Comment by dangus
3 days ago
Did I say we should run subways to every corner?
Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg
Meanwhile, Arlington, Texas has over 200,000 people with no bus system.
And before you say “oh it’s Europe it’s old” I will point out that the Netherlands had a huge car dependency problem in the mid-century and deliberately moved away from it during/after the oil crisis.
You can see multiple single family home developments that would be right at home in a US suburb in this video. The author even reaches a rural farm without a car.
What about if American transit authorities just did basic stuff like work together and perform actual regional planning rather than working in silos and having conflicts with each other?
For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.
Instead, they’re forced to do things like sell $100 World Cup train tickets because they haven’t been empowered to reap the rewards of the economic development they enable.
> For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.
This is something that I found pretty bizarre visiting the US. The transport is _so_ regionalised. San Francisco has a separate bus system to South San Francisco (which is as far as I can see just a suburb for practical purposes), for instance.
It doesn't generally make sense to split transport authorities strictly across administrative geographical lines, particularly where the administrative regions are small. For instance, London basically gets away with TFL occupying the same general geographic area as Greater London, but only because Greater London is _vast_. If you tried this with Dublin, it would never work, because the Dublin City administrative area is tiny (Dublin Bus operates in _seven_ local authorities, and its commuter rail lines all cross at least three).
> Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence
I’ll watch in detail-thank you.
An important caveat, though, and it’s not about age but density. The Netherlands ex Amsterdam has just under 1,400 people per square mile. That’s still denser than every single U.S. state. (New Jersey and Rhode Island are the only two that break 1,000, and only the former if we exclude each state’s largest city.) The tenth-densest state, Pennsylvania, is still almost 5x less dense than the Netherlands, and again, I’m doing this for the Netherlands ex Amsterdam.
We can absolutely build more transit in our metropolitan centers. But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
> there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority
Same reason the Dutch and German authorities are separate.
> But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
It’s worth pointing out here that,
1. Again, this is an ongoing choice and not an inevitability.
2. A large amount of America was built during the railroad era and a lot of urban fabric was actually just removed/demolished and could be replaced. A lot of it sits empty waiting to be rehabilitated (and to many cities’ credit, a lot of it has been rehabilitated).
3. When you watch the video you’ll see it’s not all about density, it’s also about road and street design. It’s about making spaces that feel safe to exist in as a pedestrian or cyclist. Many suburban Americans don’t actually travel that far to get around, they just can’t get places without getting in a car (e.g., a typical big box store area is a dense shopping area just like a typical high street but traversing it on foot is hostile).
I'm not sure why you would compare states to cities?
And while The Netherlands as a country is dense, the cities are not, partially due to the massive amount of urban sprawl that The Netherlands has (compared to other European countries).
Amsterdam has a density of just under 5,000 people per square kilometer. That is way less than New York City, and less than any of the Burroughs except Staten Island. Manhattan comes in at 28,000, so over 5 times more. Amsterdam Metropole has only 950 people per square kilometer.
NYC, San Francisco and Boston are massively more dense than Amsterdam. Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami are about the same. Washington D.C. and LA are only slightly less dense.
> Same reason the Dutch and German authorities are separate.
Are there any major metropolitan areas that cross Dutch and German borders?
Is there a customs border between Hoboken and NYC?
Of course NJ Transit and NYC transit should combine in the NYC metropolitan area, they are serving the same people.
To add, The Netherlands in the 1970s was going full-on towards suburbanization and urban sprawl. Even today it has one of the lowest amounts of apartments in Europe and the most urban sprawl. So if they didn't go for bicycles, it would have been America 2.0. Just look at Ireland.
In other countries bicycles aren't really needed because you can just walk everywhere.
Yes! Thank you. People just assume because Netherlands = Europe that it’s all old world walkability.
In a lot of ways the cycling in the Netherlands is almost a band-aid in itself…but it’s a hell of a lot better than depending on the automobile.