boosting safety, convenience, & feasibility of walking, biking, transit
May 25, 2016 10:28 AM   Subscribe

 
So good cheap transit is better at reducing car dependence than cycling investments, which makes a certain amount of sense.

This part of the conclusion stood out:
Travel behaviour and land-use patterns in the suburban parts of their metropolitan areas have remained car-oriented. Transport and land-use policies in suburban areas are usually beyond the control of city governments. Instead, they have been determined by state and local governments less focused on urban development and typically facilitating car use and lower-density development.
Compared with an article about zoning in the US I was reading today:
Local groups are put in the position of opposing a measure to speed the construction of affordable housing because it institutionalizes a broader kind of cost-benefit analysis, removing local discretion over every single project. (Of course, local governments still have the power to downzone, if they believe that the zoning they have already decided on is unacceptable, and the state law would not override that decision.) It’s also another data point suggesting that solutions to our “shortage of cities,” and resulting housing crunch, might be most likely to come from states, rather than city governments.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:33 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


So good cheap transit is better at reducing car dependence than cycling investments, which makes a certain amount of sense.

For Zurich at least, convenient public transport in combination with a very aggressive parking strategy (free parking hardly exists, parking capacity intentionally under-dimensioned). I have about 20 km from home to work, and it's generally a bigger hassle to take the car than to take a train, and much slower during peak hours.

Cannot find the official program document right now, but there's a phrasing in there along the lines of "our goal is to move people, not boxes of metal." They're pretty good at it.
posted by effbot at 3:32 PM on May 26, 2016


« Older I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe   |   Lesson well learned Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments