this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Genuine Question. Even if I look at hungarian Transport, and they to this day use trains from the UdSSR, they come more consistantly then the DB.

They are really Bad sometimes, with like 20 seperate prices: Theres the bayernwald ticket that only works in the alps, then theres the official ticket to the destination. Theres a special offer, but only in the very special APP. You can use a d-ticket, but look! Some random ass slum in the middle of the worlds ass dosent accept that, but it does the MVV zone Tickets. But then you need the MVV zone 11-M, a ticket to the beginning to the Nürnberg zones, and a ticket for the Nürnberg zones.

And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?

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[–] jaycifer@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I live around the Twin Cities metro of Minnesota (two cities split by a river), which installed its first passenger light rail about 20 years ago. I recently moved from the north suburbs to the south side of town. I was very excited to be able to drive 10 minutes east on the freeway to my buddy’s house within walking distance of a station to take the 10 minute light rail ride downtown for a basketball game. Previously I would have driven 20-40 minutes (depending on traffic congestion) to pay $20 to use a parking ramp because the light rail doesn’t extend north.

Over the last 20 years they have extended the rail between the airport/Mall of America on the south side to the downtown of one city, and connected that downtown to the downtown of the other city across the river. If you live anywhere north of the city proper, or more than a few miles away from the one line running south, there is little reason to use the rail system over driving the whole way. If you do though, it’s pretty great.

That’s just been my experience, my understanding is some larger cities (Chicago and NYC are what come to mind) have more robust rail systems, but many cities (mine at least) have limited access for most people living in them.

[–] VitabytesDev@feddit.nl 3 points 6 days ago

Come to Greece we will make you cry

(3 whole lines of metro (U-Bahn) and buses that come once every 30 minutes)

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

American transport outside of subway systems is literally unusable in most cases. The bus in my city of 1M+ people takes 1.5 hours to go about 20 minutes of distance by car. In some cases I can beat the bus to a destination on my bicycle.

[–] RDAM_Whiskers@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

It's pretty much non-existent

[–] dastanktal@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

United States has rails?

[–] lukaro@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

At least y'all have a system to be fucked up.

[–] Balerion6@lemmy.world 147 points 1 week ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Lmao what public transport? We don't have that here.

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 60 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (13 children)

Really? Like... How do you move around then? Only cars? But if you dont want / have a car? If youre still doing your drivers license?

[–] Balerion6@lemmy.world 118 points 1 week ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Fuck you, that's how. It's pretty much only cars. Not having a car isn't really an option here, unless maybe you live in the heart of a big city.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago

A big city not in the South. Houston and Dallas are #4 and #9. There's public transit but it fucking sucks both places.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

* Big cities are limited to NYC, Chicago, and Washington DC.

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[–] HurlingDurling@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

In many places it's illegal to walk on the side of the road for motorist safety, and no they don't see value adding sidewalks. Other places don't like people that's not from that area walking in front of their house and will call the police every single time.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 points 1 week ago

Outside of like NYC you have a car. It's a bad system economically, ecologically, and socially, but many people are kind of stupid and reactionary. You show them how putting in a bike lane and adding a bus stop will lower car traffic, improve air quality, and increase economic activity and they just go "no because I feel so". Or, "one time I had to move a refrigerator so we need to prioritize large privately owned vehicles".

[–] TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Where I live, you can drive across town in 30 minutes. I once worked with a coworker who lived about a 15min drive from work (less than 8km), and it consistently took him 2 hours to get to work by bus.

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[–] tychosmoose@piefed.social 56 points 1 week ago

Public transportation in cities varies. But inter-city transportation? In most of the USA you simply cannot travel between towns or cities on public transportation. There are a few inter-city bus options (Greyhound, Flix, Megabus), but those don't go everywhere.

The rail options outside of the NE corridor (Boston to Washington DC, basically) are very sparse. Here's the map: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/Maps/Amtrak-System-Map-020923.pdf

That's it. Most of those routes are at most once per day in each direction. So if you city even has a stop (which it probably doesn't) the train may only come through in the middle of the night. Some routes are only 3x/week. And because of the massive distances involved and old equipment, it takes at least 70h+ to travel from coast to coast (more really, since connection times are long) and costs twice the price of a 6h flight ($250+ vs $80-120).

Trains are often on schedule, but can be many hours late. Once they are off schedule they are at the mercy of the freight train lines (who own the tracks) for passing. You can get stuck behind a slow moving cargo train for many hours.

Why is it like this? It's complicated. But it starts with very low population density, large areas/distances, and a very different relationship between the individual and the state in the US vs most of Europe. Add the rise of suburbs in the automobile right when many US cities were growing. Another factor is public attitudes. People think that public transportation is for poor people. I know people who have never ridden a city bus, and I live in a city that probably has above average public transportation for the region.

Anyway, as a public transportation rider-by-choice I feel your pain. Having spent a few weeks in Germany recently (with a DT for travel), and having ridden extensively on US train and bus networks, yous is definitely much, much better. Resist the politics of privatization and decay.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

If it exists, it is better than American public transit. Here is my daily commute to work, as estimated by Google Maps:

Even Google goes “lmao use a fucking car, peasant.”

It’s technically possible for me to take public transit, but it would be about the same as walking. Here is a quick sketch of the route I’d need to take, compared to my drive:

That route is because there are no east/west lines between me and my job. It starts by walking/riding my bike the wrong direction to get to the nearest bus stop. Then it takes me south-west through two cities, then north-west through two more cities. Then I’d have a ~20 minute walk to transfer rail lines, because my job is serviced by a different rail system than the one that my bus service touches. After that walk (and waiting for the next train) I take it north and then have to walk another 10-15 minutes to finally get to work.

Not counting wait times, it would take me nearly 2.5 hours to use public transit. When you consider the fact that some busses and trains only run once every 20-45 minutes, it actually stretches closer to 3-4 hours, if the schedules don’t line up. Or I could just fucking drive 10 minutes. Yeah, it’s no wonder Americans use cars for everything.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

USA.jpeg right there. That image is for everyone who lives there except for like three cities. And the bike route is actually crossing several major roads.

And the bike route is actually crossing several major roads.

It’s worse: The bike route is on a two lane highway with no shoulder. I’d be dead on Day 1 if I actually tried to walk/ride a bike.

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[–] twice_hatch@midwest.social 50 points 1 week ago

"American public transport"

Good joke! Best joke I heard since "American democracy"!

[–] tychosmoose@piefed.social 30 points 1 week ago

Here's a fun comparison: Tennessee vs Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania

They have very similar population density (70/km² vs 65/km²). Tennessee is roughly 4x the area and population.

There are only 2 inter-city train stops in Tennessee, in Memphis and a small town to it's north, both on the 1x/day service between Chicago and New Orleans. The largest city (and its state capitol) Nashville has no rail service.

The entire state of Tennessee has only 10 inter-city bus stops. Ten! Serving 7M people. The 4th largest city in the state is Chattanooga (181k), and it has no inter-city bus and no rail.

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago

I'm 30 years old and have taken a bus once in my entire life. Not because it sucks but because it's simply nonexistent. I'd have to drive 30 minutes just to get to the place that had the public transport and at that point I might as well just drive all the way there. And I don't even think the US has any trains that go between cities anymore except for commercial trains. I literally live next to a train track and it's all cargo trains. I've never seen a passenger car on a train in my entire life. Could just be where I live, but I've driven from coast to coast and the only trains are cargo trains.

[–] Tracaine@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What is public transport? I think we need to establish that first. You mean like...the school bus? That's the only kind I've ever seen.

[–] twice_hatch@midwest.social 9 points 1 week ago

Kids get public transport, education, and sometimes even food

Old folks get walkable communities

College kids (at great expense) also do

The revealed preference is that we could have an excellent quality of life except for voters hating 18-65 year old adults

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Its so bad its use is (wrongly) looked down upon as poor person transport unless its a large city. Everything is car culture and you are fucked without a car except in the largest metropolitan.

Shit does not run on time, its more expensive than it needs to be, and it goes very few places. It takes huge huge work to get it expanded because of NIMBYs and car companies fighting it.

Amtrak is doable but it takes as long or longer than driving a car.

There are no high speed trains and busses are a joke in cities. It can take hours to traverse a city because bus routes are terrible and constantly cut.

This is seriously all to do with car companies forcing out public transport in anyway possible as well as buying up a lot of city transportation portions and shutting them down as "not profitable". Americans defend it because "public good" has been vilified here. Its so dumb.

[–] qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

Just to make this more explicit, I lived near a mall growing up. The mall actively fought against getting a bus stop put in near by. Why? Because if there is a bus stop near the mall, then, gasp, THOSE PEOPLE might come to the mall. And by those people, I think we all know I'm talking about.

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[–] handsoffmydata@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If americans come to germany and act like german public Transport is the best, how ~~frickin bad~~ non-existent is american public Transport?

FTFY. I was pretty blown away by it but I can get excited by a sidewalk.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yeah I'm not sure if everyone realizes this. There's all these states where there basically aren't sidewalks outside of maybe small areas. Like entire miles and miles of residential areas with no sidewalks whatsoever.

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

America is owned and operated by rich people. They couldn't make money running passenger trains so once we were ordered to invest in car-only infrastructure the trains were mostly disbanded and shut down. There's a ghost of a system left with just a few corridors that could be considered bare minimum service in a developed nation.

How many kilometers of high speed rail does the US have? Zero. We have some that gets close, but not really.

My mid-sized city has two trains per day, one each direction, and they both leave between 1am and 2am. In Germany you would have 30+ trains per day in a city this size, likely a notable S-Bahn network, and also some trams and/or U-Bahns in the city to compliment busses. I've got busses in town, but they operated about every 30-45 minutes each, with evening service being every 60 minutes. Here's the fun part: our busses are the most used public transit system for a mid-sized city in the US right now and it's still pathetic when compared to even basic services in Europe.

DB needs to keep getting investment. Germany must get to a dedicated passenger rail network to separate out the freight trains. DB should also be re-nationalized and operated as a national service, not a for profit system that will inevitably fail as a commercial venture, leading to yet more terrible service. Here's hoping the latest German Parliament follows through on investment money that they pushed through at the start of the year! Also, keep the Deutschland Karte! That's such a great resource for everyone.

[–] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 16 points 1 week ago

Not too long ago, I saw a map showing where each train is in USA. Someone also posted a similar maps from Switzerland. Can you guess which one had more trains?

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

I had a bus skip my part of the route in US.

They literally took a whole different route that skips over the stop sign I am waiting at so they can get to the last stop faster and clock out.

I was using dart which gives live maps view of where the bus is.

Also sometimes busses malfunction and can't work but still go through all the stops, just don't let people in. Dart doesn't tell you they malfunctioned. You have to see for yourself when bus rolls by.

As far as drivers are concerned, someone's phone wasn't working so they restarted it to show the ticket. Our driver called the police for "delaying the bus." Entire bus had to walk to next stop.

Yippeee

[–] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

DB: "At least we're not National Rail."

National Rail: "At least we're not Amtrak."

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[–] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?

Where I live there are 3 mass transit options. The airports, inter-city busses, and Amtrack. We generally get around by car.

Amtrack costs as much as taking a plane but takes as long (or longer) than the busses and is really only a viable option in the North East US. The US does have an extensive rail network that covers a most of the US, but it's mostly used for heavy freight. Most towns and cities don't have a passenger rail terminal anymore. We only have this option only because we are between Atlanta and New Orleans. Most places in the US don't have this option. Here's a map of the US rail network. If you go to layers you can hide everything except Amtrak routes to see what I mean. Link doesn't work in Firefox as a heads up.

The inter-city busses are usually only once a day (sometimes only once a week) and take forever to get anywhere and often have long layovers on the way. But they do go almost everywhere in the country. Company is called Greyhound if you want to look them up.

And finally, we have the local regional airport. Imagine what Berlin might have been like during the middle of the Cold War. It's probably not too far off the situation at our airports. Show ID at the entrance, Strip, Walk through the scanner while your stuff is riffled through, dress, Show ID again at the gate, and pray you don't get picked for a more thorough search or harassed by TSA which might cause you to miss your flight. Granted, I haven't flown in over a decade, but my last plane trip made me decide to never fly again if I could at all help it.

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[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 15 points 1 week ago

Red head kid "y'all have public transit?" Meme.

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

While in college, I needed to attend an event at another campus two hours away by car. I had no car. But I did try to look for a bus route:

  • Four hours down to the nearest major city with a bus terminal
  • Two hour stop in said city
  • Five hours back up to the starting latitude at my destination
  • Arrive Friday, attend the 6-hour function on Saturday, find somewhere to stay, and wait until Monday afternoon to make the same trip again in reverse.

I eventually found a friend who could drive me there and back, but we still had to get up at 05:00 on a Saturday to make it in time. Also, no Uber or Lyft, it was too rural to have drivers available at any given time. How glamorous it would have been if I could just hop on the train to the next town.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Threadbare. In cities like NYC, it approximates European transport, though is somewhat more dysfunctional. Elsewhere, you have things like “commuter rail” (like a regio/S-bahn, only with next to no off-peak service, running solely as a shuttle between CBDs and dormitory suburbs). There’s Amtrak, but it’s slow and infrequent and runs on tracks owned by freight railroads, and often is delayed by hours from waiting for freight trains to pass. Bus services have a stigma, associating them with poor (and typically non-white) people, to the point where people who have a choice avoid them, and vote to minimise the amount of their tax money that goes to pay for them. And in some Republican states, the government has scrapped even buses, replacing them with Uber vouchers mailed to households.

So yes, DB is creaking and needs investment to bring it up to scratch, but its service levels (even when wracked by delays) are utopian compared to most of the US.

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[–] scoobford@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

American rail doesn't exist outside of like two cities. To take public transit to work, I'd have to walk about 12km to the train station. From there, I could catch a train that runs every hour to downtown. I think that train takes about 45m, but I have no idea how often it runs. From downtown, I could transfer to light rail for 20m, transfer again to a bus for 15m, and then I could walk the last 6 blocks or so. Not counting the 12km walk, it would take at least 1:20 plus time spent waiting on transfers.

Or I could drive there in 45m of horrible traffic.

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[–] BurningRiver@beehaw.org 10 points 1 week ago

What’s American rail?

Our side of town has zero rail, and it would take about two hours on a bus to get home from downtown, 7 miles away. Oh, and the Amtrak train 7 miles away shows up once a day at 2am. And I could probably hitchhike to where I’m going faster than that shit train would get me there.

[–] octobob@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

My city only has the bus, which is super unreliable and the times might as well not exist half the time, or what happened to me recently was they changed stops for a route and Google maps never updated. It's typical to wait for an hour for a bus, sometimes they zoom right past you, or you need to transfer between lines. They're also planning on cutting 35% of bus lines next year, raising the fare, and stopping service at 11 pm, all due to lack of funding. You can read more here:

https://www.rideprt.org/2025-funding-crisis/funding-crisis/

There is a train, but it only goes to the suburbs outside of the city. The bus is your only option when you're in city limits.

I would take some more confusing steps over there not being an option at all.

[–] FireWire400@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

When I was in Australia, a bunch of people asked me about the public transport here and all of them were baffled when I told them how shit it was...

I have no idea where this perception that everything must be perfect in Germany or Europe came from but it is sooo outdated.

Speaking of tickets; in NSW you just tap your Opal card when entering/leaving train stations. It makes so much more sense and is so much easier.

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[–] Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

San Francisco has a pretty good bus/trolley system. There might be other cities with decent busses but I’m unaware of them.

Some major cities like New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago have acceptable subways, and commuter rails. You can probably get a daily train from one city to the next. Example: you can take a train from Boston to NY once a day - it’s fairly ok, and probably preferable than driving for most people.

Most cities have busses that suck, and literally zero trains and subways.

Most Europeans don’t realize how big the US is, and how much of it is quite rural. It doesn’t make sense to build a rail to service the few dozen families in east bumfuck nowhere.

Getting a license to drive is, generally speaking, pretty easy from most states. Usually just a written test and a road test where you just have to drive around the block without breaking any rules.

Some city dwellers survive without cars, but they are kind of stuck in the city. When they want to get out, they’ll rent a car for the day.

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[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 8 points 1 week ago

DB is the definite proof that German efficiency is a lie, but tourists using urban transports in big cities will usually have a good experience. Even the public transports in Berlin have got their shit together in the last few years, even if S-Bahn/DB are still a level below BVG.

[–] anguo@piefed.ca 7 points 1 week ago

I thought it cute when I believed you were comparing bus service, but laughed out loud at "america's rails"

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