Build it (well) and they will come (to use transit instead of SOVs*)
February 27, 2020 10:34 AM   Subscribe

If you've traveled or lived in different major cites around the world, or browsed lists like The Top 10 Best Public Transit Systems in the World (World Atlas, 2018), the fact that Asian and European cities are considered to have better transit systems than cities in the U.S. is no surprise. Jonathan English wrote a pair of lengthy articles for Citylab in 2018, looking at the history of transit in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Why Did America Give Up on Mass Transit? (Don't Blame Cars.) Streetcar, bus, and metro systems have been ignoring one lesson for 100 years: Service drives demand. Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S. -- The widespread failure of American mass transit is usually blamed on cheap gas and suburban sprawl. But the full story of why other countries succeed is more complicated.

*SOVs = Single Occupant Vehicles.

Bonus link: Maps compare BART’s footprint to other major transit systems around the world -- look at the scale and scope of San Francisco Bay Area's rapid transit network in comparison to other transit networks.
posted by filthy light thief (42 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
The widespread failure of American mass transit is usually blamed on cheap gas and suburban sprawl.

That's not true.

There's also the racism and white supremacy as well.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:37 AM on February 27, 2020 [48 favorites]


Comparing most American metro systems to those elsewhere, it really looks to me that American metros are oriented around Suburb to City Center transit. European and Asian systems seem to be oriented on getting people around within the city.
posted by circleofconfusion at 10:42 AM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]


The widespread failure of American mass transit is usually blamed on cheap gas and suburban sprawl.

That's not true.

There's also the racism and white supremacy as well.


Hey now there was also open conspiracies of oil, rubber, and steel manufacturers to encourage car use and sprawl.
posted by The Whelk at 10:47 AM on February 27, 2020 [12 favorites]


And after reading the article, I noticed that not once did the author mention racism. (Seriously, I checked - not once was the word used.) It is impossible to talk about the state of American public transit without talking about racism - suburbs intentionally refused transit connections out of racial prejudice, seeing them as allowing "the wrong sort" to enter the suburban community.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:48 AM on February 27, 2020 [22 favorites]


Oh, BART. You can't really compare BART to the NYC subway (or any major metropolitan subway) as it is more of a regional rail service with a subway form factor. Within SF BART is only good for getting from the Embarcadero to the Mission. MUNI is a better comparison. But no matter how you slice it, public transport in SF is sub par.

Singapore is unique in that the country is so small that mass transit can service the entire footprint. The MRT really is great.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:49 AM on February 27, 2020 [9 favorites]


Yeah the first levittowns had express racial lending laws, cars where a way of de facto segregating IW Nike also allowing city landlords to control more and more slum land. Liberal suburbs have zoning laws designed to exclude and enforcesegration.

Beverly Hills fought tooth and nail to prevent a subway stop in thier area cause it would “bring crime”.

The private religious school movement only really took off once busing and Intergration was mandated" it’s really not a hidden theme in our urban planning.
posted by The Whelk at 10:53 AM on February 27, 2020 [10 favorites]


Living in the Bay Area, and having been a user of the London, Paris, and Chicago systems, I’m struck by what is probably a geographical illusion on the first slide. Paris seems so small when plopped down on the map of the Bay Area. London is huge and looks it here. But it seems a lot bigger there. The main problem in the Bay Area is that there are at least five bus systems, two with light rail, three commuter train systems, ferries, and BART. All these systems are essentially independent. The only good thing is that they all take the Clipper Card loaded with cash. But as far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be regional planning in terms of transfers, scheduling, etc. If a transit system has special passes, you have to load all these on your card as there is no universal pass. Even on a single system, like MUNI in San Francisco, every bus and train seems to be running on its own schedule which makes planning a trip with transfers difficult. Getting off a bus at an intersection, with the desired bus across the street, it’s still blind luck if you will be able to get on it. I think the drivers enjoy disappointing people frantically running across the street against a red light. The big problem is that transit systems aren’t really very good systems at least here in the Bay Area. London and Paris were great to get around (as long as there were no labor disputes.) Given that these European systems are old, like the NYC and Boston systems, which I’ve used and were good, I think these older systems were designed to move people all around an area but out west, it was just to move people from the burbs to the city, which was where they thought everybody wanted to go. The joke about BART is that after almost fifty years of operation it’s finally making inroads into Silicon Valley where all the jobs are. As a frequent user of mass transit, I just put up with it. Can it be better?
posted by njohnson23 at 11:24 AM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive.

This strikes me as wrong. First, US cities were designed around wide public spaces, which had real impacts on density and walking, even back in the time before cars. This meant that density in big cities was achieved though tall buildings and crowded slum-like conditions so it's not real surprising that people wanted to escape that. And that nothing had to be given up (at first) to make room for cars. The space was already there.

Street car suburbs came up during this time as well, but the street cars themselves were an unsustainable amenity due to the low density - if you can find one that lasted more than 10-15 years, it's an outlier. Also why so many were sold off to GM for pennies on the dollar.

Also the timeline on cars is wrong. 25% of downtown LA and 15% of downtown Chicago buildings were leveled for parking between 1925-1940 which means that cars already had a strong foothold during that time period.

Then you add racism, red lining, and highways, and you get today.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:28 AM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


One of the most interesting things I learned writing my final paper (on how urban design interacts with classism and racism) for a history of urbanism class was that Beavercreek, OH - the Dayton suburb where John Crawford III was shot and killed by police at a Walmart - was also the site of a contentious (and often racist) debate about whether the mall should have bus service.

Crawford was shot about .2 miles from the new bus stop, about 8 months after the new buses started running.

That taught me a thing about how deeply overt state violence and the more covert violence of institutional racism are intertwined to support de facto segregation, now that they can't get away with supporting de jure segregation.
posted by Jeanne at 11:37 AM on February 27, 2020 [11 favorites]


Comparing most American metro systems to those elsewhere, it really looks to me that American metros are oriented around Suburb to City Center transit. European and Asian systems seem to be oriented on getting people around within the city.

Mmmm... not really. DC is sort of like that, but a lot of people still use it to get around the city. NYC, Philly, LA, Chicago are definitely not for suburb-to-city travel. (The London Underground is definitely suburban but also used for intracity trips.)

It doesn't really matter if a metro system serves the suburbs as well as the city. What matters for a metro system are frequency and stop spacing. It's why BART is more regional rail than metro--the stop spacing is too far apart and the frequencies suck.
posted by Automocar at 11:39 AM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


But the full story of why other countries succeed is more complicated.

Am I missing something or is the answer provided just "the US is unwilling to fund public goods," which, yes, is motivated by racism.
posted by PMdixon at 11:43 AM on February 27, 2020 [9 favorites]


NYC, Philly, LA, Chicago are definitely not for suburb-to-city travel.

LA's got more now than they did when I lived there, but the trains are still pretty sparse, and concentrated on getting people to surrounding cities (Santa Monica, Anaheim, Hollywood) rather than around the city in the way NYC does.

I live in Boston, and our trains are pretty darn good by North American standards, but we still have a bunch of spokes and not much crossover at all. Going cross-town? You're either going into town and changing lines downtown, or taking a bus (or 3).

Quality transit has frequency, stop spacing, but also crossing lines. That's what makes NYC (and the Asian/Euro systems) work differently from the more frustrating systems.
posted by explosion at 12:12 PM on February 27, 2020 [4 favorites]


I work for BART, the reasons for poor transit (and our own failings which are many) are complicated and varied but definitely includes racism, classism, political forces, etc. There are actually over 20 (depends on definition) transit agencies operating in the SF Bay Area--roughly grouped under the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (they administer Federal, State, and local funds and run the area-wide Clipper organization). Each agency has their own work force and contracts, boards of directors, etc. which also makes coordinating schedules really difficult.

There is a new group called "Seamless Bay Area" that has taken on the huge job of trying come up with a plan to coordinate and consolidate the agencies. I wish them well. My one major objection is that they want to create another board/commission, etc. to oversee the process and the money. I don't think we need another layer of bureaucracy.
posted by agatha_magatha at 12:15 PM on February 27, 2020 [15 favorites]


It is impossible to talk about the state of American public transit without talking about racism - suburbs intentionally refused transit connections out of racial prejudice

The past tense isn't needed here. Looking at you Georgetown / DC Metro.

public transport in SF is sub par.

I hear this all the time, but I think it's such a relative statement as to be meaningless. If you grew up in New York, sure. I grew up on a chicken farm. It's pretty handy, even knowing its limitations. I haven't owned a car since 2003, and since then I've lived in DC, LA, and SF. Each place has its failings, but LA ranks much, much lower on my list of sub par transit systems. agatha_magatha, thanks for the insight--I had no idea about the complex haze of transit agencies!

I'm always just a tad surprised to see Berlin so high in these lists, but I know it's because the place I'm usually staying/working in Berlin is one of those weird blind spots. Loads of new construction means a long walkaround to get up onto the right elevated platform, which isn't the most accessible way to arrange a transit stop. Paris and London seem much better through my little lens.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 12:22 PM on February 27, 2020


LA's got more now than they did when I lived there, but the trains are still pretty sparse, and concentrated on getting people to surrounding cities (Santa Monica, Anaheim, Hollywood) rather than around the city in the way NYC does.

This is due in part to the fact that the core of LA is pretty much office space for the most part.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:49 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


One thing to note is that Californian cities started out sprawled because they HAD to, since they are in earthquake zones. And then the rest of the country followed California's lead. We're in a mess, but human awfulness wasn't the only factor that lead us to it.
posted by ocschwar at 12:56 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


LA's balkanization has more to do with racism and greed than earthquakes.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:58 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


Agree that SF BART is more of a feeder system than a metro-area system. For that we (in SF) rely on Muni. As a bus-centered system it's actually pretty good! (IMO, and I realize that people love to hate it.) The busses have sensible routes and good frequency.

The thing going against us is that the busses are constrained to our city's weirdly obsessive (but nevertheless inconsistent!) grid system. So if, say, you want to go from the SE of the city to the NW of the city, you are in for a weird route and probably a transfer or two.

There are parts of the city I never visit (e,g, North Beach) because the Muni routes just make it too hard.

I was about to speculate that subways systems like the Paris Metro work better not just because they're underground but because they're not constrained by the street grid. But IIRC most of the Metro's network was built using cut-and-cover (which is great because the stations aren't a million miles underground like the RER). It's more a result of the fact that the preexisting street grid was already organic and went, in a way, point-to-point.

It would be interesting to learn whether the subway systems of the late 1800's were tied into other infrastructure improvements like water, gas and sewage. It would be surprising to learn that it wasn't. But... at some point a lot of that other infrastructure interfered with cut-and-cover subways. It's a lot more costly to build a subway when there's already a lot of stuff down there.

Anyway, in addition to a lot of really good commentary here on why the US system is bad, I would add that grid-system street layouts (Manhattan is a special-case exception) indirectly hinder effective mass transit.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:01 PM on February 27, 2020


Anyway, in addition to a lot of really good commentary here on why the US system is bad, I would add that grid-system street layouts (Manhattan is a special-case exception) indirectly hinder effective mass transit.

I've not studied enough, but the majority of the US urbanist/planners really love the grid (especially small block grids like Portland) and nearly every city west of the Mississippi is built on 1X1 mile gridded streets, so I'm not sure it's something that is going to be re-evaluated much less solved any time soon.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:32 PM on February 27, 2020


LA's got more now than they did when I lived there, but the trains are still pretty sparse, and concentrated on getting people to surrounding cities (Santa Monica, Anaheim, Hollywood) rather than around the city in the way NYC does.


The NYC subway does the same thing, though. Just sub in Santa Monica for Brooklyn. It's the same thing. It's not like LA is building a subway to Orange County.
posted by Automocar at 1:39 PM on February 27, 2020


One thing to note is that Californian cities started out sprawled because they HAD to, since they are in earthquake zones. And then the rest of the country followed California's lead. We're in a mess, but human awfulness wasn't the only factor that lead us to it.

These earthquake risks must be the same reason Tokyo is so famously sprawled out, I assume.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 2:25 PM on February 27, 2020 [8 favorites]


grid-system street layouts (Manhattan is a special-case exception) indirectly hinder effective mass transit

Except the grid is said to be great for transit in Barcelona with the superblocks. Also, if there aren't any diagonal roads for buses to run on, there aren't any diagonals for cars to run on, so buses aren't specially disadvantaged.
posted by clew at 2:29 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


When I lived in suburban Atlanta in the early 90's, there was a vote to bring MARTA into Gwinnett County. It failed. But when polled about why they voted no, openly saying "it would bring minorities into the area" was something like the third most common response.
posted by thecjm at 2:51 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


One thing I’ve noticed when home to visit family in the Philadelphia suburbs is that, if I use SEPTA to get into or around the city, I have to accept certain compromises compared to what I’m used to. On SEPTA regional rail, anything within ten minutes late OR EARLY is considered “on time,” creating a situation where you have to be sure to arrive at least ten minutes before the scheduled train time, but may have to wait as much as twenty minutes for an “on-time” train — a far cry from the usual standard of “people will start just going to the transit stop casually, without feeling like they have to plan around the schedule, when something reliably comes every fifteen minutes or so.” And then there was the time I missed a train within the city late at night because it arrived several minutes early and — as I watched from the ticket gate — just passed through because there was nobody on the platform. Had to wait for like forty minutes on the platform for the next train that night 🙃
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:55 PM on February 27, 2020 [4 favorites]


There is a new group called "Seamless Bay Area" that has taken on the huge job of trying come up with a plan to coordinate and consolidate the agencies.

I'm so glad to see this happening and hope it's well executed.

My wife and I went on vacation to SF a while back and got a City Pass. The biggest benefit to the city pass was that we could use any form of public transit in SF except BART and we just had to flash the thing. It was goddamn amazing* and if I could pay one, even somewhat exorbitant, monthly fee to get something like that same experience it may well entice us to move there.

*Especially for the cable cars, those hills are crazy steep so we'd ride the car even just a block or two
posted by VTX at 3:01 PM on February 27, 2020


thecjm: Yes, and one of the opponents of expanding MARTA said that black people were going to come into Gwinnett County to steal televisions. Which still sticks in my mind, years after I read that quote, because HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO BRING A TELEVISION ONTO A CITY BUS?

(Especially in the early nineties when everybody had CRTs!)
posted by Jeanne at 3:04 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


The city pass sounds great, but it also sounds like a time-bound Muni-only pass. The Clipper card is fine as far as it goes: it will pay cash fares for any (most?) transit systems in the area and will also validate you for any time-bound passes you might have (say, monthly Muni). But the one thing that it will decidedly not do is give you a way to buy a time-bound pass for all of (or even some of) the transit systems in the area. Muni is one thing, BART is another, SamTrans is yet another, etc.

On a myopic view, you know, the different transit agencies don't have to care about that. At least they can all use the same card. Good, right? But a commuter travelling from the South Bay might have to make connections across three different services. Having to subscribe to each service separately is not only expensive, it's a pain in the ass. But if they joined forces they'd increase ridership and revenues and, more importantly, achieve their objective of improving transit efficiency through each of their respective areas.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:25 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


it was the republicans, right? i’m going with it was the republicans.
posted by mwhybark at 3:58 PM on February 27, 2020


I lived in two different parts of Japan (Tokyo and Nara) in the early 90s. One major difference about Japan's systems is that rail companies are also major real estate and retail operations. When you ride the train in Japan there are kiosks, little shops, convenience stores, department stores, and supermarkets within a minutes' walk of any sizeable station, and often within the station itself. In many places the city or town is built around the train system. This made it very easy to live my life without a car. Out in the burbs there are extensive bus networks that are integrated with trains in a hub-and-spoke system, which contributes to ease of use.

The article mentions services frequency - I never really thought about how often buses and trains ran in Japan but I usually didn't have to think about schedules unless I was running late (to avoid the last train/bus) or traveling long distances in a single day (seishun 18-kippu).

You just cannot compare that with struggling to get from place to place in Los Angeles.
posted by technodelic at 4:14 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


I frankly suspect that the various Bay Area transit agencies consider themselves to be mortal enemies of each other and that they intentionally plan their various systems to NOT work well with people changing between fiefdoms.

They must all hate each other, and are simply using the public as pawns in their weird transit-planning battles.
posted by aramaic at 4:22 PM on February 27, 2020


Municipalities have to actually be willing to fund, and their citizenry to use, public transit. US cities often have one or the other, rarely both. (Also racism. But that's only one part of the equation).

I commute and heavily use one of the most functional metro transit systems in the country and it's a fucking dumpster fire half the time. And I know everything could be so much better than this.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:26 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


Sorry, but New York ranks higher on this list than Tokyo because... it’s been in movies?

Like Doctor Fedora, visits home are always a chance to re-establish my appreciation for the trains here. I remember waiting for the El in Chicago and realizing that there weren’t any posted train schedules anywhere on the platform, or being on a train that just stopped for about ten minutes between stations with no announcement. In Japan, the train service is reliable enough that announcements apologizing for a delay usually pop up if the train is more than a minute late. Clean trains, running regularly, nearly always on time, connected to a solid network of buses, moving millions of people a day.

One negative, aside from the ungodly crowding, is yeah, trains in Japan are expensive, but that is offset to some extent in that most employers pay for their workers transportation to and from work, separate from their wages, though some companies place limits on how much per month they’ll subsidize.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:59 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


In Japan, the train service is reliable enough that announcements apologizing for a delay usually pop up if the train is more than a minute late. Clean trains, running regularly, nearly always on time, connected to a solid network of buses, moving millions of people a day.

And the buses follow the schedule too. My wife's family in Japan lives a half-hour bus ride from the train station on an infrequent bus (maybe one every 20 minutes or so) and I know that if the schedule says the bus will be there at a certain time it will be there at that time give or take a minute. I'll contrast that with the TTC in Toronto where they have removed schedules from the bus stops and there will often be wait times of 20 minutes on a route where the service standard is 10 minutes or better.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:44 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


And yet, our situation in Toronto is still so much better than in comparable American cities that it's featured heavily in the article itself. (And I was chuffed at the call out - York Mills, yes, you do stand in the middle of a suburban wasteland! But you have some good feeder buses like the 96 Wilson!).

The whole discussion of Toronto in the article reminded me that while I have never had a car, I still haven't faced the same issues as an American who can't drive. I grew up assuming all American cities of a couple million would have buses that ran regularly. I grew up in a low density Toronto suburb also without a car - and it wasn't convenient, but my mom could get to work, and I could go to school downtown - and still come home stupidly late on a really safe, clean and (compared to a taxi) super cheap system.

Could our service be better? Of course! Decades of funding starvation (it's one of the least subsidized systems in North America) has led to a repair backlog and inability to handle growing demand.

But as the article points out: at least we have buses. We have 24 hour buses even in the far corners of the suburbs - I've ridden on them! - and service that is every 20 minutes, not every hour.

The TTC is like democracy - it sucks, but it's still better than a lot of alternatives.

We have what we have because we had the political will to build it. I am curious about the issue of race in Toronto and what role it has played (or not) in the provision of transit. Toronto is very different from many American cities - while it is very diverse (~50% people of colour), we didn't have the same pattern of white flight out of the centre into the suburbs - and with rising costs of housing, it's sort of the opposite: downtown has become richer and whiter and now our inner suburbs are much less white than downtown. The inner suburbs are also on average lower income, with more people who have no choice but to use transit. Service has been cut in some of these areas, but it's still there and - compared to American equivalents - quite good.

Maybe it would be better if the suburbs didn't also have the worst city councilors (like Grimes, Holyday or whatever Ford is ruling North Etobicoke now) who have actively campaigned against the needs of the communities they "represent".
posted by jb at 8:24 PM on February 27, 2020


I'm surprised to not see Chicago on this list. I used to live in L.A., and you had to have a car. I've been in Chicago for the last decade, and ride the L-trains daily. It's really awesome. Chicago has a pretty robust public transit system. Better than most in the U.S.
posted by MythMaker at 8:29 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


Kind of amazing that neither of those Citylab articles mentions Robert Moses even once.

Also, I love Chicago and have made extensive use of its transit system both when I lived there during high school and visiting since, but... on a recent visit, I was surprised to find that the Peterson Ave. bus (Peterson is a major east-west street on the North Side) stopped running relatively early in the evening.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:34 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


The TTC doesn't feel that special to me even within a Canadian context. The other cities I've lived in, Waterloo and Winnipeg, don't have subways but getting around on the bus felt about the same as the buses on the TTC. Winnipeg was better in a couple of ways - the drivers would wait a bit if another bus was running late so that people could make their transfers - and they had a free bus that took you from downtown to the Forks. Also the big heated bus shelters were literal life savers.

More importantly the buses did a good job of sticking to their schedule and as far as I'm concerned a bus being where it's supposed to be is the most important thing. If I can plan for the bus then I will do so, and the TTC installing GPS on the buses has definitely helped with that, but outside of peak hours there is absolutely no reason why buses shouldn't be running on and following a schedule. Not "10 minutes or better", which is a lie I am reminded of daily, but the bus will be here at this time. The same could be said for subways. There is no reason they can't stick to a schedule either.

Like fine, the TTC is like a Democracy, but other places have Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, so shouldn't we try to get on that?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 9:47 PM on February 27, 2020


I'm always just a tad surprised to see Berlin so high in these lists, but I know it's because the place I'm usually staying/working in Berlin is one of those weird blind spots.

As a Berliner I was surprised to see it at number one as well. Those weird blind spots, at times very poor accessibility, construction everywhere ... yet I can hardly think of a public transport system that I'd like to swap it out with.

I think it's because of the fact that, despite those blind spots, I can pick any random area on the map and be there within an hour or less, without needing to time my trip. I may need to transfer to a bus/ferry/tram/regional, and I'll probably need to climb some stairs and walk 10 minutes, but, unless it's 3am on a weekday, it's possible.

From my experience in many other cities there are often huge areas that are essentially no-go areas for public transport because of long transfer times or a lack of service. Those places essentially do not exist to the average visitor/commuter. Get an Uber instead seems to be the norm.

Spanish cities do public transport really well and I'm glad to see at least one on this list.
posted by romanb at 3:34 AM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


Even a Mobility Revolution Can’t Crack American Car Culture -- Ride-hailing and car-sharing were supposed to get us out of our own cars. They haven’t. (Joshua Brustein for Boomberg Businessweek, Feb. 27, 2020; republished by India Times)
There’s also little evidence the mobility industry has decreased the number of car owners—or the number of miles people drive. In research published in January, transportation consultant Bruce Schaller examined the top eight cities for ride-hailing since the mid-2000s. He found no statistically significant reduction in car ownership in any of them. Nationwide, the average number of vehicle miles traveled per person—a key stat if you’re concerned about carbon emissions—has risen about 8% in the past decade, according to federal statistics. Only seven states have seen declines over that period, and they’re not the ones with the dense cities favored by mobility startups. The biggest drop was in Oklahoma.

Hoping that fortunes could be made in helping accelerate the demise of traditional car ownership, venture capitalists took crash courses in urban planning and poured billions of dollars into various smartphone-enabled transportation innovations. They claimed common ground with government officials eager for the cleaner air and relief from congestion that would come from a reduction in car travel. Indeed, any serious response to climate change probably has to come with a reform of the transportation system, which accounted for 29% of carbon emissions in the U.S. in 2017, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Passenger cars and light-duty trucks produced more than half of transportation-related emissions.
[...]
The U.S. does have one mobility success story: Seattle. The share of residents driving to work dropped from 50.5% to 45% from 2012 to 2018, according to the city’s transportation department. This was accompanied by an increase in residents taking public transit or walking to work. According to the city and outside experts, these changes are the result of Seattle’s long-term investments in infrastructure and policies that have led to denser real estate development.
"Mobility disruptors" aren't making a dent in U.S. personal vehicle ownership numbers, but *gasp* investments in public transit do.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:25 AM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]


People knew right from the beginning that alleged "ride-sharing" wasn't going to do much to solve these problems. Neither will self-driving cars, even if (if competently-handled) they will help solve a number of other problems. Jarrett Walker has been pointing out the basic physics forever, and it was entirely predictable that a commercial implementation of ride-sharing, especially a heavily-subsidized one, would lead to an increase, rather than a decrease, in the number of trips.
posted by praemunire at 10:02 AM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]


If your primary use of land around your transit stations is car parking, you are not comparable to urban metro systems.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:45 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


When I lived in suburban Atlanta in the early 90's, there was a vote to bring MARTA into Gwinnett County. It failed. But when polled about why they voted no, openly saying "it would bring minorities into the area" was something like the third most common response.

Hey, we did that in 2019, too. For the exact same reasons. Except now, Gwinnett is the most diverse county in the southeastern US. But the white supremacists still control the government (because a lot of the new residents are not yet citizens).
posted by hydropsyche at 3:08 PM on February 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


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