this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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What is the argument here? Cars are here to stay forever and ever? Most daily commuters could get used to a train. It is possible for most people to live without a car, your city was just designed in a way that requires you to.
It's definitely not "most". You have to live and work near a train station for that to be viable option. It's not about "getting used to" trains, it's just for most commutes a train simply takes too long - because they don't go directly to your destination.
In Denmark, which has one of the best transit networks in the world, only 13% of commuting is by public transport. 20% is by bicycle. Cars are 60%.
That's the point, we can't exactly just resign a city from the ground up to work with public transit especially when it's not being pushed for by the majority
Yes but what is the alternative? Can civilians all have their own car when 10 million live in a city? What about 30 million? 100? It stops making sense the more people you have. And on top of that suppliers and transportation services use the same road, too. It is already like flying through the death star out here with half the road being eaten by transportation companies.
The higher the density of the city, the better public transit works. You can live in Tokyo or London and get by without a car, but everyone in the world can't (or won't) live in Tokyo-dense cities. It doesn't make any financial sense building a subway in a city of only 100,000.
Well with the way the birthrates are going, I think population is going to stabilize.
Then you're not looking.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/birth-rate
It is still going up just much more slowly. To say we shouldn't worry about efficiency cause there will never be that many people disregards the benefits of unloading all of these personal costs to individuals. Vehicles are expensive on top of everything.
You know that link proves my point? It shows a steady decline in population so we're actually going to have LESS people.
It shows it slowing. Line still go up.
So what's more practical, slowly replacing all ICE cars or completely redesigning entire cities, bulldozing large metro blocks to reconfigure and rebuild?
A little column A, a little column B. Mostly, we can have gentle changes to our cities, like removing Single-Family Home and other exclusionary zoning, removing mandatory parking minimums, as well other initiatives to encourage higher density, mixed-use buildings, and active transportation usage.
As I just commented. How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible? 10 million people? 20? 30? The I-10 and 101 stack interchange is already a fucken mess that can't be expanded. How do you handle exponentially more drivers on the road each year?
Edit: you don't even have to answer cause we already know from California, you don't. The rich people just pay pilots to fly them and the plebs get stuck in 2+ hour traffic to go 20 miles.
It's impossible to answer that - there are just too many other variables, such as how far are people travelling each day on average, how many of them are going to the same destination, how many roads are there (not how many lanes, how many roads), etc etc.
A lot of the problem can be mitigated with zoning rules to encourage people not to travel to the inner city. Whatever reason they might have to go to the CBD should also be available elsewhere in the city if at all possible.
The fact is trains also have traffic issues and that tends to get a lot worse as you increase the number of train lines in your city. The efficiency of train travel is in part because not many people use that mode of transport. Cities that have 10% of travel by train now probably can't expand that to 80%.
Diversity is the only option. Give people access to every mode of transit, and let them pick the best one. I'm not from California so I don't know the local issues, but looking at a map I-10 has six train lines that run basically parallel to it. Trains are clearly available so why are people choosing to drive? I'm sure they have a reason. Rather than trying to add more train lines, how about figure out why people are driving that route and tackle it from that perspective? What are they heading into LA for? Can it be done somewhere else?
I was talking more about where I live. In Arizona your options are car or a slow bus. The light rail only goes to the east side and inner city. You pretty much are forced to own a car and feed into that entire complex. Its bullshit and the congestion is getting exponentially worse each year. I've been voting in local elections for my lifetime and nobody cares. Guessing by this comment section everyone is content being forced to participate in the car market. So go ahead, be forced to buy insurance, tires, gas, and vehicle maintenance. Be forced to drive on crowded roads during early morning hours with thousands of others. Everyone loves it I guess. Instead of, maybe voting for public transit that is so reliable you can count on a tram or train every 30 minutes so we don't have to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a vehicle to get to work and back.
As much as I'd like to use public transport, even with LA traffic on a Thursday (for those who don't know, Thursdays are always the worst in LA), even when the 405 is a parking lot, taking the metro / bus is still at least 2x slower than driving. Yes I tried, it's that ridiculous. There are a lot of ongoing projects to build and extend metro lines, new bike lanes, etc. but progress is very slow. As others have said, the whole metropolitan area was designed with cars, and only cars in mind.