3 ms·

I used to take the local light rail back in college and it was great. Now, however, I am not located near the rail line and neither is my workplace. In order fo

I used to take the local light rail back in college and it was great. Now, however, I am not located near the rail line and neither is my workplace. In order for me to take public transit, I would have to walk and take the bus. What normally takes me 15-20 minutes in a car would take an hour and forty-five minutes by bus, and involve three transfers (this is one-way, and the return trip is roughly the same time-wise). Gas would have to become ludicrously expensive in order for me to make the choice to forfeit so much of my day to commuting. It would be ideal if the city I live in expands the light rail system but that's a decades long process.

dredmorbius 4y ago
What you need is both transit and land use which supports it. Private automobiles aren't a bugfix on urban planning, as someone posted to Mastodon recently, they're the determining cause of sprawl patterns. Personal vehicles, cheap fuel, and high-quality uncongested roads cheapen distance and through the Jevons Paradox increase the amount of space used. https://mastodon.social/@CarlMuckenhoupt/108465959449696924 https://mastodon.social/@CarlMuckenhoupt/108465959449696924 Light rail works great ... in reasonably dense urban environments and downtowns. If you have to walk only a few blocks to and from your boarding and disembarking points, they're great. Multi-link travel with transfers and delays is abysmal. LRT also benefits heavily from dedicated rights of way, no roadway contention from other vehicles, traffic signals optimisation, and the rest. And a single LRV can replace 40 -- 150+ vehicles on the road, depending on fill capacity.