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by falcolas 1066 days ago
> Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system.

Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system.

And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk orders, building materials, recreation, etc.

3 comments

> Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system.

Your comment is talking about the present tense while theirs is not. I’m sure they would agree with you that non-car transportation options are lacking currently. I don’t know what Midwest transportation options were before we entered this car dependency era, from a quick search it appears streetcars were a thing there (which is what their linked article was about).

> And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk orders, building materials, recreation, etc.

You can include options for cars without making them the main method of transportation for everything. Having cars as an option is not the problem, designing everything around cars and letting other options fall to the wayside is the problem.

It took me less than a minute to confirm that Billings Montana did, in fact, used to have an electric trolley system 100+ years ago.[0] Just like nearly every other US city at one time.

[0] https://billingsgazette.com/streetcars/image_1048a3b1-20c3-5...

So did the tiny city of Bozeman (I just got back from a trip there).
Those one-offs have specialized folks to do the job - taxis and delivery drivers and the like.

You don't need everyone to have their own car when a couple cars can serve everyone