That's reasonable, and as I noted in another comment I've only lived in the US and can only provide that perspective. Though I see a lot of discourse around this dismissed as "US-centric" while avoiding the fact that the US, the melting-pot of the world, is potentially one of the best test-cases for whether public transit works.
All of the situations you describe are just carpooling with extra steps.
Public transit as described in the US is a bunch of strangers with different goals and different jobs getting together in the same car at approximately the same time to go to roughly the same block. As a system it needs to be able to handle those, and when you scale it past the carpooling step, it doesn't.
Perhaps that's the problem to be solved, but if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.
> Though I see a lot of discourse around this dismissed as "US-centric" while avoiding the fact that the US, the melting-pot of the world, is potentially one of the best test-cases for whether public transit works.
This is extremely US-centric :-). It's the exact cliché of how Americans see the world: "if it doesn't work for us, then it doesn't work at all", suggesting "because we are the best".
Go pretty much anywhere in the world: the US are perceived as the least capable in terms of public transit. I am not saying "it's the worse because there are conditions in the US that make it impossible to work" (which is what you suggest with "the US is the melting-pot of the world"). I am saying that public transit doesn't work in the US because the US doesn't understand how to make public transit work (and because the urban planning was often a complete failure in that sense).
There are many things that the US do really well. And there are many things that the US do really badly. The cliché, which honestly you kind of confirm here, is that the US people can't apprehend the thought that maybe they could learn something from other countries. "If it doesn't work for us, it means that it is impossible". And I'll end by quoting you saying pretty much exactly this:
> if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.
I don't think I follow, all of those people in my example are taking the same route / the same bus, How is that different?
Or what difference would there be on a carpool / not a carpool?
On the same idea, walking a few blocks is the expectation here, being left on the same block on public transport would be enough to increase real state value
The bus I take everyday usually has:
- A random assortment of (Usually european) backpackers
- Some hospital workers
- A few factory workers
- Some office monkeys like me
- Random people dressed normally that I can't categorize
We just go along roughly the same route at the same hour
This is also mostly true in the US but replace the backpackers with people who often have little or no reason to be on the bus at all; panhandlers or people whose specific motive during the day is to harass people on the bus for money or fun. There are people who spend all day on the bus following its route back-and-forth to harass passengers. It's a not-insignificant amount of people; I have no doubt they exist in some form in other countries and maybe the generalized social solution lies outside the transit system, but I do think it's a product of having truly public transit in a place where the public is a sample of everybody everywhere.
EDIT: The distinction I make with a carpool is that you all know each other - you know the passengers, you know the drivers, everyone knows each other, the social contract enforces that nobody does anything too off-putting. Truly public transit has to assume that every passenger is a stranger to the other, and that's harder.
All of the situations you describe are just carpooling with extra steps.
Public transit as described in the US is a bunch of strangers with different goals and different jobs getting together in the same car at approximately the same time to go to roughly the same block. As a system it needs to be able to handle those, and when you scale it past the carpooling step, it doesn't.
Perhaps that's the problem to be solved, but if the US isn't handling it, I'm not sure you could point to a country solving the same problem and doing it better.