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The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

nytimes.com

111–120 of 205 posts

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#111

How about beating Europe or Asia?

> 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.

Ever been to Paris ? London's transit is fairly bad compared to it. Or to Lyon (which is vaguely SF's size) ?

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Got to remember BART carries around 400,000 riders a day, 365 days a year. Seems like the issue is lack of security/policing, not the number of passengers. There are plenty of subway networks with far greater traffic that don't have this problem to nearly the same extent.

CA doesn't do policing. It's all about the feel-good.

Clearly people aren't feeling that good about the public transport!

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#113
Ugh classic hype machine bullshit confusing the derivative with the function itself.

West coast is still total shit in land use, other than parkland allocation sometimes, and until they make the hard choices to undo a century of mistakes, can they catch up with the east coast's century of stagnation.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#114
It's worth noting that Boston has been investing quite a bit in improving the T.

New rail cars are being added to all lines over the next 4 years. As another poster mentioned, a new North/South link project is likely to start soon. The Green Line is being extended into neighboring Somerville. The article seemed to focus solely on NYC.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#115

The thing that makes mass transit work is walkability. There are 3 million people in NYC who use the subway every day. They can do that because the walkability of the neighborhoods complements the mass transit. In some European cities, the bicycle is its own form of transit, and it can likewise be that because separate bike paths exist that complement the walkable structure of those cities. If we want to actually bea…

>If we want to actually beat the East Coast on transportation

Why does it have to be a competition? I'd like to see both coasts have great systems for transportation!

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#116
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny is that they mention that NYC is reluctant to use scooters but don't mention how dangerous those things are in the snow. NYC has wayyy different weather than LA, Austin etc.

or even how insanely crowded NYC is in general. It might make sense to have scooters in a less crowded neighborhood in Brooklyn, but try driving through lower Manhattan on a scooter...

Lower Manhattan needs to be pedestrianized immediately, with wide bike/scooter lanes throughout.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ever been to Paris ? London's transit is fairly bad compared to it. Or to Lyon (which is vaguely SF's size) ?

> Ever been to Paris ? London's transit is fairly bad compared to it. Or to Lyon (which is vaguely SF's size) ?

I have. As of 2010 (before Cuomo's tenure began), New York had unambiguously better public transit overall than Paris, in addition to serving a city with four times the population of Paris.

Cuomo is doing his best to "fix" that, but in 2018, I'd still take NYC over Paris as far as public transit is concerned.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - subway trains can travel 50 mph or more - a bus can’t do that on city centre roads.

In theory, but NYCs rarely go that fast. This is changing though. I saw a news article recently about how they are lifting the speed limits on some sections of track as repaired signals come online.

The DC Metro averages 33 mph, including stops. I’d be surprised if NYC’s express lines didn’t hit 50 routinely.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#120

The thing that makes mass transit work is walkability. There are 3 million people in NYC who use the subway every day. They can do that because the walkability of the neighborhoods complements the mass transit. In some European cities, the bicycle is its own form of transit, and it can likewise be that because separate bike paths exist that complement the walkable structure of those cities. If we want to actually bea…

That's just the thing though: Western cities are increasingly de-prioritizing cars, and Eastern cities are falling behind.

There are parts of Phoenix that are more bikable than much of New York.

LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle have started pouring money into their new transit systems, while MTA and NJ Transit and Port Authority keep having their budgets cut, leading to reliability so low that it's driving people into cars.

The East Coast used to be the star of American transportation, not much anymore.

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