Tell me about it! Here in Dallas, our city has been attempting (and failing) to develop the Trinity River Corridor for the last 30 years. The whole affair is such a crazy, slow train wreck that I'll very much like to see someone cover it in greater detail.
Not forgotten. Deliberately omitted for the sake of car-dominated status quo. The transit plebs must be made to feel shame and fear for their physical safety, as punishment for defying their car-overlords.
I see the same thinking applied to new passenger rail build. People _don't know_ why they're against it, so they parrot reasons picked up from politicians. Maybe the change is just too fundamental to accept?
@@RatPfink66 I wish that didn't sound like the most likely explanation. Almost 80 years of the car being elevated and all forms of public transit being designated "for the poors" and a sign of failure.
@RatPfink66 @@literallyjudas2157 Yeah, this is most likely the reason. They don't want to be forced to ride public transit with "those (poor/not white) people". I've seen public transportation projects face protest in my city for this exact reason under the guise of "crime" and "neighborhood character". Just racism and classism once again
The dumbest part about this is how they built a train station next to a place where almost no one lives, in a town where you have nothing to do once you get there. What a waste.
That is how bad urban and rural planning is in the US. Virtually everything revolves around single family homes and car infrastructure. In other countries, you will ALWAYS have TODs where the stations are. Which is why the housing crisis in Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, and Austria isn't as bad as it is in the US.
@@ianhomerpura8937 There have been a lot of issues around Singaporeans getting access to housing as of late and they are looking to change the rules regarding it to deal with it. allowing more people to get housing Since it is a tiny island nation unlike the USA there simply isn't other options if you aren't rich and don't qualify.
@@guppy719 That's a problem of affordable housing availability, not the accessibility. When it comes to accessibility, Singapore is second to none. Homes *are* getting more expensive there, however.
What makes my blood boil is how people like John and Tony fight tooth-and-nail to "preserve the character" of miles of soulless drive-everywhere suburbia...
Yeah, but you are asking them act against their own best interest in maintaining the value of their most valueable asset. Are you advocating for making zoning unconstitutional? How about removing occupational licensing? Maybe getting rid of the Fed and going on to a gold standard? Adopting Japanese style zoning where any lower level use can be intermixed into to more restricted developments?
This video has no business being this well done. You've done an incredible job and should be proud of it. Extraordinarily excited for anything you put out in the future.
Honestly, I have a minor issue with rhetorical persuasion (manipulation) by showing the Baltimore Parkway at off peak time and labeling it as congested in "quotation marks" And the part where a ~20yr old with 20yrs of hindsight materials (for which other people put in all the hard work to reach that point) a bit smugly proclaiming how he'd have ALSO written that particular bit of analysis (which again, is far down the timeline) is a bit much. But it is a good video.
@@alexwithclipboard It's not about being a child. It is about the same as moving to place and reading 20yrs of documents and saying "Well of course I see the answer. Why can't they?" It's not your age. It's lack of perspective that makes it smug.
@@C.Church Okay, so all I was saying was that TRANSITioning to TOD 2007 was pretty much exactly what I would have written. I don't think it's a masterpiece. It just ideologically matches me exactly. Is that so smug to point out?
Repeated over and over and over all across the country. Ironically, the most left wing and the most right wing areas are the biggest culprits in doing this. You can see this same thing happening everywhere from ultra-lefty Berkeley, CA to right wing rural Idaho. We just need to start building normal towns and cities again. What we are doing right now is not sustainable. Car dependency is simply too expensive for us to continue subsidizing. The sooner we run the numbers and realize this on a local level the better.
I saw this odd station while (sigh) driving to see some relatives nearby and thought "huh, that looks really odd in terms of placement, you've got zero chance of walking there", and sure enough ran into this video a few days later - it's neat knowing the history now. Thank you for putting time and care into curious local stuff like this!
I'm about halfway through the video. It is so incredibly depressing to hear how this good plan was destroyed. I wish we could have nice things here in the States. By all rights, we should.
@@kevinp.h157 Just adding that this is southeast Pennsylvania, where it took decades both to finish the Blue Route and to complete I-95 around Philadelphia's airport. Corruption and incompetence (and LOTS of NIMBY-ism) surround every infrastructure project of every kind...
It's all about keeping people out. People who oppose these plans sincerely believe that anybody who can't afford a house or a car are losers, and they want barriers to keep those people away from them at all times, and those same people would rather spend hours driving in a dangerous car to work than have a shorter commute by train solely because they don't want to sit next to anybody else.
NIMBY’s honestly amaze me with their stupidity. “NOOO how DARE you try to build a SIDEWALK here? The AUDACITY! It’ll RUIN the smalltown vibe! Now lets get back to the construction of that 9 story tall parking garage.”
The weirdest thing about the NIMBY phenomenon is that these folks don't *necessarily* have any financial, legal or political power, let alone voting majorities. Much of the time they're literally just loud, but for some reason we're too polite to ignore them.
@@yunleung2631 No you can't since this is a local government problem. Notice that these guys are or were members of local government. In a relatively small town/county everyone knows eachother and no one wants step on peoples toes, especially if they are living near them. For legislatures or regular citizens the benefits of this development are great but for some guy who is a county executive the amount of people you can piss off and keep your seat is very low, even if the rewards (lots of tax money and your county you supposedly care about being better) are great. In this situation the state or federal government should have some way to force the project and disregard the NIMBYs, but this is America.
Utterly false to assume that somehow the resulting development is anything other than what the residents wanted. The developer had a fair hearing in the court of public opinion for the town center concept but wasn't able to convince people it was a good idea. I've driven before on Route 1 south of Granite Run, and I know exactly why the people there didn't want it. There's already too much traffic. The regional rails in Philadelphia are out of date and should be phased out instead of expanded. Most people don't need a train to Center City. If you want denser development along Route 1, the road needs a metro line that can link together all of the amenities along Route 1 from Philadelphia to to Wawa. That would make the Route 1 corridor a place where a person could actually contemplate living car free and induce demand for denser development. Expanding the regional rail line to Wawa is a backwards looking mistake.
If I lived in those houses and needed to use that train regularly, I know for sure I wouldn't walk around. So I can imagine a lot of people around there wont either. In fact it would probably be cheaper and less impeding, to get together with some neighbours, pour a couple hundred into a project pot and figure out some way to blow these bushes out of the way. Build primitive stairs into the ground and you're solid. Cost you less than driving a stupid loop and paying for parking. (Which again seems preposterous I doubt anyone in this neighborhood would do so.
Visitors from afar. Empty parking lots aren't all bad. They're prime farmers market and weekly vendors sites with booths and games... a place for teens to hang with friends, families and holiday stuff. We have a market night in my small town where roads are blocked for pedestrians, booths and free roaming. A neighboring empty lot of a long closed small mall is used for parking for the vendors and people coming from afar to spend here.
People fear change. But whether they like it or not, change is inevitable as the planet continues to move forward and society evolves. Things absolutely cannot stay the same. The type of change we invoke is up to each and every one of us. Trains are the future, and so is transit-oriented development. Where frustrated drivers are stuck in traffic, trains move past with ease. Sure trains get cancelled, but it's not like the highways are perfect either with all its road work. People in Japan and France opposed high-speed rail, and now both systems are PRAISED. Rail leads to real-estate boom, towns popped up in the western US because of rail. Middletown thought they dodged a bullet, but it's only the beginning.
"Personally I think town centers are awesome, but what they proposed was a shopping destination that people happen to live in...." Dude, you just described the definition if a town centre
As a European, this was really sad to watch, but also super interesting to see there is a movement against this kind of planning in USA. Especially younger people seem to be in favour of walkability and public transit. I suppose time will tell if they will forget about it once they become older and just drive everywhere, or will they slowly manage to make America's cities more liveable?
For you to understand this better, you would have to take a journey to places such as Philadelphia and Harrisburg, walk around there, then take a journey out to places such as York and Lancaster. Open your eyes, take a good look around you to see what’s going on, and then think very hard about why these anti-urbanist decisions have been made.
As a Philadelphian, I'm looking at buying a house up the mountains in a town with as small a population as possible. Walkable cities and more neighbors are the opposite of what I want.
If you grew up in a suburbia and don't know any better, you very quickly get used to the suburbanite ways, causing it to burrow its insidious tendrils into your mindset.
@@alexwithclipboard Even without an HoA, zoning, noise ordinances, environmental regulations, appearance ordinances all apply. (Not that all of those are bad - you probably shouldn't be allowed to open a nuclear waste dump in your back yard for example.)
Interesting how private parties can have such a big influence on central planning. Understand private property is holy ground in the states but there must be some legal tools to get these things done no? This seems like anarchy to me, how do you get things done? A vision often only works when implemented in totality, can always make adjustments after.
The thing is that this actually seriously undermines the idea of private property. If private property was fully respected, a developer could just build whatever they wanted on their own property. These laws severely restrain what you're allowed to do with your own property.
@@krombopulos_michael Sure, i do understand zoning and building codes. Was perplexed by the homeowners preventing a sewer to prevent development in a certain spot. Seems very easy to frustrate any growth and development with that. Would explain 17 years of planning i gues.
What an incredible in depth case study. I'm a transit planner but I believe videos like these can have a much greater impact than anything I could do professionally. You have people's attention with this, so I think a great next step is to turn it into a call to action. This video sort of ends in a somewhat depressing conclusion and I think viewers would benefit from a case study where things went right. Can America still build sustainable, human focused development and how can regular folks help make that happen in their communities?
The lack of a call to action might be due to the documentarians' perceived remit. But I agree the conclusion is a depressing one. Put short, people don't know the first thing about urban planning, and when they interact with it, they can rarely do so in a way that really protects the community's interests. The question of how regular folks can help make ANYTHING happen in the public interest is really the question of the age. Right now there is not a lot of public discussion of that question. It's better for ALL established interests that way - except, of course, the public, who are supposed to forget they have an interest beyond the self.
@@RatPfink66 Regular folks can come together and make change as shown in the video. It's just that they got together to oppose the development and succeeded. Perhaps we need to take their strategy and do the same thing except we need to support projects like this. I do think that it's hard to galvanize support for something however, so a better strategy could be to oppose the end result we see in this video. We want places to walk, less death on roads, more housing for families and a better environment for our children. If we want these things we have to fight for them like these people fight these developments.
@@bbaction101 it's a similar situation to US political parties. they don't think alike, but at least one studies the other's strategies and learns from them. ONLY one.
This is an absolutely sensational video! I just can’t understand though why we allow outspoken people (usually a small minority) who live in a community before being developed to have so much power that they get to decide on what gets developed, even though they don’t own the land but just love adjacent to it
people that don't understand that once this plan succeeds their "traffic" would disappear along with the smog and pollution from cars driving everywhere.
@@0xsergy Yes but that means they have to leave their cars at home most of the time unless they are leaving town, and that's just not acceptable for a typical American.
@@0xsergy It all comes down to the individualistic mentality of a typical American that has been nurtured since the founding of the country. Me first, damn everyone else.
Erm....Here in the UK the idea of building a "town" without a town centre to serve as a hub for retail, administration and public transport would be seen as a non-starter. It would never be approved in the first instance as it would be unsustainable in the long term. When we build a town we build it to be permanent and to form it's own identity and culture (well Stevenage has an identity but the only cultures it's ever produce is the STDs in the local women's knickers). What the developers wanted to build was a standard nuclear town, a town built around a centre within walking distance from the housing around surrounding it, every UK town for centuries has been built this way, I live in one of the new builds, it's about 120 years old and is the blueprint for the New Towns that copied it, cheaply, like Stevenage but the mix of a nuclear town with plenty of interior green spaces and additional local amenities within surrounding housing and industrial/commercial areas further lowering the need for car use is pretty much the standardised design here.
But you CAN walk to any Pyongyang Metro station. The whole of Pyongyang is walkable and bicycle-friendly. Not to mention there are trams and trolleybuses too! The Pyongyang Metro began operating in 1973, a year before Seoul opened their first metro line. People may not like states dominated by one party, but at least we get things done without arguments. Look at how China grew their HSR system, now covering every province
I've lived in this area my whole life and would buy in a community like the original plan in a heartbeat. You've made an excellent video. This is such scandalously bad land use that l hope more people watch it and the story gets picked up by other media. What a wasted opportunity to build much needed housing.
the thing was the train was coming because the people from this town drove to the nearest train station causing traffic problems there i notice this was a guy who did not live in the town he never ask what the people of this town wanted
The irony is that the so called corporate greed of developers that they accuse of equally applies to that sprawl development as much as the initial mixed use walkable town center plan that never came to be. Tho this isn't the idea reason to stop development, there just needs to be more funding for public housing that isn't out of reach for people with a median income under 40k. In Providence, our tallest high rise, an art deco building known coloqually as the the super man building has "affordable housing units" that is built for people with a median income of 40k when the city's median income is 24k.
also, the only reason mixed use walkable areas are expensive to live in is because of how low the supply is. They are much cheaper to build and maintain than sprawling suburbs, so if we just built enough to meet the demand, they would be so much cheaper. We can literally choose to have our cake and eat it too, and are choosing neither.
@@artandarchitecture6399 Singapore and Vienna have made public housing work, it just needs to be properly funded. government services only fail if they're not properly funded
👋 Hello from Philly! Just look at the uproar from the proposed new Sixers stadium in center city. Everyone having a heart attack about “how am I suppose to drive to the game!?” Septa, people. It’s literally ontop of a major Septa station. You literally can get on a train in a suburb and get off right at the stadium. No driving. It’s not hard. I promise.
This is not the only case, the developers don’t really walk, and don’t have the word sidewalk in their dictionary so it is very difficult for them to include that in their planning. When you approach them and ask them about the sidewalk, they will freeze and then start violently rotating until they explode!
Another fantastic documentary looking into TOD history and development. Videos like this are absolutely essential to understanding what qualifies as transit oriented developments, and what can be considered misinformation by politicians and planners. Keep up the great work, and continue to inspire new generations of YIMBYs!
There's no sidewalks or paths leading into the airport in Grand Rapids Michigan. And the bus that goes there doesn't run on saturdays. So I literally trudged through the unkept no-man's land along the runway fencing because I don't feel I should be forced to pay an extravagant cab/Lyft fare just because the people who designed the airport were idiots. I'm sure security and the control tower people were watching me like bloodthirsty ravens the whole time but it was pretty satisfying to exercise my perfectly legal freedom....literally "exercising" it.
It's funny how they think transit development will cause more traffic, as if SEPTA trains are the ones that run on highways. MAYBE if they don't want traffic in their community they should, oh I don't know...NOT have so much car-oriented infrastructure? If they took a moment to put their thinking caps on instead of yelling to a wall that if there were more people that ride trains, it would lead to LESS cars sitting in traffic (and housing near stations will allow people to walk). A developed country is where the rich use public transportation, as Gustavo Petro once said, and this has been the case in New York City and in Jersey City where people take the subway, and NJ Transit and PATH respectively to get to work (I used to live in Jersey City and my mom doesn't drive nor owns a car which wasn't a problem with Jersey City's convenient transit options). People have to stop exclaiming that transit is for the poor when in reality, it's meant to be for EVERYONE. Hence, PUBLIC! They're just mad that they're losing their privilege, glued to their cars to make them feel good.
Excellent video. So, what do you think needs to be done to rehabilitate Wawa? If you were given money and control of the area, what changes would you make around the station?
Good Question: 1. Build that friggin staircase. 2. Use the gaps in the development to put a convenience store. I don't care which brand, they just need to agree not to have more than 4 parking spaces. Then maybe a coffee shop/restaurant or clothing store, if that's economically feasible. 3. I would subdivide the unsold houses into apartments. They would never allow this, as Franklin Station is a package product, not to be tampered with. But if they wanted to turn it into a real town, that's what I'd tell them to do.
As a Dutch person, cycling infrastructure is all that matters. Most train stations over here don't have car parking anymore, none, or for just a few cars, and that is because most people go to the train station (or anywhere else) by bicycle. Bicycle parking is everywhere. In the Netherlands, cycling is the default for transportation for any trip shorter than about 5 km. And almost everyone lives within a radius of 5 km from a train station, or a bus station. So if I was in control I would make it harder to drive (less asphalt, smaller roads, more speed bumps, shops near housing), more public transport, and bike paths. Get people out of their cars, onto their bikes, and into public transport.
I grew up in southern Chester County. I vaguely remember hearing about this as a kid; my parents debating the necessity despite not living in its immediate area. Now I think it's a shame that the original plan fell through. Chester County has a lot of places that could benefit from a project like this. There are even walk-able towns with existing railways that could be revitalized, like Oxford or Kennett square. So much that could happen, but never will.
Chesco Planning Commission has some backward leadership, but that doesn't mean municipalities have to listen. In a small town, a small vocal group can achieve almost any political change. Just look at Save Middletown.
Kennett Collaborative recently had Chuck Mahron from Strong Towns out to speak. Some folks out here are trying to make sure these communities are developed sustainably.
@@mjseltzer22 i live in Kennett square. it's a great thing that people are starting to realize towns here are attractive and popular mostly for the reason that they are walkable.
Great question. One of the things that Strong Towns talks about is how North American neighborhoods are built to a finished state, and I think that is partially to blame for people's reaction to new development or adversity to more people moving to their town. It's funny how there can be so little sense of community or character in American places and at the same time residents think that new people would negatively impact their sense of community or character. People are just too resistant to change even when it would benefit them.
The best thing you can do to fight NIMBYs is run for local zoning board. It’s so important to a community and so overlooked. In PA municipalities are so small the elections are super easy. They need good people!
Local governments routinely fail on so many issues, but the worst, with the longest-lasting consequences, are zoning issues. Usually, local politicians are in bed with developers. When developers actually come up with innovative plans, the only residents who become involved are those totally lacking in imagination or common sense who throw up roadblocks to anything but boring, bleak, hideous, car-based suburbia. America is so far beyond being fixable it’s scary.
NIMBYs will forever make american TOD fall short of the mark unless there's some significant change that they all acknowledge... which won't happen. amazing production and looking forward to the rest of the videos
Lynwood city council recently allowed high and mid rise mixed use development around their Lynwood city center link light rail station in the Seattle area (opens 2025) I hope that this leads to a nice station area. We will have to see what becomes of it
Literally cried at the end. I just wanna walk down my block to enjoy my city, take transit to go to another part of the city, and take high speed rail to visit other cities, rinse and repeat is that too much to ask for 😭
the thing is to have public transportation system that is as effective as private cars need several hundred buses diesel is worse then a gas car for smog and smell
Alex I'm so happy I stumbled upon your Amtrak video earlier this year when it had double digit views, your content is getting really relevant, thought provoking, and important! Keep it up!
We have a municipality that would soon be a city, Capas, Tarlac Province. There will be a train station on that place once the municipality will be much urbanised. Also, that will be one of the two options of the northernmost stations of still-under construction elevated North-South Commuter Railway of the Philippine National Railways.
Man I wish when I get back to Philippines they rebuild or reinstate the Bicol Express. It’s tough driving or taking a bus with luggage taking like 10-12 hours while the plane can barely take any luggage. Train travel is coming back agaun
@@TheRandCrews it's being negotiated now with China. The blueprints are ready, as well as the additional right of way (since the PNR already owns at least half). All it needs is the funding and contractors, and the project can start.
I live 3 miles from Middletown! Nice to hear urbanists talking about PA! Edit: now that I’ve seen the whole video, wow, fantastic job. This shines a light on why we never seem to make any progress in the US. My only hope is that the new generation, lead by people like us, can make a difference in our communities.
My conclusion: They should have hired mediators from Europe to settle the dispute. I forgot which city, in Holland or Denmark, the most bike friendly city has the fastest car commute times because people in the town are mostly biking or walking. Even in snow. It's so brilliantly done, yes even biking in the winter. I think I saw it on Not Just Bikes. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, cul de sacs are evil. I drive Uber sometimes and more than once I've been caught in a sil de sac maze trying to leave. New developments aren't on maps. When I'm escaping a huge cul de sac development I can't help being disgusted. "At least put in a centrally located mini mart so kids and people can walk or bike here. They wouldn't need all these Ubers just to get milk or beer. And it would he inside the development so the crime will be minimal. No huge lights needed and signs. Can be quaint." My dad was in the Air Force. We lived in housing on the far north side of a base in Japan. In our housing area we had a little mart with vending machines to save us the stress of being far away from milk... or gum. But no.
@@makelgrax lol yeah I guess. 😂 But the Air Force is notoriously VERY family friendly. The least is the Marines. Abysmally least, not even close to AF.
ps. I also recommend "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)" at that channel if you're not familiar with it. Even other countries struggle with poorly implemented infrastructure. It isn't an American thing (ala "Let's hate Americans! Yeah! Addicted to cars! Rabble rabble rabble!")
This is such a great video. These projects are insanely complicated and it is hard to pay attention to them over the decades and decades that they take to plan and complete. Thanks for doing the work and breaking down all of the history for us viewers. One thing I'll say is that I don't think anyone "forgot" how to do anything. A lot of the NIMBYism comes from racism and classism which is the underlying reason why most of these types of developments are opposed. If we don't discuss that when talking about why these plans failed then I think we're doing ourselves a disservice.
Remember kids: any time you hear NIMBYs complain about the possibility of "transients" as a side effect of expanding public transit, that's a racist and/or classist dogwhistle.
The world would probably be a better place if they let young intelligent people, like the producers of this video, do the planning, inside of petty rich clueless doctors and their rich ( middle class) cohorts. Even though I despise developers ( in most cases), in THIS case at Wawa, I would actually side with the developers in their ORIGINAL plan, and certainly NOT with the clueless overpaid, petty rich local residents.
i'm from very far away from wawa & i've never even been to delaware but this was an incredible incredible, amazing well-made video. you should be extremely proud of your skills, the video and i am so happy that people passionate about transit like this are involved in the next generation of transit-orientated development
@@abimaellopezmaylord27lopez7 if we build with higher density, there will be more space left for ACTUAL green space instead of a half acre of poorly maintained lawn. whether that is wilderness or agriculture...
This is infuriating, but honestly, it is simultaneously not surprising at all. As a former Southeastern PA resident, Greater Philadelphia Area NIMBYs imo are some of the most aggressive, obnoxious, and unfortunately successful kinds of NIMBYs on par with NIMBYs in San Francisco. It's almost comical how anti-transit, anti-mixed use, and anti-pretty much anything NOT car related so many Greater Philly townships are and how they pound their chests and scream at the top of their lungs taking pride in that fact. These Middletown Township NIMBYs also REALLLYYY amped up the myth of the *BIG BAD EVIL DEVELOPER* that is so pervasive in many anti new urbanist echo chambers. Additionally, the amount of places in Philly exemplifying anti-transit oriented development, something I like to call Transit Disoriented Development is just mind numbing. See pretty much every SEPTA Regional Rail station and even many areas in the city that have SEPTA Subway stations.
"on par with NIMBYs in San Francisco" Marin County NIMBYs blocked BART from covering the north bay. As a local, I'd say they're scarier than the San Francisco NIMBYs.
This video is so well made it should belong to a multi-million subscriber channel, but no, this channel only has a few thousand subscribers. Very, very good job.
Do you have someone advising you whos working in film making or in journalism? These are way to good for you only being in the YT game for less than a year! Extremely impressive script, the pacing is pretty much perfect. Also, have you considered making a patreon? i would definitely support you.
It's so crazy that this is how city planning works. Someone gets established in an area which was opened up to them by the government building a town or because they inherited the property - or they are old enough that they got in early. Then they gatekeep that area as hard as they possibly can to not only limit the amount of new families that can receive the same opportunity but also control whether they can have kids, or how much savings they have to spend on a home. There's no democracy, no vote for the people who live in the surrounding area and no consideration for new people who might want to live in the area because they have family there or for whatever reason. The majority have no say.
i have similar master planned development in the my city, but for some reason they are still debating whether to add those bike lanes or not :/ also, it more parking than anything else :0
Wow! I'm from Lower Bucks County Pennsylvania, lived there 40+ years. Corwells Heights Station along the R7 line used to be a smaller station with apartments across the street and the bones of main street in a neighborhood called Andalusia wasn'ttoo far. A decade + ago they turned it into a MASSIVE Park and Ride. Just walking from the entrance where the old station was to all the way to where the new one is, is brutal.
Thank you for sharing. I didn't realize it had been moved. A similar thing happened in Hammonton, NJ. They moved the station out of the downtown to fit more parking.
True. In the Asia-Pacific they do this ALL the time, especially China, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia with their giant transit oriented developments, all built around suburban railway stations.
And in Dallas. I've had to risk my life to reach a single bus stop, which is located in an area without a sidewalk with a major road on one side and a wall on another. The land bridge becomes so narrow, that it became hard to even lay a foot on it without slipping into the road filled with cars.
My uncle was a part of making sure the original plan didn't come to fruition. He works for a company that lobbies on behalf of North America vehicle manufacturers. They can't have projects that prove that personal vehicles aren't needed if we redesign towns and mass transportation.
Wellp: NE Ohio born and raised here. You mentioned Crocker Park. And I went to school in Philly. Got real familiar with SEPTA. You’ve gained a new subscriber!
Literally look at any number of cities on any continent around the world and none will be as unfriendly to pedestrians as American cities. Look at Buenos Aires, Bogota, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Madrid, Moscow, Johannesburg, Kigali, Nairobi, Jakarta, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo... Among various levels of wealth, infrastructure and very different cultures, all of these places are better for pedestrians than most American cities.
Woah, you were born a year before I finished school, and here you are (hopefully) changing urban development! I wish I had had that much initiative at your age, great work! Greetings from Paris!
Fantastic video. You deserve lots of support. After losing two cars to hit and runs I've come to realize how great transit and dense, human oriented neighborhoods can be, even here in LA (Koreatown/ Hollywood specifically). Subscribed.
This is the first of your videos that I have seen. Thumbs up on the production values. I found this video more insightful regarding the local situation than the Philadelphia area videos created by Reece Martin. Pennsylvania officials can't understand why the Commonwealth has problems attracting creative-class individuals: outcomes like this (and the processes that lead to them) are a significant reason. Not claiming that New Jersey is problem-free (see the glacial progress of the Glassboro-Camden Line), but there are enough state level incentives / support to make Transit Oriented Development occur in an attractive fashion. If Doug Mastriano wins the PA Gubernatorial election, this is likely the last transit project of this kind that will happen for a very long time.
With demanding a development take place where few people can live and almost no encouragement for families, this isn't a town fighting to stay alive, it's a place where residents want to go and die. It's where their grandkids and great grandkids will visit once their dead to take away what stuff they want and leave the rest abandoned. So maybe there will be an opportunity to re-develop it a century from now. Such a waste.
I love this channel so much. Thank you for doing this great journalistic work! Investigative Developmental journalism is sorely needed here in Philly and the surrounding counties.
They just need to bring the line all the way to West Chester again, no need for TOD their, it's already rather dense near the old station, though they could extend it a bit further as the town gets denser a few blocks up.
VERY WELL DONE. I love videos like this but cant ever sit through one in its entirety because they lose me but this one i was able to watch all the way through.
US isn't a nation designed for the benefit of the people. Move to Europe and you'll never want to go back. I'm from a rural town in eastern Europe of a whopping 5000 inhabitants in the main establishment, with 6 adjacent villages of about 2k each. 5000. Five thousand people. And it has a train station where INTERNATIONAL trains stop. Not even express or intercity. International. It's offensive for me when i hear the people in the richest nation on Earth doesn't have access to the amenities i had, in Bumfuck Nowhere. Where i grew up, if i got lost, my parents could walk all the streets in that town during a single afternoon with time to spare. I can't imagine needing to go kilometers away to buy potatoes. I could walk 500m past tens of small shops and interest points. The only people who owned cars were the ones who flipped them for profit because regular people didn't need them.
Update: I was at the station two days ago and I saw a newly blacktop walking bath that leads towarsd the housing development. It goes right from entrance to the station, up the hill.
Why end the video like that? We didn't "forget" how to build walkable neighborhoods--rather, we let outdated, suffocating zoning codes proliferate that make such building projects legally impossible without subjecting each individual development project to the meddling of ornery old jerks, conspiracy theorists, and racists. We let loathsome people obtain a stranglehold over the levers of powers necessary to get walkable neighborhoods built. That's not forgetting; it's something much worse.
@@alexwithclipboard It's been like this in America for longer than I've been alive, and I was born in '85. You don't need to be nice to the people actively making the world a worse place to live.
Same thing happened in the suburb I used to be in. Look up a video called “Greenwood Village voters reject expansion near Orchard light rail station” and “Orchard Station Subarea proposal goes to Greenwood Village voters”
Yeah, Denver has miraculously built a light rail system against all odds. And it would have incredible ridership, if only areas around the station were up zoned. I think the answer is for the state government to step in and require the elimination of parking minimums, height caps and single-family zoning near stations. It could be pitched as a shrinking government thing and a using tax money better thing to get the Republicans on board. For Democrats, it could be pitched as an environmental and equity win as well.
A train station with car access only? Sounds very very very stupid ! I say this as a European, 52 years old, who never had a drivers license ! My town has about 80k inhabitants , 3 LRT lines and a very busy 8-platform train station, including a international HST stop , a tram-train and a one square mile of pedestrian precinct in the center. WHEN you are in your car ,why should you change at the station? Zoning in Europe is ALWAYS mixed use, retail and housing- housing and office-office and industrial- industrial and housing and so on…
Steadfast truths about the USA: things will always disappoint, things will always underwhelm and things will always get worse. I give up and get my satisfaction by going through a massive amount of money to travel to a civilized place like Europe every year or so, such action is a matter of my mental health at this point. This country has no future.
You're welcome here, just make sure you do keep bringing those massive amounts of money - because, you know, the right wingers who are actively working to ruin that town exist here as well, and just like them, they don't like poor people, and they tend to be in the political majority. I think this is why what's described in this video infuriates me so much, because it's such a picture book example of a problem that is *everywhere* , and it doesn't just affect infrastructure, but social, economic and environmental policy. It brings rot and ruin to everything.
in the words of philadelphia-area band The Wonder Years, "I've been holding on like poison ivy out of cold suburban concrete from this careless urban sprawl."