[curtis]

Cars aren't going away in Seattle. The bus is a good alternative, and maybe often a superior alternative to driving if you live near a bus line that also stops near where you are going. If your bus trip involves a transfer, it is almost always going to be a better choice to drive. Buses are a great, but they are no panacea.

I guess my real complaint with articles like this is that they assume cars are a problem and buses are a solution. This is wrong. The problem is that I need to get from point A to point B. Buses are a possible solution, and cars are a possible solution, bicycling is a possible solution, walking, heck, even electric skateboards are possible solutions.

The big problem right now in Seattle is that any form of commuting (especially downtown) sucks. Buses are more popular now and cars less popular now, but that's largely because for many of us commuting by bus sucks less than commuting by car. But make no mistake, they both suck.

[loeg]

I don't think the authors of the article would really disagree with you.

The problem isn't cars per se. It's the percentage of trips made with cars and the relative low person-density of a SOV (or even a fully occupied car, relative to fully occupied buses or light rail).

There will always be routes that are not well served by transit compared to cars. The end goal is not zero trips made with cars. The goal is to make transit convenient for the majority of trips, so that people choose transit over cars. The result of higher person-density transit is that travel times do not become even more unreasonable as the region grows.