Comment by onlyrealcuzzo

I'm about as big of a fan of mass transit as you can get, but this is completely overblown.

That's $1Bn for the hundred largest cities in the world.

Assuming even 40% of that went to the US, that's $1Bn for the top 40 cities. That leaves out 22 entire states [0], and like 75% of the population...

Look to NYC, LA, and SF for what $1Bn gets you... It's about 1 mile of subway [1]. And it takes close to 15 years to build.

We wouldn't all be riding around on space elevators with materially better lives if this money was invested in subways or trains.

If you spent $40Bn on busses - you'd have to spend another $250Bn to pay people to ride them...

Self-driving cars will eventually change cities. I think there's evidence it's already starting to happen.

I don't think this money would've been better spent on trains, and definitely not busses.

What else are you thinking of?

I'd be interested in a better cost breakdown of bike lanes and how much it would cost to get a significant percentage of people in cities biking & scootering around - but I'm skeptical, and also, it's not mass transit!

NYC installed 29.5 miles of protected bike lanes last year [2]. I can't find the cost, but next year they're asking for $3.1Bn to build 500 miles of protected bike lanes, among many other things [3]. I know it costs less than $1M to pave a two-lane road one mile [4] - so a protected bike lane should be well under $1M - but then everything costs way more in the city...

If protected bike lanes cost substantially less than $5M per mile in the city (like $0.5M) - $40Bn could get you pretty far!

That's 80k miles of protected bike lanes! That's about 4x the amount of total bike lanes we have now.

Bike commute rates in NYC are decent (by US standards). I'd love to see a study on how much bike commute rates increased after these new lanes were completed.

Copenhagen has only 240 miles of bike lanes and 600 miles of paths for 70 square miles and 750k people [4]. That's enough to get 62% of people commuting by bike [5]!

For the top 40 cities, you'd be looking at like 80k miles of protected bike lanes for 4000 square miles and 81M people. That's better than Copenhagen!

That could potentially get you close to 62% of people biking instead of driving - just depends on if that many people live within 5 miles of work / school / going out. 5 miles being the average commute distance in Copenhagen [6].

62% of cars off the road in the top 40 US cities would DEFINITELY change my life for the better - but I'd be surprised if we could even get 15%. Still, it's something you could do in a couple of years - and for $40Bn - would definitely be worth it. But it's decidedly not mass transit.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/vividmaps.com/map-of-largest-me...

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyre...

[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclingintheci...

[3] https://www.6sqft.com/council-wants-additional-3-1b-to-build...

[4] https://homeguide.com/costs/asphalt-driveway-cost#:~:text=Co....

[5] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-08-07/copenh...

[6] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-08-07/copenh....)