this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The only reason not to build public transport is not having the density to support it....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Public transit works perfectly fine in a low-density situation. Your urban planning needs to accommodate it, though, with walkability being a prime concern.

A car-centric city will never mesh well with public transit no matter how dense it is. The best you can hope for is good subway coverage but that's expensive and can't be done everywhere. Nobody wants to take the bus if they feel they have no safe route to the bus stop.

But if everything is opened up with proper sidewalks and bike lanes and maybe tram tracks, if street lights prioritize pedestrians over cars, if walking to the nearest convenient stop feels safe and effortless even if it's two miles away – then you get public transit that actually works.

It's not terribly difficult. But your urban planning can't be car-centric or you're getting nowhere.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I think when a lot of people say high density, they don't mean 100floor residential buildings are all the housing, but tend to think of something more akin to densely packed midrise buildings and green spaces. If you have the later, there simply is not space for cars and high density. Large universities come to mind, where there may be 50k people using 1-2sq mile while 5+ story buildings are rare. You would have to walk a mile or two to get to a car to drive 6 miles around to the other side of campus at 5mph to walk a mile or two to get to you class 1000ft away from your starting point if they were car centric.

You don't even need public transit at that level of density but it's an option.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I agree with everything except your first point. It doesn't work at all in a low density setting, to the point that low density areas are always subsidized by high density areas. Low density needs to start paying their taxes and stop relying on the urban centers to build their infrastructure.