[jhayward]

The US Census Bureau says that the greater Houston metro area is 10,062 square miles.

It is usually a bad idea to be pontificating when one does not have command of the basic facts. It is really quite annoying to have people who understand nothing about Houston except what they've seen on video or read in an article making claims about deficiencies of one thing, and superiority of others, when they really don't have any non-superficial knowledge at all. It's not helpful.

[Jedd]

> It is really quite annoying to have people who understand nothing about Houston ...

I don't deny that I'm ignorant about Houston.

My point was that there are plenty of cities around the world, larger, older, flatter, hotter, lower population density, higher / lower rainfall, etc that have implemented effective public transport systems.

It's possible that Houston has intractable and unique challenges.

However the handful of places that are claimed to be 'impossible to retrofit public transit systems' seem to be found in the USA (a country with 5% of the world's population, but the bulk of the wealth).

It's possible, also, that the narrative - and this may well have fed civil designs so far - has also fed this belief that public transport just isn't suitable for 'some cities'.

[jhayward]

I doubt you can find any city with "effective public transport systems" that meet or exceed Houston in any 4 of the categories you name. Of course Houston doesn't get a break in any of those categories (age, perhaps, excluded).

We'll have to haggle on a definition of effective public transport but it would be fun to pursue the details a bit.