> Why are all the major cities in the western world seemingly hitting this limit at the same time, even though they all have different populations?
I can’t speak for Canada, but in America the answer is always cars. Car based transit is wildly land inefficient, and the main reason why all car based cities hit their limit at the same time.
In particular there are two huge shortcomings with cars in urban design:
1. Parking eats up a huge amount of space. Either you let that drive density way down (which means commutes get longer) or you build underground parking at exorbitant prices driving up rents. Even in the latter case the roads around housing ends up becoming an issue, limiting density far below what you’d expect in say, Paris on Chicago.
2. Car transit to a shared destination is almost comically inefficient, which is really noticeable when people try and commute via car to job centers. This wouldn’t be as bad if we restricted cars to what they’re good at, such as driving away from the city, but most American cities have the unique psychosis of demanding that transit into the city center be via car. This does not scale, and is why places with wildly different zoning laws can have equally hellish commutes.
The issue is not that we can’t build, we’re really good at adding more highway lanes, it’s more that we are monomaniacally focused on building the wrong things.
Isn't this more a limit of dense (taller) housing?
If we had much more housing in tall buildings near where people worked then they either would not need a car or would at least not need to drive their car to work. You still of course need to provide parking but tall parking garages can solve that as well (or underground).
Seems like tons of cars are the symptom of the problem here not the cause
It’s symbiotic. We can’t build denser housing because we need space for car storage and roads. We can’t encourage people to reduce/eliminate their car usage because our infrastructure makes that miserable.
So I hate driving and actually moved to DC for work and also partly for the transit. Here's what I found:
1) Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building a couple blocks from the initial station to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge. Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up but a: most people have a pretty mediocre personal mobile computing setup and b: now I can't use that time for anything other than programming projects.
2) I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit. It's bad enough not having a truck but losing the car entirely would create some serious logistical problems on a regular basis. So while I saved some money I couldn't save as much as I wanted.
3) Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families^ and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places. It might not ever be economical. Like it or not transit will probably always lower property values in the US too. For whatever reason the more violent people here tend to take it and anywhere it goes becomes more violent so building it into suburbs like these is always going to be unpopular.
4) Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent. I have an extremely high tolerance for this sort of thing (I've wandered around some of the more violent cities early in the morning just to see what the fuss is about) but I can absolutely see why most people here would give up after that happening once at a maximum.
I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it.
(^ and for those that don't start families, many have lots of intense DIY projects that don't fit in apartment buildings and actually need either detached housing or industrial space with similar density.)
Almost everything you're saying is a symptom of poor investment in public transport. I have no doubt that the car works better for your commute, as is the case for millions of other people. Unfortunately, stick millions of cars on the road and you have a huge bottleneck for growing the commuter belt, which means only houses in a relatively small area are useful, and they get extremely expensive.
Historically, and in some countries still, we solved this problem by identifying when it was happening and creating new public transport lines for faster commutes and people living further out. In the UK, we even developed whole "New Towns", upgraded their transport, amenities and infrastructure specifically to support shuttling a greater number of people into London. They weren't particularly inspiring towns, and we still make fun of them nearly a century later - but it worked. Even today, it's far quicker to take the train into London from those towns than it is to drive, as is the case for pretty much all suburb to central commuting here.
There are still lots of situations where a car will be better (I have one too, in London), but if we can get people out of their cars for their commutes, that frees cities up to expand and useful houses will become more affordable. Driving to the tip or mall is much less of a problem.
Regarding the violence and antisocial behaviour, that's really a problem of policing and allocation of funding. It needn't be that way and it doesn't happen to nearly the same extent in the UK and I put that down at least partially to the excellent British Transport Police. Apparently it used to be violent and dangerous in the 80s but we turned it around. Now the train stations are mostly far safer than the surrounding environs. If I was ever being harassed or attacked, I would run towards the station as there would most likely be someone to help me there. Living within a few minutes of a train station also significantly increases your property value here, provided you're not so close that it rattles your bed...
Antisocial behavior on public transit isn’t just a matter of policing and funding.
It’s also a matter of civil liberties.
In California, people have a constitutional right to defecate on the streets.
In was once in a San Francisco bus and watched a young woman of West Asian descent break down in tears because a homeless man was calling her a “sand n***”.
She screamed back at him the Trump was going to put him in a concentration camp. He made some comments about the Muslim faith, and she told she was going to pray he’d die a horrible death.
Some more words were exchanged about Trumps policies towards Muslims and the homeless.
She got off early and walked the rest of the way.
This is all 100% constitutionally protected, or at least, under the policies of subsequent DAs (including Kamala Harris) officially tolerated.
I think that's just a think that happens where people are, and the more people you run into in your travels, the higher the likelihood that you'll run into them.
Public transit is one of the few public spaces we have left, ironically. Perhaps especially so post-Covid. I think that it's worth the investments necessary to make it usable. You can't blame public transit for the lack of effectiveness of homeless programs, and some folks are homeless by choice. It's a fraught situation, and that's why folks choose cars a lot of the time. It's more convenient for them and I guess I don't fault folks for that, but the built environment shows a lot of deference for cars in many metro areas, and that doesn't help with the traffic issues, or with zoning issues, or with housing affordability.
Yet, if you improve those other issues, then property values will probably just go up even higher than they already are, but at least that money will benefit more than just the buyer and the seller; it will benefit the entire community.
Without that kind of protection usually some group gains power and becomes the only protected group. Neo-Nazis are an indication that even the most socially unacceptable groups still have a voice. They should be considered a canary and a good thing to see occasionally. I wouldn't want to live in a country where they were censored and if you feel so strongly about it I would suggest moving somewhere else (Germany censors Nazis pretty aggressively for example.)
For example: You're upset that Nazis marched through a Jewish neighborhood. Are you upset about the violent BLM protestors marching through White neighborhoods? I would guess not but there's little difference between the two.
I've moved to places to see if I thought the changes improved things, you learn a lot about yourself and the world by doing that.
> Regarding the violence and antisocial behaviour, that's really a problem of policing and allocation of funding.
Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world with heavy investment in public transportation & policing, and yet they still have issues with sexual harassment and sexual assault on their trains. It’s a hard problem to fix related to population density.
Are you aware that many Tokyo train lines have women-only cars during rush hour? I think they started in the 1990s and have greatly improved the situation for women in Tokyo.
That makes things even worse. If a women can't fit in that car and goes into a normal car, there are POS who can now justify sexually assaulting them. Cracking down on the crime and publicly humiliating the perpetrators would be far better for society.
>Like it or not transit will probably always lower property values in the US too. For whatever reason the more violent people here tend to take it and anywhere it goes becomes more violent so building it into suburbs like these is always going to be unpopular.
This smells of the coded racism that is so rampant in the USA. It's sad because there might be some element of truth at its root, but it gets exaggerated and the attitude creates more and more segregation, exacerbates the divisions and creates a hostile society.
The problem is you’re comparing the commute by public transport in the current status quo and missing the point that fixing the car culture means improving public transport so that it does become more convenient than taking the car.
Plenty of European cities have achieved this. I work in London and I wouldn’t even dream of driving into the city. It’s far more convenient to get the train.
I think you should read my comment a little more carefully. 1 and 2 are due to serious physical and economic constraints that are very unlikely to change and apply to all but the absolute most dense areas. Remember, this is in DC. It's unusually dense and is supposed to be the best we have. 3 and 4 are additionally due to cultural, historical, and demographic problems that are becoming worse rather than better and the current political situation is working to accelerate it.
I'm not against transit but it's not the solution people think it is.
DC isn't unusually dense. It's only the 6th most dense city in America and not even in the top 100 for the world. It doesn't even have an districts that are in the top 100 (Paris, on the other hand, features several districts and still has good public transport networks).
And this is just looking at density in terms of population. There's also building density, London would rank very high up there and has excellent public transport.
The problem in DC isn't technical; the problem is cultural. You see the car as a solution so you keep investing in roads and under funding public transport. Whereas Europe took a different approach. Some UK cities have "park and ride" schemes where you parks on the outskirts and get a cheap bus into the city. Buses will have their own dedicated lanes too so aren't subject to congestion. Some of these cities even go as far as pedestrianizing chunks of the city center so the only way to access it is via subway, bus, tram or bicycle.
The benefits of improving public transport isn't just reducing congestion either. You improve the transport for the vulnerable (elderly, poor, etc), you improve the air quality in the city, you improve road safety. It's better for the environment, it's better for peoples health, it's better for moving people around. But it requires a cultural shift to happen.
> Then both in terms of any arbitrary area in the US or any arbitrary city in the US, it's unusually dense (much more dense than the mean density.)
I haven’t visited DC so I’ll have to take your word for it. But it should be noted that I can’t find anything online that supports yours assessment of DC being unusually dense.
And even if it is, that just makes a stronger case for the need of better public transport services.
> Many places in the US have these and both DC and the suburbs around it are full of them.
I’m sure they are but having a park and ride scheme is only of benefit if you invest in public transport, which, by your own admission, DC doesn’t.
It is. But the problem is that the US is about 80-100 years behind Europe in this.
Personal economies are literally built on the idea of driving, it will be painful to solve that, but unfortunately it’s necessary to solve it otherwise you end up losing enormous amounts of your life to traffic and the infrastructure cost grows exponentially.
America is simply too big for public transit to replace cars to any great extent.
There's an old cliche that goes something like, "In America, people think 100 years is a long time. In Europe, people think 100 kilometers is a long distance." It's pretty much spot on.
The comments pushing for urban densification and public transport are largely theoretical and abstract, while your comment is personal and subjective.
To all those thinking about is as 'policy' - you have to solve ways for making the subjective experience actually better if people are going to go for it.
> Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge.
Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially.
One of the clear downsides to transit oriented cities is that you do need to pay attention to transit access when renting. A unit being “luxury” is no guarantee that it’s in a convenient place for transit, nor that the trip will be short.
> Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up
I find the need to make commute time productive quite an odd but common impulse. How about just making your commute suck less? Reading a book is better than driving in traffic.
> I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit.
Again, experience varies. For a lot of people it would be cheaper to abandon the car and pay for deliveries when necessary.
Regardless, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you relegate your car trips to just when you need bulk goods, that is far more efficient than the current habit of using a car fo every single trip.
> Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places.
We could, but we’ve built our infrastructure with the opposite assumption in mind. Most other rich countries use a mix of regional rail, bus, and cars to solve this problem. The issue of “mass transit doesn’t go to the burbs, therefore I must use a car everywhere for everything” is an entirely self inflicted wound.
> Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent
Maybe we could solve that problem instead? Because that seems like a rather silly rationale for designing a transit system around.
Also, it’s not like all car drivers are sober. In fact, a drunk driver is almost certainly a far bigger risk to your safety than a belligerent drunk on the train.
> I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it.
It’s almost like I’m arguing that we should make public transit more convenient than using a car for urban transit or something.
> Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially.
I got a taxi from Gare du Nord to a hotel on Champs Eleyse this evening -- took about 40 minutes to go 2 miles. That's ridiculous, but it's apparently a thing.
Duh? I wasn't literally suggesting that GP walk from a hotel; baggage was obviously implied by the context. I'm just commenting on how taking a taxi on that route is less time and speed efficient than walking.
Obviously a bus would be a better choice, or a train depending on geography. They handle baggage just fine.
A lot of people don’t like public transit for several major reasons:
1. It takes a lot longer to get to your destination even accounting for traffic.
2. The potential for harassment based on your gender or race.
3. The potential for sexual assault.
4. The potential for violence.
Unfortunately, Western society at large is not collective and conformist like the one in Japan, which would heavily mitigate 2 out of the 4 problems stated above. Even then, Japan has a huge problem with harassment and sexual assault when it comes to female passengers.
I can’t speak for Canada, but in America the answer is always cars. Car based transit is wildly land inefficient, and the main reason why all car based cities hit their limit at the same time.
In particular there are two huge shortcomings with cars in urban design:
1. Parking eats up a huge amount of space. Either you let that drive density way down (which means commutes get longer) or you build underground parking at exorbitant prices driving up rents. Even in the latter case the roads around housing ends up becoming an issue, limiting density far below what you’d expect in say, Paris on Chicago.
2. Car transit to a shared destination is almost comically inefficient, which is really noticeable when people try and commute via car to job centers. This wouldn’t be as bad if we restricted cars to what they’re good at, such as driving away from the city, but most American cities have the unique psychosis of demanding that transit into the city center be via car. This does not scale, and is why places with wildly different zoning laws can have equally hellish commutes.
The issue is not that we can’t build, we’re really good at adding more highway lanes, it’s more that we are monomaniacally focused on building the wrong things.