I agree with Phil that the question of whether it is a good thing that I am unreliable is entirely unrelated to the question of whether you should have learned about Bay Area transit from a post you read which extensively discusses Bay Area transit, which in turn is a derail from the fact that you have a factual error in your post which you have not corrected several weeks after it was first pointed out to you.
In retrospect, snarkily proving I had paid enough attention to your post to incorporate some of it into my essay was not the best way to make the point. My apologies.
The reason I have not changed the article is that changing that information would require a careful splice to preserve the original feel of the passage, for no informational benefit. Here is why I think this:
Public transport, although cheaper than driving due to government subsidies, is slower according to Google maps (if they can’t provide accurate info in the commute radius of their top employees, I’ll be very suprised). This seems to be in line with the regular gripes that wonder across my tumblr dash about how slow and unreliable it is, something you also point out in that post
The Bay Area’s public transit system is really really good compared to public transit in most of the rest of the country (for one thing, it is possible to get places on it). However, our public transit is certainly inferior to, say, New York City’s. One of the ways this works is that sometimes, based on the Inscrutable Whim of the Train Gods, the train will choose to show up fourteen minutes late.
Looking at the actual data Google gives, we get a estimated commute time of 50m − 1h40m on a typical workday (I used 1h30m as the figure, as a number towards the higher end of the range wouldnt mean the hypothetical person wouldn’t be late to work half of the time)
That same journey on public transport, without delays or missed connections from the previous one being late is 1h45m, five minutes longer than the worst case estimate for driving.
Do you have local information that would contradict this?
If you work at Facebook you probably take the Facebook bus, which is ~1 hour 30 minutes door to door (I’m guessing based on the Ward-Street-to-Google travel time).
Things you can do on a train that you can’t do driving: read, write, meditate, watch a movie, talk to a friend online, knit (and similar handcrafts), plan/schedule things, study, answer emails. It’s not a great time for any work where you really need to be in flow or where you need equipment that takes up a lot of space, but otherwise there are a lot of goals you can advance while sitting on a train.
Things that you can do driving: listen to music, listen to a podcast or audiobook, talk to the people you’re carpooling with if you’re carpooling, talk to your kid if you happen to use an on-site daycare that you’re taking them to, maybe call someone on a carphone, that’s… about it. All five of those things, of course, can also be done on a train. And of course distracted driving can literally kill you or a child, while the worst case scenario for distracted train-taking is missing your stop.
The Google bus has wifi (I believe Facebook bus does as well) which means you can do more things because you have Internet on your laptop and not just your phone.
Taking public transit also improves your health and has a variety of positive externalities on e.g. the environment.
I agree with Phil that the question of whether it is a good thing that I am unreliable is entirely unrelated to the question of whether you should have learned about Bay Area transit from a post you read which extensively discusses Bay Area transit, which in turn is a derail from the fact that you have a factual error in your post which you have not corrected several weeks after it was first pointed out to you.
My offer of betaing remains open.
In retrospect, snarkily proving I had paid enough attention to your post to incorporate some of it into my essay was not the best way to make the point. My apologies.
The reason I have not changed the article is that changing that information would require a careful splice to preserve the original feel of the passage, for no informational benefit. Here is why I think this:
The hypothetical journey from Ward Street to Facebook HQ, although insane from my point of view, isn’t all that uncommon among tech workers in general.
Public transport, although cheaper than driving due to government subsidies, is slower according to Google maps (if they can’t provide accurate info in the commute radius of their top employees, I’ll be very suprised). This seems to be in line with the regular gripes that wonder across my tumblr dash about how slow and unreliable it is, something you also point out in that post
Looking at the actual data Google gives, we get a estimated commute time of 50m − 1h40m on a typical workday (I used 1h30m as the figure, as a number towards the higher end of the range wouldnt mean the hypothetical person wouldn’t be late to work half of the time)
That same journey on public transport, without delays or missed connections from the previous one being late is 1h45m, five minutes longer than the worst case estimate for driving.
Do you have local information that would contradict this?
If you work at Facebook you probably take the Facebook bus, which is ~1 hour 30 minutes door to door (I’m guessing based on the Ward-Street-to-Google travel time).
Things you can do on a train that you can’t do driving: read, write, meditate, watch a movie, talk to a friend online, knit (and similar handcrafts), plan/schedule things, study, answer emails. It’s not a great time for any work where you really need to be in flow or where you need equipment that takes up a lot of space, but otherwise there are a lot of goals you can advance while sitting on a train.
Things that you can do driving: listen to music, listen to a podcast or audiobook, talk to the people you’re carpooling with if you’re carpooling, talk to your kid if you happen to use an on-site daycare that you’re taking them to, maybe call someone on a carphone, that’s… about it. All five of those things, of course, can also be done on a train. And of course distracted driving can literally kill you or a child, while the worst case scenario for distracted train-taking is missing your stop.
The Google bus has wifi (I believe Facebook bus does as well) which means you can do more things because you have Internet on your laptop and not just your phone.
Taking public transit also improves your health and has a variety of positive externalities on e.g. the environment.