America Always Gets This Wrong (when building transit)
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- čas přidán 19. 05. 2024
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Why is it that in the US & Canada, we're always being told that we can't justify the ridership for transit projects? And why is it that when we do build transit, it's struggles to gain riders? It all comes down to what surrounds that transit line. Good transit requires good land-use.
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Credits, References, and Additional Information
NJB Live (my bicycle livestream channel):
/ @njblive
"TEXRail Ribbon Cutting" by Fort Worth City Hall is licensed under CC BY 2.0
• TEXRail Ribbon Cutting
Innsbruck Population (the Google result is wrong):
www.innsbruck.gv.at/page.cfm?...
Tram in London, Ontario
images.ourontario.ca/london/23...
Historical Los Angeles Railway Network
ericbrightwell.com/2021/02/08...
TravelTime Map demo (for walkshed animation)
app.traveltime.com/
Toronto Interactive Zoning Map
map.toronto.ca/maps/map.jsp?a...
Amid cost overruns and project delays, the Mississauga Transitway is complete
www.mississauga.com/news-stor...
Mississauga Transitway
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississ...
Missed opportunities on the Mississauga Transitway
seanmarshall.ca/2016/04/15/mi...
Alan's Meme uses the song "Pineapple Juniors" by Staint Pepsi (Skylar Spence):
/ pineapple-juniors
More of Alan's memes can be found here:
• Miscellaneous Train & ...
Confessions of a Recovering Engineer
Charles "Chuck" Marohn
www.confessions.engineer/
Includes licensed stock footage from Getty Images
#landuse #transitorienteddevelopment
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Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:42 We're too small for transit
1:33 Smaller cities aren't too small
2:41 Building for cars vs. transit
3:29 Land use matters!
4:59 Good transit needs good land use
5:40 Oh no it's the business park again
6:46 Mississauga's car-centric BRT
8:02 Transit-oriented development
8:41 When there's not enough D in your TOD
9:46 Can we build transit first?
10:37 When you build for cars you get traffic
11:04 The subway to nowhere
11:34 The memes are leaking
11:54 IJburg and its trams
12:41 What can the US & Canada do?
14:18 City Beautiful & Nebula
15:03 Patreon shout-out
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“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation” - Gustavo Petro, Mayor of Bogotá
I'm from Tampa FL and I always like to point out to people that our old streetcar system from the 20s/30s was more built out and had more ridership than our current bus network of today, and we had 8x less people back then. Yet we can't convince anyone around here that a new light rail system or expanding our "historic" streetcar line that only goes 2.7 miles would be a good idea.
The conversation can be frustratingly uphill sometimes can’t it? Still, good job bringing real numbers to the discussion.
Out of curiosity, where did you go to find the ridership numbers from the 20s/30s?
pointing out how succesful these systems were with so many less people really puts into perspective just how much folks nowadays are missing out, thanks.
I’m in Tampa too, I don’t even know much about the public transport systems here cause it’s just so car-centric. There’s way too many stroads too, and it just makes traffic terrible.
I love that streetcar in Tampa. I have no idea why they don't expand it further to the developments along the river or other higher density areas. It makes absolutely no sense
Same in LA Pacific Electric was ruined by Cloverleaf in the 1940ies and now the 3.5 Metro lines could bot cope with 16 million people.
One of the things that pop out when travelling in Japan is that the train station and the immediate surroundings are a destination in itself: There are always vibrant commercial areas both inside and outside the stations full of places to shop, eat and drink - and then safely take the train home.
It's just capitalism
@@data4027 capitalism can bring plenty of good though, nobody wants to take the train to a bread line
@@data4027 and oil + car companies bribing the government to completely screw up city planning so that residents are dependent on cars like babies are on their mothers *isn't* capitalism?
I'm an American and have lived in Japan for the last 20 years. I never owned a car here. There are trains and buses that can take you to almost anywhere. Not every place is like this. I lived in Toyota City in Aichi for 2 years and can you guess, yes, the city was built mostly for cars. Where I live in Tokyo now trains run throughout the city and the stations are like a hub. From the hub there are buses that will take you almost anywhere, or even to a connecting station. Buses and trains are incredibly crowded during the rush hours, but I could not imagine what the roads would be like if everyone had to drive those distances instead.
Oh, also, in the countryside where there are few people but they have beautiful stations hoping to draw investment and tourists. Sometimes it works, but mostly not. My travels to the countryside usually ends up with me taking a taxi to wherever I wanted to go. The pandemic has devastated the countryside here and stopped the tourism which is really sad. There are really some wonderful places in the countryside here. But because of decreased use they are cutting back on the number of trains. Some places now the train only comes every half hour or hour. (Back in Aichi trains still run every 20 minutes which is normal for most places in Japan).
I mean that’s r the car in many places
Living in the USA I noticed often times people in the suburbs don't want public transport because they believe it attracts "undesited individuals" and violence to their neighborhoods.
I'm so old that I learned about the Bielefeld conspiracy from the Usenet.
Nice!
I’m from outside Houston. Want to visit and see the world-class infrastructure 😉? I would appreciate another video about it
Uh, ok, I'm older than you then I guess.
Its not a conspiracy, its real. There is no Bielefeld.
I'll never forget the tired look on their Mayor's face, explaining how much time she has to spend to deal with this on a regular basis. Still funny. :D
I think me and my fellow Germans collectively breathed a sigh of relief once you corrected your mistake and removed Bielefeld out of the German cities list. Thank you.
Just wondering why exactly?
@@dennyroozeboom4795 It's a joke. There was a conspiracy that Bielefeld does "not exist", but of course it does.
@@dennyroozeboom4795 Because Bielefeld is a lie. Don't fall for it!
@@dennyroozeboom4795 de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld-Verschw%C3%B6rung
Do you know anyone who has ever been to Bielefeld? I don't. Okay I know two peoples who said the grown up in Bielefeld, but I think they just want attention.
@@marcrchz same here in the Netherlands with the province of Drenthe.
As a European that doesnt even have a driving license (cause public transport works here lmao) whenever Americans say public transit wont work with "small cities" what i actually hear is closer to "we cant have public transit because our zoning laws demand carparks, causing our buildings to be too far apart for any sort of meaningful distance between stops"
Everyone in Jena (Germany, 100k inhabitants) uses the tram. It's awesome, and during rush hours you can hop on every 5 minutes. The city features 5 tram lines. Which are reduced to 2 at night. But the 2 at night still service the whole city. It just takes longer to get home. But I also think it's a mindset: In Europe the children are allowed to walk to school, and the schools are all accessable by foot and it is encouraged by teachers and government to let children walk (alone!) to school.
How big are your homes and how much land are they on?
I see many comments like yours, I suspect you would fall down shocked at our home sizes and how much land they are on. I live in the Dallas, TX area, typical homes here are 4,000 sqft on 1/4 of land. There is no tram system that would accommodate that, you'd bankrupt yourself trying. Just to walk out of our neighborhood of homes takes 5-10 minutes to get to a main street.
@@TechDeals Dallas already features a tram. The funny thing is that there are only 4 lines for 1,3 million people where in Germany we had 5 lines for 100.000 people.
Don't use excuses of your land and home size because that's not in the city of Dallas. And that's the point of this video: Cities (!) in the US are build for cars, not pedestrians like in most of Europe.
I live in Jena and it is just amazing, I go to school and have to go with tram 30 minutes back and fort every day, but it is still way faster than cars, and like everyone uses it.
It gets so out of Hand that in a City with 102k inhabitants with 5 tram lines and a load of bus lines they need to make their trams double the Size because the poeple wont fit anymore, and the trams already come in a 5 minute time circle At the morning.
@@TechDeals That's exactly NJB's point, car-dependent suburban developments bankrupt cities because they suck a whole lot more budget for infra (road, pipe, transit etc) than the more compact traditional developments. Of course we can't reverse the damage overnight, but it doesn't mean that there aren't rooms for improvement, no matter how small. For start, cities can rezone areas around existing transit nodes to support walkable, mixed-use, higher density developments. Deeply suburban areas can still be served by transit in the form of buses or microbuses with frequent services, if it doesn't warrant a rail.
@@TechDeals That is a valid point actually. I was born and raised in Germany and lived in the US for a while and houses here are TINY.
Maybe I should rather say apartments because in most cities/suburbs/bigger towns, you literally have to be in the upper income class to buy even the smallest and crappiest house. Of course that seems to become more of a problem in the US too but I wouldn't say it's as bad yet. Only about half of the population here owns the place they live in. The average German home is about 150 square meters (around 1600 sqft) and you'd be incredibly lucky to find real estate of that size within a reasonable distance to bigger cities, where public transport is a feasible option.
At the end of the day, it definitely depends on personal preference but I highly prefer driving everywhere over literally sharing a wall with my neighbor. I can't live like this for the rest of my life
One reason that transit "doesn't work" in many U.S. cities is that the routes are designed to "avoid" the rich neighborhoods and areas of town that don't want transit. For many of the suburbanites transit is supposed to be for "poor people" so they try their best to keep transit systems from coming out as far as where they live. Although that has changed to some degree it is still part of the mindset of many people.
so true! It always drove e crazy that I needed to take an uber to get to golden gate park. the tram system there is super slow. I wondered why they never built a metro line till I realized it was to keep homeless people from finding their way there.
then they complain traffic is horrible
Also the Cohen brothers are fighting against it that’s also one major reason
Which is especially funny. Since a) decent trains, especially passenger trains, are not loud and the remaining noise can be offset by sound barriers and proper windows b) historically the most sought after neighbourhoods, i.e. the ones that attract people with stupid amount of money were around central stations or along rail lines. Why? because increased foot traffic meant more people meant better business.
Transit is extremely classist in the US, no doubt about it. Walking, bikes, trains, and especially buses, are all considered lower class, or something that only weirdoes do to commute. That's changing a little with gen z, but generally you're second class if you don't drive.
the fact that just the "smaller" german cities alone already pretty beat the numbers of tram lines in all of north america is quite fascinating
To add to that, those are just the ones that are left. Most of those systems were put out of service after the rise of the automobile (note that that was the death blow, not ww2)
It used to be that pretty much every single town had a tram system. Even the backwater i live in with (at the time) less than 10k inhabitants had a horse drawn tram from the train station to the inner city
That list is also definitely missing a few. Either that or by random chance just my hometown of Augsburg (pop 280k) with 5 1/2 Tram lines is missing
Want to hear a funny thing? One of our largest cities in Germany - Hamburg - decided to rip out all its tram tracks in the 60s and 70s to favor a more "modern" car-friendly street design. Today Hamburg is widely known as one of the most congested cities in all of Germany.
@@maxiking8272 Yes, it was very interesting finding a parking space there late at night. We had to walk further from the parking lot to our hotel than if we had taken the train. (We were geocaching, so on the way down we stayed outside of town, but we wanted an evening of geocaching in central Hamburg.)
@@maxiking8272 let me guess, now they are planning to build a new one there?
I am in Basel amd here they were planning in the 60ies to basically build an autobahn into the city center, thankfully they didn't go through with that idea and nowadays the city tries to greatly reduce car traffic and build new tramlines - we now have even one to St. Louis (FR) and Weil am Rhein (GER).
And in a few years new train lines will be built to better connect the Dreiländer (three-country) region better with S-Bahn, after all the whole economic region around Basel is between 2 and 3 million people
There is one other problem that needs to be discussed: even when "mixed use walkable neighborhoods" are built most of the commercial occupancy is taken up by cafes, bars, restaurants and galleries. These are great to visit but lack essential services. The commercial locations need to be more practical like bodegas, groceries, butchers, hardware stores, etc.
There are several "mixed use walkable neighborhoods" in my general area but because all the commercial sites are impractical, many of the residential units go unrented or those who do live there still require a car.
This. I don't care about expensive restaurants, I don't wanna drink at a bar, I don't get coffee out, and I... can't think of a reason I would care about an art gallery. Another thing these mixed use areas might have is like, clothing stores. At least in some places I've been I see that. Maybe that's useful but again, I don't really care, especially since it's usually fancy pants overpriced weird stuff. Now if we could get a smaller mixed-use version of a Duluth Trading Company location, I'd be into it. Then there's things that aren't just places to sell things. What about the trades? HVAC specialists, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. They need locations to operate out of. I'd like some office locations that can be used as satellites for companies who actually need you on site, or small businesses. Also, auto shops. You might say "shouldn't that be in an area with less pedestrians and more cars?" And I say no, because when your car is being worked on you want something to do. An oil change is quick but, if it's anything substantial you might want to either be able to walk and do stuff for a few hours, or even walk home if it's a few days work.
My personal bias nobody will appeal to is some way of having housing or businesses, adjacent to a large woodworking and machining shop. Or something like that, the kind of thing you normally put in a garage, things you can't really get access to if you live in an apartment complex. I say that's BS, let us have access to those kinds of things without having to choose the single family home.
This is not a problem that needs to be discussed, it simply is not a problem, supermarkets are allowed in those mixed use neighbourhoods and in the netherlands at least every supermarket tries to be as close as possible to as many homes as possible, besides that many neighbourhoods in the netherlands have cornerstores on top of that if you want your groceries and essentials at a slightly higher price but a lot closer to you 24/7.
the free market solves this.
the only real problem is that american style supermarkets designed for cardependent use are way to big to fit into normal neighbourhoods, but that is the supermarkets' problem not the consumers'
Mad respect from Germany for the Bielefeld joke. Got me almost crying of laughter especially as I live where this rumor of Bielefeld not existing started.
The need for more trains is not biased at all, steel on steel is where it's at 🤘
We all need more hot steel on steel action.
Bike bros: "Steel is real"
Train Bros: "Steel is real"
What are you doing out? Go back and make more memes!
Do a video about walkable college campuses in the USA so many people loved their time a college because it was walkable
my boy knows what hes talking bout love ya
What's wild to me is that this isn't the norm. I grew up in Portland, I can quite literally get to any where in the entire portland metro area by one bus/max. If I do need to transfer, it's only once. Every bus and max runs every 15 minutes and late into the night, usually til 2-3am. Because of this I don't have a license nor a car, I have never needed one. Every time I visited Vancouver, Canada it was the same up there. My reality check was when I visited Seattle and realized "wow, this absolutely sucks and these lines make no sense. This one takes me 40 minutes out of my way and doesn't show up for 30 minutes, this one doesn't run for an hour randomly in the middle of the day for no reason, what gives?" Then I went to LA and realized Seattle's public transit is good in comparison. That's when I first started hearing people talking about public transit like it's just for poor people which is insane because no one talks about it like that here. I'd like to say Portland and Vancouver are ahead of the curve but they're not, the rest of NA is just behind most wealthy nations in this regard.
Yeah. Portland is really nice, I have lived there for almost 4 years now and I am at the point where I don't think I can really handle living in another city without moving out the PNW. I have just gotten too used to the lifestyle of not owning a car. Portland has a lot of potential, but a ton of work still needs to be done.
I live in Vancouver... I think the planners have the right idea. They're a bit behind the eight ball with regards to matching the demand with rapid transit - The Skytrain began in the mid-eighties. I wish the funding was there to expand it more quickly. We do see plenty of towers around stations... I think a lot more medium density comes later.
As a Portlander I never feel safe using the max like 80% of the time
Pls…pls don’t read my name
NA is not behind, but rather deliberately neglected to promote the automobile and oil industries. Real corporate greed right here.
So, here's the same topic seen from another perspective.
When I moved from the suburbs of Montreal, Canada to Hamburg Germany, I was amazed by how different it felt to take the regional train. In Montreal, when I looked out the window, it was miserable: all I could see were industrial lots or highways. Compared that to Hamburg, where I could see the city. I was amazed by the amount of interesting places I saw and I knew that if I wanted to go there, I likely would need to get off at the next step.
The trains took me to interesting places in the city. In Montreal, getting to the train station required a car. Which meant the station was typically located in the middle of a huge parking lot.
I love taking the bus or train here in Hamburg! It's so relaxing and interesting to people watch out the window or get a look at different neighbourhoods. There's also so many beautiful bridges over the channels. It makes the commute really enjoyable in my opinion
Hamburgs net of public transportation is the best I've seen in Germany.
You either lived close of the Saint-Laurent Technopark or around the edge of Saint-Leonard / Montreal-Nord. Literally not miserable as you claim
My favorite view is from the U3 around Landungsbrücken.
@@tubensalat1453 If you take the U3 up north towards Eppendorf, you see all the canals from above. It's so beautiful in the summer
When you mentioned about the towns being "too small" for the tram and subway systems, Nuremberg came to the mind. Nuremberg was too small to have the subway system when the idea was proposed in the 1960s. Yet, Nuremberg went ahead and built the three-line subway system. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the city centre is much more thriving and popular today without the countless trams and buses rumbling through the shopping district all day long. The daily ridership is about 400,000 on the average, which is almost the same number of residents within Nuremberg city limit.
When Dallas and Denver were battling to get the tram network built, one argument was that nobody would ever ride them. Upon the launches in 1996 and 1994 respectively, both tram network has higher than anticipation demand and ridership. Denver paid Siemens extra fee to have the trams delivered sooner. This convinced the Denver area residents to vote for FasTrack, a further expansion of tram and commuter train network.
I’m a small developer in the Midwest and love this channel. I decided in college I wanted to devote my life to actually creating affordable housing rather than just debating it. I build these compact 900ft 3b/2ba unit 6-plexes (similar to early 1900 brownstones). And it is always a massive battle to get municipalities to approve them. Cities want suburban sprawl with single family housing. It’s depressing, some days I think we will never learn. Your channel is doing the lords work.
It always perplexes me how some cities low sprawl when in buildings like yours you can for example offset the extra cost of better termal insulation to have properities similar to brownstones. It's not even for ecology if people don't care about it but it's just nice to have a house that doesn't require AC in the summer.
900 square feet compact? That's almost standard here in the Netherlands.
Is there much demand for them?
@@21mozzie well it's the standard, so of course there is a lot of demand
Oh, that's the "middle density" stuff that's mentioned in the video? I am guessing those are sadly living houses only, no mixed use possible? I guess "massive battles" would become "never ever" if you proposed mixed use...
It's just wild to me that London Ontario is considered "too small" for public transport. I live in a city with 350,000 people, with a medieval city centre that can't accommodate any buses (which means getting to the city centre is a pain in the ass), and we still have 20 city bus lines, 14 regional bus lines, 3 tram lines, 4 dedicated rush hour bus lines, and 7 train stations.
I counted 34 city bus lines for London, Ontario. There is one train station with Toronto about almost 200 km to the east and the cities of Kitchener/Waterloo in between. The buses don't seem to be very frequent. There is public transit...just not very good.
I lived in a lot smaller town. Around 10,000 people. It has 2 bus lines, free to ride. Can be useful, but you can basically bike anywhere faster.
@@pauly5418 i live in a town of only around 7000 people in the UK and we have a train line that goes to the nearest major city and 2 bus lines that go to neighboring larger towns
I also live in a city with 350.000 people, in Romania of all places. The city has 68 bus lines inside the city and 28 more that links the city with smaller cities/villages nearby (think places that are at maximum 30-40km away, not sure if this counts as suburbs). Needless to say I do not own a car and never felt the need for it despite having a permit. You just reach your point faster with the bus.
@@parazitul1986 Public transport in Eastern Europe is some of the best I've ever seen.
You've reminded me of something that happened in southern England in the 20s and 30s. The Southern Railway bought up large plots of farmland (hundreds of acres) at carefully chosen spots along their railway lines running from London to the South Coast. They then built stations in the middle of these plots, and sold off the plots to developers who built houses, shops, schools, pubs and so on, with roads radiating out from the station - and they had most trains stopping at those new stations.
That meant that, right from the start, the railway had thousands of potential passengers within ten minutes walk of the station, who could catch a train direct into the middle of London to go to work, and at weekends, hop on a train to go down to the coast for the day.
The roads didn't get clogged with traffic, because people living that close to the station didn't need them. When the towns grew to a point where the outlying homes were a bit far to walk to the town centre, bus companies started routes radiating out from the railway stations, going out the edge of town.
Result? EVERYBODY was a winner!
The fact that you included Naumburg in Germany is so funny! I'm from Naumburg and it is a tiiiiiny town with barely 28 thousand people and the tram is operated by a private person. He reconstructed the very old streetcars and we have 2 lines driving through the town. People are actually using it, which surprised me a little bit to be honest bc you can pretty much walk everywhere haha
I would think that when a city is “smaller,” that would be the most ideal time to begin to build a LRT system because more could be slowly added as the city grew. By saying a city must be “x” in population before we can build one is insane and just the start up costs to build one in a major city would be enough to make council think twice.
Lol...google
Ottawa Canada lrt fiasco
Nope. Do not make a ponzi scheme out of public transit. Most cities won't ever grow much bigger than they are today.
My mother lives in a town of 50 thousand. I am ready to bet my head that a metro system(or a line really) would not only never return the investment but it would actually bankrupt both the town and the county
Yhea, that's not a bug, it's a feature.
@@natethegr8230 Oh my fucking god ottawa transit is the absolute worst. The "rapid" buses here come every 15-30 minutes, but that's only for the most highly trafficked routes. About half of every scheduled bus just doesn't show up, how the fuck do you lose half your busses every day?? And the bus routes are a nightmare, winding through parking-lots and zigzagging so much that it's impossible to know where a bus is going even roughly without a detailed map. And all that zigging and zagging means that getting from point A to point B by bus is LITERALLY SLOWER THAN WALKING!! It's a 30 minute bus ride from my house to campus, but it's a 25 minute walk or 10 minute bike! Now if line 2 of the LRT was running I could take it right into campus. But of course, they closed the whole thing down for "2 years" worth of construction (2 years my ass, it's been 2 years and they've barely started). God I miss the TTC 😭.
@@Novusod walking isnt safe cause there you walking across seas of nothing.
Also portland is a problem of their own design.
"Defund the police"
"Save the homeless *By keeping them in their hell and not giving them the aid they need*
"Release criminals with no bail despite their chain of repeat offense's
Oh no why is crime happening!
11:21 Similar story in Vienna, Austria. They extended the U2 metro line literally into fields. Then a whole new city part - Seestadt - grew there. The metro line runs paralell with a train track on a short piece. I commute daily with trains on that route, so I had the opportunity to observe how first the metro was built, then the city around it. Vienna actually made super profits there. They bought the land cheaply, announced that they will extend the U2 line there, sold the land to private owners with a high profit, which not only covered the extension of the metro line, but in the long term provides the city with money from taxes. But when the metro line was finished and first trains started to roll, they were carying more air than people. This changed now. And the development is still ongoing. Seestadt Vienna. Urbanism for transit, not for cars.
Man am I happy greens got more trams going there, sadly still 2025+ for most of the lines, but right now it's one of the only places in Vienna where I'd still consider a car as the buses are a bit too few or too full. Was a great move to get the subway there first though.
Would really love some more trams in the 14th, visiting Penzing still works okay, but more Dehnepark side, schönergasse is meh (bus service). Purposefully pick places to rent that are close to tram/subway, generally faster getting anywhere, currently in the 7th since I moved here last year, been nice.
Still room to improve - They neglected building the promised tram lines and biking infrastructure is underwhelming, and they are starting to build an urban highway in this area
I guess there's a reason Vienna gets named the world's most liveable city regularly. I hope I can visit soon (preferably by train!) from Northern Germany.
@@fs23 has more to do with rent being kept in check by the city via social housing, price caps on per meter cost for altbau/old buildings, a very robust medical aid and pension system, good transit in the city (outside is where things start getting iffy, visiting family 20km from Vienna I can take a bus every 2/3 hours on weekends for a community of 6k people, insane, they are improving though), wiener Wald, etc.
It seems like common sense. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to build a subway when there is piping, footings, sewage, and everything else in the way.
9:27 This is what just happens naturally in Japan with (almost) no zoning. People want to live near stations, so there are naturally descending levels of development as you get further away from train stations.
Part of it is due to the fact that the companies that built that privately-owned commuter rail lines in the major cities are conglomerates that also have real estate and retail divisions. They built train lines and housing developments at the same time AND arranged to have the central city terminals of these rail lines be in or near their department stores. Even now, one sees ads for new housing tracts or condos that boast of being within 5 minutes or less walking distance of a commuter station.
Meanwhile, major cities keep building subway lines. Tokyo has added three since I lived there a few decades ago, and Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Yokohama, and Sapporo also have them.
Then there's the intercity rail, not only the famous Shinkansen "bullet" trains--a system that has grown from one line to five since the 1970s-- but also conventional train lines. There are few towns that cannot be reached by frequent train service, and in those cases, there's almost always a bus.
People in Japan live in tiny apartments with no land, stuffed into a density that would make Tetris proud.
@@TechDeals : You may not want to believe this, but many families in Japan, even along transit lines, even in Tokyo, have entire houses to themselves.
@@TechDeals Look it's not rocket science. There is price, size, distance from a train station, and how new/nice a place is; and these numbers are always in balance. A lot of people want to live in nice apartments near train stations but don't have a ton of money: these places are going to be small. But for the same cost you can live farther from a train station in an older place and it can be huge. I really recommend looking up rents in Japan, you'd be surprised how cheap it is to live even in Tokyo. (And with no price controls, just lots of freedom to build.)
@@TechDeals but there is so much to see and do within a radius of a few kilometres, better than being cooped up like a chicken most of the day, such tiny apartments will force them to socialize
"They are more concerned with building parking lots for suburbanites, than productive urban places."
As someone who doesn't own a car, YES - Say it louder for the people in the back!!
For the people behind the station!
As someone who doesn’t own a car but isn’t so self centered as to think my situation applies to everyone and they should be subjected to what works for me I say - you, sir, are a self centered dick.
As someone who does owns several cars, NO.
Now sit down, no one cares what a non-car owner thinks.
@@bobsmith5314 this is the epidemy of why transit will never be a thing in the us right here
@@mitchellb4551 because we like being able to live wherever we want while having feasible access to whatever we want. Walkable cities are heaven on earth to people who LIVE IN those cities.
The reason so many suburbs exist in the US is because those are the places people want to live in
I laughed hard at the Bielefeld not existing. I actually met two people who claimed to be from there when I was in Brazil but I was not fooled by the sneaky conspiracy!
Yep, don't trust them.
Hahaha... Don't trust that
That fake city has even established its own Wikipedia page to make itself look real: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld
Do not get fooled by this. Illuminati were German. It is all connected.
i have family living in bielefeld, so i travel there couple times a year.
but everytime i leave i too believe it doesnt exist
This is the so-called Bielefeld conspiracy. It is funny at most for people from outside, but less so for the Bielefeld population, because there are always a few people who still believe this conspiracy.
I'm always stunned by the size of the parking lots...and they're all in the sun, there's no tree lines or anything...it's just all grey parking lot and some lamps...there's so much potential for either more green stuff or maybe a solar power plant, that you can park your car under. all this space could be used so much better :O
Cities put minimum parking requirements in so the customers of a business don't park on the city's streets. They base the requirements on the peak usage, which is only a handful of days a year, and don't account for the extra roads the city needs to build with all the businesses so far apart, and they forget that parking lots don't bring in sales tax revenue.
It's basically impossible to green a parking lot. The pavement prevents water from soaking into the ground and absorbs sunlight increasing the temperature. Trying to put a line of trees there is like trying to out them in the desert. They get baked by the heat and die of thirst without constant irrigation.
Excellent plan. Park the cars UNDER the solar panels. If you dare say solar roadways, I'll hurt you.
Not to mention the soul-crushingly depressing look, feel, and smell (gas and urine, generally) of a titanic parking lot.
Places are starting to put solar arrays over parking spaces now. People like them because they keep the hot sun off their car, plus you generate extra power that's otherwise going to waste. My old community college is currently in the process of installing solar arrays over every parking lot (its a lot of parking), and where I live now has solar arrays on the roofs of many parking structures.
I know of one parking lot that tried to do both. They planted hedges between parking spaces and then installed solar arrays over top. Either its a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing or someone didn't understand that both those things need a monopoly on the sun to thrive.
One of the downsides to solar arrays is that they need a transformer nearby which will take up some parking spaces. The transformer also produces a humming sound that might not be desirable if its placed too close to where people hang out. They can also be pretty expensive and while they're being installed the lot can't be used fully.
Agree though, we need more solar arrays. If we're going to use all this space we might as well use it more effectively. While we're at it, we should also slap solar arrays on those big box stores, all that real estate and solar energy just going to waste.
Great video. My mother was a town planner of the old school & she laughs at many modern developments and asks: “who lives here? Humans or cars?” I particularly remember an apartment block where each unit had a double garage with the same floor area as the liveable area. So at least the cars were comfortable, not great for the humans though
New York City is of course the huge exception. One of the rare places in North America where it is very easy to live without a car.
It was never my permanent residence, but I worked there, and stayed in a company apartment, for the better part of two years.
I travel with work all over North America. Very often I rent cars for personal use while I'm staying somewhere. Kind of need to in most places. (Ironically my job is testing railroad lines).
Never once felt the need, or even the desire, to rent a car while in New York City. It was so easy to get around with out one. (Honestly having a car would be more difficult with parking being what it is.)
Just tested a commuter line in Cleveland last week. Other than right downtown most stops were surrounded by a seas of (mostly empty) parking lots. Nothing a pedestrian would want to go to or easily could get to. People drive to train stops, and take the train downtown.
In other words..even people who use the train also have to drive each day.
Same experience in Dallas, Calgary, St. Louis, on and on and on.
This video is on the mark for most of this land.
Sidenote: This is kind of crazy to me when you consider how excellent our railroads are for freight transportation. Very extensive railroad network in North America that moves freight very efficiently. But we've forgotten how to transport people by rail.
God, sprawl truly is the ugliest/depressing thing I’ve seen, a one story building surrounded by parking lot 30 times its size, crumbling concrete stroad with no human in sight. The more I watch these videos, I feel more lucky I live in a city with proper public transit.
Absolutely! having lived in the US I can firmly say how lucky we are in Europe not to live in that hellscape
no... it's slightly worse than that. They're multi-story, single FLOOR buildings. Even when we do build up we do it wrong
It's especially awkward when you stay in a housing development that is clearly still being built. You're just surrounded by a construction site next to your brand new manicured neighborhood with no amenities, let alone transit. I just live in a small enough town that has everything you expect from a city, but everything is reachable with a reasonably short and safe bike commute.
@@schwig44 wait, sorry, I'm not good with English - isn't "story" and "floor" the same thing?
@@DanieliusGoriunovas yes they mean the same thing. I think he’s talking about houses that are 2 storeys tall but only have 1 actual floor while the top floor is just useless attic space that just makes the house look bigger (this is a pretty common setup in suburban houses)
Man, imagine the heat island effect of all those (empty) parking lots in Canada and the US. Or the effects on stormwater run off.
Why Imagine them when you can recreate it in your own city.
That heat is the feeling of Freedom™
Considering that the vast majority of Canada is uninhibited, it's probably not that bad overall
@@juliaf_ The issue is that the heat island effect makes the surrounding area warmer at night, and all these parking lots are in cities, not the uninhabited parts of Canada. Its not a climate change thing, its a microclimate effect.
@@juliaf_ it’s not that bad, is even worse.
I was talking to my boss today about how sometimes I ride my bike to work (17 miles each way). He said that over the years, he’s had great candidates apply for jobs. The issue is they lived downtown and we’re in the suburbs. They would still have to walk 5 miles from the nearest bus stop. He tried to convince the city to create a bus stop near the office (which is in a large business park), but nothing ever came of it.
I just discovered your channel. CZcams must have known that lately I've been increasingly frustrated by how hostile my city (Burlington, shown at 4:19) is to anyone who isn't a driver.
It's not just that the public transit and cycling infrastructure sucks, although that _is_ a huge issue. A lot of this city is designed like pedestrians don't exist, or even _shouldn't_ exist - even in places where designers _know_ they exist because they went to the trouble of building sidewalks, or because it's a place people _have_ to walk (e.g. from your car in the parking lot to the store).
With a few exceptions, common destinations like stores, malls, libraries, and train stations are a five minutes away from the sidewalk, because of the parking lot. Even though the parking lot could just as easily be _behind_ the store, and cars would lose literally no time, whereas pedestrians would gain huge amounts of time over the long run, be able to use transit easier (can't tell you how many times I've missed the bus at Fortinos because of that five-minute walk), and be safer too. It's like the people designing this stuff actively hate pedestrians, even when there's no benefit to cars at all.
Not to mention that you're lucky if there's _any_ continuous path from the sidewalk to the store that's designed for pedestrians, let alone one that has a convenient starting point, and isn't the longest possible way around, and doesn't have crosswalks with no traffic control so that neither you nor the drivers feel safe around each other.
And beyond that, some places just plain don't have sidewalks, so you need to either walk on a surface that wasn't designed for it, or walk on the asphalt.
Every concession made to pedestrians around here, when it exists at all, is as minimal as possible and designed to remind you that you are a second-class citizen, an unwelcome visitor to the cars' domain.
Discovering your channel has been a mixed experience, because on the one hand it explains the causes behind the problems I've been noticing. On the other hand, it also points out problems I hadn't noticed yet, makes me angrier about all these problems and their causes, and makes me pine for the cities that do it better - to no real purpose, as I can't do anything about the problems, and I can't move to a city that doesn't have them. So watching these videos is mostly just making me sad. But I'm still glad I found it, because now I know that it's not just me, and I'm not just crazy, and for that matter it's not just my city.
Yep, even my local grocery store (Upper Middle and Guelph Line) features a busy 2-lane road that runs directly in front of the store entrances, forcing shoppers to play Frogger against the traffic cutting through from Walkers Line. Why they don't route traffic along the back of the parking lot is beyond me. Cars don't shop, people do.
Omg the intersections around the malls are a pedestrian nightmare.
Fairview & Maple. Guelph & Fairview.
Parts of North Burlington could be walkable if Highway 5 & Appleby (North) weren’t so unfriendly to pedestrians. Then again the multiple shopping complexes are concrete and asphalt wastelands.
At least they were closing the lowest half of Brant street on the weekends to make it walkable.
There should have been street cars along lakeshore. More areas too.
@@coryserratore5951 Upper Middle would have made a great street car line. Especially from Appleby to Brant.
Also, how non-pedestrian friendly the Highway 5 Go Carpool. You have to cross on only one side, and it’s Highway 5 you are crossing as people are stopping from 80km/h to 60km/h area.
Ever since watching this channel, all I think about is how far centric Burlington is. Yes, there’s a nice bike path, but it doesn’t really take you anywhere (other than Upper Middle & Guelph). It’s moreso recreational. Bike lanes? Hahaha jokes on us.
I have access to a car but always try to keep my trips to a minimum and group errands together by area. My access might change in the future.
Here in Tokyo a lot of train stations are just connected to massive malls/department stores. You could literally spend the entire day just inside the stations of areas like Shinjuku or Ikebukero. Some even have hotels connected to the stations. Granted not every station is like this, but usually the core area of a neighborhood is around the station. And most Japanese cities will have some massive department store style stations as well. Even when I visited Nagasaki, which does not have nearly the amount of intense urban sprawl that Tokyo has, there were still a few train stations just connected to malls and hotels. I used to live in Philadelphia, which I think has better public transport than most U.S. Cities, but I would sometimes have to walk 30 minutes from the train station to get to anything interesting, and through some sketchy neighborhoods, on top of it. It's just such a nicer experience overall and so much more convenient. My only complaint is sometimes certain train lines stop relatively early in Tokyo which has led to me getting trapped out at night a few times lol.
Nagasaki even has a Shinkansen connection now 🙂 The city is one of my favourite places in Japan 😁
@@andrefricke9998 At this point it's still easier just to fly there lol. At least from Tokyo. The Shinkansen is great if you're staying on the same island, but if you're going from Honshu to Kyushu it takes too long and can get pricey. Nagasaki is great though, an underrated destination despite how well known the name is imo.
@@Naku_Naku_ Since there is the JR Pass for foreign tourists, I have never taken a domestic flight within Japan. Last time I was in Japan, I mostly travelled in the western part of Honshu and on Kyushu. The ride from Kumamoto to Nagasaki wasn't that bad, even though the Shinkansen line was still in construction back then ;)
@@andrefricke9998 Yeah I've only ever used the Shinkansen to go to Kansai area or something like that. It's good for that, but all the way down to Kyushu is a bit tough. I was just like screw it, I'll just take a 2 hour flight instead lol.
Two points: 1) Tokyo is a densely populated area. After the war when it was destroyed, officials seized the opportunity to redesign it resulting in the system you have today. 2) @Andre Fricke Flying may be easier to some destinations, but if and when tourism resumes, the airports and trains will be hell, just like they are during the holidays, except in Tokyo where everyone is gone 😅
It’s honestly so infuriating the more and more I think about how entrenched this type of bad planning is in the US.
It's hilarious now that high gas prices are here to stay
That is what happens when you get the federal government involved in infrastructure.
Infrastructure should be a state/local project. The only reason it was possible here in the U.S. was b/c the federal government kept subsidizing states.
Get the government out of our lives, and let cities grow/breathe naturally.
@@jean-philipperameau4220 I hope public transit in USA doesn't end up getting same treatment as some other things that would be an improvement, but would require effort. Like switching completely to metric. Due to have unwilling adults are to change anything (at least in USA), best way would be focusing on metric system in school, mandate speed limits for both miles and kilometers (only if necessary), have products labeled with both metric and imperial (for decades and eventually switch to metric only). There's almost whole decade of time to prepare for the changes if you start from only the first grade of school being taught metric, and then each year start teaching the next grade too. It may be a minor improvement, but this would make simple math many times easier since units being used are simply more suitable for conversions. This would surely make learning subjects like physics and chemistry much easier. Learning both would be just unnecessary pain in the ass and half assed measures are not going to change anything.
@@permacultureecuador2925 the irony of having permaculture in the name and being a troll against public transport.
also you don’t believe in the pandemic? 1 million plus dead in the usa, india with a population of 1.4 billion had 500 k dead.
Its all about employment or where the jobs are. Everything comes secondary as this narrator has so cleverly eluded to.
I lived in Shanghai in 2010 and took a subway line to the end of the line. I found myself in a field. I then moved to Chengdu - Home of the giant pandas - (Next to Chongqing) in Sichuan Province, West China before they built a subway system. I went to work on a bus and returned on a bus. The first subway line was under a large road which cut the centre of the inner city in half, south to north. Only useful if you lived in the south and worked in the north. Now 7 years after I left, there are 13 lines, 373 stations and 7.17 million rides in 2021! I now live in Bangkok which is another "Transit success story". Great videos, Thanks.
The 'funny' part of that Dutch example is that the orginal plan had a metro line instead of a lightrail line. But due to the cost and the fact that they didn't think that much people would use it, they downgraded it into the lightrail. Now that tram is full during rushhour and it can't handle the traffic. So they are thinking about a solution, considering that they are gonna add more land to that island.
I remember when as a kid I started playing SimCity and I found very strange, unintuitive and unrealistic to use R, C, I zones for buildings. Took me a couple of years to realize that is how they plan in the US and the game is from the US.
And nowadays in Cities Skylines I tend to make public transport free with a tightly knit bus system, for the simple fact that it reduces car traffic and congestion.
Don't forget the fact that only roads provide space to zone other buildings (goes for Cities Skylines as well). Rail lines and pedestrian walkways have no such effect, so unmodded there is no way to build a rail-oriented or walking-oriented city. Even trying to do a superblock setup doesn't work because zoned land needs to be very close to the road (usually about 2 or 3 times the width of the road) in order to get developed and used by the simulation.
@@dominiccasts Any recommendations for a city simulator that allows building walkable/bikeable cities?
@@dominiccasts Sim City Societies gave you the ability to build a fully functioning roadless city. Kind of ironic that the most hated city building game was the only to have this profoundly advanced capability.
@@markachternaam5207 with mods, City skylines is still your best bet. There are 3rd party roads that look like pedestrianised area. Then using Traffic president, you can block access to all through traffic.
It’s always a pleasure watching your videos Jason. You’re doing so much good in the world spreading the message of good urbanism
Damn straight. I've learned to appreciate, but also critique, my European transit and road systems.
One thing I havent really given much thought before watching this video is how disabeling NA is for people that for various reasons cant drive a car.
My little brother is sight disabled, and his quality of life would be far worse and more disabling if we lived in NA for the sole reason of public transit.
My housemate is 26 and has epilepsy, and cannot drive (and can't afford to own & maintain a car), so she walks, rides the bus when she can, or depends on others (me, her mother, her sister) for rides. It's difficult for her to get around because the area is not really conducive to walking or biking, and bus service is underfunded and erratic.
@@AndrewAMartin that is terrible, the mother of a friend of mine has fallen asleep at the wheel a few times as well, once with the car running in the garage, she actually had to stay in the hospital for a couple days. But she refuses to give up her car and license as there is no public transport and a taxi would be way to expensive and none of her children live close.
The USA doesn’t even have different sized or coloured paper money, it is so inaccessible to anyone with visual problems!
Uber. It's not really that expensive if you calculate the total cost of ownership.
@@court2379 uber is fairly new though, and not always consistent. Nor is it everywhere. Also if you're fully wheelchair bound a regular car is not going to be able to accommodate you
As a Dutchman living in a small village where I generaly use the car to go somewhere outside the village I love the fact that most cities here have P+R (park + ride). This is basically a parking lot with an affordable connection towards the city. These P+R places are important to encourage visitours outside the area to go there a and spend their money. I feel like this transision is often not talked about in your videos but essential to make public transport for smaller cities viable.
You need the park and ride at the outskirts. He really hates all the park and rides we have in Ontario right inside the cities. Like imagine a 5 hectare parking lot at Amsterdam Sud. That's what we build and pretend it's the thing you're enjoying.
@@tristanridley1601 Amsterdam zuid is kind of an outskirt so it does have P+R (olympic stadium) but it aint 5 hactares and I consider it good use of old, otherwise mostly unused space. Also, it is relative close to a highway. I agree with your point, P+R in a city center is completly pointless.
@@hobbykip I think it's a good discussion of "where exactly does the transition belong?" And one of the few things NotJustBikes might not get perfect, with his passionate disdain for the park and rides here in Ontario.
A well designed transition really helps to allow rural people to still access the city without their cars everywhere in the way. And if there's also car rental, also let city folk like me access the areas where there are no trains.
@@hobbykip you should only use those if there aren’t and theoretically wouldn’t be that many people using it. Otherwise, you should have a high quality and frequent bus service that connects to major streets people live on that goes directly to the train station. No driving required. This is how perth does it even with its extremely large area, dilute population and American style suburbs. Well in the better areas at least.
@@tristanridley1601 Indeed, that transition point is important. If I were to go to Munich, I'd have a number of P+R (or even just free parking near the Autobahn with a subway station in range) places that actually get me into the city centre faster than driving all the way. But when I go to Frankfurt, the only P+R I can think of takes 10 minutes to drive to from the Autobahn and then 20 metro minutes to the centre---plus waiting time because that far out the metro goes every half hour. On the other hand, getting from the Autobahn to a parking garage takes less than 15 minutes.
Did someone ever call the police when they saw you walking along stroads with no sidewalks? I went to a suburban mall in canada by bus when it was dark outside. As I walked along the narrow curb, someone screamed out of his car: "If you don't get off this street, i'll call the police!"
So much about my experience in north america
land of the free
@@heartache5742 ...of thought
I had a cop stop by and ask if I was okay, when I was walking in the suburban US.
@@saltedpopcorn2424 That sounds like what our English teacher told us about travelling to the USA and walking everywhere
I yell back when people yell at me. Catches them off guard a lot! Car people seem to think they're the only ones who can yell, but actually as a pedestrian your voice will carry much better, since you're not muffled by an engine. Giving them the finger makes them bonkers too, sometimes I go to overpasses with no offramp and do it randomly at the cars below. Great way to blow off steam.
My heart leapt when I saw the list of small German cities with tram lines. I did my university exchange in Jena and it was one of the most amazing experiences. The ease of everyday life was unbelievable to my car-dependent mind. Between walking, cycling, and catching the tram (there was a stop literally right outside my apartment), I never had difficulty getting around, socializing, and staying active! A far cry from my Canadian lifestyle.
I always wonder, to what level is that 'car-dependent mind' ingrained in people..? Is it so natural to them that they'll defend 'the car' no matter what? What I'm asking basically is if you were able to change some minds around you, back in Canada?
You don't even need a tram with well designed bus lines. I studied in Aachen (250k population), and bus lines were more than enough to cover the travel needs, if you lived and worked in the city. Thanks to high speed rail, you are in Cologne in 50 minutes, Brussel in 90 and Paris in 3 hours.
@@TheNewPatsyBailey Unfortunately no, I can get by living what I'd describe as "car-lite". It's just too difficult for most people when a city is designed against a specific mode and the car is just the more convenient (and safe) option.
@@TheNewPatsyBailey It's well known that car industry actively advocated for car-dependent mind and cities. However, also remember that public transport is not for everyone. For many introverted people, crowded public transport and their lack of privacy is a huge energy drain.
@@Psi-Storm
But as someone who grew up in Cologne and is currently living in Aachen, the bus system is a far cry from Cologne's Stadtbahn. Getting anywhere takes ages, the buses are crowded, the traffic is horrendous and the noise significant. And plans to convert the most popular bus routes (which see combined frequencies of large buses getting down to as little as one every two minutes) to a tram were voted down by the local population. So Aachen is an example for what happens when people would rather sit in a traffic jam for hours than take public transport, and whilst the bus system is good for getting around, the actual quality of the transit sucks when compared to a proper system.
I live in a city where people often complain about it the street system in the older sections being poorly designed. My dad used to complain about how _"whoever designed the roads were idiots for not planning for enough cars."_ But when I looked up old maps and photographs from around 1900 It all made sense. The streets weren't designed for automobiles, they were designed for streetcars and walking. The streetcar grid was pretty extensive and even connected to some of the other burgeoning cities in the area. A lot of the older residential neighborhoods even have old remnants of the businesses that were clustered in certain areas that probably mark where streetcar stops were (the corner drugstore etc). I always thought it was quaint how some of those old neighborhoods have little strips of small business dotted in between all the old houses on single-lane streets, but now I know why they were built that way over 100 years ago, and why they are still popular neighborhoods today.
10:50 WOW that picture of Phoenix looks incredibly depressing. I know a guy who grew up there and later moved to Germany and he wasn't just impressed that they hospital just fixed his broken shoulder, he couldn't believe how pretty our cities are. And he's not living in Munich, Berlin or Hamburg, he's in Bochum. If you've never heard of it, that's because it's a rather boring former industrial city turned into, well, hoping to survive without the coal business. And it's apparently pretty enough for him to be excited.
It's heartbreaking how most American cities-even smaller towns, third tier cities-had amazing streetcar transit in the first part of the 20th century. Then we just tore it up for the automobile.
it's called lobbying.
It happened even in Italy, we had tram lines in every mid sized city at the start of the 20th century, then came the 50s and suddenly there were cars everywhere. You could find pictures with parking spaces filled to the brim in every major square in the town centre, right in front of the main church. With our perspective it looks really absurd. Now they're investing hundreds of millions to rebuild those lines. It took half a century to rectify - partially - that mistake.
@@fdjw88 While it's not wrong to say there was some dirty play going on, the more complicated reality is that they simply weren't being used anymore. Ridership tanked, and Americans as a whole made the mistake of committing to the car. "We" (people from well before I was born) were collectively stupid on this issue. This *WAS* "the will of the people." Unfortunately.
And diesel fueled buses, pushed on urbanized places as "more flexible than stuck in place trolley tracks, and much quieter than the constant noise of metal on metal, and safer for passengers. Portland, OR, had an excellent interurban system that went from downtown to Seaside back in the Good Old Days, plus a street car that took folks to an amusement park in the West Hills, and covered commuter and goods transport for miles around. Won't be recovered in my lifetime, but I celebrate each bit of progress we make!
@@Kraven83 Same thing happened in Belgium, the streetcar network which literally spanned half the country and complemented our still-existing rail system was entirely replaced by buses after the second world war.
Thank god Melbourne never ripped up its tram system when every other city in Australia was doing so. Shout out to Robert Risson, who almost singlehandedly prevented this from happening.
Amen to that. I wish Brisbane had had someone with such foresight. Public transport around where I live is poor during the day and almost non-existent at night.
Without trains ..
A city feels soulless and I own a car a Toyota Corolla still saying this.
I don't want a car. But need to use it 😅😇
@@acdc5507 a lot of urbanism fans do. it's not hypocrisy to need to get around before glorious transit is functional again
Melbourne has a full complement of Metropolitan trains, trams and buses, and they all interlink together. In reality, a car is useful here, but it is possible to get almost everywhere in the metro area without using a car. The systems just expand as the built up area does. Simple but it works.
@@HarryP457 We had trams in Brisbane including where now busways are now (or meant to be built). A "fire" happens at the tram depot and we lost it all. The same reason many places were destroyed by "fire". For anyone not in Brisbane, fire is used to burn things to the ground so they can build again when the government says no.
Having recently returned from a trip to Portland, OR, I am here to say that the public transport system there made it incredibly simple to get around the city, especially for a person in a wheelchair. Ample space, people willing to give up their seats, access to the city centre as well as areas outside the centre. It beats the transport in my home town of Galway, Ireland, hands down. In fact, if we could break the death grip that the car culture here has on the population, we could build transit like this.
Thanks for these informative videos!!
I lived in Portland for several years without a car. The only real issue is Night time service. There were times when I got off work that I would have to spend an excessive amount of time waiting.
My experience in the US is that transit lines are temporarily experimented with, but after 2-3 years of limited ridership, the schedule is reduced to something that nobody would give up their car for. Here on the SF Peninsula, there's a great commuter rail that has survived the experiment, but its operational hours are focused primarily on commute times. After peak commute times and especially weekends, the schedule literally drives people to drive. Driving people to drive increases their dependency on cars and makes it much more likely that they'll just take the car when given the choice of drive VS rail transit.
I've been saying this for so many years. Everything is geared to cars and it's so sad.
Lived in Netherlands for two months, explored whole country by using only public transport. Awesome country!
I haven't been to the Netherlands yet, but I am planning on moving there when I'm older. It looks like such a lively country compared to America.
@hd01 nothing compared to most American cities though.
the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is surprisingly accurate and talks about how LA dismantled its public transit system. Essentially the tire and auto industry bought and dismantled it so they could build freeways. All this traffic was just a scam to sell tires, and it worked, and rubes will still defend it today
Thank you for bringing this up. I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers the backstory to that movie.
I kinda remember that not that it's brought up, thanks
don't forget the petroleum industry hand in it regards to road surfaces, lubricants and petrol... things trams don't use much of, even trolley buses were killed off!! similar thing happened in Australia in Sydney which had one of the southern hemispheres biggest tram networks (bigger than Melbourne Australia and Hong Kong) 😞
people like to whine about Apple and the alike regarding Planned Obsolesce, but don't realise they are in a state of Planned Dependency, even after i get people to SEE it, they dont understand the problem.
What's funny is that these conglomerates were found guilty of conspiracy to destroy the transit industry in the US, by none other than SCOTUS, and yet they were fined only $1!
i’m from a midsized city in the states (120k) and went to innsbruck as one of my first ever trips abroad and it stunned me- incredibly walkable and trams to take me anywhere as well as connecting to ice trains. at home, I consider myself lucky that I live 3 blocks from a 4x daily bus stop that requires transfers to get anywhere, as well as us being situated on an amtrak line with 6 daily services-three of which take you to chicago. it is astonishing to finally see what a good to great system of public transit is and it’s depressing that what we have is good for the US
You should really check out what the planners have done in Walnut Creek, California over the past 20 years. They have really been forward-thinking, planning mixed use developments around the BART stations, plus free transit to stores/restaurants in their downtown areas.
@@ButterfatFarms ... doesn't he literally say in the video that he thinks portland, a U.S. city, is doing things right for the most part?
Today, I rode my bike to work for the first time, and this channel had a major role in inspiring me to do so. It was lovely. :-)
Why am I getting Queen -"Bicycle Race" vibes. Every time I watch this channel that song comes to my head. lol.
Hell yeah!
Careful, your work mates might think you're insane if you come in to work smiling :)
How sweaty were you when you got in to work?
I can't help but think that for a vast majority of service and white collar jobs, biking to work is undesirable.
@@prion42 Not that sweaty at all. It was early, so it was pleasantly cool, and I wasn't overexerting myself. There was *some* effort involved, but I feel like I can easily control how much I put into it. Compared to walking, I am getting a lot of speed for very little effort.
holy mother of god, i just realized, how big London Ontario is - 422k inhabitants! That's not big enough for trams etc? Zurich is about the same size and has a tram system with 17 lines additional to multiple 'normal' train stations and two funiculars.
Valparaíso, a port city in central Chile, is almost 300K inhabitants. It has a train/metro hybrid that connects all of downtown and the neighbouring communities (like 4 or 5 cities in total), plus like a gazillion bus lines, plus street cars in the flatter areas of downtown. And we've been rioting for a while to make a train that connects it and the capital. And it's Chile, a poor ass third world country.
And these guys can't do it in Canada? Come on!
Yes. It is absolutely insane that London, Ontario has no rapid transit.
The issue is not total population, it's population density. Just taking your example cities and a quick google search, London has a population density of 178 hab/sq.km versus Zurich that has 926 hab/sq.km
@@IceSpoon Honestly, Chile isn't really that poor.
Much lower density, which means lower population per each 'walk-shed'
Can we get content based on rural living as well? I heard that the netherlands is one of the worlds largest agricultural exporters. I know that this channel and audience has a bias toward urban living but it'd be interesting to know how the netherlands (and other countries) is doing well in this regard.
That would be a super interesting topic! I know that here in Germany, it can be difficult to go car free in rural areas since they're definitely more car dependent. But I have to say that growing up in a rural area, I could take the bus if I wanted to, it just wasn't as frequent as in bigger cities and pretty much impossible at night.
I've lived in Guangzhou, China for 6 years, where all the places you want to go (in general day-to-day life) are within a 15 minute walk from a metro station. Now, if I'm recommended a restaurant a 30 minute walk from a metro station, I'm very unlikely to be interested in going lol
i love it how "i will talk about that in a future video" is casually changing into more and more usage of "i talked about that in a previous video"
Thanks for mentioning ChongQing, nick name the city of bridges. ChongQing's mono-rail system is also the most successful in the world, 50+ million ridership per month, and the line goes through some pretty inane terrains, absolutely incredible.
I’m surprised that Montreal never makes an appearance in any of the “less worse” North American examples. While far from perfect, I do find it to be one of the extremely rare cities in Canada where you don’t need a car to get around (unless of course you venture out into the suburbs). The subway is extensive and frequent, and buses are doing a pretty good job too even during the winter. Not to mention the countless pedestrian only major streets in the summer! I’d love to see a video about that :)
Burnaby, New Westminster and Vancouver are now building greater density around train stations and bus connections at stations. Coquitlam is also doing this. You hit on a key point on the core problem of our cities in the zoning regulations, transit streets with wide sidewalks and 3 to 5 story buildings with shops and residents and allowing small multi unit buildings alongside single family homes would make the city more vibrant.
Your intro got me thinking about an argument that I often hear: “public transit is more expensive than freeways.”
In fact, this question got me so curious that I made a video where I assess the cost to build and run a freeway into LA vs a light rail. Since it’s going to take me forever to edit and release that episode I’ll just tell you the ending right now:
When I account for the cost of citizens buying cars then the freeway costs $500 million more to build. When I account for maintenance and fuel that the citizens spend annually for their commute then using the freeway costs as much as the WHOLE CITY spends in order to run and maintain their whole light rail and bus system!
To be clear, I’m saying that a fraction of the population (along I5) spends as much on their commute as the whole city spends on its public transit!
@p well the argument at its base is just dishonest because they’re neglecting to tally up the whole cost of building a freeway, but then they compare that vs the whole cost of building public transit.
Your comment is one of the final points of my video and why I made it. Yes, there are plenty of problems with public transit which need solved in order to make it workable for the average citizen. But when we let companies try to claim that freeways are cheaper then we neglect ourselves the chance to have the conversations about the real issues.
So let’s put the cost discussion behind us and talk instead about things like frequency, route planning, distance, safety, etc!
@p lobbying
@p Yes the cost to the consumers seems to be the difference maker here. When considering total overall cost together, then yes it seems that freeways spend the most money. But when considering that some of the cost is passed onto the citizens who have to buy the cars and the fuel, along with generous federal subsidies, then the direct cost to the state will seem lower for the freeway. It is not really as sustainable but if all you care about is the short term, then I can see why freeways are chosen so often.
People are going to buy cars anyway - so those fixed costs should not be part of the equation.
For the video you should make sure the amount spent on transit passes is included as well.
This has quickly become one my favorite channels, and believe me, there’s a lot of competition on that front. I’ve been using CZcams for 15 years and have countless channels that I like but this channel is in the top 3 for me. I never realized before this channel that infrastructure and proper city planing is one of, if not the single most important part of building a prosperous society. Good city planning has a positive impact on mostly everything: mental health, social interaction, finances, safety during commute, physical fitness and therefor health - and really - I’m just scratching the tip of the iceberg. Good city planning has such a profoundly positive impact on so many facets of society that its almost miraculous.
It would be helpful if you mentioned the other channels. I'm interested in city planning a lot
@@blakksheep736 thanks man. I haven't heard about citynerd out of these
@@anzarm.a8547 np.
Same here, it’s become an obsession, I’m fascinated by how it interacts with every single issue in society
@@blakksheep736 I would add Climate town to this list. It’s a comedy/educational channel on climate change related topics. It addresses urbanism in some of its videos. There’s even a collaboration video with NJB.
You have cities, like Hong Kong, building subway lines with multiple bright, pretty stations through mountains, across harbours and under existing high-rise city structures in less than decade. While here in Toronto, it took two decades to extend a line less than 10km for 4 additional stops: 1) centre of a university campus, 2) just outside of the university (in the middle of nowhere), 3) next to a toll-freeway (in the middle of nowhere), and 4) a newly-developed Metro centre (technically not even in the city of Toronto). I mean, they've been renovating our central station for over 10 years and construction is STILL NOT COMPLETED, and what they have done isn't a huge jump in improvement.
I am immensely jealous of the public transit in European and Asian countries.
Laughable how far behind in public transport they are. It would be absolute nightmare for me to live in a place where you need to use your car to go anywhere.
I live in Canada and I can confirm it is very depressing dealing with. I rarely go out anymore cause I just can’t be bothered to have to drive everywhere.
Having lived in England for 13 years and counting, I can't imagine life without public transport. Its so efficient I was even forced to sell my car as it wasn't practical to have it anymore due to the fact that I simply didn't need it, only drove it on weekends.
When you realize renting a car every second weekend is cheaper and less hazzle than owning a car.
Sadly Leeds doesn’t subscribe to this. It’s all buses and they’re horrendously unreliable and expensive. I wish it weren’t true but it’s cheaper and easier to take a car there.
@@PaulBeattie1 Leeds isn't the worst I've seen, but the buses could do with a lot of improvement, especially later at night.
The trains aren't bad in my limited experience, I can get to most surrounding towns fairly painlessly.
Uk busses are existant.
And they are actually better than america's.
My town of 99k has busses to nearly all corners plus intercity ones.
It used to have 1 train an hour each way now it's zero because they are on strike.
That not public transport is efficient. That old UK cities are horrible for cars. Live in UK in small town and enjoy driving every day. I would never ever live in place where i need to use public transport daily.
As someone living near Innsbruck it always comes as a bit of a shock, when you realise that ppl outside of Austria know it exists... And that Bielefeld joke was unexpected but appreciated
You kidding? Once you travel through there either by train or even by car/motorcycle, it is treat to the eyes ;-)
Well, in Poland it's mostly known because of ski jumping.
But then again, I was extremely suprised when characters in some Norwegian series were talking about Zakopane, Poland.
Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen,
Ich fahr dahin mein Straßen
In fremde Land dahin.
Mein Freud ist mir genommen,
Die ich nit weiß bekommen,
Wo ich im Elend bin.
@@herosstratos our good old friend Emperor Max
I really don’t understand this channel. Why would I want to give up my private space and freedom to be in a box full of strangers?
I'm in a small New England town and it's completely inaccessible to people who do not own cars. Our nearest city is pretty much completely beholden to cars as well. They had a citywide poll a few months ago and the respondents were pretty neatly separated into two camps: city residents who wanted more walkable neighborhoods, safety features including crosswalk lights, and dedicated bus lanes; and non-resident commuters who wanted pedestrians to stay out of "their" roads and called public infrastructure a waste of money. Pretty telling.
I live about an hour away from Portland. All I need to do is hop on an Amtrak train in the morning and then from there I switched to the max train's. It is so fluent and easy to use. There are definitely issues but it is the best way to get around. Generally speaking. I wish all cities, towns and villages would implement this.
Lund, a city of less than 100k in Sweden, recently opened their first ever tram line in order to connect a brand new, dense and walkable development that's being built to the city's northeast. So far ridership has exceeded expectations and that's despite the line being opened post-pandemic, and only a fraction of the planned development along the line even being finished yet.
"In North America, we’ve forgotten the rules of good land use and we’ve forgotten how to build good transit that supports it."
It's not really forgotten if there are powerful people with a financial incentive to do what benefits them. Even if it's only a short-term gain and harms everyone else.
They harm themselves too, unfortunately.
thank you. Its really that simple too.
While you might be entirely correct, when trying to convince others of your argument, pointing an accusing finger at some group of people is just counterproductive. It leads people to raging at the offending party instead of working to fix the problem.
Being able to say "it's that guys fault" makes it easy for people to shed responsibility, and then less people will take that responsibility.
@@MrAddex It can be helpful to identify the source of the problem. I don't know that it's as helpful to blame someone pointing out the offending party when people choose to rage rather than act, however. 🤔
But forgotten also
As a Canadian citizen (Alberta) there's a cycling development quirk that was introduced this year which truly makes me hate this continent: "Summer Streets" Edmonton introduced temporary bike lanes this year and they are... The bare minimum required to be considered "protected bike lanes" but they are only here for the summer months. As soon as fall starts they will be converted back into car lanes and cycling in the winter will be even more difficult... I can't wait to get European citizenship
Just found your channel, I'm a resident of Fake London and was surprised to hear that it's your hometown! I came from a small village and didn't get around much so I took the terrible transit and valley of parking lots for granted. Recently I traveled to OG London and surrounding area and it was mind-blowing how efficient and available public transit was. I've heard a lot of talks about improving transit but haven't heard any ideas or solutions. I wish I could assign this video as "homework" to our council and city planner lol. I feel like it's irreversible at this point though, unless we make some drastic changes in laws, zoning, and planning.
As a German: I really appreciateted the Bielefeld-Joke, putting it on there with those real cities was unexpected
Explanation: We have this nationwide running joke that the city of Bielefeld was invented by the Nazis to lure away American bombers during ww2, which as it turns out isn't a joke and is completely true
As someone living close to Bielefeld, I've never heard the WW2 Story before.
Does Germany have any funny town names though?
In Poland we have:
Koniec Świata - End of the World
Nędza - Misery
Burdele - Brothels
And like fake London in Canada, we also have fake Paris (Paryż).
@@GTAVictor9128 In Italy a lot of cities take the name "on *RIVERNAME*" and there's a river called Membro... Now... Membro (member) is also an euphemism for dick, and there's a joke town name that combines two nearby towns in "Vergate sul Membro" which can be translated as "Baton whacking on the dick". We also have the town of Figa (Pussy) and Dispera (Despair)
Wild
Tom Scott did a good (short) video about the non-existence of Bielefeld and other public secrets.
THANK YOU FOR THE BIELEFELD COMMENT. I recently went through ''Bielefeld''' when traveling by our awesome European train system from Amsterdam to Berlin. And I didn't for one minute think it was real. It was so clear to me it was a set, or otherwise, just non-existent. More people need to talk about this, spread the word people, don't believe in Bielefeld.
Wat bracht je in Bielefeld, de trein van Amsterdam Berlijn rijd over Bad Bentheim- Wolfsburg - Hannover - Berlijn. Bielefeld is veel meer naar het zuidwesten van Hannover richting het Ruhrgebied
@@MrJimheeren Ja op de heenweg idd via Osnabruck/Hannover etc. Maar op de terugweg ging ik via Bielefeld, Duisburg en dan weer naar Nederland. Wat is Duisburg trouwens een treurig station zeg, dat wordt met tape bij elkaar gehouden :')
@@MrJimheeren Ah ja even opgezocht, als je bij ns internationaal kijkt en de keuze berlijn naar arnhem kiest, dan is er een optie die langs Bielefeld komt. Ik koos Arnhem omdat ik vanaf Arnhem gratis kan reizen en dacht dat dat binnen nederland iig geld zou schelen.
@@letheas6175 ja Duisburg is vrij treurig, maar dat is eigenlijk het hele Ruhrgebied, er zijn nogal wat bommen op gevallen in de jaren 40. Essen, Bochum, Wuppertal, Hagen. Het zijn allemaal bruine misbaksels heel snel gebouwd in de jaren 50 en daarna allemaal slecht onderhouden. Persoonlijk vind ik het wel wat hebben, je kan precies zien hoe er toen gedacht werd, schouders eronder en gaan met de banaan, niet terugdenken maar denken aan de toekomst.
@@MrJimheeren Oh leuk, ik ben het helemaal eens met je beredenering over waarom het toch wel iets heeft. Mee eens hoor, plus, een stukje verderop ligt naar mijn mening de parel van het Ruhrgebied, Dússeldorf. Wat een prachtige sfeervolle stad is dat zeg:) Ik kom er graag in elk geval.
Oh en Wuppertal, nog nooit geweest maar ik moet die soort monorail trein/ding/iets een keer bezoeken (als mobiliteitsstudent is dat gewoon een must visit denk ik)
What a great video. I live in a city that had trams up til 1964. Then it was time for the private car. This set us back 60 years. Now we are building light rails. Let us hope we can get our city back.
My home town of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic has a population around 100 thousand people and we have over 20 bus lines (nearly half trolley busses) that go everywhere in the city and even to the outskirts. I am always amazed when I bike to some remote part of town but then I see a *wild city bus* appear out of nowhere to connect there too. I take these remote bus lines on occassion as a trip to enjoy those parts of the city from the elevated point of view of a convenient, mellow public transit.
Totally feel you on the “Small cities” argument- the government of my hometown of Bremerhaven, Germany also justifies not reinstating the tram system that was shut down in the 1980s by saying there’s no demand compared to the high costs…. for reference, we used to be occupied by Americans, so it checks out I guess.
the deadly touch of the 'Murica
Oh that's why haha. I was really surprised when I visited Bremerhaven because there were only buses there as public transport. It was surprising because it's not a small city by German standard and it's even in the (former) West Germany. In the city of Bremen itself, the transit system is fairly weak compared to other cities of the same size in Germany. My ex bf was from Bremen and he said "Bremen is a village with trams" xD
We're all living in America! America! Coca cola, sometimes war!
@@666Tomato666+
bUt dOn'T yOu eNjOy ThE FrEeDoM?
When I was a kid, my mom would take me to the doctor's office by train because she hated driving. To leave the station that we got off at, you needed to walk across this wooden bridge that looked temporary (like something construction workers would use), but had actually been there for several years. The bridge led to a lot full of gravel and cinder blocks that you then had to walk through to get to the sidewalk. It was still a few minutes of walking to get from the sidewalk to the clinic, since the clinic had a parking lot. The only thing on that side of the street (besides the clinic) was a fast food chain with a drive-thru that cars would speed into at 30+ mph from the highway. I grew up in a city with more than a million people.
I always find myself thinking UK city design is bad and car centric when I am out and about. Then I go and watch your video about North America and suddenly the UK seems like a pinnacle of urban planning. The things that you show as standard in the USA/Canada look absolutely insane to me. I mean - just look at the size of these random carparks!
Great video. Thanks for the video clip from my home town of New Orleans. Your video uploads have helped me understand historical land use principals. Very eye opening.
I'm from the US, so not sure if it's the same in Canada: We've been trained to associate public transit with being poor and to associate having a car (that most of us can't even really afford) as being successful. Other countries value their health (walkability of cities) and doing their part to save the environment. I just got back from Mexico City. Their metro line is incredible and overall as a country, they have it set up where you can walk to almost everything you need. For example, I walked to get my haircut, to the bakery, lots of vegan restaurants, the bank, etc. As you've mentioned before, the US and Canada have created zoning laws to make this so it isn't possible. I can't wait to permanently live in Mexico (plan in progress).
Now how about learning and changing mind ? Isn't behaving differently from parents considered cool also ? Most often it needs just a generation change. And some positive experience may be.
It's weird how people view having a car as success in US. I'm from England, so cars aren't as heavily used here (we do have the same issues, but not quite the point of dependency) and the public transport system usually almost completely fills up during rush ours. It's a quick and easy way to get between cities, as driving can take quite a while to get to places.
Plus, I have pretty severe travel sickness. Most motor vehicles are borderline painfully dizzying for me to be in without medication, and medication can be quite expensive when used consistently especially when I need allergy tablets ontop of it, plus, it doesn't really stop all of the discomfort I get from being in them, so I've kind of learned to avoid getting in them where I can, especially cars.
Though, tbf I'm tryna become a gardener, and you need a license for most gardening jobs here for some reason, so I might just have to suck it up and deal with it.
I have lived in or just north of New York City for the last 3+ years, and although I know I don't want to live here forever, I think I'm really going to struggle to move to a place with minimal public transportation. I love not having to rely on a vehicle to get around.
@@sandy_carpetsthesecond5013 If you can afford a car, you at least have somewhat good economy, so in that respect it's a sign of success. I live in Sweden. We have pretty good public transports here, but it's expensive. The only thing is that going by car is even MORE expensive than bus and train. And I'm both slightly autistic and a misanthrope, so I prefer going by car. And people in this country usually don't talk to strangers anyway, so it's extremely unlikely that you would meet your future wife on the bus as well.
@@francisdec1615 Well, no. Most people have cars, so unless pretty much everyone is successful, It's not really an indicator of anything other than the fact that cars are convenient for your current life situation.
You are a one-man publicity campaign for the Hoofddorp Business Park. I almost want to start a business just for the purpose of locating it there and availing myself of the amenities.
It's depressing that apparently every city planner in the US is oblivious to everything in this video. It seems so clear when it's presented. Very well done.
I imagine the planers are all too aware of these things and try their best to make something useful, but the ridiculous zoning laws and NIMBY crap that's prevalent in North America make it an almost impossible task. Not to mention the politics involved. Nobody wants to be "that politician" who green lit this thing that's going to bring "those" people to your neighbourhood!
American here...I have always been annoyed by the way cities are planned out here... knowing that if we made walkable communities with public transit as integral to the city, not as a afterthought would only make it better for everyone... citizens deserve better...we can do better. You continue to enlighten me with every video since I first subscribed. Thank you!
My pre 1940 city neighborhood is dealing with this right now. The area is very walkable (for an American city), but one of the city's largest streets runs through it. They aren't going to streetcars, but are planning to drastically restructure the street: one lane for cars each way, one 24/7 bus lane each way, separated bike lanes, and wider sidewalks. Plus fewer but better bus stops and timed traffic lights to give the busses right of way. Maybe not perfect, but pretty good.
Everyone (who owns a car) that I talk to thinks it's a terrible idea. "But where will you park to go shopping?" "they're narrowing the street to one lane!!!" There are plenty of parking lots behind the stores, lots of side streets, and maybe, just maybe, people might use the improved bus system?
I'm the weirdo outlier, a professional class person who does not own a car and takes the bus. I think the new plan is great. And if it means I no longer get woken up in the middle of the night by people drag racing on the street, that's worth everything.
Out of curiosity, which city is this located in? It sounds quite familiar to a situation in my own right now (though I'm sure it's not an uncommon experience)
Yes, an American woman who doesn't bring a jumbo pocketbook on wheels hauling enough wardrobe to clothe an African village with her everywhere she goes, is an outlier indeed. That's not being sexist, that's just how life is in the US and anything less than that standard is tyranny, so how's some city commissioner going to vote to diminish his wife's human rights like that and reduce car lanes and parking lots? Ain't gonna happen, so these videos are more futile than challenging Godzilla to a pillow fight.
I get the issue though. If they improve only one lane then the bus system for the rest of the city doesn't work and it will not be good for most people in the city.
Where I live (Warsaw, Poland) actually faces a similar problem as we have allowed for quite a lot of sprawl with rapid development where the land is cheapest not where it makes sense to build and now many people complain about public transport being bad and them being "forced" to use cars. When in reality public transport here is still very good it's just we can't keep up with unregulated suburbs
@@austinmillbarge8731 Excuse me???
I carry as little as possible, don't even have a rolling suitcase.
I do have to carry a laptop back and forth to work, plus a thermos of (home made) coffee, maybe an umbrella and my office shoes if it's -5F outside. I have a simple commuter bag, nothing else.
Plenty of men carry all that, plus a full set of gym clothes, more tech than an Apple store ... and they use a backpack that smacks other people in the face when they stand on a crowded bus.
The solution isn't to blame women - or men, it's to have enough public transit that there's room for all the people and their bags.
@@NotADuncon There are similar projects elsewhere in the city, plus more light rail projects. This is just the one closest to my home.
Compared to the rest of the world, public transit in my city sucks. Compared to the USA and Canada, it's very good, and getting better.
This channel is bringing awareness to people like me that didn’t even realize how car dependent we are in the US compared to everywhere else. Doing the world a service
Real men drive cars, bus is for broke boys.
@@morganangel340 real men can use a car because it is supported by gasoline subsidized by the state. We'll see if these real men can use cars as they please, if state subsidies are lifted
@@tomster95 electric car my friend you assume all cars are gas powered but go on
@@loving916 electric car need electricity to charge,it means need power plant, and american electricity got subsidies from the state.
@@morganangel340 Real men would walk or bike to work so we can show off our beefy bods we got goin' on. Cars are for losers who make poor job, housing and finciancial decisions, and buses are just there for convenience.
Plus, a lot of people can't drive for disability reasons. Disable-friendly cars are expensive, travel sickness tablets are expensive long-term. I know for a fact that I sure as hell ain't gonna be behind a wheel, I do not have the eyesight or the ability to not projectile vomit in vehicles for me to get in one without accidentally killing at least family of five.
It is so odd seeing how properly designed cities are safe to walk through. The safest place to walk through my hometown, are active freight train rail lines and large concrete storm drains, 3 miles down either and you cross 7 miles of road to the same spot.
You're absolutely right. We have the same problem here in Australian cities. That's because for years, the motoring lobbies have bribed politicians to build more and more roads. I used to live in Switzerland many years ago and never needed a car. All freight there is transported on trains from town to town, here all freight is moved on semitrailers clogging up the roads. Love your videos, they should be compulsory viewing all around the world. Thank you an keep posting.
As a Brit who visited the US a couple of times, I'll say one good thing about their buses: They have a bike rack on the front, so you can take it with you. This is unheard of in the UK. Granted, I only saw this while stood at the side a car infested stroad in Reno.
They have them in Toronto and Guelph too - its pretty standard here (and nice!). But, it isn't perfect - the driver is grumpy if you use them when the bus is late (aka always) because of the pretty short loading time and there are usually only 2 spots for the bikes, so you never know for sure if you'll get a spot. They're still good though.
Hmmm.
Our busses got like zero places to put bikes apart from the 2 disabled areas up front.
Although even if the busses did i feel like here in the UK they won't be used often.
Just like how older busses still got manual ramps but they are rarely ever used.
I have seen trams with bike racks as well, in Lisbon and Stuttgart.
In the Netherlands, they even have bike cars on some trains.
Omg Reno buses are so sketchy! I’m living in Salt Lake City right now and for N. America their transit isn’t bad, with space for bikes on buses and rail cars, but it could be SO much better.
Forgot to mention a small detail about IJburg: when 'this area was selected because it had potential' it wasn't an island. It was a lake. Before building the tram, we first built the island...
I'd be inclined to call it part of a river/lake transition. seeing it more as a part of 't IJ than the IJmeer
@@wp12mv If we're going to be technical, 't IJ ends and IJmeer starts at the Orange Locks (Oranjesluizen)...
But the main point is that all of IJburg is reclaimed land.
Who does these things(building)? and in what kind of timeframes?
@@jamesmedina2062 big construction usually involves BAM group, but it could just as well be a cooperative of multiple developers, so not sure about that and technically, it's been under constructing since 1997 and still developing. Long story, but google it, IJburg has a wikipedia page in English. The design is already from 1967. (Dutch take city planning quite serious and take their sweet time to plan stuff out)
Youre Dutch so this doesn’t have to be mentioned, it’s already implied automatically 😄
I get all the “vibrant” experience that I want or need at work. What I want outside of work is R1 residential, where it is QUIET so that I can enjoy my family and friends. Once you are an adult with a famly, a noisy local Pub isn’t very appealing …
Enjoyed the Regina, SK shout out!
Last summer on a nearby street thre was a pothole that was so bad it exposed an old tram rail. They didn't tear out the infrastructure, they just buried it!
When I first moved to Shenzhen, I was walking around my neighborhood to get familiarized and find the optimal bus/subway stops to use. The furthest of the "close" subway stops had me walk down a dirt road past stagnated ponds of something toxic and an artificial hill of excavation fill then hop a wall. When I finally got there, it was desolate, there was absolutely nothing there and it was a pristine subway stop that was staffed. It just boggled me how ridiculous it was at the time.
As in Chongqing, it's now completely unrecognizable, heavily developed, and smack in the middle of a high density housing complex. Would be near impossible to have built the subway connection after development.
China does use capitalism, but they're also still so communist, in such obvious ways, that are working so well, that it just busts down the myth that unplanned capitalism is the only a working model. America could be building up our flailing Midwest cities with the world's population. Instead, we fight each other for decaying housing stock while not even having the facilities to train new builders or indeed build much of anything at all. Other than Tesla & the Boring Company, firms, universities, & cities in America all pay a heavy tax to the construction cartels. Every city over 100k could have a subway with Boring Company's tunneling technology.
@@Nphen It's not just China, nor it's communist government, that does this sort of transit orientated government. I have a friend who spent 12 years living in Seoul, South Korea and they did something similar. He remembers taking the subway to the end of the line and ending up at subway station with nothing around it. Just like Chongquing it seemed odd athe time but in the space of 5-7 years they had built up an entire satellite community around it. It's planning ahead and having a population where taking transit doesn't seem to have the stigma it does in North America.
Why u immigrated to china so that u can find an asian woman?
Making walkable neighborhoods is definitely the direction we should be going. Even if rail transit isn't a part of it. It would get more people out of their cars, which helps in weight loss and overall health.
You lose weight in the kitchen and gain muscle/cardiovascular health in the gym.
I went keto/IF and lost 60+ lbs in a few months.
And if you walk / cycle everywhere, you need less time doing cardio at the gym.
@UCBE8e8Sr7p2yzzlsd1Kgjfw But driving costs you the price for gas, and, depending on your gym contract, you maybe need to pay according to the time spent at the gym, using their devices.
Damn right
@@KillerofGods true but school studies have shown that just 1 hr of daily activity dramatically reduced obesity in children and the Dutch have very low rates of obesity. Daily physical activity prevents obesity
EXCELLENT! At last, a sane voice on this issue. Thank you!
"Productive urban places" is the key. There are such places in the US, but they change over time scales as low as a single generation. Unlike bus routes, tracks can't be moved overnight.
In the 19th century, and well into the early 20th, very few people had cars, and there were few places to drive them anyway, and they were slow and prone to breaking down. So people made it a point to live near their work. But they also tended to work at the same place for many years or a lifetime. And the downtown area of any city remained a center of commerce. Trains (trams, trolley's, whatever) were valuable forms of getting people around in town. But the automobile allowed people to move to better areas without quitting their jobs. The stereotypical "American dream" included a house in suburbia, not an apartment in a hundred year old high rise. Those small cities and towns with trolleys took them down because no one was using them. And those who tried bringing them back quickly found that people still wont use them. Why? Because they don't go to the places people live and it would be absurd to try to put them there.
For example, the largest city near me is Memphis, a prime example. Memphis took down their trolleys in the 1950s. And they build new ones in the 1980s, which remain unused. No one wants to drive into town and park in a bad area to get on the trolley to take them to another bad area where half the businesses are closed and boarded up and the crime rate is high. Memphis, like virtually all major cities is mostly bad areas. People want to live and shop elsewhere, and as a new area goes bad, people who can afford to move elsewhere and leave the neighborhood to decay away until another future generation might buy up the area and build expensive gated condos. trolleys can't keep up with such changes. It's the same reason so few people travel by train. Virtually every train station is in the worst parts of town.
Also there is a difference caused by war. American cities weren't bombed into rubble in the 1940s. So we never had to rebuild everything from the ground up in the 20th century.
The "number of people" issue is a real one, but it's more about how far they are apart and how far they are from work and shopping. American cities are VASTLY further apart in north America than they are in Europe. You can't really compare them on similar terms.
What the hell! I'm from Bielefeld/Germany and i was thinking like "is he really pulling of the joke now" AND HE DID! :D
Nah man, you don't exist either now. ;)
A real cyberghost
But...you can't be! There is no such place!
Obviously he did. If there's an opportunity, then you have to make this joke. :D
I've been watching your videos from the Midwest for a year or two and agreeing on principle, but it wasn't until I moved to Boston this summer that I got to truly experience a subway. It's genuinely life-changing. I had been thinking of moving to Europe for a while now, but if this is what it gets me, there's no stopping me now
As a citizen of the world, I highly encourage you to move out of the United States. It's madness that people still think that country is the _pinnacle_ of freedom living when it's all about dependency to the mega-corp.
And a very warm welcome to the Netherlands for you, dear sir 😉😄
@@TheNewPatsyBailey Yes welcome. Bring a tent though, there are quite literally no houses left :)
You are absolutely correct. This is the key. Interestingly, in Phoenix, the development is taking place around the rail lines. It is possible that if you build transit along sprawl, it might lead to development of walkable destinations. Time will tell.