Comment by JumpCrisscross
3 days ago
> 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.