When I saw "American rail" the first and only thought I had was of a porn parody of a movie: An American Rail: Fievel Bangs West.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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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.
Public transport in the US is when they bring that big police box van to arrest everyone.
Come to Greece we will make you cry
(3 whole lines of metro (U-Bahn) and buses that come once every 30 minutes)
My kids have theoretical public transportation to school, work, we live near the bus routes in several directions.
To work or the high school - that bus runs 1 times per hour. So they can only arrive very early or very late, and it's about an hour walk to either of those.
The bus route to the university is actually pretty good, runs every half hour, and takes about 40 minutes to get there (vs. 10-15 minutes drive) then you have to trust your luck with the loop runner bus that goes from the transit center around the campus, that adds between 10 minutes and an hour, randomly because it has no schedule, just drives the loop all day and arrives whenever. There is an app that tracks it so you can know whether to risk crossing the huge road between the transfer ramp & the uni.
The only area I know well is the NW corner of the USA, but there is indeed public transit. I can't say how it compares to even other parts of the US, let alone other countries, but I can say that in the urban and suburban areas it's generally possible to walk or bike to a bus stop and with some transfers, get within a walkable or bicycle-able distance of where you are going. Some rural areas have a system called "dial-a-ride" which are basically on-demand small buses if I understand correctly. Similar systems exist for people with disabilities in the urban areas also.
Besides buses there are also ferries, and local train systems (light rail) which connect neighborhoods and cities in the same major metropolitan area. Trains between major metros (such as between states) also exist, but typically it's just not worth it: If you aren't going to just drive it by car, then flying is both faster and cheaper than the train, and flying isn't cheap.
There are also commuter trains between the downtowns of major (nearby) cities separate from the light rail, but I've never actually tried that myself.
United States has rails?
It's pretty much non-existent
the buses in my area are physically pretty nice but they are infrequent and my friends and I have learned it is rare to be able to ride the bus without getting sexually harassed by a stranger on the bus
At least y'all have a system to be fucked up.
I am not educated in public transport logistics, but why do they make ticket prices so obnoxiously difficult?
It's seemingly a worldwide issue so there just be a reason.
.... Which I assume is "money".
The DB is like Sparkasse and others not „the” DB but a bunch of different regional companies. Some of them around bigger cities decided to make a regional zone network like The MVV. At The same time many make other regional Tickets with others, like the bayernwald ticket, which covers part of these MVV network and non MVV networks.
So you might just think „well why not just make everything into a zone tarif”, but if you do that, if someone wants to go from Hessen to munich, since the zones are so big/many, they will have to pay way too much for many stations they will not even want to go to.
But for smaller places like the mvv network, if you abolish those zones, most stations will just just as much and the small ones which only accounted for cents if your zone ticket will die out.
So personally I think the problem with these tarif prices is just the over advertisement of time limited offers that only work for specific people and people not having properly learned about the 2 most important tickets in public transport: stripe cards for simple one way routes or zone tickets if you want a flatrate.
So the rail networks are operated by private companies? I am not familiar with the various acronyms, but that would certainly explain the complexity... Everyone wanting their slice of the pie.
It certainly looks complicated:
Transport services are provided by over 40 companies. These include the Bayerische Oberlandbahn, the Deutsche Bahn that also operates the S-Bahn, the Münchner Verkehrsgesellschaft that operates the U-Bahn, tramway and city buses, together with multiple operators of regional trains and buses.
We (Queensland, Australia) have 50 cent fares at the minute - any public transport, no matter the distance / zone / etc is a flate rate of $0.50AUD. I assume any private interests are being compensated with tax dollars but at least it makes public transport simple and affordable.
There was recently a change from a Labor government (centrist?) to a Liberal government (right / conservative) so I suspect the 50c fares will be removed at some point, though they did make it permanent as part of an election promise. "Permanent" is a pretty flexible term from a politician though.