old cities: built dense for walking, because cars didn't exist.

new cities: built dense for walking and public transit because private car ownership isn't that common in China

20th century USA cities: built for cars. Sprawl makes public transit too expensive because it requires many lines with low ridership. Wide roads, long distances, and cars flying around everywhere makes walking scary. Driving becomes the only attractive mode of transportation.

The problem is deeply embedded in the urban layout and the culture. It will take decades of destruction & rebuilding, plus a huge cultural shift, before USA cities can be fixed.

This isn't quite true for many of the big cities of interest. There was an active high-modernist effort in the ~70s to destroy the walkable, transitable, livable parts of many American cities and cut freeways across them like big ugly neighborhood-destroying scars.

Even transit wastelands like LA had an actual urban core (that they're now rebuilding), as well as a relatively extensive network of streetcars.

Los Angeles area had very advanced light railway system including Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric Railway Company up until 1960s.

Check the map of Pacific Electric Railway Company, and you can see a railway running on the beach from Hermosa Beach up to Santa Monica. The famous Venice Beach Bike Path was originally what the Pacific Electric Railway Company rail used to be. Can you imagine light rails ON the beach in SoCal?

All the rails were torn up after lobbying by oil/tire companies. :(

I've heard that story plenty of times, but I have my doubts, which increase over time. I think people simply didn't like streetcars once buses were available. I think streetcars were seen as a horrible, dangerous, inconvenient technology with massive infrastructure costs.

The first crack in my belief was a comment by a former Baltimore fire chief (I think) who had worked as a streetcar and bus driver earlier. He talked about how scary it was to operate a streetcar with its very poor braking, and how during the transition period every operator was jumping at the chance to become a bus driver.

I'm sure there's a grain of truth in there, about lobbying - but was it really the decisive factor? Could Amazon lobby and get Ebay shut down? Did landline phones fade away because of lobbying from the cellular industry?

Streetcars were a very cool idea but unfortunately motor buses were better in every objective way.

>I've heard that story plenty of times, but I have my doubts,

It's not a story, it's a goddamn historical fact[1].

>I'm sure there's a grain of truth in there, about lobbying - but was it really the decisive factor?

Of course not just lobbying, but also immense loads of corruption and monopoly practices[1].

>Streetcars were a very cool idea but unfortunately motor buses were better in every objective way.

Yeah, that's why streetcars in Europe were all replaced by buses just like the were in the US, and nobody builds "light rail" (read: streetcar systems) anymore anywhere.

Oh wait, exactly the opposite is true, because, well, street cars work, and[1].

The real reason you don't see streetcars is that the benefits of a public transit system are externalities[2], and so they must be funded by the government.

Streetcars were never simply not funded by the government in the way highways are funded -- because of things like [1] -- and so they were destroyed by companies that made [1] happen.

You're welcome.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Let me address the externalities idea first:

> The real reason you don't see streetcars is that the benefits of a public transit system are externalities[2], and so they must be funded by the government.

I don't follow your logic here. Seems like two different issues. First, should transit be subsidized based on positive externalities. Second, which technology will best deliver that transit. Are these issues coupled somehow? I think they are independent.

In the US, we often have government-operated buses that are heavily subsidized. If streetcars were a better option, the transportation authority could use them.Whether subsidized or not, whether public or private, you presumably have a decision maker looking to deliver transit of a certain grade at the lowest cost.

(This page gives a sense of the subsidy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)

So if all the historical rails and overhead wires were still intact, I'm guessing that today's transit authorities would make the same decision as the transit companies did back in the day, which is switch over to motor buses and either dismantle or neglect the expensive infrastructure.

Of course there would be a few exceptions; very heavily used routes, and places where non-economic reasons would intervene.

Now the wikipedia page you linked presents a much more nuanced view than what you advocated. In fact it contains a lot to support my skepticism, particularly under "Other Factors" and "Counterarguments". For instance:

> "GM Killed the Red cars in Los Angeles".[84] Pacific Electric Railway (which operated the 'red cars') was hemorrhaging routes as traffic congestion worsened with growing car ownership levels after the end of World War II.[88]

And most tellingly:

> GM's alleged conspiracy extended to only about 10% of American transit systems

So the other 90% shut down the street car lines without any arm twisting from GM. Sounds like all system operators saw the same economic picture.

I'm not wedded to my theory (change driven by evolving technology) but I'm even more skeptical of your theory (change driven by conspiracy). ~

The podcast 99% Invisible had a story on "The Great Red Car Conspiracy" which covers this. As with most issues, it looks like it is more complex (and interesting) than first appears.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-...

> I'm sure there's a grain of truth in there, about lobbying - but was it really the decisive factor? Could Amazon lobby and get Ebay shut down? Did landline phones fade away because of lobbying from the cellular industry?

Streetcar companies were bought up by GM proxy companies and dismantled. Lobbying had nothing to do with it.

I mean this is covered in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". GM also tried to destroy Toon Town.

> cut freeways across them like big ugly neighborhood-destroying scars.

Not like.

The goal was to destroy neighborhoods--mostly lower socio-economic areas in order to displace the undesirable people away from land that was beginning to appreciate in value.

Freeways are located in very specific spots--close enough to the rich areas to be useful but far enough into the poor areas in order to minimize cost/maximize displacement.

The core of san francisco, probably 30% of the city's 49 sq mile landmass, and where 60%+ of the population lives, was built before cars existed. Most of SF was a walking/horse city, and then a walking/streetcar/cablecar city.

It's no coincidence that SF is the only part of the Bay Area where it's truly viable to live without a car.

True, alongside downtown Berkeley, Oakland, and Palo Alto (maybe a few others)

Nonetheless, mass transit in SF is still pretty crappy. Muni is notoriously unreliable and slow (it's often faster to jog than take Muni -- to say nothing of biking).

> Palo Alto

As someone who lived in Palo Alto for almost a year without a car... there is so much to be desired for public transit. Outside of the few blocks near University, it quickly becomes a walking wasteland. My bike, on the other-hand, was a divine gift from the heaven and, when combined with CalTrain, enabled a fairly large world-bubble.

Also add:

- years of racism (then: buses are only for white people. now: buses are only for poor people of color, and thus should not be funded.)

- a history of destruction happening primarily in neighbourhoods of ethnic minorities (e.g. the razing of SoMa in the 80s)

Low Private car ownership isnt a cultural thing in China, it's qutie heavily regulated and coming from above. e.g. getting a license plate takes ages, at certain days only certain license plates can drive.

Years too long also.

We'll have self driving cars long before we could restructure many of our cities to have effective public transit.

There are many cities that do certain things better than others, but what I don't understand is that most local politicians don't travel there and learn from how others govern their cities and don't accept their own problems have been solved elsewhere.

Follow SF politics for a couple of years, and you'll see that the problem isn't lack of technocratic solutions, it's politics (with some exceptions that tend to be problems larger than a single city's scope). A supervisor can go tour every functional city in the world and when they came back, they wouldn't be any more effective, because knowledge of how to fix things wasn't the blocker.

Chicken and egg problem. You can’t have a good transport system if people don’t use it (too expensive) and people won’t use it unless it’s good. Was in San Francisco recently and it really is mostly impressively bad, but one of the major sources of badness is that it’s mostly pretty infrequent. Presumably because people don’t use it.

Edit: One thing they could fix, easily; unified, visitor accessible, payment system. And more realtime bus information. Those are simple things that they could borrow off any decent-sized European city.

Further edit: looks like the Clipper card is easier to get than I thought. Googled before I went, but must have gotten outdated information.

I thought the same (bad transit, people don't use it, it becomes even worse), but after no longer being able to ride my bike, I realized that many buses and Muni trains are packed at least at rush hour. People do use public transit in SF, so its sorry state is even more of a shame.

My pet theory: the people who use it (immigrants, environmentalists, folks new to town) are not the people who make funding decisions ("san francisco natives").

I'm not sure why you got the impression otherwise, but people do use transit in SF, a lot. The 38 Geary is so packed that you frequently can't even get on at major stops like Powell during rush hour.

> visitor accessible, payment system. And more realtime bus information

These do exist: purchasing fares via the Muni app is pretty straightforward and services like nextmuni.com and similar apps can tell you when the next bus is coming.

Frequency is definitely subpar though. When I first came to SF, I was supposed to meet with a job interviewer for dinner in a place at mission. The subway train took 30 minutes to show up!

I used the Muni app to buy fares; it demanded a US zip code, and crashed repeatedly.

Muni data is not at all accurate.

The nextmuni predictions are pretty good for buses that are already running on the route. The predictions break down as soon as it has to estimate when the next driver is going to actually start the route.

It's accurate insofar as bus drivers check the time as they drive. This is about as accurate as it is in Toronto, which I consider to have a good public transit system. YMMV

Schedules aren't accurate, but I find neztmuni to be accurate about 90% of the time. It's the only reason non-metro Muni is even usable for me.

The way I handle this in the Bay Area is keep an extra autoload Clipper card for any guests that are coming to visit. hand it off to them when they get here. It's pretty easy to let them know how much to settle up for when they depart.

I'm not sure how most visitors to the bay get in but two desks at SFO and OAK across from baggage claim seem like a good start to implement the same kind of solution.

Or, for an ethical gray-area solution if your guest has only a one way trip (like to the airport): give them a Clipper card with some minimal ($2) balance. They should be able to go to their destination regardless of the fare. The card’s balance will go negative, but they can just throw it away.

The BART gates won't let you out if you don't have enough money on a ticket, so you'd have to jump the gate or add funds at a kiosk (think the same applies for cards, too).

Doesn't the clipper card allow you to use one payment system for caltrain, bart, and muni? I'm not sure if SamTrans busses are included.

Huh, I googled before and got the idea you had to get it by post or something. Looks like that’s outdated information.

Clipper cards work on SamTrans buses too.

And they work on all the ferries I have taken recently. Other than the fact that it's one person per Clipper Card, they're great.

Clipper cards even get you a discount on the new Richmond ferry.

The hard part is how to make it work politically. I don't know if any place has really done it in an environment that was mostly built out already. Manhattan used to have 700k more residents than it does now, and that was when a lot of the island was still farmland - people spread out with the trains. Once you're out of space it's very difficult to develop transit, because that would probably mean a homeowner doesn't get what they want.

Privatize it and stop letting local politics strangle it

https://www.econlib.org/no-more-public-mass-transit-infrastr...

> In Japan, being in the railway business means being in the real estate business, explained Egon Terplan, SPUR’s regional planning director, at Thursday afternoon’s panel discussion about what the Bay Area can learn from Japanese transit station area development. “They are able to capture the value of the train stations they are building and beyond. One third of the revenue is from retail, services, hotels.”

> That’s because rather than contracting out the business opportunities on the real estate around their stations, they own it all–everything from department stores to vending machines on the platforms. That has turned Japan’s six passenger railway companies–Hokkaido Railway Company, East Japan Railway Company, Central Japan Railway Company, West Japan Railway Company, Shikoku Railway Company, and Kyushu Railway Company–into hugely profitable corporations.

> “These are companies listed on the stock exchange; they make money,” said Terplan. They also, together, carry nearly a third of the world’s railway passengers.

> In Japan, the profit motive of real estate, retail, and office space–in addition to the trains–becomes a bit of a feedback loop. The Japanese railway companies want to maximize the value they derive from space around the stations. So transit oriented development isn’t just about housing. In Japan, it includes department stores, office buildings, shops, and hotels, and housing on different levels directly above and below the stations.

Regulation is a serious problem in "free market" USA. Subway construction is 7x the cost in NYC than Paris because of land and labor regulations. It's out of control, nobody cares because most just blame some other thing like funding being insufficient when that's not really the case. Instead they'll try to get more from the gas tax instead of fixing the root problem.

It's an interesting concept that I am not sure will work in the North American context. You see far greater numbers of conglomerates that own multiple businesses in Asia than in North America/Europe. North American business schools are all about focusing on one business and one industry.

I don't know the West coast very well, so I'm curious -- are there any (smaller) cities there where you can actually get by without a car to do grocery shopping, commute to one's office (assuming it's in the same town/city), etc.? I'm thinking something comparable to Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Berlin, where you can get by with a bike and/or subway, or often just walking. Portland? Seattle?

I've visited Silicon Valley and SF, and I remember it as being really pedestrian-unfriendly. A friend of mine has a story about visiting San Jose without a car, and not being able to go to a bookstore because, while the map showed it as being a block away and he could clearly see it, there was no way to reach it on foot from where he was.

Even within the Larger Bay Area there is plenty of smaller cities with a well developed and prolific downtowns that have startups, retail, supermarkets, bars and restaurants all within walking distance of a rail system connecting you to SF: Mountain View, Oakland, Redwood City or where I live - San Mateo. My family and I have been a 1-car household for more than a decade and mostly walk everywhere including a train station for a 25min ride to SF

I've only visited Silicon Valley once, so my impression may be skewed, but to me it came across as this incredibly bland, entangled sprawl of anonymous strip malls, with each "city" indistinguishable from the next.

To some extent these cities seemed walkable, but in practice everyone has a car, and most endeavours have you end up on the highway. Everyone seems to complain about either traffic or about the awfulness of BART, but maybe that's HN.

I did love SF itself, though it seems to be in a similar situation as NYC, nestled deep within this huge web of urban sprawl that you have to punch through in order to get out into the wilderness.

Bay Area is a large metropolitan area, so yes, there are places like what you described.

There are also great cities with walkable downtowns often right next to a train station. You can choose to live close to these areas and enjoy walkability, or live a bit further and drive everywhere. There are definitely choices

I have lived in San Francisco since 2000 and have never owned a car. Transit varies a lot by neighborhood, but I think there are plenty of places to live and get by with just transit and/or a bicycle.

Yep - Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver BC all fit into this "don't need a car, just take the subway or walk" camp. According to a friend that lives there, Bellingham "almost kinda counts" for this category, too, but I haven't been to confirm/deny.

There's cases where Car2Go/etc. are useful out this way, but generally I don't use a car often (having lived in Seattle and Vancouver BC since coming to the PNW).

Edit: I should clarify. You can't just plop down anywhere - if you live up at the top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, you're gonna have a rougher commute to downtown than someone who lives in, say, Columbia City near the light rail line. Much like Chicago or NYC, your proximity to high-frequency transit corridors will greatly decrease your stress levels.

Hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans shop from local markets and commute to work downtown every day. A single bus line has over 50K riders every day. I would guess 10’s of thousands commute to work by bike within sf.

This place is not Dallas.

Vancouver, BC is probably the easiest city on the West Coast to manage without a car. The downtown core is very walkable, and there is reasonable public transit through most of the greater metro area. There's a high proportion of residential buildings downtown, and many have pretty empty parking lots as cars aren't necessary for a lot of people most of the time, and there are a number of competing car share services the rest of the time.

Vancouver ticks a lot of boxes, but it's a bit cold, unfortunately.

Those of us living in the frozen wasteland that is winter in the rest of Canada can definitely not relate!

It's possible on the West Coast, and actually probably easier to do in bigger cities. However you need to be particular about where you live and work, which usually involves paying more money. It also becomes much harder if you have a significant other and kids.

Sure. Looking for specific examples, though!

Currently residing in NYC and pretty unhappy about the difficulty of getting out in nature. My ideal town is on the water; not too big; good public transportation; flat enough for biking; forests, mountains and lakes easily reachable by bike/walking/subway; dense urban core for apartment living or small house; decent downtown with some brand name shopping; temperate climate. Plus points for abundant access to public EV charges.

My home town is Oslo, Norway, which ticks all the boxes except the climate one, which always bugged me when I was living there. The lack of daylight and sun is something of a dealbreaker.

Curious what the situation is elsewhere. I've heard good things about Denver and Raleigh, for example, though those aren't so temperate either.

Raleigh’s a pretty nice area, but not remotely reasonable for public transit except on very specific (and limited) corridors.

Raleigh has a small downtown area that is walkable. I’m there a number of times a year and my hotel is a few blocks from my office. There are some downtown condos. I doubt any professionals live downtown without a car.

I know ~one. It’s not common, and in general not very feasible.

You are looking for San Francisco

Isn't SF/Bay Area notorious for its terrible traffic? My impression is that while it's easier, distance-wise, to get out of SF into nature than NYC, it's in a similar spot in terms of rush-hour traffic.

Getting out into nature from SF without a car is a little tricky. I still miss being able to take a train out into the countryside, walk in the hills finishing at a pub before taking a train home...

There is a ton of incredible nature within SF itself. Like Presidio and Crissy Field and whole Golden Gate recreational area and Ocean beach

How is San Jose "pedestrian-unfriendly"? You can walk anywhere but on freeways. You just have to dodge assholes on scooters now and then.

As to your first question, you can live without a car anywhere if you choose to live near work and other frequent destinations.

I have lived in San Francisco for 15 years with no car, both at the bottom of the nation's income brackets and near the top.

Some people just don't want to mix with "normal" people and a lot of San Franciscans wish they would fucking leave.

If you're ever in London, I recommend visiting the Museum of Transport in Covent Garden to understand how London's transit system developed.

Singapore would be easy to monetize, some of the lines are run as for-profit (it's also one of the cheapest systems around)

This. Let transit be a business and fix the incentives.

> would be to figure out why cities with good public transit / shared transit infrastructure managed to build them

Few NIMBYs and a less-car-focused mentality which is typical of the US.