[HN Gopher] Why commuters prefer origin to destination transfers
___________________________________________________________________
Why commuters prefer origin to destination transfers
Author : _delirium
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-07-02 19:07 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pedestrianobservations.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pedestrianobservations.com)
| Aardwolf wrote:
| English is not my first language but I think I'm ok at it,
| however I still can't figure out WHICH type of ride the article
| says travelers prefer.
|
| "Commuters Prefer Origin to Destination Transfers" would mean
| they prefer home->destination over destination->home? Does origin
| mean home?
|
| "much more likely to make the trip if it's near their home than
| near their destination" would mean they prefer the trip if the
| station is close to home, but it's ok for the other station to be
| far from destination?
|
| "reluctant to take the train if they have any transfer at the
| city center end" would mean the exact opposite, they prefer
| station close to the destination?
|
| Which one is it now? home->destination, station close to home, or
| station close to destination preferred?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| English is my first language and I have exactly the same
| confusion as you. It is not well expressed.
| sltkr wrote:
| No kidding. If the author is on Hacker News: your spelling
| and grammar are impeccable, but you really need to lay out
| your ideas more clearly (which really is the most important
| part of a blog post!)
|
| Just from the start:
|
| > Garrett Wollman is giving an example, in the context of the
| Agricultural Branch, a low-usage freight line linking to the
| Boston-Worcester commuter line that could be used for local
| passenger rail service.
|
| Imagine, just for fun, that a reader might not know who the
| famous Garrett Wollman is, what the Agricultural Branch is,
| _or_ where the Boston-Worcester commuter line is? (Isn 't
| Worcester in England and Boston in North America? Is there a
| transatlantic train service I'm ignorant about?) What do you
| think the above paragraph communicates to the reader?
|
| > The more typical example of residential sprawl involves
| isotropic single-family density in a suburban region
|
| Ah yes, isotropic density, that perennial scourge! The word
| isotropic of course means: "exhibiting properties (such as
| velocity of light transmission) with the same values when
| measured along axes in all directions", which I didn't need
| to look up in a dictionary because it's such a common English
| word, and the meaning in the above sentence is self-
| explanatory, really.
|
| Anyway, I think you get the point. This article is written in
| a way that's inscrutable to a general audience. That's fine
| if the blog is targeted at traffic nerds who talk about the
| isotropic density of the Agricultural Branch on the daily,
| but then why post it on Hacker News?
| j1elo wrote:
| > _What do you think the above paragraph communicates to
| the reader?_
|
| Nothing, really. I read the whole article and was
| constantly having the feeling that they were only a random
| sequence of overly technical words which after the fact
| hadn't conveyed any information. What an obtuse way of
| structuring ideas. I was thinking my English comprehension
| was nonexistent (which might be the case), until reading
| these comments here kind of confirmed me that " _it 's not
| me, it's them_".
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think they mean that a short transfer near home, like taking
| a bus or driving to a nearby station, is preferred to a short
| transfer at the end of the journey -- like taking a bus a few
| stops within the city centre, or a different railway line a few
| stops out.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| station close to destination preferred
|
| Yes, this one.
|
| Imagine if you can drive 3 miles, park your car, and get on a
| train that goes all the way to your office. You'd probably do
| it.
|
| Now imagine instead that you live right near a station but,
| once you get to the other end, it's 3 miles to your office. You
| probably wouldn't take the train at all.
|
| Part of the issue is that, once you get to the other end, you
| don't have a private vehicle, so you're subject to a bus
| schedule or whatever.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| > Part of the issue is that, once you get to the other end,
| you don't have a private vehicle
|
| You can bring a bike onto many trains
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Ye, but a total ballache.
|
| Consider UK- allowed on some metro lines, banned on others.
| Allowed on some trains, banned on others, requires booking
| on yet other trains. Suppose you got a full sized bike on a
| train, it often needs to be held for the entire hourney
| because acceleration of the train will overpower the
| kickstan and make it roll of fall over
|
| I do this occasionally, but ita bothersome
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not universally; in the Netherlands, country of bicycles,
| it's not actually allowed to bring your bike with you
| during rush hour. Folding bikes at best. But even a folding
| bike is a bit of a ballache.
|
| The legal alternative: last-mile bike rental, there's a
| scheme from the railways where you can rent a bike for the
| day, it was about EUR6 for the day.
|
| Another alternative is to buy a cheap bike and just leave
| it at the train station overnight. That's allowed as long
| as the bike isn't abandoned for a month or so, after which
| it'll be removed.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The last couple of years I lived in Beijing, there were
| many competing bike rental companies. IIRC the two most
| popular charged something like 1 RMB (about 0.15 USD) for
| up to 20 mins. It was great to be able to ride at both
| ends of a subway journey, at almost zero cost.
| starkparker wrote:
| Also worth noting to an American audience that transit-
| related bike parking in the Netherlands operates at a
| large enough scale that it's difficult to fathom.
| Utrecht's Central Station bike garage alone has more bike
| parking spaces (13-20k) than the entirety of most
| American cities' transit systems.
| baud147258 wrote:
| it depends on how packed it is...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Awkward in a city center like Chicago (which has good
| public transit for a US city), where the train platforms
| are either underground or elevated. So you'll be hauling
| your bicycle up and down flights of stairs.
| afterburner wrote:
| Very odd to count the private vehicle to public transit as a
| transfer on the same level as public transit to public
| transit transfer. Once this is pointed out the observation is
| almost banal.
| 111111IIIIIII wrote:
| I think this is why the article is confusing. The
| interpretation with the least friction is so banal that it
| seems unlikely to be the intended meaning.
| itronitron wrote:
| The artistry is to take the banal and illuminate it in a
| new way.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Even if the two legs of the journey are on transit, the
| unsaid aspect of all this is that buses are an order of
| magnitude less reliable than a train. The train conductor
| won't skip stops because they didn't notice anybody at the
| station and has to deal with little to no traffic (traffic
| only existing for light rail/streetcars). I'd much rather
| have the risky part near home because if something goes
| wrong, it's much easier to find an alternative like biking,
| car pooling, rescheduling, walking, etc.
|
| Honestly, if we could make routes served by buses more
| reliable, this would all be much less of an issue.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I wonder if the bus think it's US specific. I've had that
| problem in SF, but never in Germany or Shanghai.
| samtho wrote:
| I agree, if I'm driving my car for a single leg of the
| journey, then my "origin" is where my private vehicle is
| parked.
| starkparker wrote:
| This comment, maybe unintentionally(?), encapsulates the
| cultural angle of the article pretty well.
|
| Suburban Americans, with exceptions, consider the
| "origin" of a trip on public transit not where they
| originate from, but where they get out of their car,
| because the sparse urban transit systems and job
| locations are oriented around extending car capabilities.
| It is easier and less stressful for an American to drive
| part of a commute and ride one train than to drive none
| of it and risk missing an infrequently operating transfer
| that strands them far from home.
|
| Suburban Europeans, with exceptions, do not do this,
| because their denser urban transit systems and job
| locations are built around foot or transit access. It is
| easier and less stressful for a European to ride the
| train all the way because, even if a transfer is
| required, it is more likely to occur closer to home and
| with a more frequently operating service.
|
| So, transit proposals in the United States that propose
| solutions based on European models without recognizing
| this American trait - often deeply rooted in experiences
| over years of bad transfer experiences in places that
| have transit, and operating against a cultural car-
| friendly bias in places that don't - are less likely to
| succeed.
|
| Or, as the article puts it:
|
| > To the extent that this relates to American commuter
| rail reforms, it's about coverage within the city:
| multiple city stations, good (free, frequent) connections
| to local urban rail, high frequency all day to encourage
| urban travel (a train within the city that runs every
| half an hour might as well not run).
| afterburner wrote:
| It's not about American or European. Where Americans can
| reliably take public transit the whole way, their
| thinking would be the same as the Europeans you describe.
|
| It's just about how a car leg compares to a train leg or
| a bus leg. Of course the car-to-train transfer will seem
| relatively frictionless compared to the other options.
| It's the easiest of them. That the car leg is first when
| leaving in the morning is more about the circumstances of
| suburban commuting than the transfer point's distance
| from home/dest. Of course the car leg is closer to home,
| your car is at home. If you already lived in the city
| with better train access you wouldn't even be using a
| car.
|
| On top of that, usually the whole idea of using a car is
| to make it a car+train commute, rather than a bus+train
| commute. Usually these distant car+train commuters aren't
| taking a bus as the last step, because then they would
| probably just drive the whole way (instead of
| bus+train+bus just do car). And they wouldn't take a bus
| as the first step because that was the whole point of
| using the car, and the only place than can use the car as
| part of a multi-mode commute anyways.
|
| It really weakens the claim that it's about the transfer
| being closer to home that determines the decision.
| SllX wrote:
| Bus to the station would have the same effect. If you live
| near the station but need some other mode of transit to get
| there in a timely fashion, that's easier to justify. If
| everything else fails, you can just go home.
|
| If there's a failure on the other end, you're not exactly
| near work, and you're much further away from your home now.
| Part of dealing with public transit on a regular basis is
| dealing with it failing: bus came 5 minutes early and you
| missed it and the next one is 25 minutes away; bus gets
| taken out of service; bus is too crowded to take new
| passengers; somebody jumps in front of a train. Whatever it
| is, you're now subject to depending on a system that has
| failed you. There's some psychological comfort in being
| able to just go home.
|
| And unlike with the office, there's less pressure to get
| home on time at a time when you would normally be out
| anyway. You just call in and make the walk back if you have
| to, or maybe get on the bus back if one is available.
| [deleted]
| Scarblac wrote:
| Dutch train stations have cheap parking for bicycles to solve
| that problem. Works great. I've had four different jobs over
| the years where I commuted by train (to four different
| stations) and used my bicycle on the office side for the last
| bit.
|
| There are also rental bicycles for 4 euro / day to use on
| stations where you don't have your own stored.
|
| (They parking buildings become really massive, but still much
| smaller than the same for cars would be:
| https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/finally-
| fully-... ).
| kuchenbecker wrote:
| [flagged]
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Yeah the last mile issue :).
|
| In Holland foldable bikes were the main way to solve that for
| a long time. Last years on-demand ov-fiets (public transport
| bike) were created to solve that. Around 4,8 euros for 24
| hours. Really impressive and great system and most larger
| station have enough to serve most people.
|
| However I think at least in Holland the electric scooter
| (step) will transform this market. Beyond easy to take. Only
| 200-300 euros. Goes 25 km per hour.
|
| Main issue is Dutch law got strict after few incidents with
| new vehicles. But e-scooters are amazing vehicles for this.
| Although bikes are better for health. New e scooters are
| coming to the marketing and I think will transform the way we
| transport.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Scooter are actually small enough to take them with you
| everywhere. A single fold makes a scooter compact enough,
| that they could be accomodated on public transport
|
| I love bikes, I have 4, but they do not integrate with
| public transport - even folding ones require 3 folds, then
| fold of the pedals. The full sized ones take up loads of
| space on trains, and must be constantly held or they will
| fall over.
| genman wrote:
| Is this electric bike for 4.8? If not, it's way too
| expensive.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| 4 euros a day is great for for once or twice a week. They
| are in every city and you can use them whole day. Saving
| on taxi and public transport. Commercial rentals bikes
| are 10+ euro and not so fast and not located well
|
| If you are a long term commute, it's cheaper to buy a
| second hand bike for 100-200 and a good lock for 40. Will
| take around 10 weeks to get it back.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Is this electric bike for 4.8? If not, it's way too
| expensive.
|
| I don't know about that. Where I live[0] it's US$4 for 30
| minutes.
|
| As such, I think 4.8 for a whole day is pretty good. I
| don't use them, as I have my own bicycle, but people seem
| to really like them.
|
| From the Citibike website[0]: $17.08/mo
| ($205 billed annually) Access to 1000s of
| bikes in NYC, Jersey City, and Hoboken
| $0 unlocks ($4.49 value) Unlimited 45-min
| rides on classic bikes $0.17/min ebike rides
| ($0.26/min value) 3 free guest passes per
| year Eligibility for our Bike Angels rewards
| program Single ride - $4.49/ride -- 30
| minutes on a classic bike. $0.23/min thereafter.
|
| [0] https://citibikenyc.com/
|
| Edit: Fixed formatting.
| [deleted]
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Funny! I read through it and remarked to myself that it was
| like reading something from a foreign language...
| travisjungroth wrote:
| It's more confusing because you're quoting parts of sentences.
|
| "It's an empirical observation that rail riders who are faced
| with a transfer are much more likely to make the trip if it's
| near their home than near their destination."
|
| Rewritten and removed the introduction part:
|
| "Rail riders who need to do a transfer are much more likely to
| make the trip if the transfer is near their home than if the
| transfer is near their destination.
|
| Of the two options below, first one is more liked.
|
| Home -> 3 minute train -> station -> 15 minute train ->
| destination
|
| Home -> 15 minute train -> station -> 3 minute train ->
| destination
| stevebmark wrote:
| > It's an empirical observation that rail riders who are faced
| with a transfer are much more likely to make the trip if it's
| near their home than near their destination.
|
| Sorry, but what a nightmare of an opening sentence! What is "the
| trip"? What is "it" in "it's near"?
| jamilton wrote:
| "It" is the transfer.
| version_five wrote:
| Speaking for Canada (well part of it), Toronto and Montreal do a
| decent job of bringing people into the city from outside on
| commuter trains. While Ottawa is a joke. There is no commuter
| specific rail (like GO and EXO) only a few miscellaneous busses
| from outlying areas. And, related to the article, the Ottawa
| train station is at the dumbest spot possible in the east end of
| the city, near nothing.
|
| Since they built the "o-train" (Ottawa's subway line) it's
| actually much easier to get into town from the station, but it's
| still an annoying extra destination transfer.
|
| I live in Montreal and I do take the train to Ottawa sometimes
| but often driving makes more sense because the train doesn't get
| me anywhere useful. I'm sure lots of other people are making the
| same decision.
| danielfoster wrote:
| I stopped reading halfway through because the author does not get
| to the point.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| People seem confused, but this seems very reasonable to me.
| Consider flying to some far away location. Would you rather
|
| A) A short flight from your local airport to a nearby hub and
| then transfer to a long haul flight to the far away location
|
| B) A long flight from your local airport to a far away hub and
| then transfer to a short flight to get to your final destination.
|
| If something goes wrong, its likely to happen at the transfer
| point. If something goes wrong, you want to be in a place where
| you have the most resources available to you. Usually being close
| to home affords you the most resources/options. Stakes are much
| lower for commuter train travel, but it still rings true for me.
| progbits wrote:
| Transfer can also be exhausting. I would rather have it done
| early so when I get out of the long haul flight I can directly
| go to the hotel.
|
| For all my EU->US (and back) flights, if I have to transfer I
| always do it in Frankfurt/Zurich/Heathrow, rather than US. The
| fact the airports and lounges are nicer helps.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| What makes European airports nicer to you? I'm usually
| annoyed by them due to the larger number of duty free shops
| and fewer seating at the gate. My experience with US airports
| is mostly with west coast airports plus main hubs like DFW
| and ATL.
| Mandatum wrote:
| Yeah but US airports are ridiculous. There's nowhere in the
| world with worse processing.
|
| I'd take Indonesia and Heathrow during a lockdown over LAX on
| the quietest day of the year.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I think it's because we want to transfer while feeling fresh,
| and then relax for the remainder of the trip.
|
| Traveling is exhausting, and probably a factor is increased
| stress, and the stress of an upcoming transfer, and a transfer
| when exhausted just seems so much worse.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I take your point for long-distance travel, but the same
| argument doesn't really make sense to me in the commuter
| context. if something goes wrong with the second leg of my
| commute, I probably want to figure out a different way to get
| to work, not turn around and go home. either way, I'd just end
| up taking a taxi, bus, or both. as long as it doesn't happen
| often, it's not a big deal.
|
| personally, I am primarily optimizing my commute for low
| average travel time and variance. I'll always pick the fastest
| option that allows me to walk out of my door at the same time
| every day and get to work on time for >90% of trips.
| practically, that equates to planning transit where the second
| leg has very short headways, regardless of where the transfer
| happens.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Actually, with the week divided between in-office and wfh
| nowadays, my most common reaction to something going wrong
| with my commute _is_ to turn around and go home to work from
| there.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Most people don't have this luxury.
| tqi wrote:
| I think the flip side is you have more time to react / find
| an alternative if the transfer is early.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| And chances are high something goes wrong during a transfer on
| public transit. I don't know how anyone manages to use transit
| in Seattle effectively without some sort of backup plan (Uber,
| bike, walking, etc.) because I often found the buses would
| never show up, often due to undocumented/poorly documented
| route adjustments. Also, buses would very frequently not stop
| unless I basically jumped up and down to get their attention
| (just standing right next to the stop marker in broad daylight
| was not sufficient).
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| 100% of my flights from Europe to the SF are A) and 100% of my
| flights from the SF to Europe are B). Quite frankly the
| deciding factor here is that the factor that outweighs
| everything is that transferring at a European airport is
| speedy, luggage stays checked and I don't need to go through
| security. Transferring in most of the US from an international
| to a regional flight is a much more involved undertaking.
|
| The same kind of thinking for me applies to a lot of public
| transport too. I pick based on how annoying transferring is.
| hgsgm wrote:
| People are confused because the article doesn't explain what
| it's talking about. Seems like SEO babble.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I would rather muster the effort at the beginning as well.
| After a long flight i want to be done.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Does that matter, given you'll do the trip in reverse on your
| return?
| zabzonk wrote:
| i found this completely incomprehensible, and i have been a
| commuter in london for over 30 years. can somebody else explain?
| _delirium wrote:
| I believe one piece of missing context is that this is part of
| a debate in the U.S. about how/whether transit planners should
| serve commuters to non-downtown jobs, which are a large and
| growing percentage in some areas.
|
| U.S. commuter rail is traditionally entirely oriented towards
| bringing people from suburbs downtown, but some American cities
| are getting less downtown-centric in their employment patterns,
| with various secondary job centers in the suburbs. Some cities'
| transit planners are trying to find ways to serve those commute
| patterns. A few European cities are able to do that
| successfully, and the article looks at whether their approaches
| are applicable to the U.S. The answer is mostly no, due to the
| American suburban jobs being more sprawling rather than built
| on top of / near train stations. People are willing to drive
| from their house to a park-and-ride for a train to downtown,
| but doing that in reverse is inconvenient and unpopular. But it
| might work in a few cases where the suburban job centers are in
| a compact cluster, like a few examples the article gives in the
| Boston area. To the extent the article has a take-away
| recommendation, it's basically, "planners should focus on
| better serving existing compact suburban job centers like
| those". One problem mentioned is that even where new transit-
| oriented development is built in the U.S., there is usually
| more economic demand for it to be residential rather than
| commercial, so it generally doesn't make economic sense to put
| offices on top of suburban train stations.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You might live in Luton, take the train to London, then use the
| Underground to get to a job at Canary Wharf.
|
| Americans and Canadians apparently don't do this, since the
| 'new' just-out-of-the-centre development has residential
| buildings near the station, unlike Canary Wharf where the
| nearest buildings to the station are offices.
|
| The suburban trains also run frequently and all day, so Brixton
| to Wembley is a reasonable journey by train. This would not be
| the case in the USA.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I've actually done the city center to suburb commute where a
| shuttle bus was the final leg of the journey.
|
| I walked 10 minutes to the train station, rode the train for 20
| minutes, and then the shuttle for about 15 minutes. The shuttle
| waited for the train to arrive. In the evening, I did the
| reverse.
|
| Interestingly, there was a core of about 10 other riders who
| started their journey in a different suburb. They drove to a
| train station, rode it downtown, switched trains, and then rode
| out to the suburb. The key for them was that it was time
| competitive with driving and the transfer didn't add nuch time.
| The conductor for the outbound train would hold it if the inbound
| was late.
|
| It worked well for everyone, at least until the suburub stopped
| funding the bus. I was able to find a less convenient transit
| alternative, but it was slower and added a 1 mile walk on the end
| though a not quite pedestrian friendly environment. Everyone else
| ended up switching to their cars.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Poorly written blog post is hard to understand.
|
| > American and Canadian commuter rail riders drive long distances
| just to get to a cheaper or faster park-and-ride stations, but
| are reluctant to take the train if they have any transfer at the
| city center end.
|
| Are they saying that people prefer 2 long legs over 3 shorter
| legs?
|
| That's very different than the headline!
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Rail has a decent value proposition against single occupancy ice
| cars for commuting, especially American monstrosities.
|
| But the EV revolution isn't "just cars, but electric". EVs are
| much more flexible as a platform because the batteries are
| already manufactured in a highly scalable flexible form factor:
| the cell.
|
| Ultimately an ebike, escooter, e kei car, are going to be
| cheaper, faster, more convenient, environmentally better, and
| less infrastructure intensive.
|
| So the article seems to reflect an old battle mindset: ice cars
| vs rail. Imo both are obsolete already, pending scale up of high
| density sodium ion and lfp cells. And if sulfur gets
| commercialized at 2x the density?
|
| This doesn't even account for convergent infrastructure and self
| driving tech which has the ability to utilize transportation
| infrastructure to a higher degree than is possible now.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The rail EV revolution started in the 19th century, and was
| complete in the early 20th century for the types of journeys
| we're discussing.
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| Trains are obsolete because of EVs? Lots of trains are already
| electric (and many have been for 100+ years). And there's not
| really a better option for moving a huge amount of people
| short-medium distances.
| [deleted]
| Fiahil wrote:
| I think it's a cultural thing. The study was made with North-
| American commuters, it's not ever a thing in dense metro areas
| with good subways, like Paris or London.
|
| Edit: The article does mentions that's it's different over here
| :)
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Most European commuters don't live in metros with good subways,
| and so they drive. In France, for example, something like 4
| times as many people commute by car than by public transit.
| Even in Paris, something like a third of all commuters drive a
| personal car.
|
| Whenever we have a public transit thread on HN, I observe
| people having totally unrealistic image of Europe, probably
| based on hearsay or being a tourist in some of the top metros.
| Thus, let's make a few facts about commutes in Europe very
| clear:
|
| * European mostly commute by car, not by public transit, and
| the disparity is big, with something like 3-5 times as many
| people driving than riding public transit, depending on a
| country.
|
| * Out of those who ride public transit, many if not most would
| prefer to drive, they just can't afford it (regular Europeans
| are much poorer than regular Americans, most Americans have no
| idea how poor average European is, and vice versa)
|
| * Most people don't live in transit-heavy places like London or
| Paris. Most Europeans have little to no practical public
| transit around where they live.
|
| * By far, biggest user of public transit are students and
| retirees.
|
| * Finally, average European commute is much longer than average
| American commute, and in transit-heavy places like Paris or
| London, average commute is very long, something like 45-55
| minutes one way.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Yes, that's true outside of big cities.
|
| Commuting in and out of Rennes takes about 40 minutes (by
| car), double that during rush hour.
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