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Mass transit goes off the rails in many U.S. cities. What is going on?
In "Mass Transit Expansion Goes Off The Rails In Many U.S. Cities," Joel Kotkin of New Geography writes that as investment in public transportation has increased in cities across the country, actual ridership, per capita, has been falling. In addition, traditional, 20th century, public transportation improvements are becoming so expensive (think about the 1.6 billion dollar San Francisco Central subway that goes about 1.7 miles - that's a billion dollars a mile), that they continue to be more and more financially unsustainable without considerable public subsidy.
However, the real question is why? Is it possible that it's not that people are "bad" or that they need to "change" and adapt to life without cars, but it's something else that has to change? Is it possible that it is actually planners who need to let go of their 45 year old, 1970's based theories about what is good for the environment and what the future of transportation really is, and open their eyes to what is happening all around them.
Cars were branded "evil" by what has become the environmental establishment, back in a time when the average automobile got 13 miles per gallon, had no pollution equipments, such as catalytic converters, and when smog choked U.S. cities as it does in Beijing, today. Out of this evolved complex theories about transportation and city planning that have become so ingrained in our thinking that they are no longer even questioned. Urbanism, which is in reality only one of many potentially sustainable planning choices (and in my opinion far from the most efficient one), has become synonymous with environmental benefits (all scientific evidence and experience to the contrary) and every planner working today had that drilled into them in college.
But technological advances, which have long promised better solutions, are finally taking hold and changing paradigms that have been around for a century. We no longer live in a world of "cars." We live in a rapidly evolving world of "personal transportation vehicles" ("PTAs"), and as they become increasingly clean and efficient, and their "fuel" becomes increasingly non-petroleum based, everything we believed for the past 45 years, and every planning theory and grand vision that grew out of that, becomes increasingly obsolete.
It is time to face facts. We live in a world that must become less centralized not more centralized; more based on individuality and personal choices, not less; one that demands more personal flexibility and adaptability, not less. PTAs are not just here to stay, they are on the brink of a explosion of alternatives. The types of vehicles and transportation options that will be available in the coming decades will boggle the mind: from hyper-loops and app driven, on-demand, driverless shuttle services to PTAs of all shapes and sizes from one seater super cycles to group travel pods where passengers can work and play as they commute. And they will predominately run on more environmentally friendly technologies and fuels like solar electric, hydrogen and even air pressure.
This is equally true and will be equally "disruptive" for all conventional types of public transportation: buses, taxis, trains, etc. Companies such as Uber are just the beginning of how creative destruction will upend traditional thinking about how we get around.
These indisputable trends and the growing need for individual choice of lifestyle are redefining what it means to have a "job" or to "work." The cost efficiencies that will be required to have our society both prosper and avoid unthinkable environmental impacts, make these trends inevitable. Yet planners cling to visions of little apartments over quaint shops run by mom and pop retail proprietors, on Norman Rockwell streetscapes, out of a time that is either long past or never even existed: a time that the Internet is obliterating at light speed.
So when transportation planners and public policy wonks feel compelled to tell us all about how society must change, perhaps they need to turn their point of view back at themselves. And, perhaps our local government officials need to open their eyes and realize that their children will not be living in the same world they grew up in, so it would be a good idea to plan for the future they will inherit.
In a related story, see this piece in Gizmodo, about how The US government is offering seven cities a remarkable challenge: reinvent urban transportation for the 21st century, with a particular focus on autonomous vehicles. To pull it off, those cities will work with some of the world’s most powerful tech companies, and are eligible to get $40 million from the US Department of Transportation.
These 7 American Cities Will Compete for $40 Million to Create Transportation Utopias