You don’t need to make cars worse to have people use public transit. I visited Japan last year for a couple weeks and their train and bus infrastructure was so good I would have just taken the buss instead of a car if I had a car there. Google maps times were like a 3 minute difference between public transit and car times every single time I checked it. In cali it’s at least double the time if not triple depending on where I’m at. Both of these were in the middle of Metropolitan areas. They just need to make public transic as good, cheap and clean as it is in japan. Not an easy task granted.
Yeah, I kind of added that sarcastically. My view of the US is that it needs some capitalist nuance to it or people won’t like it. It’s not enough if it’s better, or just cheaper for society.
In reality, I understand that people in rural areas need their car. And it’s a hassle to do the shopping for a family of 5 without a car. Unless you can have that delivered…
I’m not sure if Japan is a good example for exactly this. As far as I know a parking spot in central Tokyo is more expensive than an apartment in other places of the world. And the city mandates that you have some parking spot or you can’t have a car in the first place. I suppose it actually is very expensive to own a car there. However I don’t know what they do outside of the cities or how they tax the cars and fuel. And there are cities in the US like NYC where they also don’t have space available to own cars.
But public transit in Japan is awesome. They’re on time, get you everywhere, are affordable and run every few minutes… The scenic train routes have cute mascots. Everything works. There are colored lines on the floor (in the big city) and you can get by without being able to read… And there are shops with nice japanese snacks just around the corner or within the station. I’d like to have all of that where I live.
You could have a bus route along the major street, bus stops every kilometer and a bus coming every 20 minutes.
That’ll take you to the city center or to a junction where you can jump on another bus taking you in a different direction.
Maybe make it cheap, and gasoline and taxes on cars more expensive so people are incentivised to use it.
You don’t need to make cars worse to have people use public transit. I visited Japan last year for a couple weeks and their train and bus infrastructure was so good I would have just taken the buss instead of a car if I had a car there. Google maps times were like a 3 minute difference between public transit and car times every single time I checked it. In cali it’s at least double the time if not triple depending on where I’m at. Both of these were in the middle of Metropolitan areas. They just need to make public transic as good, cheap and clean as it is in japan. Not an easy task granted.
Yeah, I kind of added that sarcastically. My view of the US is that it needs some capitalist nuance to it or people won’t like it. It’s not enough if it’s better, or just cheaper for society.
In reality, I understand that people in rural areas need their car. And it’s a hassle to do the shopping for a family of 5 without a car. Unless you can have that delivered…
I’m not sure if Japan is a good example for exactly this. As far as I know a parking spot in central Tokyo is more expensive than an apartment in other places of the world. And the city mandates that you have some parking spot or you can’t have a car in the first place. I suppose it actually is very expensive to own a car there. However I don’t know what they do outside of the cities or how they tax the cars and fuel. And there are cities in the US like NYC where they also don’t have space available to own cars.
But public transit in Japan is awesome. They’re on time, get you everywhere, are affordable and run every few minutes… The scenic train routes have cute mascots. Everything works. There are colored lines on the floor (in the big city) and you can get by without being able to read… And there are shops with nice japanese snacks just around the corner or within the station. I’d like to have all of that where I live.
also rezone to allow mixed use and tall buildings directly along the route. bring some density to the suburbs