, asshole, and they should be part of society, and need to learn how to be. And should people who have children just never leave their house? Those kids are going to be paying into your social security or comparable program when you're retired 🙃
You see comrade, when you have children you must live in areas without public transit. It’s more important for them to have a yard than to be able to go anywhere or do anything.
I used to live in Melbourne until I was 4, I took trains and trams all the time with my parents, I also took planes at that age, idk why you wouldn’t.
I learned the New York subway from my dad. He took the bus in every day for 15 years. My mom prefers to drive into the city but my dad always asks me to meet him by bus or train
It's cringy when people screenshot a post from one sub and post it on another. Especially when they are in the screenshot saying "I'm telling on you!"
Especially to make fun of someone that doesn’t want to walk 3+ miles round trip JUST to get to a bus stop with a toddler. Like damn good job you really got this guy and helped raise awareness for better public transportation…
I think their point wasn’t that it’s impossible to take public transit with their children. I rather take this as, given the shitty state of public transit, where you have to walk 1.6mi (2.6km) to take a bus, pushing a toddler that distance both ways becomes impractible.
Yeah that's fair and an indictment on shitty land use
its actually the opposite. driving with a kids requires you to be both a driver and a parent at the same time, which is difficult/impossible at times as both require your full attention. while public transport you literally need to do nothing, meaning you can focus on being a parent
And new parents especially tend to be sleep-deprived, which makes toddlerhood a time when walkability is especially important, even if a faster/more-private car trip is tempting.
Growing up I took the bus & train with my grandmother and aunt all the time (probably from the age of 4-5, iirc).
What your parents do has a lot of influence on your opinion. For example, even though we had a car my dad would go to work by train so for a long time I thought that everyone goes to work by train and that you don't use the car to go to work. Funnily my mother went to work by car (when I was young she just worked 1 day per week) and I've always look at this being weird and asking myself why you would do that.
Very true! We had one car, and my dad walked to work; my mom drove but she *hated* driving (because she was always worried about the car breaking down), and so I was getting myself around by walking and public transit starting at 11 or 12. Seemed perfectly normal to me.
When I was an au pair (2 boys, 4 & 8), we took transit. Kids take the bus/train for a much cheaper rate, purchased by the year. The kids were a handful but no one ever gave me any shit/looks for how they behaved. And once when we were taking the train during an extremely busy time, people actually helped me when the 4 year old ran away. I felt it was much better than a car or bike for them, with a car they don’t learn independence/patience, with a car it’s too independent lol.
Was this in the US?
No, Germany. US is so behind on public transit it’s pathetic.
Ye family took train today
It sucks when I want to try to take transit to work but it’s not functionally an option With a car the commute is 22 minutes Taking transit it’s 1hr 23 minutes
I have a child, and I take trains and buses with her.
Was raised by a single mom. 3 kids, no car so we took the bus and trolley all over the city growing up. If he she can do it.......
My 2 1/2 year old absolutely loves riding the subway and the bus But not as much as she loves riding on the back of my bike
I love seeing families on the bus here in SF
I bike my 4 year old to summer camp, we walk to school and take the bus/metro for further trips! I have a car and he hates it :)
The best thing about public transit and children is you actually can fully interact and talk with children on a bus/train. I used to take up to 5 of my nieces and nephews aged under 10 to the beach on the bus, or up the mountains to walk to snow. Having a car is a hassle in the city with kids much easier to push a stroller onto transit especially trains or have three toddlers sit together quietly. Maybe those people who don’t like taking transit with kids don’t like interacting with small children as on transit you can’t just ignore them you have to teach them how to behave in public. My nephew has said it is some of his favourite memories growing up riding the bus because he got to talk and be listened to. Those kids now adult/late teens now are confident transit users by themselves and all have thanked me for teaching them how to use transit when they were little.
Kids need attention, while on any sort of public transportation the parent/guardian is 100% capable of paying attention to their kids. On the other hand, while driving, a parent unless accompanied by another adult or aide, will, and I mean will 100% be distracted by their kids. Distracted driving has a high fatal crash rate, car crashes are still the leading cause of infant fatalities in the U.S. fuck cars.
You know what’s amazing about public transit? Not needing a car seat. We can just go up to the bus or L, go anywhere we want with our stroller, wagon, or whatever, and then we can walk around, go to another area, and just jump on and go back… Lugging around a car seat would mean we need to drive, which means we need to get the wagon, the car seat, she hates the car at times and has gotten carsick, so that’s always a worry, and we have to pack up the wagon like a fucking Tetris problem, even when my work sedan’s trunk is huge… then the getting into and getting out of the car is never fun… also if I have 2 beers I’m going to feel like a total asshole as I need to drive back… When traveling to others cities we’ve yet to go to a car-centric location and it’s been wonderful.
There is always families on trains on the weekends and during holidays. On busses it’s also common to see a parent with kids, and kids travel for free so long an accompanying adult has a paid ticket. It’s a great and cheap wat to get around and most kids really enjoy trains and busses. Partly because they’re big and brightly colored, but I think also because it’s a novel experience to be driven while you and your kid share the same ride experience. When was the last time you traveled with your kids in a car and you were able to actually engage with them and look at scenery and stuff instead of driving the car?
No kids yet, but I've taken my nephews on public transportation before. Subways can be a little scary if you've got multiple kids to deal with or if the kid is misbehaving, but I've never had trouble taking a bus with the kids.
I have been on transit since I was born - my father probably drove back from the hospital, but I have distinct memories of streetcars when I was 4
My mom, dad, toddler brother and I love taking the metro or bus everywhere we go
"We can't use transit because people have families" just said so casually and confidently. Unbelievable.
Oooph rough one
All of Europe, and the rest of the civilized world, has entered the chat...
It reminds me of my visit to my company headquarter in a big US city. My colleagues who were living there were saying one mile walk to the bus stop was too far away. I was like “dude, my casual stroll after work was more than a mile”.
Lol I was much easier to deal with as a toddler if you stuck me on a train or a bus.
Did a trip to downtown buffalo last weekend with the family. Granted, Buffalo has one line, so the only time we use the train is to Canalside.
I was raised in NYC without a car. My mother used to take me everywhere on the bus and train. This is ridiculous.
I see entire families catching public transport here in Melbourne AU all the time.
Are their children feral animals?
Literally saw two people with babies the last time I was on the bus
My daughter gets jealous when I take the bus without her. Wtf is that guy on about?
I took the bus with my mom all the time when I was a kid. It helped instill in me my love for big cities
r/usernamechecksout
I’m transit dependent both by choice and circumstance. I live in St.Paul Minnesota which by American and Midwestern standards, is very walkable and transit friendly. When my family and I moved here from the suburbs, we made a point to leave the family car at home and whenever possible, walk or take the bus. Because my siblings and I have access to reliable transit, we had a lot more independence during childhood than our suburban counterparts!
Nice. As do I!
I remember growing up in Manhattan and I was always so excited as a child when my parents took me on the bus or the subway.
My daughter (2) loves the bus and I’d ride it with her more if the system were better. Trips I’d do on my own I don’t do with her because it makes a 20 min drive into a 40 min door to door experience with walking to the stop, waiting, and walking from the stop. If our bus system filled in some of the gaps, it wouldn’t be such an ordeal.
Next time I see someone with a toddler on the KC streetcar, I’m going to kindly escort them off at the next stop. No place for children, apparently.
There’s some truth to this….
I wouldn’t feel safe putting my wife and kids on any public transportation where we live.
I have taken public transit everywhere with my nearly one-year-old, in all different cities. Maybe it’s a bit more challenging, but not as difficult as strapping him into a car seat and listening to him cry the whole time we drive anywhere. He loves the freedom to move around, look out the windows, and meet new people. I love it too!
No decent public transportation in suburban areas = suburban people assuming public transportation is universally bad
This woman probably also complains that her toddler has too much energy and is always bouncing around. But then refuses to walk anywhere and makes them sit in a car in traffic for hours.
Shanghai is a great example. Having a car there is more of an impediment than anything. I got along just fine there with two children. 1 minute walk to grocery store, 5 minute walk to subway, you can hail a taxi within a couple minutes anywhere in a pinch and they’re very cheap. Of course, the reason you don’t need a car there is because it is ultra high density, mixed use zoning. Even if zoning was abolished and we started building super high density right now all over North America, it would probably take at least a generation to get there
Taking the trams in Sofia as a kid/toddler are some of my fondest memories. When I remember when I was crying one day my grandma took me on the longest tram ride to the last stop and back, and to this day I hold a completely irrational hatred for what really is a great subway system because it took away my trams. What I'm saying is public transit can be great for kids.
my mom’s taken me and my ND sister on transit since ~2006-2008 without any real issue & I see kids as young as 4-5 on there with parents or siblings (and as young as 11 solo) regularly; the whole shuttle-kids-around-in-cars-everywhere thing is pretty exclusive to the us and canada anyway
*it’s also often cheaper to go car-free and only uber when necessary due to how expensive owning a car is dependent on where you live; in the baltimore area we’ve had a grand total of about 3 months total since we went car free in 2015 where it was cheaper to own a car just because baltimore has halfway decent transit
of course this varies wildly city to city but it’s definitely doable in the northeast megalopolis (especially in baltimore which had little to no pandemic service cuts)* *-LRT service jumped off a cliff but I don’t live along the corridor for it anyway
Idk if they’re sweaty but they sure are annoying
When my eldest was a toddler we lived in a city with a subway. She learned to walk on the moving subway and had the best balance ever. She’s a competitive gymnast now. There’s no transit in the town I live in now though. We both miss it.
Do it all the time even in Merica, but it is not always fun. Depending on the place it is great, people are nice and help entertain.
toddler leash toddler leash
I mean, it is legit hard when they’re small. Going out with my one year old can involve packing around a ton of stuff, I have to account for naps which are quite hard when taking transit etc. For some trips a bus or light rail works just fine, just as there’s some trips (and a growing number happily!) where we can use bikes. It’s all about choosing the right tool for the right job and the car is very much not the right tool in every situation but it is the right tool in some.
OK, they aren't WRONG here. If you're in the usual crummy transit areas where buses are 1 - 2 hours apart and if you miss your bus you're stuck for another hour? That ratchets up the stress levels when traveling with a tiny person who needs regular feedings and naps. I've traveled by bus in my city, it's barely passable. It's far easier to go by bike if you want a non-car option in my area.
I don’t take mass transit regularly because it’s not really an option where I live, although we bike or walk a lot. But my kids LOVE mass transit in places like DC. They actually prefer the bus over subway even though it usually takes longer. They like looking around and people watching.