Re:The demise of America's once-mighty streetcars
by bane on Friday May 08, 2015 @11:05AM
(#9512073)
One thing to always keep in mind in U.S. to European city comparisons is that U.S. cities (for better or worse) are more spread out and less dense.
Bucharest is both smaller (~250km^2 vs. 700km^2) and more dense (8,260/km^2 vs 1,065/km^2) than Austin.
It's simply less cost effective to build a system in Austin than in Bucharest. I would imagine that a citizen of Bucharest, transported to Austin, would be surprised that some parts of the city are even considered "city" since it's so low density.
While city areas are somewhat arbitrary, it does impact the raising of capital to support building these systems.
Still, we're slowly relearning lessons our European friends learned a long time ago (and ones that we forgot), new urbanism, smart cities, etc. are all starting to bring people back into city centers, which makes building these kinds of systems more cost effective (and more logical).
Keep in mind that we have buses, trolleybuses and subway here, as well, and the metropolitan population of Bucharest isn't much larger than Austin's.
Still, glad to hear that things are improving :)