[mardifoufs]

Yes, it's hard to literally relocate hundreds of thousands of jobs according to some urban planners dreams. We aren't talking about intra city planning, but about state wide job markets. I guess Canada is dysfunctional too because there is absolutely no way to get rail service working beyond the big cities. Maybe it has something to do with north America not being Europe so trying to just force a European model here is a pure pipe dream.

Again, not talking about public transit in cities (which is amazing and should be scaled up) but about intercity/state/province transport. The distances, and spread are just not comparable to almost anywhere else in the world and you can't just magically make everyone move.

[kaesar14]

The context of this thread is about Virginia which is part of the I-95 corridor, the most densely populated area in the country, with a population density comparable to many Western European countries[1].

This is like the one region of the country you actually could scale up intercity/state transport, and it sucks so bad that Amtrak is terrible.

1: https://tetcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2040_Vis....

[mardifoufs]

I guess it could be, but the point of the GP was that the jobs and the population were spread out widely even if the population density is similar. Now I could be wrong, but from what I know from the half of my family living in France, transit in Paris for example is mostly pouring into the city where the jobs are. In this case, everything is spread out, so the density itself does not really matter. The problem is the spread.

Even here in montreal, while the metro is pretty good and we are currently building a pretty nice light rail system you still can't really depend on the rail system if your job isn't in montreal itself. The whole transit system is based on feeding the big city, not move people in between smaller cities. (Also, It's a bit tiring then to hear about just how dysfunctional the US is and how good they have it everywhere else when it's just not true. The American self loathing just get repetitive honestly)

I think public transit is amazing for city transit but does not scale very well when there's something else than the usual suburb->city->suburb pattern of movement. You can't really interconnect every single medium-small ish city at a north American scale

[kaesar14]

You can connect those smaller cities with stuff besides rail, you know.

[qaq]

bus service is fairly decent in NoVA

[seanmcdirmid]

> Again, not talking about public transit in cities (which is amazing and should be scaled up) but about intercity/state/province transport. The distances, and spread are just not comparable to almost anywhere else in the world and you can't just magically make everyone move.

This problem has been solved for awhile now, at least since the 1960s when the first intra-city/province shinkansen came online. Just because some other countries suck as badly as the USA at it doesn't mean it is an unsolved problem.

[mardifoufs]

There's just absolutely no way to compare the shinkansen to what would be required in the DC/VA area. Yes the US should connect its big cities with high speed rail but that would still not do anything for small intercity transit for everyone else

This is just rehashing pop-urban planning buzzwords. Like I'm not sure where the trend of just handwaving every problem as easily solvable by "rail! Shinkansen! City public transit even out of cities!" came from but it particularly does not make sense in this situation considering the commenter you replied to specified he talked about spread out, smaller cities with frequent stops. Which is the opposite of what the shinkansen is for.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Yes the US should connect its big cities with high speed rail but that would still not do anything for small intercity transit for everyone else

Have you ever tried taking these lines before? They have high speed rail between big cities, and tons and tons of small branch/feeder routes out to small towns with the most frequent stops ever imaginable. Getting from huge Tokyo to small Gifu actually works.

It did take some planning however. The USA's model of just "build that office complex wherever you want!" wouldn't work.

[mardifoufs]

>The USA's model of just "build that office complex wherever you want!" wouldn't work.

Which is exactly my point! That's already the current situation on the ground in the USA. So yes, it wouldn't work there. Unless you'd literally move around millions of jobs, offices etc which is absolutely not feasible. Trying to build public transit around that structure just to fit an idealized vision of somewhere else is weird. Japan built the system that fit their needs and their situation and the USA should do the same.

[seanmcdirmid]

My first comment mentioned urban planning. I that involves more than just planning the transit, you have to plan the work places and residential places as well. The USA is too enamored with personal and corporate liberty to let the government plan anything that would actually be effective beyond “let’s just build freeways everywhere and expect everyone to drive.”

[tptacek]

You don't get to "plan" the work places and residential places. They are what they are. Your transit plan needs to serve the commercial and residential areas that already exist, not a hypothetical ideal. It isn't easy in Ireland, Germany, or Spain to reorganize an entire metro area by fiat, either.