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Thought I'd share this video. Something I've always hated about this great country. Many of you probably already understand this issue, but it addresses the history of US public transit, problems that have led us to where we are and argues for its expansion in a well produced 10 minute video.
Very good video overall, but one thing that doesn't add up to me: He partially blamed strict zoning laws for hurting public transportation in the U.S., but aren't the U.S. cities with the strictest zoning laws the ones with the best public transportation, and conversely, don't cities with weak or no zoning tend to have bad public transit?
Thought I'd share this video. Something I've always hated about this great country. Many of you probably already understand this issue, but it addresses the history of US public transit, problems that have led us to where we are and argues for its expansion in a well produced 10 minute video.
Enjoy/discuss!
This article counters a lot of the stuff in that video:
Main problem IMO, is till today many of our metros loose their weighted density as suburbia expands, although it seems to have slowed down from the nineties we have zero focus on developing core neighborhoods and when we do we normally replace at least in the south a low density neighborhood with another low density neighborhood with the only thing changing are the house size, the distance between houses and the number of houses that aren't vacant.
Streetcars were not profitable and were losing ridership.
I've seen numerous articles this year that bus ridership in down in numerous big , dense cities.
Buses really don't count as far as I'm concerned. They are too slow and vulnerable to the same traffic jams that cars are. By public transit people really mean trains/subways/monrails etc.
Buses can be pretty good -- with HOV or transit-only lanes, fewer stops, etc. My city is bus-dominated but creams many train-heavy cities in transit commute share.
The biggest advantage with buses is that a rider heading for the hub (on a hub-spoke system) will usually have a bus within an easy walk at the spoke end, if the local service is any good. Buses can fan out at the end of each route, while collecting into HOV lanes for fast trips the rest of the way in. Each HOV lane can handle several or numerous routes, so any stop on those gets fast, frequent service.
Buses really don't count as far as I'm concerned. They are too slow and vulnerable to the same traffic jams that cars are. By public transit people really mean trains/subways/monrails etc.
I wonder how many middle class people who say public mass transit is no good in the US would be willing to pay higher fares to fund improvements.
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