this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023

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How Commute Culture Made American Cities Lifeless -- Yet There's Hope (www.youtube.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This video outlines some of the relationships between US commuting culture and the perspectives that it's engendered about the role of the city. The, when compared and contrasted to other nations' approach to city design and perspectives shows that it's possible to have a city core that's more than just a workplace.

My city is currently clinging to a small area of interesting downtown core. Everything else has either been bulldozed for parking lots, turned into office buildings with no store fronts, or plowed into wider roads. Every time I show the maps of the city with how car-focused we've made downtown to a city council member they recoil at the desolation, but it's so hard to get change happening.

We need fewer roads, cars, and non-human spaces in our city core areas. Making wider walking paths, biking roads, mass transit (not just busses!), and planting trees to make spaces more attractive will all continue to invite people to come downtown, not just someone desperate enough to drive there, park, hit one store and drive away.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (4 children)

"Culture" is probably an overstatement. Isn't it just horrifying zoning laws that lead to sprawl and people didn't have a choice as there is a lack of public transportation?

[+] Dmian 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The car lobby thing is true for LA, but I'm not sure you can apply this to every city. What is evident, is that cities that existed before cars were invented or introduced are still more pedestrian friendly (see east coast cities or European ones for example) and the ones founded after are more grid like and car friendly.

Public transportation is only worth it if there is a high enough density of people (yeah, this sub may not like to hear it), so if you have huge sprawling suburbs it's not obvious where to even put your bus/train stations. Usually it's great to connect centers of some sort.

So yeah, if there had been more incentive to connect centers and dense clusters of population with each other, they may have planned according to that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Somehow there's always a "death spiral" for public transit, especially now as people commute less. But somehow... There never is for roads. We never seem to have enough roads. Funny that.

[–] FireRetardant 3 points 7 months ago

In Canada the resistance to change is fueled by "this is how we've always done it" which is false as Canada was founded before the car was made. There is also a conflict of interest to reduce dependance on roads as we have a decent auto manufacturing sector and many people rely on jobs related to roads and cars. With zoning there is hesitancy to change because many of our politicians are land lords using single family homes as rentable apartments and they know that their property values will drop if we start building real multi unit residences and affordable housing.

Our cities have been caught in this style of development for decades and to try to change it really goes against the current political grain. It takes a brave and determined politician to try for change and they will meet resistance from their colleagues and parts of their voter base the entire way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I think to work well the Land zoning and transport planning need to be hand in hand.
(and ideally serve people rather than car companies).

A local bus service is more efficient the denser the population it serves.

Rural densities will struggle to support/ warrant frequent bus services.

Really dense areas will more easily support more frequent bus services / netwoks and even trains / grade separated or exclusive land use for public transport.

It's no suprise that super dense places like Japan, Singapore, and desely populated European , Chinese regions have more public transport.

Add New York City to that list for that matter. Presumably NYC benefited from achieving it's density before cars became too powerful politically..

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

@oo1 @azimir @P1r4nha @Dmian

Urban planning and public transport should absolutely go hand-in-hand.

But on to your other point.

The key factor for transport use isn't just population or density. It's also the proportion of the population that uses public transport. And places that have more frequent public transport will have a higher proportion of the population using it than places with low quality public transport.

It's a point the late Paul Mees made in his book "A very public solution": https://www.mup.com.au/books/a-very-public-solution-paperback-softback (it's highly recommended reading if you have the chance.)

Imagine a city with just 100,000 people. But the local bus service is exceptional, and half the population uses it. That's a base of 50,000 people.

Imagine a city of 500,000 people. The public transport network there is average, so just 10% of the population uses it. That's 50,000 people.

Now imagine a metropolitan area of 5,000,000 people. The public transport network there is poor and infrequent. Only 1% of the population uses it. That's 50,000 people.

Three cities, same absolute number of public transport users, different modal share.

If you run frequent services, every 10 minutes or better, and services connect so that it's a two- or three-seat journey to everywhere in your city, you will have a much higher ridership than if it's an hourly bus service. That's with the same population and density.

Frequent bus services (once every 10 minutes or more) can also act as a feeder into a higher rail, light rail, tram, or metro services. In suburban, rural, and seni-rural areas, that extends the reach of your rail network.

Yes, higher density around railway stations is the best option. But where there is a lot of low-density suburban sprawl, frequent feeder buses are a good option.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'm coming to the belief that sometime this is an overblown excuse. I'm sure it's not true everywhere, but I just visited a friend in a medium sized (well under 100k people) Florida city, and spent a day going around by bus and foot, and it was great. Buses were reliable, air-conditioned, cheap, and traveled all the main routes, running about 18h a day, but they were barely used. Still loads of 6 lane roads, paved everything, massive parking lots, and more SUVs than I could count.

Even if you have a car for some trips, people in this city could easily reduce their usage, but they've become far too reliant on car culture. A trip to the store, 15 min walk, hop in the car. A trip downtown, 10min walk and 30min bus ride, nope... Car.

If we want more public transport, we need to encourage people use what exists when they can.

[–] FireRetardant 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Transit needs to be competitive with cars to really see a difference. In your own example a bus somehow takes 20 minutes longer to get downtown than walking there would, which is completely ridiculous but possible with how american transit is managed.

The transit needs to be nearly as fast and convenient as cars are. The city could take some of those 6 lane roads, dedicate a bus lane, and reduce the travel time of the bus by reducing time spent in traffic and prioritizing signals at intersections for the bus.

As for zoning, it is to blame because zoning prevents density and denisty helps support transit by increasing ridership in denser areas. If every building is limited to 1 or 2 stories and has a massive parking lot, it takes more space and everything gets farther away, increasing travel times for all transportation. This also increases the costs of road maintaince, sewer and water pipes, elecitricity delivery and is just pretty much one of the most ineffecient ways for a city to use space and resources.

[–] DarthBueller 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

All I know is that PalmTran in south east Florida became wildly unpredictable during the Great Recession due to suicide by train. Many many times it was shut down do to people offing themselves on the tracks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Then ride the train during bull markets only.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I read a study long time ago, I can't find it, it's old, and I have not kept up with new publications so take all this with a huge grain of salt. The study found that not only does a public transit system need to be available and dependable, it needs a certain amount of people too. Once a critical number of commuters used public transit it passed a tipping point where even more people began to use it. The study concluded that people seeing people take public transit will increase the likelihood that they will choose public transit next time compared to people who saw deserted public transit. It's a chicken and egg problem on top of everything else. Keep in mind I am not an expert and I am not current with the topic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

That's certainly one cause, but culture is as well. The American dream of a quarter acre in the quiet leafy suburbs, easy commute to work by car on the freeway, has been a pervasive part of culture for a long time. It's only recently that we've started appreciating the unsustainable reality of that idea.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It sounds like you're saying they're livng in an effective dictatorship rather than a democracy.
They should be able to choose by the way they vote.

I dont reallly know much about how planning and public services works in the USA.

Im my country we have fluctuating quality of local and national public transport investment and maintenace, and one of the sources of variation is who they're voting in to power.

When they keep voting in individualistic self-serving leaders the public infrastructure gets shat on sometimes duismantled and snaked off outside of public control. The rare time they vote for politicians who support public infrastructure and the general public, then it improves,
however briefly.

So my country is probably average on public transport - by the sounds of things, it's generally better than most of the USA - I'd rather it be better. but I tend to accept the choices made by the electorate, saddening though it may be, this is what people want.

If i'm really that bothered about it then i have to stand for election myself.

I guess it might all come down to how free and fair the elections are and how easy it is to enter and get your manifesto heard by a fair number of people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

A lack of options isn't really the same as a dictatorship. The day to day choices are sometimes hard to abstract into an intelligent vote every 2 or 4 years. The US suffers from a lack of trust in public institutions, so they aren't given enough funding or the right leadership to take a step back, take a good look and make tough choices that goes against reactionary NIMBYs.

The sprawl may very well be part of the culture. I just don't like to call everything a culture, including commuting. Commuting just seems a necessity and the choice of how and how far you commute is a function of infrastructure and land value. Sounds almost too boring to organize around, but it would be important to find a solution that works for everyone, instead of just single individuals.