One factor here is the perception of safety. To choose public transit over a car, you have to feel safe walking to/from the station and you have to feel safe riding the train. This is especially true if you are at a physical disadvantage because of gender, disability, age, whatever. Because it's a perception thing, this is not just about statistics. A dirty, chaotic subway station just feels threatening to passengers.
I've ridden public transit in a bunch of cities, and this makes a huge difference to how welcoming the experience is. Hong Kong is #1 for me. The trains and stations are clean enough to eat off of - probably cleaner than my car. On/off boarding is fast and orderly even during peak travelling hours. This is not a universal, and there are definitely cities where I would hesitate to take public transit if I had some other choice - which is the root of the problem when you're trying to convince a population to fund and use such a system instead of bringing their cars.
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No amount of "transit is more efficient" statistics is going to convince someone to ride it if they feel unsafe. Pretending that these are not real concerns just makes sure that we'll keep building monster highways.
There's no amount of convincing that is going to make them feel safe, you need to get them to use it, and change their opinion that way.
They're not gonna use it unless you build it, and they're not gonna use it unless it becomes more convenient than the car.
Right now you've got 3 unreliable bus lines, each bus 30 minutes apart, service stops at 8pm and the schedule is useless because they get stuck in traffic. Consequence is, nobody uses it and there's always a crackhead in the back (they're part of the population that actually uses it to get around even when it's inconvenient)
My point is, you can clean busses regularly (and you should but -), you can put a cop on every bus, you can do a lot of things to improve "the feeling of safety", but it's not going to offset inconvenience, and you won't need to do all that if you just make public transport the most convenient way to get around in your city. Except cleaning them. You'll still need to clean the bus.
Yes, this is absolutely true! But if you make transit convenient without addressing the crackhead in the back, the first time someone tries it will probably be their last and we're back to "nobody uses it, so we're cutting the schedule to save money".
Fundamentally it's a competition between public transit and the alternatives (usually cars). Cities can influence both ends - make driving less pleasant by cutting road infrastructure, parking, add fees for driving into the city, etc and make transit more pleasant by improving schedules, cleaning, etc. I'm a big fan of the latter instead of the former because the former often pisses voters off and leads to a backlash that sets progress back instead. Unfortunately, the latter often costs more as well.
You have to take people’s concerns seriously, but “cities are so dangerous” has returned as a political thing and is hard to change as long as one group is making these claims for political reasons.
I’ll point out that we had a postdoc in the lab I worked in from India, then Germany. When he told people he was going to Boston people told him he was crazy to come to crime ridden america where everyone has guns. He laughed about it hind-site but that image is real and gave him pause. It does real damage.
Cities aren’t perfect, but traffic needs to get bad enough or too costly and people will take transit (as my cousin pointed out about living in NYC). I just ended up riding my bike 50 minutes to work.
A Ukrainian refugee being savagely murdered on US public transport isn't a good look.
And consider how often you are on edge from people's behavior around you and nothing happens. That's a normal, "safe" (in outcome) trip and yet it still didnt feel safe.
There is a certain class of danger from public transport, and a certain class of danger from driving. They are rather different. Have you ever taken public transportation with any regularity in the US? Drove?