Yet you never hear these people complaining about new roads and highways that "go nowhere". It's almost as if infrastructure is easier and cheaper to build BEFORE an area is highly developed.
@@Lildizzle420 That is different in the Federal Republic of Germany where we pay tax to the federal government and local government together. We pay taxes for every thing, if we go shopping food pay taxes too. It is all inside the price of near every product! So we here not have this problem. The "free taxes" are less things, e.g. fun with hubby, eat apple from own tree, robbery foreign tourists, swimming in lake or sea.
@@OldLordSpeedy back when the highway system was introduced in the states the local government only paid 25% of the cost with the rest being funded by the higher government, so getting a highway through the city was a great idea to make the local budget go far... until they needed maintenance or resurfacing. This is also how their single family home urban sprawl gets messed up, the developer will pay for the initial roads but the cities don't tax enough for maintenance/replacement. Their point wasn't about taxes it was about costs that won't surface for 15-30 years. Or if you keep covering up debt with more debt maybe 50.
id love to see the face of these people if the government applied the same reasoning they give against transit to roadways like yeah ok we heard you, we're cancelling all funding for new roads and road upgrades
@@Lildizzle420 which is funny cuz then they complain about paying for food stamps and welfare or anything else ever lmaoooo conservativism and hypocrisy, name a more iconic duo
Another thing I would add is that if you build the transit first, you can often build it for a lot cheaper. If the city is already all developed, you gotta spend a buttload of money tunneling or buying rights-of-way. If you build the transit first before it fully develops, you can acquire the rights-of-way for dirt cheap (relatively) for a much cheaper elevated light metro to avoid tunneling altogether.
the feds won't allow that because you have to prove it's a good investment and they don't like transit oriented development. they claim to support it but it's a lie
If you go full on social-democrat (which has nothing to do with socialism and is a good thing), you can build public transit and sell the land around the stops for developers and ban single-family homes, giving way to mix use walkable neighborhoods and even superblocks, making the city much quicker, safer and denser
You can't build a railway that bridges over the top of buildings, but you can build buildings under the bridges once it's done. Not only is it cheaper, but it helps the area develop into something usable for the transit system. Owning a car in Japan is not that common if you live near a train station, and most people live near a train station. Imagine being able to go anywhere with a rail system, even out to a suburban neighborhood. That's why we don't get good transit systems and good ridership on american railways, if we do build transit it won't go all the way out to the suburbs, it'll take you around the city center and the wards and city neighborhoods, but once you're hitting the outer highway loop where the suburbs start the best you'll find is a park and ride.
We have a new LRT being built in Calgary, Canada. One of our politicians opposed it, saying, “It’s a train to nowhere.” Nowhere meaning a stop a one minute walk from his local office… where all his constituents live. Fortunately, about 90% of Calgarians support the project, so it’s happening anyway.
I think the pandemic caused a large shift in how people see cities, at least in parts of the US. People saw what life can be like in a city with less cars. I've certainly noticed politicians talking much more about the importance of good urbanism since then. And importantly, actually implementing good urbanist ideas, not just talking about them.
It is not baffling. Some people just want to preserve the suburban character of their neighborhood. They don't want multi story apartment towers springing up in their neighborhood of detached single family homes. A lot of people moved out to the suburbs because they wanted to get away from the bustle of the city. These people aren't interested in bringing the city to the suburbs because it detracts from the very reason they moved into the suburbs in the first place. They value peace and quiet.
@@Novusod but they need people from the city to maintain the suburbs so it's a huge drain on the sustainable urban core. If they value peace and quiet, they need to use their cars way less because in about a decade or two, there will be nothing but construction and highway noise. Density is how we can do that. There can be reasonable limits to building height that still allow taxes to cover maintenance without requiring yet another rural county to be subdivided for more suburban sprawl. What's the endgame? I don't know why we take people seriously when they use extreme arguments like that. Again, baffling. Well... It's less baffling once I remember that keeping poor people, racial minorities, and single parents out is more important to some people than having a stable community. If they want quiet, it shouldn't be at the expense of the people they abandoned.
@@Novusod I would understand it more if people weren't so blatantly acting against their self interests. If the city wants to expand to your suburb, you've won the jackpot. Your land will increase in value really quickly. If you like the suburbs, you can move and earn a big payday. Or stay where you are and deal with the somewhat more crowded neighborhood. What in any reasonable world you would not be allowed to do, is tell the city it can't expand anywhere. And everyone else everywhere says the same, so now there's a massive housing crisis. And then people who prefer the city to the suburbs are just out of luck, and they haven't even won a jackpot to make up for it.
I think the most frustrating thing about ValTrains being disapproved was that the voters probably weren't thinking about the city's future residents, such as myself, who were born after the proposal and have to live with the consequences.
Yeah, that's honestly the big issue with allowing citizens to have input on development. Most people think about development in terms of how it would personally effect them right now, not how it will fit into a changing city over the coming decades.
the same is happening right now when people don't realize we're going to be the same size of chicago but we're going to have 50 miles and chicago is going to have 250 miles
Seattle had an opportunity to build rapid transit starting in the late-60s when a proposal called Forward Thrust came up for a vote. Unfortunately, although it got majority support, it needed a 60% yes vote in order to pass, and unfortunately it didn't get that. If we got that, the entire system would have been built out a decade before I was born. At least we're building light rail now. Better late than never...
This doesn’t just apply to people who are older than you, who don’t think about people, your age, needing effective public transit. When you are there, age, I will guarantee it will happen, then as well, and the subsequent generations will complain.
Prague politicians were recently laughed at for lengthening a tram line to a place where no-one lives (because the houses there are only about to be built). As if we didn't used to do exactly that decades ago with all the tram lines that are now surrounded by apartment buildings. It's really rare to hear people and politicians to think ahead more than their voting period... 🤦🏻♀️
tbf i understand why TOD is sometimes met with opposition in Europe: in my city there are several huge and dense neighborhoods with NO light rail at all despite large-enough boulevards to build the lines cheaply. But the city council doesn't want to build anything here, their plan is to build THREE new lines to an empty area. I'm aware there are huge housing projects and they will build a few thousands apartments in this empty area but... could current taxpayers have at least decent service? Shouldn't they be a priority?
@@maoschanz4665 while decently serving the existing city should obviously be a goal, I do understand the line of thought. If you build a new community with a tram already in place you get three major advantages: It’s cheaper, you don’t have NIMBYs to deal with and, very importantly, people get used to having that tram line, when they move in. Once a neighborhood has been built around having no/ bad transit changing travel patterns and land use takes time. Because people who value good transit will not move there, if they have other options, slowly filling the area with people who at the very least aren’t passionate about building transit projects and businesses catering to car dependent people. All in all this can lead to strong resistance against projects that would be massive improvements. So, cities often follow the path of least resistance and expand in newly built areas.
@@eechauch5522 or maybe they follow the path of "my friends are the developers of these areas, and they will make more profit if i put all the tramway money in such a way that they can advertise their soulless new buildings destroying a floodplain (near the rising ocean) as a vibrant and green TOD"
I don't mind propping up actual construction project just so that it's not the mean cro'y capitalists who do the building 😂 Sometimes people sacralize the absence of free market as much as the lolbertarians do with the free market itself, but we should all understand that whether we are in favour of, skeptical of, or outright hostile to what today's markets look like as a social force, it doesn't mean that the "freedom" of a non living thing is pure projection as a value to maintain rather than a tool which can get overused while being practical in other cases. That's roughly a "market socialist" position of mine, idk
Although now that I think of it, degrowthers sometimes engage in their "left NIMBYism", which I found an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction catalyzed only by the desire to own the libs, sadly
My car dependent friends sometimes freak out that I don't drive. "How do you get to this place?" "What if it's cold?" I just answer that I have 2 train lines, 2 bicycle stations, and 2 bus stops next to me (I live in Chicago). I don't need a car at all. And if I need a car? There are car rental places nearby, although I keep forgetting where they are because... I don't need a car! I recommend, if you live in a city with decent public transportation, try not driving for a week. You'll realize that you're less stressed from not waiting in traffic, can get work done on the bus, and save money on gas/insurance/repairs!
IMHO "the commute" is what "determines" your transport choices IE EZ train commute VS "HARD" drive commute then car-"lite" is a no brainer but for MOST people the "commute" is CAR favouring and making "ALL" transport choices around the "paid for" car VS extra cost options so "fixing" the commute will "fix" the other transport uses
In my community (London, Ontario), public transit + car rental every second or third weekend + occasional taxi fares is still massively less costly than car ownership.
I live in L.A. When my 75-year-old mother visited recently, she was floored that we could take the train from downtown to the Santa Monica coast in 42 minutes. AND transfer to a bus for free. Then have the free shuttle at Getty Villa drive us up to the venue. HER FARE WAS JUST 35 CENTS!!!
@@beback_ Well, you have to remember that NJB makes a comparison with Amsterdam, so having lived the Amsterdam experience, the place is probably horrible for him (NJB).
Americans have been brainwashed to believe "public transit" means Commie-Pinko-Librul-Bad-Evil, making selling them on an idea that does nothing but help them nearly impossible.
5:00 "the free market can fix the traffic problem itself. We don't need the government stepping in..." I agree. Abolish all funding for roads and privatize them. Make all land mixed use zoning. Abolish all mandated parking minimums. Let's see how long car dependent suburbia would last in an actual free market and level playing field. It really astounds me how these think tanks are under the impression american suburbs were not the result of massive central planning, government intervention and subsidies.
It would be interesting to see the configuration of private vs public transport in a completely free market, with a government favouring neither. For cars it will be impractical though, because you will have toll posts everywhere leading to massive inconvenience. While bus and train tickets are much more straightforward and going through ports with your card is at most a very minor inconvenience.
Developing transit *before* the land is densified is key, because if there's no transit when people flock to the new area, they will buy a car as they would need it to move around. It doesn't matter if the transit line opens a year later, those people already commited to a car, and if they own their home, they probably won't move in decades.
I'm losing it at the "changing traffic patterns" argument. Like ah yes, Koch Brothers, those notoriously fluctuating traffic patterns. Some days you go out into rush hour and the roads are completely empty, cause you just can't predict traffic! Traffic, notoriously unpredictable -- people never simply commute to the same workplaces and shops 95% of the time, nooo. We gotta have a legion of private rideshare cars on the road to aDaPt to the ever-changing demand of traffic. It's not like people's homes and workplaces are in fixed locations or anything. And they mention this right after saying a few LRT trains are going to increase traffic. So a few trains increase traffic, but hoards of Uber drivers on the road doesn't, got it. These arguments are _so_ obviously contradictory, logically fallacious, and just plain stupid -- and yet they work well enough to convince voters to vote for more traffic. 🤦♂
logic NEED NOT apply Only "sow the seed" of doubt and perpetuate the cash machine that is LOW density "greenfield" developments AND car centric developments that shift PUBLIC money into the hands of PRIVATE development corps
@Nick Gerz the US actually exports more crude oil than it imports. And of the imports only about 7% comes from Saudi Arabia. The biggest crude oil exporter to the US by far is Canada which supplies 52% of the imported crude to the US. So the domestic US oil industry has much more skin in the game to lobby against public transit and keep demand for petroleum products high. Persian Gulf oil mostly ends up in Asian markets. Not in the US.
@@kb_100 oh you fucking bet they are You just need to tune in to youtube through a vpn set to the US, or better yet go there and turn on the TV Literally the first ad you'll see will have you wondering: how tf is it even legal to air this ad? And some of them eat and swear by that shit with a zealous passion The carefully curated culture/information bubble certainly helps, makes people think what they are used to is actually normal and there's no better alternative
the weirdest is how when predicting what happens after the transit is built they are still talking about traffic. who cares about traffic? you can just take the metro
The really silly part is, of course, that public transport reduces traffic conjestion (how much so depends on how well the new system serves the destinations that were generating the traffic, of course), as, rule of thumb, people will take public transport if it is faster than driving, and the worse the traffic conjestion is, the slower driving is. Public transport thus functionally puts a cap on how conjested routes that its service duplicate can become. Note that, just as conjestion affects how fast car travel is, service frequency affects how fast travel by rail is. Larger trains, less often, seems like a more efficient option, save that the 'less often' part kills the demand that justifies the 'longer trains' part. You're better off with shorter, more frequent trains (and then using longer trains once usage is high enough to justify them After attaining frequency).
@@laurencefraser the only small caveat is that public transit isn't an infinite source of travel capacity/ sink for travel demand to forever lock in an upper limit to travel times. Eventually the capacity of the train will be reached and travel times will increase in both systems. (Likely in the form of waiting for the next train) However, transit expansion to improve capacity is a lot less impactful (detrimental) than highway widening on the surounding community. (Cue the "one more lane bro" clip of the katy park freeway that totally solved all of Houston's problems)
@@jasonreed7522 Tokyo has rail lines frequently serving a million + passengers a day. On pretty simple double track lines largely without fancy rolling block signalling or ultra wide trains or anything else fancy.
@@pauly5418 Everyone hates the Koch brothers. Even a MAGA guy like myself honestly despises the hell out of the Koch brothers. However, I will say this; New York and Chicago need to be held to as much account as more suburban cities are. Sure, put more transit in sprawling cities like Los Angeles and Dallas, and densify the housing stock to be more in line with New York, but also, make sure NYC and Chicago have enough expressways to handle car traffic themselves.
Jay Foreman's video about London's expansion highlights this concept well. Several rail lines were built in the last century, heading north into empty countryside, and the urban development quickly followed.
@@ricardokowalski1579 Good question, why fund anything with public money? might as well stop funding the public roads, water, electricity and sewage as well and let the private companies divy it up into 20 thousand separate networks. The why is that providing mobility for the citizens of an area is important in allowing them to be productive and give the city (or state, etc.) money in taxes and the like.
@@zephyros256 you do know that competing private companies coordinate and share "separare networks" better than governments? Cell phone companies buy and sell each other access to their towers, ISPs buy and sell bandwith in their cables, many electric companies sell kilowatts using the same cables, airlines code share, pipelines pump oil from several companies at the same time. Are you not aware of these examples?
@@ricardokowalski1579 Sure I am, that is why I did not mention some of those networks. The electrical companies can sell electricity to each other on the same cables because those are regulated and controlled by the Reliability coordinators (such as RCWest or ERCOT) which provides oversight (making it a controlled market). Same goes for airlines code share where it is in large part controlled by the FAA (for the US at least). The two above show that the infrastructure can often be funded and managed by a central (government aligned) authority with exploitation by private companies.
@@ricardokowalski1579 Large infrastructure projects like roads, rails and sewage works (fixed cost businesses) are poorly suited to free market competition because the extreme barrier to entry means the market is not really free. Most places need only one rail line, road or sewage pipe so it will inevitably be a monopoly. If another company was to try to compete they would have to build their own parallel line, which would not only be very inefficient. Also the existing company could use the threat of cutting prices temporarily to freeze their competition out. Also in the UK our rail lines are built and funded by the government just the actual running of the trains is franchised out to 25 odd operating companies. It's a very complicated system that doesn't work particularly well and tbh I don't fully understand the ins & outs. Although in the early days of rail there was a lot more risk tolerance amongst private investors that enabled competing lines to be set-up, as you mentioned. However as capital markets have become more efficient and lower risk, the appetite for theses projects has disappeared and it would be almost unthinkable for a competing line to built serving the same/nearby area as an existing line.
You don’t build infrastructure after it’s needed. You build it before it is needed or you build it to create a need because it’s called planning. Look at all the cities in the middle of the United States that were built up around the west to east train line that was built in the 1800s. The union pacific or whatever you call it. The cities and towns literally didn’t exist until the train track made it a place that could be settled and Transport in an out was possible. That’s like saying sorry, we will build houses first, then if there’s enough demand we will build streets for those houses, we wouldn’t want to waste money building streets before we know we need them. So let’s just build houses without streets. It’s literally the same fucking logic. You know what cost billions, having to buy property back that has gone up in value from people who want to cash in because they are naturally losing their homes, so you can build infrastructure that should’ve been built to 20 years before, when it was empty land, they didn’t need to be bought for anywhere near the same price. That is a waste of money. Or the wasted amounts of economic potential because people are stuck in. Traffic jams instead of being able to be at work or doing business or exchanging goods. What about that economic waste of money.
@@Lildizzle420So you're saying it's about the states' rights to underfund comfort of living in cities and the general degree of civilization? On what political justification btw, I've only seen two arguments so far : sacro Saint free market or sacealized degrowth in the name of return to nature despite empirical geological data seems to point that cities are actually more sustainable on average (but low carbon transit is necessary as a premise. Luckily it also gets propped as a *local* environmental issue, which people are more aware of and therefore favourable to putting money and effort towards)
One of the main problems that this channel and many in the comment section don't seem to understand is that when people vote against rapid transit it's not usually because "we're not dense enough to justify the costs yet" the main reason is because most don't want to be dense enough to justify it. People live out in these small suburbs and rural areas for a reason and don't want to create an incentive for the population to explode. The residents want to try and maintain their small town vibe. Just look at what happened to that NY street in this video. Some may call it progress but others hate what it turned into. These people we're afraid of what will happen to their town is rapid transit was built and all this video did was prove them right.
Nashville resident here, sadly saw that latest transit plan get defeated with lots of outside intervention. But beyond the arguments that you mentioned, two that played an important role in the transit plan's defeat were (1) that it would hasten gentrification if light rail extended into poor/middle-income neighborhoods (those that arguably would benefit the most regarding mobility) - this was part of why Erica Gilmore turned against it in the home stretch, and (2) perception of no benefit to those living outside walking distance to a light rail stop. The massive city borders resulting from the city-county merger lump together very rural areas and the actual denser city core, with very different interests. That, and the fact that the state of Tennessee hates public transit (and Nashville in general, evidenced by their latest efforts to downsize the city council, defund the convention center, and take over the airport board and sports authority), leaving the city to have to essentially finance everything by hiking the already-high sales tax, which is the most regressive way to go about things but the only way to do it when there's no state/local income tax and some strange regulations regarding property taxes. I am not hopeful about future transit prospects (though who we select as our next mayor this year will make a difference).
Sad that the Koch brothers were able to sabotage the light rail project in Nashville. They also tried in Phoenix but failed, so they're targeting any move towards its expansion to suburbs like Scottsdale and Gilbert.
gentrification is caused by housing policy and not by transit, cities restrict the supply of housing to drive up investment and property values to attract wealthy people who can pay more in taxes.
You are absolutely spot on about the factors that played into the failure of the referendum. I canvassed for the project shortly before the vote and I heard precisely the same things while operating in areas around Nolensville and Murfreesboro Pikes. Nashville is my hometown and while I want the absolute best for it in terms of proper growth I doubt we as urbanists will ever see what we truly want happening. For such a "blue city" the necessary level of popular support was never there and the selfish/individualistic perspective prevailed so heavily.
The "gentrification" argument baffles me. They're saying that people will want to move there! Which is true - people _will_ want to move there. It seems to me that the solution is to build a lot of it, so that more people can afford to.
@@james-p Yes, I agree that building more housing in a transit-oriented manner is the priority. And honestly, Nashville is actually pretty good about building housing - there's a LOT of new housing (denser infill and multistory apartment/condos) going up compared to other cities I've seen. But without transit, that means that the large apartment complexes all come with giant parking decks, ensuring the traffic feared by the NIMBYs voting against transit becomes a reality. And the city ought to be able to require that units that are affordable/attainable are built so that we're not just stuck with luxury developments, but again the state of Tennessee has essentially made inclusionary zoning illegal. Gentrification is a real problem - see e.g. displacement of minority and older populations in North Nashville by new, generally more expensive infill - but transit is certainly not the culprit.
I hate the argument that “our city is too big and sprawling for a rail service.” If you want an example of a city heading in the right direction, look at Dallas. DART has five rail lines across the Dallas area. In fact, Dallas has the longest light rail service in the country, at 93 miles. When did the first DART rail line start? 1996.
Its the argument for a lot of things. Biking infrastructure is another. And pedestrian prioritized planning. People keep saying "we're too big". But the average trip is less than 4 miles. The average grocery run is just over 3miles from home, and that is the 2nd store. The average closest grocer to home is just over 2 miles. Americans do not travel far. Its just an excuse. The truth is, people are just f'n lazy.
@@cjohnson3836 yeah, you’re not wrong about the under four miles thing. When I go shopping, I typically go to one of the Krogers, Targets, or Walmarts near my house, which are around 3 miles each way. I cannot bike or walk, because the trip is too loud, uncomfortable, and dangerous. Some stretches of the road don’t even have sidewalk! However, you are wrong about us being lazy. A lot of us would be willing to bike, walk or take transit, but we can’t, thanks to years of NIMBYism and car-centric planning.
@@Justaguy689 You don't bike on sidewalks. Most places that's illegal and its also one of the easiest ways to get hit by a car. Because, you become unpredictable due to intersections and loss of said sidewalk. You bike on the road. You remain visible. And you take the lane, like you are legally allowed to do. Neighborhood streets are safe. And, seeing as people live near stores, neighborhood streets are also near stores. If I can live car free in West Texas, no one has an excuse.
@@cjohnson3836 ok wow. 1. It is actually not illegal to bike on sidewalks here in the Wild West called Fort Worth. 2. Most streets here DO NOT have bike lanes, so we are forced to share the narrow sidewalk (that is, if you’re lucky enough to live near a road with a sidewalk) with the few brave people who decided to walk. And 3, no we really cannot share the road with drivers. On 4 lane roads, drivers typically go around 35-45 mph, which is usually unattainable by cyclists. And even if we were fast enough to bike on the road, we aren’t protected, and if hit by a speeding 2 ton truck, we could die.
There just isn't much incentive to improve public transit. A lot of people are satisfied with their current method of transportation and even if they do believe improving public transit would be a good thing, they might not care enough to actually do something to cause that change. It's the same attitude to switching to metric. I live in the suburbs in a large metro area (6+ million) and I''m satisfied with my life.
@@99thExtent you might be satisfied, but the people subsidizing your satisfactory lifestyle sure aren't! Do you realize how expensive and unsustainable American suburbs are? You're right in that a big issue is that nobody here cares about anything but their own convenience
A good example of this is the Orange line through Arlington Virginia. After it was built, the area around it has built up to pretty high density with many mid-rise and high rise apartments. The blocks around each metro station are noticeably denser than nearby areas.
Thank you for bringing this up. I feel like I'm losing my mind whenever someone says "LA will never have good public transit because it's too spread out and lacks density". Where do people think the density comes from in the first place?! Density is a byproduct of building environments that people want to live in. If you build a city around highway oriented design, people will have no incentive to live closer to the center and every incentive to get as far from the traffic noise as possible.
@@handsfortoothpicks afaik a lot of US cities were blueprints/ idea hubs for cities around the world to imitate, since they had a lot of top class tram lines in numerous cities.
gotta love Pattison's PRIVATE MONEY AND the worlds fair (EXPO86) ADD in a city that "always was leery" of the automobile and fought highway development from the beginning LOOK to Vancouver VS Seattle for a stark difference
Yeah, Skytrain is the best analogue for what could have been. And I think it also highlights how you don't need to be that big of a city to build a metro. Metro Vancouver still has less than 3 million residents.
@@bopete3204 Skytrain is fantastic, however, I'm really hoping that Metro Vancouver starts looking at regional rail (like the West Coast Express, but it should run all day). Skytrain doesn't really make that much sense to run out to Langley/Abbotsford given how slow it is and how frequently is stops. There aren't any express trains.
@@agntdrake Either a regional rail or an express metro (see BART for example) Regular Skytrain is fast- but express metro is even faster- and regional rail can even beat out highways. So Surrey and Langley would probably be within the sweet spot for an express metro since they're still somewhat connected by continuous housing developments, but Abbottsford and the areas even deeper in the Fraser Valley are firmly within the distance of a regional rail system. The WCE has quite a bit of potential.
@@williamhuang8309 BART doesn't run express trains unfortunately, although Caltrain (on the other side of the Bay) does run limited and express service. Unfortunately it's still primarily run as a commuter service, although that is likely to change more when electrification is completed later this year. With Skytrain the problem is there are no passing tracks (i.e. triple and quad tracked segments) which can either be done along the alignment or even inside of stations. Within a station the local train can wait at one platform and the express can pass it on a different platform. That express train can even stop and allow an easy cross platform transfer between the local and express services.
From what I’ve heard, Arlington, Texas is going through the same situation. The difference is they once had public transit until it was shut down due to lack of ridership.
I’m from Australia, and in my city Melbourne we have trams(light rail) trains heaps of buses and we like to make sure our system is up to date with new lines to decongest our system with more trains ect. It’s just amazing that American government/people can’t get it that pushing public transit to the side isn’t the way.
Plus it won’t work in this regard: capturing typically widely spread commutes via cars into 1 or 2 transit lines isn’t easy. The transit won’t really reduce congestion, but will allow people to move without a car efficiently, even at peak time.
@@xouxoful the problem is the wide spread itself. They are right that public transport needs high density. It's just that areas that could and should be dense are not because of zoning laws. That is the real problem.
America exists ina vacuum not only geographically, but also historically. Even small European cities have extensive public transportation networks with great walkability, as does Japan, and new developments tend to be transportation oriented. But, historically, many American cities had extensive trolley networks which would routinely build a low density neighbourhood out on a spur to create demand. Many neighbourhoods in Denver, where I live, started that way. Before lobbyists destroyed public transportation and created the cultural conception of public transportation being for poor people, transport oriented communities were the norm.
My hometown of roughly 75k people has a website with loads of photos of the city back in the 1920s-1930s- the town then is a night and day difference from today despite having the same population. Everyone in the oldest generation knows that the streetcars existed and all the old commercial corridors are based on them, knew the town used to be significantly denser and now is mostly parking lots, and used to have a passenger rail line connecting it to the larger nearby city now without a single connection. They knew all of these things existed and worked... but they still complain that the city is too small for this stuff today. The level of propaganda that has gone into convincing even the older generations that lived through the times when these things were torn out that these things are no longer viable is pretty insane.
The reason Bay Ridge-95th Street exists in the first place is because it was meant to be part of an extension to finally connect Staten Island through a tunnel. The tunnel was never built but a fake wall was added for the extension. What happened to it? The project was shelved in 1925, the same year the station opened. The 96th mayor of NYC, John Hylan, who formerly worked for the BMT and advocated for the tunnel, cancelled the project as a way to cripple the two private subway rivals (BMT and IRT) so he could promote the city-operated Independent Subway System or IND (which opened in 1932). He is an example of being able to resist the interests of pro-car industries, as he rallied the people to go against what he saw as a Standard Oil octopus controlling the Republic. SI's Hylan Boulevard would be named after him in 1923. Nonetheless, even if it was for the tunnel, this doesn't change the fact that the stations within Bay Ridge (95th Ave, 77th St, 86th St, and Bay Ridge Ave) helped Bay Ridge's growth big time!
Staten Islanders regardless don't even want the subway to connect to their island cause it would "ruin the community" and "bring in the wrong people". They have voted multiple times against it so I say fuck them. They can stay on their little island
I witnessed first hand how mass transit creates urban density. As Bangkok's MRT/BTS has expanded, you see tall condo buildings and malls spring at each stop. People prefer to live within walking/short motorcycle taxi ride from the train stops. When I first moved there I lived near one of the last stops on the BTS line, and dozens of condominiums as well as too huge supermarkets were built around it. Today this line stretches another 20 km further, and those little "density spots" around the train stations move further and further away from the city center.
Lightrail doesn’t suck, American lightrail may suck, though. Phoenix has 1.6 million citizens and one streetcar/tram/lightrail line and I don’t see any train station on the city map. I live in The Netherlands and there are 2 cities here that have a metro system Amsterdam (825,000 citizens, 12 train stations, 5 metro lines, 13 tram/streetcar lines, 7 ferries and multiple bus lines) and Rotterdam (625,000 citizens, 7 train stations, 5 metro lines, 11 tram/streetcar lines, 6 waterbusses and multiple bus lines). America is backwards in public transport, it needs to catch up. First step should be to balance the costs for roads with the costs of public transport. Give it the same amount of money. The second step is to give lightrail its dedicated lane of the road. Motor vehicles get one lane less in every direction. That is possible because public transport moves more people at once, so there would be less cars on the roads. It will take a while though for people to notice this, especially for Americans. Step three is to eliminate free parking in downtown and start free parking at lightrail station outside the downtown area, preferably outside city limits. Step four is to up the frequency of lightrail so it is a quicker alternative than the car. Less cars on the road means less traffic jams and less lanes means more pedestrian area. Better for the environment and better for people’s health.
If you have the population density to support a highway, then you have the density to support transit. Both are designed to move people from A to B, but one costs a lot less than the other if you count the huge amount of expensive real estate occupied by urban highways and the resultant loss in tax income to the city because highways don't pay taxes. Transit moves more people in far less space than highways do, and it increases property values near the transit, unlike highways which generally destroy neighborhoods and decrease property values.
... the dudes video was density is needed it just can come later by allow development to have hirises. But Nimbys won't allow that.. so yes, running a train thru suburbs gets underused train for decades. Us people and our politicians suck, we are stuck w cars.
5:41 Ha! Any lobbyist or politician who thinks it’s cheaper to take an Uber instead of public transit should try coming to San Francisco. An Uber from the Ferry Building to Mission Dolores Park is gonna cost around $20 and take 30 mins. Meanwhile a ride on the Muni plus walking a few blocks is gonna cost around $3 and take you the same amount of time.
Go to sprawling Florida cities like Jacksonville and take an Uber. It would still be hella expensive. And also rideshare and delivery drivers are often paid so little, they’d have to work 24/7 and still could barely pay rent.
Hello, my name is Melbourne, and I'm such an atrocious sprawl, that I'd make Houston blush. I also have 17 lines of frequent regional rail totaling 430km and 222 stations, as well as the worlds largest tram network at 250km and 1,763 stops.
"Public transit makes car traffic worse" Me to that person, "Amazing, every word of what you just said, was wrong"...seriously, I'm sorry what? Last I checked, buses and trains carry more people than cars. The more people on buses and trains, the less people there are in traffic! That's not a bad thing, that's a GOOD thing! Look at our Pyongyang for example. Pyongyang is the city for the elite, meaning unlike other parts of the country, the people are better off, and you can see cars. But despite that, the majority of the city travel by transit or bike. We have three tram lines (and one shuttle line to my grandpa's and father's mausoleum), two metro lines, and twelve trolleybus lines! With all this transit, it doesn't take long to see why. Pyongyang is a transit city done right, and that's on top of the fact the city had to be completely rebuilt after the war!
"We're too car-focused to justify rapid transit" (*Refuses to change the car-centric character, thereby further entrenching yourself in car dependence*)
Thank you for educating me i have always been under the assumption that public transit just wouldnt work or make sense in low density towns bc “there just isnt enough people” but the argument that “once the public transit is built that more people will come” MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. This gives me hope for when i am able to vote that change can come
For reference, even small towns in Europe have a station or bus. Doesn't matter if it's a population of 200k or 20k. Even the 2k town has a bus. Because it's exactly that, if it's there, people will use it.
My 40k city in Europe has 1 railway station with national connections, 3 lightrail stations, with connections to 2 major cities, 1 tram line with multiple stops and a several busroutes. A little further along the lightrail line they built a station about 20 years ago in an area with just a few houses. Now 20k people live there. Many people who live here have jobs in the two bigger cities. Imagine if all those people would use their own car. There would be permanent grid-lock. A good transport system improves mobility, livability and keeps the roads (reasonably) open for people who need to drive. Every person on a train or bus means one less car on the road.
One of the main problems that this channel and many in the comment section don't seem to understand is that when people vote against rapid transit it's not usually because "we're not dense enough to justify the costs yet" the main reason is because most don't want to be dense enough to justify it. People moved out of the cities to the suburbs and rural areas for a reason and don't want to create an incentive for the population to explode. The residents want to try and maintain their small town vibe. Just look at what happened to that NY street in this video. Some may call it progress but others hate what it turned into. These people we're afraid of what will happen if mass transit was built and all this video did was prove them right.
Well....to be optimistic...David Koch died in 2019 at 79. Charles, the older brother of the two Koch brothers that run the oil company is 87. Things will change soon hopefully.
This story reminds me of people making fun of Chinese cities for building underground metro stops in empty fields and then photos of 5 years later where the station is surrounded by high-rises and offices. Also, Berlin Germany, where I live, all the neighboring towns expanded along rail routes and a lot of people get to commute to the city on those trains 🚉🚉
Yeah they would never build a subway under a low residential neighbourhood today… *cough* Toronto. Nah just joking, great video. This backwards planning is a very common and it’s very frustrating.
@@miles2378 Canada is pretty similar to America in terms of car culture and bad planning. What, do you think we are just a bit of frozen Europe above your heads?
When building in cities skylines, transit is considered a service like police stations or parks. So I just plunk it in when zoning a neighborhood and they tend to spawn faster around it. I wonder why...
wierd that a tramline is so contentious that it gets a oppose referendum, trams are some of the cheapest ways to have a instant connection while keeping the possiblity to ammend it available since it isnt all to too much work to rip out or install it during regular sewer and road works
That kind of doublethink where you can simultaneously go "we aren't urban/dense enough to justify rail/transit expansion / not enough people would use it" and also "more public transit would increase traffic" and also "help there is currently too much traffic". Like hello? When you see dense urban cities successfully incorporate public transit what do you think is happening there?
IMHO a lot of the "pushback" as from people not wanting there HOUSING being "threatened" with high density apartment towers as there is LITTLE chance they would build affordable "missing middle" like terraced houses and "dingbat" apartments but ONLY LOW density houses OR high-rise towers with small "unliveable" apartments for 3/4 of a MILLION look to Europe and see a LOT of "small" apartments like the "dingbat" units OR terraced " townhouse?" and other "medium" density housing solutions that are NOT built in "modern" America *"dingbats" are a style of apartment blocks usually 2-3 levels and take the space of 2-3 houses and are common in the 60-s California (the ONLY USA area I have lived) * terraced houses are where a often 2-3 level house is built in a row with each house built into the next one "side" walls but with there own FRONT AND BACK yard you get 5 per 100 FT street frontage VS 2 "normal" houses
will say I believe a lot of the "pushback" is from developers that WANT to build cheap to build housing on LOW COST land and make a LOT of money when they sell them on for large profits and there has bean a 20+ year campaign to convince Americans that "the government is a BIG money waster" and anything is BETTER done privately and NOT "tax payer" done so it is easy to suggest PUBLIC funding of TRANSIT projects is a "waste of money" and the PRIVATE sector "is better" at spending money so UBER yes TRANSIT for everyone NO
I doubt it. Access to high quality transit leads to increasing property values, which allows developers to justify building a larger building on the same amount of land. That increases the value of the land when they sell it off, or increases the amount of rent they make when they rent out units. Either way, they profit far more than if they have to build tons of small single family homes, each on a large amount of land. They also may have to pay the city to build roads/water/sewer/electric/telephone/internet connections to each house. In a large building, they can build a single short connection to the existing nearby mainlines of each service. This all assumes they aren't also forced by zoning laws to build parking into the large building (they will have to build it into the SFHs because those won't have good enough transit access).
there were some internet meme-ing back some years ago because there were pictures of new subway stations in China opening in basically open fields. Like, look at how wasteful Chinese infrastructure spending is! But if you look at those same spots now, they're surrounded by dense, high-rise developments. They built infrastructure for the future they wanted. A great case study for the argument you're making.
Education like this is really important so that regular people can understand how things work. I didn't start learning until I was in my 20s. Once regular people know what's up we can kick out our current politicians and (heaven forbid) maybe elect someone who has an education in civil engineering instead of the person who is best at name calling and blaming others.
I’ve been binging urban planning videos lately. I so appreciate you and other channels like you who discuss the benefits and importance of people centered city designs. You are doing wonders. The more this gets discussed the more change can happen
Great video. Living in Europe and being interested in urban planning is pain because whenever I want to discuss it online I am *bombarded* by americans who have never seen a tram in their life, taking it like a personal insult whenever I say that cars are impractical in big cities.
Even though i am practicing to drive (I’m 31) my heart is still on public transit. I chose to move to dc as i came from the Virginia Beach area who rejected light rail expansion from Norfolk in 2016. The paper called it a landslide victory even though it was a 57%-43% majority of no. I was VERY PISSED OFF about that as I should.
The lack of actual rapid transit in Phoenix is highlighted by the Super Bowl this week. You can only take the light rail to things downtown, everything in Scottsdale and Glendale you have to drive to.
A few years ago pictures from China leaked on the internet showing a metro station in an entirely undeveloped area, and people laughed at China for wasting money. A few years later the same location was photographed again, showing massive developments around the metro station. The government anticipated needing the residential space and built the transit first. Another benefit to building transit before density is that the new residents will be accustomed to using transit from the start. If you build the transit afterwards then most people will just stick to the car they needed to begin with. A good example is Toronto's Liberty Village and Humber Bay Shores. They both have lackluster transit connections to the downtown area so many people there drive and the city is only just building transit to connect them better: a new subway line extends to Liberty Village to go through downtown, and a new regional rail station is being built for Humber Bay Shores.
I live in Memphis, I hate driving more than fifteen minutes to work. I hate that I have to drive 30 minutes out of my way just to go to a department store, or a specialty grocer.
As a Californian in Arizona. These folks are way more worried about everything California is doing besides about what to do about Arizona itself. Their own state.
Awesome video! I visited the NY Transit Museum in Brooklyn recently. They have photographs of before, during, and after the subway construction. The photos of the Bronx before construction are of literally nothing in the middle of nowhere. There's an empty field, and a railway line... and that's it. Then you look at the Bronx a mere 7 years after construction completed and it's a metropolis!
Even smaller cities like Tucson have their own light rail system. Interestingly enough their single-line streetcar system only began service in 2014. Sometimes you wonder why these sort of things weren't built this sooner. What do people have against mass transit?
Obviously Arlington is a good example, but another example worth studying would be Houston. The three LRT lines, completed in 2004 and 2007, with an extension of the first line completed in 2013. While all three lines run into downtown, they all go through areas that, at the time of construction, were economically depressed and/or a mix of industrial and low-income residential, with a lot of parking lots, vacant homes, empty lots, and disused warehouses along the routes. The light rail lines have had a transformative impact in all of those areas. It was a little slow going at first, but in the last five years, the pace of development has really picked up, and now it is exploding.
My hometown Cleveland has a train system that isn't exactly packed like NYC or Chicago, but it's STILL important to the city as it connects downtown to the suburbs.
Low density cities where traffic spirals out of control because you have to drive everywhere: “you gotta help us, man…we’ve tried nothin’ and we’re all out of ideas!”
People exaggerate road traffic. US roads carry 90% of workers and average speed is 45 mph. In 1920 it was 20mph and that still beat horses at 7mph.. Vs counting walking time transit moves at 15mph. So in car 10 miles is 13 minutes, transit is 40 minutes. No transit study finds car aint about 2.4x faster except for 5%, 95% in copenhagen and lyon france a car is faster. .. . . . . Leave home at 8:45 or 8:20 in cold chicago suburb, which one do you think people think sucks, so no car traffic is fine its transit "traffic" that sucks. . . . Ive learned to like audiobooks while walking and have no car, but lets stop the lying that roads and cars are soooooo bad. My grandma walked 1 hour on mud roads, then 1930 happened and she in car saved 55 minutes, what a freaking miracle, cars are awesome. . . But anyone skipping all numbers can make any argument, facts do matter though in the end. I say give everyone free ebikes and reward ebiking with $1000 a month, stop wasting $5000 per transit rider via govt subsidy, people will ebike and live near work like 5 miles.
@@unatrek2821 That's a lot of words to say you think it makes sense for each person to bring along a giant box large enough for five or more people everywhere they go, and for every destination to need room for everybody's empty boxes. It's wildly inefficient use of resources, even before you address the energy wasted. Also, if you think drivers aren't subsidized, I hope you're advocating for all zoning regulations that stipulate parking provisions to be repealed, because otherwise you're just being hypocritical. Edit: I should note here that I own a car, and there are times when it serves a purpose and so I use it. But assuming that’s always the best option is fantastically stupid. I know, because my quality of life has improved drastically since I stopped banging my head against the wall driving to work, and now glimpse all those stranded mostly-empty boxes from the train as go by.
@@de-fault_de-fault .... @de-faultde-fault6847 ... 1. Well, yes businesses should be free to have less parking spots if their customers can't cheat. We passed that law since business A would skip spots and it's customers would park at business B or on the street, so it was a mess. Sadly if we repealed th law it'd be a mess again. So, I'm open to ideas.. 2. Most of weight of car is crash protection, even at little SmartCar is heavy, if you go 70mph you need a heavy cage, per person a Train car is even heavier, so haha by your logic trains are bad?????? 3. No one is evil or cheating, tech and work and society changed in 1940s and car use rose... It's not a conspiracy or dumbness, in 1940s workplaces left the downtowns and so did people moved to houses with lawns and garages, cars are only way. 4. Even if France 80% of workers drive, youre pushing a model that DONT WORK EVEN IN EUROPE FOR 80%, that's a worse hypocrisy, claiming a fantasy is possible. Even Netherlands 70% drive to work, per statista com.... It's so weird few transit lovers don't know these basic numbers. X. TIME IS THE BIG REASON CARS WIN, door to door 15 minutes vs 50, so 1.5 hours extra time to love kids and work overtime, CARS BRING LOVE AND GOOD CAREERS AND TRANSIT THE OPPOSITE. You may not like it but this is the truth... I walk and kick scooter, I'm lazy about worker so waste 1 hour a day doing this, but most people hate wasting time ........ X. transit works if mandate 5 story buildings no lawns, like central Madrid or Scottish apwrtment blocks. Do you think US voters will go for that? No! I have no solution I just know Transit as Europe shows ain't solution for 80% even after they tried hard for decades and still 80% drive to work in Europe in most nations (you can't just count inner metros, as nation France is mostly nation of drivers, Netherlands even too)..... I'd love a miracle solution, I'm not happy there's no better way ...
@@unatrek2821 You don't need to give anyone free ebikes, what is needed is providing bike roads that get people where they want to go, then people will get bikes themselves.
When I lived in Japan, they made a HUGE deal out of "ekimae" - literally "in front of the station". They would plop a station in middle of nowhere, knowing that the station would drive construction and development. They even plan their networks and developments around both existing density and also ekimae potential.
It's such a hilarious drop in the bucket though. Metromover moves fewer people in a YEAR than ONE SINGLE STATION moves in ONE SINGLE DAY in Tokyo, think about that for a second. Americans, outside of NYC, really have no idea what transit can do.
I think your video is spot on. Very good analysis. I think cities like Phoenix need to promote high density condos next to light rail. If you like the freeway commute life, go for it. You need to offer an alternative as well. You might want to study Yonge St in Toronto. Especially North York's New downtown.
I seem to recall it was an American movie that coined the phrase "If you build it, they will come". Induced demand is a thing and it's as true for transit as it is for highways, or any other infrastructure really.
I live in the german city of Nuremberg with around 510000 people in it. We have a subway but not a single Scyscraper and its one of the only things that is actually working and widely appriciated by all people.
I just had a conversation with my city about transit. I’ll continue my conversation but I think there’s at least some consideration. Conversations to be held with others sounds promising. So it’s a start.
Good luck. Maybe introduce them in solutions like combining the station to a plaza with one or two apartment buildings with like 20-50 homes, and build the homes right after building transit, so people move there because of the connection. Might help the kickstart.
The main problem is the layouts of buildings, land use and traffic flow NOT density thanks to codes. Ironically I was at the gym shown at 6:55 while watching this!
Pheonix should go through with an elevated system no more light rail stop building street running trains. For large cities only fully separated trains work best.
Don't they realize that when they were expanding across the country to go west it was by train.Dont they realize that the rest of the world does trains and some counties thay you wouldn't think have high speed rail does before America.How Morocco got high speed before us.I don't count the Acela as high speed.Light Rail is fine but a true commuter rail is so much better unless the light rail doesn't deal with traffic. Thus backwards way of thinking isn't helping.
I believe that promising to reduce traffic w rapid transit is dangerous because it won't really do that, at least not in a noticeable way. Drivers who switch to transit will be replaced with other drivers. It's the same phenomenon seen with adding traffic lanes to a freeway. It doesn't really reduce traffic. More traffic heads to it to fill the void and it becomes as congested as it ever was. That broken promise will be used as an argument to kill any addl transit; "see, we spent billions and traffic is worse." What rapid transit does do is add rapid mobility to a city. That's the big promise of rapid transit. Rapid mobility is a big boost to a city's economy. It's like adding a rapid circulatory system to a city's infrastructure. It allows lower income populations more access to services, jobs, education, and healthcare which has economic benefits for the whole city. Reducing the time it takes to get to work from 2 hours by bus to 45 min. by rapid transit is a big quality of life improvement. Mobility gives people options to go car-free, avoid traffic, and save money. Rapid mobility spurs development. Businesses and dense housing like to be near rapid transit. Chicago and NYC didn't grow that dense out of the nothing, transit helped build that density. You're right in that the "not dense enough" argument is made by people who don't understand transit planning or are using that argument to sow doubt and kill transit. Waiting for dense development can take decades, if it ever happens. Businesses and developers have learned not to believe political plans to provide transit because most of the time, they don't. Having rapid transit built and in place is no longer a hypothetical that may not be worthy to bank on. It's a fact. Providing rapid transit ahead of time accelerates that development. It's also less expensive to do it that way. Once an area is dense, it is much more expensive and disruptive to construct anything. There are plenty of examples where a less dense urban area has a well used rapid transit network. Calgary is a fairly low-density residential city that has a transit mode share of 16%! That's pretty high. It's higher than Portland's, Denver's, or Los Angeles. Phoenix's today is about 4%. It has a dense downtown now but not when it began to construct it's light rail system. PS when people think elevated rail, they think of Chicago and Brooklyn's noisy century old systems. Modern elevated lines are very quiet, can be elegantly built, and can be hardly noticeable. Vancouver is always the example I use to show that.
@@alittlebitgone If you re-read what I wrote you'll see that that's not what I'm saying. Where are all the traffic reductions because of new rapid transit lines? Studies have shown that rapid transit doesn't reduce traffic. It shifts riders from one mode to another and can attract more discretionary trips. It can also attract some car drivers but not enough to reduce traffic. Any traffic reduction because of rapid transit is miniscule compared the amount of traffic that exists and that would be induced by any reduction. The Santa Monica Freeway is as traffic choked as it ever was even after the Expo Line light rail that parallels it opened. The NYC Subway added a new 2nd Ave line. Did traffic on the East Side of Manhattan go down? Did San Diego's traffic clear up after the Trolley lines were put in? or Dallas'? Or Portland's? No, cities grow and more people add both more transit riders and more car drivers. So, the major benefit of rapid transit is increased mobility and opportunity for more people. If rapid transit disappeared, people can see that more traffic would occur, just as it would if you shut down the existing bus system even w/o rapid transit, but they wouldn't say that traffic was reduced because of rapid transit in the first place. In fact, IF traffic were noticeably reduced, almost all of those who switched from driving would go back to driving. That's part of induced demand.
RMTransit made a really good video about how Australian cities successfully provide transit to low-density sprawling suburbs using electrified regional rail. The same model would be perfect for US cities that currently lack significant rail transit.
There is another thing I missed. Whenever new transit is built, the potential of property taxes going up is high. Property values go up as well, but not everyone wants to sell.
Given that most Americans seem to have an aversion to urban density, the fact that pre-emptively building transit in non-dense neighborhoods would (or could) lead to dense development would not be a point in its favor in their minds.
the American "dream" of a (detached)HOME-WITH-the-PICKET-FENCE and a shiny new car in the driveway also the "dream" of big development companies as HOUSING is CHEAP to build VS the selling prices VS "flats / condo's and they are "good" compared to the "missing middle" of terraced houses and "dingbat" apartment blocks that require a LOT of EXPENSIVE land to build
It is but it's also a death loop. Bad public transit -> more rideshare -> less incentive to improve public transit and just build more roads for rideshares instead -> bad public transit
Austin is already planning LightRail with Project Connect. Granted, it's slow as hell to get going, but their reasoning is to have as much community input on it's planning as possible. There has been so many concepts of elevated, to underground subway stations on the table. The two routes are from Downtown to South Austin for one, and Downtown to the Airport on the other. So far, the biggest issue to get around it is the Colorado River, and also dealing with TXDOT forcing the I-35 expansion. The city so far has pushed for the highway to be buried with parks over it to compensate for the amount of land being wasted. It's also where the current commuter rail from North Austin to Downtown crosses the highway.
Could you please make a video on how our cities can be converted from suburban to urban? There is so much on the internet about what makes a great city and we can all agree that walkabolity and public transportation is important, but for cities that are already built entirely around the car, how can they be made wallable?. The conversion from unwwalkable and completely car centric to pedestrian friendly would probably be done gradually, but what are the first steps?
the first step to making a neighborhood walkable is making sure your neighborhoods actually have sidewalks and cross walks. the other part is to create more mixed use and allow small commercial and office spaces in residential areas.
Nashville is a case study in my book Sustainable Infrastructure Investment. Very good video, Helsinki builds out the tram one year before the first apartments are occupied.
As China rapidly expanded it's rail network, there was a lot of derision of "trains to nowhere" in the media. But look at these trains to nowhere today and there is usually a dense, bustling neighborhood around them. All of this within a 5-10 year span. Transport precedes urbanization. (China's a special case for a number of reasons, but the principles of transit oriented development still apply to the US.)
I used to live in Phoenix, I’m moving back again in the summer to Tempe or Mesa. God I love the public transportation in Tempe. Light rail and so many buses.
I am from San Diego, California. In the late 19th Century any developer who wanted to build a housing tract had to first arrange to have a trolley route through the area before any houses could be built.
Boston, New York, Philly and Washington have a very good public transit system. I used it from my hotel in Boston all the way to my hotel in Washington. Far better than what I'm used to here in Germany.
You're missing the forest for the trees. A primary function of highway oriented development is to reinforce racial and economic segregation. The only transit oriented development that comes close to being as effective is park and ride commuter rail. The fact that poor people have trouble affording cars and racial minorities have a harder time catching a cab or Uber is not a bug, it's a feature.
Love the content but you are missing one massive ingredient. Zoning and Minimum parking requirements. These two things drastically limit density which is the economically natural development pattern. Density feeds ridership which then creates a virtuous cycle. Higher ridership demands requires higher frequency. Higher frequency improves service times. Improved service quality entices more ridership. More ridership = more paying customers = justifies the costs. More ridership also increases demand for more expanded service. Expanded service increases the value of the network, and also within each node of the network (stations). Southern California is a good example of decent public transit infrastructure (in that it exists), but its ridership is low compared with capacity, service quality is terrible, expansion is slow. This is because the majority of stations are parking lots instead of dense mix use neighborhoods. California just eliminated minimum parking requirements half a mile from transit stations. So, its conceivable that in a few years, these stations will finally be put into good use as development around the stations pick up, and the virtuous cycle can happen. This more than just about public transit. Its about walkability and being able to find affordable housing near work. If you look at large job centers like universities, hospitals, business parks, shopping malls, the free market would normally create tall dense buildings around these places for students and workers. Businesses would then want to locate next to these places to take advantage of foot traffic. These areas are then perfect for a transit station. But this can't happen because of zoning and parking requirements.
What makes parking requirements so bad is that it reverses the virtuous cycle of transit into the cycle of car dependence. Mandating parking = making cars more convenient and makes density formation expensive. Low density = destinations are further apart = car travel is more convenient = walking is less convenient = more cars = less pedestrians. Less pedestrians = lower ridership on public transit = lower service quality = less ridership. Bad public transit = forces more people into cars. More cars = demand for car infrastructure + neglect for pedestrian infrastructure = less safety for pedestrians. Less safety = forces more people into cars. More cars = people and businesses being further and further apart. Which is why LA metro area is so bad even with public transit.
This is honestly the best summary I’ve seen of the situation in Los Angeles. I can’t even begin to fathom what it would take to undo this. Convenience is #1 above everything else and driving in LA (in spite of traffic and parking) is 99% more convenient than transit except for a few narrow cases.
It's true - for all the braying the Kochs do about eeeeeevil government intervention, half of the hell that is car-burbia is _caused_ by way of... government intervention i.e. zoning laws.
@@ficus3929 Luckily the natural way of things is density. The free market likes efficiency. Efficiency means shorter commutes - ideally waking distance. It means less space per person during commute, less fuel burned per person. Cars take up huge amounts of space and burns significantly more fuel per person than biking, public transit (upon a certain threshold). Its also much much cheaper for the average person. In US, cars costs around on average $500/mo in payments, insurance, gas, and maintenance. If you count walking as part of traffic, then big cities are the most efficient in getting people to work in terms of space and energy. Living in the barracks and college dorms was very efficient in getting to work and school. Not that its for everyone, but it should be an available option, many people will chose smaller places, efficiency, cost savings, over big house, less savings, and cars.
I live in SoCal and I hate how these new KB home developments make it difficult for them to ever have good public transit. Those endless cul-de-sacs will make it impossible to have a non park-and-ride rail line for the next 50 years. I once walked to the nearest mcdonald's and it took 1 hour for just one-way! the commuter rail station would've been just as bad. driving would've just been 10 minutes through roads to "nowhere".
The poster child for transit oriented development would be Chongqing subway station in China that was basically in the middle of nowhere when it was build. Or historically the whole "Metroland" scheme of the Metropolitan Line in London, which basically created a lot of the London suburbs back in the day, and even made additional money from it.
I have, in recent years, spent months in Central and Mediterranean Europe; Barcelona, Florence, Budapest, Zagreb. There are subways, electric tram lines and carbon fuel busses.. The only two cities where it did not seem to work well were Milan and Florence. The air quality in each city was degusting to the point that I had to seek intervention for my Asthma. My adolescence was spent in and around Chicago. The Northwest and the IC took me from the South or North west suburbs to the opera house of the Lakeshore drive museums for less than $1. I live in Newark,, NJ. From my apartment, I can take a bus from my doorstep to a train to NYC in about 40 minutes. An extra 10 mins on the NY subway gets me to The Met Opera, the Met Mu of Art or the Statin Island Ferry. for a while, I lived in Morris and Bergen Co. NJ. "Rich suburbs" where you could buy a loaf of bread if you didn't have a car to drive to the nearest supermarket; generally 3 mile away
I'm ashamed that I bought the BS arguments against expansion of the light rail system from Norfolk into Virginia Beach, I no longer live there but I will never make that mistake again no matter where I end up.
I appreciate that you learned from your mistakes and were willing to admit it. It takes courage to admit you were wrong, so congratulations 😊 We get so much propaganda from rich assholes, it's no wonder Americans believe what they do, but it takes intelligence to break out of the propaganda as you did.
It's so funny, the image @ 8:05 - the green strip in the middle of the 4 lane would be perfect for a tram line that could reduce traffic on that road, which would reduce the cost of repairs for the obviously eroding streets.
Great video! My biggest take away from this is to not let my future transit advocacy plans get too loud... Or else the Koch brothers will come bury me 😅. That point about Brooklyn is really cool and I'm definitely going to use that in the future! It's hard to argue with historic examples. But honestly, my second biggest take away is that advocacy for public transit may work better in small towns, where I could individually meet with people and deconstruct the ridiculous arguments from the Kochs!
Some truly excellent points in this video! I do think another factor that has hindered the ability to encourage transit in most parts of the USA is a punishing stigmatization of our bus systems. So much of the opposition to good BRT projects comes from the fact that they are associated with buses and automatically assumed to only be for the lower-class that don't have an option to 'own' a car. IMO we should work hard to champion BRT projects, because if we can get them done (and done WELL) it's a low cost option that can literally pave the way for future rail corridors. Thanks for the wonderful channel.
People in the US get the whole urban density thing backwards. It's not that your city isn't suited for transit because it's not dense enough, it's that your city isn't dense enough because it doesn't have transit.
What's truly frustrating is every time you do try to take action to provide some form of public transit option, you get slowed up by any and all manner of procedures, from having to provide timetables so as not to disrupt traffic, to having to put up with a bunch of bureaucracies that are often of the reactionary NIMBY crowd.
Same thing happened in Durham, NC when Duke University, whom should have supported a light rail line, complained it would somehow "damage" or otherwise negatively impact their fancy giant hospital next to the proposed route, and the university's bizarre and short-sighted opposition was one of the decisive factors that led to the failure of the light rail proposal there. There really is no actual evidence that the light rail line would have caused any issues as many major similarly advanced research hospitals around the world exist in proximity to rail transit, and traffic itself causes vibrations just as much as a light rail line would (perhaps more if it is larger trucks driving by, let alone that automobiles have more friction with the ground, or road construction in the same exact place). My guess is that the sort of people catered to by Duke don't want poor people near them, and the university does not actually feel they have to implement the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that they claim to support. The Research Triangle region (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Durham), like much of urban North Carolina, is rapidly growing, but they don't seem to understand that you cannot just build more roads and more lanes and have traffic somehow solve itself. Only Charlotte really has a serious series of transit projects that have been completed or are in the works, but this happened after the city became so traffic-snarled that it made little sense not to build it. The Research Triangle region has made and keeps making several major mistakes in managing their growth, and though it would logically be the place I would have lived had I stayed in North Carolina, I could not stand living somewhere that does not seem to understand proper mass transit or how to properly handle major population growth, so I have been doing my best to avoid ending up back there, I find it far too depressing and disappointing. Also, I have gotten several ads on TH-cam recently for Vanderbilt University that call it a "world-class university in a world-class city (Nashville)" and I just laugh at them because I find many aspects of Nashville to be anything but world-class. The city has some of the worst traffic, longest commutes, and worst urban planning I have witnessed in the United States. An urban area that haphazardly managed, and which has rejected improving itself in ways such as not investing in transit, is pretty backwards and far from "world class" as far as international standards of cities in similar countries go. I do think it does have the potential to be world class, given the cultural significance of the city and being home to a major university. However, these are not the only factors that are up for consideration when such a title is bestowed upon a city, and I really do not feel it is worthy of the title given there are other cities with similar cultural significance and major research universities that have a lot more going for them, such as Boston or Seattle.
I just visited Charlotte the other week from our North Texas suburb, looking for a car-lite option for my wife and me to move eventually. We both work from home now for the first time and are looking to go down to one car. I read quite a few of their planning documents about rail and biking, and I was cautiously optimistic. If they follow through on the Little Sugar Creek Greenway expansion and keep ramping up the rail lines, they have something great in the works. Of course, with exurban Texas as my only real reference, I'm still learning what is fool's gold in transportation.
Yet you never hear these people complaining about new roads and highways that "go nowhere". It's almost as if infrastructure is easier and cheaper to build BEFORE an area is highly developed.
that's because the costs are externalized and hidden from the public, they'll say "well its federal funding so you're not paying"
@@Lildizzle420 That is different in the Federal Republic of Germany where we pay tax to the federal government and local government together. We pay taxes for every thing, if we go shopping food pay taxes too. It is all inside the price of near every product! So we here not have this problem.
The "free taxes" are less things, e.g. fun with hubby, eat apple from own tree, robbery foreign tourists, swimming in lake or sea.
@@OldLordSpeedy back when the highway system was introduced in the states the local government only paid 25% of the cost with the rest being funded by the higher government, so getting a highway through the city was a great idea to make the local budget go far... until they needed maintenance or resurfacing.
This is also how their single family home urban sprawl gets messed up, the developer will pay for the initial roads but the cities don't tax enough for maintenance/replacement.
Their point wasn't about taxes it was about costs that won't surface for 15-30 years. Or if you keep covering up debt with more debt maybe 50.
id love to see the face of these people if the government applied the same reasoning they give against transit to roadways
like yeah ok we heard you, we're cancelling all funding for new roads and road upgrades
@@Lildizzle420 which is funny cuz then they complain about paying for food stamps and welfare or anything else ever lmaoooo conservativism and hypocrisy, name a more iconic duo
The same people who rejected the transit proposals are the same people that will continue to complain about being stuck in traffic
Yep. They are also the same people who rejected affordable housing/social services and are the first to complain about homelessness
They aren't stuck in traffic, they are the traffic.
They’ll also demand more lanes as the only solution.
@@mattevans4377 of course they are the traffic. They will still complain that they are stuck in traffic.
A functional democricy is aristocratic. Fools need not be able to vote.
Another thing I would add is that if you build the transit first, you can often build it for a lot cheaper. If the city is already all developed, you gotta spend a buttload of money tunneling or buying rights-of-way. If you build the transit first before it fully develops, you can acquire the rights-of-way for dirt cheap (relatively) for a much cheaper elevated light metro to avoid tunneling altogether.
the feds won't allow that because you have to prove it's a good investment and they don't like transit oriented development. they claim to support it but it's a lie
Yeah, that's what he's talking about. Like, that is literally what he is talking about.
Or even use the cut and cover technique to build an underground metro for normally wayy cheaper..
If you go full on social-democrat (which has nothing to do with socialism and is a good thing), you can build public transit and sell the land around the stops for developers and ban single-family homes, giving way to mix use walkable neighborhoods and even superblocks, making the city much quicker, safer and denser
You can't build a railway that bridges over the top of buildings, but you can build buildings under the bridges once it's done.
Not only is it cheaper, but it helps the area develop into something usable for the transit system.
Owning a car in Japan is not that common if you live near a train station, and most people live near a train station. Imagine being able to go anywhere with a rail system, even out to a suburban neighborhood.
That's why we don't get good transit systems and good ridership on american railways, if we do build transit it won't go all the way out to the suburbs, it'll take you around the city center and the wards and city neighborhoods, but once you're hitting the outer highway loop where the suburbs start the best you'll find is a park and ride.
We have a new LRT being built in Calgary, Canada. One of our politicians opposed it, saying, “It’s a train to nowhere.” Nowhere meaning a stop a one minute walk from his local office… where all his constituents live. Fortunately, about 90% of Calgarians support the project, so it’s happening anyway.
they're sweating now that they know "the poors" will have a direct line to demonstrate in front of their office and hold them accountable
@@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub Poor people can just as easily drive to his office because the majority of them have cars
@@Rodegon___ just as easily as rich people?? not sure about that.
@@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub the way the US and Canada is , even the poor need cars in most parts of the continent
Glad to see it is happening. I'm surprised though since calgary looks like the most American city in terms of development in Canada.
The backwards thinking around urban development is honestly baffling to me. Hopeful to see it change soon.
maybe once the public stops believing anything the GOVERNMENT does is "BAD" and that "social welfare is important to EVERYBODY
I think the pandemic caused a large shift in how people see cities, at least in parts of the US. People saw what life can be like in a city with less cars. I've certainly noticed politicians talking much more about the importance of good urbanism since then. And importantly, actually implementing good urbanist ideas, not just talking about them.
It is not baffling. Some people just want to preserve the suburban character of their neighborhood. They don't want multi story apartment towers springing up in their neighborhood of detached single family homes. A lot of people moved out to the suburbs because they wanted to get away from the bustle of the city. These people aren't interested in bringing the city to the suburbs because it detracts from the very reason they moved into the suburbs in the first place. They value peace and quiet.
@@Novusod but they need people from the city to maintain the suburbs so it's a huge drain on the sustainable urban core. If they value peace and quiet, they need to use their cars way less because in about a decade or two, there will be nothing but construction and highway noise. Density is how we can do that.
There can be reasonable limits to building height that still allow taxes to cover maintenance without requiring yet another rural county to be subdivided for more suburban sprawl. What's the endgame? I don't know why we take people seriously when they use extreme arguments like that. Again, baffling.
Well... It's less baffling once I remember that keeping poor people, racial minorities, and single parents out is more important to some people than having a stable community. If they want quiet, it shouldn't be at the expense of the people they abandoned.
@@Novusod I would understand it more if people weren't so blatantly acting against their self interests. If the city wants to expand to your suburb, you've won the jackpot. Your land will increase in value really quickly. If you like the suburbs, you can move and earn a big payday. Or stay where you are and deal with the somewhat more crowded neighborhood.
What in any reasonable world you would not be allowed to do, is tell the city it can't expand anywhere. And everyone else everywhere says the same, so now there's a massive housing crisis. And then people who prefer the city to the suburbs are just out of luck, and they haven't even won a jackpot to make up for it.
I think the most frustrating thing about ValTrains being disapproved was that the voters probably weren't thinking about the city's future residents, such as myself, who were born after the proposal and have to live with the consequences.
Yeah, that's honestly the big issue with allowing citizens to have input on development. Most people think about development in terms of how it would personally effect them right now, not how it will fit into a changing city over the coming decades.
Seattle did this twice. It pains me to think what the city could have been had people not been so short sighted.
the same is happening right now when people don't realize we're going to be the same size of chicago but we're going to have 50 miles and chicago is going to have 250 miles
Seattle had an opportunity to build rapid transit starting in the late-60s when a proposal called Forward Thrust came up for a vote. Unfortunately, although it got majority support, it needed a 60% yes vote in order to pass, and unfortunately it didn't get that. If we got that, the entire system would have been built out a decade before I was born. At least we're building light rail now. Better late than never...
This doesn’t just apply to people who are older than you, who don’t think about people, your age, needing effective public transit. When you are there, age, I will guarantee it will happen, then as well, and the subsequent generations will complain.
Prague politicians were recently laughed at for lengthening a tram line to a place where no-one lives (because the houses there are only about to be built). As if we didn't used to do exactly that decades ago with all the tram lines that are now surrounded by apartment buildings. It's really rare to hear people and politicians to think ahead more than their voting period... 🤦🏻♀️
tbf i understand why TOD is sometimes met with opposition in Europe: in my city there are several huge and dense neighborhoods with NO light rail at all despite large-enough boulevards to build the lines cheaply. But the city council doesn't want to build anything here, their plan is to build THREE new lines to an empty area. I'm aware there are huge housing projects and they will build a few thousands apartments in this empty area but... could current taxpayers have at least decent service? Shouldn't they be a priority?
@@maoschanz4665 while decently serving the existing city should obviously be a goal, I do understand the line of thought. If you build a new community with a tram already in place you get three major advantages:
It’s cheaper, you don’t have NIMBYs to deal with and, very importantly, people get used to having that tram line, when they move in.
Once a neighborhood has been built around having no/ bad transit changing travel patterns and land use takes time. Because people who value good transit will not move there, if they have other options, slowly filling the area with people who at the very least aren’t passionate about building transit projects and businesses catering to car dependent people. All in all this can lead to strong resistance against projects that would be massive improvements. So, cities often follow the path of least resistance and expand in newly built areas.
@@eechauch5522 or maybe they follow the path of "my friends are the developers of these areas, and they will make more profit if i put all the tramway money in such a way that they can advertise their soulless new buildings destroying a floodplain (near the rising ocean) as a vibrant and green TOD"
I don't mind propping up actual construction project just so that it's not the mean cro'y capitalists who do the building 😂 Sometimes people sacralize the absence of free market as much as the lolbertarians do with the free market itself, but we should all understand that whether we are in favour of, skeptical of, or outright hostile to what today's markets look like as a social force, it doesn't mean that the "freedom" of a non living thing is pure projection as a value to maintain rather than a tool which can get overused while being practical in other cases. That's roughly a "market socialist" position of mine, idk
Although now that I think of it, degrowthers sometimes engage in their "left NIMBYism", which I found an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction catalyzed only by the desire to own the libs, sadly
My car dependent friends sometimes freak out that I don't drive. "How do you get to this place?" "What if it's cold?" I just answer that I have 2 train lines, 2 bicycle stations, and 2 bus stops next to me (I live in Chicago). I don't need a car at all. And if I need a car? There are car rental places nearby, although I keep forgetting where they are because... I don't need a car!
I recommend, if you live in a city with decent public transportation, try not driving for a week. You'll realize that you're less stressed from not waiting in traffic, can get work done on the bus, and save money on gas/insurance/repairs!
IMHO "the commute" is what "determines" your transport choices IE EZ train commute VS "HARD" drive commute then car-"lite" is a no brainer but for MOST people the "commute" is CAR favouring and making "ALL" transport choices around the "paid for" car VS extra cost options
so "fixing" the commute will "fix" the other transport uses
In my community (London, Ontario), public transit + car rental every second or third weekend + occasional taxi fares is still massively less costly than car ownership.
@@peterg76yt So it's not as bad as NJB says?
I live in L.A. When my 75-year-old mother visited recently, she was floored that we could take the train from downtown to the Santa Monica coast in 42 minutes. AND transfer to a bus for free. Then have the free shuttle at Getty Villa drive us up to the venue. HER FARE WAS JUST 35 CENTS!!!
@@beback_ Well, you have to remember that NJB makes a comparison with Amsterdam, so having lived the Amsterdam experience, the place is probably horrible for him (NJB).
As a European, I'm baffled by the fact that these cities need referenda to build public transit.
Not only that, the referenda usually fail.
And of course, there was never any votes on whether or not to build freeways!
yeah i dont get why city planning is up to residents voting. They dont do the same when they plan on building highways :/
Americans have been brainwashed to believe "public transit" means Commie-Pinko-Librul-Bad-Evil, making selling them on an idea that does nothing but help them nearly impossible.
@Vanya C agreed
5:00 "the free market can fix the traffic problem itself. We don't need the government stepping in..."
I agree. Abolish all funding for roads and privatize them. Make all land mixed use zoning. Abolish all mandated parking minimums. Let's see how long car dependent suburbia would last in an actual free market and level playing field.
It really astounds me how these think tanks are under the impression american suburbs were not the result of massive central planning, government intervention and subsidies.
Don't forget the lobbying to give the proper motivation for all of that
Koch bros literally profit off of driving. Of course they do this.
Yep.
exactly. We got into this mess by centralized planning and insane regulations and tax payer projects in the first place.
It would be interesting to see the configuration of private vs public transport in a completely free market, with a government favouring neither.
For cars it will be impractical though, because you will have toll posts everywhere leading to massive inconvenience. While bus and train tickets are much more straightforward and going through ports with your card is at most a very minor inconvenience.
Developing transit *before* the land is densified is key, because if there's no transit when people flock to the new area, they will buy a car as they would need it to move around. It doesn't matter if the transit line opens a year later, those people already commited to a car, and if they own their home, they probably won't move in decades.
Normal people won’t buy a car because they already have one.
@@danieldaniels7571 people without a car are not normal is what you are saying ?
@@lexburen5932 duh.
I'm losing it at the "changing traffic patterns" argument. Like ah yes, Koch Brothers, those notoriously fluctuating traffic patterns. Some days you go out into rush hour and the roads are completely empty, cause you just can't predict traffic! Traffic, notoriously unpredictable -- people never simply commute to the same workplaces and shops 95% of the time, nooo. We gotta have a legion of private rideshare cars on the road to aDaPt to the ever-changing demand of traffic. It's not like people's homes and workplaces are in fixed locations or anything.
And they mention this right after saying a few LRT trains are going to increase traffic. So a few trains increase traffic, but hoards of Uber drivers on the road doesn't, got it.
These arguments are _so_ obviously contradictory, logically fallacious, and just plain stupid -- and yet they work well enough to convince voters to vote for more traffic. 🤦♂
logic NEED NOT apply Only "sow the seed" of doubt and perpetuate the cash machine that is LOW density "greenfield" developments AND car centric developments that shift PUBLIC money into the hands of PRIVATE development corps
Yeah, the Koch Brothers got their money from oil, so naturally they'll use any argument to keep people dependent on gasoline for their cars.
It seems the American public is highly susceptible to any message they hear in advertisements regardless of how asinine.
@Nick Gerz the US actually exports more crude oil than it imports. And of the imports only about 7% comes from Saudi Arabia. The biggest crude oil exporter to the US by far is Canada which supplies 52% of the imported crude to the US.
So the domestic US oil industry has much more skin in the game to lobby against public transit and keep demand for petroleum products high.
Persian Gulf oil mostly ends up in Asian markets. Not in the US.
@@kb_100 oh you fucking bet they are
You just need to tune in to youtube through a vpn set to the US, or better yet go there and turn on the TV
Literally the first ad you'll see will have you wondering: how tf is it even legal to air this ad?
And some of them eat and swear by that shit with a zealous passion
The carefully curated culture/information bubble certainly helps, makes people think what they are used to is actually normal and there's no better alternative
the weirdest is how when predicting what happens after the transit is built they are still talking about traffic. who cares about traffic? you can just take the metro
The really silly part is, of course, that public transport reduces traffic conjestion (how much so depends on how well the new system serves the destinations that were generating the traffic, of course), as, rule of thumb, people will take public transport if it is faster than driving, and the worse the traffic conjestion is, the slower driving is. Public transport thus functionally puts a cap on how conjested routes that its service duplicate can become. Note that, just as conjestion affects how fast car travel is, service frequency affects how fast travel by rail is. Larger trains, less often, seems like a more efficient option, save that the 'less often' part kills the demand that justifies the 'longer trains' part. You're better off with shorter, more frequent trains (and then using longer trains once usage is high enough to justify them After attaining frequency).
@@laurencefraser
That's basically the Vancouver approach
@@laurencefraser the only small caveat is that public transit isn't an infinite source of travel capacity/ sink for travel demand to forever lock in an upper limit to travel times. Eventually the capacity of the train will be reached and travel times will increase in both systems. (Likely in the form of waiting for the next train)
However, transit expansion to improve capacity is a lot less impactful (detrimental) than highway widening on the surounding community. (Cue the "one more lane bro" clip of the katy park freeway that totally solved all of Houston's problems)
@@jasonreed7522 Tokyo has rail lines frequently serving a million + passengers a day. On pretty simple double track lines largely without fancy rolling block signalling or ultra wide trains or anything else fancy.
FYI, the Koch Brothers are really the Koch Brother now as one of them is deceased (as of 2019).
The last Koch brother involved with the oil company, Charles, is 87 now. The other brother David died at 79. And btw Rupert Murdoch is 91.
@@pauly5418 Everyone hates the Koch brothers. Even a MAGA guy like myself honestly despises the hell out of the Koch brothers. However, I will say this; New York and Chicago need to be held to as much account as more suburban cities are. Sure, put more transit in sprawling cities like Los Angeles and Dallas, and densify the housing stock to be more in line with New York, but also, make sure NYC and Chicago have enough expressways to handle car traffic themselves.
Jay Foreman's video about London's expansion highlights this concept well. Several rail lines were built in the last century, heading north into empty countryside, and the urban development quickly followed.
Yes. But these were competing lines, privately funded.
The problem is not if transit is needed, the issue is why fund it with public money?
@@ricardokowalski1579 Good question, why fund anything with public money? might as well stop funding the public roads, water, electricity and sewage as well and let the private companies divy it up into 20 thousand separate networks. The why is that providing mobility for the citizens of an area is important in allowing them to be productive and give the city (or state, etc.) money in taxes and the like.
@@zephyros256 you do know that competing private companies coordinate and share "separare networks" better than governments?
Cell phone companies buy and sell each other access to their towers, ISPs buy and sell bandwith in their cables, many electric companies sell kilowatts using the same cables, airlines code share, pipelines pump oil from several companies at the same time.
Are you not aware of these examples?
@@ricardokowalski1579 Sure I am, that is why I did not mention some of those networks. The electrical companies can sell electricity to each other on the same cables because those are regulated and controlled by the Reliability coordinators (such as RCWest or ERCOT) which provides oversight (making it a controlled market). Same goes for airlines code share where it is in large part controlled by the FAA (for the US at least).
The two above show that the infrastructure can often be funded and managed by a central (government aligned) authority with exploitation by private companies.
@@ricardokowalski1579 Large infrastructure projects like roads, rails and sewage works (fixed cost businesses) are poorly suited to free market competition because the extreme barrier to entry means the market is not really free. Most places need only one rail line, road or sewage pipe so it will inevitably be a monopoly. If another company was to try to compete they would have to build their own parallel line, which would not only be very inefficient. Also the existing company could use the threat of cutting prices temporarily to freeze their competition out.
Also in the UK our rail lines are built and funded by the government just the actual running of the trains is franchised out to 25 odd operating companies. It's a very complicated system that doesn't work particularly well and tbh I don't fully understand the ins & outs.
Although in the early days of rail there was a lot more risk tolerance amongst private investors that enabled competing lines to be set-up, as you mentioned. However as capital markets have become more efficient and lower risk, the appetite for theses projects has disappeared and it would be almost unthinkable for a competing line to built serving the same/nearby area as an existing line.
You don’t build infrastructure after it’s needed. You build it before it is needed or you build it to create a need because it’s called planning. Look at all the cities in the middle of the United States that were built up around the west to east train line that was built in the 1800s. The union pacific or whatever you call it. The cities and towns literally didn’t exist until the train track made it a place that could be settled and Transport in an out was possible. That’s like saying sorry, we will build houses first, then if there’s enough demand we will build streets for those houses, we wouldn’t want to waste money building streets before we know we need them. So let’s just build houses without streets. It’s literally the same fucking logic. You know what cost billions, having to buy property back that has gone up in value from people who want to cash in because they are naturally losing their homes, so you can build infrastructure that should’ve been built to 20 years before, when it was empty land, they didn’t need to be bought for anywhere near the same price. That is a waste of money. Or the wasted amounts of economic potential because people are stuck in. Traffic jams instead of being able to be at work or doing business or exchanging goods. What about that economic waste of money.
that would make sense if the federal government didn't hate transit oriented development and won't give federal funding to any projects
@@Lildizzle420So you're saying it's about the states' rights to underfund comfort of living in cities and the general degree of civilization? On what political justification btw, I've only seen two arguments so far : sacro Saint free market or sacealized degrowth in the name of return to nature despite empirical geological data seems to point that cities are actually more sustainable on average (but low carbon transit is necessary as a premise. Luckily it also gets propped as a *local* environmental issue, which people are more aware of and therefore favourable to putting money and effort towards)
One of the main problems that this channel and many in the comment section don't seem to understand is that when people vote against rapid transit it's not usually because "we're not dense enough to justify the costs yet" the main reason is because most don't want to be dense enough to justify it. People live out in these small suburbs and rural areas for a reason and don't want to create an incentive for the population to explode. The residents want to try and maintain their small town vibe. Just look at what happened to that NY street in this video. Some may call it progress but others hate what it turned into. These people we're afraid of what will happen to their town is rapid transit was built and all this video did was prove them right.
Nashville resident here, sadly saw that latest transit plan get defeated with lots of outside intervention. But beyond the arguments that you mentioned, two that played an important role in the transit plan's defeat were (1) that it would hasten gentrification if light rail extended into poor/middle-income neighborhoods (those that arguably would benefit the most regarding mobility) - this was part of why Erica Gilmore turned against it in the home stretch, and (2) perception of no benefit to those living outside walking distance to a light rail stop. The massive city borders resulting from the city-county merger lump together very rural areas and the actual denser city core, with very different interests. That, and the fact that the state of Tennessee hates public transit (and Nashville in general, evidenced by their latest efforts to downsize the city council, defund the convention center, and take over the airport board and sports authority), leaving the city to have to essentially finance everything by hiking the already-high sales tax, which is the most regressive way to go about things but the only way to do it when there's no state/local income tax and some strange regulations regarding property taxes. I am not hopeful about future transit prospects (though who we select as our next mayor this year will make a difference).
Sad that the Koch brothers were able to sabotage the light rail project in Nashville. They also tried in Phoenix but failed, so they're targeting any move towards its expansion to suburbs like Scottsdale and Gilbert.
gentrification is caused by housing policy and not by transit, cities restrict the supply of housing to drive up investment and property values to attract wealthy people who can pay more in taxes.
You are absolutely spot on about the factors that played into the failure of the referendum. I canvassed for the project shortly before the vote and I heard precisely the same things while operating in areas around Nolensville and Murfreesboro Pikes. Nashville is my hometown and while I want the absolute best for it in terms of proper growth I doubt we as urbanists will ever see what we truly want happening. For such a "blue city" the necessary level of popular support was never there and the selfish/individualistic perspective prevailed so heavily.
The "gentrification" argument baffles me. They're saying that people will want to move there! Which is true - people _will_ want to move there. It seems to me that the solution is to build a lot of it, so that more people can afford to.
@@james-p Yes, I agree that building more housing in a transit-oriented manner is the priority. And honestly, Nashville is actually pretty good about building housing - there's a LOT of new housing (denser infill and multistory apartment/condos) going up compared to other cities I've seen. But without transit, that means that the large apartment complexes all come with giant parking decks, ensuring the traffic feared by the NIMBYs voting against transit becomes a reality. And the city ought to be able to require that units that are affordable/attainable are built so that we're not just stuck with luxury developments, but again the state of Tennessee has essentially made inclusionary zoning illegal. Gentrification is a real problem - see e.g. displacement of minority and older populations in North Nashville by new, generally more expensive infill - but transit is certainly not the culprit.
I hate the argument that “our city is too big and sprawling for a rail service.” If you want an example of a city heading in the right direction, look at Dallas. DART has five rail lines across the Dallas area. In fact, Dallas has the longest light rail service in the country, at 93 miles. When did the first DART rail line start? 1996.
Its the argument for a lot of things. Biking infrastructure is another. And pedestrian prioritized planning. People keep saying "we're too big". But the average trip is less than 4 miles. The average grocery run is just over 3miles from home, and that is the 2nd store. The average closest grocer to home is just over 2 miles. Americans do not travel far. Its just an excuse. The truth is, people are just f'n lazy.
@@cjohnson3836 yeah, you’re not wrong about the under four miles thing. When I go shopping, I typically go to one of the Krogers, Targets, or Walmarts near my house, which are around 3 miles each way. I cannot bike or walk, because the trip is too loud, uncomfortable, and dangerous. Some stretches of the road don’t even have sidewalk! However, you are wrong about us being lazy. A lot of us would be willing to bike, walk or take transit, but we can’t, thanks to years of NIMBYism and car-centric planning.
@@Justaguy689 You don't bike on sidewalks. Most places that's illegal and its also one of the easiest ways to get hit by a car. Because, you become unpredictable due to intersections and loss of said sidewalk. You bike on the road. You remain visible. And you take the lane, like you are legally allowed to do. Neighborhood streets are safe. And, seeing as people live near stores, neighborhood streets are also near stores.
If I can live car free in West Texas, no one has an excuse.
@@cjohnson3836 ok wow. 1. It is actually not illegal to bike on sidewalks here in the Wild West called Fort Worth. 2. Most streets here DO NOT have bike lanes, so we are forced to share the narrow sidewalk (that is, if you’re lucky enough to live near a road with a sidewalk) with the few brave people who decided to walk. And 3, no we really cannot share the road with drivers. On 4 lane roads, drivers typically go around 35-45 mph, which is usually unattainable by cyclists. And even if we were fast enough to bike on the road, we aren’t protected, and if hit by a speeding 2 ton truck, we could die.
@@Justaguy689 what part of neighborhood street is so hard for you to understand? I've been to Ft Worth often, I know you have them.
America is just unbelievable sometimes
All the time, not sometimes.
I saw a comment saying "America is the Florida of the world" and that sounds about right.
There just isn't much incentive to improve public transit.
A lot of people are satisfied with their current method of transportation and even if they do believe improving public transit would be a good thing, they might not care enough to actually do something to cause that change.
It's the same attitude to switching to metric.
I live in the suburbs in a large metro area (6+ million) and I''m satisfied with my life.
@@99thExtent you might be satisfied, but the people subsidizing your satisfactory lifestyle sure aren't! Do you realize how expensive and unsustainable American suburbs are? You're right in that a big issue is that nobody here cares about anything but their own convenience
most east coast cities have good transit
A good example of this is the Orange line through Arlington Virginia. After it was built, the area around it has built up to pretty high density with many mid-rise and high rise apartments. The blocks around each metro station are noticeably denser than nearby areas.
Thank you for bringing this up. I feel like I'm losing my mind whenever someone says "LA will never have good public transit because it's too spread out and lacks density". Where do people think the density comes from in the first place?! Density is a byproduct of building environments that people want to live in. If you build a city around highway oriented design, people will have no incentive to live closer to the center and every incentive to get as far from the traffic noise as possible.
The funnier part is that LA used to have the best public transportation in the world
@@handsfortoothpicks afaik a lot of US cities were blueprints/ idea hubs for cities around the world to imitate, since they had a lot of top class tram lines in numerous cities.
There are so many stupid excuses discussing this I have come across it's ridiculous.
0:18 Sounds a lot like the proposals in Vancouver... except that the ones in Vancouver actually got built
gotta love Pattison's PRIVATE MONEY AND the worlds fair (EXPO86) ADD in a city that "always was leery" of the automobile and fought highway development from the beginning
LOOK to Vancouver VS Seattle for a stark difference
Yeah, Skytrain is the best analogue for what could have been. And I think it also highlights how you don't need to be that big of a city to build a metro. Metro Vancouver still has less than 3 million residents.
@@bopete3204 Skytrain is fantastic, however, I'm really hoping that Metro Vancouver starts looking at regional rail (like the West Coast Express, but it should run all day). Skytrain doesn't really make that much sense to run out to Langley/Abbotsford given how slow it is and how frequently is stops. There aren't any express trains.
@@agntdrake Either a regional rail or an express metro (see BART for example)
Regular Skytrain is fast- but express metro is even faster- and regional rail can even beat out highways. So Surrey and Langley would probably be within the sweet spot for an express metro since they're still somewhat connected by continuous housing developments, but Abbottsford and the areas even deeper in the Fraser Valley are firmly within the distance of a regional rail system. The WCE has quite a bit of potential.
@@williamhuang8309 BART doesn't run express trains unfortunately, although Caltrain (on the other side of the Bay) does run limited and express service. Unfortunately it's still primarily run as a commuter service, although that is likely to change more when electrification is completed later this year. With Skytrain the problem is there are no passing tracks (i.e. triple and quad tracked segments) which can either be done along the alignment or even inside of stations. Within a station the local train can wait at one platform and the express can pass it on a different platform. That express train can even stop and allow an easy cross platform transfer between the local and express services.
"won't even consider building transit until they're already choked with traffic" we're going through this right now in Halifax NS Canada
From what I’ve heard, Arlington, Texas is going through the same situation. The difference is they once had public transit until it was shut down due to lack of ridership.
I’m from Australia, and in my city Melbourne we have trams(light rail) trains heaps of buses and we like to make sure our system is up to date with new lines to decongest our system with more trains ect. It’s just amazing that American government/people can’t get it that pushing public transit to the side isn’t the way.
LOL these people against transit wouldn't last a day in DC or NYC
Those people will look down on those cities for being "crime-filled hellholes" as if they were still stuck in 1970s decline anyway
Great video! I think you're spot on. Building transit should not just be a band-aid solution applied to areas with unbearable traffic.
Plus it won’t work in this regard: capturing typically widely spread commutes via cars into 1 or 2 transit lines isn’t easy. The transit won’t really reduce congestion, but will allow people to move without a car efficiently, even at peak time.
@@xouxoful the problem is the wide spread itself. They are right that public transport needs high density. It's just that areas that could and should be dense are not because of zoning laws. That is the real problem.
America exists ina vacuum not only geographically, but also historically. Even small European cities have extensive public transportation networks with great walkability, as does Japan, and new developments tend to be transportation oriented. But, historically, many American cities had extensive trolley networks which would routinely build a low density neighbourhood out on a spur to create demand. Many neighbourhoods in Denver, where I live, started that way. Before lobbyists destroyed public transportation and created the cultural conception of public transportation being for poor people, transport oriented communities were the norm.
My hometown of roughly 75k people has a website with loads of photos of the city back in the 1920s-1930s- the town then is a night and day difference from today despite having the same population. Everyone in the oldest generation knows that the streetcars existed and all the old commercial corridors are based on them, knew the town used to be significantly denser and now is mostly parking lots, and used to have a passenger rail line connecting it to the larger nearby city now without a single connection. They knew all of these things existed and worked... but they still complain that the city is too small for this stuff today. The level of propaganda that has gone into convincing even the older generations that lived through the times when these things were torn out that these things are no longer viable is pretty insane.
Love your style. Low budget, minimal emotional appeals, name calling, trolling etc. just focused on the information 👍thanks
The reason Bay Ridge-95th Street exists in the first place is because it was meant to be part of an extension to finally connect Staten Island through a tunnel. The tunnel was never built but a fake wall was added for the extension. What happened to it? The project was shelved in 1925, the same year the station opened. The 96th mayor of NYC, John Hylan, who formerly worked for the BMT and advocated for the tunnel, cancelled the project as a way to cripple the two private subway rivals (BMT and IRT) so he could promote the city-operated Independent Subway System or IND (which opened in 1932). He is an example of being able to resist the interests of pro-car industries, as he rallied the people to go against what he saw as a Standard Oil octopus controlling the Republic. SI's Hylan Boulevard would be named after him in 1923.
Nonetheless, even if it was for the tunnel, this doesn't change the fact that the stations within Bay Ridge (95th Ave, 77th St, 86th St, and Bay Ridge Ave) helped Bay Ridge's growth big time!
Staten Islanders regardless don't even want the subway to connect to their island cause it would "ruin the community" and "bring in the wrong people". They have voted multiple times against it so I say fuck them. They can stay on their little island
I witnessed first hand how mass transit creates urban density. As Bangkok's MRT/BTS has expanded, you see tall condo buildings and malls spring at each stop. People prefer to live within walking/short motorcycle taxi ride from the train stops.
When I first moved there I lived near one of the last stops on the BTS line, and dozens of condominiums as well as too huge supermarkets were built around it.
Today this line stretches another 20 km further, and those little "density spots" around the train stations move further and further away from the city center.
Phoenix needs to build light metro, not light rail. Light rail sucks
Well, it’s too late for Phoenix
@@GenericUrbanism it isn't. The city now owns the right of way above. Which means it is much easier to do cut-and-cover and upgrade to a metro.
Lightrail doesn’t suck, American lightrail may suck, though. Phoenix has 1.6 million citizens and one streetcar/tram/lightrail line and I don’t see any train station on the city map. I live in The Netherlands and there are 2 cities here that have a metro system Amsterdam (825,000 citizens, 12 train stations, 5 metro lines, 13 tram/streetcar lines, 7 ferries and multiple bus lines) and Rotterdam (625,000 citizens, 7 train stations, 5 metro lines, 11 tram/streetcar lines, 6 waterbusses and multiple bus lines). America is backwards in public transport, it needs to catch up. First step should be to balance the costs for roads with the costs of public transport. Give it the same amount of money. The second step is to give lightrail its dedicated lane of the road. Motor vehicles get one lane less in every direction. That is possible because public transport moves more people at once, so there would be less cars on the roads. It will take a while though for people to notice this, especially for Americans. Step three is to eliminate free parking in downtown and start free parking at lightrail station outside the downtown area, preferably outside city limits. Step four is to up the frequency of lightrail so it is a quicker alternative than the car. Less cars on the road means less traffic jams and less lanes means more pedestrian area. Better for the environment and better for people’s health.
@@ianhomerpura8937 there is zero political will for that.
If you have the population density to support a highway, then you have the density to support transit. Both are designed to move people from A to B, but one costs a lot less than the other if you count the huge amount of expensive real estate occupied by urban highways and the resultant loss in tax income to the city because highways don't pay taxes. Transit moves more people in far less space than highways do, and it increases property values near the transit, unlike highways which generally destroy neighborhoods and decrease property values.
... the dudes video was density is needed it just can come later by allow development to have hirises. But Nimbys won't allow that.. so yes, running a train thru suburbs gets underused train for decades. Us people and our politicians suck, we are stuck w cars.
Great video about the benefits of transit, Thomas. Great explanation. I even dig you breaking into a vacant apartment to film this.
LMAO! I thought I was being so slick by changing the background...
5:41 Ha! Any lobbyist or politician who thinks it’s cheaper to take an Uber instead of public transit should try coming to San Francisco. An Uber from the Ferry Building to Mission Dolores Park is gonna cost around $20 and take 30 mins. Meanwhile a ride on the Muni plus walking a few blocks is gonna cost around $3 and take you the same amount of time.
Go to sprawling Florida cities like Jacksonville and take an Uber. It would still be hella expensive. And also rideshare and delivery drivers are often paid so little, they’d have to work 24/7 and still could barely pay rent.
Hello, my name is Melbourne, and I'm such an atrocious sprawl, that I'd make Houston blush. I also have 17 lines of frequent regional rail totaling 430km and 222 stations, as well as the worlds largest tram network at 250km and 1,763 stops.
"Public transit makes car traffic worse" Me to that person, "Amazing, every word of what you just said, was wrong"...seriously, I'm sorry what? Last I checked, buses and trains carry more people than cars. The more people on buses and trains, the less people there are in traffic! That's not a bad thing, that's a GOOD thing! Look at our Pyongyang for example. Pyongyang is the city for the elite, meaning unlike other parts of the country, the people are better off, and you can see cars. But despite that, the majority of the city travel by transit or bike. We have three tram lines (and one shuttle line to my grandpa's and father's mausoleum), two metro lines, and twelve trolleybus lines!
With all this transit, it doesn't take long to see why. Pyongyang is a transit city done right, and that's on top of the fact the city had to be completely rebuilt after the war!
In London, many of the outer suburbs used to be rural areas, but because there were metro lines built here, they have become much denser.
thank you for showing the bay ridge picture. and for filming in your living room.
"We're too car-focused to justify rapid transit"
(*Refuses to change the car-centric character, thereby further entrenching yourself in car dependence*)
Thank you for educating me i have always been under the assumption that public transit just wouldnt work or make sense in low density towns bc “there just isnt enough people” but the argument that “once the public transit is built that more people will come” MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. This gives me hope for when i am able to vote that change can come
Especially when some of the stops are in higher density areas
For reference, even small towns in Europe have a station or bus. Doesn't matter if it's a population of 200k or 20k. Even the 2k town has a bus. Because it's exactly that, if it's there, people will use it.
My 40k city in Europe has 1 railway station with national connections, 3 lightrail stations, with connections to 2 major cities, 1 tram line with multiple stops and a several busroutes.
A little further along the lightrail line they built a station about 20 years ago in an area with just a few houses. Now 20k people live there.
Many people who live here have jobs in the two bigger cities. Imagine if all those people would use their own car. There would be permanent grid-lock. A good transport system improves mobility, livability and keeps the roads (reasonably) open for people who need to drive. Every person on a train or bus means one less car on the road.
One of the main problems that this channel and many in the comment section don't seem to understand is that when people vote against rapid transit it's not usually because "we're not dense enough to justify the costs yet" the main reason is because most don't want to be dense enough to justify it. People moved out of the cities to the suburbs and rural areas for a reason and don't want to create an incentive for the population to explode. The residents want to try and maintain their small town vibe. Just look at what happened to that NY street in this video. Some may call it progress but others hate what it turned into. These people we're afraid of what will happen if mass transit was built and all this video did was prove them right.
Car sellers were probably behind the dumb reasoning.
Well....to be optimistic...David Koch died in 2019 at 79. Charles, the older brother of the two Koch brothers that run the oil company is 87. Things will change soon hopefully.
Does it need the actual brothers to run their political foundations?
This story reminds me of people making fun of Chinese cities for building underground metro stops in empty fields and then photos of 5 years later where the station is surrounded by high-rises and offices. Also, Berlin Germany, where I live, all the neighboring towns expanded along rail routes and a lot of people get to commute to the city on those trains 🚉🚉
Yeah they would never build a subway under a low residential neighbourhood today… *cough* Toronto. Nah just joking, great video. This backwards planning is a very common and it’s very frustrating.
This is about the crazy US not canada.
@@miles2378 Canada is pretty similar to America in terms of car culture and bad planning. What, do you think we are just a bit of frozen Europe above your heads?
@@pepperpillow possibly.
When building in cities skylines, transit is considered a service like police stations or parks. So I just plunk it in when zoning a neighborhood and they tend to spawn faster around it. I wonder why...
lol um what? that's not true
Same here as soon as i put a train station and connected some areas the population boomed
wierd that a tramline is so contentious that it gets a oppose referendum, trams are some of the cheapest ways to have a instant connection while keeping the possiblity to ammend it available since it isnt all to too much work to rip out or install it during regular sewer and road works
That kind of doublethink where you can simultaneously go "we aren't urban/dense enough to justify rail/transit expansion / not enough people would use it" and also "more public transit would increase traffic" and also "help there is currently too much traffic".
Like hello? When you see dense urban cities successfully incorporate public transit what do you think is happening there?
IMHO a lot of the "pushback" as from people not wanting there HOUSING being "threatened" with high density apartment towers as there is LITTLE chance they would build affordable "missing middle" like terraced houses and "dingbat" apartments but ONLY LOW density houses OR high-rise towers with small "unliveable" apartments for 3/4 of a MILLION
look to Europe and see a LOT of "small" apartments like the "dingbat" units OR terraced " townhouse?" and other "medium" density housing solutions that are NOT built in "modern" America
*"dingbats" are a style of apartment blocks usually 2-3 levels and take the space of 2-3 houses and are common in the 60-s California (the ONLY USA area I have lived)
* terraced houses are where a often 2-3 level house is built in a row with each house built into the next one "side" walls but with there own FRONT AND BACK yard you get 5 per 100 FT street frontage VS 2 "normal" houses
Please, make this comment harder to follow.
will say I believe a lot of the "pushback" is from developers that WANT to build cheap to build housing on LOW COST land and make a LOT of money when they sell them on for large profits and there has bean a 20+ year campaign to convince Americans that "the government is a BIG money waster" and anything is BETTER done privately and NOT "tax payer" done
so it is easy to suggest PUBLIC funding of TRANSIT projects is a "waste of money" and the PRIVATE sector "is better" at spending money so UBER yes TRANSIT for everyone NO
I doubt it. Access to high quality transit leads to increasing property values, which allows developers to justify building a larger building on the same amount of land. That increases the value of the land when they sell it off, or increases the amount of rent they make when they rent out units. Either way, they profit far more than if they have to build tons of small single family homes, each on a large amount of land. They also may have to pay the city to build roads/water/sewer/electric/telephone/internet connections to each house. In a large building, they can build a single short connection to the existing nearby mainlines of each service.
This all assumes they aren't also forced by zoning laws to build parking into the large building (they will have to build it into the SFHs because those won't have good enough transit access).
there were some internet meme-ing back some years ago because there were pictures of new subway stations in China opening in basically open fields. Like, look at how wasteful Chinese infrastructure spending is! But if you look at those same spots now, they're surrounded by dense, high-rise developments. They built infrastructure for the future they wanted. A great case study for the argument you're making.
Education like this is really important so that regular people can understand how things work. I didn't start learning until I was in my 20s. Once regular people know what's up we can kick out our current politicians and (heaven forbid) maybe elect someone who has an education in civil engineering instead of the person who is best at name calling and blaming others.
I’ve been binging urban planning videos lately. I so appreciate you and other channels like you who discuss the benefits and importance of people centered city designs. You are doing wonders. The more this gets discussed the more change can happen
Great video. Living in Europe and being interested in urban planning is pain because whenever I want to discuss it online I am *bombarded* by americans who have never seen a tram in their life, taking it like a personal insult whenever I say that cars are impractical in big cities.
Even though i am practicing to drive (I’m 31) my heart is still on public transit. I chose to move to dc as i came from the Virginia Beach area who rejected light rail expansion from Norfolk in 2016. The paper called it a landslide victory even though it was a 57%-43% majority of no. I was VERY PISSED OFF about that as I should.
The lack of actual rapid transit in Phoenix is highlighted by the Super Bowl this week. You can only take the light rail to things downtown, everything in Scottsdale and Glendale you have to drive to.
A few years ago pictures from China leaked on the internet showing a metro station in an entirely undeveloped area, and people laughed at China for wasting money. A few years later the same location was photographed again, showing massive developments around the metro station. The government anticipated needing the residential space and built the transit first. Another benefit to building transit before density is that the new residents will be accustomed to using transit from the start. If you build the transit afterwards then most people will just stick to the car they needed to begin with. A good example is Toronto's Liberty Village and Humber Bay Shores. They both have lackluster transit connections to the downtown area so many people there drive and the city is only just building transit to connect them better: a new subway line extends to Liberty Village to go through downtown, and a new regional rail station is being built for Humber Bay Shores.
2018 - Nashville rejects public transit.
2024 - Hey maybe we should do public transit.
Ah. A classic example of supply and demand.
I live in Memphis, I hate driving more than fifteen minutes to work. I hate that I have to drive 30 minutes out of my way just to go to a department store, or a specialty grocer.
As a Californian in Arizona. These folks are way more worried about everything California is doing besides about what to do about Arizona itself. Their own state.
Awesome video! I visited the NY Transit Museum in Brooklyn recently. They have photographs of before, during, and after the subway construction. The photos of the Bronx before construction are of literally nothing in the middle of nowhere. There's an empty field, and a railway line... and that's it. Then you look at the Bronx a mere 7 years after construction completed and it's a metropolis!
Even smaller cities like Tucson have their own light rail system. Interestingly enough their single-line streetcar system only began service in 2014. Sometimes you wonder why these sort of things weren't built this sooner. What do people have against mass transit?
racism. it's literally racism that's the whole reason
That thing sucks and they could do a whole lot more with it.
PTSD on Nashville. I live here now and it's awful
My takeaway from this video is the monorail in the Simpson's was actually clever urban planning.
Obviously Arlington is a good example, but another example worth studying would be Houston. The three LRT lines, completed in 2004 and 2007, with an extension of the first line completed in 2013.
While all three lines run into downtown, they all go through areas that, at the time of construction, were economically depressed and/or a mix of industrial and low-income residential, with a lot of parking lots, vacant homes, empty lots, and disused warehouses along the routes.
The light rail lines have had a transformative impact in all of those areas. It was a little slow going at first, but in the last five years, the pace of development has really picked up, and now it is exploding.
did you say houston? odd
My hometown Cleveland has a train system that isn't exactly packed like NYC or Chicago, but it's STILL important to the city as it connects downtown to the suburbs.
Low density cities where traffic spirals out of control because you have to drive everywhere: “you gotta help us, man…we’ve tried nothin’ and we’re all out of ideas!”
People exaggerate road traffic. US roads carry 90% of workers and average speed is 45 mph. In 1920 it was 20mph and that still beat horses at 7mph.. Vs counting walking time transit moves at 15mph. So in car 10 miles is 13 minutes, transit is 40 minutes. No transit study finds car aint about 2.4x faster except for 5%, 95% in copenhagen and lyon france a car is faster. .. . . . . Leave home at 8:45 or 8:20 in cold chicago suburb, which one do you think people think sucks, so no car traffic is fine its transit "traffic" that sucks. . . . Ive learned to like audiobooks while walking and have no car, but lets stop the lying that roads and cars are soooooo bad. My grandma walked 1 hour on mud roads, then 1930 happened and she in car saved 55 minutes, what a freaking miracle, cars are awesome. . . But anyone skipping all numbers can make any argument, facts do matter though in the end. I say give everyone free ebikes and reward ebiking with $1000 a month, stop wasting $5000 per transit rider via govt subsidy, people will ebike and live near work like 5 miles.
@@unatrek2821 That's a lot of words to say you think it makes sense for each person to bring along a giant box large enough for five or more people everywhere they go, and for every destination to need room for everybody's empty boxes. It's wildly inefficient use of resources, even before you address the energy wasted. Also, if you think drivers aren't subsidized, I hope you're advocating for all zoning regulations that stipulate parking provisions to be repealed, because otherwise you're just being hypocritical.
Edit: I should note here that I own a car, and there are times when it serves a purpose and so I use it. But assuming that’s always the best option is fantastically stupid. I know, because my quality of life has improved drastically since I stopped banging my head against the wall driving to work, and now glimpse all those stranded mostly-empty boxes from the train as go by.
@@de-fault_de-fault .... @de-faultde-fault6847 ... 1. Well, yes businesses should be free to have less parking spots if their customers can't cheat. We passed that law since business A would skip spots and it's customers would park at business B or on the street, so it was a mess. Sadly if we repealed th law it'd be a mess again. So, I'm open to ideas..
2. Most of weight of car is crash protection, even at little SmartCar is heavy, if you go 70mph you need a heavy cage, per person a Train car is even heavier, so haha by your logic trains are bad??????
3. No one is evil or cheating, tech and work and society changed in 1940s and car use rose... It's not a conspiracy or dumbness, in 1940s workplaces left the downtowns and so did people moved to houses with lawns and garages, cars are only way.
4. Even if France 80% of workers drive, youre pushing a model that DONT WORK EVEN IN EUROPE FOR 80%, that's a worse hypocrisy, claiming a fantasy is possible. Even Netherlands 70% drive to work, per statista com.... It's so weird few transit lovers don't know these basic numbers.
X. TIME IS THE BIG REASON CARS WIN, door to door 15 minutes vs 50, so 1.5 hours extra time to love kids and work overtime, CARS BRING LOVE AND GOOD CAREERS AND TRANSIT THE OPPOSITE. You may not like it but this is the truth... I walk and kick scooter, I'm lazy about worker so waste 1 hour a day doing this, but most people hate wasting time ........
X. transit works if mandate 5 story buildings no lawns, like central Madrid or Scottish apwrtment blocks. Do you think US voters will go for that? No! I have no solution I just know Transit as Europe shows ain't solution for 80% even after they tried hard for decades and still 80% drive to work in Europe in most nations (you can't just count inner metros, as nation France is mostly nation of drivers, Netherlands even too)..... I'd love a miracle solution, I'm not happy there's no better way ...
@@unatrek2821 You don't need to give anyone free ebikes, what is needed is providing bike roads that get people where they want to go, then people will get bikes themselves.
When I lived in Japan, they made a HUGE deal out of "ekimae" - literally "in front of the station". They would plop a station in middle of nowhere, knowing that the station would drive construction and development. They even plan their networks and developments around both existing density and also ekimae potential.
And I am trying to move to Japan...
You should look at downtown Miami’s Metromover, completely automated and all the TOD built around the stations with more to come
It's such a hilarious drop in the bucket though. Metromover moves fewer people in a YEAR than ONE SINGLE STATION moves in ONE SINGLE DAY in Tokyo, think about that for a second. Americans, outside of NYC, really have no idea what transit can do.
I think your video is spot on. Very good analysis. I think cities like Phoenix need to promote high density condos next to light rail. If you like the freeway commute life, go for it. You need to offer an alternative as well. You might want to study Yonge St in Toronto. Especially North York's New downtown.
I seem to recall it was an American movie that coined the phrase "If you build it, they will come". Induced demand is a thing and it's as true for transit as it is for highways, or any other infrastructure really.
I live in the german city of Nuremberg with around 510000 people in it. We have a subway but not a single Scyscraper and its one of the only things that is actually working and widely appriciated by all people.
I just had a conversation with my city about transit. I’ll continue my conversation but I think there’s at least some consideration. Conversations to be held with others sounds promising. So it’s a start.
Good luck. Maybe introduce them in solutions like combining the station to a plaza with one or two apartment buildings with like 20-50 homes, and build the homes right after building transit, so people move there because of the connection. Might help the kickstart.
The main problem is the layouts of buildings, land use and traffic flow NOT density thanks to codes. Ironically I was at the gym shown at 6:55 while watching this!
Pheonix should go through with an elevated system no more light rail stop building street running trains. For large cities only fully separated trains work best.
There’s no will for that politically.
@@GenericUrbanism then don’t bother
Don't they realize that when they were expanding across the country to go west it was by train.Dont they realize that the rest of the world does trains and some counties thay you wouldn't think have high speed rail does before America.How Morocco got high speed before us.I don't count the Acela as high speed.Light Rail is fine but a true commuter rail is so much better unless the light rail doesn't deal with traffic.
Thus backwards way of thinking isn't helping.
I believe that promising to reduce traffic w rapid transit is dangerous because it won't really do that, at least not in a noticeable way. Drivers who switch to transit will be replaced with other drivers. It's the same phenomenon seen with adding traffic lanes to a freeway. It doesn't really reduce traffic. More traffic heads to it to fill the void and it becomes as congested as it ever was. That broken promise will be used as an argument to kill any addl transit; "see, we spent billions and traffic is worse."
What rapid transit does do is add rapid mobility to a city. That's the big promise of rapid transit. Rapid mobility is a big boost to a city's economy. It's like adding a rapid circulatory system to a city's infrastructure. It allows lower income populations more access to services, jobs, education, and healthcare which has economic benefits for the whole city. Reducing the time it takes to get to work from 2 hours by bus to 45 min. by rapid transit is a big quality of life improvement. Mobility gives people options to go car-free, avoid traffic, and save money. Rapid mobility spurs development. Businesses and dense housing like to be near rapid transit. Chicago and NYC didn't grow that dense out of the nothing, transit helped build that density.
You're right in that the "not dense enough" argument is made by people who don't understand transit planning or are using that argument to sow doubt and kill transit. Waiting for dense development can take decades, if it ever happens. Businesses and developers have learned not to believe political plans to provide transit because most of the time, they don't. Having rapid transit built and in place is no longer a hypothetical that may not be worthy to bank on. It's a fact. Providing rapid transit ahead of time accelerates that development. It's also less expensive to do it that way. Once an area is dense, it is much more expensive and disruptive to construct anything.
There are plenty of examples where a less dense urban area has a well used rapid transit network. Calgary is a fairly low-density residential city that has a transit mode share of 16%! That's pretty high. It's higher than Portland's, Denver's, or Los Angeles. Phoenix's today is about 4%. It has a dense downtown now but not when it began to construct it's light rail system.
PS when people think elevated rail, they think of Chicago and Brooklyn's noisy century old systems. Modern elevated lines are very quiet, can be elegantly built, and can be hardly noticeable. Vancouver is always the example I use to show that.
So you honestly believe if the NYC subway shut down tomorrow road traffic would be unaffected?
@@alittlebitgone If you re-read what I wrote you'll see that that's not what I'm saying.
Where are all the traffic reductions because of new rapid transit lines?
Studies have shown that rapid transit doesn't reduce traffic. It shifts riders from one mode to another and can attract more discretionary trips. It can also attract some car drivers but not enough to reduce traffic.
Any traffic reduction because of rapid transit is miniscule compared the amount of traffic that exists and that would be induced by any reduction.
The Santa Monica Freeway is as traffic choked as it ever was even after the Expo Line light rail that parallels it opened.
The NYC Subway added a new 2nd Ave line. Did traffic on the East Side of Manhattan go down?
Did San Diego's traffic clear up after the Trolley lines were put in? or Dallas'? Or Portland's? No, cities grow and more people add both more transit riders and more car drivers.
So, the major benefit of rapid transit is increased mobility and opportunity for more people.
If rapid transit disappeared, people can see that more traffic would occur, just as it would if you shut down the existing bus system even w/o rapid transit, but they wouldn't say that traffic was reduced because of rapid transit in the first place.
In fact, IF traffic were noticeably reduced, almost all of those who switched from driving would go back to driving. That's part of induced demand.
RMTransit made a really good video about how Australian cities successfully provide transit to low-density sprawling suburbs using electrified regional rail. The same model would be perfect for US cities that currently lack significant rail transit.
There is another thing I missed. Whenever new transit is built, the potential of property taxes going up is high. Property values go up as well, but not everyone wants to sell.
Given that most Americans seem to have an aversion to urban density, the fact that pre-emptively building transit in non-dense neighborhoods would (or could) lead to dense development would not be a point in its favor in their minds.
the American "dream" of a (detached)HOME-WITH-the-PICKET-FENCE and a shiny new car in the driveway also the "dream" of big development companies as HOUSING is CHEAP to build VS the selling prices VS "flats / condo's and they are "good" compared to the "missing middle" of terraced houses and "dingbat" apartment blocks that require a LOT of EXPENSIVE land to build
6:15 What if the popularity of ridesharing services is a reaction to the lack of public transit?
It is but it's also a death loop. Bad public transit -> more rideshare -> less incentive to improve public transit and just build more roads for rideshares instead -> bad public transit
Austin is already planning LightRail with Project Connect. Granted, it's slow as hell to get going, but their reasoning is to have as much community input on it's planning as possible. There has been so many concepts of elevated, to underground subway stations on the table. The two routes are from Downtown to South Austin for one, and Downtown to the Airport on the other.
So far, the biggest issue to get around it is the Colorado River, and also dealing with TXDOT forcing the I-35 expansion. The city so far has pushed for the highway to be buried with parks over it to compensate for the amount of land being wasted. It's also where the current commuter rail from North Austin to Downtown crosses the highway.
Could you please make a video on how our cities can be converted from suburban to urban? There is so much on the internet about what makes a great city and we can all agree that walkabolity and public transportation is important, but for cities that are already built entirely around the car, how can they be made wallable?. The conversion from unwwalkable and completely car centric to pedestrian friendly would probably be done gradually, but what are the first steps?
the first step to making a neighborhood walkable is making sure your neighborhoods actually have sidewalks and cross walks. the other part is to create more mixed use and allow small commercial and office spaces in residential areas.
@@Lildizzle420
Getting rid of parking minimums might be on the list 2
Rework zoning laws.
Nashville is a case study in my book Sustainable Infrastructure Investment. Very good video, Helsinki builds out the tram one year before the first apartments are occupied.
As China rapidly expanded it's rail network, there was a lot of derision of "trains to nowhere" in the media. But look at these trains to nowhere today and there is usually a dense, bustling neighborhood around them. All of this within a 5-10 year span. Transport precedes urbanization. (China's a special case for a number of reasons, but the principles of transit oriented development still apply to the US.)
I used to live in Phoenix, I’m moving back again in the summer to Tempe or Mesa. God I love the public transportation in Tempe. Light rail and so many buses.
I am from San Diego, California. In the late 19th Century any developer who wanted to build a housing tract had to first arrange to have a trolley route through the area before any houses could be built.
Boston, New York, Philly and Washington have a very good public transit system.
I used it from my hotel in Boston all the way to my hotel in Washington.
Far better than what I'm used to here in Germany.
You're missing the forest for the trees. A primary function of highway oriented development is to reinforce racial and economic segregation. The only transit oriented development that comes close to being as effective is park and ride commuter rail. The fact that poor people have trouble affording cars and racial minorities have a harder time catching a cab or Uber is not a bug, it's a feature.
U gotta be the most underrated urbanist on the platform. Great vid!
Love the content but you are missing one massive ingredient. Zoning and Minimum parking requirements. These two things drastically limit density which is the economically natural development pattern.
Density feeds ridership which then creates a virtuous cycle. Higher ridership demands requires higher frequency. Higher frequency improves service times. Improved service quality entices more ridership. More ridership = more paying customers = justifies the costs. More ridership also increases demand for more expanded service. Expanded service increases the value of the network, and also within each node of the network (stations).
Southern California is a good example of decent public transit infrastructure (in that it exists), but its ridership is low compared with capacity, service quality is terrible, expansion is slow. This is because the majority of stations are parking lots instead of dense mix use neighborhoods.
California just eliminated minimum parking requirements half a mile from transit stations. So, its conceivable that in a few years, these stations will finally be put into good use as development around the stations pick up, and the virtuous cycle can happen.
This more than just about public transit. Its about walkability and being able to find affordable housing near work. If you look at large job centers like universities, hospitals, business parks, shopping malls, the free market would normally create tall dense buildings around these places for students and workers. Businesses would then want to locate next to these places to take advantage of foot traffic. These areas are then perfect for a transit station. But this can't happen because of zoning and parking requirements.
What makes parking requirements so bad is that it reverses the virtuous cycle of transit into the cycle of car dependence.
Mandating parking = making cars more convenient and makes density formation expensive. Low density = destinations are further apart = car travel is more convenient = walking is less convenient = more cars = less pedestrians. Less pedestrians = lower ridership on public transit = lower service quality = less ridership. Bad public transit = forces more people into cars. More cars = demand for car infrastructure + neglect for pedestrian infrastructure = less safety for pedestrians. Less safety = forces more people into cars. More cars = people and businesses being further and further apart.
Which is why LA metro area is so bad even with public transit.
This is honestly the best summary I’ve seen of the situation in Los Angeles.
I can’t even begin to fathom what it would take to undo this. Convenience is #1 above everything else and driving in LA (in spite of traffic and parking) is 99% more convenient than transit except for a few narrow cases.
It's true - for all the braying the Kochs do about eeeeeevil government intervention, half of the hell that is car-burbia is _caused_ by way of... government intervention i.e. zoning laws.
@@ficus3929 Luckily the natural way of things is density. The free market likes efficiency. Efficiency means shorter commutes - ideally waking distance. It means less space per person during commute, less fuel burned per person. Cars take up huge amounts of space and burns significantly more fuel per person than biking, public transit (upon a certain threshold).
Its also much much cheaper for the average person. In US, cars costs around on average $500/mo in payments, insurance, gas, and maintenance.
If you count walking as part of traffic, then big cities are the most efficient in getting people to work in terms of space and energy.
Living in the barracks and college dorms was very efficient in getting to work and school.
Not that its for everyone, but it should be an available option, many people will chose smaller places, efficiency, cost savings, over big house, less savings, and cars.
I live in SoCal and I hate how these new KB home developments make it difficult for them to ever have good public transit. Those endless cul-de-sacs will make it impossible to have a non park-and-ride rail line for the next 50 years. I once walked to the nearest mcdonald's and it took 1 hour for just one-way! the commuter rail station would've been just as bad. driving would've just been 10 minutes through roads to "nowhere".
The poster child for transit oriented development would be Chongqing subway station in China that was basically in the middle of nowhere when it was build.
Or historically the whole "Metroland" scheme of the Metropolitan Line in London, which basically created a lot of the London suburbs back in the day, and even made additional money from it.
I have, in recent years, spent months in Central and Mediterranean Europe; Barcelona, Florence, Budapest, Zagreb. There are subways, electric tram lines and carbon fuel busses.. The only two cities where it did not seem to work well were Milan and Florence. The air quality in each city was degusting to the point that I had to seek intervention for my Asthma. My adolescence was spent in and around Chicago. The Northwest and the IC took me from the South or North west suburbs to the opera house of the Lakeshore drive museums for less than $1. I live in Newark,, NJ. From my apartment, I can take a bus from my doorstep to a train to NYC in about 40 minutes. An extra 10 mins on the NY subway gets me to The Met Opera, the Met Mu of Art or the Statin Island Ferry. for a while, I lived in Morris and Bergen Co. NJ. "Rich suburbs" where you could buy a loaf of bread if you didn't have a car to drive to the nearest supermarket; generally 3 mile away
I'm ashamed that I bought the BS arguments against expansion of the light rail system from Norfolk into Virginia Beach, I no longer live there but I will never make that mistake again no matter where I end up.
I appreciate that you learned from your mistakes and were willing to admit it. It takes courage to admit you were wrong, so congratulations 😊 We get so much propaganda from rich assholes, it's no wonder Americans believe what they do, but it takes intelligence to break out of the propaganda as you did.
It's so funny, the image @ 8:05 - the green strip in the middle of the 4 lane would be perfect for a tram line that could reduce traffic on that road, which would reduce the cost of repairs for the obviously eroding streets.
Great video! My biggest take away from this is to not let my future transit advocacy plans get too loud... Or else the Koch brothers will come bury me 😅.
That point about Brooklyn is really cool and I'm definitely going to use that in the future! It's hard to argue with historic examples.
But honestly, my second biggest take away is that advocacy for public transit may work better in small towns, where I could individually meet with people and deconstruct the ridiculous arguments from the Kochs!
Some truly excellent points in this video! I do think another factor that has hindered the ability to encourage transit in most parts of the USA is a punishing stigmatization of our bus systems. So much of the opposition to good BRT projects comes from the fact that they are associated with buses and automatically assumed to only be for the lower-class that don't have an option to 'own' a car. IMO we should work hard to champion BRT projects, because if we can get them done (and done WELL) it's a low cost option that can literally pave the way for future rail corridors. Thanks for the wonderful channel.
People in the US get the whole urban density thing backwards. It's not that your city isn't suited for transit because it's not dense enough, it's that your city isn't dense enough because it doesn't have transit.
What's truly frustrating is every time you do try to take action to provide some form of public transit option, you get slowed up by any and all manner of procedures, from having to provide timetables so as not to disrupt traffic, to having to put up with a bunch of bureaucracies that are often of the reactionary NIMBY crowd.
Same thing happened in Durham, NC when Duke University, whom should have supported a light rail line, complained it would somehow "damage" or otherwise negatively impact their fancy giant hospital next to the proposed route, and the university's bizarre and short-sighted opposition was one of the decisive factors that led to the failure of the light rail proposal there. There really is no actual evidence that the light rail line would have caused any issues as many major similarly advanced research hospitals around the world exist in proximity to rail transit, and traffic itself causes vibrations just as much as a light rail line would (perhaps more if it is larger trucks driving by, let alone that automobiles have more friction with the ground, or road construction in the same exact place). My guess is that the sort of people catered to by Duke don't want poor people near them, and the university does not actually feel they have to implement the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that they claim to support. The Research Triangle region (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Durham), like much of urban North Carolina, is rapidly growing, but they don't seem to understand that you cannot just build more roads and more lanes and have traffic somehow solve itself.
Only Charlotte really has a serious series of transit projects that have been completed or are in the works, but this happened after the city became so traffic-snarled that it made little sense not to build it. The Research Triangle region has made and keeps making several major mistakes in managing their growth, and though it would logically be the place I would have lived had I stayed in North Carolina, I could not stand living somewhere that does not seem to understand proper mass transit or how to properly handle major population growth, so I have been doing my best to avoid ending up back there, I find it far too depressing and disappointing.
Also, I have gotten several ads on TH-cam recently for Vanderbilt University that call it a "world-class university in a world-class city (Nashville)" and I just laugh at them because I find many aspects of Nashville to be anything but world-class. The city has some of the worst traffic, longest commutes, and worst urban planning I have witnessed in the United States. An urban area that haphazardly managed, and which has rejected improving itself in ways such as not investing in transit, is pretty backwards and far from "world class" as far as international standards of cities in similar countries go. I do think it does have the potential to be world class, given the cultural significance of the city and being home to a major university. However, these are not the only factors that are up for consideration when such a title is bestowed upon a city, and I really do not feel it is worthy of the title given there are other cities with similar cultural significance and major research universities that have a lot more going for them, such as Boston or Seattle.
I just visited Charlotte the other week from our North Texas suburb, looking for a car-lite option for my wife and me to move eventually. We both work from home now for the first time and are looking to go down to one car. I read quite a few of their planning documents about rail and biking, and I was cautiously optimistic. If they follow through on the Little Sugar Creek Greenway expansion and keep ramping up the rail lines, they have something great in the works. Of course, with exurban Texas as my only real reference, I'm still learning what is fool's gold in transportation.