Indeed. Transportation is a hugely complicated issue. I'm not sure why people are downvoting the parent comment for pointing this out.
I suspect that to make real progress we will need to move away from our current assumptions. I'm not from the US, where perhaps the expectations and practicalities of transportation can be quite different to somewhere like Europe. But even here, there is a tendency to conflate mass transportation (buses, trains, etc.) with public transportation (vehicles run as a service by someone else, rather than owned personally and reserved exclusively for the use of their owner). As the existence of alternatives like taxis and school minibuses demonstrates, these are really two separate axes. And that's before we get to all the complexities of how we pay for transportation, both individually and as a society collectively.
There are some big advantages to providing individual transportation tailored to each specific journey. Going door to door at an exact time of their choosing can obviously be more efficient, sometimes several times more efficient, for the individual traveller than having to connect to and travel via a network of predefined locations on a predetermined timetable. There are also some health and security implications for travelling individually, and of course it can be much more comfortable because you have plenty of space, a guaranteed seat, your preferred temperature and ventilation levels, etc.
There are also some big downsides to individual transportation using the options we typically have available today. In particular, the individual vehicles we use right now are often not well suited to any particular journey. People are more likely to own a single vehicle, which they use for anything from taking their whole family on a long distance journey to a one-person drive to work or for shopping. That can be very inefficient in terms of space usage, environmental impact and operating costs. But then owning multiple vehicles, suitably sized and featured for different types of journey, is also very inefficient if each of them then spends most of the time sitting idle in a garage somewhere. And there are safety implications for using a smaller personal vehicle on the same roads as bigger, more dangerous vehicles operated by fallible drivers, as anyone who cycles around a big city can testify.
On top of that, you have an emergent system where there are millions of individual journeys happening on the same infrastructure with at best some very local co-ordination via things like lights at junctions. If you look at the mathematics underlying transport networks, you can see how this can lead to all kinds of surprising and sometimes very unhelpful overall outcomes, even if everyone is acting logically as an individual part of the system.
But there is no rule that says things always have to be this way. Sometimes mass transit uses dedicated infrastructure, as with trains and planes, and sometimes it's shared with individual transport, as with most buses and trams. Future infrastructure could be designed to support, as one possible example, both small and efficient personal vehicles and larger vehicles with space for more passengers and/or cargo that could be summoned on request, with preferred routes and timing specified by each traveller, but with the actual co-ordination of the vehicles administered centrally and the vehicles themselves operating autonomously.
It's obviously a huge jump from where we are today to such a system, and there would be all kinds of difficult questions about how we could migrate from one to the other even if we somehow all agreed on where we were ultimately trying to reach. But one thing is for sure: we can't even start working towards a system like that as long as we stick to preconceived notions of public transportation as mass transit with fixed timetables on large vehicles like buses or trains, and private transport as the family car as we know it today.
I agree with him. Public transport doesn't scale well, doesn't completely replace individual transport and is uncomfortable for everyone. Optimal (not the current system) individual transportation is much better.
I'm comparing optimal public transport against optimal individual transport. The problem is that it never will be a solution for everyone, and additionally, the public transport system you're imagining can be integrated into the individual transport system I'm talking about (see my other comments here) - and IMO it's better to do the more integrated, future-proof and optimal solution. Public transport as it is now can never satisfy all people, and making it optimal means moving towards more individual means of transportation.
Thinking about it now, it seems like the distinction of public vs private/individual transport will become less and less important - and that's what we should encourage. Let everyone choose the best option for them - given the prerequisites I talked about in my other comment, the market could take over from there. I'm 100% positive that buses would not cease to exist, just operate more efficiently.
You got downvotes because most people are incapable of nuanced thinking, especially on this subject.
Yes public transport is one of the key talismans in the church of the utopian left.
Public transport in the US is in a terrible state and needs to be massively expanded and funded, yet it cannot solve all of the transportation requirements of our massive economy and geography.
Please read the rest of my comments here. You're talking about a different idea of individual transport than me.
The problem is that you can't use public transport for cargo, for disabled people, for luxury rides, etc - there are many more use cases. Another problem is time - the bigger area and the more people your bus line has to serve, the less efficient it is for your customers.
There are better ideas than to minimize space (comfort AND usability) per person. E.g. optimizing your route in a way that you go from point A to point B as directly as possible, utilizing buses and shuttles on the way, taking people that need it. Bus lines are just like this, but fixed to specific pickup points, which would definitely remain existing, but the traffic around it would get optimized as well.
Why? Because with growing population, there are more and more people that need to go individually because of time constraints, comfort requirementa, disability or cargo. My solution supports your approach, just extends it to all vehicles on the road.
A lot of comments here about the need for more public transportation or other transportation options I think come from projecting one’s personal lifestyle on the rest of the country. Property in dense walkable urban areas is expensive and transporting anything more than yourself and some personal items is difficult. For most of the population and especially those with families or who’s occupation requires it personal vehicles will be the status quo in the US for the foreseeable future.
They are, which is why I'm suggesting that instead of thinking of "transit vs private cars" everything will essentially melt together. IE, if you take a bus with 30 riders today and replace it with 5 AV-minivans each with 6 occupants driving behind each other, is it any different? What if instead of the city, I own one of these minivans? What if I pay 6 fares and have the minivan take my family to somewhere? What if 6 passengers split a minivan, but pay extra to use a dedicated lane?
But it’s a problem that can be addressed at the individual level, rather than requiring large societal shifts like a move to more public transportation would. As much as I love the idea of easy-to-use public transport, the changes in US society needed to make that happen are unlikely to come in the next 5-10 years.
Agree with your point. It raises another question for me - if we are talking about shared or non-owned vehicles that people interchangably call and use when they need to go somewhere, aren't we inching closer to the same experience that other means of public transportation provide? And shouldn't we give those equal consideration to a world that is still built for and dominated by cars? For all the benefits we are all citing here, there are still a lot of problems with a world dominated by cars (pollution, the space they take up, the roads they require that cut up communities and are inhospitable to pedestrians / other modes of transportation, etc.)
Maybe it's just me but that picture makes the exact opposite point from what you're saying. It clearly points out that the difference between cars and other forms of transportation is linear. Public transportation doesn't scale this especially well, as anybody using public transport knows, but this article is a nice summary [1].
We all know what would happen to bus stops, stations, and generally to public places if people on buses actually had anywhere near the density "made possible" by public transport. It just won't work.
While for instance, adding roads in the sky (ie. very long bridges) scales exponentially, for obvious reasons. As does just flying (flying, incidentally, is a lot more efficient than people think). People don't want this, for obvious reasons, but there comes a point in cities where we have no choice. Frankly, cities like depicted in "the fifth element" and "star wars" are the future. Probably more rails, less floating, but the general idea is where we'll be going.
Doesn't even really matter if they have public or private transport. Given how fast public transport upgrades (even when absolutely required by the numbers of people they just refuse to upgrade for decades. Yes. Decades) and how comfortable it is, and add of course the fact that they just don't support the use cases cars enable (some of which, like an elderly or disabled person doing groceries, are absolute requirements) and you get to the point : private transport is far preferable to public transport.
That's something that can only be viable if millions+ people make the change, over the long term. Public transportation is better, but not always practical for everyone. It's certainly something governments should be investing in.
tl;dr public transit definition needs to stop being confined to rail and buses.
I have always been in the camp that real dystopian future is tens of millions trapped in large cities instead of being free to live and travel where they want. I can never willingly place myself back into a large city.
there is no reason the concept of public transportation does not include self driving vehicles in many sizes. already this day we run separate transit vehicles for those with handicaps which make regular bus and train travel difficult or impossible to access. So why not smaller cars that can serve any one in need at any time regardless of where they are located.
one of the most common traits in any recently freed or booming economy is the personal vehicle and for good reason. it offers the means to travel where and when you want to not be trapped in one location.
Sorry, maybe I'm missing something, but everything we know about urban planning is that large high capacity vehicles doing fixed routes are way more efficient than individual point to point travel. Cars aren't as efficient as busses, busses aren't as efficient as trains. Or to put it another way - using your logic everyone should just be flying in private jets.
The main thing your comment highlights for me is how much of a push we need for more sustainable methods of transportation in general.
There's always going to be people who will need to drive, but there's a hell of a lot of people who could be perfectly adequately served by strong public transportation.
I'm not arguing with you, I mostly believe the same. There are many cities though where public transport is such a foreign concept, that partial solutions will have to be a stepping stone for something better later.
There's way bigger problems for 'the 2-5 person capcity mass transit vehicle' (by which you basically mean 'car') than people owning and driving the vehicle.
Time is completely out of your hands (am I first or fifth in? What route will it take? How long are we going to wait for this person to show up?). Its not solving infrastructure issues massively (cars still need roads - you might make it attractive by having a lane for 3 or more people vechiles though). Its not really a system suited for dense walkable centres (see European cities) - and we are going further that way. And whats the objective benefit vs a train or tram? You are still in a space with strangers.
There are places in the world where labour costs are so low that this doesnt figure. There are also those where shared rides are common (e.g. taxis that run 'routes') - I'm not sure in any of these places they are considered a better solution than public transport at all. Of course they have a place, and I think Walker acknowledges this too, but its not really a game changer like building proper public transport can be.
The majority of people do not choose to live in one town and commute to work to a different one that doesn't have a good transit connection with the first.
The solution sure isn't providing even more infrastructure to the method of transport that is least efficient (passengers/hr, ongoing cost, space wasted for parking), most polluting (particulate, noise) and most dangerous to others (injuries per Km travelled).
People constantly defend cars based on how convenient it is for the person driving them without taking into consideration how their choice affects everybody outside their car. This method of transport is unique in the magnitude of its externalities compared to the alternatives.
I'm very familiar with the stark difference between North American and European transit systems. I've actually visited the Netherlands multiple times, and many other European cities. Totally agree that we generally do public transit miserably in NA, and have a lot of room for improvement.
All I was getting at with my original comment is that "trains for everyone" is as ridiculous of a concept as "cars for everyone".
> You're saying that you would choose a personal vehicle, but does that choice have the potential to change if the surrounding circumstances change?
Sure, as mentioned, if severe artificial barriers are put up to car usage, I would begrudgingly change. Absent that, no, I like my personal space. I like not getting rained on, not getting snowed on and not walking through -30C temperatures. Currently, I can get into a personal vehicle inside a garage, and proceed directly to my workplace's garage. Buses and trains will never match that, at least, not in the city I live in.
> Making cars self-driving is putting lipstick on a pig. It's like taking high blood pressure drugs instead of losing weight.
It's tremendously frustrating to constantly butt up against the foregone conclusion of "car is intrinsically bad no matter what". Safety and environmental impact are commonly accepted as the two largest issues with cars. We are poised to address both of these over the next two decades. Yet cars are still somehow intrinsically bad nonetheless? Is usage of a vehicle bad if one is not sharing the interior of it with a certain number of other people at any given time?
At the end of the day, I am a strong believer in enabling people to live their lives the way they want to, when reasonably practical. To cover most of the population, this means building pedestrian and cyclist friendly infrastructure, public transit, and supporting the safe and efficient use of personal vehicles too. And there's nothing stopping this from all coexisting, as you've already stated.
A train or bus that only carries a few people is not really a problem. Because labor costs are the majority of public transit operating costs not vehicles it makes sense to use the largest vehicle everywhere. Using minibuses or smaller train cars just means you get capacity issues during rush hour and you can't standardize on one vehicle.
You are right that public transit does not go door to door. Riders are expected to walk a block to the nearest station. If a transit system tries to replicate taxi service it would be too expensive or would really inflate waiting times for a ride.
I suspect that to make real progress we will need to move away from our current assumptions. I'm not from the US, where perhaps the expectations and practicalities of transportation can be quite different to somewhere like Europe. But even here, there is a tendency to conflate mass transportation (buses, trains, etc.) with public transportation (vehicles run as a service by someone else, rather than owned personally and reserved exclusively for the use of their owner). As the existence of alternatives like taxis and school minibuses demonstrates, these are really two separate axes. And that's before we get to all the complexities of how we pay for transportation, both individually and as a society collectively.
There are some big advantages to providing individual transportation tailored to each specific journey. Going door to door at an exact time of their choosing can obviously be more efficient, sometimes several times more efficient, for the individual traveller than having to connect to and travel via a network of predefined locations on a predetermined timetable. There are also some health and security implications for travelling individually, and of course it can be much more comfortable because you have plenty of space, a guaranteed seat, your preferred temperature and ventilation levels, etc.
There are also some big downsides to individual transportation using the options we typically have available today. In particular, the individual vehicles we use right now are often not well suited to any particular journey. People are more likely to own a single vehicle, which they use for anything from taking their whole family on a long distance journey to a one-person drive to work or for shopping. That can be very inefficient in terms of space usage, environmental impact and operating costs. But then owning multiple vehicles, suitably sized and featured for different types of journey, is also very inefficient if each of them then spends most of the time sitting idle in a garage somewhere. And there are safety implications for using a smaller personal vehicle on the same roads as bigger, more dangerous vehicles operated by fallible drivers, as anyone who cycles around a big city can testify.
On top of that, you have an emergent system where there are millions of individual journeys happening on the same infrastructure with at best some very local co-ordination via things like lights at junctions. If you look at the mathematics underlying transport networks, you can see how this can lead to all kinds of surprising and sometimes very unhelpful overall outcomes, even if everyone is acting logically as an individual part of the system.
But there is no rule that says things always have to be this way. Sometimes mass transit uses dedicated infrastructure, as with trains and planes, and sometimes it's shared with individual transport, as with most buses and trams. Future infrastructure could be designed to support, as one possible example, both small and efficient personal vehicles and larger vehicles with space for more passengers and/or cargo that could be summoned on request, with preferred routes and timing specified by each traveller, but with the actual co-ordination of the vehicles administered centrally and the vehicles themselves operating autonomously.
It's obviously a huge jump from where we are today to such a system, and there would be all kinds of difficult questions about how we could migrate from one to the other even if we somehow all agreed on where we were ultimately trying to reach. But one thing is for sure: we can't even start working towards a system like that as long as we stick to preconceived notions of public transportation as mass transit with fixed timetables on large vehicles like buses or trains, and private transport as the family car as we know it today.
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