When I lived in Germany for a while, my wife and I took a train across the country one winter to Munich for the Christmas markets. We stayed in a hostel and walked the streets, enjoying the various stalls. I’d never heard of Glüwein before (hot, mulled, spiced red wine), but it was fantastic! It was an amazing experience and we didn’t have to worry about parking lots or figuring out public transportation. Everything was within walking distance and we ended up touring all of Munich on foot.
I wish the US would get off its ass and get some high speed trains set up. We just need to keep oil and auto dealers out of the discussion because they keep shutting it down. Like Musk’s “Hyperloop” project, which he proposed to stop legislation from approving high speed trains, but then intentionally did nothing with, so we just don’t develop trains to replace his Tesla cars.
High speed trains should actually not be the primary focus of the US when it commes to public transport, city/suburban systems are more important.
Don’t get me wrong, the US absolutely needs high speed rail, but without a well functioning local public transport system at both ends you end up with something that conceptually is more like an airport than a european train station.
Without local public transport, travelers still need to go by car to and from the endpoints, just like a lot of airports, this means that stations will require a lot of expensive parking, that is essentially wasted space.
Now, the US will probably allways be car dependant to a higher degree than Europe, this is due to how cities have been built, unchecked urban sprawl with little mixed use zones with few central spots makes it hard to build good metro and bus lines, where do you put the stations, where will people connect?
I won’t pretend to have the answers, I absolutely don’t, but I know that regardless of how public transport is established in new and existing neighbourhoods there will be angry people, but lets just make sure that the happy people outnumber them
100% without local city restructuring with mixed zoning and suburban redevelopment for proper land use, high speed rail developments will result on those stupid “middle of nowhere” train stations that are just railways from giant parking lot to giant parking lot. Completely undermining the whole point of rail that is being able to drop you off right in the middle of dense cities, which airports can’t due to the logistics of flight.
Sometimes to get to work I drive one mile, park (expensively) and then take the train 8 miles, then walk a mile, carrying all the shit I need for work, including my dinner, laptop, change of clothes and 3 40z water bottles. Usually I just drive.
You can say a lot about Stockholm, but one thing it does have is excellent public transport, fully integrated with the suburbs.
In my municipality we have a local train line and several bus lines that can take me into the city, during rush hour busses depart every 5-10 min or so from my closest bus stop, bus lanes along the highway work well and it usually takes me an hour to get to the office, 40 min during summer, this is to cover about 30km.
Agree if by “local public transport” you mean “put things next to each other, without 18 400-car parking lots separating them”
To make public transport successful you need mixed use zoning, small community centers where you can connect from longer routes to more local routes, meeting places with a few shops/cafés/restaurants, parking will be needed as well, but not insane surface lots, but a garage with 2-3 levels should be fine.
Right - public transit needs to be usable in the place you’re traveling to if you’re going to take a train. This is why a lot of people would rather drive from, say San Francisco to Los Angeles. Suppose you were to take a train instead. Then… great?! what would you do next? You wouldn’t have anywhere to go, so you’ll need a car anyway. You’d either have to rent one or just skip the train and do the drive instead.
Probably a lot easier and feasible in my opinion to build the local public transit first, and then focus on the regional/national transit system.
If you’re going from LA to SF you’re fine. You’d take the Coast Starlight to SJ, then you’d transfer to Cal Train, and that drops you off at the Transbay Terminal in SF which gives you easy access to BART or Muni and all of the streetcar and bus lines. Owning a car in SF is more trouble than it’s worth for a lot of people. I never owned one when I lived there.
Granted, SF is one of only a handful of US cities where this is true.
Heading south to LA would probably be a much bigger problem though.
I see what you’re saying, but the advantage of intercity rail, not necessarily high-speed, but rail that goes from one city to another at commuter speeds, that is definitely worth having where I live. I’m in Terre Haute, IN. There isn’t a ton of work here. A lot of people here make the 80-90 minute drive to either Indianapolis or Bloomington to their jobs. There is already a bus line here if people need that and, yes, it could go to more places, but Indiana used to have a robust rail network that linked the entire state and doing something like that today would have a lot of advantages. Not just the job issue, but both Indianapolis and Bloomington are desirable destinations for things like restaurants and shows and people from all over the state drive to them (and a few other small cities) very regularly because of that.
The way I see it, a lot more CO2 emissions would be reduced with intercity rail in this state and the public bus transportation in various Indiana cities is already decent.
Sorry, I think you missunderstand me, I didn’t mean that the US should abandon any existing rail project, but that the local public transport system if often forgotten in the talk about HSR
Dude I’m traveling to Texas in a few months and I didn’t realize how close Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin are. It’s like a triangle, 2.5 to 3.5 hours between either city. Waco and San Antonio sit on the line between Austin and DFW.
These cities are linked by a rather nice highway system from what I remember last time I was in TX, but to the best of my knowledge, there’s no high-speed rail, only rail that’s slower than driving most the time.
Why? Texas should be embarrassed. Especially with Houston being so close to Galveston, which is a pretty damn good port.
High speed trains for city to city transit wouldn’t allow for markets like this. You need suburb to city core transit for that…
Oh, wait:
This reminds me of that AskHistorian thread of someone asking where people parked their chariots when Roman citizens went to the coliseum.
Heh. Their palanquin or litter would drop them off and go sit in an alley or street somewhere, probably. Like how carriages in later centuries would.
Palanquins were used only by noble families, if even. Less than 1% of the population and even less than that of the amount of people who would assist to the coliseum were carried there. Almost everyone just walked.
Iirc, chariots where only used to transport people and goods between towns and cities, being pretty rare inside cities if not completely forbidden.
New Yorkers get it but that’s about it.
I think Chicago is the only other US city that comes close, their transit is fantastic!
And they’ve got Christkindlmarket.
DC’s light rail is pretty nice too. LA’s could be nice if there were more frequent trains, but that probably has more to do with how sprawled LA is.
I used the red line all the time when I lived in LA. It was crazy to me that so few people who lived there even knew it existed.
At the time, the other two lines were, if I remember correctly, the blue and green lines. Those were much more working class commute type lines that didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, but the red line ran from downtown out through Hollywood, and then on to universal where I could enjoy some of the bars at City Walk without worrying about driving or parking.
Now I live maybe less than five miles from downtown Dallas and I never go there because there’s no train and the driving/parking situation is a nightmare.
Clarification: There are trains that go to downtown Dallas. Just not from my neighborhood.
I (US citizen living in Japan for most of a decade) took my wife (only in the US once as an elementary school student and only Honolulu) to DC for the first time a couple of months ago. I was pleasantly surprised. I had ridden DC’s subways once or twice on trips there. We were table to do everything we wanted on foot, by bus, and by train. Getting on the train from Dulles, though, we had some only-partly-clothed woman passed out with what I can only assume was a trail of partly-dried piss on the floor by her. Police took her off when we got into the city at some point, but it was a less-than-stellar start. That said, I’ve seen people puke and piss on trains in Tokyo as well.
San Francisco always gets left out of these as well, but transit there rocks
They probably assumed this is like a theme park or something and not an actual city that people actually live in year round. Cities having nice, people friendly places away from cars? Who’s ever heard of that?
They have transit to back that up though. There are plenty of smallish towns and rural areas that don’t have any transit at all.
At the same time, those towns are hella compact, such that 90+% of residents can walk to pretty much any retailer or store or other resource within 15-20 minutes. Yes, some people (farmers) live outside of town and there are some American-style housing in clumps outside of the town, but everyone mostly lives in tight clusters.
And even the tiny towns well away from other larger towns have busses that move people between towns on a fairly regular If infrequent basis (15-20 minutes apart). Only the larger population centres can afford to have public transport that comes every 5 minutes or so.
You also have to understand that in North America, a “significant separation between towns” is something like 100+km. In Germany, that term qualifies with as little as a 10km distance. It’s rare to find any population centre that is more than 20km away from its nearest neighbour.
fairly regular If infrequent basis (15-20 minutes apart)
lol that’s the frequency that the busses and trains near me operate during peak commute times. I finally broke down and bought a car. I’m American if you couldn’t tell…
Oof, in my city there’s one route that’s 40 minutes, and the rest are an hour+
If I lived in a different spot or had kids or anything, it’d be impossible for me to take the bus. I don’t blame people who don’t use it. It’s mostly used by homeless people.
It’s getting better though, slowly but surely :)
At the same time, those towns are hella compact, such that 90+% of residents can walk to pretty much any retailer or store or other resource within 15-20 minutes.
- Pandemics are a thing
- Families wanting nature and places in their backyard that kids can play
I think 15 minute cities are great if you have everything to back it up. All of the grocery stores and mini-box stores left downtown Seattle because a lot are work from home now. If people can work and live anywhere they want, they want nature. You need to have transit for that.
Edit: I’m trying to understand the downvotes, is this not being taught in urban planning? Is it just developers wanting to rent their spaces because their leases are closing out? Or is it naive people wanting to force their ideas without realizing humans are going to make decisions in the process as well? Super interesting thread.
One of the mistakes for which j think you are down voted is thinking you can’t have nature nearby if you live in a more dense cluster. Quite the opposite is true. People living in apartments 4 or 5 high leaves a lot more open space available for parks, playgrounds, etc. Suburban sprawl looking for “wanting nature and places in their backyard that kids can play” is exactly what destroys this space in cities in the first place…
As an American, I worked in Tokyo for a while and I would 100% raise a family in any sized walkable town or city with mass transit. You could walk to several stores or restaurants, the train station, the river, or several parks within 10 minutes.
I think 15 minute cities are great if you have everything to back it up.
This is just a tautology
I think water is great if it has two hydrogens for each oxygen
Even if you have most things nearby for day-to-day life but still need to travel an hour for any of: school, work, daycare, groceries, or even common leisure or entertainment activities, “green spaces”… Then that ain’t a 15 minute city.
Additionally, transit is absolutely included in 15 minute city concept - whether it be pedestrian, biking, bus, train, mixed-mode trips, cars*… It’s a holistic concept so of course these are all under the umbrella.
* yes even cars can be included, but in order for the others to be successful they are general de-prioritized in this model.
Edit: I’ll also add that I see “15-minute city” is an aspirational goal, and anything that moves us closer towards it tends to be good for the people that live there - and even if not fully achieved in a particular place, this type of hand-wringing about specific aspects in order to disregard the whole concept seems disingenuous at best.
I think the downvotes are the blanket statement of “if people can work and live anywhere they want, they want nature”
I like nature just fine and have worked from home for most of the past ten years but you couldn’t get me to give up the city for the country and I’ve had the option for a long time. I moved from Atlanta to Seattle because i preferred the opposite of what you said people want.
If people can work and live anywhere they want, they want nature.
This is a huge generalization and you seem to imply that would mean populations spreading out into semi rural areas. Studies have shown people are happier with access to nature, but you seem to forget green spaces, parks and tree lined streets exist. I loved living in a walkable city and absolutely would again if I could afford it.
I think 15 minute cities are great if you have everything to back it up.
The fifteen minute city is the infrastructure.
I live in France, about 30 minutes from a major city. There is transit, but it’s not good, and has very few stops near where I live. Grocery shopping has to be done by car or bike as there aren’t any shops in the village. European cities are extremely well served by transit, but outside the metropolitan areas, cars are still king.
It’s a really interesting thread. Cities are great, suburb & rural can be great and transit is great. 15 minute cities are great goals, but it’s not a one size fits all situation. I can’t figure out how they think these utopian 15 minute cities would work if they don’t have a working transit built in. It’s so weird, do they think handicapped people can bike and walk everywhere or don’t exist? Do they think parents love sending their kids down the block to play by themselves instead of the backyard? Their choices aren’t going to make sense for a ton of people. They’re either right out of school or trolling, I can’t tell which.
It’s so weird, do they think handicapped people can bike and walk everywhere or don’t exist?
As a handicapped person myself, it really baffles me how people think car oriented infrastructure is so much better for us. I am a wheelchair user, and I live in a 15 minute neighborhood. Getting around in my wheelchair is a million times simpler there than in my old car-centric suburb, because the same disabilities that make me wheelchair bound also prevent me from driving. Which mean that in a car-centric environment I do one of the following:
a) Rely on the generosity of friends and family to cart me around at their convenience, or b) Utilize shared access rides, which are door to door, but take longer than using public transit, or c) Roll myself to underserved suburban bus stops over badly maintained sidewalk, and pray I make it on time.
None of which are appealing.
Meanwhile, in my 15 minute city:
- The buses often run at 10 to 15 minute intervals (vs 30 to 60 minutes in the suburb),
- Sidewalks are larger
- I have less distance to travel in the first place
You never even seen the Netherlands, have you? Also, what I tell everyone who comes up with these kind of non-questions, no one is taking your car away. Cars still exist in Europe, but they are not the default, they are used for what they make sense, making irregular trips of 100+Km. But chances are, that there is a train that serves the route anyway.
Handicapped people: most have access to electric micro-mobility vehicles that are legal to use on bike lanes. For those who can’t use micro vehicles, there’s still cars, and vans. They still exists. They weren’t magicked away.
Kids: My sister lives in the outskirts of Madrid, her neighborhood is littered with dozens of parks of all kinds, all less than 10 minute walks. My 10 y.o. nephew can go on his own to many parks without ever having to set foot on asphalt, cross a road or get on neither a bus or a car. He has never had to play on a street. They live in an urban tower that, while they don’t have a personal green cancer backyard, they have a skatepark, a playground, a pet park, sport courts (tennis, badminton, soccer and basketball), a running trail and a botanical garden, all within walking distance.
Handicapped people are more affected by the inverse. Small cities are great, car-centric communes are terrible for them. They’ve worked out their own mobility issues, but those solutions are interrupted when the crosswalks and pedestrian bridges are affected. If the “solution” involves getting in and out of a car repeatedly, it’s often cumbersome for people in wheelchairs.
The point on kids really relates more to neighborhood safety, and how often people interact with a community. Often, kids should be trusted to go down the street to the park. All our old Saturday newspaper comics involve kids going places themselves on foot or bike instead of constantly “being dropped off”.
I can’t figure out how they think these utopian 15 minute cities would work if they don’t have a working transit built in. It’s so weird
Isn’t the assumption that the 15 minute city is a neighbourhood in a functional city? There should be transit.
It’s so weird, do they think handicapped people can bike and walk everywhere or don’t exist?
I lived in something like a fifteen minute neighbourhood. I saw people in wheelchairs around. They appeared to use the same amenities as everyone else.
Do they think parents love sending their kids down the block to play by themselves instead of the backyard?
Our kids preferred going to playgrounds because the toys and play structures were better. And they ran into kids they knew.
Their choices aren’t going to make sense for a ton of people.
I’m not sure what would be bad about a fifteen minute neighbourhood. It’s just a normal neighbourhood, with stores, schools, work, and civic infrastructure.
As far as I can tell, a fifteen minute neighbourhood only adds to what exists, rather than taking away.
That you can’t imagine how it possibly could.
You think the rest of the world just, I guess, found the natural transit in the ground? The rest of the world built public transit systems to satisfy the people. America did not, to satisfy the companies.
to pre-empt the standard responses:
“america is very big”, yes yes so is the rest of the world, we managed.
“America isn’t as dense”, yup the rest of the world has low densities, too. We still build infrastructure, though
“It’s very expensive and we already bought a car and made all these empty dead suburban environments, it would take people three hours by bus to get to a store”, yup America made its choices there, the rest of the world zones so that people live near the infrastructure they need and can get the things they need via transit.