Comment 35797

By JeffTessier (anonymous) | Posted November 26, 2009 at 23:06:28

There's nothing intrinsic to "rapid" transit that necessarily makes it faster than driving and I think objections like the "four times as long" argument really just belie a different vision of urban living than a real problem with rapid transit, a means of transportation Capitalist seems not to understand anyway.

You could easily design a city in which it is four times faster to drive somewhere than to go by any other means. It'd be a city in which you have expressways running through neighbourhoods, synchronised lights helping to pump cars along those expressways, and a surface parking lot around every corner. And - here's the part we haven't fully mastered, yet - you'd have a shoddily implemented rapid transit system. Obviously it would be faster to drive. But that's a planning problem, not a problem with the system. People who think that poor efficiency and sub-par service are 'features' of public transportation are, I think, just relying on an urban vision in which that's the kind of public transportation you get. There are other priorities and nothing truly public receives the full energy of the city government.

But it's an "argument" that should have the attention of LRT advocates, because if LRT can be screwed up anywhere, it'll be screwed up here, by people with the same vision and critical thinking skills as Capitalist.

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