This is all fine for city dwellers, but for those of us living rural, 4busses per hrs all day and night would be waste. But a mix perhaps
A mix is what's needed. Trains between major metropols, busses for smaller places. Less frequent busses for yet smaller places and no busses for the most remote locations.
I have used public transit to several remote locations in Scandinavia, it's surprisingly doable, but it takes planning and often waiting because there's only one bus a day, the school bus (but anyone with a ticket can get a ride).
Still, having the option to travel with public transport and have the opportunity to read my book, doze off or just relax is amazing.
Most people live in cities, trains to rural areas can happen over time.
Ye - fuck’em if they dont live in cities. They can wait for trains or drive their combine harvesters. How sustainable would building rail to cater for 4500 people over 40km?
That's the wrong sentiment and not what I was aiming for. It is not all or nothing.
public transit isnt supposed to be a profit center for companies, it is a public service. making sure transit runs to rural areas would allow rural people to get to town without having to drive.
if there was a transit service that was either equal to or faster than driving and inexpensive to use, there would be no point in driving to town.
that town can have a train station for inter-city transit to allow for longer rides for business or pleasure.
imagine not needing a car or plane, and being able to go on a distant vacation : D
I live in a rural town, that has two universities near by, thus a thriving downtown area surrounded by forest and trails. There is some density.
In my pipe dream, they would ban vehicles downtown, and we'd have a trolly that goes from the strip mall (Walmart) down the route, through downtown, and to the end where there are three more strip malls. Make the whole area walkable and bikeable. Have a park and ride at either end.
Them my son could ride his bike to school, I wouldn't need to get in a car to go to the grocery store that is a half mile from my house, instead crossing a 50mph road, it would be walksble, and my kid could go to the park on his own.
There are so many places to go within two miles of my mostly old folk trailer park, but all of it currently is inaccessible without a car or crossing basically highways.
New England is an interesting place, we have high (well maybe more) medium density, and rural areas mixed together everywhere. We could do better.
Highspeed rail would be great. Im 2 hours drive from my states largest city, where tons of cool events happen, and I never ever go, because it's a bitch to drive. There is no direct public transport, so I lose out. Even if the train ran twice a day it would be worth it.
England, the UK, have rural areas with trains. Why can't we?
I want a better distribution of walkable white collar work and more work-from-home jobs.
I used to live within easy walking distance to the light rail, and work was easy walking distance from the other stop. The stops were 20 miles apart through the center of the city.
I could drive there, around the beltway, around the whole damn west side in 30 minutes.
The train was over an hour on a good day.
I tried it:
Day one, there was some mid day stuff happening in town, the train was PACKED and spent 10m at every stop, that day was 2 hours.
Had a few decent days, then they hit a car. We were forced to stay on the train for an hour in summer heat, no AC.
Some days the train was every 10. Some days every 30, some days 2 in a row. It was supposed to change frequency with time, it changed rather randomly.
By the end of my first month, there was an outage, so they did a bus bridge. That trip home was 4 hours.
I know that the light rail here was just substandard. but that didn't make it any easier.
Trains need a specific ecosystem and population density to thrive. In the US, we seem to have an issue that installing train stops connecting suburbs to significant cities brings crime to the suburbs and pushes out boutique shops from the stops. Is there any of that in other countries, or does the train increase commerce in an area?
It sounds like your city does not prioritize trains at all
train was PACKED and spent 10m at every stop
add more wagons or increase frequency for example
then they hit a car
intersections with car traffic are always a problem and they should be minimized
train was every 10. Some days every 30, some days 2 in a row
i can bet the tracks share the same space with regular roads and signaling does not prioritize public transit, which usually leads to this sort of inconsistent schedule
that didn’t make it any easier
that's usually the excuse used to cut funding to public transit instead of the other way around: "see it doesnt work, why waste money on it". They never mention how it's been underfunded for decades, how cars are always prioritized, and the success cases seen all around the world where it works properly
does the train increase commerce in an area?
stations are usually prime real state for commerce and housing due to all the foot traffic it brings. Just look at stations in Japan, they are basically big shopping malls, without all the unnecessary parking, and high towers all around for housing
my town has the worst god damn trains, i swear to fuck they're not even trying
Anyway:
trains need a specific ecosystem and population density to thrive
Which is totally not just some unverified just-so story people fucking say because it sounds nice, in spite of all evidence.
Crazy proposal: Those billionaire cities, prepare to run one and design it around public transport.
With a million people, each saving $10,000, that would be $10 billion. Start saving and start finding those people now.
I know many don't like this but i'll say my opinion again:
Public transport should be built on the coastlines, which coincidentally also are blue states, because there's a high population density and public transport makes sense there because of the frequency.
Public transport does not and never will make sense in the midwestern and rural areas of US. The major reason for this is that people there simply largely (70% of people) don't want it. You can't get something through against the will of the local population. Just deal with it. You won't be able to take a train from the East Coast to the West Coast, you'll still have to fly (or drive) that distance.
All this 'public transit not work for the rurals' shit i keep hearing repeated just seems like something you say to make what has happened so far seem somewhat reasonable and just, a statement of hope and denial, not anything supported by history¹, not anything derived from deep analysis of available options and methods², and not anything an expert told you³.
Please stop repeating it without evidence.
¹because it's not. Quite the opposite.
²im not a serious transit nerd and theres shit obvious to me that you people miss every time
³because they wouldn't
I think the issue goes well beyond technical terms, where it would probably be doable.
The issue is of a fundamental nature: The right to self-determination. You cannot make states install public transport that don't want it.
That's just how a society works.
I want flying cars. Fuck trains. Build nuclear powered flying drone-like cars, what's the fucking problem?
The tram in edinburgh scotland was awesome when I visited.
Look at something like the podbike and imagine that as a self driving micro taxi that goes 50 kmh max. Little embedded energy, material and only needs small batteries and incredibly energy efficient because of aerodynamics (slimmer). Energy efficient even compared to trains or busses, especially in areas or times with lower utilization.
If you want to eliminate cars and make mass transit work as energy efficient as possible, you NEED self driving single seater cars (or double seaters with face to face).
Your proposal sounds a lot like a car, but then slower and self-driving.
Yeah but a car build with bicycle parts. Drastically less energy, recyclable and environmentally sustainable. Build a state owned factory to build a million of these micro cars for the big cities and ban all cars. It's technologically feasible right now and it would be more luxurious for people. You need to add a little bit of honey to your environmentalism lol.
Come to Seoul~~~
Honestly, I want both. I live in Germany and my city has pretty decent public transit. But there are still way too many cars in the city, most streets have parking spaces on both sides, leaving only a small sidewalk. I want people to not be dependent on owning cars anymore. I want personal cars in the city to be replaced by self-driving cabs that you can just order when you need them. Imagine how cool that would be. There would be centralized (underground??) self-driving car storages and if you need a car, you just order one via an app and they just come to wherever you are autonomously and drive you wherever you want to go. You could basically get rid of all public parking spaces, it would be awesome.
I can see a lot of possible futures if self-driving cars become common.
In some, people use self-driving taxis whenever they need a car. In places like NYC where owning a car is a real hassle, self-driving cars mean you can ditch that annoyance and still enjoy the benefits of a car when you need one. That means urban living is much more popular, and high-rise building don't need to be built with obscene amounts of parking attached. Because nobody has to park their car when they're not using it, parking spaces and parking lots completely disappear. This opens up space for bike lanes or other uses. Because nobody has to worry about parking anymore, pedestrian malls are more common. People can just be dropped off and picked up in a small area nearby. In this scenario, mass transit might also be more common. People could take self-driving cabs from their homes or workplaces to the nearest transit hub, switch over to mass transit, and then get a self-driving cab on the other end to get to wherever they're going. This would be less convenient than taking a car the whole way, but if the pricing was right, and the mass transit was nice enough, people might want to save money this way. This would work especially well if you have things like express subway lines that go very quickly between two very popular spots.
Unfortunately, there's the other end of the spectrum. In this one, people decide they want to own their self-driving cars. The fact that they can get to work, working while the car drives, means they want to live out in the middle of nowhere. So, instead of reducing urban sprawl it makes it much worse. Because everyone owns their own car, you still need lots of parking for the self-driving cars to use while the owner is at work. One possible benefit of this is that you don't need the parking right next to the associated building, so at least you can do away with parking scattered everywhere, ruining cities. OTOH, you will end up with some dystopian hellscape parking structures where 10k cars wait for their owners to call.
It could get even worse too. If the rich all move deeper into the suburbs and self-driving cars make traffic more efficient, I could easily see cities passing laws that give cars much more priority even than they already have. Jaywalking might be considered an even bigger crime because not only are you interfering with the driving of one or two human drivers, you're disrupting the algorithm-optimized flow of traffic.
Very interesting thoughts, thank you. I would guess that the percentage of people owning their car would decline rather than increase, especially in the cities, but I had never considered the factor that the travel time itself will be less inconvenient and people might be okay with longer commute times. I guess it's possible that overall, these two factors more or less cancel out, and then the number of cars would stay the same but they would move more to the suburbs and rural areas, and out of the cities. That still doesn't sound so bad.
Any way, I don't think self-driving cars should replace public transport, but complement it. Politics and society need to steer development in that direction. While I personally look forward to self-driving cars, currently my energy goes into fighting for better bike infrastructure und better and cheaper public transport. If we're lucky, we'll find a way for all these modes of transportation to form an intertwined and accessible network that is efficient and sustainable. We should keep trying to make it happen.
but they would move more to the suburbs and rural areas, and out of the cities. That still doesn't sound so bad.
It sounds bad for the city cores though. I like cities and I especially like cities with dense cores that combine good walkable areas with great transit. Tokyo is a prime example. Some people still drive in Tokyo, but a lot of people use the amazing mass transit system there. The end result for Tokyo is that mass transit hubs become these amazing walkable areas with all kinds of interesting things to see.
If everybody except the most poor get self driving cars and move to the suburbs, the downtown cores might become robocar hells, where cars have the priority and pedestrians need to wait 5 minutes to cross a street.
Any way, I don't think self-driving cars should replace public transport, but complement it.
Yeah, I agree. There might need to be some kind of government intervention to make sure that people have an incentive to use public transit instead of just going everywhere in self-driving cars. But, if you can make journeys robocar -> mass transit -> robocar that's still an improvement on just full robocar journeys.
As for bikes, I have spent most of my life using a bike to get around. I want Netherlands style bike highways everywhere. But, it's really hard to get any progress with bike-friendly designs in the current climate. What I think some people should do is have some very well developed bike highway plans in their back pockets, waiting for the opportunity to roll them out.
It could be that self-driving cars will take over the roads in a way that was like how cars replaced horses. If that happens, there are going to be a lot of cities that are going to have to make new laws suddenly: what happens to street parking, what do we do with existing parking lots, etc. That would be the time to pull out a big plan and say "ok, first of all, let's install all these bike highways with the room we now have".
It sounds bad for the city cores though.
I meant that cars would move out of the city, not people. I live in Germany where the statistics is that 57% of people own a car. In my city the percentage is 48% so that's already lower than average and in the city centre districts it's only around 30-35% of people owning a car. I would say that is a pretty normal distribution for German cities. That difference between inside and outside the city would just get bigger and I see no problem with that. The reason is already that public transport in the city is decent, people use bikes a lot, and parking is difficult and expensive (my city just increased parking prices in public resident parking zones to 360€/year). We need better public transport and better bike infrastructure and car numbers should go down in total, but I would still appreciate a shift of cars into rural areas. At least there is enough space to park them. In the city they're just taking up way, way too much valuable space. And they're loud and they smell (both getting better with electric ones, to be fair).
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