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by Schiendelman 29 days ago
Of course you still need government intervention to get transit. I'm not saying "no intervention". I'm being precise: "private companies will ask to operate it".

It also doesn't matter. Which sounds weird, but it's true. If you just let people build density without transit, the market will almost always build it in convenient places (a bank won't underwrite if they don't think it'll be successful), the people who move into it will either be happy with walking or they'll organize.

I've done a lot of such organization, if you're curious. I spearheaded Seattle's successful 2016 ballot measure for $50 billion in additional rail transit, much of which is now under construction. It'll take more ballot measures, but we're getting there: https://seattletransitblog.com/2011/11/23/lets-build-a-seatt... And along the way, we had to save bus service, so I forced the city to do that too: https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2014/04/friend...
1 comments
Herring 29 days ago
Ok that probably explains it. We're just talking past each other. You're doing really good work, and Seattle is one of the top transit cities in the US, but those three cities I mentioned before are in a whole different league as global outliers. Best practices in an American historical/political context are completely different than best practices overall. You can find lots of examples historically and today (eg in developing countries) where density outpaces good transit and the result is gridlock/pollution/etc. Seattle is just not that dense (yet).
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Schiendelman 27 days ago
Ha, happens a lot in comments! No worries! And thank you.

I think the big reason gridlock and pollution happen in a lot of other countries is more about lack of traffic laws, and lack of pollution controls. In Seattle we're selling a lot of electric vehicles. Maybe we get some gridlock, but that reduces road deaths. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Because we are willing to shift road space to bicycle infrastructure, we will end up with bicycling getting a higher share of trips if cars slow down. And then we will have a healthier population as well!

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