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Then why does public transit work in other countries with suburbs? Obligatory repost of this video about small towns and cities in the Netherlands being easily

Then why does public transit work in other countries with suburbs? Obligatory repost of this video about small towns and cities in the Netherlands being easily accessible by public transit and cycling: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg I will also point out that a large proportion of suburbs in the US are comparatively brand new developments. While we might not be able to retrofit existing developments, fast-growing suburban locations like those in Texas can change course right now and decide to build in a way that’s transit-oriented.

infecto 3mo ago
Transit going to where. That’s the problem, you could build a new development that is transit oriented but where is it going? The average person in Texas does not want to transfer busses. Your comparison to Netherlands is rough because you are talking about a country that has a fairly mild climate and older cities that generally have density and not much sprawl. I don’t comprehend these examples. Also those cities are incredibly tiny with probably a concentration of employment. Keep in mind the Netherlands is about 115 miles wide and maybe 180 north/south diagonally. That’s roughly the size of the Dallas metro area. Someone who lives in Arlington might commute to downtown Dallas, an office building in Plano or downtown Fort Worth. You multiply that by millions of people and it becomes a very hard problem that a typical city bus cannot handle. Now I do think there is probably opportunity for a Waymo like solution with 10 seats that could do driverless ride sharing but I don’t see how a city can build a bus system that works, people don’t want to take a bus unless it has zero transfers. The last mile problem is incredibly hard and places like Texas are hot. I asking through a strip mall parking lot is further than most of the cities in the Netherlands in that video.
- Grombobulous 3mo ago
  I guess I should have expected these talking points to come back after posting a comment like that and I should have headed them off at the pass. If the Netherlands is the size of the Dallas metro area, then why isn't the Dallas metro area like the Netherlands? Dallas-Fort Worth has over 8 million people in it, it's not like it's a drastically smaller population than the Netherlands. This argument of "America has a bunch of empty space outside of metro areas" is irrelevant to the conditions inside of those metro areas. Most Americans by population live in metropolitan areas. They don't live in the middle of nowhere. Yes, some people do, but 80%+ of Americans live in very much urban areas. So we can exclude the <20% of Americans from this "we should have decent public transit" debate if you would like, I am fine with that. The Netherlands actually built out a lot of car-focused infrastructure in the mid-century just like the US. The difference is that they have since pushed that development mindset out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTSNWDTE888 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTSNWDTE888 This idea that America "can't go back" is a farce, because it makes an incorrect assumption that other countries never grew in population and therefore never built any new suburbs after the spread of the automobile. The Netherlands grew from 11 million people in 1960 to 18 million people today. Do you think the Netherlands never built a new neighborhood in that time period? This doesn't mean that people in the Netherlands or Japan don't own cars. Far from it. What it does mean is that driving a personally owned car in a one-person-per-car paradigm isn't necessary to survive and thrive in those places. Transit-oriented development means that they have other options. You are concerned about how difficult the climate is, here is how Singapore stays walkable despite hot and rainy climate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 Here is how people use public transit in Yakutsk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 I will also inform you that buses are indeed air conditioned and have heaters, just like a car. You can think of a bus as a car but much larger and fits more people inside. Why don't people in Dallas want to transfer buses? I transfer buses all the time in my city, or transfer from bus to train. That doesn't mean it takes me a long time go get around. I will tell you why: because demand is induced. There isn't some innate human nature where we all automatically prefer cars and have decided by evolution that anything less than a car is less ideal. No, demand is instead induced: if there's a place for me to ride a bike or walk or take a bus/train to my destination, and it feels safe and comfortable, I might just choose that just because it exists. Induced demand is especially prevalent in the US because personal vehicles are heavily subsidized over other options. The US government engages in forever wars to secure low oil prices, subsidized by federal tax dollars. Gas taxes are underfunded and don't keep up with inflation to ensure driving is offered below the real cost. Society subsidizes traffic deaths as nobody, not even insurance companies, compensate society when a 19 year old dies in a drunk driving crash and all the economic activity they would have generated over their lifespan evaporates. Personally owned cars at a ratio of one car per person are literally the most expensive way to get around on this planet until you get into stuff like private jets and helicopters. They're even more expensive than buying a plane ticket between many destinations. You say that people in Dallas don't want to take the bus, but if it was available, reliable, had a frequent schedule, and got them to everywhere they needed to be, they probably would be very excited to ditch the $5,000-10,000 annual total cost of vehicle ownership. And, while public transit in Texas has a long way to go, Dallas Area Rapid Transit has ridership of 52,823,800 annually. If you are saying that people in Dallas don't want to transfer buses, I'd have to ask where those 52 million rides are coming from?
  - infecto 3mo ago
    I don’t think you touched any of the critical issues. You’re also incredibly rude for no reason. - Dallas is much much hotter than the Netherlands. - Overall Netherlands population density (including rural areas) is higher than DFW metro. - For most of the cities in the YouTube video shared they are a few miles by a few miles. The length of a typical Dallas frontage road. It makes sense to walk and bike in those small hamlets. Going back to density, you are right the Netherlands moved back from a car centric life but that did not change population density before or after. Most cities in the Netherlands are a multiple of DFW so you have this tough argument. What works in the Netherlands is not necessarily a solution for DFW. You would need to rebuild the city to be denser, have more businesses located together and then build out transit while ignoring that it’s too hot for a good portion of the year to ride a bike or walk around outside. My back of napkin math ended up with 30k sq ft per person in DFW compared to 20k sq ft per person in all of the Netherlands. I think Waymo is a great step in the right direction.
  - vel0city 3mo ago
    > If the Netherlands is the size of the Dallas metro area, then why isn't the Dallas metro area like the Netherlands? Dallas-Fort Worth has over 8 million people in it, it's not like it's a drastically smaller population than the Netherlands. EDIT: Your statement of "its not like its drastically smaller population" is also just not true. 8 is not about the same as 18. I ended up replying thinking they were closer without realizing this as well. So less than half the population on about the same area. Having half the average density before even thinking about how dense the clustering is really makes quite a difference! Density of where people actually choose to live, which you've already alluded to with the things you're saying. Similar population, similar kind of area. But look at both on a satellite image. One actually has a lot of farmland for that area. Where people actually live its often a good bit denser. Why is it like that? That's what people have voted for, that's what they've supported. Try actually talking to the people who live there and suggest to them they should live in a zero lot line home or a townhouse with shared walls. > Why don't people in Dallas want to transfer buses? I wouldn't mind transferring busses if there was good service. But instead transferring busses around here usually means sitting in the baking hot sun on a concrete bench in >100F heat for a half hour. If the next bus was in like 5 minutes, I probably wouldn't care. It also often means you're probably taking a very suboptimal route instead of a direct route to the place. So not only do you have an additional wait to change busses, you then also have a much longer path to ride. And you're likely going to end up going a slower average speed, as you're having to stop to pickup/dropoff people along this longer route as opposed to just continuing on. For instance, it'll take me over an hour to go to where the new Dallas Stars arena will be in Plano as I need to make 4-5 bus changes. Its a 15 minute drive although it will probably be way more than that once 20k people try to leave at once. Now, obviously, busses can change routes. They can get more busses and do more routes. They can get more busses and offer faster service. There's a lot of potential solutions to this. It doesn't have to be that way. But in the end getting people to put more funding into it is pretty challenging. > if there's a place for me to ride a bike or walk or take a bus/train to my destination, and it feels safe and comfortable, I might just choose that just because it exists. Its often not very comfortable riding a bicycle in 110F heat index when you've got this air-conditioned box you could ride in sitting in your garage.
vel0city 3mo ago
> This is entirely because of the design of Haarlem and its pedestranized city-center Practically all of those towns have had a focus of building walkable/bikeable spaces with dense mini-downtown areas for at least decades if not longer. Its not impossible for this to eventually happen to these already built US suburbs, but a lot of these places were explicitly designed around everyone coming and going by car. A lot of these suburbs weren't even planned with the idea of pedestrians ever leaving the neighborhood. They'll have few actual entrances and exits, with those rarely connected to any kind of infrastructure outside other than busy roads. > fast-growing suburban locations like those in Texas can change course right now and decide to build in a way that’s transit-oriented A lot of those fast-growing areas are in cities with zero transit and often don't even neighbor a city with any real transit. Look at places like Princeton, Celina, Melissa, Anna, etc. They border towns like Frisco, McKinney, Prosper, and more which also aren't connected to DART. All of these towns actively shun public transit. A lot of home buyers in these areas just don't care about transit access at all, with many actively opposed to transit. So what, maybe Princeton does decide to make some transit. Ok, where do I go with that? From one suburban house to another without a car? A bit easier time getting to Little Ceasars, Taco Bell, and Walmart? Its entirely disconnected from practically any other place the people there actually need to go, because its not like many people actually work in Princeton or Celina. So it'll take a lot of additional development and rethinking of what these places are and how they ultimately function for transit to actually make sense there. I'm not saying public transit and walkability/bikeability can't possibly happen in North Texas. I like biking around, I ride DART when it makes sense, and I do push for expansion of bike infrastructure and good DART access. But I also see the heat index for today is 105F, it'll be about 110F on Friday. I don't think I'll be riding a bike to get the groceries. I don't think the Netherlands often gets weeks where the heat index is >100F practically every day. And finally, it will take changing a lot of minds about public transit to get buy-in from a lot of the population to actually do it.
- Grombobulous 3mo ago
  Hot weather transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 Cold weather transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 Transit is small towns and suburbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg I would remind all of us that our built environment is not an inevitability, it is a continuous choice, especially in a rapidly expanding state like Texas. In 1960, 8 million fewer people lived in the Netherlands, and cars definitely existed and were mainstream back then. This idea that the Netherlands is special and this magical thing they've done can't be done anywhere else is a weak one in my mind. It's never too late to change course. It's not a black and white choice where we must suddenly give up our vehicles and never drive, it's more like a gradual increase in the number of trips that are feasible and enjoyable without a car. I know people who lived in Cleveland who started using the bus to get to work when the HealthLine BRT line was completed. They still drive basically everywhere else, but that one bus line changed their daily habits dramatically.
bluGill 3mo ago
> Then why does public transit work in other countries with suburbs? To give a clear answer that others have beat around: it is the network. Transit works when you can get places. When you can get many places it doesn't work. The real question is how can Dallas get there - which is a hard problem is you need a massive network investment before it becomes useful to many people and so there is a lot of upfront investment needed first. The US has a poor history with getting a good return on investment for transit. In general even where the investment does get good ridership, the amount spent was way out of line from what anyone else in the world would have spent for that system.
- infecto 3mo ago
  That trivializes the problem too much, part of the equation but you also have to have a population that actually wants it along with high enough density that it makes sense. For places like Dallas I struggle with all of the above. Sure some percentage would use it if it was flawless but I think far too few would.
  - bluGill 3mo ago
    Dallas has plenty of density as proven elsewhere. As for wanting it, people don't want what they don't know. How they would act if something existed is very different from what they say.
    - infecto 3mo ago
      Proven where? DFW is not as dense as you might think. Last mile is an incredibly hard problem to solve when it comes to transit and you add in unfavorable weather and it’s a not go. Good luck though! Just sharing as a member of the DFW community has taken dart and bikes a lot. The metro is absolutely not dense.

infecto 3mo ago

Transit going to where. That’s the problem, you could build a new development that is transit oriented but where is it going? The average person in Texas does not want to transfer busses. Your comparison to Netherlands is rough because you are talking about a country that has a fairly mild climate and older cities that generally have density and not much sprawl. I don’t comprehend these examples. Also those cities are incredibly tiny with probably a concentration of employment. Keep in mind the Netherlands is about 115 miles wide and maybe 180 north/south diagonally. That’s roughly the size of the Dallas metro area. Someone who lives in Arlington might commute to downtown Dallas, an office building in Plano or downtown Fort Worth. You multiply that by millions of people and it becomes a very hard problem that a typical city bus cannot handle. Now I do think there is probably opportunity for a Waymo like solution with 10 seats that could do driverless ride sharing but I don’t see how a city can build a bus system that works, people don’t want to take a bus unless it has zero transfers. The last mile problem is incredibly hard and places like Texas are hot. I asking through a strip mall parking lot is further than most of the cities in the Netherlands in that video.

Grombobulous 3mo ago
I guess I should have expected these talking points to come back after posting a comment like that and I should have headed them off at the pass. If the Netherlands is the size of the Dallas metro area, then why isn't the Dallas metro area like the Netherlands? Dallas-Fort Worth has over 8 million people in it, it's not like it's a drastically smaller population than the Netherlands. This argument of "America has a bunch of empty space outside of metro areas" is irrelevant to the conditions inside of those metro areas. Most Americans by population live in metropolitan areas. They don't live in the middle of nowhere. Yes, some people do, but 80%+ of Americans live in very much urban areas. So we can exclude the <20% of Americans from this "we should have decent public transit" debate if you would like, I am fine with that. The Netherlands actually built out a lot of car-focused infrastructure in the mid-century just like the US. The difference is that they have since pushed that development mindset out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTSNWDTE888 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTSNWDTE888 This idea that America "can't go back" is a farce, because it makes an incorrect assumption that other countries never grew in population and therefore never built any new suburbs after the spread of the automobile. The Netherlands grew from 11 million people in 1960 to 18 million people today. Do you think the Netherlands never built a new neighborhood in that time period? This doesn't mean that people in the Netherlands or Japan don't own cars. Far from it. What it does mean is that driving a personally owned car in a one-person-per-car paradigm isn't necessary to survive and thrive in those places. Transit-oriented development means that they have other options. You are concerned about how difficult the climate is, here is how Singapore stays walkable despite hot and rainy climate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 Here is how people use public transit in Yakutsk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 I will also inform you that buses are indeed air conditioned and have heaters, just like a car. You can think of a bus as a car but much larger and fits more people inside. Why don't people in Dallas want to transfer buses? I transfer buses all the time in my city, or transfer from bus to train. That doesn't mean it takes me a long time go get around. I will tell you why: because demand is induced. There isn't some innate human nature where we all automatically prefer cars and have decided by evolution that anything less than a car is less ideal. No, demand is instead induced: if there's a place for me to ride a bike or walk or take a bus/train to my destination, and it feels safe and comfortable, I might just choose that just because it exists. Induced demand is especially prevalent in the US because personal vehicles are heavily subsidized over other options. The US government engages in forever wars to secure low oil prices, subsidized by federal tax dollars. Gas taxes are underfunded and don't keep up with inflation to ensure driving is offered below the real cost. Society subsidizes traffic deaths as nobody, not even insurance companies, compensate society when a 19 year old dies in a drunk driving crash and all the economic activity they would have generated over their lifespan evaporates. Personally owned cars at a ratio of one car per person are literally the most expensive way to get around on this planet until you get into stuff like private jets and helicopters. They're even more expensive than buying a plane ticket between many destinations. You say that people in Dallas don't want to take the bus, but if it was available, reliable, had a frequent schedule, and got them to everywhere they needed to be, they probably would be very excited to ditch the $5,000-10,000 annual total cost of vehicle ownership. And, while public transit in Texas has a long way to go, Dallas Area Rapid Transit has ridership of 52,823,800 annually. If you are saying that people in Dallas don't want to transfer buses, I'd have to ask where those 52 million rides are coming from?
- infecto 3mo ago
  I don’t think you touched any of the critical issues. You’re also incredibly rude for no reason. - Dallas is much much hotter than the Netherlands. - Overall Netherlands population density (including rural areas) is higher than DFW metro. - For most of the cities in the YouTube video shared they are a few miles by a few miles. The length of a typical Dallas frontage road. It makes sense to walk and bike in those small hamlets. Going back to density, you are right the Netherlands moved back from a car centric life but that did not change population density before or after. Most cities in the Netherlands are a multiple of DFW so you have this tough argument. What works in the Netherlands is not necessarily a solution for DFW. You would need to rebuild the city to be denser, have more businesses located together and then build out transit while ignoring that it’s too hot for a good portion of the year to ride a bike or walk around outside. My back of napkin math ended up with 30k sq ft per person in DFW compared to 20k sq ft per person in all of the Netherlands. I think Waymo is a great step in the right direction.
- vel0city 3mo ago
  > If the Netherlands is the size of the Dallas metro area, then why isn't the Dallas metro area like the Netherlands? Dallas-Fort Worth has over 8 million people in it, it's not like it's a drastically smaller population than the Netherlands. EDIT: Your statement of "its not like its drastically smaller population" is also just not true. 8 is not about the same as 18. I ended up replying thinking they were closer without realizing this as well. So less than half the population on about the same area. Having half the average density before even thinking about how dense the clustering is really makes quite a difference! Density of where people actually choose to live, which you've already alluded to with the things you're saying. Similar population, similar kind of area. But look at both on a satellite image. One actually has a lot of farmland for that area. Where people actually live its often a good bit denser. Why is it like that? That's what people have voted for, that's what they've supported. Try actually talking to the people who live there and suggest to them they should live in a zero lot line home or a townhouse with shared walls. > Why don't people in Dallas want to transfer buses? I wouldn't mind transferring busses if there was good service. But instead transferring busses around here usually means sitting in the baking hot sun on a concrete bench in >100F heat for a half hour. If the next bus was in like 5 minutes, I probably wouldn't care. It also often means you're probably taking a very suboptimal route instead of a direct route to the place. So not only do you have an additional wait to change busses, you then also have a much longer path to ride. And you're likely going to end up going a slower average speed, as you're having to stop to pickup/dropoff people along this longer route as opposed to just continuing on. For instance, it'll take me over an hour to go to where the new Dallas Stars arena will be in Plano as I need to make 4-5 bus changes. Its a 15 minute drive although it will probably be way more than that once 20k people try to leave at once. Now, obviously, busses can change routes. They can get more busses and do more routes. They can get more busses and offer faster service. There's a lot of potential solutions to this. It doesn't have to be that way. But in the end getting people to put more funding into it is pretty challenging. > if there's a place for me to ride a bike or walk or take a bus/train to my destination, and it feels safe and comfortable, I might just choose that just because it exists. Its often not very comfortable riding a bicycle in 110F heat index when you've got this air-conditioned box you could ride in sitting in your garage.

vel0city 3mo ago

> This is entirely because of the design of Haarlem and its pedestranized city-center Practically all of those towns have had a focus of building walkable/bikeable spaces with dense mini-downtown areas for at least decades if not longer. Its not impossible for this to eventually happen to these already built US suburbs, but a lot of these places were explicitly designed around everyone coming and going by car. A lot of these suburbs weren't even planned with the idea of pedestrians ever leaving the neighborhood. They'll have few actual entrances and exits, with those rarely connected to any kind of infrastructure outside other than busy roads. > fast-growing suburban locations like those in Texas can change course right now and decide to build in a way that’s transit-oriented A lot of those fast-growing areas are in cities with zero transit and often don't even neighbor a city with any real transit. Look at places like Princeton, Celina, Melissa, Anna, etc. They border towns like Frisco, McKinney, Prosper, and more which also aren't connected to DART. All of these towns actively shun public transit. A lot of home buyers in these areas just don't care about transit access at all, with many actively opposed to transit. So what, maybe Princeton does decide to make some transit. Ok, where do I go with that? From one suburban house to another without a car? A bit easier time getting to Little Ceasars, Taco Bell, and Walmart? Its entirely disconnected from practically any other place the people there actually need to go, because its not like many people actually work in Princeton or Celina. So it'll take a lot of additional development and rethinking of what these places are and how they ultimately function for transit to actually make sense there. I'm not saying public transit and walkability/bikeability can't possibly happen in North Texas. I like biking around, I ride DART when it makes sense, and I do push for expansion of bike infrastructure and good DART access. But I also see the heat index for today is 105F, it'll be about 110F on Friday. I don't think I'll be riding a bike to get the groceries. I don't think the Netherlands often gets weeks where the heat index is >100F practically every day. And finally, it will take changing a lot of minds about public transit to get buy-in from a lot of the population to actually do it.

Grombobulous 3mo ago
Hot weather transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_SJ1NBMrH0 Cold weather transit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvtnToQyi0 Transit is small towns and suburbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg I would remind all of us that our built environment is not an inevitability, it is a continuous choice, especially in a rapidly expanding state like Texas. In 1960, 8 million fewer people lived in the Netherlands, and cars definitely existed and were mainstream back then. This idea that the Netherlands is special and this magical thing they've done can't be done anywhere else is a weak one in my mind. It's never too late to change course. It's not a black and white choice where we must suddenly give up our vehicles and never drive, it's more like a gradual increase in the number of trips that are feasible and enjoyable without a car. I know people who lived in Cleveland who started using the bus to get to work when the HealthLine BRT line was completed. They still drive basically everywhere else, but that one bus line changed their daily habits dramatically.

bluGill 3mo ago

> Then why does public transit work in other countries with suburbs? To give a clear answer that others have beat around: it is the network. Transit works when you can get places. When you can get many places it doesn't work. The real question is how can Dallas get there - which is a hard problem is you need a massive network investment before it becomes useful to many people and so there is a lot of upfront investment needed first. The US has a poor history with getting a good return on investment for transit. In general even where the investment does get good ridership, the amount spent was way out of line from what anyone else in the world would have spent for that system.

infecto 3mo ago
That trivializes the problem too much, part of the equation but you also have to have a population that actually wants it along with high enough density that it makes sense. For places like Dallas I struggle with all of the above. Sure some percentage would use it if it was flawless but I think far too few would.
- bluGill 3mo ago
  Dallas has plenty of density as proven elsewhere. As for wanting it, people don't want what they don't know. How they would act if something existed is very different from what they say.
  - infecto 3mo ago
    Proven where? DFW is not as dense as you might think. Last mile is an incredibly hard problem to solve when it comes to transit and you add in unfavorable weather and it’s a not go. Good luck though! Just sharing as a member of the DFW community has taken dart and bikes a lot. The metro is absolutely not dense.