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>> ... Invest in public transportation. >> ... The US is a country where it's very difficult to live without a car, except in certain major cities. In order t

>> ... Invest in public transportation. >> ... The US is a country where it's very difficult to live without a car, except in certain major cities. In order to do this, we need to rethink how we design cities. Right now, unless, as you point out, you live in a major city, it just isn't well laid out for public transportation. No amount of retrofitting is going to help. City planners need to take public transportation into account when they issue new building permits, etc. They need to encourage business to build closer so people can use public transport. Here in the south, thought needs to be put into thunderstorms. We can have afternoon thunderstorms with 50MPH winds and deadly lightning pop up very quickly. You can't have people out waiting on public transport in that mess.

jlebrech 11y ago
the solution even though people won't like it is to put a tax on fuel and reinvest that into public transport, or give people 'miles' they can use with public transport so they don't feel robbed.
- noxToken 11y ago
  > the solution even though people won't like it is to put a tax on fuel There already is an excise tax on fuel in a lot of places. I can't say what that revenue is specifically allocated towards, but the tax exists nonetheless.
  - Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
    In the US gas taxes are very low and don't even cover the costs of our highways. Local roads are paid for mostly with local taxes. It's hard to quantify exactly the subsidy per passenger mile while driving, whereas it's very easy to do the same for transit. The system we have makes drivers feel as though they are paying their fair share while transit riders are not. They don't see the share of their local taxes going to roads.
Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
>City planners need to take public transportation into account when they issue new building permits, etc. They need to encourage business to build closer so people can use public transport. The problem we have today is too much planning, from the smallest rural town to the biggest metropolis. Planning has gone from the simple but noble goals of ensuring public safety and efficient flow of goods and services to dictating lifestyle and trying to preserve things exactly as they are. The typical suburb or sprawling city, for instance, doesn't merely not take into account public transit in zoning and approval processes, it actively allows only sprawling designs. Minimum setbacks, floor area ratio limits, side, front, and back yard requirements, minimum parking requirements, and height limits all act to make it so nothing but sprawl is even legally possible. I can point to numerous examples of these sorts of regulation from all over the United States in cities big and small, from New York to Nome. Yes, this includes places like Houston where it is claimed that there is no zoning but land use control is still Stalnist. This is all based on a 1950s utopian vision where all people everywhere would have cars, cars would just be extensions of people, and we'd all be able to live in a comfortable middle class suburb the next state over because modern planning would ensure no traffic could ever happen. It would also ensure those pesky apartments full of those 'others' would have limited density, so they'd be packed away in some ungodly corner of the world where everyone else wouldn't have to see them. This power is still used today as a de facto tool of modern segregationists who are concerned not merely with race, but also class and even taste and lifestyle. Reducing the power of these local regulators so that urban planning once again becomes a boring profession concerned with public safety and the movement of people, goods, and services and not a way to enforce a very specific 1950s utopian lifestyle would go a huge way to fixing sprawl in America. >You can't have people out waiting on public transport in that mess. Until about the 1950s, people in the South did wait on public transportation. Look up the timetables and maps of the old railroads, interurbans, and streetcars. You'd be amazed how far reaching public transportation in the US was. Many of the cities of consequence in the South sprung up around the railroads. Atlanta, for instance, used to be known as 'Terminus' as it was the end of the line for a railroad with nothing else nearby. The city was built around it, grew rapidly, and eventually the state capital was moved there. Streetcars further fueled growth. This is a story repeated all throughout the South and the rest of the US.
- 11y ago
panglott 11y ago
We got where we are now with nearly a century of poorly-considered planning and infrastructure spending. It will take another century of better design to get us out of this hole.
wpietri 11y ago
> You can't have people out waiting on public transport in that mess. For the old sort of public transit, I think that's true. But our current notion of public transit is based on fixed schedules, fixed routes, and the high cost of human driver labor. But think what a new public transit would mean. If everybody has a smartphone and vehicles are automated, then public transit could mean vans and small buses that dynamically route to come near you.
- akgerber 11y ago
  Such a system would still be much more inefficient than fixed-route transit because of the winding routes required and insufficient concentration of demand.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I would like to see the math on that. It's inefficient in terms of bus-miles driven, but assuming that we value people's time, it's not clear to me it would be inefficient in dollar terms. Yes, insufficient concentration is a problem, which means that living in the suburbs would still be more expensive in transport costs. I still expect (or perhaps hope) that we'd see a contraction back to more dense urban cores. But automated transportation could provide a bridge between the suburban model and whatever comes after.
stanleydrew 11y ago
The easiest thing that I can imagine working is elimination of most free parking. That's effectively been a huge subsidy to drivers.
- panzagl 11y ago
  Where is there free parking? Either you have metered public spaces in a downtown area, or sections of private property set aside for parking use by the customers/employees of the owner of the property. Not really a subsidy in the way most people think. Or you're playing Monopoly wrong and wondering why it takes 3 hours to finish...
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Pittsburgh uses free parking as an incentive to draw people into commercial areas. Ironically, those commercial areas are well-served by the mass transit system generally, but Pittsburgh's suburbanization pattern doesn't align with how the mass-transit system is laid out (and, yes, plenty of suburanites appear anecdotally to think of the bus system as for "Those people").
  - teek 11y ago
    Free parking is kind of mislabeled. The correct term is minimum parking requirements. Most build standards now enforce having a minimum amount of parking for any new building or housing development, including for low income housing. In order to have mass transit work, we need to be able to build housing and businesses that have very little to no parking allocated. Minimum parking (along with level of service for roads) makes every business and house foot print larger, decreases density, and decreases pedestrian accessibility. It wouldn't even be that hard to naturally enforce/encourage this. All we would have to do is eliminate minimum parking requirements for developments within a quarter mile radius of a mass transit station. One would argue that would do essentially nothing. For example a wealthy condo owner would naturally want a parking space and thus pressure the developer to build a space. But I argue there is demand and will be more demand for this parking-less space today in very crowded cities (think SF) or in the future when younger generations or immigrants decide to live in high density areas. I actually think we have things backwards with minimum parking compared to other cities like Tokyo. Minimum parking acts as a hidden subsidy that increases the price of the property. In Tokyo, houses can be sold without parking. But in order to own a car in Tokyo, you have to prove you also own a parking space. So many housing communities will have parking lots or shared parking garages where nearby residents can rent a space. (There also exist houses that are sold with attached parking as well, but it isn't a requirement.) This is essentially a free market solution to the problem where as the American minimum parking solution is a government regulated solution.
kwhitefoot 11y ago
Where I live you might be waiting for a bus at -30C in heavy snow, it doesn't stop people using buses. Where more than one or two people habitually wait the authorities normally build a shelter that at least keeps most of the rain, snow, and wind at bay.

jlebrech 11y ago

the solution even though people won't like it is to put a tax on fuel and reinvest that into public transport, or give people 'miles' they can use with public transport so they don't feel robbed.

noxToken 11y ago
> the solution even though people won't like it is to put a tax on fuel There already is an excise tax on fuel in a lot of places. I can't say what that revenue is specifically allocated towards, but the tax exists nonetheless.
- Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
  In the US gas taxes are very low and don't even cover the costs of our highways. Local roads are paid for mostly with local taxes. It's hard to quantify exactly the subsidy per passenger mile while driving, whereas it's very easy to do the same for transit. The system we have makes drivers feel as though they are paying their fair share while transit riders are not. They don't see the share of their local taxes going to roads.

Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago

>City planners need to take public transportation into account when they issue new building permits, etc. They need to encourage business to build closer so people can use public transport. The problem we have today is too much planning, from the smallest rural town to the biggest metropolis. Planning has gone from the simple but noble goals of ensuring public safety and efficient flow of goods and services to dictating lifestyle and trying to preserve things exactly as they are. The typical suburb or sprawling city, for instance, doesn't merely not take into account public transit in zoning and approval processes, it actively allows only sprawling designs. Minimum setbacks, floor area ratio limits, side, front, and back yard requirements, minimum parking requirements, and height limits all act to make it so nothing but sprawl is even legally possible. I can point to numerous examples of these sorts of regulation from all over the United States in cities big and small, from New York to Nome. Yes, this includes places like Houston where it is claimed that there is no zoning but land use control is still Stalnist. This is all based on a 1950s utopian vision where all people everywhere would have cars, cars would just be extensions of people, and we'd all be able to live in a comfortable middle class suburb the next state over because modern planning would ensure no traffic could ever happen. It would also ensure those pesky apartments full of those 'others' would have limited density, so they'd be packed away in some ungodly corner of the world where everyone else wouldn't have to see them. This power is still used today as a de facto tool of modern segregationists who are concerned not merely with race, but also class and even taste and lifestyle. Reducing the power of these local regulators so that urban planning once again becomes a boring profession concerned with public safety and the movement of people, goods, and services and not a way to enforce a very specific 1950s utopian lifestyle would go a huge way to fixing sprawl in America. >You can't have people out waiting on public transport in that mess. Until about the 1950s, people in the South did wait on public transportation. Look up the timetables and maps of the old railroads, interurbans, and streetcars. You'd be amazed how far reaching public transportation in the US was. Many of the cities of consequence in the South sprung up around the railroads. Atlanta, for instance, used to be known as 'Terminus' as it was the end of the line for a railroad with nothing else nearby. The city was built around it, grew rapidly, and eventually the state capital was moved there. Streetcars further fueled growth. This is a story repeated all throughout the South and the rest of the US.

11y ago

panglott 11y ago

We got where we are now with nearly a century of poorly-considered planning and infrastructure spending. It will take another century of better design to get us out of this hole.

wpietri 11y ago

> You can't have people out waiting on public transport in that mess. For the old sort of public transit, I think that's true. But our current notion of public transit is based on fixed schedules, fixed routes, and the high cost of human driver labor. But think what a new public transit would mean. If everybody has a smartphone and vehicles are automated, then public transit could mean vans and small buses that dynamically route to come near you.

akgerber 11y ago
Such a system would still be much more inefficient than fixed-route transit because of the winding routes required and insufficient concentration of demand.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I would like to see the math on that. It's inefficient in terms of bus-miles driven, but assuming that we value people's time, it's not clear to me it would be inefficient in dollar terms. Yes, insufficient concentration is a problem, which means that living in the suburbs would still be more expensive in transport costs. I still expect (or perhaps hope) that we'd see a contraction back to more dense urban cores. But automated transportation could provide a bridge between the suburban model and whatever comes after.

stanleydrew 11y ago

The easiest thing that I can imagine working is elimination of most free parking. That's effectively been a huge subsidy to drivers.

panzagl 11y ago
Where is there free parking? Either you have metered public spaces in a downtown area, or sections of private property set aside for parking use by the customers/employees of the owner of the property. Not really a subsidy in the way most people think. Or you're playing Monopoly wrong and wondering why it takes 3 hours to finish...
- fixermark 11y ago
  Pittsburgh uses free parking as an incentive to draw people into commercial areas. Ironically, those commercial areas are well-served by the mass transit system generally, but Pittsburgh's suburbanization pattern doesn't align with how the mass-transit system is laid out (and, yes, plenty of suburanites appear anecdotally to think of the bus system as for "Those people").
- teek 11y ago
  Free parking is kind of mislabeled. The correct term is minimum parking requirements. Most build standards now enforce having a minimum amount of parking for any new building or housing development, including for low income housing. In order to have mass transit work, we need to be able to build housing and businesses that have very little to no parking allocated. Minimum parking (along with level of service for roads) makes every business and house foot print larger, decreases density, and decreases pedestrian accessibility. It wouldn't even be that hard to naturally enforce/encourage this. All we would have to do is eliminate minimum parking requirements for developments within a quarter mile radius of a mass transit station. One would argue that would do essentially nothing. For example a wealthy condo owner would naturally want a parking space and thus pressure the developer to build a space. But I argue there is demand and will be more demand for this parking-less space today in very crowded cities (think SF) or in the future when younger generations or immigrants decide to live in high density areas. I actually think we have things backwards with minimum parking compared to other cities like Tokyo. Minimum parking acts as a hidden subsidy that increases the price of the property. In Tokyo, houses can be sold without parking. But in order to own a car in Tokyo, you have to prove you also own a parking space. So many housing communities will have parking lots or shared parking garages where nearby residents can rent a space. (There also exist houses that are sold with attached parking as well, but it isn't a requirement.) This is essentially a free market solution to the problem where as the American minimum parking solution is a government regulated solution.

kwhitefoot 11y ago

Where I live you might be waiting for a bus at -30C in heavy snow, it doesn't stop people using buses. Where more than one or two people habitually wait the authorities normally build a shelter that at least keeps most of the rain, snow, and wind at bay.