[w1ntermute]

> He claims only the rich use light rail. But what is it about a light rail that causes a poor person to look at it and walk away deciding it's not for them? It simply doesn't make sense. Build LRT to a poor area, people will use it.

Are you sure you read the article…?

> The area around the LRT lines definitely attract investment, but if you look at who actually uses the line a few years in, it’s mostly rich people. Why? Because they’re the only people who can afford to take it – not because the fares are too high, but because real estate in the immediate walking area around stations becomes too expensive…Unless you have bus routes or other last-mile ways of getting to the LRT, then it’s going to be a public transit option that’s only available to people who can afford to live nearby. And the nicer you make the line, the higher an income threshold that’s going to require. (Unless you do the hard work of actually integrating the LRT line via last-mile bus routes into all of the other neighbourhoods that aren’t gentrifying.) LRT investment on its own doesn’t expand public transit; it gentrifies it.

[jacobolus]

So the claim is more or less: «the only way to keep a poor neighborhood poor while providing public transit is to build public transit that rich people are unwilling to use, because if you build transit that rich people enjoy, they will move in and gentrify the neighborhood»?

Seems like a good argument for building a whole lot more light rail, since it’s apparently quite desirable...

Maybe if we had more human-scale, walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods everywhere, there would be enough of them to meet the high demand and more such neighborhoods could support mixed-income residents.

[w1ntermute]

Wrong—the claim has nothing to do with what rich or poor people like to use.

The claim is that the only way to provide affordable public transit that's sustainably accessible to people who aren't rich (that is, even when gentrification occurs in the city core) is to provide surface transit (buses), which can serve a much larger area than light rail.

> Maybe if we had more human-scale, walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods everywhere, there would be enough of them to meet the high demand and more such neighborhoods could support mixed-income residents.

Sure—let me know when you find the funding required to build all those "human-scale, walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods everywhere." In the meantime, let's provide affordable transit that's accessible regardless of which neighborhood you live in: high-frequency, reliable buses.

[jacobolus]

The problem is largely not about lack of “funding” per se, but more about zoning laws, urban planning more generally, and a whole society organized around driving and inefficient sprawl housing with large-scale short-term subsidies but long-term unsupportable infrastructure.

(More funding for transit certainly wouldn’t hurt. Also, buses are great, especially BRT with dedicated lanes. Buses, light rail, subways, commuter trains, long-distance trains seem like complementary parts of a transit system more than competitors.)

There are plenty of cities in the world with effective subways, light rail, and BRT serving working-class neighborhoods.

[w1ntermute]

Great—let me know when you've changed the zoning laws, fixed urban planning more generally, and how the whole society is organized around massive subsidies for driving and inefficient sprawl housing with long-term unsupportable infrastructure. In the meantime, let's provide affordable transit that's accessible regardless of which neighborhood you live in: high-frequency, reliable buses.

[rayiner]

JIt would be great if every place in DC was within a 10 minute walk of a subway station. The costs make that completely impossible.

https://images.app.goo.gl/Z2h71ZhmkmEAPAEo9

DC is a triangle ten miles on a side. Look how much area is without subway service. (Most is those are lower income parts too, on the eastern side of the city.)

By 2040, DC is studying the possibility of building maybe one new subway line within city limits. One. Maybe. New York is working on Phase II of the Second Avenue subway, a 1.5 mile segment. It’s currently stuck in environmental review hell, and if they get through that this year and start construction, they project being done by 2027-2029. It will take decades to build the whole 8.5 mile segment, and probably $20 billion plus.

These are two of the most transit oriented cities in the country (not to mention, immensely progressive politically). The idea of having numerous transit oriented neighborhoods, such that transit isn’t a scarce amenity that causes property values to skyrocket, is completely unrealistic. At least with any sort of rail.

[jacobolus]

It’s too expensive (relative to expected ridership) because almost all of the area not near subway stations is zoned as low-density residential and I believe mostly consists of single-family detached houses (didn’t help that the city was shrinking in population for 50 years from 1950–2000).

Not having enough 1- and 2-bedroom apartments in low-to-mid-rise buildings for all the people who now want to live in them is not some law of nature though.

https://statisticalatlas.com/school-district/District-of-Col... (This isn’t a great map; maybe someone can do better than my 3 min web search.)

[rayiner]

No, it’s too expensive full stop. There’s plenty of density in many of the neighborhoods not currently covered by rail. But it’s costing $3.8 billion per mile to build subway in New York now. DC would be less, but at these prices new subway is pretty much a non-starter.

[hdfbdtbcdg]

And yet it works for Tokyo, London and Copenhagen to pick three random cities.

[DuskStar]

Those cities do not spend anywhere near as much as the US does per mile of rail. (Whether surface, elevated or underground)