Yea, these are some of the hardest things we need to address to make non-driving more popular in North America - overseas the increased density lends itself a lot more naturally to public transit.
Our biggest cities normally have bus and train. About half of them have some sort of light rail/tram equivalent too. The coverage isn’t completely comprehensive, so it’s possible to find suburbs that don’t have great coverage, but by and large, it’s pretty good. Footpaths and bicycle paths are common too. The cycling infrastructure is often gappy, so you on commutes etc, you can find yourself navigating spaces without dedicated cycling infrastructure, but generally, you can get a good portion of a cycle commute on dedicated bike spaces. The only roads without a pedestrian corridor of some sort are generally major highways
In our smaller and medium cities, the trains are normally inter city, not local, so they’re not so much use as public transport, but there are generally buses, though with less coverage. Good pedestrian infrastructure even in smaller cities though. It’s harder to survive in smaller cities without a car, but possible.
Once you get out of smaller cities and in to towns and villages though, it gets harder again.
My town (sort of- it’s a bunch or merged towns) finally got its actual grocery store back! That sort of thing is such a big deal to micromobility and public transit.
It closed down like a decade ago and we’ve had this discount merchant that nobody goes to because it’s real junk ripe with dollar store shrinkfkation issues, and if you can afford to go elsewhere, you do, and a few overpriced small town grocers that charge 2-5x what a regular grocer does.
The closest real grocery was 25 minutes by car on the highway going 70 for most of the trip. The re-opened grocery is 21 minutes by human-powered bike, assuming fitness (no, but working on it).
So now that that’s an option again, I have an actual excuse to get a cheap e-bike for shopping for fresh produce (that’s what’s most pricy at the small town gougers). I already have a nice detachable basket for shopping, so it’s the perfect out-of-house regular activity. Maybe weekly instead of monthly grocery trips. I’ll eat better, and for less overall.
Especially since I just paid 3k to fix the transmission on my car (😭😭😭). Sadly I’m rural enough I need the car, but if I don’t have to use it, I win.
Where I recently moved to, everything is a 10-20 min drive away, but buses can be over an hour because how poorly they’re done. Apparently they used to be quite bad, but recent changes made them awful and no one understands how the new routes and timetables managed to be approved and implemented.
In most cases, someone opposed to public transportation finds a way into a position of authority and makes the routes worse with stupid justifications, then gets it killed because nobody uses it.
This is a massive part of the problem here in the UK too.
I just checked with Google Maps how long it would take my wife to get to work tomorrow morning. In the car it would take between 45 minutes and an hour, but public transport would take an hour and 52 minutes, with 29 minutes of that taken up by walking to bus and train stops. She would have to leave the house before 5:30 am, whereas the car would give her another hour in bed.
At the moment we’re under a yellow warning for rain too, so she would need to take waterproof clothes and probably a change of clothes too.
Until things like this are improved, it’s easy to see why lots of people still take the car :(
Wow, that’s a bummer :-/ For me it’s 15-20 min by car assuming a few minutes walk to where I’ve parked. 25 min by bike (20 min by road but I take a safer ‘scenic route’) and about 40 min by bus and about 10 minutes of that is walking to/from the bus stop.
And the bus fare gets capped at 8 trips per week so every trip thereafter is free meaning if you commute to work every day, Friday and all weekend will be unlimited free trips.
And the bus fare gets capped at 8 trips per week so every trip thereafter is free meaning if you commute to work every day, Friday and all weekend will be unlimited free trips.
This sounds amazing. Meanwhile where I’m from they recently raised prices again.
Or it takes prohibitively longer than a driving.
My wife considered taking the bus to work, but it would take 2 hours to get 20 minutes down the road.
Also add the fact that a bus pass is more expensive than our car insurance.
Yea, these are some of the hardest things we need to address to make non-driving more popular in North America - overseas the increased density lends itself a lot more naturally to public transit.
Australian manages pretty good urban public transport, with a much lower density than the US
(Our rural public transport effectively doesn’t exist though)
I don’t know much about Australia, what forms public transportation are implemented over there?
Hope you’re having a good day :)
Our biggest cities normally have bus and train. About half of them have some sort of light rail/tram equivalent too. The coverage isn’t completely comprehensive, so it’s possible to find suburbs that don’t have great coverage, but by and large, it’s pretty good. Footpaths and bicycle paths are common too. The cycling infrastructure is often gappy, so you on commutes etc, you can find yourself navigating spaces without dedicated cycling infrastructure, but generally, you can get a good portion of a cycle commute on dedicated bike spaces. The only roads without a pedestrian corridor of some sort are generally major highways
In our smaller and medium cities, the trains are normally inter city, not local, so they’re not so much use as public transport, but there are generally buses, though with less coverage. Good pedestrian infrastructure even in smaller cities though. It’s harder to survive in smaller cities without a car, but possible.
Once you get out of smaller cities and in to towns and villages though, it gets harder again.
Thanks for the reply! I hope someday the US gets there :)
Melbourne has the world’s largest tram (streetcar) system!
My town (sort of- it’s a bunch or merged towns) finally got its actual grocery store back! That sort of thing is such a big deal to micromobility and public transit.
It closed down like a decade ago and we’ve had this discount merchant that nobody goes to because it’s real junk ripe with dollar store shrinkfkation issues, and if you can afford to go elsewhere, you do, and a few overpriced small town grocers that charge 2-5x what a regular grocer does.
The closest real grocery was 25 minutes by car on the highway going 70 for most of the trip. The re-opened grocery is 21 minutes by human-powered bike, assuming fitness (no, but working on it).
So now that that’s an option again, I have an actual excuse to get a cheap e-bike for shopping for fresh produce (that’s what’s most pricy at the small town gougers). I already have a nice detachable basket for shopping, so it’s the perfect out-of-house regular activity. Maybe weekly instead of monthly grocery trips. I’ll eat better, and for less overall.
Especially since I just paid 3k to fix the transmission on my car (😭😭😭). Sadly I’m rural enough I need the car, but if I don’t have to use it, I win.
Where I recently moved to, everything is a 10-20 min drive away, but buses can be over an hour because how poorly they’re done. Apparently they used to be quite bad, but recent changes made them awful and no one understands how the new routes and timetables managed to be approved and implemented.
In most cases, someone opposed to public transportation finds a way into a position of authority and makes the routes worse with stupid justifications, then gets it killed because nobody uses it.
Conspiracy theory.
Conservatives running public services into the ground is an actual conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html
It’s a thing that happens on very rare occasions in very corrupt Republican areas, not a thing that happens with any sort of regularity.
This is a massive part of the problem here in the UK too.
I just checked with Google Maps how long it would take my wife to get to work tomorrow morning. In the car it would take between 45 minutes and an hour, but public transport would take an hour and 52 minutes, with 29 minutes of that taken up by walking to bus and train stops. She would have to leave the house before 5:30 am, whereas the car would give her another hour in bed.
At the moment we’re under a yellow warning for rain too, so she would need to take waterproof clothes and probably a change of clothes too.
Until things like this are improved, it’s easy to see why lots of people still take the car :(
Wow, that’s a bummer :-/ For me it’s 15-20 min by car assuming a few minutes walk to where I’ve parked. 25 min by bike (20 min by road but I take a safer ‘scenic route’) and about 40 min by bus and about 10 minutes of that is walking to/from the bus stop. And the bus fare gets capped at 8 trips per week so every trip thereafter is free meaning if you commute to work every day, Friday and all weekend will be unlimited free trips.
This sounds amazing. Meanwhile where I’m from they recently raised prices again.
Dedicated lanes make a huge difference there!
Actually, that’s almost part of the problem ironically.
Most of the bus routes go down dedicated bus transitways to a main hub, which means the first bus goes 30 minutes North instead of West.