Simple: sprawl and ultra low density. Public transport thrives in areas where a single bus stop serves hundreds or more of people, but in rural areas it's cost-prohibitive.
At 25k people per km^2 you get 200 thousand people within 1 mile radius and 0.8 million people within 2 mile walking distance. That transforms most US population centers into tiny little walk-able islands.
Public transit can spread things out, but lower density is a real trade-off.
Isn't a big part of the problem that it's not really all that dense? Most of it is a sort of endless suburbia, not the kind of packed city where mass transit really shines. I'm sure that public transit could be improved anyway (it certainly seems quite poor to me, from a distance), but I'm not sure "such a dense area" applies.
I'm not sure what you're even arguing. It seems pretty clear that population density has a strong correlation to efficiency of public transit. If nobody lives there, don't run rail to it.
I’m not talking about rural areas. I’m talking about low density cities and suburbs. They have population densities in the low thousands of people per square mile, more than enough for all services to be profitable.
Low density. Without enough population density it's impossible for transit to be economically viable. Tokyo has it. London has it. NYC has it. SF is... simply not dense enough to support a good transit infrastructure.
Part of the problem is that increase in population happened in outward sprawl. There isn't anything particularly incompatible with a modernized version of that transit system at that density.
A couple of things off the cuff, but economies of scale affect infrastructure costs, so centralized areas take far less money per person to operate. For example, a dozen busses provide much better return on investment in an urban area than suburban or rural because they can each complete a single route quickly and service more people per mile and thus you have service every 10-15 minutes. When you spread those same busses out over a larger, less dense, area you have much longer between stops and far fewer people to use them for the same cost.
Water, sewer, electrical, communications all scale better with more dense living as well. Bigger pipes are far cheaper than much longer runs.
Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31961508
I don't have anything for socialization, but access to more diverse population gives you far more options to interact with people of shared interests. For example, if you're the only person in your small town who likes Sci-fi, you aren't going to get to discuss it with anyone. In a more dense/diverse area you'd likely have options of dozens of book groups and meetups. The same holds true for any number of interests.
Yeah, that’s just not accurate, if you look at those metro areas, you find significantly less population density outside of the city.
The success of public transit is entirely a function of population density, because the amount of riders is directly proportional to population, and the cost is proportional to the distance you were moving them.
People always say that, and somebody even said that in this thread, and I pointed out that Amsterdam would be the fifth most dense city in America if it were here. Three of the more dense cities are the ones that actually have usable public transit.
Of course, everywhere could have public transit if you are not counting return on investment. If you had infinite money, and no necessity to make it back, you could put public transit in Columbus, Ohio.
But that is not how our world works, and roads and cars simply make economic sense when the population density drops below, a certain threshold, which is where most of America lives. And by most I mean like 90 some percent.
I mean look at the existing public transit in very dense cities, like New York, Boston, etc. They are all losing money and struggling to pay for it while cutting services. It’s just really difficult in America because we are spread out and everything is expensive, in Europe, where the cities have substantially higher population density and lower expenses it makes sense.
My point is that OP's comment is not relevant. It's not like the costs are high per capita, the costs are high per mile. In which case, the population density doesn't matter.
With regards to density, San Jose has a density of 5,256 people per square mile. In contrast, Denver (which has an awesome train/bus system) has a density of 3,698 people per square mile.
If low density is why San Jose can't support a decent transit infrastructure, then how can Denver do it with even less density?
Like most people in the US, I live in a neighborhood of detached single family dwellings on their own lot. Paid parking is even less viable than frequent efficient public transport. The actual development density is about 15 persons/acre or about 37 persons/hectare net for the neighborhood. Considering the surrounding development it's less than half that.
As it's a bus system, it doesn't need to make a ton of money, it just doesn't need to lose any, as it's a public service.
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