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Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

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Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#41

Post by latchkey »

hnburnsy wrote: post #24

>These are the statistics underlying the reality that in San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Boston; Atlanta; and many other major cities in the U.S., not a single mile of rail transit is currently under construction. Here are some of the current U.S. cities with rail projects under construction: Los Angeles, California - Extensions to the existing light rail network Denver, Colorado - Commuter rail lines San Diego, Cal…

As much as I like to see it happening, San Diego is too spread out geographically to make use of their rail projects effectively, unless you're really well situated on the lines. That said, it makes for a great way to explore the city for a day.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#42

Post by iJohnDoe »

My answer without reading the article.

It’s hard in the US because of politics, corruption, favors, contracts for the purpose to burn money, transit other than cars is only for poor people (a US thing), poor people aren’t a priority, reputation for working on transit for people won’t get you reelected by your rich donors and constituents.

It’s kind of a shame because whenever Americans get back from Europe they rave about being able to take the train everywhere.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#43

Post by SoftTalker »

genghisjahn wrote: post #34
qwerpy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle-area commuter here. I have to agree, transit seems mostly designed for people who don't value their time. Which don't tend to be the highly paid tech workers with families. I tried so many times to give transit "one more try". The straw that broke my back was when they silently canceled 2 buses in a row for my route, on the coldest day of the year, for a route that has 20 minutes between buses. And my suburb…

Public transit people don't value their time? I wonder about the people stuck on I-76 as I pass over them on the regional rail here in Philly. Sure I deal with a late train now and then. But those people deal with center city traffic every day twice a day.

Yeah in dense urban areas in the US we have transit. Maybe it could be better but we have it. Other places are too spread out. There are not enough people going to the same places at the same times for a really useful transit system to exist.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#44

Post by Ologn »

I lived in New York City until 2020. According to the 2010 census, the majority of households in New York City do not own a car. I got around fine via buses, subway and railroads. If need be I could take a taxi. The subway runs all night, all over the city, as do buses. The city even improved its transit - the subway now goes to the Javits Center. The Long Island Railroad now goes to Grand Central Station.

I was in San Francisco once and the latest Caltrain going from Sunnyvale to San Francisco was before 11:30PM, and the latest Caltrain going from San Francisco to Sunnyvale was three minutes after midnight. In New York PATH trains, LIRR trains, Metro North trains, New Jersey transit trains all leave well past that.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#45

Post by AlbertCory »

This seems to come up once a month or so on HN. Here is a non-ideological take, which I suppose means everyone will hate it because it doesn't echo their pet theory:

The US's basic problem with large building projects nowadays is federalism. There are so many different jurisdictions that opponents can always find some court or legislative body that they can exploit to slow down or stop the project.

Everything else flows from that.

Lawsuits? Too many courts.

Legislative opposition? Too many governmental units. Even if the public as a whole supports it, some jurisdictions will not.

Administrative permit hearings, which go on endlessly? Too many governmental units.

Yes, things used to work better in the US, but things change and all systems decay.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#46

Post by techsupporter »

sakras wrote: post #25
yellow_postit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle making the Link a chore to take to and from the airport is a perennial disappointment — painfully slow.

And then them making to along I-90 instead of 520 also doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'd LOVE a fast line from the east side to U-district. But I don't understand the logic behind the current scheme.

It's for a few reasons, let's see if I remember them all from the run-up to the Sound Transit 2 vote in 2008:

Mercer Island exists and has political clout (even though they tried to use that clout to force Sound Transit to not use the express lanes on I-90) and would demand a station no matter what.

Running across a floating bridge is hard enough and the Governor Albert Rosellini Bridge (SR 520 Floating Bridge to the Yanks) is the longest in the world. Going across the dual-named bridge that carries I-90 would be shorter and was seen as easier back then.

You don't have to turn around to serve Bellevue and then Redmond. Coming up from I-90 you hit the big part of Bellevue then you turn right and keep going northeast to Redmond. Coming from SR 520 you'd go south into Bellevue then have to U-turn to go back to meet BelRed and Overlake.

At the time, we didn't know when, if ever, the SR 520 bridge would be replaced. The previous span was a nightmare. It had a movable bit in the middle, the road deck sat at roughly water level, and would routinely sway so hard in strong winds that the bridge would have to be blocked off so the midspan section could be opened to relieve stress and prevent the thing from sinking. The I-90 bridges have no such issue (considering the damn thing had already sunk once in the 90s). There was no way to use the previous SR 520 bridge for light rail, though the new one is built to support it.

You also catch a lot more potential riders in station areas around I-90 and South Bellevue. The Points cities are basically HOAs with delusions of grandeur. There's no hope they'll gain more people in any of our lifetimes, meanwhile the areas the 2 Line passes through are already fairly populated by Eastside standards and have room to grow (also by Eastside standards).

Meanwhile, the 542 and 545 are comparatively very fast.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#48

Post by nrr »

giantg2 wrote: post #32
infotainment wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just market forces though; most municipalities in the US legally mandate a focus on cars. For example, most downtown areas in the US are pre-existing, as they're largely illegal to build today due to mandatory off-street parking minimums among other onerous requirements.

Those mandates are due to the market forces. Go ahead and build a building without parking. Tenants or customers are going to bring their cars anyways and try to find street parking, or they'll go somewhere else. If you make it inconvenient for car and the other option is inconvenient public transit, then people will just look for alternative housing or stores that are more convenient.

Is this true? This doesn't jive with my lived experience, particularly when you consider walkability/wheelability.

The suburban shopping mall, oddly enough, is something of a counterexample. People in aggregate will easily put up with the agony of walking half a mile from a parking space, and extrapolating to a setting more urban, this is roughly what downtown St. Louis around Busch Stadium is like.

The MetroLink isn't the most convenient thing either, but Busch Stadium and whatever-the-Kiel-Center-is-called-this-time are very well trafficked for Cardinals and Blues games (particularly in light of very limited parking availability), and shopping and eating over on Washington Ave west of Broadway doesn't seem to suffer either.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#49

Post by conductr »

thayne wrote: post #21
infotainment wrote: post #2

I think the biggest problem is attitude; in the US, transit is largely viewed as a welfare program for poor people who are not (yet) able to afford cars. To put it in HN terms, Americans see it like a deprecated API; something you're obligated to support somewhat, but only until your users migrate off of it. If you look at the Honolulu transit project (Formerly HART, now called Skyline), I think it shows everything w…

It's kind of a reinforcing cycle. Since public transit is terrible, everyone wants cars. Since everyone wants cars, there isn't a lot of interest in public transit.

Yep. It's chicken and egg problem. You have to invest so heavily before reaching a tipping point of it being a realistic alternative to cars for most American's. Only at that point does it make sense. Where as with cars, we've already made much of that investment. I know it has a high maintenance, economic, and ecologic burden but that's not what we've optimized for. We've optimized for complete freedom and autonomy of movement. We have a number of light rail lines in my city. They mean nothing to the vast majority of our citizens because they either live too far or work too far. And by too far, I mean that proverbial last mile. The other problem is they're not always direct. Just like air travel, this adds time to your trip. People are willing to accept it on air travel because it's rather uncommon, but when your daily commute could be 20 minutes by car or 45 minutes by rail most people will drive. Not to mention, the run times are commonly every 20-30 minutes and are not always consistently running on time. This means even if you plan your day perfectly, a single round trip could leave you sitting for up to an hour at the rail stops just waiting on top of your 45 minute travel time. We have auto traffic, but nothing that severe. We also have sprawled significantly. The implication of which being people drive long distances to work as the status quo. With transportation, long distances means more stops and longer travel time. When driving, most people's commutes see an extra 10-30% of time than non-rush times. But it's fairly predictable and much quicker than trying to get to rail.

All that is also ignoring the other big items: weather & culture. I'm in Dallas, although this applies to many southern cities, where people most people are not used to the weather. Going to speak broadly, this applies to a vast majority of folks. They leave their HVAC home to their HVAC car to their HVAC offices and so on. The women especially get dressed up and do their make-up and hair daily before ever being seen my a non-housemate. Men are often still dressing in clothing that they'd like to keep clean. We don't carry changes of clothes around with us or have a natural style (like I see in European cities where biking is normal). Sweating and being rained on and such is completely foreign to us. We generally wouldn't show up to work after having walked a mile outside. This is why we don't even ride bikes for transportation even when going short distances. It would require a huge shift in perspective and culture around these things.

Re: Why is it so hard for the U.S. to build quality transit?

#50

Post by sakras »

techsupporter wrote: post #46
sakras wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then them making to along I-90 instead of 520 also doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'd LOVE a fast line from the east side to U-district. But I don't understand the logic behind the current scheme.

It's for a few reasons, let's see if I remember them all from the run-up to the Sound Transit 2 vote in 2008: Mercer Island exists and has political clout (even though they tried to use that clout to force Sound Transit to not use the express lanes on I-90) and would demand a station no matter what. Running across a floating bridge is hard enough and the Governor Albert Rosellini Bridge (SR 520 Floating Bridge to the…

Wow I didn’t know the old bridge was such a nightmare. This also makes me wonder why this line only opened now, if it was voted on all the way back in 2008.

I do usually take the 542 now, and it works well-enough, but it only comes every 30 minutes which is annoying.

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