Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amsterdam has plenty of suburbs, they just look different from US suburbs because of the different land-use and planning approach that they have in the Netherlands. Interestingly, Amsterdam actually does have urban freeways, though they run in a ring a couple miles out rather than right through the urban center. But they've also invested a lot in their train network and most people commute that way. I wish I had more…
> Amsterdam has plenty of suburbs, they just look different from US suburbs because of the different land-use and planning approach that they have in the Netherlands. > But they've also invested a lot in their train network and most people commute that way. Most people in say D.C. don't commute by train not because D.C. hasn't invested enough in it, but because the suburbs "look different." D.C., for example, has inv…
I think the solution is a combination of: 1) further uber-ification, 2) further bike/walking lane improvement, 3) further investment into trains, despite the problems you speak of now
1) I think more people should become Uber drivers (if not Uber, gov't should make an Uber-like app). Not necessarily for the money (although it is nice), but because of the ecological reasons. One of the great Uber-driver features is: you can set direction to go home, and have Uber-riders that are only going along this direction. I live in Boston suburbs, my roundtrip commute to work is about 3 hours. Picking up strangers along the way without losing a lot of time, I save the environment a little bit (less cars on the road) and make the roads less clogged. This is the technological benefit... an app that can intelligently connect riders going the same path (the olden days of finding car-sharing buddies in Craigslist et al was too difficult.. and going around posting flyers at workplace asking who here has somewhat the same commute is too much of a hassle both logistically and socially).
2) I used to park my car at a parking garage and then use a bike for last 10% of the commute (because the last 10% of the commute was actually the part that cost the most time... in Brookline where traffic was hell). I stopped doing that, even though I would save a lot of time because it's really terrifying, I swear I genuinely believe I would have been dead if I had kept doing it for 2 years more. My colleague got in an accident only last week (when he was walking home from work in Winthrop)... he broke BOTH of his legs. Too many people I know are dying or getting seriously injured when biking/walking.
3) You bring up good points about investment in train/bus infrastructure not being worth it in various part of US. But most of Boston and its suburbs are getting more and more crowded... it is starting to build UP (lots of highrises everywhere being recently built) and built across. What I'm getting at is, the US is growing (or rather, at least the big cities are starting to have more concentrated and more dense population hot spots), it does make sense to start investing NOW for infrastructure that will last us decades to come.