4 ms·

I lived in Portland, and even though the public transit there is supposed to be good, it was basically unusable. As a European I try to take public transit when

I lived in Portland, and even though the public transit there is supposed to be good, it was basically unusable. As a European I try to take public transit whenever I can, but in this case it took me 20 minutes to work by car and 75 minutes by train. The reason was not missing train lines or anything, it's just that the train is super slow. The top speed is low, it accelerates slowly, it opens the doors for what seems like 5 minutes at every station. By comparison, where I live now public transit is as fast or faster than driving, unless you're going somewhere not covered by the subway or trains. It's fast paced, because a majority of people actually depend on it to get anywhere. If I have to wait more than 3 minutes for the train, I'm annoyed. I'm not saying this would work in most American cities, because they're built for cars and you can't just undo that, but in European cities, yes, public transit is often better than driving. In Portland, the trains feel like they were built for old and poor people who cannot drive, and have all the time in the world to get wherever they're going.

jfim 11y ago
As you mention, in the US, public transit is often unusable. It is often unusable in the US mostly because the cities have been designed around cars, urban sprawl, single-usage zoning codes and low density. So far, from what I've seen, the cities where public transit works are cities with relatively high population density and mixed-usage zoning (ie. shops on the ground floor and housing/office space above) rather than the generic American suburbia with single-family houses. As the former model is how most large European cities are built, Europe has significantly better public transit than the US does. Cities that are built that way in the US also have decent public transit (eg: the core of SF, NYC and Boston are well served by public transit, whereas LA isn't) because cars don't scale past a certain density.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  That does get into the worldview problem, yes; I have no interest in sharing a wall, ceiling, or floor, so any transportation option that only works when everyone does so does not appeal at all. That might change if apartments started coming with far more soundproofing than they currently do. However, I wouldn't say that US major cities have good public transit; rather, they have awful automobile infrastructure such that transit looks good by comparison. And as you said, "the core of" those cities have transit options, but that doesn't mean the whole city does. I've certainly encountered much better public transit when traveling in Europe, though not sufficiently so that I'd be inclined to use it in preference. In any case, that then leads back to the point that started this discussion: given a set of existing cities that don't have (or want) the kind of layout and design you mentioned, how do you build a transportation infrastructure? Public transit doesn't fit the current layout very well, and you can't redesign those cities from scratch even if people would prefer the new design. Hence, the many different visions of self-driving cars, which adapt more readily to various ways of laying out a city, and which work in urban, suburban, and rural settings.
  - jfim 11y ago
    It's a tradeoff. If you want to live in a low density area and have to drive everywhere, then no, you're not likely to have any mass transit other than a suburb commuter train to go downtown. The alternative is living in smaller, high density housing where there are two grocery stores, three coffee shops, a half dozen restaurants, a pharmacy, a metro station and so on within a five minute walking radius, and have a fifteen minute commute to work by foot or five minutes by bike, so there's not that much transit required. The funny thing is, if we go back to the point that started this discussion, the city of Montréal actually has a decent public transit system, a bike share system, 400 miles of bike paths and is one of the most bike-friendly cities in North America (depending on what source you believe). For those US cities that have low density sprawl (such as LA), there's no real way to have a transportation infrastructure that makes sense; people who are from LA will say it's fine, you just drive wherever you want, whereas Europeans will say it's not a city that you can live in because you spend your life in a car and can't go out and grab a coffee or pastry with a short walk. Self driving cars don't really solve that problem, because you'll still have thousands of people going to work at roughly the same time, and even though self-driving cars can have higher density and traffic fluidity than human-controlled ones, they still pale in comparison to mass transit systems. For example, look at Tokyo; it has at least five train stations that have a ridership over one million passengers per day and has a ridership of over forty million (granted, that number counts people switching transit systems multiple times). If you assume that the minimum surface area that a self-driving car could have is nine square feet (3x3), slightly more than a chair moving around would have, and that you need 5 million of them to have an adequate amount of service, just the surface area of all of these cars, bumper to bumper, is 1.6 square miles. Assuming you put them back to back, eight cars wide, that's 355.1 miles long worth of cars, which is about 40% of the length of freeways and highways in LA county.
- _delirium 11y ago
  > eg: the core of SF, NYC and Boston are well served by public transit SF is, I think, a glaring opposite example: a city whose density should support transit, but which does not have it. Not a single part of SF is served by what I'd consider "modern" rapid transit, meaning average higher than 30 mph, frequent headways during the day (~3-5 minutes), and 24/7 service with at least some reasonable frequency (~20-30 minute headways off-peak). One smallish corridor of SF is served by what I'd consider 2nd-tier rapid transit, the BART corridor, which isn't 24/7, and has relatively infrequent trains even during the day, but at least averages an OK speed when it does run. Most of the city instead has 1920s-level transit. For example, to get from the Outer Sunset to the Caltrain station is about 45 minutes on a streetcar. This is a distance of 6 miles, which should take about 15 minutes on a metro.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    > For example, to get from the Outer Sunset to the Caltrain station is about 45 minutes on a streetcar. This is a distance of 6 miles Yikes; you could walk nearly that fast.
    - lmm 11y ago
      No you couldn't. Walking for 45 minutes you'll go maybe half that. And in a congested city you may well not be able to drive any faster than that; part of the reason the streetcars are slow in SF is because they get stuck behind car traffic.
      - JoshTriplett 11y ago
        I'd said "nearly"; six miles in one hour is not an unreasonable walking speed.
        dalke 11y ago
        Yes, it is unreasonable. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking : > Specific studies have found pedestrian walking speeds ranging from 4.51 kilometres per hour (2.80 mph) to 4.75 kilometres per hour (2.95 mph) for older individuals and from 5.32 kilometres per hour (3.31 mph) to 5.43 kilometres per hour (3.37 mph) for younger individuals; a brisk walking speed can be around 6.5 kilometres per hour (4.0 mph). Champion racewalkers can average more than 14 kilometres per hour (8.7 mph) over a distance of 20 kilometres (12 mi). ... > Power walking or speed walking is the act of walking with a speed at the upper end of the natural range for walking gait, typically 7 to 9 km/h (4.5 to 5.5 mph). Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed : > Many people tend to walk at about 1.4 m/s (5.0 km/h; 3.1 mph). Although many people are capable of walking at speeds upwards of 2.5 m/s (9.0 km/h; 5.6 mph), especially for short distances, they typically choose not to. Individuals find slower or faster speeds uncomfortable. These all indicate that walking 6 miles in an hour is exceptional. FWIW, a 10 minute mile is faster than the 11:47 per mile average pace from the 5K run data set at http://www.pace-calculator.com/5k-pace-comparison.php http://www.pace-calculator.com/5k-pace-comparison.php . The average pace for males 25 - 29 is 10 minutes / mile.

jfim 11y ago

As you mention, in the US, public transit is often unusable. It is often unusable in the US mostly because the cities have been designed around cars, urban sprawl, single-usage zoning codes and low density. So far, from what I've seen, the cities where public transit works are cities with relatively high population density and mixed-usage zoning (ie. shops on the ground floor and housing/office space above) rather than the generic American suburbia with single-family houses. As the former model is how most large European cities are built, Europe has significantly better public transit than the US does. Cities that are built that way in the US also have decent public transit (eg: the core of SF, NYC and Boston are well served by public transit, whereas LA isn't) because cars don't scale past a certain density.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
That does get into the worldview problem, yes; I have no interest in sharing a wall, ceiling, or floor, so any transportation option that only works when everyone does so does not appeal at all. That might change if apartments started coming with far more soundproofing than they currently do. However, I wouldn't say that US major cities have good public transit; rather, they have awful automobile infrastructure such that transit looks good by comparison. And as you said, "the core of" those cities have transit options, but that doesn't mean the whole city does. I've certainly encountered much better public transit when traveling in Europe, though not sufficiently so that I'd be inclined to use it in preference. In any case, that then leads back to the point that started this discussion: given a set of existing cities that don't have (or want) the kind of layout and design you mentioned, how do you build a transportation infrastructure? Public transit doesn't fit the current layout very well, and you can't redesign those cities from scratch even if people would prefer the new design. Hence, the many different visions of self-driving cars, which adapt more readily to various ways of laying out a city, and which work in urban, suburban, and rural settings.
- jfim 11y ago
  It's a tradeoff. If you want to live in a low density area and have to drive everywhere, then no, you're not likely to have any mass transit other than a suburb commuter train to go downtown. The alternative is living in smaller, high density housing where there are two grocery stores, three coffee shops, a half dozen restaurants, a pharmacy, a metro station and so on within a five minute walking radius, and have a fifteen minute commute to work by foot or five minutes by bike, so there's not that much transit required. The funny thing is, if we go back to the point that started this discussion, the city of Montréal actually has a decent public transit system, a bike share system, 400 miles of bike paths and is one of the most bike-friendly cities in North America (depending on what source you believe). For those US cities that have low density sprawl (such as LA), there's no real way to have a transportation infrastructure that makes sense; people who are from LA will say it's fine, you just drive wherever you want, whereas Europeans will say it's not a city that you can live in because you spend your life in a car and can't go out and grab a coffee or pastry with a short walk. Self driving cars don't really solve that problem, because you'll still have thousands of people going to work at roughly the same time, and even though self-driving cars can have higher density and traffic fluidity than human-controlled ones, they still pale in comparison to mass transit systems. For example, look at Tokyo; it has at least five train stations that have a ridership over one million passengers per day and has a ridership of over forty million (granted, that number counts people switching transit systems multiple times). If you assume that the minimum surface area that a self-driving car could have is nine square feet (3x3), slightly more than a chair moving around would have, and that you need 5 million of them to have an adequate amount of service, just the surface area of all of these cars, bumper to bumper, is 1.6 square miles. Assuming you put them back to back, eight cars wide, that's 355.1 miles long worth of cars, which is about 40% of the length of freeways and highways in LA county.
_delirium 11y ago
> eg: the core of SF, NYC and Boston are well served by public transit SF is, I think, a glaring opposite example: a city whose density should support transit, but which does not have it. Not a single part of SF is served by what I'd consider "modern" rapid transit, meaning average higher than 30 mph, frequent headways during the day (~3-5 minutes), and 24/7 service with at least some reasonable frequency (~20-30 minute headways off-peak). One smallish corridor of SF is served by what I'd consider 2nd-tier rapid transit, the BART corridor, which isn't 24/7, and has relatively infrequent trains even during the day, but at least averages an OK speed when it does run. Most of the city instead has 1920s-level transit. For example, to get from the Outer Sunset to the Caltrain station is about 45 minutes on a streetcar. This is a distance of 6 miles, which should take about 15 minutes on a metro.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > For example, to get from the Outer Sunset to the Caltrain station is about 45 minutes on a streetcar. This is a distance of 6 miles Yikes; you could walk nearly that fast.
  - lmm 11y ago
    No you couldn't. Walking for 45 minutes you'll go maybe half that. And in a congested city you may well not be able to drive any faster than that; part of the reason the streetcars are slow in SF is because they get stuck behind car traffic.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      I'd said "nearly"; six miles in one hour is not an unreasonable walking speed.
      - dalke 11y ago
        Yes, it is unreasonable. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking : > Specific studies have found pedestrian walking speeds ranging from 4.51 kilometres per hour (2.80 mph) to 4.75 kilometres per hour (2.95 mph) for older individuals and from 5.32 kilometres per hour (3.31 mph) to 5.43 kilometres per hour (3.37 mph) for younger individuals; a brisk walking speed can be around 6.5 kilometres per hour (4.0 mph). Champion racewalkers can average more than 14 kilometres per hour (8.7 mph) over a distance of 20 kilometres (12 mi). ... > Power walking or speed walking is the act of walking with a speed at the upper end of the natural range for walking gait, typically 7 to 9 km/h (4.5 to 5.5 mph). Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed : > Many people tend to walk at about 1.4 m/s (5.0 km/h; 3.1 mph). Although many people are capable of walking at speeds upwards of 2.5 m/s (9.0 km/h; 5.6 mph), especially for short distances, they typically choose not to. Individuals find slower or faster speeds uncomfortable. These all indicate that walking 6 miles in an hour is exceptional. FWIW, a 10 minute mile is faster than the 11:47 per mile average pace from the 5K run data set at http://www.pace-calculator.com/5k-pace-comparison.php http://www.pace-calculator.com/5k-pace-comparison.php . The average pace for males 25 - 29 is 10 minutes / mile.