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A big issue with the market argument in converting car drivers to transit riders is the respective networks operate at different scales. Think of a little neigh

A big issue with the market argument in converting car drivers to transit riders is the respective networks operate at different scales. Think of a little neighborhood with a bus line on a road; theres probably I’m not even sure call it 20x as many roads in that neighborhood that don’t have a bus line. There is so much more built out of the comprehensive road network everywhere than there is with transit. Cities are barely establishing their cardinal direction rail transit routes today. Even living in a place as densely railed as nyc most of those routes are extremely biased in the sort of commutes they best serve (in to manhattan for the most part). Since most cities can’t afford to ever build their rail networks as comprehensively as the existing road network in even a small city, we are left with bussing to build that comprehensive network. And what do you know, if you look up most cities bus networks they look pretty good and high coverage. So why don’t people take them? Its still worse than a car. A car is a direct bus on your own schedule, a bus route is a compromised route of average population and job density, might not help you get to where you are going especially for drives outside a fixed commute to a central business district. Scheduling and especially transfers can be fickle. As long as the coverage and convenience are so lopsided, people are going to take cars if they can afford it, even with a shiny new light rail line or whatever is attempted. I have yet to see a project like that attract wealthy ridership that can afford choice, transit rider median demographics are working class or even at the poverty line in a lot of metros. Even nyc subway ridership is 40k income on avg, bus ridership 28k. In the most expensive city in north america no less.

ericmay 2y ago
It’s hard to talk about the topic at very high level but for many American cities like Columbus where I live the answer lies at least partially converting surface parking lots in downtown areas into economically productive assets like housing or businesses which are also not extractive to the local economy. This density makes it easier to walk and bike as well. Many cities, including Columbus, are expanding bus rapid transit and other bus related activities which is laudable, but to your point, and which I agree and would frame it slightly differently, the bus is a strictly worse version of the car in these kinds of cities and so you need category changes to change habits (trams, bikes, walking). I think we need to focus our efforts on cities like Columbus, or others, which do have the population to support rail development and solve for that and not get too worried about solving everything everywhere all at once. Most state departments of highways and cars (they are not departments of transportation) simply don’t fund alternative means of transportation. Leadership from the top down needs to change its focus. The mantra should be the best, safest car is the one you never get in. Instead it’s “we need to preserve going from here to there in 20 minutes without traffic surprises” as if not being stuck in traffic is a Constitutional right. It’s bankrupting us and it’s bad for business and wellbeing.
- Maarten88 2y ago
  > the bus is a strictly worse version of the car in these kinds of cities You can change that by giving them their own lane so they don't get stuck in traffic with the cars, let them go where cars may not go, give priority at traffic lights etc. That is what they do where I live.
  - ericmay 2y ago
    It will change the habits of some but it’s not enough. We should continue to build out bus infrastructure and enhance bus rapid transit especially in the ways you mention, but those efforts won’t result in the large change we need to shift away from vehicle-based infrastructure.
    - pooper 2y ago
      > their own lane so they don't get stuck in traffic with the cars, let them go where cars may not go, give priority at traffic lights etc I feel like we are in agreement. It might not be enough but it is necessary. Problem is we don't even have enough political capital to enforce this. Bill deBalsio the ex mayor of New York came on a radio show and said (paraphrasing) he can't order cops to ticket cars and trucks that are loading or unloading in the bus lane. The bus lane is NOT a business' property for loading and unloading, especially not at busy hours. I'd you must do so, do it when there is no traffic in the middle of the night. How can we do more when we can't even do the bare minimum?
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > Problem is we don't even have enough political capital to enforce this. The problem is that you're proposing a new problem rather than a solution. Suppose there are two car lanes and they're somewhat congested. You suggest converting one to a bus lane to encourage people to take the bus. The result is to make the remaining car lane disproportionately more congested, because the bus lane gets 10% of people to take the bus and the other car lane is now 105% over capacity instead of 15% over capacity. Your theory is that this will cause enough people to take the bus to make this problem go away, but that theory only works if it doesn't. If people taking the bus relieves the congestion then the car lane is uncongested and there is no more reason to take the bus. So let the car lane be interminably congested, you say. Force people to take the bus. Only the bus doesn't service all destinations, or doesn't run there often enough (because if it did it would be empty), so the bus is no option for those people no matter how bad the car traffic gets. At which point they're prepared to boil you alive for making the traffic worse without giving them any viable alternative to it. You need to make their lives better, not worse, or you can't win.
bobthepanda 2y ago
Bus coverage isn’t the only metric that matters. Frequency is also terrible. It is entirely a symptom of investment. Bus ridership was found to decline in large part because the actual amount of service hours had declined as well. https://humantransit.org/2015/06/pity-the-poor-city-bus-writes-jacob-anbinder-in-an-interesting-essay-at-the-century-foundations-website-anbinder-b.html https://humantransit.org/2015/06/pity-the-poor-city-bus-writ... Canada has significantly higher bus ridership than the US despite having pretty similar urban forms and it is entirely due to the difference in services provided. Seattle has seen noticeable increases in bus service hours and ridership from across income ranges, and the new rail extensions are performing similarly well.
- bsder 2y ago
  > Frequency is also terrible. This is almost completely the issue. If I can count on a bus every 10 minutes, I will take a bus. If I can't just hop off a bus and back on the next because of long time intervals, I won't take a bus because I know something will go wrong and waste a huge chunk of my time. The political problem is that you need to keep a bunch of empty buses running continuously in order to change the behavior of people to start taking those buses more often at which point they quit being empty. The current problem is that in most places I have lived, I can WALK between points faster than I can take a bus. It will be 40-60 minutes between buses and because those buses are unreliable I can't count on my transfer, so I can wind up with a 2 hour+ bus ride for something which is less than 15 minutes by car.
  - squeaky-clean 2y ago
    I just checked the bus stop near my parents' place in Miami (I'm living in NYC now). The next bus arrives in 14 hours lol. Busses for that stop run hourly between 11am-4pm. I don't get how they think anyone can depend on that. Not only is an hour between busses incredibly frustrating, if I needed to do anything past 4pm, (like I don't know... commute to work?) I would have no way back home until the next day.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
vegetablepotpie 2y ago
To expand on that, with small and midsized cities, daily cost of transit rides vs. gas is on parity. Of course this does not include maintenance, insurance, and depreciation, of owning and driving a vehicle, but most people only encounter those twice a year, vs gas and bus fees are daily and weekly. In small and midsized cities, driving a car takes less time, likely 1/2 to 1/3rd the time of taking a bus. Lastly, there’s the sense of control over personal space. When you’re on a bus, you do not control who gets on the bus with you. When you’re in a car, you have total control.
- EricE 2y ago
  Yes, cars are not a universal problem to be "solved". Want to live car free? There are plenty of cities to choose from - go knock yourselves out.
NemoNobody 2y ago
I had a conversation the other day with someone here from San Diego - which now has the highest cost of living in the US. I briefly looked into it from a rental pov and it seemed his statements checked out. I'm not saying that NYC is actually cheaper than San Diego - I'm aware it's incredibly expensive but I think that all the cities are more similar than they are not as far as unaffordability goes That actually really surprised me but it does make sense once thought about - goes against everything I've been taught tho. How can San Diego be as expensive as NYC?
- fragmede 2y ago
  https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/ https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculat... doesn't agree with that. It says cost of living in San Diego is almost 40% lower than living in Manhattan. it pulls from ACCRA.
  - ohmyiv 2y ago
    It really depends on where in San Diego the other person lived. A lot of people will say San Diego instead of whatever little city they live in in the area. La Jolla is probably a better comparison to Manhattan Island. The average home price in La Jolla is over $2M, which I think is closer to Manhattan. It still shouldn't be higher than Manhattan, but pretty damn close. San Diego would probably be better compared to the Bronx, SI or Queens, maybe. But again, it depends on where in SD that person lived. Heck, you can move inland to Kearney Mesa and still find a home under $1M, hopefully. It's been a minute since I was down there. Also, I feel that the website/ACCRA is trustworthy, but why lump Los Angeles and Long Beach together when every borough in NYC is separate? Doesn't make sense to me. Long Beach is as independent of L.A. as the boroughs are to each other.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      I would assume that in LA Jolla, that $2 million gets you a medium-sized house. In Manhattan, it buys you a one- or two-bedroom condo with a high condo fee.
- 2y ago
Beldin 2y ago
> As long as the coverage and convenience are so lopsided, Two ways to fix that (in general): improve one side, or worsen the other. Some measures do both simultaneously, eg. bus lanes take away asphalt for cars and improve bus infrastructure. It's fairly easy to make a bus network more convenient than a car in a city. You can easily take measures such as dedicated bus lanes, one way streets, pedestrian areas, narrower streets + wider pavements and cycle lanes, less and more expensive parking. The current attractiveness of public transport is roughly how attractive cars should have been. But most US cities have focused for decades on making car use more attractive. Congratulations, it worked.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  The cost to redo what is there is so high that efforts for road diets are usually only a few blocks or a few miles at a time. More money need to be made available for these projects by the federal government as municipalities are usually strapped for cash.

ericmay 2y ago

It’s hard to talk about the topic at very high level but for many American cities like Columbus where I live the answer lies at least partially converting surface parking lots in downtown areas into economically productive assets like housing or businesses which are also not extractive to the local economy. This density makes it easier to walk and bike as well. Many cities, including Columbus, are expanding bus rapid transit and other bus related activities which is laudable, but to your point, and which I agree and would frame it slightly differently, the bus is a strictly worse version of the car in these kinds of cities and so you need category changes to change habits (trams, bikes, walking). I think we need to focus our efforts on cities like Columbus, or others, which do have the population to support rail development and solve for that and not get too worried about solving everything everywhere all at once. Most state departments of highways and cars (they are not departments of transportation) simply don’t fund alternative means of transportation. Leadership from the top down needs to change its focus. The mantra should be the best, safest car is the one you never get in. Instead it’s “we need to preserve going from here to there in 20 minutes without traffic surprises” as if not being stuck in traffic is a Constitutional right. It’s bankrupting us and it’s bad for business and wellbeing.

Maarten88 2y ago
> the bus is a strictly worse version of the car in these kinds of cities You can change that by giving them their own lane so they don't get stuck in traffic with the cars, let them go where cars may not go, give priority at traffic lights etc. That is what they do where I live.
- ericmay 2y ago
  It will change the habits of some but it’s not enough. We should continue to build out bus infrastructure and enhance bus rapid transit especially in the ways you mention, but those efforts won’t result in the large change we need to shift away from vehicle-based infrastructure.
  - pooper 2y ago
    > their own lane so they don't get stuck in traffic with the cars, let them go where cars may not go, give priority at traffic lights etc I feel like we are in agreement. It might not be enough but it is necessary. Problem is we don't even have enough political capital to enforce this. Bill deBalsio the ex mayor of New York came on a radio show and said (paraphrasing) he can't order cops to ticket cars and trucks that are loading or unloading in the bus lane. The bus lane is NOT a business' property for loading and unloading, especially not at busy hours. I'd you must do so, do it when there is no traffic in the middle of the night. How can we do more when we can't even do the bare minimum?
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > Problem is we don't even have enough political capital to enforce this. The problem is that you're proposing a new problem rather than a solution. Suppose there are two car lanes and they're somewhat congested. You suggest converting one to a bus lane to encourage people to take the bus. The result is to make the remaining car lane disproportionately more congested, because the bus lane gets 10% of people to take the bus and the other car lane is now 105% over capacity instead of 15% over capacity. Your theory is that this will cause enough people to take the bus to make this problem go away, but that theory only works if it doesn't. If people taking the bus relieves the congestion then the car lane is uncongested and there is no more reason to take the bus. So let the car lane be interminably congested, you say. Force people to take the bus. Only the bus doesn't service all destinations, or doesn't run there often enough (because if it did it would be empty), so the bus is no option for those people no matter how bad the car traffic gets. At which point they're prepared to boil you alive for making the traffic worse without giving them any viable alternative to it. You need to make their lives better, not worse, or you can't win.

bobthepanda 2y ago

Bus coverage isn’t the only metric that matters. Frequency is also terrible. It is entirely a symptom of investment. Bus ridership was found to decline in large part because the actual amount of service hours had declined as well. https://humantransit.org/2015/06/pity-the-poor-city-bus-writes-jacob-anbinder-in-an-interesting-essay-at-the-century-foundations-website-anbinder-b.html https://humantransit.org/2015/06/pity-the-poor-city-bus-writ... Canada has significantly higher bus ridership than the US despite having pretty similar urban forms and it is entirely due to the difference in services provided. Seattle has seen noticeable increases in bus service hours and ridership from across income ranges, and the new rail extensions are performing similarly well.

bsder 2y ago
> Frequency is also terrible. This is almost completely the issue. If I can count on a bus every 10 minutes, I will take a bus. If I can't just hop off a bus and back on the next because of long time intervals, I won't take a bus because I know something will go wrong and waste a huge chunk of my time. The political problem is that you need to keep a bunch of empty buses running continuously in order to change the behavior of people to start taking those buses more often at which point they quit being empty. The current problem is that in most places I have lived, I can WALK between points faster than I can take a bus. It will be 40-60 minutes between buses and because those buses are unreliable I can't count on my transfer, so I can wind up with a 2 hour+ bus ride for something which is less than 15 minutes by car.
- squeaky-clean 2y ago
  I just checked the bus stop near my parents' place in Miami (I'm living in NYC now). The next bus arrives in 14 hours lol. Busses for that stop run hourly between 11am-4pm. I don't get how they think anyone can depend on that. Not only is an hour between busses incredibly frustrating, if I needed to do anything past 4pm, (like I don't know... commute to work?) I would have no way back home until the next day.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

vegetablepotpie 2y ago

To expand on that, with small and midsized cities, daily cost of transit rides vs. gas is on parity. Of course this does not include maintenance, insurance, and depreciation, of owning and driving a vehicle, but most people only encounter those twice a year, vs gas and bus fees are daily and weekly. In small and midsized cities, driving a car takes less time, likely 1/2 to 1/3rd the time of taking a bus. Lastly, there’s the sense of control over personal space. When you’re on a bus, you do not control who gets on the bus with you. When you’re in a car, you have total control.

EricE 2y ago
Yes, cars are not a universal problem to be "solved". Want to live car free? There are plenty of cities to choose from - go knock yourselves out.

NemoNobody 2y ago

I had a conversation the other day with someone here from San Diego - which now has the highest cost of living in the US. I briefly looked into it from a rental pov and it seemed his statements checked out. I'm not saying that NYC is actually cheaper than San Diego - I'm aware it's incredibly expensive but I think that all the cities are more similar than they are not as far as unaffordability goes That actually really surprised me but it does make sense once thought about - goes against everything I've been taught tho. How can San Diego be as expensive as NYC?

fragmede 2y ago
https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/ https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculat... doesn't agree with that. It says cost of living in San Diego is almost 40% lower than living in Manhattan. it pulls from ACCRA.
- ohmyiv 2y ago
  It really depends on where in San Diego the other person lived. A lot of people will say San Diego instead of whatever little city they live in in the area. La Jolla is probably a better comparison to Manhattan Island. The average home price in La Jolla is over $2M, which I think is closer to Manhattan. It still shouldn't be higher than Manhattan, but pretty damn close. San Diego would probably be better compared to the Bronx, SI or Queens, maybe. But again, it depends on where in SD that person lived. Heck, you can move inland to Kearney Mesa and still find a home under $1M, hopefully. It's been a minute since I was down there. Also, I feel that the website/ACCRA is trustworthy, but why lump Los Angeles and Long Beach together when every borough in NYC is separate? Doesn't make sense to me. Long Beach is as independent of L.A. as the boroughs are to each other.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    I would assume that in LA Jolla, that $2 million gets you a medium-sized house. In Manhattan, it buys you a one- or two-bedroom condo with a high condo fee.
2y ago

Beldin 2y ago

> As long as the coverage and convenience are so lopsided, Two ways to fix that (in general): improve one side, or worsen the other. Some measures do both simultaneously, eg. bus lanes take away asphalt for cars and improve bus infrastructure. It's fairly easy to make a bus network more convenient than a car in a city. You can easily take measures such as dedicated bus lanes, one way streets, pedestrian areas, narrower streets + wider pavements and cycle lanes, less and more expensive parking. The current attractiveness of public transport is roughly how attractive cars should have been. But most US cities have focused for decades on making car use more attractive. Congratulations, it worked.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
The cost to redo what is there is so high that efforts for road diets are usually only a few blocks or a few miles at a time. More money need to be made available for these projects by the federal government as municipalities are usually strapped for cash.