4 ms·

Okay, you make some good points. Do you think the problem is cultural or something else? I would be curious to see a breakdown for metro areas, where public t

Okay, you make some good points. Do you think the problem is cultural or something else? I would be curious to see a breakdown for metro areas, where public transit is actually useful (obviously cars work fine for most of rural America, and add a bus system when necessary). But I have no idea if that analysis is available. I am heavily biased towards cities with awful traffic, where I would like to see less traffic.

rayiner 7y ago
I think it's economics. The american middle class is richer, and taxed lower than almost any other in the OECD. That means that people can afford big houses in the suburbs,[1] and multiple cars per household,[2]. That means businesses have huge incentives to locate in low-cost suburbs, because they can count on all their workers being able to drive to work. Also, for the most part, driving is just faster, even in cities with bad traffic. I'm pretty lucky--I've got a train station 22 minutes from my house that drops me off an 8-minute walk away from work (with no transfers). Driving in involves fighting through rush-hour traffic from one end of D.C. to the opposite end, but it's still no slower on the way in, and 20 minutes faster on the way out. All those stops just make the train slow. [1] Average house size in the US is twice as big as in Japan or Western Europe: https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a7654/house-sizes-around-the-world/ https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a765... [2] Americans have 50% more cars per capita than the EU average.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Outside of the city center, it's also vastly easier to stop and run a few errands on the drive home without it adding tons of additional waiting for transit time.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  There is also the matter of population density. Compare the population density of the UK or Germany to China, then to the US. If you have fewer passengers per square mile then you either need smaller vehicles or less frequent operation to fill larger ones. People naturally prefer the first option. But the country isn't a city. It would be possible for an individual US city to have the population density required to support more effective mass transit (at least to the extent that it exists in Europe or Asia). NYC is the highest density major city in the US and largely manages to do that. To make it work elsewhere would require the same sort of densities as New York, which would require allowing people to build more high density housing there.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    It would require both allowing and people pervasively desiring Manhattan level of density of housing. I think that might be workable in San Francisco (with the desire being there). I'm not sure that level of density is desired anywhere else (as measured by people buying land and building such buildings).
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      There are a few other cities that might manage it in the US. Seattle, Boston, maybe D.C. Certainly not anything like Kansas City or Tucson, because you have to have enough density pressure around the city to actually require tall buildings. If you can satisfy all the local housing demand with single family homes and still have plenty of empty land within reasonable distance of the city center, there isn't enough reason to compress it into a smaller area just to have taller buildings and put things a little closer together. But those cities also don't have anything near the same traffic problems either. Where you're really screwed is in places like Los Angeles and Houston, where you have large populations but also so much sprawl and undeveloped land that taller buildings aren't really justified. So they end up in this unhappy medium with enough population density to have bad traffic but not enough to have good mass transit, and weak demand for higher density housing. But that still doesn't justify the zoning restrictions that exist in a lot of these places. Houston largely doesn't have them while Los Angeles does, and you can check for yourself the difference in rent. Even if without them Los Angeles still wouldn't be New York, because it would at least be better than it is.
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        Los Angeles is significantly more dense than Houston, despite the cited zoning restrictions in LA. Maywood is 23K/mi^2 with several other LA incorporated areas in the 15-20K/mi^2 density. Houston is under 10K/mi^2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
        7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

I think it's economics. The american middle class is richer, and taxed lower than almost any other in the OECD. That means that people can afford big houses in the suburbs,[1] and multiple cars per household,[2]. That means businesses have huge incentives to locate in low-cost suburbs, because they can count on all their workers being able to drive to work. Also, for the most part, driving is just faster, even in cities with bad traffic. I'm pretty lucky--I've got a train station 22 minutes from my house that drops me off an 8-minute walk away from work (with no transfers). Driving in involves fighting through rush-hour traffic from one end of D.C. to the opposite end, but it's still no slower on the way in, and 20 minutes faster on the way out. All those stops just make the train slow. [1] Average house size in the US is twice as big as in Japan or Western Europe: https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a7654/house-sizes-around-the-world/ https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a765... [2] Americans have 50% more cars per capita than the EU average.

sokoloff 7y ago
Outside of the city center, it's also vastly easier to stop and run a few errands on the drive home without it adding tons of additional waiting for transit time.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
There is also the matter of population density. Compare the population density of the UK or Germany to China, then to the US. If you have fewer passengers per square mile then you either need smaller vehicles or less frequent operation to fill larger ones. People naturally prefer the first option. But the country isn't a city. It would be possible for an individual US city to have the population density required to support more effective mass transit (at least to the extent that it exists in Europe or Asia). NYC is the highest density major city in the US and largely manages to do that. To make it work elsewhere would require the same sort of densities as New York, which would require allowing people to build more high density housing there.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  It would require both allowing and people pervasively desiring Manhattan level of density of housing. I think that might be workable in San Francisco (with the desire being there). I'm not sure that level of density is desired anywhere else (as measured by people buying land and building such buildings).
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    There are a few other cities that might manage it in the US. Seattle, Boston, maybe D.C. Certainly not anything like Kansas City or Tucson, because you have to have enough density pressure around the city to actually require tall buildings. If you can satisfy all the local housing demand with single family homes and still have plenty of empty land within reasonable distance of the city center, there isn't enough reason to compress it into a smaller area just to have taller buildings and put things a little closer together. But those cities also don't have anything near the same traffic problems either. Where you're really screwed is in places like Los Angeles and Houston, where you have large populations but also so much sprawl and undeveloped land that taller buildings aren't really justified. So they end up in this unhappy medium with enough population density to have bad traffic but not enough to have good mass transit, and weak demand for higher density housing. But that still doesn't justify the zoning restrictions that exist in a lot of these places. Houston largely doesn't have them while Los Angeles does, and you can check for yourself the difference in rent. Even if without them Los Angeles still wouldn't be New York, because it would at least be better than it is.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Los Angeles is significantly more dense than Houston, despite the cited zoning restrictions in LA. Maywood is 23K/mi^2 with several other LA incorporated areas in the 15-20K/mi^2 density. Houston is under 10K/mi^2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
      - 7y ago