It’s amazing how many downvotes pointing this out gets. People have quite the kneejerk reaction when the downsides of car transit are pointed out to them.
It’s a lazy slogan that gets us nowhere. I live in NYC and we’ve built three brand new subway stations in the last fifty years.
It’s not just a matter of people’s preferences for cars, it’s not possible to build a non car city anymore due to pathologies that have nothing to do with “car culture”.
The number one issue is that we’ve allowed too many people and interest groups to effectively bring any major project to a halt. This is not some inherent feature of democracy either, you can have a democracy where the majority gets to do things. We just don’t have one of those in the US, or Canada it sounds like.
“Cars are land inefficient” isn’t a slogan, it’s literal fact.
> I live in NYC and we’ve built three brand new subway stations in the last fifty years
Ah, the stereotype of New Yorkers not paying attention to other cities strikes again! Yes, New York has its own problems, but for the vast majority of other cities GP’s comment is true. New York is one of the very few exception cases in the US.
> The number one issue is that we’ve allowed too many people and interest groups to effectively bring any major project to a halt. This is not some inherent feature of democracy either, you can have a democracy where the majority gets to do things. We just don’t have one of those in the US, or Canada it sounds like.
What if I told you that for a lot of transit activists, undemocratic processes that prioritize the needs of drivers over the rest of society is car culture?
Environmental impact reviews are car culture? Public notice and comment processes are car culture? Kafkaesque public bidding processes are car culture? Decade long litigation needed to exercise eminent domain is car culture? Union work rules are car culture?
For the most part, yes. These items are so inherent in public works projects that it is inconceivable that they wouldn’t exist. But try to build or expand a road or parking lot and none of these exist. The culture is literally biased toward the relatively effortless expansion of car use and relatively challenging expansion of anything else. This duality is car culture.
The big dig is actually a pretty phenomenal example of what we're talking about. It was a dumb project that was extremely expensive, incapable of fixing the problems it was supposed to fix, highly disruptive to locals, and it still got built.
Meanwhile complaints from a tiny number of affected people completely scuppered the high speed rail planned between Los Angeles and San Francisco before any track got laid.
Governments pull out the stops to complete car-centric infrastructure even over the loud complaints of the populace, but flinch the moment there is any push back against any public transit. Heck, trading on street parking for a bike lane is often a herculean effort.
Oh, and there's this little gem about the Big Dig "As of 2021, promised projects to extend the Green Line beyond Lechmere, to connect the Red and Blue subway lines, and to restore the Green Line streetcar service to the Arborway in Jamaica Plain have not been completed. Construction of the extension beyond Lechmere has begun.[20] The Red and Blue subway line connection underwent initial design,[21] but no funding has been designated for the project. The Arborway Line restoration has been abandoned, following a final court decision in 2011.[22]".
So once again, governments promised the moon about public transit and then did a rug pull once the highways were done. They in fact used this as an opportunity to destroy existing streetcar service. Exactly what we've been talking about.
> Or the new Kosciuszko Bridge?
Completed in 3 years. Again, we are really capable of building stuff, so long as that stuff supports cars.
You wrote: <<built three brand new subway stations in the last fifty years>>
That sounds pithy, but it overlooks all the maintenance work done on the system. Have you ever looked at pictures from the NYC subway in the 1970s? It was hell. (You can Google it.) My father lived in NYC in the 1970s and said the subway was like the "Fourth World" (vis-a-via first/second/third world!).
Also, how about PATH, Metro North, NJT, LIRR, AirTrain JFK, or AirTrain Newark? These are not the NYC subway, but they have also seen major upgrades in the last 50 years.
Finally, I tried to Google for list of stations opened from 1972. It could not find a concise list. I'm pretty sure it is more than three, just for NYC subway.
Also, you don’t need to add a ton of subway stations when you already have an extensive network. 3 stations in 50 years would be a much worse outcome in say, Cincinnati.
That just made me appreciate how much greater value still might be unlocked by simply building as few as 3 stations in metro areas that don't currently have any at all, and then expanding from there. That would be an interesting study if it hasn't been done: what is the MVP of underground subway networks? How many stations do you need for a given area is probably a budgetary concern as much as a passenger capacity concern.
Have any metro areas built entirely new subways where there were none before in recent times? I know a lot of places are looking at light rail too, so have there been any greenfield light rail deployments in USA either?
It seems like a uniquely American problem, which leads me to believe that there just isn't political will to overcome the massive car lobby in most places, which is all the more reason to advocate for it, in my view.
"Have any metro areas built entirely new subways where there were none before in recent times?" China is the easiest one to study. The number of kilometers of heavy rail metro lines built since the year 2000 is simply mindboggling. (Specifically, I am not talking about high-speed train lines.) In the same two decade time range, look at Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, and Singapore. I guess multiple systems have doubled or tripled in size (length or stations). Remember that Korea has two major systems: Seoul and Busan; and Taiwan has Taipei and Kaosiung.
I am not an urban planner but the north-south & east-west initial two-line style seems very popular. In my experience, the trick to quickly increasing ridership on new lines is closely coordinate with private developers. Be transparent about line planning, then team-up with private developers who can build (large) residential or office buildings with subway entrances in their basement. I've never seen a city do it better than Tokyo. My assumption is that the Elizabeth Line in London will spur similarly spectacular levels of redevelopment.
Light rail: Silicon Valley opened their system in Dec 1987.
About "unlocking value": Two massive upgrades come to mind. East Side Access in Manhattan will allow LIRR trains to enter Grand Central Station. The construction photos online are like something from science fiction. And look at last 30 years of Tokyo metro tightly integrating with private suburban rail lines where trains enter same station, but opposite sides of same platform. Everything is timed to the minute, so transfers are seamless.
> Have any metro areas built entirely new subways where there were none before in recent times?
None that I can think of in the US, but Madrid is generally pointed to as the stellar example of rapid and cheap subway expansion. They added an unbelievable amount of track and stations at really low cost.
> Between 1995 and 2007, the Spanish capital swiftly and cost-effectively upgraded its subway system, building more than 150 new stations over 120 miles at costs far below New York City rates. First, in just four years, Madrid designed, constructed, and opened 39 new metro stations and laid 35 miles of rail, 23.5 miles of which required new tunneling. The expansion was unprecedented for its low costs (about $65 million per mile of rail) and speed. Then, between 2000 and 2003, Madrid built Metro Sur, a 28-station, 25-mile circular subway line that connects the densely populated municipalities south of the city. Simultaneously, Madrid completed a direct metro line from the city’s central business district to its airport, now a 12-minute train ride away. Finally, between 2004 and 2007, commuters in the Madrid region gained an additional 80 new metro and light-rail stations, at a cost of $6 billion.
Just like high speed rail, this was less of a revolution in public works, and more a series of unglamorous minor improvements that added up to something greater than the sum of its parts. The government aimed for speed above all else, with the understanding that delays and financial uncertainty are the doom of any large project. So they would hire multiple teams to bore tunnels at once, and pit them in friendly competitions to bore faster. They negotiated with local land and business owners over more interruptions over a shorter period of time to reduce lawsuits (a big issue in NYC subway expansion), and they designed all the stations to be modular so that they wouldn't waste a ton of time designing and constructing bespoke stations. The sum is that they got it done really fast and really cheap.
Ironically, it looks a bit like the way that we construct our highways.
I agree it is car culture... but I feel that too often people treat it similar to self-driving-car predictions.
Sure, we have a good option for a significant majority of the time. But those many edge cases are non-trivial to resolve so a large majority of people will keep their cars for simple practicality sake.
