It was disappointing to hear this debate https://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/big-cities-are-past-their-prime https://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/bi

It was disappointing to hear this debate https://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/big-cities-are-past-their-prime https://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/big-cities-are-pas... where the people saying "Big Cities are past their prime" were extremely down on public transportation. It's possible they are correct that we could really never have good public transportation in the USA because our cities aren't designed around it. But, I did want to reach through the podcast and shake them, "Go visit the largest city on the plant, Tokyo!" and see if you can't imagine public transit working for a city of 34 million people. Of course it's possible the reality is it just can't happen in the USA. See the fiasco of SF's Central Line. I'd argue the best place to try is Los Angeles. It used to have the best in the public transit in the world in say 1920-1950 but it was all torn down. In any case, it looks like it has maybe enough people that a truly good public transit with nice stations as destinations and express lines etc would work but you'd have to magically make about 80 lines appear. A few lines at a time will never get to the MVP of actually making the system useful for the average person that wants to get from A to B because it would require 80 lines to get from every A to every B. Also, people seem to forget that Japan's system is privatized and the incentives seem to align. The train companies create/fund/own buildings at and around their stations so they have every incentive to make people want to ride the trains as use their stations and all the buildings and businesses around them. Some of them even build housing. And, if they don't like the big city version then they can go to Amsterdam (pop 800k), Antwerp (500k), Barcelona (1600k), Copenhagen (600k), Helsinki (630k), Koln (1000k), etc... that all have pretty great public transportation.