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I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. But it's important to try for it. The key of course is to provide pl
by bane 4y ago
I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. But it's important to try for it. The key of course is to provide plentiful housing in varieties that support people at a variety of incomes and at every life stage, places to shop for everything from daily consumables to appliances, public services, and most importantly a large center of offices and places of employment.
Basically build an arcology and set a transit goal of 15 minutes across the radius of it. Repeat this pattern whenever the transit gets too long, which is usually about a subway stop or two across -- creating many "town" centers. Pubic transit needs to include buses, trams, and maybe subways each feeding into each other from slow and low density (buses) to faster modes at higher density.
I think the best city I've ever been in that featured this was Tokyo. It looks like a giant megalopolis, and it is and acts that way for a part of the population, but for many people it's a bunch of small neighborhoods and towns. Even then, the average commute time is about 40 minutes each way.
Even relatively small European cities seem to hit about 40 minutes plus/minus 5-10 minutes.
In the U.S., you might experience <40 minute commutes maybe in either very small car centric towns, or close to the core of a few cities like Portland, or maybe Chicago. Even within NYC, you can easily hit over 1 hr each direction.
One place I've been to and know folks from near Washington D.C., Reston VA seems to offer consistent under <30 min door to door commutes, and that's without major public transit in place yet. It's growing, but toss in a tram-line and it'll be as good as any U.S. city can get to a European core. It's not without accident, it was apparently originally build and modeled off of European towns.
- nephanth 4y agoProblem with commute times, is that you can’t easily change your job to get one that is closer (compared to changing your gym / grocery store…). Plus a lot of companies like to congregate together in sorts of business districts (I don’t really get why? Maybe those places are more attractive. Or maybe proximity helps foster business relationships). That makes it hard to get a low commute time unless you live in/close to one of those business districts
- pjerem 4y ago> I don't know that it can be universally achieved car or no car, great public transit or no. It can totally be achieved. In fact, there already are working examples everywhere. Most inhabitants of European capitals (and a lot of metropolitan cities) don’t even own a car. You can live totally car free in Stockholm, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and in mostly the entire Switzerland. Working examples are in fact everywhere, the only thing that is needed is political will to invest in really heavy transport infrastructure but boy how could you even like driving a car in any city when you have a great metro/train system and bikeable cities. I know most people don’t even know it’s possible but solutions already exists and are just waiting to be copied. If anyone is interested in the topic, I recommend the YouTube channel « Not Just Bikes ». Just remember that 30-40 years ago, Amsterdam was an horrible unlivable car centric city and that it became a fantastic livable city with just political will in a really short period of time. In a totally different design, there is also the (pretty unique, I think) Switzerland example (Not Just Bike recently made a video about it) where you have basically no real « big » city but where every little town is reachable by trains that stop everywhere every 30min even in hundreds inhabitants towns. Switzerland example is really hard to replicate, imho, but it is a masterpiece and it deserves to be inspiring of what should be a civilized country.