* What about the level of safety/social order on your mode of transport? Public transport in Hong Kong is easy to deal with partly because it’s almost entirely free of crime. In the USA obviously both trains and buses are subject to more crime, but is crime more common on buses, perhaps because once you’ve done the deed and jumped off a bus you’re out on the streets, whereas if you commit a crime on a train you’ve got to get off the train and then out of another controlled space, i.e. the next station? Trains may therefore ‘feel safer’, and hence be perceived as more upscale to SWPLs.
In the end, though, the simplest explanation for the SWPL preference for trains may be that Europe has trains, therefore trains = doubleplusgood.
* What about audiobooks?
That way you can still keep your eyes open for any sketchy characters lurking around you on the bus!!!
I knock out a book and several podcasts (radioderb, dailyshoah, 2kevins, and more) every week while exercising(power marching using a weighted vest, backpack and dumbells), doing yard work and just walking to the grocery store for a gallon of milk.
* Trains are definitely much easier to read on than buses. Even subways, with their frequent stops tend to be ok because they tend to have relatively smooth speeding up and slowing down. Buses are always stopping abruptly and jerking around. You’re always swaying. Long haul intercity buses can be fine though when you’re cruising along a highway.
* Because trains run on tracks, they run smooth. Motion sickness is less common on trains than on vehicles with tires.
* I get sick riding in a car or bus, not on a train or plane. I thought that was common.
Here in London the move is definitely towards professionals staying in town rather than moving out when they reach 35/want children. Factors include:
Roads very crowded & petrol high taxed makes long drive commute unpleasant no matter the oil price.
Train season tickets incredibly expensive, trains very crowded.
But the main one I think is:
Universal in-town camera surveillance has driven down the rate of violent crime, which for this purpose essentially means black muggings of white professionals – most (over 60%) street muggers are black, most victims are white. In the 1980s people (white professionals) moved out of London to get away from crime, from the late 1990s punishment & surveillance policy changed and they started to come back. Raising a family in London’s ubiquitously mixed neighbourhoods no longer seemed too dangerous.
I get the impression that law enforcement has also driven the return of white professionals to New York.
