Originally Posted by
Dahon.Steve
If the city does not want to spend money to subsidize professional bus service, then Mexican jitney vans should be allowed to compete for passengers. Once you have these vans in service, more people will want and vote for public transit. Getting people used to transit, even it's a dirty jitney van will enforce new carfree behaviors.
I've seen this first hand with lightrail.
This is a good idea. Idk about the 'dirty' part but if something like Uber was allowed for shuttle-vans and the like, flexible routing could provide some of the same efficiency-gains of busing without the inefficiency of fixed routes and partially-filled buses. I have been skeptical of ride-sharing systems like Uber because I'm afraid they would encourage more motor-traffic congestion but if the vehicles were larger and used efficiently, they might be a good complement to more popular fixed-route large-bus lines.
Originally Posted by
alhedges
I don't think that you can meaningfully discuss public transit in the abstract. What works in one city won't necessarily work in another, with the density of the city being a critical factor. You also can't hand wave away the tremendously expensive upfront cost of something like light rail.
I agree. I think light rail is a solution to the status-problem of busing. I'm sure you are right that localities have nuances that make them unique cases, as with individuals/families within localities, but it obfuscates the discussion to defer it to the local level. What's more, those who resist and even fight against growth in public transit do not limit themselves to their local communities, so deferring to the local level is essentially feeding the sheep to wolves who will gladly devour them.
And, as far as I can tell, public transportation is only really successful where driving (including parking) is particularly inconvenient.
This is the huge issue. Driving IS most convenient below a certain threshhold of population and sprawl. The convenience and efficiency fades, however, as the city grows. Then, the more the city has grown, the more difficult it is for public transit and cycling to grow as relief for the impending sprawl-congestion.
In other words, the longer people wait to grow transit and cycling as relief for automotive congestion, the harder it gets for individuals to make the choice. So the challenge is finding a way to get enough people to adopt transit and cycling at a point in city-growth before sprawl-expansion so that the sprawl-expansion can be prevented by forms of growth that don't add to sprawl and automobile dependency.
It takes me 25 minutes to drive to work. If I take the bus, (which is convenient to my house, and runs twice per hour) it takes me 40 minutes; cost is $1.75 one way. (Biking takes 50 minutes).
So the value proposition isn't that great, it takes more time, and it's less flexible if I want to stay after work or do errands on the way home.
Note, too, that if I miss the 7:30 bus, I could drive to work before the next bus arrives (and the schedule creates its own inefficiencies - if I'm ready to leave at 7:15, I can't; I still have to wait until 7:30).
I'm pretty sure everyone who drives sees it the same way.
And our bus system is very much of a hub-and-spoke design: good for getting to and from work, particularly if you work downtown, but not necessarily good for going across town or visiting anyone who doesn't live downtown or on the same spoke.
I think that these factors, more than anything else, tend to mitigate against greater public acceptance of public transportation in a lot of newer cities
Could you go as far as to say that cities are practically designed to limit public transit use so that automobile ownership and driving is positioned as a premium mode of transportation? It's like transit is basic cable and driving gets you to the premium channels. Local governments no more want to make public transit comprehensive than cable companies want to include premium channels in the basic cable package. Doing so would reduce automotive business.
This is a problem because it practically guarantees sprawl-growth, which gradually creates worse economic consequences than automotive business losses.
Later this year, my city is rolling out an electric car share service, which I'm looking forward to. Unfortunately, they haven't set the price yet; but it may provide a better model for non-dense midsized cities.
I was optimistic about car-sharing at first but I think public transit, sprawl-reduction, and more bike transit does more to reduce traffic, bustle, and the seas of cars everywhere that come with most people relying on driving.
Originally Posted by
Walter S
What does "successful" mean? That it exists and people use it? Besides convenience, you also have economic drivers. In my area many people use public transportation and would probably rather not because they can't afford cars. The rail takes people to the outskirts of the city where they have jobs. There's also a sort of stigma that goes with using public transportation - not a dramatic one. But it's a factor. Many people seem to perceive using public transport as something for poor people.
These are all reasons why the public resists public transit. At what point do you give in and accept inherently unsustainable growth patterns though? It's like planning death as the culmination of a long-term strategy to live off debt without repayment.
If you introduce buffers where cars can't go then using public transport can actually save time. But how do you do that in the face of the public outrage that comes from people that already go to these places in their cars? Without that, public transport is for poor people or people with environmental concerns that do it out of a sense of responsibility. There's also people that use up some extra time on public transport, but spend that time reading, emailing with friends, etc. and do in fact prefer that way of getting around because driving takes constant attention. But that's a small segment of the population at large.
Certain campuses get away with restricting driving, e.g. amusement parks and universities. They also get away with charging high parking fees and tolls to enter their road networks. Local governments are under the *** to keep public roads free and car-friendly, for the most part, because of majoritarianism mainly because the public has proved its ability to block out concern for the long term consequences of unsustainable growth in favor of narrow short-term concerns like continuing to drive the same way they did yesterday and to be able to afford the costs that come with driving.