51–60 of 205 posts
Weird that they don't mention New York's awful inefficiency, especially since it was reported by the same paper. NYC tax payers are already spending billions and not getting much to show for it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
Hahaha. I lived in Brooklyn, I lived on Long Island, spent a summer in Seattle, and I live in San Jose now. One can't speak for the entirety of the either coast, but no city in CA comes close to what NYC offers in terms of public transportation. And what NYC offers is a true car-free lifestyle which carries you to work, leisure, and back home via public transport. E-scooters aren't a reliable way to get anywhere yet,…
NYC public transportation is great, but its incredibly expensive and falling apart. (NJTransit + Amtrak have had major problems in the last few years)
There doesn't appear to be any fixes in the works. It seems like they're just hoping the problem goes away or that the federal government will spend billions on new infrastructure.
What will it look like in a decade?
Hahaha. I lived in Brooklyn, I lived on Long Island, spent a summer in Seattle, and I live in San Jose now. One can't speak for the entirety of the either coast, but no city in CA comes close to what NYC offers in terms of public transportation. And what NYC offers is a true car-free lifestyle which carries you to work, leisure, and back home via public transport. E-scooters aren't a reliable way to get anywhere yet,…
I think the point is that west coast cities are willing to invest in their systems, not just live off of what past generations built. Here in NYC we've been living off the investments of past generations for a long time, not even maintaining it adequately. It's shameful. I don't know what happened to the can-do attitude that New Yorkers were once famous for.
That's a recent development. The MTA hit its peak of reliability and performance about a decade ago. Since 2010, which coincidentally is the exact time that Cuomo took office, things have plummeted.
The article doesn't really mention that most of these expansions will be ready 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed). If you buy a house in an LA suburb hoping that you will soon get subway nearby, you might get it once the mortgage is paid out and the kids have left for college. What will the technology be like in 20-40 years? Everybody surely have cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices a…
> 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed) that seems to be unreasonably long. In germany, both the city I am studying at and the city I was born are undertaking big changes in their transportation infrastructure, and both don't take that long. In munich, building just started and is expected to last unit 2026 [1]. And we always complain that it's taking too long to plan and build! 40 years seems to be crazy! You…
Admittedly, I'm a bit torn on this. Since infrastructure is so important to the liveability and growth of a city, and any sort of long-term thinking is a good thing. But predicting the future is hard, and having a 40 year plan survive (short-term) politics is also unlikely.
I’m surprised by this article. Most people seem to agree that the the metro systems of NYC, Philadelphia, and DC are much better than those of the west coast. LA’s is unusable for most people because there aren’t enough stops. Seattle’s light rail is definitely gaining steam as it adds more stops.
The difference is that places like Seattle and LA are expanding their systems. In New York, Boston, and DC it's rather stagnant.
How about beating Europe or Asia?
London is the only city in Europe that even comes close to offering what NYC alone does in terms of public transit.
Even Berlin, the second largest city in the EU, has pitiful public transit in comparison.
The article doesn't really mention that most of these expansions will be ready 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed). If you buy a house in an LA suburb hoping that you will soon get subway nearby, you might get it once the mortgage is paid out and the kids have left for college. What will the technology be like in 20-40 years? Everybody surely have cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices a…
> 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed) For comparison, the first intercontinental railroad was built by hand and muscle in 6 years. Including the bridges, cuts, and grading. Including through a mountain range.
Actual construction, even nowadays, is pretty fast. What takes 20-40 years is the long-term planning. By comparison, the first intercontinental railroad was advocated first in 1832 (before most of the American West was even American), and serious planning first started in the late 1840s and early 1850s, which led to the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
Can anyone in other west coast cities speak about the crime on the new transit systems? I'm in Portland, and for the first time in my life, I'm worried about crime on mass transit. Maybe it is just the automated news feeds that are circulating stories of stabbings and attacks that have heightened my internalized hysteria. At the same time, I've felt a larger presence of people on mass transit who seem to be dealing w…
I don't think crime is any worse on mass transit than it is in the surrounding areas. I suspect that most of your fears are driven by media bias: crimes that happen in the crime-ridden section of town are inherently less newsworthy than crimes that happen outside of it.
Hahaha. I lived in Brooklyn, I lived on Long Island, spent a summer in Seattle, and I live in San Jose now. One can't speak for the entirety of the either coast, but no city in CA comes close to what NYC offers in terms of public transportation. And what NYC offers is a true car-free lifestyle which carries you to work, leisure, and back home via public transport. E-scooters aren't a reliable way to get anywhere yet,…
We're not going to see cities go all-in on transit while self driving cars are on the horizon.
Maybe after cars drive themselves, when people learn traffic is still not getting better, more cities will get serious about transit infrastructure.