5 ms·
It's more painful in the US because so much of our built environment is not at a human scale conducive to public transit. Transit uses an implied hub and spoke
by tbihl 5y ago
It's more painful in the US because so much of our built environment is not at a human scale conducive to public transit. Transit uses an implied hub and spoke network system where the base level of spoke is walking, then some combination of buses/trains/subways integrating those walk-sheds.
For huge areas of the country (and yes, this includes those classified as "urban"), the distances are too long, and the scenery too hostile or unexciting, to encourage walking. The more this happens, the more people want cars, and everything about accommodating cars (vs accommodating those on foot) worsens the area for human use: heat islands from parking and roads, danger from the same, dead landscapes, etc. Part of the problem is that cars are great for GDP (road building/maintenence, New rings of suburbs every generation as people flee the old ones, the whole car ecosystem) and horrible for building wealth, and ultimately national policy is all about GDP.
The inertia of this ugly system keeps cars nearly necessary to live and work in most places. And you can live in ways that avoid car use, but all entertainment and recreation and your friends are inaccessible without cars because most people pick the car option when faced with the question.
All of this means that there's no critical mass of people using transit to push for high level of service, and buses (and in some regions trains too) become filthy places to avoid.
- sofixa 5y ago> Transit uses an implied hub and spoke network system where the base level of spoke is walking, then some combination of buses/trains/subways integrating those walk-sheds. Not necessarily. Minibuses, bikes, e-scooters, even cars (park and ride, a big parking next to a train station; you get off the train and on your car for the last/first part of your trip) are perfectly viable "last mile" options.
- supertrope 5y agoI prefer not to get killed in a traffic crash. Even personal mobility requires infrastructure like fully separated bike lanes and multi-use trails. A white paint line or sharrows is a joke. We have level of service standards for roads and highways. But for pedestrians and bicyclists there's no standards for sidewalks on every street, bus stop quality, tree canopy, protection from speeding SUV drivers, crosswalks, bike racks, etc.
- TYPE_FASTER 5y agoI think there are a ton of opportunities to use unused or infrequently used existing rail infrastructure. Passenger rail travel was more common when the population density of the country was lower [0], so there's no reason we couldn't restore it. For example, a local city wants to expand a road leading to the downtown area, to improve traffic flow from the highway to the downtown core area. I'd much rather they build a parking garage where we have a park and ride lot, and run the modern equivalent of a Budd Car on existing track a couple miles into the city and back. The tracks parallel the road they want to build, and anybody who wants to drive into the city is going to park and walk around anyway, so why not reduce traffic and make it less frustrating to go downtown? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budd_Rail_Diesel_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budd_Rail_Diesel_Car