{"id":5496,"date":"2013-11-03T09:52:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T15:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5496"},"modified":"2013-11-03T09:52:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T15:52:27","slug":"google-cars-versus-public-transit-the-us%e2%80%99s-problem-with-public-goods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5496","title":{"rendered":"Google cars versus public transit: the US\u2019s problem with public goods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/www.ethanzuckerman.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/15\/google-cars-versus-public-transit-the-uss-problem-with-public-goods\/\">Ethan Zuckerman<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have an excellent job at a great university. I have a home that I love in a community I\u2019ve lived in for two decades where I have deep ties of family and friendship. Unfortunately, that university and that hometown are about 250 kilometers from one another. And so, I\u2019ve become an extreme commuter, traveling three or four hours each way once or twice a week so I can spend time with my students 3-4 days a week and with my wife and young son the rest of the time.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;America is a commuter culture. Averaged out over a week, my commute is near the median American experience. Spend forty minutes driving each way to your job and you\u2019ve got a longer commute than I in the weeks I make one trip to Cambridge. But, of course, I don\u2019t get to go home every night. I stay two to three nights a week at a bed and breakfast in Cambridge, where my \u201cludicrously frequent guest\u201d status gets me a break on a room. I spend less this way than I did my first year at MIT, when I rented an apartment that I never used on weekends or during school vacations.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;This is not how I would choose to live if I could bend space and time, and I spend a decent amount of time trying to optimise my travel through audiobooks, podcasts, and phone calls made while driving. I also gripe about the commute probably far too often to my friends, who are considerate if not entirely sympathetic. (It\u2019s hard to be sympathetic to a guy who has the job he wants, lives in a beautiful place, and simply has a long drive a few times a week.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Zuckerman: I have an excellent job at a great university. I have a home that I love in a community I\u2019ve lived in for two decades where I have deep ties of family and friendship. Unfortunately, that university and that hometown are about 250 kilometers from one another. And so, I\u2019ve become an extreme [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}