Comment on Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says
oh_@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What about transit? Why do Americans always have to drive. We need real alternatives to cars.
Chicken and egg situation, Americans drive because that’s how their cities and suburbs are laid out (excluding NYC, for the most part).
They don’t rely on alternatives because they are slow, inconvenient or non-existent; alternatives can’t be built up as the costs can’t be justified based on existing patronage levels.
Plenty of US cities are built like NY, on grids, as circles, etc. The problem is that everything is far away.
It’s not so much about being built on a grid, but rather being built with a particularly high population density in mind - and further supported by a robust public transit network.
No, the problem is the network matters. When you can't get anywhere on transit you don't use it and in turn won't help improve it. I've many times looked at the transit options available to me and found I was unable to get my errand done on transit so I was forced to drive. One place I lived I checked and transit could do the job so I sold my car (but my wife still had hers because there were still many things we couldn't do on transit)
I live in a mid-sized Canadian city, with a population of just under 400k with what is considered a pretty good bus-based transit system, with roughly 60 routes. Even way out in the boonies you can catch a bus. You can get from pretty nearly any point A to any point B on the bus.
And yet I and those who can afford to do so generally avoid the bus. Our streets are still filled with cars during rush hour (which, as someone who has 100% WFM for the last 15 years I’m happy to say I’m not contributing to). Reasons?
You know what doesn’t have any of those problems? My car. I can crank my music up if I want to. I get to pick who is in my car. I don’t have to get up extra early to make sure I get to my destination on time because the bus might be late, full, or because I have to make multiple transfers (at each point of which the bus could be late or full…).
I’m glad we have the bus system we have for those people who need it. I know we have people in our city who don’t have the privilege of owning a vehicle of their own — and for some people whose needs are simple the bus can likely work just fine. I’m glad we have that system for the people who don’t otherwise have a choice — but for everyone who has that choice, the choice is typically being in their own private vehicle where they can sing loudly, eat and drink whatever they like, control who rides with them, and go wherever they want to — heck, I can even change my mind about my destination mid-drive and go wherever I want to without having to switch cars.
I’ll admit, having taken transit in bigger cities (Toronto, Montreal, Istanbul) being able to take a train (subway, LRT, surface rail, streetcars etc.) can be pretty great. I think bigger cities need this kind of transit — even with its many, many problems it can beat out taking a car to a downtown core. But even when I lived in some of these cities I still had a car. But the size of my current home city just isn’t big enough to accommodate that level of transit. The cost would just be too horrendous.
Can everyone do better? Sure. But I don’t think such improvements are going to significantly encourage more people to take transit over their own vehicles.
There’s many smaller cities than yours in Europe with a tram network. Volchansk in Russia has a tram line with a population of 10k. Canada isn’t know for having great public transport… In a city like Hong Kong you don’t need a car, it’s so convenient.
Hamilton? Guessing it because of the racism
transit
“We mean electric cars, you commie! The next time you talk about that thing, you are going out that window.”
\s
Honestly, it’s just so convenient to be able to get in the car and go (unless the destination’s parking situation is really bad).
Americans value convenience quite a lot. We even trade our personal data for it.
The design of US cities has reinforced this.
Nobody actually lives anywhere near the places they need to work and shop so driving is the only option. Because everything’s so spread out public transport is terrible because it’s not possible to provide a decent service.
You have as a much denser population than the US by land area so everything’s closer together and it’s easier to build public transport infrastructure in that scenario because every stop serves a greater number of people. Plus there isn’t such a great distance between the suburban areas and the urban areas. Personally I can get from suburbia to urban areas with a 1-minute walk. I don’t understand why Americans have to be 10 miles away from their cities.
Ah that makes sense. Personally, I tend to avoid urban areas if possible. Too much air pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, people… Maybe it’s a sensory thing. I could see how it’s much easier to build a public transit system when everyone’s so close together though
Have you seen America? It’s huge.
There’s also way more to America than the metropolitan cities you’ve been conditioned to prioritize.
Yes. I grew up in the Midwest. In rural America. I live in a city now on the west coast… Transit is a great option for metropolitan areas. U.S. cities in general have terrible transit options, big highways ruining core city areas and no thought of pedestrians in many areas. We need to start with fixing that. Slowing down urban corridors, taking away parking, added better light rail to encourage less use of cars. Yes, in rural areas and outlying areas cars will of course still be needed. It’s a huge country.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The suburban sprawl makes building transit a lot harder but to fix that we need to increase density but then it’s hard to increase density when you need space for cars because you have no usable transit
bluGill@fedia.io 2 months ago
Most suburbs have plenty of density to support transit as proved in other countries that provide good transit to their areas of similar density. However most suburbs have such bad transit you can't use it for anything and to people start believing the idea that it is impossible to get them good transit and so they won't agree to get it.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The American style suburbs where you have just single family homes and the closest stores are 5 miles away?
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I live in the suburbs. The older kids can bike to the local Walmart (save it) as there is a pedestrian tunnel that crosses under the main road, providing a complete pedestrian/bike path from one end of the town to the other.
I’d prefer if we had more of those, but it’s something.
bluGill@fedia.io 2 months ago
Most suburbs a store is not that far. you will often drive more than that for a store you like but something is closer.
american suburb covers a lot of variation. If you have a horse as some of the least dense support that is different from ones where you get a postage stamp lot. Streetcar suburbs designed before cars are ess dense than the new developments they are putting is around me today.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Infrastructure alone to Bungalow jungle is never cost-effective: as Detroit learned, it never pays for itself with property tax.
I say we jack the property tax on low-dense residential to properly reflect a 20-year amortization and all the operating expenses of the infrastructure used, all the way back to City Hall, so that it does pay for itself (and the farther out, the more expensive to fix, the more expensive the tax).
At the same time, the city will
People think they can’t do apartments, but I’m sure a spacious 1200sqft place planned with an eye to sight-lines isn’t what they’re thinking. We love our (smaller) apartment near the mixed-use block that sprung up , and everything we need is within that block. From daycares and pet stores to restaurants and coffee-shops and take-out, and gyms (plural) and insurers and a market and a chemist and an insurer and a physio… it’s endless, and they’re still building out more commercial space.
But you have to build the new space, properly configured with GOOD (rail) transit, before you can get people out of their cars.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s really isn’t difficult
Our government just won’t spend the money to do it
BussyCat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If you want useful public transit then it needs to connect population centers where people are. People are lazy and don’t want to walk more than 1/2 mile to a bus stop so if you have a population density of 1000/ sq mi that means any one bus stop is only going to be able to provide adequate coverage to 250 people. With so few people per stop it needs to make a lot of stops to be useful which then makes it slow which further lowers use. At that density it also doesn’t make logical sense to have designated bus lanes so they are stuck going slow in traffic as well. So now you have an expensive system that nobody uses because it sucks
If you have higher density then you can justify more lines which makes them actually useful and can add things like light rails which really make a difference
Bike transit is usually easier in those lower density areas but due to the low density getting between places is usually a bit further away so there are usually higher speed limit roads that aren’t as good for cyclists so more expensive barriers need to be constructed or they have to follow less direct paths which causes cycling to be slow