Why is it hard for cities/towns to promote public transport over cars and freeways?
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To quote Homer Simpson “Public transit is for losers”
In North America there’s a perception that owning a car is a sign of wealth, success, and freedom and a lot of people refuse to use public transit for that reason alone.
Even if it’s relatively cheap, efficient, and environmentally friendly to use public transit, people like the convenience of having their own vehicle that can go where they want, when they want.
Public transit is often congested and slow. While it’s efficient for getting a large number of people in and out of key areas it’s poor for transporting people to specific locations or in and out of suburbs.
The suburbs are the key factor as well, because those living in an urban city center are more likely to use public transport than those living outside of the city. The realities and cost of having to park a car at home or at work in an urban center make public transit more appealing.
A lot of this comes down to lack of infrastructure mind you, with more development on subways and buses public transport would be a lot more affordable and efficient, but peoples refusal to use it makes the situation worse. It also doesn’t help that for many cities public transport and cars were an after thought to the city design. So cities aren’t laid out nicely for public transport.
I believe it is either due to the infrastructure of the city/town which has already been built up and cannot be easily changed to facilitate a good public transportation system, or the city/town simply doesn’t have the money to do so.
Most American cities and towns simply aren’t laid out in a way that makes public transport a viable option. It’s one thing in NYC or Chicago where you have a very sense population and widespread public transit, but most part of the US were built out, not up. The major neighborhoods are a long way away from the major shopping areas, which are a long way away from the major office parks, etc. The end result is a sort of self-defeating cycle where people don’t use public transit because it’s undesirable (it would take me an hour and two transfers to take the bus from my home to my office, whereas I can drive it in ten minutes), so there isn’t the political capital to make meaningful investments in it.
A big reason that stands in the way has been that the cities were originally designed and built to promote individual vehicles. In areas that public transport, like trains, were more popular, they build trains into the city plans, instead of erecting them after.
You can see this in some towns/cities in Germany that are predominately sidewalks. The city was build to promote walking and public transit for larger voyages.
Ya nope. If I were to take public transit into downtown DC, it’d take me 45 mins to an hour, assuming bus was coming soon. It’d also cost me $5 bus + train. That’s one way one person. And I’m usually with my wife. So $20 round trip if I make no other stop.
Or I can drive 15 minutes. Even if I have to pay garage parking $25, the extra $5 for saving an hour of my time is worth it, and I can usually get cheaper or free parking on the street anyway.
Before DC, I lived near Kaiserslautern, Germany. About €3 per person per direction, again with my wife and they’d charge my kid too. Time needed was 15 mins regardless of car or public transportation but the intervals between buses or trains could be two hours. Or I could just pay like $2-5 (or free on Sunday) to park at my convenience.
This is why, it isn’t worthwhile.
But I also don’t commute into the city, it is more for entertainment, dining, etc.
From personal experience, I am the kind of guy who tends to make multiple stops on the way home for work and even if I wanted to walk from the bus/train stop to the store, then back to the stop, 3 times, The transit system would stop service and the stores would be closed by the time I got done.
One important point is that driving is massively subsidized, which simultaneously helps it become a more convenient option and makes the alternatives less attractive (to many). Many think that their taxes and registration fees completely cover the costs of roads, but that isn’t remotely true, and that sure doesn’t help.
If we funded pedestrian infrastructure, cycling infrastructure and transit sufficiently, considerably more people would use them more frequently.
It’s wildly inconvenient.
With public transport you have a problem which is that the more stops you put on the bus or train line, the more people can use it and the slower it is since it needs to stop at all those places.
For example, in my city, driving from the center of the city to a suburb takes about 15-20 minutes. The same bus ride is an hour and a half because of all the stops.
It’s one of the reasons why taking a bus from one city to another is actually really inexpensive, especially compared to a plane or train. The bus is only going from one city to another. There aren’t many stops so the ride is pretty comparable to driving your car.
The infrastructure has to exist. A cheap way to start is for a city to make a bus system which only takes some changes to existing roads to start. But if the people don’t want that, then it’s hard to get anything beyond that. And jumping straight from no transit to rail transit is often stupid.
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