[perennate]

Doesn't a transit system complement a road network?

Rapid transit serves the most trips when either the source or destination (or both) are in the urban center. The road network is typically most congested in the urban center. Thus, transit reduces congestion in the areas that would otherwise be most congested, making the road network more useful.

Perhaps "car-oriented cities" simply haven't yet reached the density (and size of the high-density area) where transit becomes necessary.

[the_gastropod]

This is kind of a chicken-egg situation. You can't reach the high-density requirement when cars are the primary means of transportation. Cars are an extraordinarily low-density means of transportation. And some evidence, based on city age, seems to suggest that cities built with cars in mind (e.g., non-east coast cities in the U.S.) tend to sprawl quite a bit.

[perennate]

That's true, I guess that ties back into a counterargument to the parent's point, that the connectedness issue with transit would be mitigated had the city been planned differently.

[njarboe]

Isn't it wonderful how the car allowed a large number of families to own a home with a piece of land, yet have access to the amenities of a city? Nice and spread out living spaces with concentration for work and culture. Now we just need some tunnels or something to deal with the problems that fast above ground car transport causes (mostly noise, pollution, and using up precious surface land).

[so33]

>Isn't it wonderful how the car allowed a large number of families to own a home with a piece of land, yet have access to the amenities of a city?

That was an illusion. House prices are soaring in the inner suburbs (case in point: the Bay Area) to the point of complete unaffordability, forcing people out further and further from where they work and, consequently, creating situations where commuters drive for hours every day because there is no other choice.

To drive to the city, you have to find a place to park your car. As more people want to drive to access the amenities of a city (and they have to, because they might live more than an hour away as they can’t afford anything closer), they will need to pay more and more to park, because of the costs of real estate.

And tunnels are no panacea. The congestion created by single occupancy trips created by people who might be living an hour or more away from their destination will persist.

Density would go a long way to solving some of these problems. Simple things from lowering minimum lot sizes, to mid size apartments and condos, would increase access to home ownership. But we can’t have anything lowering those property prices, can we?

[njarboe]

A tunnel can have any kind of transport running in it as you want. Cars, buses, and trains at the same time. A toll tunnel that is run full will be wildly profitable and would inspire others to build them. "The Boring Company" already has the tech, we just need to work out the regulatory system so that they can build across the multiple small cities in the LA basin. Below a certain depth you can't even tell the tunnel is there.

A controlled tunnel system would be easily driven by today's automatic cars. It pick you up and goes back home (no parking problem), runs on electricity from your sunny California rooftop solar array, and works as a peaker power source for the grid when you aren't using it. Bring me a future that is better than the past please.

[TheCoelacanth]

The problem is that digging a tunnel is expensive even when amortized over the 30,000 passengers per hour that a subway line can carry. When you amortize it over the 2,000 passengers per hour that a lane of single-occupancy vehicles maxes out at, the expense is completely outrageous.

[the_gastropod]

Is that true? The U.S. doesn't have a particularly high percentage of home ownership (64.5%) compared to other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...

[TylerE]

I don't have numbers to back it up, but home RENTAL rates are quite high in many places. A home with a decent sized lawn, say, a dozen blocks from downtown will often rent for about the same (or even cheaper) than a smaller downtown apartment.

[benj111]

The problem is, is that car orientated cities tend to grow out, rather than densify. So you never get the critical mass, where transit becomes required.

[Kerrick]

There are major exceptions to this, usually involving the city's potential expansion zone being bounded by water on multiple sides. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Seattle all have this feature -- and they've all developed into critical mass, where transit becomes required.

[benj111]

Manhattan and San Francisco at least, developed before the car, so may well have already had the critical mass before the car came along.

[bluGill]

You cannot actually say that. non car oriented cities have been growing for hundreds of years, while car oriented cities only for about 80. You could well be right, but we will all be dead before we can actually state it with confidence.

[benj111]

Look at a 1900 city that was 80 years old, you will find it significantly denser, you can't have a 50 mile wide city, when the main mode of transport is a horse.

Northern British industrial cities fit into that age bracket at the turn of the century. Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle weren't spread out at that time.