Its terrible because it is geometrically impossible for a form of transit to simultaneously have high capacity and to carry people directly to their destination.
Cars average an occupancy of about 1.5, while trains routinely carry hundreds of people. A bit of thought about the implications of everyone arriving directly at their destination should reveal why the average occupancy of such a transit mode can never be much higher than 1.5. This is something that many many advocates of PRT (personal rapid transit) systems fail to understand.
By the way, a pedestrian oriented space can be made to accommodate people that have difficulty walking, but it is virtually impossible to make a city safe and accessible for people with difficulty seeing if the expectation is that everyone is driving a car to their destination.
Depends on the design of the area. For rural areas, that’s gonna be the case (although we could make buses go to specific houses by request and buses for disabled people already do this). But I’ve been places where the buses stop everywhere and have designated routes, so getting to a car means walking at least half a mile each way and often having to drive further, possibly in traffic the buses avoid.
Where have you found that buses stop only in front of your start and destination, and nowhere else? How do buses prevent cars from dropping off or picking up people at a curb? Where are parking structures significantly further away than bus stops?
I didn’t mean only stop at destination. Just that the pickup and dropoff are basically the destination, while parking is in some distance lot or garage. The entire routes are bus-only. Cars aren’t allowed on the street at all.
Right, so an urban area that actually has full transit coverage wouldn’t have that problem. Sadly, that isn’t relevant to the vast majority of the planet.
Its possible for every urban area everywhere across the globe, because the laws of geometry are the same across the entire globe.
In many cities in many countries the conscious choice was made to destroy transit infrastructure and radically alter the urban fabric to accommodate cars (and in so doing hamper every other form of transportation). But nothing about this has anything at all to do with the city’s location, and its not an accident that public transportation just ‘happens’ to be better in some places than in others.
Carpooling is just taking a short bus (non-derogatory and second-meaning not intended).
Being a passenger on a 3DS and such is such a good feeling.
Except it’s a “bus” that stops at your start and destination instead of several blocks away, and takes a fraction of the time to make the trip
Its a good thing that busses and trains don’t take you directly to your destination.
Yes, because it’s terrible to get somethwete in a timely manner, especially people unable to walk moderate distances.
Its terrible because it is geometrically impossible for a form of transit to simultaneously have high capacity and to carry people directly to their destination.
Cars average an occupancy of about 1.5, while trains routinely carry hundreds of people. A bit of thought about the implications of everyone arriving directly at their destination should reveal why the average occupancy of such a transit mode can never be much higher than 1.5. This is something that many many advocates of PRT (personal rapid transit) systems fail to understand.
By the way, a pedestrian oriented space can be made to accommodate people that have difficulty walking, but it is virtually impossible to make a city safe and accessible for people with difficulty seeing if the expectation is that everyone is driving a car to their destination.
Yes, but the point is: if people who can walk a short distance do walk a short distance, it frees up space for the people who cannot.
Depends on the design of the area. For rural areas, that’s gonna be the case (although we could make buses go to specific houses by request and buses for disabled people already do this). But I’ve been places where the buses stop everywhere and have designated routes, so getting to a car means walking at least half a mile each way and often having to drive further, possibly in traffic the buses avoid.
Where have you found that buses stop only in front of your start and destination, and nowhere else? How do buses prevent cars from dropping off or picking up people at a curb? Where are parking structures significantly further away than bus stops?
I didn’t mean only stop at destination. Just that the pickup and dropoff are basically the destination, while parking is in some distance lot or garage. The entire routes are bus-only. Cars aren’t allowed on the street at all.
Right, so an urban area that actually has full transit coverage wouldn’t have that problem. Sadly, that isn’t relevant to the vast majority of the planet.
Its not possible for the majority of uninhabited land on the planet, but its possible for the majority of people globally that live in urban areas.
To clarify, I was specifically referring to urban environments across the globe.
Its possible for every urban area everywhere across the globe, because the laws of geometry are the same across the entire globe.
In many cities in many countries the conscious choice was made to destroy transit infrastructure and radically alter the urban fabric to accommodate cars (and in so doing hamper every other form of transportation). But nothing about this has anything at all to do with the city’s location, and its not an accident that public transportation just ‘happens’ to be better in some places than in others.