No, it can be express buses with 100% dedicated bus lanes and fewer bus stops. Of course, that will require removing some standard lanes and converting them into said dedicated bus lanes.
> But in a typical American city, everything is SO spread out that it just won't work: it's too far for most people to walk to the station, having to drive to the station just adds more overhead plus having to deal with traffic with everyone else going to/from the station and looking for parking, etc.
This can be solved with multi-modal traffic with a mix of bikes and buses. This again will require removing standard lanes and converting them into protected bike lanes, and while that's happening and considering the width of the average lane, a green should with trees that separates the road from the bike lane and from the newly added sidewalk.
> Honestly, I don't really see a solution; too many Americans think this kind of thing is anathema anyway, so the political will to make any of these ideas a reality is unlikely to materialize.
However this is what kills any of these proposals, in practice :-)
I think "fast" is subjective. Depending on city size, car culture, etc. Buses with dedicated lanes could be pretty fast. I suppose what I should say is, comprehensive public transit. And maybe not always out to the rural areas until we have good connections to the suburban hubs.
As far as economics, much like Agriculture, Housing and Healthcare the economics will never really work out. They will run at a deficit and require government subsidies because they are necessities.
Often with these things its a vicious cycle.
People don't use Public Transit --> Because its slow and doesn't cover everywhere --> Because adding stops and more vehicles costs money --> And there's not enough money to improve it --> Because People don't use public transit --> ... repeat
If we improve transit, make it more convenient than driving (banning cars in certain metropolitan areas, making it cheaper than gasoline, etc.) Then likely over years the US could transition.
Though I agree, tis a pipe dream at this time in history.
I wonder if frequency and hours get overlooked in these discussions. In my experiences one of the things that made the NYC subway more enjoyable than other systems is that the trains came frequently (so I didn't have to schedule when I got to the station and if I missed a train it wasn't a big deal) and they ran 24 hours a day (so I could do things like go to a bar and not have to worry about getting home).
I used to live in a smaller city, the busses would come every 15 - 30min and then after midnight every 1hr. It was hard to rely on, if you miss a bus you could miss an appointment, after bar close, you had to rely on Taxi and Uber.
Now I live in a city where buses/trams come every 9 and subways come every 4 during peak hours. I don't even own a car anymore!
Dedicated bus lanes would help I'm sure, but I still don't see how this could ever be "fast" when buses still have to stop at intersections for red lights. It's what makes driving in a denser city so slow. Trains and subways don't have this problem.
>They will run at a deficit and require government subsidies because they are necessities.
Not true. The trains in Japan aren't subsidized and run at a profit from ridership. You could argue that they got some "unfair" advantages in their initial funding for construction, but as it stands today for ongoing operations, they don't need subsidies; they generate a profit for their owners. Moreover, the companies running many of the trains are really real estate companies: they own big stations in certain places, and then build big complexes around those stations. Build it and they will come.
>banning cars in certain metropolitan areas
The biggest thing to do is simply make it horribly inconvenient to use a car, by not having any free parking. If there's no place to park except some extremely expensive parking lots that might be a longish walk from your destination, people won't drive.
There are lower volume fast public transport mechanisms; BRTs (ie bus systems with largely fully segregated lanes) or high quality standard bus systems with partially segregated lanes. Somewhere in between are trams.
for example compare stuttgart in germany with los angeles.
stuttgart has half a million inhabitants. LA has 4 million. both cities have a very similar population density of 3000 people per sqkm. stuttgart has 350km of rail and about 300 stations. los angeles has 175km of rail with about 100 stations.
now, i don't know how much the stuttgart network extends beyond the city. i only looked at the city rail, and ignored regional trains. but i didn't spend much time to research, so i am going to guess on the safe side that it's city rail network serves 1 million people.
for LA to compete with that it would need 1400km of rail with 1200 stations. so, it could be 10 times as large.
another comparison, vienna: 2million people, 4500 per sqkm. 1100 stations on 250km. most the stations are light rail, which is very dense.
in other words, the population density argument is nonsense. there are plenty of cities with a population density of 3000 people or more per sqkm. and none have public transport comparable to european cities.
the problem is not density. the problem is how many people are willing to use public transportion instead of cars.
if you can motivate more people to use public transport, then you can grow the infrastructure.
this is something that will only change slowly as public transportation improves. if you can motivate more people to use public transport, it will grow. even european cities have not reached the end yet, and many cities are investing in more rail.
Stop calling them cities then! They're just endless suburbs and strip malls, which makes for a really really large town. If they're not dense enough to do what cities do, they're not cities.
Can't be done in North America. "Fast public transit" means subways (or trains on elevated tracks), and these are really expensive to build and maintain, so the economics don't work out unless you have a lot of ridership, and that only works if you have high enough density. So in Tokyo, it works great because the density is very high and ridership is enormous, so the city can afford hundreds of subway stations with trains running every 3-5 minutes. But in a typical American city, everything is SO spread out that it just won't work: it's too far for most people to walk to the station, having to drive to the station just adds more overhead plus having to deal with traffic with everyone else going to/from the station and looking for parking, etc. Of course, you could try a model where developers build huge, dense, mixed-use developments at the stations, but that's pretty hard to get done when all that land is already owned, and there's NIMBY zoning laws preventing such housing developments anyway: each such station would be a huge, expensive, long political fight.
Honestly, I don't really see a solution; too many Americans think this kind of thing is anathema anyway, so the political will to make any of these ideas a reality is unlikely to materialize.