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for rural areas public transportation just isn't economically feasible.
too few passengers, too big an area.
Economically profitable? No. Feasible? Sometimes!
I live in VT, and we actually have a bus system that serves most of the state quite well! I take it all the time. It's subsidized of course, but I think that most rural areas don't have adequate public transportation because of cultural and political reasons.
Our culture is all about individuality and convenience, which doesn't jive with public transportation. Americans hate following timetables. That is not to say that rural areas shouldn't attempt to offer public transportation, it just takes more effort!
I will NEVER give up my car for public transportation.
A car provides so much freedom! and they're fun to drive and gas is cheap and the wind through my hair feels too good. Why would I give up rolling down my windows with the AC on full blast smoking a cigarette for cramped public transport with a bunch of peasant-like people? Like I wanna sit next to a total stranger who smells like soup and onions... coughing on me...talking to me, smelling their rancid breathe.
No thanks.
Pop in my car and off I go! riding off into the sunset.
Well depends on whee you go, more than likely it will be sitting in traffic while watching that sun set...though try to keep your eyes on the road, don't want to make driving conditions worse for others.
I'm not sure how else to explain housing obsolescence . . . houses built in 1880 were built with gas lanterns in the wall. There was no electricity. There were no toilets.
In 1940 in my Philadelphia census tract 30% of the units did not have a full bathroom. 10% of the houses were lacking a toilet. In a neighborhood full of small, 2 bedroom rowhomes 60% of the units had 5 or more people. 16% had more than 7 people. Hardly anyone had anything resembling a modern kitchen. This is why people left - because they knew what a modern house with a garage and a yard and 3 bedrooms looked like and they wanted one and because the GI Bill gave it to them. Not because they were scared of the black people who were already their neighbors. That's just nonsensical fantasy.
You see the same thing happening now in 1950s suburbs where the previous owners didn't modernize as often as they should have. No one buying a house in 2015 wants to deal with an electrical panel with a handful of 15 amp breakers, that doesn't have central air, that has a kitchen that needs to be gutted. Not if they can afford better anyway. That's what housing obsolescence is. If you were picking up a rental car would you take the new Camry with bluetooth, dual zone a/c, cruise control, and a good sound system or would you take the 1974 Chevy Nova with vinyl seats, no a/c, and am/fm dial tune radio. It's not a tough decision for most people.
When you look at the census data it's very clear that the people leaving the neighborhood in the 1950s were young, white renters in their early 20s aka: people starting a family and moving out of their parents house. Those were the people moving to the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s and they were doing it because the housing conditions they were coming from were terrible. In the parts of Philadelphia that were still being built out in the 1950s you see a lot of white people moving to those neighborhoods - because the houses were new.
Good post, I've excerpted some things I'd like to highlight.
Many people on this forum have this romantic idea that ALL housing built prior to a certain date (1945 often being used) was "better-built" than housing built since then. Of course, housing built before 1945 really means housing built before 1930, as the Depression then WW II caused little housing to be built during that time. Housing for the well off was "better-built" than housing for the masses; it always has been. But still, this housing was built to the technology of the time. Most homes built before 1930 didn't even have a place for a refrigerator, b/c few owned refrigerators back then. The Great Depression and the Rise of the Refrigerator - The Science of Society - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society What Does the Fridge Say? A Historical Photo Essay | Emily Contois
Back to transit. I don't have much more to say about it right now.
LOL. Aside from your dates being completely off the mark I grew up there and am old enough to remember when most of them opened. 1959 marks the first bridge built in Delaware that would become a part of the signed interstate years later. 295 wasn't finished until 1994. I know because when the last segment opened it cut my trip time to Philly by about 15 minutes. Until the early 80s it had only been built north to Moorestown and cut between areas of Camden County to the west that had been mostly developed in the 1880s to 1920s and to the east that had been developed in the 1950s.
The two segments of I-76 were connected - finishing the Schuylkill Expressway - in 1960.
I-95 through Center City Philly didn't open until 1979 and the rest of it wasn't finished until the mid-80s.
Construction on the Vine St. Expressway (676) didn't even start until the mid-80s and didn't open until the early 90s.
The 13-295 interchange in 1951--yes, it was a bypass of Philadelphia for many years, true
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
So, if you want to talk about the Great Migration then you should know that it's typically broken into two parts, 1st and 2nd. You should also know that the 2nd Great Migration was much larger than the 1st. And that while black people were leaving the south in large numbers that's relative . . . and they weren't all going to the same place. The black population of Philadelphia in 1920 was 7.4% or around 134,000. To put it another way the city was over 90% white and large parts of Philadelphia were either in the process of being built or had yet to be built so the numbers of african-americans are mostly irrelevant when it comes to what the white population was doing. African-Americans from the south were moving to the oldest parts (read: cheapest) of Philadelphia, neighborhoods that native born whites had been leaving in droves well before hand. And speaking of native born whites - the white population of Philadelphia had been buoyed through the early part of the 20th Century by continuing European immigration. Native born whites began moving to the suburbs with the advent of the electric traction trolley in 1880. By 1900 the decline in native born whites in the city could already be seen. By 1920 suburban growth was rapidly outpacing urban growth. By 1930, which marked a sharp decline in European immigration, all of the white population growth in the Philly region was happening in the suburbs. By 1950 all population growth in the region was happening in the suburbs.
And by 1930, Philadelphia's black population was about 220,000.
And note that the 1920s suburban growth was enabled by transit--this was not the far-flung suburb growth enabled by roadways after WWII. In the later period, "[t]he population of the seven suburban counties surrounding [Philadelphia] grew by eighty-five percent between 1940 and 1960, while the white population within the city fell by thirteen percent."
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
I'm using Philly here as an example because I can easily back up the data I'm using but the same is true for most older, northern cities.
The same is true about northern cities. Population growth in cities slowed before plateauing as suburban populations exploded. At the same time, northern cities became more black and less white, and northern, far-flung suburbs were almost uniformly white.
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
If what you're saying is true - the suburbanization happened because white people didn't want to live around black people then there would have been some mass exodus over a decade or two. That didn't happen. The facts are that the white population of most urban neighborhoods declined at a relatively even rate over a 50 or 60 year period and in even in neighborhoods that were still 90% white in 2010 the rate and size of population is similar to neighborhoods that were 90% white in 1950 and 10% white in 2010.
Port Richmond, Philadelphia
I did not say that suburbanization happened because white people did not want to live around black people, although that was likely one of the factors that contributed to white flight. Other factors included home-buying incentives, racially restrictive covenants and other redlining practices, wealth inequality, and employment discrimination.
Your graph shows very substantial decline in Philadelphia's white population starting in 1950. After holding steady around 1.7 million, the 1950-1960 decade sees white population fall to around 1.4 million, and the next decade sees a further slide to ~1.2, and the next decade all the way below 1 million. That's about a 13% decline from '50-'60. That is very substantial. And the next decade is just as steep.
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
The same phenomenon can even be observed in neighborhoods that were majority black in 1950
Graduate Hospital, Philadelphia
The white flight theory doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Your graph of Philadelphia's population does show white flight. And while white people obviously remained in Philadelphia, it is an incredibly segregated city. So it's not surprising that 90% white neighborhoods stayed 90% white. Philly, like other American cities, is racially segregated: The Best Map Ever Made of America's Racial Segregation | WIRED
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
The practices were relevant for a brief part of the suburbanization of the country (at most 2 decades) - a suburbanization which began in earnest in the 1880s and which was only really impeded by the Great Depression/WWII. I completely concur that it negatively impacted the ability of african-americans to move to the suburbs in most cases in the 1950s and 1960s but it didn't stop them from buying homes in large numbers because the FHA restrictions weren't to deny loans but to promote segregation. That's still not enough to explain suburbanization.
Here's a graph of a South Philly neighborhood with an AA population that predates WWII - most other Philly neighborhoods show similar curves
The "practices" started when black people started moving to Philadelphia. Employment discrimination, mob attacks, and housing discrimination started in the post-WWI era.
FHA restrictions were one part of housing discrimination in the United States, but not the only part. The practices of mortgage companies and real estate agents were involved. As were widespread racially restrictive covenants on real estate.
I don't have data for the Philadelphia area, but in Chicago and Los Angeles 80% of properties could not be sold to black people due to racially restrictive covenants by 1940. http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshal...ts/cr11042.pdf
These covenants followed on earlier racial zoning practices that were struck down in 1917.
Also note that FHA restrictions generally resulted in much higher interest rates for the less "desirable" neighborhoods.
But federal home-buying incentives made it more economical to buy a newer home than to repair/renovate an existing one. This encouraged development, which was cheaper and easier in unbuilt areas--suburbs. The suburbs were not job centers themselves, but were connected to urban job centers by highways. Thus, suburbanization--without transit access--is born.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
If anything the lack of access to the GI Bill - because the military was segregated during WWII and because the draft boards in Southern states (where the large majority of AAs at the time were still living) wouldn't take black men - had a much more deleterious effect when it came to getting federally guaranteed loans than anything the FHA could muster.
As I have repeatedly said, FHA loans (and practices facilitated by FHA) were one of many factors in housing discrimination.
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
Your point was that school financing had a big impact on suburbanization but the facts are that it happened regardless of how schools were financed. Whether or not people in NC were resisting integration is irrelevant because they lost and when I lived in NC 15 years ago kids were stilled being bussed out of their home district.
As new suburbs were created and incorporated, property taxes in those suburbs went to new local governments that controlled services, including school funding in most places. In the context of white migration to suburbs (especially when suburban property owners are working in nearby urban centers), there is a resultant diminution of the city's property tax base and one result is increased strain on a city's finances--in most old northern cities, this caused major problems with school funding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
I'm not sure how else to explain housing obsolescence . . . houses built in 1880 were built with gas lanterns in the wall. There was no electricity. There were no toilets.
In 1940 in my Philadelphia census tract 30% of the units did not have a full bathroom. 10% of the houses were lacking a toilet. In a neighborhood full of small, 2 bedroom rowhomes 60% of the units had 5 or more people. 16% had more than 7 people. Hardly anyone had anything resembling a modern kitchen. This is why people left - because they knew what a modern house with a garage and a yard and 3 bedrooms looked like and they wanted one and because the GI Bill gave it to them. Not because they were scared of the black people who were already their neighbors. That's just nonsensical fantasy.
And you don't suppose that federal home buying incentives and the GI bill encouraged people to buy new homes rather than renovate existing ones? And you don't suppose that these new suburban homes were mostly available only to white people, as a result of the myriad factors I've outlined? Again, you are claiming that I am arguing that white people were scared of black people. I am not. That is a strawman.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
You see the same thing happening now in 1950s suburbs where the previous owners didn't modernize as often as they should have. No one buying a house in 2015 wants to deal with an electrical panel with a handful of 15 amp breakers, that doesn't have central air, that has a kitchen that needs to be gutted. Not if they can afford better anyway. That's what housing obsolescence is. If you were picking up a rental car would you take the new Camry with bluetooth, dual zone a/c, cruise control, and a good sound system or would you take the 1974 Chevy Nova with vinyl seats, no a/c, and am/fm dial tune radio. It's not a tough decision for most people.
Today you also see much more transit-oriented development in city centers (as a proportion of new development).
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
When you look at the census data it's very clear that the people leaving the neighborhood in the 1950s were young, white renters in their early 20s aka: people starting a family and moving out of their parents house. Those were the people moving to the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s and they were doing it because the housing conditions they were coming from were terrible. In the parts of Philadelphia that were still being built out in the 1950s you see a lot of white people moving to those neighborhoods - because the houses were new.
In this same census tract in 2010 the household size for occupied units is around 2.4. The population decline wasn't "white flight". It was white kids starting their families in the suburbs. Their parents didn't go anywhere and while the white population declined evenly over the decades the number of white households declined much more slowly. This wasn't a flight - it was a migration that took place over 3 generations. I understand that if you're pushing an agenda then "white flight" is more dramatic but, outside of a few anecdotes, that's not really how it happened. [/quote]
A 13% population slide in a decade is considerable. But call it something else if the term "white flight" scares you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
Do you have any idea about the devastation that WWII wrought on Russian industry, infrastructure, and the population itself? It wasn't a rich country to begin with.
As Malloric mentioned, "Soviet planners love them some transit." I do not think that attributing the difference in development patterns in the US and USSR can simply be that the Soviets were spending too much on their military to build suburbs.
You're being obtuse so this is the last I'm going to post on this matter unless you want to revive one of the old threads on it or start a new one.
When suburbanization began 70 years before the introduction of the interstate you can't list it as a causal factor. It's clearly not. That's not splitting hairs.
The 13-295 interchange in 1951--yes, it was a bypass of Philadelphia for many years, true
You don't need to keep posting the same thing over and over. No one is debating when construction started. The debate is that these early interstate segments were largely suburb to suburb or connecting suburbs to the already existing turnpike system.
The urban interstates segments that would be able to move people directly from the city to the suburbs weren't completed until the 1980s and even before then they were mostly irrelevant until the early 1970s when the suburbanization process was already well underway.
You can't point to a flyover being built in suburban Delaware in 1959 and say that urban Philadelphians (40 miles away) were using it to move to the suburbs and have anyone take you seriously.
And by 1930, Philadelphia's black population was about 220,000.
No one is debating that the Great Migration happened. No one is debating that poor whites/immigrants weren't pitted against poor blacks to fight over lower wages for the same terrible jobs. The point is that poor, southern blacks were moving to the falling down neighborhoods in Philadelphia that whites had been moving out of the minute they had two nickels to rub together. What made it possible for black people to move to these neighborhoods in the first place is the vacancy rate. By the time it was 1930 there were already several, established, black enclaves in the city. The idea that white people are going to live next to black for 50 years then, all of the sudden, say "uh oh, black people, let's move to the suburbs!" is pure comedy.
Big cities were awful, filthy places with poor sanitation and, unless you were wealthy, also had a crappy housing stock. People with a choice left as soon as they were able.
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And note that the 1920s suburban growth was enabled by transit--this was not the far-flung suburb growth enabled by roadways after WWII.
Transit-enabled suburban growth in Philadelphia started in the 1840s in neighborhoods like Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill. It was driven first by regional rail then, as I've already mentioned a few times, by the electric traction motor. Philly still has a few of the interurban lines that brought people from the suburbs in Delaware and Montgomery Counties into the city.
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In the later period, "[t]he population of the seven suburban counties surrounding [Philadelphia] grew by eighty-five percent between 1940 and 1960, while the white population within the city fell by thirteen percent."
You need to work on your stats game. The white population of Philadelphia in 1940 was 1,678,577. In 1960 it was 1,467,479. That's a loss of ~210k. The white population of the suburban counties went from 1,184,217 to 2,194,108. That's a gain of about 1.01 million.
How does 210k turn into 1.1 million? Surprise! It's kids. There was no room in Philadelphia for another 800,000 people. Not only was there not enough housing and not enough room in the city to build enough housing but there was no room for the schools, the playgrounds, the industry - not for any of it.
The number of white households in Philadelphia went from 441,488 in 1940 to 466,624 in 1960. In case you don't get it I just destroyed your white flight theory. Yes, the number of white households in the city rose by 25k over this period that you claim that scurred whites were fleeing to the suburbs to get away from the riotous blacks who terrified them so much. (yes, that is sarcasm)
Household size declined from 3.62 to 3.09. If you have almost 650k housing units in 1960 and you lose .53 people per household then your city has lost 350k people.
Like I've said before in this thread and countless others - the white population in the city was declining because white household size was declining. People had more money so there was no reason for them to shack up 2 to a bunk, 8 to a house anymore. The number of white households in the city declined much more slowly than the white population.
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The same is true about northern cities. Population growth in cities slowed before plateauing as suburban populations exploded. At the same time, northern cities became more black and less white, and northern, far-flung suburbs were almost uniformly white.
White urban population decline happened regardless of the presence of black people. It happened in neighborhoods and in cities where there weren't many black people in 1960 and where there are hardly any now. Even if african-americans never existed the population of our urban areas would have declined. It happened in Canada, in Australia, in the UK - anywhere household size declined saw a decline in population.
Quote:
I did not say that suburbanization happened because white people did not want to live around black people, although that was likely one of the factors that contributed to white flight. Other factors included home-buying incentives, racially restrictive covenants and other redlining practices, wealth inequality, and employment discrimination.
You can't talk about "white flight" then post a dozen links saying that white people didn't want black neighbors then say "I never said that." Restrictive covenants and redlining wouldn't have aided or encouraged so-called white flight - if anything they would've had the opposite effect but in the grand scheme of things neither had much of an impact on white migration to the suburbs.
Quote:
Your graph shows very substantial decline in Philadelphia's white population starting in 1950. After holding steady around 1.7 million, the 1950-1960 decade sees white population fall to around 1.4 million, and the next decade sees a further slide to ~1.2, and the next decade all the way below 1 million. That's about a 13% decline from '50-'60. That is very substantial. And the next decade is just as steep.
I've already explained this but the drop is fairly even from decade to decade. That's because, contrary to your idea of whites fleeing like they were running from a house fire, it's because of shrinking household size and mortality. That means that new white family formation was happening in the suburbs and that the older white people who stayed in the city got older and died.
Quote:
Your graph of Philadelphia's population does show white flight. And while white people obviously remained in Philadelphia, it is an incredibly segregated city. So it's not surprising that 90% white neighborhoods stayed 90% white. Philly, like other American cities, is racially segregated:
Seriously bro, you can quit with the links. You're not posting anything that I haven't seen or read before. You haven't proven white flight. Not by a long shot. And no, most neighborhoods in Philly are not Port Richmond or Fishtown and while it's true that most black people in Philly live in hyper-segregated neighborhoods most white people in Philly do not.
Quote:
The "practices" started when black people started moving to Philadelphia. Employment discrimination, mob attacks, and housing discrimination started in the post-WWI era.
FHA restrictions were one part of housing discrimination in the United States, but not the only part. The practices of mortgage companies and real estate agents were involved. As were widespread racially restrictive covenants on real estate.
I'm not denying those things happened and this discussion isn't about whether or not they happened. It's about AFAIK, why cities declined. Your argument about the interstates is easily and quickly debunked so then you turned to housing discrimination which, yes, would partially explain why black households were trapped in cities until the late 1960s but it doesn't explain why white people left the city.
Quote:
I don't have data for the Philadelphia area, but in Chicago and Los Angeles 80% of properties could not be sold to black people due to racially restrictive covenants by 1940. http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshal...ts/cr11042.pdf
These covenants followed on earlier racial zoning practices that were struck down in 1917.
Yeah, no. The Supreme Court ruled on that in 1948 and the FHA threw it out the same year. The suburban housing boom hadn't even started yet.
Quote:
Also note that FHA restrictions generally resulted in much higher interest rates for the less "desirable" neighborhoods.
But federal home-buying incentives made it more economical to buy a newer home than to repair/renovate an existing one. This encouraged development, which was cheaper and easier in unbuilt areas--suburbs. The suburbs were not job centers themselves, but were connected to urban job centers by highways. Thus, suburbanization--without transit access--is born.
As I have repeatedly said, FHA loans (and practices facilitated by FHA) were one of many factors in housing discrimination.
As new suburbs were created and incorporated, property taxes in those suburbs went to new local governments that controlled services, including school funding in most places. In the context of white migration to suburbs (especially when suburban property owners are working in nearby urban centers), there is a resultant diminution of the city's property tax base and one result is increased strain on a city's finances--in most old northern cities, this caused major problems with school funding.
And you don't suppose that federal home buying incentives and the GI bill encouraged people to buy new homes rather than renovate existing ones? And you don't suppose that these new suburban homes were mostly available only to white people, as a result of the myriad factors I've outlined? Again, you are claiming that I am arguing that white people were scared of black people. I am not. That is a strawman.
You came into this thread with a really simplistic argument about interstates that was quickly knocked down so you then expanded to housing discrimination and racism arguments that are almost as facile. Housing and internal migration are anything but simple and combine multitudes of push/pull factors. I'm glad you're opening up to the idea that white people moving to the suburbs was about more than highways and housing discrimination.
Last edited by drive carephilly; 01-23-2015 at 03:18 PM..
You can't talk about "white flight" then post a dozen links saying that white people didn't want black neighbors then say "I never said that." Restrictive covenants and redlining wouldn't have aided or encouraged so-called white flight - if anything they would've had the opposite effect but in the grand scheme of things neither had much of an impact on white migration to the suburbs.
I've already explained this but the drop is fairly even from decade to decade. That's because, contrary to your idea of whites fleeing like they were running from a house fire, it's because of shrinking household size and mortality. That means that new white family formation was happening in the suburbs and that the older white people who stayed in the city got older and died.
Seriously bro, you can quit with the links. You're not posting anything that I haven't seen or read before. You haven't proven white flight. Not by a long shot. And no, most neighborhoods in Philly are not Port Richmond or Fishtown and while it's true that most black people in Philly live in hyper-segregated neighborhoods most white people in Philly do not.
I'm not denying those things happened and this discussion isn't about whether or not they happened. It's about AFAIK, why cities declined. Your argument about the interstates is easily and quickly debunked so then you turned to housing discrimination which, yes, would partially explain why black households were trapped in cities until the late 1960s but it doesn't explain why white people left the city.
Yeah, no. The Supreme Court ruled on that in 1948 and the FHA threw it out the same year. The suburban housing boom hadn't even started yet.
You came into this thread with a really simplistic argument about interstates that was quickly knocked down so you then expanded to housing discrimination and racism arguments that are almost as facile. Housing and internal migration are anything but simple and combine multitudes of push/pull factors. I'm glad you're opening up to the idea that white people moving to the suburbs was about more than highways and housing discrimination.
You attributed a simplistic argument to me that I never made. What I said from my first post on this topic, #263 was, "[i]t was not really the invention of the car, but the construction of the interstates, the home-buying incentives, the residential redlining, and the connection of property taxes to school funding that moved our country away from the cities, I would say." In post #268, I added the long-standing U.S.-Saudi relationship as a factor.
Apparently lacking reading comprehension, you turned that into "interstates were the only cause of suburbs."
And I said, "the key to understanding why America departed from denser development to globally high car dependance is understanding why America departed from denser development to more sparse development." Your explanation for that change appears to be "[s]uburbanization started because people at the time saw it as the only way to modernize quickly." This does not explain the US's globally high car dependance. Even "New World," rich countries are less car-dependent--Canada, New Zealand, Australia. Throw in Argentina for good measure, as well.
And apparently I touched your "white flight" nerve, as the very phrase seems to have shut off your brain. Philadelphia was and is a really segregated city, and it followed a pattern shared with many other northern cities. You have put some effort into trying to argue that housing discrimination--in all its forms--did not matter. Research and common sense disagree. I post the research because you abandoned the common sense.
Do you truly believe that housing discrimination ended in 1948, as your post appears to posit? If you do, then you have an awful lot to learn despite of your claims to expertise.
I also love that you chastised me for claiming a postwar boom in suburbs, yet you claim that racially restrictive covenants didn't matter because, "[t]he suburban housing boom hadn't even started yet." What are you arguing about, anyway?
So when you state that housing and internal migration "combine multitudes of push/pull factors," I hope you can recognize that housing (and job) discrimination--and interstate construction--are among them. And I also hope that you can begin to understand that incorporation of commuter suburbs created a feedback loop in which cities incurred the costs to sustain a region's jobs, but lacked the property tax base of many of its workers, often resulting in poorer services--including schools, police, etc.
Well depends on whee you go, more than likely it will be sitting in traffic while watching that sun set...though try to keep your eyes on the road, don't want to make driving conditions worse for others.
Perhaps, but better than trying to keep your eyes on the loony person, homeless person, or thief riding with you on the bus.
Perhaps, but better than trying to keep your eyes on the loony person, homeless person, or thief riding with you on the bus.
That is not really an issue in most places. Though in a car you have to watch out for pedestrians, bad drivers, bicycles, traffic lights, stopped traffic, that person who thinks it is a great time to read their text messages, and so on.
So one could find negative things about anything if they really want to.
When I lived in Boston I loved the transit system. I liked being able to read during my trip, the trains and busses were almost always on time.
When living in San Antonio I had to use the public transit for about 6 months because I could not afford a car. That was a terrible experience since the busses there took forever to get anywhere in the city - at least 45 minutes or so to make a trip that in good traffic with a car takes 15-20. At one point I had an 1.5 hour public transit commute from where I lived to my job, that was awful. The same trip in a car in good traffic took about 35 minutes.
Public transit can be done well in sprawly type cities, but it costs a lot of money up front. Houston has actually done a decent job with its light rail & busses, so much so that the people there want more rail, and no city sprawls quite like Houston does.
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