This country needs some fuckin' reform.
This country needs some fuckin' reform.
199 comments
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Another demonstration of how NYC is the only real city in America and anywhere else is a suburb larping as a metropolis.
You can't call yourself a metropolis unless half the population uses public transit: change my view.
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50% of Boston's workforce commutes using the T every day, but it doesn't show up on the map. I'm assuming because most of those stops are in outlying towns and, therefore, only make up a minority of the commuting workforce in each area. According to the federal government, the T is the third best public transit system in the US due to it being the fastest average commute out of any by at least half an hour, only outclassed by the quality of DC and Seattle (I believe, might be Portland that's #1? I'd have to look again).
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That's just an example of how useless the map is. You can't look at it at this scale and only pay attention to the top most used transportation from a county level. New York City shows up because it literally is those counties, geographically, nearly edge to edge.
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Ok! As per the marriam-webster definition of a metropolis:
the chief or capital city of a country, state, or region,
the city or state of origin of a colony (as of ancient Greece),
a city regarded as a center of a specified activity,
a large important city.
As per Cambridge:
a very large city, often the most important city in a large area or country.
Collins:
A metropolis is the largest, busiest, and most important city in a country or region.
Britannica:
a very large or important city — usually singular
Oxford:
A very large urban settlement usually with accompanying suburbs. No precise parameters of size or population density have been established. The structural, functional, and hierarchical evolution of global metropolises is rooted as much in the past as in the present: modern information and communications technology may be more advanced than the 19th-century telegraph, but the processes and outcomes are much the same (Daniels (2002) PHG 26). ‘[Berlin's] wealth of facilities, as well as their scatter across the metropolis, can be understood only in the light of the city's history and, paradoxically, its troubles.
Longman:
a very large city that is the most important city in a country or area
You:
NYC but only if half the people use public transit
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In Amsterdam the mode share for all trips is like 30% for biking and for walking and like 20% for driving and for transit
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I was being hyperbolic in my comments anyway. My commute is basically always by bike unless there's a thunderstorm.
I know the Brooklyn Bridge has lightning rods but the idea of being on the bridge on an e-bike in a lightning storm, 60 meters in the air is too much.
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New Yorkers living up to the arrogant douchebag stereotype again.
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That's this whole sub though
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Nah I'm not saying NYC is the best city ever - there are so many great cities on earth.
But there isn't another metropolis like it in the USA. Is the only true metropolis in America.
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change my view.
Me and the Sullivan twins would like to have a conversation with you and a few baseball bats in the alley out back if you're seriously arguing that Boston isn't a metropolis... and don't you dare fucking insult the Red Sox, Dunkin' or the Bruins (actually, we care more if you bad mouth our college hockey teams) unless you'd like to qualify for Medicare early.
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I like Boston fine as a New Yorker, but fuck Dunkin'.
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Why isn't public transport popular in the US? It's cheaper, it's cleaner, it saves time, it's overall better if done right.
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Well part of it is this conspiracy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
But mostly you can blame Eisenhower for wanting to make US cities harder to nuke, racism for making suburbs appealing for segregationists etc.
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What are u people smoking, cars are awesome.
NYC metro is bankrupt and unmaintained. They can't even build a link to JFK.
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Driving is more fun when there are more viable alternatives. I don't like driving, but it's my only real choice where I live so I do it begrudgingly, and you have to share the road with me. Think of all the people who don't want to drive (on account of it being dangerous, costly and/or mentally taxing) suddenly not being in cars, and how much traffic that would free up for you to zip around instead!
Also, calling a public service "bankrupt" is really weird to me. How many tax dollars are we spending on public highways and freeways again? Do suburbs, which are designed to be car-dependent, provide a net gain or net cost in tax revenue to cities?
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I remember going to a job interview when I was younger. My dad dropped me off there on his way to work and then I took the bus home after my interview was done. It took my dad about 13 minutes to drive me to the interview and it took me TWO AND A HALF hours to take transit home. That includes bus travel time as well as time spent waiting for buses. I have also biked that route before and it takes about 25-30 minutes one-way.
The North American approach (because Canada is guilty too) to transit is to just throw a bunch of busses at the problem and act like they've "solved traffic". Meanwhile those buses are noisy, stinky, often unsafe things which spend most of their time stuck in traffic and are almost always late, if they even arrive at all. Most of the bus routes in my city stop at midnight so if you were out at the bar for the night and needed a way to get home then you better have funds for a cab or Uber or you're going to be stranded. (something something car-centric cities encourage drunk driving deaths somethingsomething)
Depending on the distance you need to travel - it's often faster to just walk. That's right, we have created a method of transportation that is actually slower than walking. And all the while our city planners, officials, and politicians pat themselves on the back for their "commitments to public transit".
And don't even get me started on how the war on unhoused people has lead to almost all bus stops being uncovered and with no seating. Raining? Fuck you! Snowing? Fuck you! 35c+ outside? Fuck you! Disabilities? Fuck you! What few covered stops I have seen usually have glass roofs so the sun still cooks you under them.
Maybe more people would use this method of transportation if it literally wasn't intentionally made to be as miserable and useless as possible.
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The North American approach (because Canada is guilty too) to transit is to just throw a bunch of busses at the problem and act like they’ve “solved traffic”.
Nobody thinks they're "solving traffic". In most of North America, buses are seen as transportation for poor people. Cities feel like they need to supply them because poor people need to get to their jobs, but it doesn't have to be a good solution.
In Switzerland where they actually do try to solve traffic with buses, those buses have their own dedicated lanes, their own stop lights, etc. Plenty of rich people still drive because it's a status symbol or something, but buses, trams and trains are the fastest way to get from A to B. Cars are forced to yield to bus traffic. The result is that buses are fast and predictable, so everybody's happy to use them, which means they get increased investment, which leads to even better bus service, so even more people use them, etc.
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My entire company of 150 people here in Switzerland in Zürich has 11 parking spaces, one is reserved for the CEO, who doesn't even use it often, three are rented by other C-suite members, five are for visitors or the occasional internal reservation, and two hold our bike racks.
But you really have to be masocistic to even want to drive in Zürich during the commuting times. Right in front of our office there is an train station for a local train line right under the river, and on the side of our block there is a tram station. Or you can walk to the main station in 10 minutes. I usually bike home though, it's half an hour and at least somewhat counteracts my sedentary lifestyle.
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I very seriously tried to be a no car household, I got to one car and I just walked a mile to work, rain or shine.
But my wife was a 6 minute drive from work, but due to criscrossing highways it was entirely unwalkable and like a 40 minute bus ride.
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Not too far from me there's a family with three kids in the school literally across the street from their house. They take the bus to school. Literally directly across the street.
Why? Some kid got killed there back in the 1980s. And instead of making it safe for children to walk to school they have them take the bus to cross the street.
Why? Because that street is a state route, and doing anything to calm traffic is anathema to it being a "highway."
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I'm in a similar boat. 45m drive by car. 2h using PT. Including a 30 minute walk for the last bit to my office. This doesn't include waiting for busses or trains.
Realistically it'd be 2.5h without delays. And that's just one way. After that I'm expected to work for 8h and do it again.
So if i leave at 7am, +5h+8h +30minute lunch break I'd be home by ...8.30pm?
And that is hoping the connections line up after work... Cycling isn't really an option as there's no shower in the workplace. And knowing corps I'm pretty sure they won't appreciate people charging their electric bike battery in the office for free.
RIP work-life balance using PT. And I already feel like it's shit.
Though I do try to use the train when I can. Even though it ain't cheap either...
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I am so sorry. Here in the Netherlands it's not super great, but I'm ashamed if I'd complain now. A one way trip takes me an hour by car, by train it takes only half an hour extra. The train on my line usually gets more than half an hour delay only once every two months or so. The car gets half an hour delay twice per day. Train delays mean I get to read more books. Car delays mean I get to stare at more brake lights and build up more anger and stress.
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Also trains are slow and it takes the same time as a bus/car and costs the price of an airline ticket. This is comparing Detroit to New York via bus, train and airplane.
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The Amtrak long distance lines are a disgrace, kept barely alive. I had a similar experience where my girlfriend at the time wanted to visit me from Albany to Boston but the train took an hour longer than greyhound. I’m not sure we should even count them as a transportation choice.
Amtrak does run some lines where they can afford to upgrade them to “useful”, notably Acela. Travelling from Boston to NYC is fastest and most convenient by train, although weirdly enough flying might be the cheapest option if you include parking costs for the car option
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I remember riding a bus downtown for the first time. A guy sneezing and wiping his nose helped me understand what bus I need to use. I'm grateful for his help but he sure did smell like bologna.
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I was excited because I thought the bike path extension construction was going through, federal funding had been secured. I’d have been able to bike my kid over to daycare in a year. Well I guess the time to start building ran out and the funding expired. I don’t precisely know why, but I heard a council member was being petty. I’m so very disappointed In addition, that daycare closed down as well, so moot I guess
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I'm guessing those red areas in Alaska are literally only because there are no roads.
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That, or those people live in the place they work, or else only a few minutes away.
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I think you nailed it. The majority of the northern portion of alaska is going to be oil/gas workers, lumberjacks, and perhaps researchers and native tribes. All of those probably have company barracks, cabins, or if there is a 'town' it's going to be a few hundred yards wide. For the towns, it's due to the winter, when you almost need to be close to other people in case something goes wrong, because significant help is a long way away in distance and time.
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Or people
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And the blue area is definitely "commute by boat", btw.
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I was thinking snowmobile
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false, it's more accurate to say Suburbs don't really exist in Alaska. Primarily because it still hasn't really filled up the "urb" layer.
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The US needs so, so, so much reform. Especially regarding public transit. In most parts of the nation anything that isn't a car stuck in traffic is for poor people who are also disregarded across volumes of needs issues.
We're falling back to where we were in the great depression, and it still seems nothing short of violence and bloodshed will stop our ownership class from exploiting the rest of us.
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Even in those cities with it, public transportation is failing. The systems are archaic and outdated.
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Are there similar maps available for other countries? Would be really intereseting to see
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(source)
Not a map, but at least some more data from some other countries. The own car is unfortunately the most used mode of transport for commuting in every surveyed country, but the US seem to be especially far behind when it comes to alternatives.
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They mixed taxi and ride sharing with walking in that statistic. For the purposes of car usage, it's not really helpful. That's still one car for one person, on the road for the amount of time that person is commuting (i.e. it doesn't park, it goes and picks up another commuter)
Moreover, difference in land mass and population density matters when looking at this from a national perspective. United States has significantly more rural space than Germany. The map posted is kind of pointless because it's only showing the most used form of transportation in each county, and that will always be cars with extreme outliers like New York City, no matter how much we invest in public transportation.
What they're using is Bumblefunk County Oklahoma to get from their little town of 2,000 people to the factory 20 minutes away in some industrial park between Nowheresville and Chickentowm isn't really relevant to the discussion. Public transportation is only really viable in dense areas, but everyone else in the country is going to still drive because they've got distance to cover or irregular routes. Even if we expanded rail across the country, people in those counties would still need to drive to the station.
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It's not surprising when we've created an induced demand for driving through which infrastructure we build and subsidize. However, the numbers in Germany and China are changing as they push for non car-centric infrastructure. I can't speak to the other countries.
Places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam used to be full of roads and parking lots. When they built public transit and safe bike infrastructure for shorter trips, they induced a demand and people ditched their cars for safer, cheaper, and more convenient alternatives.
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I think this source hasn't sampled their data very well. The figures for china seem wildly wrong.
The figures from the same source even list the number of automobiles in China as 319 million in 2022, no where even close to 64% of the population.
The 64% commuting with own car in China is way off. So I'd question the entire chart.
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the US seem to be
especially far behind when it comes to alternatives.leading the world as usual, hashtag based, hashtag foreign oil -
The wording on that one makes me wonder. It says "own a car," but I'm sure there are millions of people who own a car but don't necessarily use it daily for work. Isn't it fairly common in major cities to own a car and still take a train/bus to work because of traffic, using the car for things like weekend trips or errands? Idk if that's enough to really swing of the stats, just that I wish they had phrased it differently.
Edit: misread that. S'what I get for reading a Lemmy post before I put my glasses on, or even get out of bed to pee
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I think this map would really benefit if the colors would be slightly adapted to show the percentage. In some regions, 50% commute by car, in other regions maybe 90% - and both are green.
It really highlights the fact that most of us (also in europe) depend on our cars to make a living.
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Outside the US there are very few major cities that don't depend on public transport, because it is the most efficient way to move millions of people around a city. Ultimately it depends on the quality of public transport.
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Why is "motorcycle" in a different category than "Drive Alone"?
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Climate impact is significantly less for motorcycle riders, that's the only mitigation I can think of.
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That's hardly self evident.
The map has no information to specify its intent or methodology. Without that, you can assign whatever meaning to it you like.
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One, they are much better on gas use. So less energy in general to move them.
Two, they are much lighter, which as we are discovering with electric vehicles, matters a great deal in how horrible the tire wear is (and remember that 28% of microplastics in the environment come from car tire degradation alone!).
Three, for traffic purposes, they are much, much better. They are smaller, so recall that picture that floats around of how much space 100 passengers takes up. They aren't near the train/bus level, but are closer to the bicycle portion of the picture than the cars. It becomes even better if they are scooters compared to motorcycles (scooters are generally even lighter and have smaller engines with better gas usage). I always hear the stat thrown around that if 25% of individuals switched to motorcycles, modern traffic jams in cities (in America, I guess, where I hear it uttered) would nearly disappear.
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Because motorcycles take up way less space than a car
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Did San Francisco sink into the bay? It looks like the map didn't include it, shame since that's probably the only place outside NYC that may be a different color.
EDIT:
Looks like someone else noticed it to and did a close up on the original. It shows SF is public transit and also shows that dc is missing on this map as well and also is more public transit then driving, so not just New York. You can also see it by borough in NY and Staten Island is cars but Hudson county NJ is public transit too.
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The choice of measurement is a misleading one. We do have a handful of cities with good transit options but this choice of measurement shows them all as green. Many developed countries will show most/all green, not just the US, as if they have the same car culture.
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Yeah, while transit exists in SF… it’s not great.
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This is why we Americans may be happy to hang out and chat on /c/fuckcars, and try to vote for sane transportation policies, but then also be like lol no I can’t actually get rid of my car.
Every big American city you’ve ever heard of is solid “car” except for the heart of New York. Now just imagine what it’s like for the folks in rural areas or even in the suburbs of medium cities.
This is a pretty sparsely populated country on average, and it’s all designed assuming everybody is in a car. Sidewalks and bike lanes get sprinkled around where there’s room and desire for them.
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Actually many European cities would be green as well. For example Munich still has a modal share of 34% cars. However none of the other options has more then that with walking and public transport being at 24% each and cycling at 18%. You could very much live without a car though.
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i like how alaska is included in this like the majority of it is populated lmao.
of course it's only "walkable" you have to hike over mountains and through forests to see it
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Alaska is the place where you generaly live close enough to walk to work, live in a big city, don't commute, or don't work.
That last option actually works in rural areas because subsistance makes hunting/fishing a viable option.
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brother... The red part of alaska is half in the the arctic circle. The majority of the alaskan population lives in the little pullout coastline bit, afaik.
Literally nobody lives in the northern part except for longhaul truckers, and hunters.
though to be fair, im sure some portion of the population lives in a walkable area, i just think it's mostly disingenuous.
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I'm all for a significant reduction in vehicles commonly on the road. Apart from a monumental restructuring of the entirety of every major infrastructure in the United States, how would we go about effectively reducing the number of cars that are daily drivers?
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Make public transit a viable alternative.
My commute is 45 minutes by car, over 2 hours by public transit. We need massive investment into public transportation. More buses, more trains.
And, I'll get crucified by this I'm sure, but it's true: bicycle infrastructure is nice but a far far secondary goal. When we prioritize cycling over buses and trains, all we're doing is supporting upper middle class office workers and work-from-home recreational cyclists. It's not a sea change. It doesn't move the needle. Taking away a car lane to make a dedicated bus lane moves the needle. Taking away a car lane to make a bike lane does not, unless mass transit is already a viable option.
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God if I wouldn't kill to just be able to take a train like in Tokyo. The train times were usually 2 to 3 minutes apart from driving times on Google maps. Add the 10-15 minutes it'll take you to walk out of your station to your job and I'm all for It. I need the extra walking anyways to stretch my legs.
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I can agree with this. If we moved to public transit through the utilization of railways and bus routes, would you say the cost of maintenance then moved to the Local and State governing bodies? One might conclude that roadwork costs would decrease positively with the reduction in traffic. There would also be higher maintenance costs, all offset by taxes.
What about the logistics of these operations?
The initial start-up costs?
The time?
The petty small suburban neighborhoods who claim buses increase homeless presence in their neighborhoods?
There would also need to be a fundamental cultural shift on the Professional level.
I know we don't really have all the answers. I just want to make sure we are aware that moving this needle is more than dropping a couple magic bus lines down in each major city, and running a railroad from Point A to B. We do need less cars. I wish I could walk to work. All of this requires an almost mind-boggling amount of preparation and then work to even get started.
Gotta be realistic, otherwise we'll never get anywhere.
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Making public transport not absolute dogshit.
Like, I don't even mean "We need to extend it way out into the boonies" kind of thing. Something as simple as "Public transport that isn't so dogshit that the locals in major cities avoid it like the plague whenever possible" would go a long way towards reducing traffic congestion and car usage, even with suburbs and rural areas continuing to use cars excessively.
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Wait what? Don't people use the train in NY?
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NYC, yes. That's the yellow on the map.
Syracuse, no.
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Aww shit it's tiny af
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Nobody drives in New York, too much traffic
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Channeling Yogi Bera?
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What about Mackinac Island?
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It's funny that it's both visible and wrong
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USA should play a bit of OpenTTD or other public transit simulators on their country map to get some ideas ^^
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Honest question. Does everyone in this instance live in a major city?
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A large majority of the United States lives in a city or urban center.
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Most people live in cities.
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81% of people in America do.
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It's not only major cities that ought to have good public transportation. Basically everything except small villages and rural communities would have all that in a sane world.
But yes, over 80% of the population of most developed countries live in a city.
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NYC here. Don't think I'd want to live anywhere else, at least not in the US.
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Not everyone, but most people live in major cities. And any city that is big enough to "justify" building stroads is absolutely big enough to justify having walkable communities connected by light rail or bus
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I don't, if that question really is honest. (But also not in the US)
But you really shouldn't be surprised, most people live in major cities.
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im not and i don't want to, but i support the vision.
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All but two of my ADULT family members in New York City drive. Even though they have access to the best public transit in the country and finding a parking spot can be a chore. The rest of us (as in Americans outside of The Big Apple) are required to drive.
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I'm surprised the Chicago area isn't orange/red..
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I do walk to work when I can, but right now I'm sitting here stuck because it's pouring (like it does every afternoon/evening in the summer here). If I could have brought my car, it would be waiting for me in the covered parking garage!
Getting an electric bike this month and that will let me arrive not sweaty, but it won't solve the getting home in the rain. There are actually THREE separate bus routes I can take from my house to work with about a block of walk on each end but whenever I could bus or bike I could walk, once I leave the house I never feel like spending the fare, it's only a mile.
In the other half of the year it's easy to get here without a car but only because I refuse to work anywhere that is not on a bus line and close by.
Here, the city tries but unfortunately transit is run by the county not the city.
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Why not use an umbrella
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Apparently you mistake rain for something different from what I mean by rain. An umbrella would not avail, and would be a lightning rod. A raincoat does not work either. My glasses get all rained on too then I can't see. It's a big rain with wind and lightning, goes in all directions, not a gentle rain shower in a downward direction. I'm sure there is specialized gear that would work, I just am not that committed.
A Florida rain, not a London rain.
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This is the home of car culture and it's the reason the climate change movement has seen such little traction. 80% of this problem could be solved by a decent intercity rail network combined with light rail and cycle paths in the densely populated areas. Sometimes a car is the only solution but everything looks like a nail when your only tool is a hammer.
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What's that orange paradise in the northeast coast?
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I have to drive 50 miles to work one way. Chartering a bus or a uber is just too expensive and i aint walkin it
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Trump has some plane to privatize and sell off national parks doesn't he?
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Reform alone will not be enough. It needs a new revolution.
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I grew up with public transport and now drive the car daily. Car is so much more convenient.
I don't understand what's all the fuss is about. Like it's impossible to haul a lot of groceries in the bus and u have to wait in the cold for the bus to come. And sometimes there are a lot of people and u are like sardines there.
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It's not "I want public transportation because public transportation is fun", it's "I want good public transportation because it's better for the environment and society and urban planning and etc etc etc"
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Car is so much more convenient.
(Okay before you read this, this assumption is for Cities only. Rural areas do not apply at all lol. Suburbs are also still part of cities)
This is actually an effect of creating a car centric infrastructure and city planning revolving around roads and parking.
You have to imagine for a moment what an entire city would look like without cars as the core transportation method. For starters, suburbs wouldn't be a thing, everything would be spaced about 4-8x closer, large supermarkets would be rare, especially grocery stores, pedestrian and cyclist traffic would be the most common form of transportation, and then busses/streetcars, and then trains.
You would likely be getting groceries more frequently, but it would be an average 7 minute walk to your local grocery store, and a flat 3 minute cycle if you don't want to carry any groceries and put in even less effort than walking. Busses and trains would be reserved for mostly commercial traffic like traveling to work, city center, or other neighborhoods.
There are plenty of real life examples of cities and entire countries that are developed like this. Netherlands is always brought up, but places like Sydney follow this planning despite also having a lot of cars. Even several US cities were like this in the early 1900-1940s.
The reason busses and trains absolutely suck in the USA, is that it is treated as secondary transport. Busses are rarely running with enough frequency to make them viable, and they have to travel the same distance and use the same roads as cars, because every neighborhood was designed to accommodate cars first. There should be almost no need to get on a Bus to do grocery shopping.
Same logic applies to trains. Lots of people drive first to take the train, which makes it much less effective. Also the USA hasn't properly invested into rail for like 70 years, so every system you see is slow as hell and never on time.
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Walkable cities are even better. I used to drive daily and then I moved close enough to walk to work with conveniently located grocery stores. Didn't drive much at all for years and THAT was convenient. Never sit in traffic and just stop in the store and pick up a few things on your way home from work. As long as I have to be working that is as close to livin' the dream as possible for me.
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Cars don't scale.
As soon as there is real traffic, cars become inefficient trains.
If you're somewhere that doesn't have much traffic yet, it'll seem fine, but that doesn't always last.
If you can make a bicycle work, that's much healthier and cheaper to own and operate for all those people that can't afford a car, or don't want to be indentured to it. Cargo bikes even work fine for groceries, depending on your family size.
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It has a bad reputation cause it isn't well funded, I do agree buses aren't perfect but in my city they come often enough and there is actually plenty of space to rest so it is not a traumatic experience
Besides the fact that underground trains take care of most transportation
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See there are some problems here.
I can't get to my doctor, or dentist, or grocery store, or pharmacy, or bowling alley, or friend's house, or closest pond, or my parents, or the airport without driving to each of those places.
The only way this gets solved is if there is a huge network of buses going to every neighborhood at tight intervals then each business Park and public attraction, etc at tight intervals. In a town of what 150k-200k?
Outside of metro areas, this doesn't work. At all.
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This is because a lot of well-built towns (or cities) have been bulldozed and rebuilt for cars instead of people. Or some built directly with only cars in mind (I wonder if car and oil companies had a role in this..., they did). This is why one of the key points (maybe the first step and the most important one) is to allow, invest in and develop better urban areas: allow two or more stories buildings, so not only areas are denser, thus it makes sense to serve them with transit, but also your doctor is allowed to have their office there; so your dentist; so are stores and pharmacies (that can only thrive in an environment where people live, not a suburban sprawl of cars and megastores). Cities built like this always have fast and efficient transit to the airports, to recreational areas (parks and your pond) and most likely to your parents.
Banning cars where you are FORCED to use a car to do anything doesn't make sense. Building fake "bike-lanes" that lead to nowhere in zero-density areas with no point of interest (a store, your doctor, a station...) also doesn't make sense.
What you can and should do is advocate for the abolishment of outdated zoning laws and the proposal of new transit projects. Change in those areas takes the most because it's like starting to cultivate strawberries on a desert.
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It can work well though. My city of about 60k is a great example.
- As a city built out hundreds of years ago, it’s more centralized than most American cities, with a town square, offices, library, post office, etc in a tight walking radius.
- As a bedroom community of a major city, we have a couple train stations.
- As a city dedicated to quality of life and transit oriented growth, we grew the train station into a transit hub for buses, cycling, taxi, ride share, rail trail and micro mobility. It’s all surrounded by higher density housing - bigger apartment and condo complexes than elsewhere
- As a city watching its business interests, that walkable town center is a center of shops and restaurants from many culture
As someone in a neighborhood of single family homes, I have frequent buses stopping at my corner. However I frequently walk to the town center, to see a movie, enjoy a restaurant, etc.
Yes, transit can work well in medium and even small towns, depending non how they’re set up and run
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Buses can go all of those places. A system of regional light rails in buses would probably work. Urban sprawl makes it difficult.
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