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This is a stupid, stupid idea. Cities that cross borders are a problem wherever they are, because of the administrative difficulties involved: you can't have a

This is a stupid, stupid idea. Cities that cross borders are a problem wherever they are, because of the administrative difficulties involved: you can't have a single, consistent set of rules and laws spanning the whole city, you don't have a single government managing it, etc. We already have a LOT of problems here in the US where metro areas are comprised of multiple cities, and worse, cross state boundaries. Ask anyone who lives in one state, and drives to the other state to go to work every day, how they like doing their taxes: it's a nightmare of forms every year because there's multiple taxing authorities they have to answer to. Or look at public transit that crosses state boundaries, such as that used between New York City and New Jersey. It's a mess, because there's no single government that the transit agency has to answer to and is accountable to. Funding is always a problem because again, there's no single government that controls it, and no single electorate that government is accountable to. Even a metro area within a state, but composed of multiple cities can have problems. In the Phoenix metro area, there's confusion at traffic lights because all the cities have leading left turn arrows, except for Scottsdale which has lagging turns. This has caused many accidents because drivers get used to one or the other and then drive across one street and suddenly the standards change. There was an interesting college project back in the 70s called "The 38 States" (google it) where a class decided the current US state borders were badly drawn and led to too much inefficiency, so they came up with a new map of the US with idealized borders, taking into account local cultures and locations of metro areas. One of the prime factors in how they drew the new state borders was to make sure that no metro area spanned two states, and instead the borders were drawn, whenever possible, in rural areas between cities. This guy's idea flies entirely in the face of this. The governments in Oregon and Washington already complain a lot about people living in Vancouver (WA), where there's no income tax, and then doing all their shopping in Portland, where there's no sales tax. Doing this over a national border, between two countries as economically disparate as the USA and Mexico, is a recipe for disaster. Plus, as dogma1138 says, we already have places much like this on the border. El Paso/Cuidad Juarez is a prime example. It isn't a panacea, and last I heard, Juarez had a huge problem with brutal gang violence.

seszett 10y ago
It doesn't work that bad with cross-border metro areas in the EU. Or at least the ones I know. I live in one, it's perfectly good. Maybe I wish the metro could have a few stations on the Belgian side of the border, but the buses do cross it so it's still fine. Other than that I don't see a problem with the cross-border situation. (By the way, it not only spans across France and Belgium, but also across Flanders and Wallonia on the Belgian side). But there is one common metropolis authority that the transit agencies have to answer to and that coordinates what happens in the metropolis, it's like the inverse of what you're describing in the US apparently.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >It doesn't work that bad with cross-border metro areas in the EU. Or at least the ones I know. It doesn't work that bad in the US either, but there's tons of room for improvement. But, just like the EU, in the US neighboring states are usually at or near economic parity; this is not the case for US/Mexico. Imagine having a city in the EU that's half in Germany and half in Greece (suppose there's a freak seismic event that moves the two countries together). >I live in one, it's perfectly good. Maybe I wish the metro could have a few stations on the Belgian side of the border, but the buses do cross it so it's still fine. Well obviously it's not fine, and could be a lot better. Why settle for crappy bus service when you can have a subway system that doesn't stop on one side of an artificial and nonsensical border? If your entire metro area was within one country, you wouldn't have this problem; if it made economic sense to the city to put in those metro stations, they'd just do it, and wouldn't have to mess around with a bunch of international (though at least intra-EU) political problems to get it done. It's not easy to build infrastructure that crosses political boundaries, and especially national boundaries; look at the Chunnel. How long did it take them to finally agree to do that? >By the way, it not only spans across France and Belgium, but also across Flanders and Wallonia on the Belgian side That's probably not a big deal because it's in the same country, and I'm guessing different regions within Belgium don't have quite the autonomy and political bickering that separate US States do. But spanning France and Belgium isn't as easy. Now, imagine that your city spans France and Spain; don't you think there'd be more problems? How about France and Italy? Italy and Croatia? France and Switzerland (which isn't EU)? >But there is one common metropolis authority that the transit agencies have to answer to and that coordinates what happens in the metropolis, it's like the inverse of what you're describing in the US apparently. We have that too, but it's frequently a mess. In metro areas that are within a single state, there's usually a single metro transit authority that runs the buses (not that many cities have subways here). In DC, there's a single agency that runs the subways, which run between Virginia, Maryland, and DC, and that agency is an utterly corrupt mess with horrible service and fatal train accidents. In New York, the MTA runs the NY subways and buses and the LIRR (Long Island Railroad), but then NJ Transit runs the trains and buses on the New Jersey side, which also stop in Manhattan on the NY side, so there isn't a single authority there, nor a single transit system (so to travel between Jersey City and Brooklyn you'd have to take a PATH train or a bus to Manhattan, then get off and go to a separate station possibly, get on a subway with a separate ticket, and go the rest of the way; the entire trip would take quite a while because there's nothing resembling a direct route. It's much worse if you're going to the Bronx or Queens or Staten Island.). When there isn't a single government or single transit authority, there's no consistency and no single overall plan of how to implement an efficient system. And when there is a single authority (like in DC) but no single government, you end up with massive corruption and mismanagement because they don't answer to a single governmental authority.

seszett 10y ago

It doesn't work that bad with cross-border metro areas in the EU. Or at least the ones I know. I live in one, it's perfectly good. Maybe I wish the metro could have a few stations on the Belgian side of the border, but the buses do cross it so it's still fine. Other than that I don't see a problem with the cross-border situation. (By the way, it not only spans across France and Belgium, but also across Flanders and Wallonia on the Belgian side). But there is one common metropolis authority that the transit agencies have to answer to and that coordinates what happens in the metropolis, it's like the inverse of what you're describing in the US apparently.

Grishnakh 10y ago
>It doesn't work that bad with cross-border metro areas in the EU. Or at least the ones I know. It doesn't work that bad in the US either, but there's tons of room for improvement. But, just like the EU, in the US neighboring states are usually at or near economic parity; this is not the case for US/Mexico. Imagine having a city in the EU that's half in Germany and half in Greece (suppose there's a freak seismic event that moves the two countries together). >I live in one, it's perfectly good. Maybe I wish the metro could have a few stations on the Belgian side of the border, but the buses do cross it so it's still fine. Well obviously it's not fine, and could be a lot better. Why settle for crappy bus service when you can have a subway system that doesn't stop on one side of an artificial and nonsensical border? If your entire metro area was within one country, you wouldn't have this problem; if it made economic sense to the city to put in those metro stations, they'd just do it, and wouldn't have to mess around with a bunch of international (though at least intra-EU) political problems to get it done. It's not easy to build infrastructure that crosses political boundaries, and especially national boundaries; look at the Chunnel. How long did it take them to finally agree to do that? >By the way, it not only spans across France and Belgium, but also across Flanders and Wallonia on the Belgian side That's probably not a big deal because it's in the same country, and I'm guessing different regions within Belgium don't have quite the autonomy and political bickering that separate US States do. But spanning France and Belgium isn't as easy. Now, imagine that your city spans France and Spain; don't you think there'd be more problems? How about France and Italy? Italy and Croatia? France and Switzerland (which isn't EU)? >But there is one common metropolis authority that the transit agencies have to answer to and that coordinates what happens in the metropolis, it's like the inverse of what you're describing in the US apparently. We have that too, but it's frequently a mess. In metro areas that are within a single state, there's usually a single metro transit authority that runs the buses (not that many cities have subways here). In DC, there's a single agency that runs the subways, which run between Virginia, Maryland, and DC, and that agency is an utterly corrupt mess with horrible service and fatal train accidents. In New York, the MTA runs the NY subways and buses and the LIRR (Long Island Railroad), but then NJ Transit runs the trains and buses on the New Jersey side, which also stop in Manhattan on the NY side, so there isn't a single authority there, nor a single transit system (so to travel between Jersey City and Brooklyn you'd have to take a PATH train or a bus to Manhattan, then get off and go to a separate station possibly, get on a subway with a separate ticket, and go the rest of the way; the entire trip would take quite a while because there's nothing resembling a direct route. It's much worse if you're going to the Bronx or Queens or Staten Island.). When there isn't a single government or single transit authority, there's no consistency and no single overall plan of how to implement an efficient system. And when there is a single authority (like in DC) but no single government, you end up with massive corruption and mismanagement because they don't answer to a single governmental authority.