I live in a city with excellent public transport and use it a lot, but a car is total freedom. You can go exactly where you want, and stop anywhere on the way. Even with great public transport you can't beat it.

I'm 23 and I really don't want to drive but I have to eventually. Public transit where I'm at is absolutely terrible and its holding me back from basically any typenof decent career.

If you live in a city with great transit, thats great for you. The sad reality is that in most places, public transit sucks donkey balls.

As the simplest catch all to your question:

People prefer cars when they do not have access to adequate public transit.

If the transit is unsafe, untimely, or unsanitary, then it is not adequate. I live in an area of the US with a robust transit system comparatively and even it isn't adequate. You don't need a car to get pretty much anywhere but the travel times are at a minimum 2x due to how sparsely things are scheduled off peak times. They're a bit closer during peak times though.

I honestly miss the free time I had while taking the buses and trains to read news or play games, but since work requires quite a hefty list of materials, and can randomly shift during a day, I need the mobility of a personal vehicle these days.

Speaking from a US standpoint, the public transit sucks. The main issue where I'm at is lack of bus stops, and the bus is never on time. I'd have to walk down a highway (not interstate) to get to the bus stop, then it might not even arrive on time.

Cars are faster, most of the time. However, they still suck. Traffic in dense areas is heavy at almost all times of day where anyone is active. It's really a failure on the US government why people dont take public transit as much.

My 45min drive would take 3 hours though five towns and would still need to drive the first quarter of the trip. Not mentioning getting dropped in to the homeless bedrooms, also known as the transportation center.

I dislike other people and would prefer to not interact with them if I don't have to.

From a guy who takes the bus all the time.

Yes I prefer cars over buses, why? More freedom For getting around

A) I have ADHD, so timing is an issue.

B) If I have to go far enough to drive instead of walk, I am probably going out to get a significant amount of stuff. I can't shove a Costco shopping trip onto a bus, nor carry it to/from the bus.

C) The other reason for traveling far means that I am probably traveling a far bit away. There is no way the bus is faster when it's an hour drive without traffic.

D) I hate dealing with random people all the time. I get in my car, I put on my music or podcast, and/or talk with my wife, and just go.

I live near Atlanta, in a spot where taking a train anywhere means I have to drive at least 80% of the way to my destination, then park and buy a train ticket to ride the last 20%.

The nearest bus route to me also requires that I drive 15 minutes away, and it runs infrequently and only directly to midtown, with few if any stops along the way (and it lacks a dedicated bus lane, so it doesn't buy me any escape from the same traffic I'd hit while driving, except that I could read on the bus or something). When I still commuted for work, I didn't need to go to midtown. I needed to go to Buckhead, which would've required that I walk a considerable ways from the bus terminal (if I'm remembering right), then get on a train that would take another 30 minutes. Total one-way trip time would've been over 2 hours. Driving early in the morning got me there in 45 minutes.

Most of that is due to hardcore NIMBYism around me, with just a touch of racism tossed in (of the sort where majority-white suburbs that have Confederate memorabilia shops always shoot down any transit expansion or funding by saying "we don't want urban crime, that'll make us just like Atlanta"...which just so happens to be one of the more majority-black major cities in the US).

Still, what it means for me is that public transit is totally unfeasible for getting around the Atlanta area.

It also doesn't exist at all between metro areas. There's only Amtrak, a private company, which has routes so limited that to get from Atlanta to Savannah (both in the same state) by train I'd first have to route up through North Carolina and Virginia and then catch a different train back around. Atlanta and Savannah are 3ish hours away from each other by car. They're around 30hours apart by train. (This is not an exaggeration; you can plug this all into Amtrak's "Plan Your Trip" tool yourself).

I went to Boston recently for a work trip. Their public transit actually goes places, and Boston's particular form of sprawl seems to be the sort where there are smallish neighborhoods a few train stops away from their midtown. In that sort.of environment, I think I'd be riding the train more often for work commuting or "I don't need to carry anything around" purposes, but use-cases like grocery store trips still seem like something where the car as a "stuff transporter" still retains a lot of value.

There are no buses where I live. The nearest light rail stop is 12 miles away. Several times I’ve made plans to go to a party at someone’s house, which would take half an hour by car, or one and a half to two hours using public transport.

When I do take public transport, sometimes it’s standing room only, too many people put their filthy shoes on the seat, people cough and sneeze and specially during the pandemic didn’t mask up.

In the times I've taken public transit, I was hit on creepy people, harassed, seen inane fights, etc.

Once I went car I never wanted to go back.

In the US, the state of public transit outside of a handful of (very expensive) cities is significantly slower and less reliable than taking a car. I would pin the reason for this on the shift of people outside of urban areas into suburban ones, and the lobbying power of the automotive industry to convince the government and citizens alike that cars were the right choice.

If public transit is the fastest option in the area, people do choose to take it! That's the case for me too in the past couple of cities I've lived in. But most cities have a long way to go before they get there.

Aside from just talking about this from a convenience angle, a message that might help explain the issues with car dependency is how much more it costs! People that are more hesitant about public services might be easier to convince with a cost-based argument. This is a great video explaining the actual cost of car ownership.

This would be like if a farmer went to New York City and said I don’t understand why everybody doesn’t just milk their own cow instead of buying it from the grocery store.

i can road rage in a car 👍

Answer in Progress did a video on this yesterday

There is a substantial YouTube library of breakdowns on why we (usually North Americans) continually choose cars.

https://youtu.be/-cjfTG8DbwA

https://youtu.be/j4s9WDDRE2A

https://youtu.be/V3yXSD2O95E

https://youtu.be/n94-_yE4IeU

There are so many.

I'd guess because for a lot of us in the USA, public transportation is insufficient to meet our needs. I'd love to take a train from home to work, but there's no train line that's anywhere near my house. They're building one that'll go near my work, but it's not done yet. Busses are available, I suppose...but the time it'd take to get from home to work or back would be a lot longer than driving takes, even in heavy traffic, given that I'd have to transfer several times.

For longer trips, again, the infrastructure just isn't there. To visit my sister, for instance, requires taking a bus if I want to take the public transportation option. My (step)son takes the bus to go see his dad (who lives in the same city as my sister) since he doesn't like driving, and it takes a good 2 extra hours compared to driving. We should have train service, but no...Scott Fucking Walker killed the project back in 2010 when he got elected governor of Wisconsin.

I think it boils down to:

1. some places have good public transit, others don't
2. some trips just don't work well without a car, making people get cars
3. once you have a car anyways, it's often slightly more convenient

In some places, public transport is just bad, while car infrastructure is good. In some cities, on the other hand, public transport is great while going anywhere by car is slower than walking.

A car lets you comfortably get basically anywhere, anytime, in any weather, with any (reasonable) amount of luggage, usually on a more direct path than public transit. Nobody will bother you during that time.

Public transit:

• may not work if you have luggage
• may not go exactly where you want to go, requiring a lot of walking at the end
• may require significant waiting, including waiting for connections
• may take a lot longer, especially if you need to take some inconvenient connection because there is no direct one
• may simply not be available
• may be really uncomfortable or even unsafe (full, aggressive/rude/stinky people, dirty)
• may be unreliable

I don't have a car, and usually that works fine, except when it doesn't and I realize I'm missing out on something because to be there at 9:00 am I'd have to get up at 5:00 am, walk to the station, take the first train at 6:00 am, hope I don't miss any connections and sit on two trains and one bus vs. a 1 hour drive by car. Or I need to get to some place simply doesn't have any public transit in reasonable walking distance. Or I would like to transport two crates of beer.

These trips that just don't work on public transit make people get a car. Now they own a car and have paid the biggest part of the expense up front. And once you have the car, it's very often faster and more convenient to just get the car and drive somewhere rather than deal with public transit, which probably will take longer, won't go at the exact time you want to go, etc. - and most importantly, it requires a lot more planning and figuring stuff out than with a car.

Driving a car you own also appears deceptively cheap because maintenance etc. is often seen as a fixed cost (even though driving more increases the cost), so people only consider the cost of the fuel. Even with European prices, driving 100 km at 6 liters/100 km is like 10-12 EUR. A public transit ticket is going to be just as expensive, if not more. Especially if it's two people going together. So even if for some connection public transit may make sense, it can quickly price itself out of the game once someone owns a car.

Having car sharing easily available can solve the problem, but that's still a lot more annoying than a car you own, since it requires planning, you can get unlucky and not have a car available, and dealing with booking/pickup/return is a hassle. And it quickly gets more expensive than buying a really cheap car.

The answer depends on where you live.

In a good city with well funded public transportation, it makes sense to use it.

But in other cities either public transportation doesn't exist, or is so limited/crippled that you need a car anyways to get it places. Then it becomes a question about time.

Yes I could take a bus, but to get from Halifax to Dartmouth it would take the same time on a bike, or half the time with a car.

Or well if I miss my bus in Fredericton I will need to wait 30 minutes for another one. Or I can walk and get to my destination before it gets here and leave on my own time and leisure.

Because public transport is not available (and reliable) enough for me.

We can't sensibly talk about people's preferences without talking about the environment in which those preferences arise.

Here are some things that are true for most car drivers:

• The road starts right at your house. You don't have to go anywhere to get on it.
• Your car is right at your house whenever you want to use it. You never have to wait for it.
• Public transit requires that you pay up-front; the costs of using your car only bother you occasionally (e.g. fueling, maintenance, taxes that pay for roads).
• Businesses you want to visit are often required by law to provide parking for cars as part of commercial zoning.
• Cars are the dominant vehicle on the road; other vehicles such as bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters are in many ways treated as second-class citizens.
• Your employer didn't choose to locate close to transit, but they did build a parking lot.

The majority of housing in the USA requires a car. The nearest public transport option for me is 40 miles away.

If I did live in a city I would prefer to live near where I worked and shopped. Then I could get by without a car day-to-day, but would still want the freedom of a car for road trips.

A car is superior in almost every way where I live.

-Cars are faster. They don't have to stop to pick up and drop off other passengers.

-Cars operate on your schedule. They leave when you leave.

-Cars take you directly to your final destination. No transfers.

-Cars can take you anywhere. Want to take a road trip, you can.

-Cars take cargo. On transit, you can only take what you can carry or can fit in a cart (if a cart is accepted and will fit).

-Cars allow you to set up for your comfort. You control climate control, you control the radio. You can even adjust the seat for comfort.

1. Even if I sold my house and moved to a part of town where the bus runs, the bus would still take much longer than driving, resulting in even more wasted time out of my day
2. My job is in this city so I don’t want to move and find a new, probably less secure, job
3. Cities where one can reasonably go carless aren’t viable for me to live in because (a) too expensive, and (b) I’ve gotten too old to fall asleep among the banging and thumping and barking and stomping melody of apartment life
4. I don’t like having strangers coughing and sneezing on me.

1. Public transport is being actively sabotaged.
2. Car culture. It's a status symbol, a symbol of freedom, a masculinity enhancer, etc.
3. Lots of places are built around cars.

In my current case, because my local public transport service is not the most convenient.

I live in a medium sized city were we only have bus service. We have many lines covering "almost" all the city, but each of the lines only has a relatively small number of buses available. This causes long delays between arrivals and makes combinations very difficult when needing to use more than one line. Waiting times of 40 minutes in the bus stops are not uncommon. By car, it takes me 15 minutes to go anywhere.

Another issue is with pricing: in our case buying individual tickets VS a monthly pass only makes sense when you do more than 40 trips every month. It literally costs me more to use the bus than to pay for gas.

In the past I lived in much bigger cities with underground service and plenty of buses available, and I barely used the car, and didn't even considered the pricing.

I think most covered it all why they use a car.

I just want to add that it all depends on where you live. I don't know what you mean by "most". I would say most in cities with good bike lanes like Paris and Amsterdam would say most take the bike, or cities with great public transport like Tokyo would say most take public transport. If you live in a place like USA where it is dangerous to walk and the public transport is almost none existing then most would take the car. I think New York has ok public transport. But I don't know, when I was there were sandy coming in so all of the subways were closed off.

Public transit is so slow where I am. A trip in a car that would take an hour takes 2.5 hours with the bus/train.

The biggest reason is my local public transportation. I live near a large city in northern West Virginia. The only bus that comes close to my address runs twice a day. Once at 7am and then again at 5pm. On top of that it would be a 20 minute walk, 10 minute bike ride, or 5 minute car ride to the bus stop. If I had to I could make it work but I can't get groceries after work because I would miss the last bus by the time I got off work and finished my shopping. This means I would have to go out on Saturday at 7am and do my shopping and then catch the bus back at 5. Add on top of that having two kids and it's just impossible. Unfortunately a lot of the US is like this. I wouldn't mind if I had to pay more and my local government put more effort into public transit but that seems to be low on their list of priorities.

I will say that electric bikes and self driving cars in the future may change everything for the better.

Hopefully there will be a Lemmy equivalent to r/fuckcars and r/YIMBY soon enough.

If you live anywhere outside of the inner city, public transport gets slow really quick.

In the US, public transit is almost universally unavailable. If it is available, it's a massive luxury (or strictly necessary, like NYC).

Check out the episode Adam Ruins Cars from Adam Ruins Everything: Season 1, Episode 3. It's a sad history of why we are where we are.

Even in places where public transport is very good, a lot of people value the illusion of power when steering the vehicle themselves. It makes them feel independent and in control.

Myself, I don’t get it. I’m over 40 and I don’t have a driver’s license. I used to live in a place where I could get anywhere by bike; now I live in a place where public transport is really good. I can’t see myself moving to a US city where public transport is a joke.

I live in San Francisco, so decent public transportation. But even then, it doesn't run 24 hours. If you want late night fast food, unless you live in NYC, you either need a car or get to pay absurd prices for door dash to deliver cold food.

My freedumbs. It's stupid.

I would definitely use public transportation if it were an option where I live. Cars are too damn expensive.

I live 5 miles out from the city im WV. I would need to walk/bike up and down hills for 2 miles at a minimum just to get to a local transit stop.

If I take public transportation from my home to my job: I have to get on a train where it will stop several times due to the ‘TRaiN DisPatcHer’, then when I get off, I have to switch over to a bus…but hold up. Sometimes the bus SKIPS the stop so I have to wait another 15+ minutes and IF when I get in the bus, the traffic will be horrible. The bus will go 4 mph and I will have to endure elderly people with there bulky carts, children screaming, homeless people, people talking loudly through there phones, vaping, or obnoxious music. When I finally get out, an hour and a half will pass. I’m more tired, angry and my back hurts (because did I mention the chairs aren’t made for humans.) and I have to do this again when I return home.

So essentially, I think I’ll stick with my car.

Sometimes there's no direct public transportation route. I'm in NYC and to get to Queens I have to go through another borough. Or I could do a half hour drive.

Sometimes you just don't want to deal with the crowds. I have an invisible health issue which can make it hard to stand on a bus or train.

I take public transport whenever possible. But I'm not going to say it would be easy to give up cars.