They say if you’re driving, that’s time lost, while if you are on the bus, you can be doing all sorts of things on your phone or what have you.
I don’t have a car right now (not in any rush, especially with the current market) and I’m a BIG defender of this point. On the bus, I usually have a book. I take Amtrak alot and having driven on plenty of out of town trips over the years - I LOVE getting to nap out after hopping on then getting some reading done, do some gaming, or just…stare out the damn window. Coming home I have a tendency of getting a bit drunk one way or another haha.
My thing with people’s perception of Amtrak in particular is how if they applied the same standards to driving we’d have an INFINITELY more equitable movement infrastructure. Sooooo many people I talk to swear off Amtrak forever cause that caught one delay, in a number of these folk it’s only an hour or two but that’s enough to swear it off entirely. Meanwhile those same people will sit in gridlock for an hour every day driving to work without batting an eye, or pound the steering wheel once in a multi-hour delay while traveling then are just like “that’s life.” How come one 1 hour delay is a forever deal breaker but nobody (seriously) complains about that? It’s just what they know so no level of inconvenience is too much and they’re rather be stuck in a car for 6 hours in a jam than share space with others for 2 hours on a train.
@Facebones@tunetardis When a train opperator is a good one, if they have a 3 hour delay, they can tell the passengers and they can wander off, have a nice meal etc. When a highway has a catastrophic issue you are just stuck in your car. Maybe you can get out and look at the trees, but that is a risk at making the recovery worse for everyone.
I don’t have a car right now (not in any rush, especially with the current market) and I’m a BIG defender of this point. On the bus, I usually have a book. I take Amtrak alot and having driven on plenty of out of town trips over the years - I LOVE getting to nap out after hopping on then getting some reading done, do some gaming, or just…stare out the damn window. Coming home I have a tendency of getting a bit drunk one way or another haha.
My thing with people’s perception of Amtrak in particular is how if they applied the same standards to driving we’d have an INFINITELY more equitable movement infrastructure. Sooooo many people I talk to swear off Amtrak forever cause that caught one delay, in a number of these folk it’s only an hour or two but that’s enough to swear it off entirely. Meanwhile those same people will sit in gridlock for an hour every day driving to work without batting an eye, or pound the steering wheel once in a multi-hour delay while traveling then are just like “that’s life.” How come one 1 hour delay is a forever deal breaker but nobody (seriously) complains about that? It’s just what they know so no level of inconvenience is too much and they’re rather be stuck in a car for 6 hours in a jam than share space with others for 2 hours on a train.
@Facebones @tunetardis When a train opperator is a good one, if they have a 3 hour delay, they can tell the passengers and they can wander off, have a nice meal etc. When a highway has a catastrophic issue you are just stuck in your car. Maybe you can get out and look at the trees, but that is a risk at making the recovery worse for everyone.