What I've learnt is that the public won't take the first step on taking public transport, transit agencies have to take the first step by providing a clean, fast, reliable, frequent, convenient, cheap and safe service will make the public start using it.
100%. I notice this with my friends and family. They will not take train unless its absolutely the most convenient way to travel. That includes cost, time, reliability, cleanliness, pricing and the other points Reece mentioned.
Being totally reliant on public transport after 21 years living in Manchester U.K. I often wonder if restricting or totally banning car ownership or use, insurance, licensing, tax, etc within 50 miles radius of any city, would force people to use public transport more often, as sometimes you have to use force of law to effect change
@@michaeljohndennis2231 I think it would help to have some pushes to make cars generally more hassle. NYC for example has a strong 'push factor' in the fact that there is very little reliable access to street parking (either free or paid) within the inner city area. This alone means basically any journey in Manhattan is more convinient by transit than driving, a major factor in this borough of 1.7 million having only 22% car ownership.
One strange thing which I do not believe should be overlooked is transit cleanliness. It may not stop people from taking transit, but clean transit overall can be a good pull factor for people who normally take cars. I have noticed that dirty vehicles and stations tend to make people think twice before using a particular service. It can really affect stations in particular, which are often used like malls to help generate revenue to run services. When stations are dirty, few will travel there to visit shops unless they are actively using the transit service. Maybe a video about this would be interesting?
Indeed. This is actually what makes quite a lot of Asian transit networks very attractive. Cleanliness tend to be THE priority alongside frequency annd regular maintenance.
@@ianhomerpura8937 I've definitely noticed, comparing riding the train in Tokyo to... anywhere else I've been (ie. a reasonable coverage of North America and Europe). I hate to say it, but there seems to be something about the bulk of Western culture and having less respect or consideration for public property/spaces. No doubt trains and stations in Tokyo are likely cleaned more regularly/thoroughly, but the average person is much more averse to making a mess to begin with. While I'd love more attention be given to cleanliness by transit authorities... I think it's also a bit of an up-hill battle.
@@EggTamago7 Elsewhere, the dirt isn't necessarily due to slovenly passengers. If the floor is dirty but free of rubbish, which is often the case, that isn't the passengers' fault. If paint is pealing off the walls, or there is a visible build-up of dust, that isn't the passengers' fault.
@@katrinabryce Yeah, totally agree. There's definitely stuff that can be done in terms of station/train upkeep. Plenty of stations I frequent show signs of neglect. But, people leaving trash on the floor (when every station/platform is full of garbage cans), putting their feet up on seats etc. is pretty avoidable behaviour, but extremely common.
I think stuff like station lockers are pretty underrated. They seem only useful for tourists, but I think many locals could be convinced to leave their car at home or ditch it altogether if you could leave stuff at most stations.
Being used to good quality public transport links here in Manchester U.K. where I’ve lived for 21 years, it drives me insane when I go home to family in Rural Ireland on visits - getting into Dublin can be a nightmare from Rural Ireland at the best of times and the public transport offering is getting worse, not better in the time I’ve been away - the Irish government seriously needs to “cop itself on” with regard to sorting out public transport in Ireland
The biggest upswing EVER (excluding world wars) for Oslo's tram was their at the time counter-intuitive large increase in service called the "Rolling Sidewalk" project. ALL central and semi-central lines were to have service at most every 10 minutes. Including the ones with dwindling ridership. The effect was that people simply stopped looking at the time table. You just strolled over to the stop at your leisure, because one would show up in a few minutes anyways. This decreased the perceived hassle and lead to a MASSIVE increase in total ridership across all parts of the system.
At the end of the day, if city planners and politicians look at transit as an asset for cities and not a checklist band-aid solution, great transit is possible just about anywhere. And great transit will get people to ride every single time.
"great transit is possible just about anywhere." you mean this literally or only in big, dense cities? because I can assure you that in many places (even that count as a "city") public transit doesnt make financial and environmental sense if you want good coverage and frequency, and outside you can completely forget about it lear about the road damage in relation to weight (10 times heavier vehicle=10 000times more road damage) and look up how much power buses actually need in a city where they need to stop and start all the time and the AC/heating running at 100%....in some cases its over 200KWH per 100km for comparison i can get 10KWh in my electric car..... so on average you need over 20 people in every bus, and from what i saw that doesnt happen because they run almost empty at night....
100% agree - I feel like my city (Denver) has excellent transit "on paper," and I've seen transit commentators from elsewhere praise it, but actually using it it is pretty worthless, failing in almost all the respects described in this video. Many seem trivially absurd, simple things they could have done different that would have made it so much better. Those who designed it went through the motions, the "checklist" you describe, but didn't really think through the actual user experience of it.
An effective system is the connectivity of Miami's Metrorail and Metromover with the commuter Tri-Rail. They got people to ride trains when there was highway construction in the 1980s, so Tri-Rail was meant to be a temporary solution to still get people to and from work. Because it proved to be such a popular service, they made the service permanent. They changed the livery from GO colors to blue skies and palm trees which I love and it's one of my favorite liveries of all-time, up there with the New Mexico Rail Runner. And purchased more rolling stock from Hyundai Rotem, as well as renovating coaches so they can be bike cars, furthering reach with making it great for cyclists. The Metromover is a free people mover system with three loops and because of it, so much development has popped up downtown thanks to its connectivity to the Metrorail. The Metrorail first opened in 1984 as a park and ride system with parking garages outside downtown but now, transit-oriented development has popped up by stations like by Brownsville and Historic Overtown/Lyric Theatre stations.
From my experience in Philadelphia, people who choose not to use SEPTA cite how dirty it is and unlawful behaviors (assaults, smoking on trains, drug use) as reasons why they avoid using transit. They're not completely off base, it can be gross and very sketchy. Even if statistically there's a low likelihood they'll be a victim, the mere terrible reputation of the system leads many people to Uber or drive to places they could much more easily use transit. The buses seem to have a better reputation though. Until the issues are lessened, I just can't see people who have the means using transit as much as driving or ride services. Philly isnt NYC so you can get a ride so its just not attractive enough for a lot of people.
Wish that there were more female transit content creators with the same level of clout as RM, CityNerd, etc because this one thing I constantly forget is that as a man I sometimes forget that what I myself can shake off as "stop being paranoid" might be a serious concern for women. My female cousin stopped riding the metro after being harassed. Yeah it was one rare time and could've happened anywhere but that's all it takes to put someone off transit for years. I think when male transit advocates say things like public transit means sharing space with someone you might not be comfortable with, they forget the perspective others unlike them might have. Many (not RM) dismiss it as a problem with cowardly suburbanites, missing that city or suburb you don't want a system that people only take out of desperate necessity.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 My country (Malaysia) implement the women-only couches approach to tackle sexual harassment on transit. For example, the 6-car KTM Komuter train that connect suburban areas to the Kuala Lumpur city center have for years designated the two center couches as women-only couches, while other couches are open for all. Although it's not legally binding rule, a man wondering in the women-only couches will still get stares from the ladies; the train drivers will also make annoucement to advice male passangers to move to other couches if they spotted them through CCTV cameras. This will usually put male passangers off the women-only couches and eventually create a safe space for female passangers. Our Ministry of Transport recently replicated this approach on our MRT Kajang line, but it's not well receive by many even among the public transit fans. The main points they cited are that women-only couches is unsuitable to a metro train as it create congestion on other couches and MRT have less couches than KTM Komuter train. They also argue that the Ministry put their priority on the wrong issue as there are more important transit issues to be tackled such as frequency and bus reliability.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 Very true, I think many downplay things that deter people. Being stuck in a box with a person who in unstable, doing drugs, or harassing you is not fun for anyone. I want to use the subway, but when that's something that happens with frequency it's just not as worth it. Use the subway in Asia and Europe and you just don't see as many of these issues, if any. So I think transit RU-vidrs are a bit Polyanna when discussing why people don't use transit in US cities.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 My wife used to be mostly fine taking the bus to the community college nearby but eventually began to dread it because there were a lot of homless people causing trouble at the bus stop. I don't blame her but I do feel bad because even though that was an issue for me at the same stop I probably didn't feel as unsafe as her there. In general I think the urbanism movement doesn't take into account female and families as much as single dudes.
Absolutely would be great to have a woman’s perspective. Why would anyone take a means of transportation where they will feel uncomfortable the whole time?
As a Calgarian, I would say the number one barrier to people I know ditching the car and sticking with transit is service shutdowns. Transit in this city SHUTS DOWN in the wee hours of the morning. On weekends it's even worse. One can't even make it to midnight before transit shuts down. Whether it's a kid trying to make it home from their McJob, or a temporary foreign worker trying to get back and forth from that late night restaurant, transit has NO SOLUTION FOR YOU. Having to hire Ubers after every shift doesn't make transit an affordable option. It forces folks into cars, even when they don't want to.
It can work... if your economy isn't on the 24h clock. Restaurants and shops close by 10-11pm at the latest, bars might still be open, but most close by midnight, 1am at the latest. And there's still transit going then. At night, there is a collective taxi system instead for about double the price of a transit ticket, which is reasonable.
You left out a major point-- security. I've personally been on transit where I've witnessed sexual harassment and drug use. Transit agencies need a security system in place to kick off unruly passengers. If people's experience on public transit is not pleasant, they will not use it.
I feel like the solution to this has less to do with transit organizations and more to do with North America's general lack of social programs. If people weren't homeless there wouldn't be homeless people on trains, and if we had good systems in place to deal with drug addiction that also wouldn't be a problem.
One of the solution in my country is put a few auxiliary police in the stations. These auxiliary police although not a "full, proper" police, they still have a fair share of law enforcement power within the boundary of the train stations. Yes, employing private security guards may be able to tackle most of these security issues without the need of police invovlement, but I would argue that auxiliary police's power to make arrest, equiped with weapons (baton or pistol), direct communication line with police forces and their police uniform appearance may act as a deterrent to potential criminals. Outside of their patrolling duty, most of the time they are just like any other station staffs, directing confused passangers and tourists where to go and what platform they should get to.
@@theexcaliburone5933 While homelessness is an issue, it's a stretch to assume all problems on transit are caused by them. Oftentimes harassers are not unhoused, they're just going there and harassing or worse because they know there are no consequences. I think a program where police or security are paid to ride the metro and hang out at stops would be a good idea.
Can you please make a video on NJ transit. Its the most developed train sysytem in all of North America. Its very busy. Most of it is electrified. It also has high ridership.
The exclusion of transit is, in the United States, very deliberate a number of times. For example, for sports stadia, the parking revenue is significant. There are also other reasons to keep "undesirables" away from certain areas.
2:51 Minor point, but the bad decision was not putting the stadium near transit, it was to not build core transit lines near the stadium (and the nearby Clippers arena). There were very few options for a NFL stadium site in the downtown LA area, there's not much they could do to get that kind of footprint in any realistic way, especially after the Staples Center plan went up in smoke. 10:38 Virginia Railway Express ran an interesting experiment this summer, making all fares on Fridays free. I tried it once at the end of the season, I noticed that there were a lot of families using the train for day trips up to DC on a day when people in the area traditionally take off and ridership is very low. The trains I was on were actually quite full both going into and out of DC, when they ordinarily wouldn't be. This might be something other commuter rail lines should look at doing, as it exposed a lot of people to the convenience of using VRE when they might not ordinarily have used it.
I specifically took a trip to Manassas by VRE and saw a lot of families taking young kids on the train. I chose Manassas because it had trains running out of DC in the early afternoon and back in the evening- counter to regular commuter traffic. I think weekend service and regional instead of commuter service would pleasantly surprise VRE and MARC with an uptick in demand. After all, how many people would love to visit Harper's Ferry or Frederick or Fredericksburg by train but don't now? Or office workers that live in DC and could work outside the city?
Frequency is freedom! But frequency is also speed. This is obvious when connections are needed--and frequency also improves reliability here--but even outside of connections, frequency is "speed". Most people are arriving at some place at a time t, with a car, they must leave at time t - t_trip, but on transit they must leave to catch the transit vehicle that arrives before t, which could arrive at up to the wait time. So someone going to a meeting, might have to arrive 30 minutes early if the bus only comes every 30 minutes. If the trip is 20 minutes...that's intolerable. Frequency is freedom. As for free transit, that's an ideological issue, but I'd argue that any time the farebox recover ratio is very low (like single digit percent) like it often is for rural transit systems, which mostly support low income people, free transit is a no-brainer. Of course, now that I have a family, the biggest issue on transit pricing is family pricing. On a weekend, or frankly any time, the idea I have to pay for my 4 year old to ride ION...is frankly idiotic. An utterly self defeating policy.
2:55 this is so true. MetroLink in St. Louis is always most used when people are commuting into the city for a sporting event, whether it's the Cardinals, Blues, City SC, or even the Battlehawks. It certainly helps when every major sporting venue has a MetroLink station close by.
How about urban planning. I think this is especially true as areas return to Transit. We should have much more active urban planning. For example, actively working with businesses and institutions to relocate them to transit friendly locations. If you have a large employer located in a suburban office park for example, what would it take to move them to a more transit friendly location? Maybe it is cheaper to help them move than deal with awkwardly routed transit or even no transit to them. Similarly, my local Go station got recently renovated. It got brand new multi-level parking garage. But there surface lot is still there. I often wonder why that land is not leased/sold to a develop to put up some condos/apartment/townhouses/commercial properties. Probably more complicated, but still doable. If programs could be had to make transforming neighborhood easier. I acknowledge this is going to hard. I live in SFH. I wouldn't mind if we could snap our fingers and it magically becomes much more dense townhomes or midrise. The transition is the issue. If there was a program to say keep people in the same neighborhood, build some new housing in a reasonable amount of time (
GO station parking will be developed, but I don’t think we should rush it, give it time and we will get more density, which we should have next to super high capacity train stations!
The main reason why businesses don't immediately move in such places is because of prices for rent or purchase of floorspace or ground to build. As soon as you have good transit nearby prices usually go up by sth like 200 - 300% and if you aren't one of the really big companies swimming in cash it might become a real threat to the survivability of the company to make such an investment.
@@martinklein9489 This is why I say government should 'help' companies move. I think it is in the public interest to have large employers at major transit nodes. If it means lower property taxes or even subsidies for the move, I am for it. Call it corporate welfare if you want, but moving them to a good transit location is for the public good. Then in the future, have proper urban planning/zoning to deny major employers locations outside good transit.
I like predictability. I like frequent transit that runs along major corridor in straight (or mostly straight) trajectories, with 1 intra-city transfer to reach a destination. The rest can be reached via walking.
Trains naturally tend to be this, but a lot of bus services I see wind all over through neighborhoods. Serving more people and area with a given route, but so slow as-the-crow-flies, or compared against point-to-point transport of a car or other means, that it's really not all that useful - serves everyone but hardly worth using by anyone. The mindset behind these I suspect is that they want to serve the most people who have no alternative with as few routes and buses as possible, even if in a way that doesn't appeal to anyone who does have alternatives. The mindset that trains are to be an alternative to cars, buses are for those who don't have cars. Or, perhaps, to look good on paper to planners and critics viewing from afar, "Here's how many people this route serves," while in reality being nearly useless to those people it supposedly serves.
@@quillmaurer6563 I've noticed the same. I would personally rather walk a block or two and have a more frequent and more intuitive service, than a service along a winding route that runs infrequently. It would be nice if planners were frequent users -- which they may be, but doubt they are.
Sofi Stadium was built where it was because that was where the private developer that built it had access to surplus land. There was no direct transit access to it because Los Angeles still has lots of areas with no transit access. Most or all of the areas that are near existing or planned transit don't have enough space to build a football stadium on.
In defense of putting your sportsball venues outside of city centers, the Stadiums are an incredibly low value use of the land, and sit vacant most days, so they often should be built on cheaper land. There can and should be transit to these places similar to what is done for airports.
Transit to venues is amazing, the only issue is "tailgating" culture in America where people enjoy getting drunk in the parkinglot of a venue. Personally i lived riding a bus from a random strip mall parkinglot into a concert closer to the gates than any of the parking lots. And leaving was blissful watching all the cars stuck in a jam as we flew by them all. (I had to drive out of a concert the year before as the DD and hated it, i hate driving in general but that was one of the most stressful driving experiences i ever had before owning my first car.) As far as being a low value land use goes, professional sports make an insane amount if mobey and theoretically should be a big tax revenue source for the host city, but i suspect they actually are net tax burdens. At the very least the sports team could have an outreach program to make the facilities available to the community while not in use by the team.
@@jasonreed7522 It has been proven though that sportsball is taxpayer subsidized and a net negative to a city, it is usually one of the worst forms of Corporate welfare.
Unless you can make them livelier all year round. You can have a top restaurant in the business seats open year round, conference rooms, guided tours and fan shops, heck, have other attractions nearby, like an amusement park, office and retail space... and you'd have a decent flow of visitors.
A very important thing that you missed is how safe people feel in public transport and in stations. My female friends often avoid certain stations at night because they just don't feel safe there.
Having attractions at stations is a decent curve ball to get people. Big transit hubs in Tokyo were fun place to hang around. I had no problem on waiting friends at station. Here in LA, I need to get out from stations ASAP. If there's no starbucks nearby, I can only meet friends at destination. Make stations into a shopping mall, bring in small businesses, hire good security, get a decent monument for people to meet up.
I agree. Union Station in DC is slowly recovering but at least stores and shops in it are a possible way to keep things running when travel is slow. Crystal City metro has a mall and tunnel network that suffered from the surge in remote-working, but was historically busy. Not all malls are dying, contrary to popular opinion. The ones near where people live are doing ok, even if they've had to pivot away from big clothing retailers to bars and social amenities. Being around where people live and around transit only increases the throughput.
To some degree, yes, I want some shops in a station as well, but it should be a station foremost, not a shopping mall where you have to look for your platform.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 Yeah I live in the area where some malls are dying while others are thriving. And seeing similar trends you just said. Driving to a shopping mall for stores you can find everywhere in the US (or online) is becoming pointless. But if they were located on my commute and I don't have to find a parking spot? I may spend some time (and money) there.
Regarding tapping your debit or credit card to get on transit: yes, this would be handy, but having it be the only (or even preferred) option would make transit users more vulnerable to credit and debit card theft. What would be better? A tappable transit card attached to a preloadable account that also supports monthly automatic withdrawals from a bank account or credit card. Why? That transit card enables you to use your debit or credit card to pay for transit, without having to pull out your debit or credit card to pay for transit (and thus potentially have that very important card stolen). There's a lot less incentive to steal transit cards, as they can only pay for transit.
I agree that frequency is key, not just train and bus arrival frequency (headways), but also cleaning frequency. In Philly, the transit authority, SEPTA, proudly proclaims on Facebook that it just finished deep cleaning a station on the BSL (broad street line) and next up, a station on the MFL (market Frankfort line)! But it’s like they didn’t clean either station in months! Daily cleaning would be ideal, but if they can just manage weekly cleanings, it would be way better than what it looks like now. The urine smell is the worst and that’s mostly due to other big problem, homelessness. Not enough shelters and not enough housing affordability despite high housing density means the homeless use the subway and stations as shelter. This lead to closures of entire sections of the downtown concourse because they were being used as tent cities.
DC has two major problems at the moment. The first is that the majority of the federal workforce is still remote. The second is the massive increase of crime on trains & buses and in & around stations. And ridership was decreasing before the pandemic due to reliability concerns. People are coming to the conclusion that it's far easier to just drive. In most areas of the country, public transit is viewed as something students and poor people use to get around. Anyone who can afford a car has one.
It’s also usually faster to drive than take metro depending on where you’re going. It’s a 20-25 minute drive for me to get from my house in Maryland to Alexandria. That takes an hour or more to do on metro and I live close to a metro station.
Safety at stations/bus stops and onboard is another of these factors. I don’t believe a sense of personal safety will pull or push people to transit, but a perceived lack of safety will push them away.
How to get more people on transit? 1.) Air conditioning. 2.) Trains every 5 minutes. 3.) Air conditioning. 4.) Getting to work/home as fast as driving. 5.) Air conditioning. 6.) Plenty of seating, even during rush hour. 7.) Air conditioning. 8.) Stations less than 2 blocks away from my house/place of work. 9.) Air conditioning. 10.) Take cash and fare cards (both at the same time), and don't require exact change, give change on a fare card. 11.) Air conditioning. 12.) Simple fare structure. Same fee to enter the system at any station. If you must have zones, then do it in a way that nobody gets trapped in the system unable to leave without begging and lots of paperwork. 13.) Air conditioning. 14.) 24 hour service so you're not stranded if you go out drinking on a Friday night and head home at 2 or 3 AM. 15.) Air conditioning.
In terms of connectivity, I completely agree about transit needing to connect to transit. I recently lived in a city where one of the commuter rail stops didn't connect to anything - no bus, not even a park and ride! So I, along with others who don't have a car, had no way of getting to that station.
My keys: 1) Allow bikes to be stored on transit 2) Have stations with short walk distances 3) Allow skyscrapers to be built by stations (99% of urban areas prohibit skyscrapers) 4) Fund transit with property taxes and not fares, to simplify station design 5) All stations should connect to bike paths 6) Provide good frequency & speed 7) Connect transit to airports 8) Arrest people who harass others on transit 9) Prohibit low-density developments near stations 10) Provide late-night/early morning services
I would change that to "Arrest, indict, and prosecute people who harass others on transit." Having been harassed myself on public transit in one particular city (see if you can guess which one), I would never want ride public transit in that city again. I would also add that bike paths should be safely separated from automobile traffic with natural or man-made barriers. With those caveats, all of your ideas are great and if done correctly would make having a car in a city an unnecessary extravagance for most people.
@@lourencovieira5424 Because they block "sight-lines" from wealthy NIMBY condos? Are there any good reasons to ban skyscrapers? Everybody pretends Euro-style row houses can match skyscrapers for occupancy, but this just isn't true...especially when it comes to office space. Taller = more capacity. Plus Euro-style row houses would never meet satisfy North American fire codes.
@@vulpo Something I would love to see more of is "grade separated" bike paths in urban centers...even if elevated paths are required. Rivers/creeks are a great spot to locate bike paths as they naturally won't have to cross as many roads because of the cost of bridges. Also bike lanes should NEVER be located inside of shoulder parking/unloading...but always outside of it. So few urban planners get this right. Crime sadly is a major problem in select metros (like LA, SF, and NY). Zombies that don't respect other people's boundaries need to be put in jail. If cities wanted to clean crime out of metros it could happen.
@@AaronSmith-sx4ez Well than maybe that's a reality for you. I live in a country with no skyscrapers and there's some extremely dense neighbourhoods here. Also skyscrapers can be quite big fire hazards too! Not everyone wants to live in skyscrapers, not everyone wants to live in detached houses, the housing market should be diverse.
The Washington DC area runs into the problem that whoever is making decisions about Metro, MetroBus, and other bus systems (who clearly don't talk to each other) all seem to be under the (wrong) impression that DC is still a Monday-Friday, 9-5 town. It's not. Hasn't been for at least a decade, but especially post-pandemic. But after about 6PM, transit starts to disappear. Out in the burbs where I'm stuck, I used to run into an 80 minute gap in buses, from 6:50 to 8:10. Even though folks (including myself) were still getting on the train in the city during so-called "peak" service time, we'd arrive to our suburban station with the local buses already having switched to their evening schedule. So 6 or 8 full trains would roll in, with no local buses to take them to their destination...thus most folks drive to the Metro station. Forget about going to see a movie, a ball game, or even having a slightly late dinner, because what service remains after 6PM just ends completely at 9. And it's even worse on weekends. The train runs late, but the buses stop early, if they run at all. Probably half the bus lines outside of the city proper don't even run on weekends. Don't even get me started on the painfully bad cycling infrastructure that's being built right now...or has been built, but is still sitting there, closed to cyclists...it's a whole thing.
Grew up in the DC suburbs (Silver Spring) and I understand. I had to take the bus from the metro for a job once and the bus would come every 20 minutes in the morning rush. It took me ages to get to my job and that was after carpooling to the metro. I don't quite know how to fix it because MoCo is kind of unique in that there are few creek crossings and traffic gets funneled onto a few key arterials with alternate routes taking you miles around. Bus lanes on saw New Hampshire Ave or Rt 29 would cause a riot. They couldn't even get dedicated bus lanes on the new Flash "BRT" route.
Some cities really struggle with service span, Melbourne in Australia isn’t like DC but they also cut their service back way too much at night, heck even NYC does
In Boston, the MBTA is encouraging people to bike or to work from home if they can, by making transit as difficult as possible. I've been a regular rider of the subway since 2006, and service has steadily deteriorated. But at least bike infrastructure is gradually improving.
I live in Los Angeles, and personally I think our biggest barrier for transit is lack of a social safety net for the unhoused population. When we don't take care of our homeless, they tend to dominate public spaces & transit and make many people uncomfortable using them
@@crowmob-ii2ng Yes this! Affordable dense housing close to job centers is the ultimate solution. Helps reduce homelessness, traffic (via reduced commutes), and the density creates more transit demand Marina Central Park newly proposed project that I think would be huge on this front
The problem here is that the homeless problem isn't going to be solved any time soon and the transit agencies have to figure how to legally get them off the system or soon they will be the only ones using it.
Question from someone who likes the idea of public transport but never lived where that exists: What do people do when they have several places to shop, and must carry their bags from one store to the next. Most stores won't let you bring in bags from elsewhere. Also for the weight or number of bags, esp. for groceries.
A combination of lockers, personal shopping trolleys, multiple trips and deliveries. If you have local shops/supermarkets/pharmacies within a 5 minute walk (quite common over here) everyday shopping is not much of a problem.
I think the idea is to _not_ do one big shopping trip. The whole idea of the huge shopping spree, in addition to being an over-consumption problem, has been encouraged and facilitated by private car and single use zoning. For example: you go to the mall, you have to drive to get there and there are many stores that you might need to visit so you just hit them all in one day and get it over with. But if we switch to mixed use zoning, then those stores will (1) be arranged closer to where you live and (2) be geographically distributed so it makes less sense to go around to each one and instead just do them on separate days, possibly on your way back from work or some other errand. My dad, for example, only goes shopping once a week. He drives to costco, buys frozen and self-stable foods in bulk and then packs his freezer. This strategy would not work if he needed to use public transit, its true, but I think that's a good thing. When I lived in a walkable neighborhood, on the other hand, I went to the store every day or every other day, and bought just enough food for a couple of days. I actually find that I prefer that situation because it enables me to buy fresh food which can't last a week and eat a wider array of meals (because I could just buy whatever I felt like that day). As opposed to my dad's strategy, where he has to _anticipate_ what he wants to eat for the week, and almost exclusively buy food that lasts a while because (inevitably) he will find that he isn't interested in any food around the house and instead opts for fast-food. This is not ideal. This is a "good enough" solution to a problem caused by cars and traffic being a pain to deal with on a daily basis. I _just_ moved back in with him and honestly I have no idea how I tolerated this life before. More importantly, I have to ask: why do you need to do so much shopping? And must it all be done in one day? Can you maybe get some of it delivered like furniture? I know where I live, in the USA, we simply buy too much stuff. Stuff that we don't need, stuff that just becomes clutter and eventually garbage. Another question: how _often_ do you have to do such large shopping sprees? Perhaps you actually do need to do such a thing maybe once a month, why not rent a car for that day in particular? There's services like zip car where you can rent a car by the hour, even. Or, alternatively, just drive your car? This isn't an either/or dilemma, you can use public transit without having to give up your car. There will be less parking overall, but if the system works then less people will _need_ parking. The idea of improving public transit is so that you don't _need_ to drive to the store just to buy a couple of items. This might just be me, but I personally find that I'm far more open to spontaneous trips out when I don't need to deal with traffic and parking. sorry for the long reply, but this felt like a genuine question so you get a genuine answer.
@@tucuuk Thanks :-) I live on the outskirts of a large city, and there just isn't much public transit here. The "walkability rating" is near zero, it's very car-dependent. So in order for public transit to really be practical, they'd pretty much have to redesign everything, wouldn't they?
@@SilverDragonJay Yes, thank you :-) I'd love to be able to walk to a store or doctor's office, especially since I can't see well enough to drive anymore. But there's no place around here where that can be done. So by necessity we shop less often, like your dad. Most of our shopping is groceries, and since we rent we don't need a lot of home repair tools or supplies.
sadly the most popular solution is that you just dont.... and that where is ends for most people, the brave ones try it sometimes but they quickly realize that they are not up to the task
If a car takes x, a bike takes 1.2x and transit takes 2or3 x guess which trip im taking. Its a reality of life in most small cities in north america. Strikes and feelings of safety are another factor.
That's because the environment was built to prioritize cars. If private vehicles were instead forced to take less convenient paths compared to walking, biking, or mass transit lines, safety per commuter would dramatically improve just from being around so many more people around to temper emotions and react to incidents -- because nobody has a 3+ton shield to hide personal incivilities.
@@doujinflip first part very true, but as for safety I am more referring to the unpredictability of people and also the fact that most people won’t stand up to someone that is misbehaving on transit because inherently we want to defend ourselves first. But my issue is most (not all)car inconvenience projects doesn’t improve transit speed but just makes car infrastructure slower. It’s a stick and not a carrot. Also cost per mile of transit has become completely unreasonable compared to an asphalt road which steers people towards more car centric infrastructure. I’m looking for how we can develop infrastructure that makes sense to build for everyone and not just for the rich. Also we have to consider the democratic process where the majority of people vote for car centric infrastructure and nimbyism in politicians so make sure you talk to your neighbours as well to promote existing infrastructure and new quality(and faster) infrastructure.
@@RMTransit no doubt. If i was in toronto id definitely have a different thinking on driving. I dont speak universally. and again keep up the advocation for transit. But my main point on safety was the unease or auxiety for many people of sitting beside strangers on a transit, Transit as a statistic is safer, just as flying a plane is statiscically safer but there is a sense of control that someone that is driving a car has, however irrational it is.
I could reach my workplace by transit. It would take longer, and then to get home the timetable is bad and gets worse the later the day gets. It would also cost me more per week than the fuel to drive. If those things were sorted out, I would gladly jump on the train instead.
Making cars worse just means the transit system gets defunded by angry car owners come election day to raise money for new highways. Making roads worse is not a winning strategy.
I live in the Los Angeles area. The city is definitely investing in more transit, but the problem with the Southern California area as a whole is that in the 1960s and 1970s, the amount of land available for building was virtually limitless, so they built massive housing estates everywhere (including my home built in 1952) with single-story homes with yards all around them. While this is great for the quality of life of the people living in them, it is NOT great for transit, because the amount of people living in say.... 500 meters around a potential transit stop is a lot less, possibly as little as 25% compared to say a suburb in the outer areas of London, Paris, or even New York, where they have built compact, multiple floors up. So from the get-go, planning a new light-rail system through suburban areas of Los Angeles, Riverside, and Orange Counties comes with a massive financial return challenge. You can build the perfect route, going past all the perfect venues (work, sporting events as explained in this video, leisure, etc) but if the average amount of people within walking distance is low because the housing density is low, it is very hard for any transit company to make a buck, and they will likely operate on a loss until areas around the stations start replacing their 1960s bungalows with apartment buildings and condos. As for making driving more difficult..... I do hear ya, but it is kind of too late with regards to parking. My office has a multi-story parking garage right next to it which means my car is dry when it rains, and my dashboard won't be melting in summer either. All around me in the office park I work at you see the same thing: Office building with parking structure attached or land for parking. And these were all built in the 1980s and 1990s. Before the pandemic there was enough parking, now with many people working partially from home (my company policy has remained 3 days in, 2 days remote) the parking garage near my office building with the same amount of office workers (give or take) is 50% empty. And they are certainly not breaking DOWN any parking garages, because no one knows where it will all go, and in 5 years from now everyone might be back in an office. Even in the worst circumstances, with accidents on the freeway, bad weather, and lousy drivers causing traffic..... I can be at work in under 45 minutes. (Half an hour on most days, 20 minutes if no traffic). If I take public transport, it will be three different buslines and about 2 hours. So for me to get on transit, I would have to have..... 1) A stop nearby my home AND my office, 2) a single line, or at most one change-over that lasts less than 5 minutes, and 3) the total travel time would have to be less than an hour to even make it interesting. And even then, you bet that if I go to the office on Fridays, I'll still take the car because it takes me 20 minutes. The best public transportation are the ones where areas have developed as "mini city centers" or "hubs" within neighborhoods, and that is not the case in Southern California. The only chance we have here for public transportation is good connectivity from airports to tourist attractions, because yeah..... everyone wants to visit California. Then again, they are building an LAX people mover that will go directly into a state-of-the-art brand new modern....... car-rental facility. Also a stop on the Metro K line, but hey..... the focus is once again on cars. And as such, it will remain a massive challenge to change the thinking of residents and visitors alike.
The biggest problem with the UK's public transport system is just how insanely expensive it is. Taking the train even by standard class to any destination that isn't a big city like London often costs so much on a per-mile basis that a car works out cheaper, even once you add up the cost of fuel, tax, insurance, servicing and depreciation! As an example, my wife's office is about 90 miles away and she goes there once a week. The fuel cost for the return journey by car comes out to £24, the train journey...£80. And that's before you factor in that the train takes about twice as long (change via London) even with the M25's notoriously bad traffic, or that she'd have to contend with a 40 minute walk from the destination station to the business park where she works. She'd actually prefer to take the train and not deal with the M25 but it's just not economically viable. There winds up being about four type of people outside of London who actually use trains and puts up with the inflated cost: 1) London commuters (i.e. me, as it's still the fastest and most convenient option) 2) Intercity business travellers where the company pays for their ticket. 3) People who snagged a cheap advance ticket. 4) People who cannot drive for one reason or another. Price alone is the biggest reason why in this country anyone who can drive does so.
One thing to consider. A destination cannot consider itself to be well-served by transit unless it is served by two frequent transit lines running in perpendicular directions. One line traveling one direction isn't good enough. For example, a place that is only served by north/south transit, but not east/west transit will be a pain to get to for anyone that doesn't live right along that north/south line.
I live in a city close enough to Toronoto that we have a dedicated GO bus line, and our city busses all have NFC pre-built into the fireboxes... yet presto seems almost like a dirty word... for some reason we seem dedicated to an "exact change only" model for on route fare payment, with the only alternitive being buying a physical paper pass from the bus station, as long as you go during customer service hours... it blows my mind that we literally have all the physical infrastructure already in place to modernize fare collection, and seem to have 0 interest in it.
I live in Sydney, and yes while we have had an extension of transit systems. At the same time we have also had a massive expansion of a motorway and tunnelling system. We have 11 motorways, and they are all owned and run by the same company. That kind of power, dynamic and infrastructure set up, is not conducive to making transit more attractive. Unfortunately, some of the stuff has to do with urban design, but a lot of it has to do with vested interests.
You left out safety. Cities with large numbers of "homeless" people often end up with many of them using transit vehicles as places to keep warm (or cool), or just sit down. This demo tends to have drug or other issues which can lead to preying on the general public. This may not be an issue in Canada, but it sure as hell is in NYC, LA, San Francisco and a number of other places. Many people are afraid to use mass transit or are not interested in dealing with urine, feces and so forth.
Have to agree on not using public money to support a small group of people going to sports and entertainment events. Montreal has talked about putting in a stadium (where an old one existed), but it would be on existing REM anyway. With only one occupant on a wagon, why not let it stop nearest to their destination rather than the nearest stop. Bus drivers do it now.
If you go to any rail station in London just before 7pm, you will see a lot of people waiting by the barriers for the clock to tick over so they can get the off-peak fare. Another thing is, people will quite often prefer a direct service to one where they have to change vehicles, even if changing is quicker. For example, on Thameslink and the Elizabeth Line, there are fast services outside the central section on the same corridor, but a lot of people take the slower train along the full route rather than fast train to the edge of the central core and change. When the CrossCountry network was introduced about 20 years ago, it was a lot more popular than expected because people were switching to the slower direct links that it offered.
I'm pretty sure that there wouldn't be enough slots but it would be cool if Elizabeth Line had express trains running through its core. They could then be extended to serve places like Oxford, Newbury, Southend and Chelmsford. They could even have Chiyoda Line style Intercity services from Norwich to Bristol. I ackownledge the PSD maybe an issue. The Thameslink route already has semi express trains on its route but the Non-stop Cambridge to London service could be linked up to a new express service that runs non-stop between London Bridge & Brighton on say weekends.
*resists urge to make a "get people into the boxcars" joke** *mostly Seriously though, short of the many coercive methods mentioned, have you actually considered getting people to where they actually want to go, when they want to get there? You know, the whole last mile issue. Cleanliness and security is also important. Most people would prefer not to be robbed or stabbed or second hand stoned. At the very least don't prosecute people for defending themselves. There are two keys to urban mobility, intermodal options and elevation. Being able to transition seamlessly from one mode of transport to another is the only way to solve the last mile problem. Autotrains on regional rail, ample park and ride facilities at the edge of town, bike racks on commuter rail, bike parking down town, ect. Of course all this assumes that bikes can offer some comfort, safety and cover from the weather, and there is still some work to do there. Secondly, wide scale adoption of skywalks eliminates the artificial scarcity issues associated with the road surface. Shift storefronts, pedestrian entrances, sidewalks, bike paths, hot dog stands, ect. up a story. It's also a good spot for elevated tubes. The ground, including ground floors, are reserved for motor vehicles and parking. The result is both more parking and less motor way congestion, and more space to use the right tool for the job.
The example from Montreal illustrated at11:50certainly offers plenty of space, but also perhaps shows one off-putting factor, particularly prevalent, in seems, in North America: hard plastic seats. That's not going to tempt many out of their BMW
Honestly the seats here aren't so bad, especially considering that trips on the métro and now the REM are generally fairly short. I would definitely have clean hard seats rather than nasty plush ones. That said, I'm not very old.
Here's one very important, and never addressed point: profitability....to think transit must be profitable is folly. It's a public service....not a commercial activity where profit trumps everything.
Lovely video as usual. I love transit, obviously I'm subscribed, but I don't agree that you should attack cars and drivers to push transit. Make transit accessible, cheap, connected, and reliable like you said and you will get riders. You don't need to hurt drivers to achieve that. Just make transit a realistic alternative and people will willingly choose it.
I can very much agree with the sport point. My dad never used transit, he eighter drove or biked, unless a football match was played. Then he took the tram. Probably also some social reasons. Being among so many others cheering for the same team. But our stadium is just really weird. It has two transit stops. A S-Bahn and a Tram. Both are almost 1km away from the stadium. There's always a discussion to relocate the tram stop to be closer. The S-Bahn Station can't really get closer as it locatete at a complex interlocking. While there is limit parking maybe 200 to 300 meters away it very very limited. The bigger parking is 700 meters away. But by far the largest parking is over 2km of walking (no shuttle service). Radio station always tell you ppm game day to take transit as there is no parking almost immediately. Well it is at least a plesent walk through forested area.
Oh, yeah, I made the mistake of visiting this city when a game was happening at this day (but I had no interesting on vising the stadium). Getting to a train at the main railway station was awful after the game finished! Which also shows how much car traffic there would be if it weren't for trains.
reframe road congestion as a positive: "utilisation is very high"... and we should aim for 100% utilisation for most of the day before we consider expanding it :)
3:15 "Making driving more difficult"... now I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but I do find the phrasing there pretty poor. You're basically saying to people: the government is going to take away the thing you love. That just isn't going to sit will with a large part of public, in fact you might find their reaction is overly hostile. You need to convince people there's a better alternative, not penalise them and tell them they can take bus. In their mind this sounds like they're getting the scraps from the Lord's table, and they'll actively vote against it.
I appreciate GO’s weekend passes. Both the single and both days. I live in St. Catharine’s and if I wanted to visit my friend in Peterborough, technically I could do a wknd visit for $15 travel. It would be a long trip but noticeably cheaper than driving. And I have a fuel efficient car. I’d love to see a stat study of ridership in NA comparing a place like TO to LA. TO has many connections to event centres and the ridership is phenomenal. This also benefits the venue. If you look at where Ottawa’s NHL team plays, it was a disaster getting out of there by car and it’s obv why they’re considering moving downtown onto the subway line. These situations have proven themselves many times over. I openly welcome (back) the public transit age.
The tax system should be reformed to allow employers to give transit passes or transit allowances to employees without that being a taxable benefit. Employers can usually provide free parking without that being a taxable benefit so it would make sense! Businesses very close to skytrain stations should also have the option of charging for parking whereas now they have to provide a certain number of free spaces.
Give them reasons to go to different places by making areas diverse and attractive, and make it hard to find parking and insanely expensive to park. Also have frequent and reliable public transit
Reece, can you make a video on your favorite (or your least hated) gadgetbahns? While Translohr is dumb as hell, Vancouver Skytrain is basically a gadgetbahn and yet you and millions of other people love it. I actually really respect VAL systems for what they could do with lesser technology, and they seem to function well in the many French cities that have them!
Modern vehicles also make a huge difference. My city recently got electric busses. They are so clean, comfortable and quiet that it makes me wanna use public transit even more often! They also have USB charging ports, it's amazing.
Counterpoint to the "transit shouldn't be free" take: roads are largely "free" for road users (excluding gas taxes, which haven't covered the cost of road maintenance and have basically been a drop in the bucket for a LONG time) as roads are generally paid for by taxes everyone pays in the end (property taxes [which get passed onto renters too], income taxes, etc). So, if roads are to continue to be basically free for road users that way, transit should follow a funding model that is at least as favourable for the user... meaning the price should be negligible. Something like $0.05/trip, maybe $0.25/trip tops. The alternatives, if you want to be consistent while still requiring transit users to pay for transit use at-or-near-cost: - All roads become toll roads, OR - Total vehicle miles travelled is taxed, OR - Gas and diesel taxes get raised through the roof, and EV charging is also taxed in accordance with their higher average weight causing more damage to roads, OR - Extremely heavy taxes are levied on ALL car sales, imports, and manufacturing, OR - Vehicle registration fees get raised high enough to cover the cost of road maintenance. All of which would be pretty much guaranteed to make a lot of drivers fly into a blind, dumb fury because suddenly they're not being subsidized by the rest of society. You get the picture. EDIT: Oh, this is what you're arguing for. Yes, that's a great idea, but I'm afraid the strength of the driving lobby would likely prevent any such legislation from getting passed right now.
Our biggest struggle in Edmonton (and probably everywhere else) is the loss of trust in safety, or just the perception of it. We turned our transit system into another catchall for societal problems and are facing the consequences. It's going to be really hard to regain that trust.
It’s a pretty good system compared to most American ones, the problem is that years of neglect could eventually lead it to go the way of many American systems. Placing some more security on the trains (even during off-peak times), creating a barrier between operators and passengers, expanding social programs and bringing back turnstiles could go a long way in making transit more appealing again.
@@highway2heaven91 yes, I am excited for the future, and happy for what there is now. But it is such a downer reading negative views on transit here. All great suggestions on what direction we need to take to help. I just hope we can get back to that happy go lucky feeling on transit we had a decade ago to get more folks on trains and buses and all the benefits that come with it for everyone.
There are a lot of comments about safety and cleanliness. It seems that many people only care about these things when they are directly affected. Out of sight, out of mind.
Kids should ride free otherwise it becomes cheaper for families to drive than to take transit. While we're on that subject maybe we could replace school busses with regular transit that's available to everybody.
I think specifically making driving harder is not a good move. Toll roads is a classic example. It doesn’t make me want to take transit more than I currently do. It makes me want to go around them or move or travel somewhere else.
Love the footage from Guadalajara! Too often we leave out Mexico when we talk about “North American transit”. But they’ve made some impressive achievements
Another important thing is coordinating schedules, services, policies and fares across different agencies to present a unified system to the customer. One of the worst situations is when operators are competing for riders by making it harder to use a competitor (separate tickets for effectively the same service, incomplete maps and sometimes not even selling tickets that include a competitor). Because while yes, it makes using the competitor that bit harder, it splinters the system into a bunch of smaller and way less usable systems or lines. Kinda like a superstore vs. a market of stalls usually has competitive advantages
What circumstances is this seen in? I feel like almost every public transit system I've ever encountered or heard of is an integrated government-managed (and usually sponsored) agency with whatever modes they have as an integrated system. Though even these are too often not well coordinated with each other. I've heard of the competing networks scenario historically but don't get the sense that's common anymore.
@@quillmaurer6563 UK has a bunch of that where tickets for multiple companies (there are often multiple per town) are way more expensive than on one company for the same service (or as close to that as possible) and e. g. in many german trains, often times you only see the current contract‘s network pall over the train and the full map is hidden, or again UK, where from A to G, stopping pattern A B D FG is operated by one company and pattern A C D E G by another, where an anytime for one company is 1/3 of an anytime valid on both companies, and other shenanigans like that…
That’s easy. Base all new communities back on the old grid system. And build elevated transit lines (connected with low floor tram lines for local services) that are fast and frequent… Done
I’ve followed your advice from your video the other day of doing what we preach and tried taking a complex transit route to an office I normally drive to and I was pleasantly surprised that google was wrong by 20 minutes and ended up the office in 75 minutes which is relative to the normal driving time it takes to go there in rush hours. On top of feeling that I followed my principles, I wasn’t frustrated when I ended up at the office!
"How to Get People on Transit" Pretty easy...just make driving expensive with expensive parkings and make finding a spot as difficult as possible thats how people get on public transit in all places in the world
I agree that transit works best in areas where driving is difficult. The trick is doing this gradually or subtly enough that you don't anger people used to driving while ALSO keeping the destination attractive while transit is started up. What do I mean? Washington DC is a good example. You can drive a lot of places, like to a baseball game. It's right off major roads off the highway. But every local knows the roads are awful from 3-7 PM. If you can take the metro, even if it means driving to a farflung metro stop to board, you'll save time or at least the headache of paying for parking. Same goes for other events- this year's Cherry Blossom festival was packed with pedestrians but also with drivers. Literally I was outpacing gridlocked cars on foot. All those drivers will either (1) not come back next year or (2) look into taking the metro. But there are also events and locations without transit where people decide the traffic means it's not worth going. This is why "prebuilding" transit is so important, I think. You want the means of getting there available as demand increases so people get it in mind early on, that's how you get there. If you make a place harder to get to (road diets) while the transit line is still 2-5 years out, then the destination risks drying up and folding.
I think only hardcore transit enthusiasts (like this guy) think trimming roads to force people to use transit is a good idea. Maybe a little bit, but most of the effort should go into making the public transit better, not driving worse. I mean, isn't that the end goal - to make life overall better, not worse? Driving in urban areas sucks enough as it is, we should do everything we can to say "Here's a better option," and have it actually be a better option. Something my city (Denver) has utterly failed at, while the transit system looks great "on paper," actually using it I've found circumstances where it's better than, or even just not several times worse, than driving, in terms of cost, convenience, and journey time, are quite rare. Getting somewhere by car takes 20 minutes and by train an hour. We shouldn't make driving take an hour, we should make the train take, even say 30 minutes, then more people might be tempted to use it.
That scene at6:20(wherever it is, probably somewhere in Eastern Europe) illustrates why that strategy is always a stupid idea. There are several trolleybuses in the congested lanes on the left, but they're all stuck in traffic so they're going to provide no incentive at all to switch from cars, are they.
Thank you Reece. The most important point to emerge from the comments on this video is your point about Canadian children usually getting free public transit. Canadian children will therefore bewell trained in using public transport ON THEIR OWN. When they grow up they willy know all the ins and outs of using public transport. They will be like all SWISS children. I visit Switzerland about once a year, and it is quite the norm to see children as young as five travelling on their own. (The fares are cheap - not free.) In effect using public transport is part of a Swiss child's education. And when they grow up they will continue to use public transport. A major reason why Swiss public transport is so good and so well used.
There is about to be a large amount of road works near my house on the main arterial road in my city, hopefully this will push people to public transport.
Sadly, it doesn't matter how good a public transportation system is. Where I'm from it's half decent (usable for those with no choice) but girls I work with still drive to work even though it's at the city centre and they live ten minutes away. They don't feel safe outside of a car.
As a woman, safety is the biggest deterrent for whether or not I’ll take transit, after length of overall trip. When I lived in Long Beach and would take the train to Downtown LA, random men would sometimes approach me and try talking to or following me so I have to take extra precautions before getting on the train by myself. When I was in DC recently for a work trip, I didn’t take any transit at night because it was my first time in a new city, and since transit is less crowded at night, I always have to be aware of worst case scenarios. If American transit adopted more women-only cars like Japan, I know waaaaaay more women would travel via transit.
I'm not sure if a woman only car would be technically legal in the US, especially in any state (like California) that has passed an ERA style law. Not discriminating by gender would include men.
As always, many very valid points and food for thought. Thanks again Reese. .... but ..... surely any target short of the PERMANENT removal of traffic related smog is a cop-out? Polluters have too long been allowed to act as if the huge secondary costs associated with their freedom to make a buck don't exist. Public health is right up there. I'm slightly uneasy that the lesson of the demise of the 'Red Cars' of LA seems to have been forgotten among today's arguments. There's little evidence of any Damascene conversion since that successfully executed act of brazen sabotage!
Funny you mention it, the Twin Cities actually does have a fare structure which charges slightly more ($2.50) for a fare during peak hours than the base fare for the rest of the day ($2). It's also the same for certain express bus corridors, $3.25 during peaks and $2.50 off peak. It does somewhat work in moving people to take transit outside of rush hours, I've personally waited on it to save money before!
@@alexhaowenwong6122 oh trust me as a twin cities resident, our fare structure is way too complicated. I even find the rush hour pricing thing to be a bad idea, but in the context of this video from RMTransit it was worth pointing out that we exist, and we tried such a model. The light rail has very good design outside of the fare structure
@@faustinpippin9208 "expensive" lol your car also has hundreds to thousands of dollars in latent expenses like maintenance, insurance etc. I don't have to own a car so I'm not wasting hundreds of dollars a month. Oh and btw, most Americans own 20mpg shitboxes
I'm seconding the opinion that the actual transit experience needs to be made more comfortable to get people to use it. This means that the behavior of people who use transit need to be better enforced in the United States like they are in other countries. People are not going to take transit if they feel it is dirty, unsafe, or just unpleasant to use.
I would say to look at whatever NYC is doing and to then do the exact opposite. You’ll get more services from more lines that are built more affordably, making each project not look like a massive waste of public money and instead is an affordable alternative to alleviating congestion. Along with being clean, safe, and reliable as a method for people to get around the region. Construction should take a reasonable amount of time and the project should be built with the foresight of assuming that development will drive growth around the infrastructure and more people will want to use the system. Bus rapid transit is just an expensive bus line, at that point just make it a tram or light rail line because there are enough people to justify its costs.
really isnt that much of a chicken and egg issue with connectivity when you think about it i mean when people make a new greenfield development what do they build first, roads or buildings? why should transit be different
