Source: Lewis C. Lin’s Newsletter
Public transit generates massive revenue and ridership despite being universally despised—a rare product category where usage doesn't correlate with satisfaction. The industry's obsession with incremental UX improvements (better maps, cleaner interfaces) treats transit dissatisfaction as a design problem when the actual issue is structural: unreliable service, long waits, and lack of control. Transit apps cannot solve the operational failures—unpredictable schedules, missed connections, crowding—that make commuting miserable. Interface polish cannot fix those problems.