LogFAQs > #972700570

LinkPizza posted...

Theres still walking areas around Sidewalks and stuff

Having sidewalks doesn't make an area walkable. Having stuff within a comfortable walking distance does, which is much more difficult when stores are routinely set a kilometre back from the road to accommodate the parking lot, or when entire blocks that could have been destinations are bulldozed to make space for parking. It also relies on walking being a safe option, which it really isn't when the street has been designed to prioritize moving as many cars as possible as quickly as possible, since that results in narrower sidewalks with fewer obstacles between the sidewalk and the road (which minimize the harm of cars mounting the curb for whatever reason), frequent driveways, more complex intersections where drivers have more to pay attention to than pedestrians (right turns on red lights are a particular issue, since drivers are typically looking to their left while making those turns and have a harder time noticing pedestrians coming from the right), longer crossings... The issues are countless.

LinkPizza posted...

That said, most spaces get used. We made just a patch of land that was sitting there useless into more parking spaces since it wasnt used for anything else. So, now its usually full with a couple spaces open. And thats usually enough for everybody to park. And since its a 24 hour operation, they are usually getting used through the whole day

That's kind of the point. Designing the city around cars means all that parking space is necessary, because everybody has to drive and everybody that drives needs somewhere to store their car when they get where they're going. That land wasn't useless, it was unused, which I'd be willing to bet was a consequence of zoning laws, minimum parking requirements, and other car-centric policies making it non-viable to develop it into something more valuable than parking. If it's valuable as parking, then it's close enough to other things to have been valuable as a commercial destination or housing (or both, since mixed-use, medium-density housing is fantastic for cities despite the fact that many cities don't even allow such properties to be built), which it could have been if not for the need to allocate so much land to parking.

LinkPizza posted...

Though, tbf, base just has a lot of extra land that just sits there unused. Mostly just fields Some have trees, and some just have grass They should probably use it for something. But they dont have a need for anything new right now. But its not used for parking or living or anything. Just the local wildlife, I guess. So, it seems like it works well since everything it close-ish on base Still a big base, though

Bases are a bit of a different situation in that they tend to be designed to be self-sufficient and allow people to do what they need to do without travelling far. University campuses are often designed around similar principles, assuming that those living in dorms don't have cars and making everything pleasantly walkable as a result. It'll depend a bit on the base, but I expect you actually can enjoy some of the benefits of good city design already and that there are errands you prefer to run on the base instead of on your way home because the base is just better designed.

LinkPizza posted...

As for tax, either way, tax will be expensive I dont see it getting cheaper with public transportation At least, not anytime soon I can see it getting way more expensive, though

Road infrastructure is unfathomably expensive, and far and away the least cost-efficient way to move people around cities (putting aside obvious silly alternatives like personal, tax-funded helicopters). Low-density housing, industrial parks, and other car-centric designs need way more road infrastructure (and also power, sewer, water, phone, internet, and other forms of infrastructure that every one of those spaced-out buildings needs) to connect them to the rest of the grid, so not only do those parcels of land generate less tax revenue per unit of area, they cost more tax dollars to service. People routinely balk at the idea of spending half a million to install a few protected bike lanes (which improve traffic flow by getting more people out of cars), but happily swallow spending a hundred times that just fixing the potholes that showed up over the winter (which is the bare minimum needed to keep roads usable and does nothing to improve traffic flow).

Would there be a front-end cost? Sure. Is that front-end cost going to be very quickly mitigated by fares, increased property and sales tax revenue, and reduced road maintenance requirements? Absolutely. Cities routinely invest more in road "improvements" than it would take to pivot to a less car-centric model, and those improvements don't actually help anything in the long run.

LinkPizza posted...

Buses and trains have routes. So, even with the bus lanes, it just depends on the route. With a personal vehicle, I head straight to wherever Im going. With public transport, I can end up going a bunch of places around town first (and possibly the transit station) first

Buses tend to follow the same major arterial roads that you'd take in a car anyway, or at least something closely parallel to it. Personally, I don't walk/bike to work on the same road that my bus to work would take, but it's only 1-2 blocks over for most of the trip, and that's the same distance I'd have to walk to get to the stop in the first place. On the rare occasion that I drive, I'll take either of those two roads and see similar results either way. Now, that bus comes once every 20 minutes at best, is routinely very late, sometimes doesn't show up at all, and I'm still leery of public transit amid the pandemic, but I would at least say that the route is well-designed and improving it to be properly usable is going to be a matter of improving the frequency and reliability.

If transit is well-designed, you won't be meandering aimlessly around on a bus before getting to where you're going. It might not be quite as direct a route as you would drive, but it should be comparable, especially with provisions like bus lanes and advance signals to help it avoid getting stuck in traffic (which is a major part of making it faster than driving).

LinkPizza posted...

I know that having used lots of public transit before, youre at the mercy of everything else.

That's no less true of cars. You don't control traffic any more than you control bus schedules. Heck, in most places that just throw buses in with the rest of the cars and wonder why nobody wants to use them, that same traffic is often going to be the main reason buses show up late or miss stops. By and large, machinery that is professionally maintained on a prescribed schedule and operated by trained professionals is going to be less prone to randomly breaking down or getting into an accident than any given car being driven by any given person, to the main factor for unpredictability is traffic, which there are many ways to mitigate for transit (including making transit reliable enough that people take it instead of driving, which improves traffic from the outset).