Yeah, the total direct monetary cost of maintaining low-density car-dependant cities is extremely high: road construction & maintenance, plumbing and electrical, parking lots taking valuable space that could be used for housing or workplaces, insurance for personal and commercial vehicles, maintenance and upkeep, gas, and probably many more I’ve missed.
And on top of all of that, the externalized monetary costs are also high: medical costs from all the deaths or injuries due to collisions (the stats are honestly depressing), medical costs due to less physical activity across the population, environmental damage, time wasted due to traffic, slower delivery times for long-haul trucks, and probably many more I’ve missed.
And on top of all of THAT the intangible costs are also high: isolation from the people and communities directly around you, less customers for small businesses that rely on foot traffic and have no parking space, increasing polarization between urban/suburban/rural populations, and probably many more I’ve missed.
Side note for the people that still really need cars in their lives (workers in rural areas, people living in suburbs, etc.), pushing for better transit and city planning will directly benefit you. If less people have cars: gas prices will be lower (supply and demand), road construction and upkeep will be cheaper, traffic will be better for you directly, and more. I always fear that pro-transit, pro-urban planning folks (me included) come off as dismissive. There are definitely people who will still need cars in their lives. The goal is to catch the many millions of people who could probably replace their car usage if transit systems and cities were built better.
People will always do what is easiest/best for them, we need to keep pushing towards systems that make sense.
Eh, I’m still not sold on transit (for people). If you live in a well designed city, everything should be right there in front of you, no more than steps away. The need to move further than your feet (or wheelchair, if that’s your thing) can reasonably allow is a straight up urban planning failure.
I can buy into the idea that, given our existing urban planning failures, it is better than nothing. As a bandaid, sure. But in the context of looking to build the world in which we want to live, why settle for bandaids? Why not go straight to building cities properly, thereby having no need to move people around with external propulsion at all?
Those in the rural parts are a harder problem, but it seems you think the car is still their best option. So, when does transit become useful?
Is it the freight transit infrastructure you see as needing improvement? It is true that, even with the best laid plans, we are not in a place to give that up yet. As interesting as vertical farms are, the technology just isn’t there yet to supplant food grown in rural areas, never mind things like lumber and other commodities that aren’t usually found in cities.
But when it comes to people, concentrating them close together is kind of a city’s whole deal. Why then pretend it is a rural area that requires travel over long distances?
I don’t anymore. There is no well designed city in Canada. It would be strange to continue subject myself to that. I live in a well designed small town. Everything I need to carry out life is available within a five minute walk. This is why I can’t figure out why the cities want to pretend to be rural areas. If you want to pretend that you are living on a farm, why not just live on a farm?
Good for you. I’m just surprised that as a former urbanite you are against public transit? I live in Montréal and can’t imagine the city without the metro.
I’m just surprised that as a former urbanite you are against public transit?
I’m against poorly designed cities. Once you have a well designed city, what would you need transit for?
About all we’ve been able to come up with is that one guy who wants to have lunch with his far away friend. Is that a good reason to build transit? If so, where do you draw the line? People are going to have friends all over the world. Do we need a train straight to Japan so I can connect with my friends who live there? I’d enjoy having lunch with them, sure.
I live in Montréal and can’t imagine the city without the metro.
Live amongst wannabe farmers and you’re going to need wannabe tractors, for sure. That’s outside of the discussion taking place here, though. We’re talking about working towards building cities for people who actually want to live in cities.
You are making no sense. What wannabe farmers are you talking about? We are talking about cities, not villages. Do you expect 40000 UQAM students to all live in the Quartier Latin? Do you expect 70000 UdeM students to all live in Cote de Neiges? What about their professors, the admin staff? Do you expect that the spouse of a professor would not need to have a job in a different part of town? What if you have a couple where one works at the Botanical Garden and the other at the National Library that are in different parts of the city?
Do you imagine that in an ideal city there are no big centralized institutions with thousands of people working there? Universities, hospitals, public services, cultural amenities (theaters, stadiums, museums, …), shopping districts, etc? Dense, livable cities cannot exist without public transit.
Are you talking about “cities” and imagining suburban sprawl?? Because you’re not making any sense.
Do you expect 40000 UQAM students to all live in the Quartier Latin?
Why? They say you will meet 10,000 people in your lifetime. What is to be gained by having the 30,000+ other people there?
What if you have a couple where one works at the Botanical Garden and the other at the National Library that are in different parts of the city?
What if they got jobs locally? You can’t have a local economy without local workers.
Dense, livable cities cannot exist without public transit.
There exists communities in this world with over 150,000 inhabitants in a square kilometre. What is the 150,001st person providing you that the 150,000 other people can’t?
By dense, are you imagining having a few acres of land to call your own? That’s fine, but that’s the rural life, not the city life. If you want to live rurally, why not live rurally?
I live in an urban part of my city, and I still have plenty of reasons to leave my 15-minute walkable area. A friend far to the north, a friend on the other side of the river, family on the outskirts. Restaurants I love all over. My office downtown. Theatres near the university. Festivals and expos spread out across all the parks and venues and other walkable areas. I can use my bike to access pretty well all of those things in the warmer months but transit (and sometimes, unfortunately, a car) keeps it accessible year round.
If you don’t see any reason to use transportation in a city, you either don’t appreciate the breadth of experiences that come with city life, or you live in a really boring city.
What if I have a friend on the other side of town and we are meeting up at a restaurant on their side of town? Or maybe there is a high speed rail connecting a few cities and now I can visit my parents the next city over by taking the train. Or maybe I didnt manage to find a job in the more walkable part of town (we cant fix cities over night) but the transit hub can connect me to my job. Or maybe I usually walk the 20 minutes but I injured my leg and its only 5 minutes of walking if I take the bus.
I think transit belongs within a well designed city and for intercity connections. Even with the best urban planning, some cities will just be too big to get everywhere in the city just by walking. Some people might be fine staying in their neighborhood but others will want to see other people, try different restaurants, shop different places.
Approximately nobody is going to live close enough to the workplace of everyone in the household who works.
Then who is going to be left to support the walkable economy? You need approximately every working person who lives within that community to be active in the walkable economy, else you will quickly find that services are no longer within walking distance.
Are you imagining that you’ll hop on the train to go work on the other side of town, while someone living on that side of town hops on the train to work in your neighbourhood? That is not a good reason for transit at all. That’s just silly.
You can’t expect people to change their housing to be right next to their work or change their work to be right next to their housing. You’re silly.
You can’t expect people to change at all.
Let’s be real, they aren’t going to magically start supporting transit either. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but we tried that already, building out a huge transit network in the 1800s, with streetcar systems lining the streets of the cities (not just Toronto) and the train connecting even the smallest of towns. We eventually ripped up almost all of it because nobody wanted to use it.
But as we’re discussing an invented dream world, why do you cling to the transit bandaid when we can simply design cities property?
Designing cities for transit is designing them properly. Designing them for only walking is a fairy tale thought up by a 12 year old with no real world experience. Look how well transit works in European and Asian cities. Vancouver is even halfway decent (tons of room to improve still).
Yeah, the total direct monetary cost of maintaining low-density car-dependant cities is extremely high: road construction & maintenance, plumbing and electrical, parking lots taking valuable space that could be used for housing or workplaces, insurance for personal and commercial vehicles, maintenance and upkeep, gas, and probably many more I’ve missed.
And on top of all of that, the externalized monetary costs are also high: medical costs from all the deaths or injuries due to collisions (the stats are honestly depressing), medical costs due to less physical activity across the population, environmental damage, time wasted due to traffic, slower delivery times for long-haul trucks, and probably many more I’ve missed.
And on top of all of THAT the intangible costs are also high: isolation from the people and communities directly around you, less customers for small businesses that rely on foot traffic and have no parking space, increasing polarization between urban/suburban/rural populations, and probably many more I’ve missed.
Side note for the people that still really need cars in their lives (workers in rural areas, people living in suburbs, etc.), pushing for better transit and city planning will directly benefit you. If less people have cars: gas prices will be lower (supply and demand), road construction and upkeep will be cheaper, traffic will be better for you directly, and more. I always fear that pro-transit, pro-urban planning folks (me included) come off as dismissive. There are definitely people who will still need cars in their lives. The goal is to catch the many millions of people who could probably replace their car usage if transit systems and cities were built better.
People will always do what is easiest/best for them, we need to keep pushing towards systems that make sense.
Eh, I’m still not sold on transit (for people). If you live in a well designed city, everything should be right there in front of you, no more than steps away. The need to move further than your feet (or wheelchair, if that’s your thing) can reasonably allow is a straight up urban planning failure.
I can buy into the idea that, given our existing urban planning failures, it is better than nothing. As a bandaid, sure. But in the context of looking to build the world in which we want to live, why settle for bandaids? Why not go straight to building cities properly, thereby having no need to move people around with external propulsion at all?
Those in the rural parts are a harder problem, but it seems you think the car is still their best option. So, when does transit become useful?
Is it the freight transit infrastructure you see as needing improvement? It is true that, even with the best laid plans, we are not in a place to give that up yet. As interesting as vertical farms are, the technology just isn’t there yet to supplant food grown in rural areas, never mind things like lumber and other commodities that aren’t usually found in cities.
But when it comes to people, concentrating them close together is kind of a city’s whole deal. Why then pretend it is a rural area that requires travel over long distances?
What city do you live in?
I don’t anymore. There is no well designed city in Canada. It would be strange to continue subject myself to that. I live in a well designed small town. Everything I need to carry out life is available within a five minute walk. This is why I can’t figure out why the cities want to pretend to be rural areas. If you want to pretend that you are living on a farm, why not just live on a farm?
Good for you. I’m just surprised that as a former urbanite you are against public transit? I live in Montréal and can’t imagine the city without the metro.
I’m against poorly designed cities. Once you have a well designed city, what would you need transit for?
About all we’ve been able to come up with is that one guy who wants to have lunch with his far away friend. Is that a good reason to build transit? If so, where do you draw the line? People are going to have friends all over the world. Do we need a train straight to Japan so I can connect with my friends who live there? I’d enjoy having lunch with them, sure.
Live amongst wannabe farmers and you’re going to need wannabe tractors, for sure. That’s outside of the discussion taking place here, though. We’re talking about working towards building cities for people who actually want to live in cities.
You are making no sense. What wannabe farmers are you talking about? We are talking about cities, not villages. Do you expect 40000 UQAM students to all live in the Quartier Latin? Do you expect 70000 UdeM students to all live in Cote de Neiges? What about their professors, the admin staff? Do you expect that the spouse of a professor would not need to have a job in a different part of town? What if you have a couple where one works at the Botanical Garden and the other at the National Library that are in different parts of the city?
Do you imagine that in an ideal city there are no big centralized institutions with thousands of people working there? Universities, hospitals, public services, cultural amenities (theaters, stadiums, museums, …), shopping districts, etc? Dense, livable cities cannot exist without public transit.
Are you talking about “cities” and imagining suburban sprawl?? Because you’re not making any sense.
Why? They say you will meet 10,000 people in your lifetime. What is to be gained by having the 30,000+ other people there?
What if they got jobs locally? You can’t have a local economy without local workers.
There exists communities in this world with over 150,000 inhabitants in a square kilometre. What is the 150,001st person providing you that the 150,000 other people can’t?
By dense, are you imagining having a few acres of land to call your own? That’s fine, but that’s the rural life, not the city life. If you want to live rurally, why not live rurally?
A UNIVERSITY
Honestly, you have no idea what you are talking about. You’re either a troll, a kid, or an idiot.
I live in an urban part of my city, and I still have plenty of reasons to leave my 15-minute walkable area. A friend far to the north, a friend on the other side of the river, family on the outskirts. Restaurants I love all over. My office downtown. Theatres near the university. Festivals and expos spread out across all the parks and venues and other walkable areas. I can use my bike to access pretty well all of those things in the warmer months but transit (and sometimes, unfortunately, a car) keeps it accessible year round.
If you don’t see any reason to use transportation in a city, you either don’t appreciate the breadth of experiences that come with city life, or you live in a really boring city.
What if I have a friend on the other side of town and we are meeting up at a restaurant on their side of town? Or maybe there is a high speed rail connecting a few cities and now I can visit my parents the next city over by taking the train. Or maybe I didnt manage to find a job in the more walkable part of town (we cant fix cities over night) but the transit hub can connect me to my job. Or maybe I usually walk the 20 minutes but I injured my leg and its only 5 minutes of walking if I take the bus.
I think transit belongs within a well designed city and for intercity connections. Even with the best urban planning, some cities will just be too big to get everywhere in the city just by walking. Some people might be fine staying in their neighborhood but others will want to see other people, try different restaurants, shop different places.
I would add people who change jobs and households with more than one worker.
Nobody is going to move every time they change jobs.
Approximately nobody is going to live close enough to the workplace of everyone in the household who works.
Then who is going to be left to support the walkable economy? You need approximately every working person who lives within that community to be active in the walkable economy, else you will quickly find that services are no longer within walking distance.
Are you imagining that you’ll hop on the train to go work on the other side of town, while someone living on that side of town hops on the train to work in your neighbourhood? That is not a good reason for transit at all. That’s just silly.
I work in construction. Do you expect me to move next to a new project every 3 years? What about people who work on multiple projects a day?
You can’t expect people to change their housing to be right next to their work or change their work to be right next to their housing. You’re silly.
You can’t expect people to change at all.
Let’s be real, they aren’t going to magically start supporting transit either. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but we tried that already, building out a huge transit network in the 1800s, with streetcar systems lining the streets of the cities (not just Toronto) and the train connecting even the smallest of towns. We eventually ripped up almost all of it because nobody wanted to use it.
But as we’re discussing an invented dream world, why do you cling to the transit bandaid when we can simply design cities property?
Designing cities for transit is designing them properly. Designing them for only walking is a fairy tale thought up by a 12 year old with no real world experience. Look how well transit works in European and Asian cities. Vancouver is even halfway decent (tons of room to improve still).