We live in an age when the most unobjectionable and necessary ideas for progress can give rise to paranoia and fear. If the most innocuous, unoriginal possible idea can fuel paranoia, how can we hope to have a sensible discussion about the future of our places?
I love transit and I live less than 15-minutes from a bus stop, but last night it took 2 hours and 15 minutes to get home by the bus that would have been around 30 minutes of a drive. Just having a bus stop isn’t enough to make people consider switching. It needs to be at least reasonably competitive in time or price.
Also car advocates always are sure to bring up their disgust with sharing their commute with nasty people or the homeless. That’s a tried and true method to drum up fear against a working, affordable transportation system.
if your public transportation has enough people living below the poverty line on it that it becomes distasteful to be on, then that’s separate issue and a disgusting reflection of the standard of living in the area. a person shouldn’t get a bus and feel like a social worker. however, this isn’t antithetical to good public transportation! it just recognises another social injustices that also need addressing.
15 minute cities can and should be seen separately to public transportation though, in that everything a person NEEDS is limited to a 15 minute walk/cycle. a person hopes that public transportation is almost redundant for any daily travel you make (for most people), and that it is still to a high standard for when we do need it.
Why does a lot of people who are below the poverty line using public transportation make it distasteful in the first place? They’re people like everyone else. ~Strawberry
We should have fast and slow buses. One bus that stops at every stop along a route, another which goes a distance in a city only stopping at a few. That would greatly speed up transportation in my area.
As for poverty, everyone should be able to go on the bus. IMO they should be free and taxpayer funded. I have no idea what to do about “undesirables” except that we need to fix homelessness and poverty.
We already do in many places, they sound good in theory, but in practice aren’t much better. The problem with “express buses” is that they still have to sit in traffic. Really we need different modes of transportation, such as light rail, subways, dedicated bicycle paths, and so on, which do not share the road with cars. Otherwise, it’s much more difficult to make a value proposition for public/alternative transportation to those who can afford cars.
Bus rapid transit (lanes/roads entirely for buses) is cheaper than a subway, but provides many of the same benefits.
I wonder what it would be like if we planned out cities to have underground transport from the get-go? Basically leveled an entire area, built tunnels for all sorts of infrastructure in a meaningful way (imagine building the perfect city in sim-city approach) and then built everything on top of that again. Basically instead of digging tunnels we’d basically let the ground floor be tunnels and build on top.
Obviously wholly infeasible, but if you were to build a city for 1-3 million people it wouldn’t be unreasonable.
Agreed, a mix is absolutely the way to go. Dedicated bus lanes and signalling are also a great lower cost alternative to new hard infrastructure. There’s often extra driving lanes that can, for the cost of a quick paint job, become a bus lane bypassing all that traffic. Pair that with a safe and smart bike network and places to park bikes near where folks want to go and you’ve got a great core built ready for heavy rail, light rail, etc!