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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?

#81

Post by onecommentman »

Ekaros wrote: post #78
Jensson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The states along the coasts aren't huge (they are roughly like large European countries) and there isn't good public transit there either compared to the rest of the first world, and that is where most people live.

No one is really talking about connecting tiny places really faraway from each other. But cities in 1-6 hours drive of each other and sensible locations inside them clearly make very much sense to connect with public transit.

Unless almost everyone who wants to travel already owns a car which they and their family can quickly, safely and directly drive (with reasonable luggage) to the very doorstep of any given 1-6 hour destination. Which is the case in the US. Will be even more the case if cheap Chinese electric cars ever hit the shores. Makes very much less sense then.

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

#82

Post by theshrike79 »

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.

It's not just the "need for parking" it's the regulation that you need a MASSIVE AMOUNT of parking.

The formula used to calculate "required" parking is based on the theoretical maximum amount of customers for said store, resulting in grocery stores having parking lots 20 times bigger than the store itself.

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

#83

Post by fmobus »

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.

"Mandate" and "market forces" are two terms directly at odds here.

If this was really a "market forces" situation, then parking price would be what determine the equilibrium, not a zoning law article written by the local government.

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

#84

Post by fmobus »

qwerpy wrote: post #12
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…

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…

In comparison: my commuter train in Germany comes every 30 minutes (even a bit more often at peak), but travels at 160km/h. Door-to-door, it's about 20% quicker than driving, with no parking stress, no unpredictable highway conditions and I can even get some work done on the WiFi.

Sure, there are issues with those trains sometimes, but it is really an easy decision.

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

#85

Post by Kbelicius »

shiroiushi wrote: post #77
Kbelicius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, if you prioritize the wants of the people, you'll just get wider roads. The people there don't want better public transit; you can see this every time these discussions come up on HN and Americans here respond about how much they hate riding on public transit or walking anywhere. Everybody wants a car because public transit sucks. Do you think that those people would still want a car if they lived somewh…

>Do you think that those people would still want a car if they lived somewhere with a good public transit and walkability? Yes, I really do. You can see it in comments here on HN and any other place the transit-vs-cars discussion comes up and Americans are involved. Sure, there's some Americans who'd really like to live someplace with good public transit and walkability, but don't be fooled: most Americans (IMO) just…

> Yes, I really do.

So you don't think that people respond to incentives? Quite an interesting take.

> most Americans (IMO) just aren't like this and really do want to stick with their car-based lifestyle.

Because nobody, not just Americans, likes change. I'd like to stick with my public transit/walking lifestyle but if overtime that lifestyle becomes hard to maintain I'd want to get a car.

> If most Americans were like you say, there'd be a huge exodus of Americans moving to Europe.

You've missed the point. I made absolutely no claims about Americans. If I made a claim about people it was about all people, Americans, Europeans, Asians... That claim is that people respond to incentives.

When a person moves from a place with bad public transit and walkablity to place with good public transit and walkablity it is likely that they'll go car free or at least use their care much less. Same applies the other way around.

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

#86

Post by apexalpha »

mike_hearn wrote: post #72
dado3212 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this unique to America? Why doesn’t this apply to the UK?

It does apply to the UK. Very little new public transit gets built, what's there is permanently overloaded. Whenever I visit I regularly end up on trains where you have to stand for the entire 1hr journey. Many lines are full and can't be easily upgraded short of massive signalling reworks (moving block etc). Reliability is poor because there's no slack in the system. Root cause is more people + little/no new capacit…

HS2? New Crossrail thing?

Seems like a bit of a stretch to say the UK isn't at least trying.

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

#87

Post by mike_hearn »

apexalpha wrote: post #86
mike_hearn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does apply to the UK. Very little new public transit gets built, what's there is permanently overloaded. Whenever I visit I regularly end up on trains where you have to stand for the entire 1hr journey. Many lines are full and can't be easily upgraded short of massive signalling reworks (moving block etc). Reliability is poor because there's no slack in the system. Root cause is more people + little/no new capacit…

HS2? New Crossrail thing? Seems like a bit of a stretch to say the UK isn't at least trying.

I didn't say it doesn't try, I said relatively little gets built. Crossrail is a great project, notable for its uniqueness, and the fact that so much is underground (the only place you can build nowadays, and even then just barely). HS2 has to go above ground and doesn't seem to really be happening.

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

#88

Post by shiroiushi »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #74

Has the author of this article ever driven across the US? It takes days and days. The US is huge; it makes absolutely no sense to build mass transit connecting that many places where people live when it's so uneconomical. The US isn't China; the government can't just decree that something happen.

Exactly. Most Americans have to commute long distances crossing multiple states. Daily commutes between places as far apart as Texas and Florida are common. Lots of people working in New York commute by car every day from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, and even Mississippi. There aren't any kind of clusters of people living together in the US, normally called "cities" in other countries, because Americans all live equally spaced apart across the continent, so that's why public transit can't work in the US.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

onecommentman wrote: post #79
Kbelicius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, if you prioritize the wants of the people, you'll just get wider roads. The people there don't want better public transit; you can see this every time these discussions come up on HN and Americans here respond about how much they hate riding on public transit or walking anywhere. Everybody wants a car because public transit sucks. Do you think that those people would still want a car if they lived somewh…

Absolutely yes. Families with children would want it. People with erratic schedules and demands for travel would want it. The aged would want it. People who highly value their and their children’s personal safety and security would want it. People living in harsh climates would want it. People with last-mile issues would want it. People with certain disabilities would want it. People who value their personal time hig…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by fragmede »

shiroiushi wrote: post #88
nathanaldensr wrote: post #74

Has the author of this article ever driven across the US? It takes days and days. The US is huge; it makes absolutely no sense to build mass transit connecting that many places where people live when it's so uneconomical. The US isn't China; the government can't just decree that something happen.

Exactly. Most Americans have to commute long distances crossing multiple states. Daily commutes between places as far apart as Texas and Florida are common. Lots of people working in New York commute by car every day from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, and even Mississippi. There aren't any kind of clusters of people living together in the US, normally called "cities" in other countries, because A…

sarcasm aside, most of those have no business being called cities, as they don't have the density to support city services like buses or light rail, and should only be called big towns or suburban sprawl.
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