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by lotsoweiners 1214 days ago
We’re not hostile to it and we have good or at least adequate public transit in a lot of major cities. We just don’t need it everywhere. I live in a very suburban town and can’t imagine that many people would really want to take it. My town skews heavily Mormon (large families) and elderly. That is not going to get much ridership yet some people still keep proposing light rail extension to my town.
2 comments
patmorgan23 1214 days ago
You don't think those elderly people who are having trouble driving would love the opportunity to hold on a light rail line so they can take a stroll downtown in with their grandkids?

There is no good transit system in north America. If you want to see good transit you have to go to Europe, Asia or Latin America, where even small towns can have robust transit with high ridership.

North America is comically car dependent because we build everything only focusing on how cars are going to get in and out, and require ludicrous amounts of parking onsite basically everywhere.

Our transit systems are almost always an after thought in the land use planning process. We surround places in seas of parking and put transit stops on the edge of them or put transit stops on highway access road with no sidewalks. The transit systems are often viewed and built as a charity service provided for the poor that no respectable person would use daily. The schedules rarely have sufficient frequency to make the service actually usable.

Our zoning codes make building walkable places that could support and be supported by transit illegal or restrict them to only small specific TOD projects.

Here's a great video essay on what north America gets wrong when building transit https://youtu.be/MnyeRlMsTgI

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JohnFen 1214 days ago
> we have good or at least adequate public transit in a lot of major cities.

I don't think this is actually true. I can think of two cities that have decent public transit: New York (so I hear, I haven't been there) and Chicago. I've been to a lot of the other cities, including many who have won awards for their public transit, and I would call the best of those "poor".

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