3 ms·
It's hard to tell people "just take the bus" when the nearest suitable home to the bus stop starts at $1M. Alt transit is making slow but measurable progress bu
by Steltek 5y ago
It's hard to tell people "just take the bus" when the nearest suitable home to the bus stop starts at $1M. Alt transit is making slow but measurable progress but the housing situation is the real priority if you want people out of cars.
Unless you're a believer in urban living, suburban costs are hard to beat, even when factoring in car ownership costs.
- shafyy 5y agoThat's why I'm saying in "cities and surroundings". You can absolutely build great public transportation infrastructure in rural areas. For example, in Switzerland public transportation is mostly public, and you can go to every nook and corner of the country reliably. As a stark contrast, in Ireland, a lot of the "public" transport is privatized and there transport options suck in rural areas. Now, I don't want to make this about private vs. public (even though I absolutely think public transport should be public), but just to show that it's just a matter of how you invest money and set incentives to build this infrastructure.
- acdha 5y agoThis very much depends on where you live. In SF or NYC, sure, housing is very expensive but that's not the entire country and even there it's exaggerating to say you can't live near transit for less than $1M. We definitely need more attention to urban housing availability and improving transit considerably (i.e. not treating it as a last resort for the poor / disabled) but there's also a lot of inertia and assumption driving those comparisons which leads people to think it's cheaper to live further out even when they end up spending the same amount or more (at least hopefully for a preferred lifestyle choice such as a large lawn).