Right, i disagree with you wholeheartedly. The probably is the how do we get from here to there. We have transportation infrastructure. It's roads, the roads are mostly designed for car and light truck traffic primarily. Now my question to you is, how do you justify, politically, the proposal to add a bunch of extremely expensive, and unpleasant to build (2nd ave subway made 2nd ave horrifically ugly for a couple years) infrastructure.
Without a billionaire (thus fairly incorruptible) mayor in his last term, i really don't think it's going to happen.
People have invested in the car infrastucture, they have bought certain houses, in certain neighborhoods because of it, they have planned their lives around it. You can't just say, "okay, we're all going to take light rail now, so we need to remove all the street parking on your street, sorry, 1/4 of this town is going to have to deal with dramatic changes in infrastructure.
No, the way to do it is sin taxes. Why? Firstly, because the pain is felt by everyone. This prevents NIMBY's from getting their ammunition. Everyone feels the pain, everyone must adjust. Secondly, it provides a gradual path to a low-car environment. Slow is good, fast is politically untenable for most cities. As traffic decreases, you can add BRT lines with little objection. You can switch current infrastructure from private vehicles to public. You don't have to dig a bunch of holes in the ground, you just have to re-purpose. Thirdly, you've just funded your public transit projects.
If we want to make public transit in america. I honestly thing the best way to do it is build a better bus. A bus that feels like a subway car. A bus that i would want to ride, even when it's packed.
You answer is "sin" taxes, and you see no way people would want to spend on a light rail project. But why would they vote themselves into a sin tax then? How is it different. Wouldn't building of a light rail in a town or region come with an increase in taxes anyway for a good number of years? Is that a "sin" tax?
> I honestly thing the best way to do it is build a better bus
A bus is a bus. Unless the wheels are falling off. The problem is not the bus, is how often does the bus come. If sell my car, and the bus only comes in the weekdays, ok, now I have to get taxi to grocery shop on the weekends. It would dictate when I have to leave from work because I might miss the last one.
The other problem is social. This is hard to say but in many cities, public transportation is often used by those that cannot drive, that unfortunately includes crazy people. You might not otherwise encounter them but you will on public transportation. In some cities it is a small nuisance. In some it happens often because almost everyone who is capable of driving is driving or getting rides. That bus could have gold plates handles and it could even be free, and a lot of people will still opt for driving.
> Firstly, because the pain is felt by everyone.
Yes. It can't be just artificially and locally manufactured pain -- sin taxes. Why would they ever vote for that? Why would a small quiet suburb of some major city just decide to vote to punish themselves for driving? But the pain has to already be there -- horrible traffic. If they start sitting in traffic for 2 hours every day, they might start thinking, hmm, we've tried HOV-3 lanes and even then it is not quite doing it? Maybe a light rail is better. Or more buses.
We are talking about cities. There should not be a last bus. They should run 24 hours/day.
> now I have to get taxi to grocery shop on the weekends
In a real city, you can usually walk or at the very least, cycle to your grocery store. If you can't then you do not actually live in an urban environment.
> public transportation is often used by those that cannot drive, that unfortunately includes crazy people.
Right, again i'm talking about creating a system of urbanism in major cities. I'm not talking about Houston or San Diego. I'm talking about cities like Amsterdam, Edinburgh, or Stockholm. If taking a bus is slower than taking your car at rush hour, you'd have to be crazy to take the bus. If you build a good BRT system that is faster than using a car, people will use it. Not just crazy people.
>Why would they ever vote for that? Why would a small quiet suburb of some major city just decide to vote to punish themselves for driving?
We are talking about cities like Philly, and people that live in cities like Philly, we are not talking about some exurb that uses subsidized parking in major cities to facilitate their commute.
Why would they vote for that? Easy, because it pits competing interests together so that there is no major bloc that forces a candidate to change. Let's say you add a sin tax. Those that can afford it would benefit, because there would be less traffic on the road, and those who don't own cars would benefit because it would improve the public transit infrastructure. The slowly increasing it while slowly increasing the public infrastructure would never force a major bloc into political action. Something that definitely would happen if you dramatically reduce the quality of living for 1/6 to 1/4 of a city's population by trying to dramatically ramp up some type of subway system and digging up people's front lawn for 18 months, so that they can have access to a subway in 6 years.
In a real city, you can usually walk or at the very least, cycle to your grocery store.
Gotta love that goalpost shifting. Have you considered that there are plenty of cities here in the US (real or not, by your standards) where that's not true?
We are talking about cities like Philly, and people that live in cities like Philly, we are not talking about some exurb that uses subsidized parking in major cities to facilitate their commute.
The problem is that without the commuters coming in, the urban core dies. This is exactly what happened in Detroit. Now, it's possible that if you already have an excellent transit system and a vibrant urban core (like New York, for example), you can impose congestion charges and get away with it, because the core of the city is attractive enough for people to continue to want to go there and the public transit system is robust enough to carry them. But that's not the case in Philadelphia. For older "rust belt" cities, which are already having issues with people moving away to sunnier, warmer southern cities with lower taxes and bigger roads, making the core of the city even more inaccessible isn't a winning strategy.
The best way is to make public transport more like cars.
Individual cars, perhaps on a track system, that people can book at any time of day to whereever they like, without having to share with a large number of unknown people and without random stops and detours that slow it down, getting a guaranteed seat and place to put anything they are carrying, which then leaves to pick someone else up when they arrive, and they just book another 5 minutes before they leave when they want to go home.
That's great for going between cities, but useless within them. It also needs something on a smaller scale for people to get from home to work to the shops to home without standing for 30 minutes in the rain and not getting a seat, or for them to get home when drunk at 3am and the trains don't start until 6.
Self-driving cars could be very economically feasible for traveling within a city. They will be able to drive in tightly packed formations to minimize air resistance as well...a sort of hybrid between public transportation and individual/family transportation.
Without a billionaire (thus fairly incorruptible) mayor in his last term, i really don't think it's going to happen.
People have invested in the car infrastucture, they have bought certain houses, in certain neighborhoods because of it, they have planned their lives around it. You can't just say, "okay, we're all going to take light rail now, so we need to remove all the street parking on your street, sorry, 1/4 of this town is going to have to deal with dramatic changes in infrastructure.
No, the way to do it is sin taxes. Why? Firstly, because the pain is felt by everyone. This prevents NIMBY's from getting their ammunition. Everyone feels the pain, everyone must adjust. Secondly, it provides a gradual path to a low-car environment. Slow is good, fast is politically untenable for most cities. As traffic decreases, you can add BRT lines with little objection. You can switch current infrastructure from private vehicles to public. You don't have to dig a bunch of holes in the ground, you just have to re-purpose. Thirdly, you've just funded your public transit projects.
If we want to make public transit in america. I honestly thing the best way to do it is build a better bus. A bus that feels like a subway car. A bus that i would want to ride, even when it's packed.