5 ms·

When public transit is done right, last mile is more like last 500 feet, and a walk. Maybe for S-bahns far out it's a mile, but bikeshare should cover that.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
You can’t do public transit right in areas that are insufficiently densely populated, like the vast majority of the US. There’s simply not enough people to be able to pay for the costs.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Well, doing public transit right means densifying. Density is a virtue on it's own so this is fine.
  - vnxli 6y ago
    How is density a virtue?
    - anonporridge 6y ago
      It breeds efficiency and self sufficiency. Less wasted resources on virtually every metric. Suburbia on the other hand makes us all worse off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...
      - hcurtiss 6y ago
        Except living in suburbia is a delight. I appreciate not everyone shares that perspective, but in my view everything from not sharing walls, to quiet streets for kids to ride bikes, to garages large enough for a boat or trailer, to large public parks. I think that's why you're seeing so many presently move in that direction. Densification is great, but for all the people. I lived in the city for ten years. I'll never do it again.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        It is a delight, for those who can afford it. For others, and future generations subject to the effects of pollution, it will not be such a delight.
        hcurtiss 6y ago
        Having money has always and will always lead to a more comfortable life. Pollution is all a matter of degree, and cities produce plenty of it, even if per capita numbers are marginally less.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Energy = force * distance = mass * acceleration * distance . I don’t think dense living energy usage is only marginally less due to the extra distance all the mass has to travel. And with current technology, the energy used is basically a proxy for pollution. The more mass you move (water, sewage, gas, waste, supplies, people) longer distances, the more you pollute. I.e. the more space you use, the more you pollute. Just like using most other material resources.
        hcurtiss 6y ago
        I only mean “marginally” insofar as living in a cabin with no electricity and growing your own food would use even less. We are all living very high energy lifestyles. The difference, as always, is on the margin. Modern conveniences and comforts come at a price, both ecologically and economically. It’s just a question of whether that price is worth it.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        > per capita numbers are marginally less It's not marginal at all, but a huge difference. Rich inner suburbs ("Democrat suburbs" you might say) are the worst polluters per capita, and urban and some truly rural areas the best, but the truly rural case absolutely doesn't scale. I'm sorry, but your boats-the-shed fantasyland is slowly killing us all.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Try making faster CPUs without doing die shrinks. Expecting perpetual economic growth without densification is equally absurd.
- runarberg 6y ago
  While I agree that part of the solution is to increase density (and more importantly provide affordable housing close to where people work; and also—just as important—provide good jobs close to where people live), you can for sure improve peoples lives a lot in the mean time by throwing some money at the problem. A frequent bus route from the less dense neighborhoods to the center might not be profitable in the strict sense, and might run many trips empty or near empty, but it will certainly improve many people’s lives.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Politically, it has and will be seen as a waste of resources to run empty buses which then translates to “public transit does not work, it’s a waste of money, cancel it”.
    - runarberg 6y ago
      In my experience people are generally in favor of this kind of “waste of money” if it is done in their neighborhood. A good example is ST3 in the Seattle area. Seattleites and their neighbors overwhelmingly supported the expensive and radical expansion of the rapid transit system in the area and were more then willing to pay the increased taxes for it... Opposition came mostly from the eastern parts of the state even though the taxes are only to be collected in the proximate areas to the expansion. In fact I can’t recall any examples of people calling for the cancellation of existing public transit. The backlash is usually against planed expansions from distant areas.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Seattle is in the middle of an exceptional economic boom. Typically, these things start showing when budgets start getting strained and taxes are already high and cuts have to be made. I’ve seen a few places on the East coast where voters resonate with political candidates that decry the subsidies to public transit, and call for increases in fares or decrease in frequency of bus/train service.
- bluGill 6y ago
  True, but the density needed for a useful bus is a lot less than people think. With an investment in buses and useful routes most of the us could have useful buses with a good number of riders.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Frequency is the problem. A bus is useless to me if there is 1 every 30min and missing it means I waste another 29min. It needs to be every 5, maybe 10 min at most to make me not want a car at current car costs in most of the US.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Agreed, but the density of suburbs supports a bus every 10 minutes in some countries.
opportune 6y ago
I completely agree - I love the German train system - but we can't get there overnight. While we wait (optimistically) 50+ years for the US transit infrastructure to develop, we need rideshare.
- runarberg 6y ago
  > but we can't get there overnight Why not? Buses are cheap and can operate on existing infrastructure. Sure there are places like Seattle where the buses are congested and more expensive rail infrastructure is needed, but that is not true in majority of American cities. Quite often the bus lines are even already there, but run so infrequently that they are unusable for the majority of people (think El Paso). For most of Americans the problem could literally be solved over night.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    The limit to that is how fast we can make more buses. Those lines are built for expected demand, and if cities suddenly start buying all the buses they should have to get a useful transit system they need a large expansion. Though if cities actually did put for that investment, in a few years there would be enough riders as to pay off the investment. I'm not hopeful though: most cities have transit executives who don't care about transit, and so if given a ton of money will instead invest in transit art - things that look good but don't improve transit.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Bikeshare. Rideshare is a colossally inefficient in both labor and material terms. Bikeshare including wagons for kids and cargo is far, far better. Also we can do it much faster if we accept we need to make driving worse. See https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/09/18/cars-and-trains-urbanism/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/09/18/cars-and-train... cars and trains are fundamentally opposed, so every time build American-style light rail and yet continue widening highways we shoot ourselves in both feet. Accepting the reality that we need carets and sticks to radically reform our material culture, demolish highways, shred zoning laws, crank up the gas tax, and then suddenly find your trains full, bikes all in use, people clamoring for more, the private sector helping with the easy stuff, and more growth in general.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

You can’t do public transit right in areas that are insufficiently densely populated, like the vast majority of the US. There’s simply not enough people to be able to pay for the costs.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Well, doing public transit right means densifying. Density is a virtue on it's own so this is fine.
- vnxli 6y ago
  How is density a virtue?
  - anonporridge 6y ago
    It breeds efficiency and self sufficiency. Less wasted resources on virtually every metric. Suburbia on the other hand makes us all worse off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUeqxXwCA0&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...
    - hcurtiss 6y ago
      Except living in suburbia is a delight. I appreciate not everyone shares that perspective, but in my view everything from not sharing walls, to quiet streets for kids to ride bikes, to garages large enough for a boat or trailer, to large public parks. I think that's why you're seeing so many presently move in that direction. Densification is great, but for all the people. I lived in the city for ten years. I'll never do it again.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        It is a delight, for those who can afford it. For others, and future generations subject to the effects of pollution, it will not be such a delight.
        hcurtiss 6y ago
        Having money has always and will always lead to a more comfortable life. Pollution is all a matter of degree, and cities produce plenty of it, even if per capita numbers are marginally less.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Energy = force * distance = mass * acceleration * distance . I don’t think dense living energy usage is only marginally less due to the extra distance all the mass has to travel. And with current technology, the energy used is basically a proxy for pollution. The more mass you move (water, sewage, gas, waste, supplies, people) longer distances, the more you pollute. I.e. the more space you use, the more you pollute. Just like using most other material resources.
        hcurtiss 6y ago
        I only mean “marginally” insofar as living in a cabin with no electricity and growing your own food would use even less. We are all living very high energy lifestyles. The difference, as always, is on the margin. Modern conveniences and comforts come at a price, both ecologically and economically. It’s just a question of whether that price is worth it.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        > per capita numbers are marginally less It's not marginal at all, but a huge difference. Rich inner suburbs ("Democrat suburbs" you might say) are the worst polluters per capita, and urban and some truly rural areas the best, but the truly rural case absolutely doesn't scale. I'm sorry, but your boats-the-shed fantasyland is slowly killing us all.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Try making faster CPUs without doing die shrinks. Expecting perpetual economic growth without densification is equally absurd.
runarberg 6y ago
While I agree that part of the solution is to increase density (and more importantly provide affordable housing close to where people work; and also—just as important—provide good jobs close to where people live), you can for sure improve peoples lives a lot in the mean time by throwing some money at the problem. A frequent bus route from the less dense neighborhoods to the center might not be profitable in the strict sense, and might run many trips empty or near empty, but it will certainly improve many people’s lives.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Politically, it has and will be seen as a waste of resources to run empty buses which then translates to “public transit does not work, it’s a waste of money, cancel it”.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    In my experience people are generally in favor of this kind of “waste of money” if it is done in their neighborhood. A good example is ST3 in the Seattle area. Seattleites and their neighbors overwhelmingly supported the expensive and radical expansion of the rapid transit system in the area and were more then willing to pay the increased taxes for it... Opposition came mostly from the eastern parts of the state even though the taxes are only to be collected in the proximate areas to the expansion. In fact I can’t recall any examples of people calling for the cancellation of existing public transit. The backlash is usually against planed expansions from distant areas.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Seattle is in the middle of an exceptional economic boom. Typically, these things start showing when budgets start getting strained and taxes are already high and cuts have to be made. I’ve seen a few places on the East coast where voters resonate with political candidates that decry the subsidies to public transit, and call for increases in fares or decrease in frequency of bus/train service.
bluGill 6y ago
True, but the density needed for a useful bus is a lot less than people think. With an investment in buses and useful routes most of the us could have useful buses with a good number of riders.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Frequency is the problem. A bus is useless to me if there is 1 every 30min and missing it means I waste another 29min. It needs to be every 5, maybe 10 min at most to make me not want a car at current car costs in most of the US.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Agreed, but the density of suburbs supports a bus every 10 minutes in some countries.

opportune 6y ago

I completely agree - I love the German train system - but we can't get there overnight. While we wait (optimistically) 50+ years for the US transit infrastructure to develop, we need rideshare.

runarberg 6y ago
> but we can't get there overnight Why not? Buses are cheap and can operate on existing infrastructure. Sure there are places like Seattle where the buses are congested and more expensive rail infrastructure is needed, but that is not true in majority of American cities. Quite often the bus lines are even already there, but run so infrequently that they are unusable for the majority of people (think El Paso). For most of Americans the problem could literally be solved over night.
- bluGill 6y ago
  The limit to that is how fast we can make more buses. Those lines are built for expected demand, and if cities suddenly start buying all the buses they should have to get a useful transit system they need a large expansion. Though if cities actually did put for that investment, in a few years there would be enough riders as to pay off the investment. I'm not hopeful though: most cities have transit executives who don't care about transit, and so if given a ton of money will instead invest in transit art - things that look good but don't improve transit.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Bikeshare. Rideshare is a colossally inefficient in both labor and material terms. Bikeshare including wagons for kids and cargo is far, far better. Also we can do it much faster if we accept we need to make driving worse. See https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/09/18/cars-and-trains-urbanism/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/09/18/cars-and-train... cars and trains are fundamentally opposed, so every time build American-style light rail and yet continue widening highways we shoot ourselves in both feet. Accepting the reality that we need carets and sticks to radically reform our material culture, demolish highways, shred zoning laws, crank up the gas tax, and then suddenly find your trains full, bikes all in use, people clamoring for more, the private sector helping with the easy stuff, and more growth in general.