Comments on: Virginia’s Behind-the-Scenes Transportation Planning Revolution

By: ValidGarry

ValidGarry — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:06:31 +0000

Many thanks for the reply. I understood the density aspect (the likes of NoVA being choked with cars but not dense enough for mass transit to be viable) but hadn’t really grasped the scale of the issue. The other points you highlight are exactly the issues I do not yet appreciate in my short time here so far. Every day is a school day, with or without school buses!

By: jabacon@baconsrebellion.com

jabacon@baconsrebellion.com — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 19:54:27 +0000

Scattered, low-density development (what you call “suburban sprawl”) has rendered mass transit economically impossible to provide for more than half the country. In those places, there is no point in even talking about transit until we change land use. Then there is the problem that transit operations are inefficient, government-owned monopolies that take federal funding with strings attached (such as, we’ll pay for your bus, but it must be manufactured in the United States) and that have unionized workforces wth archaic work rules. Meanwhile, our roads are heavily subsidized (though not as heavily subsidized as transit). My impression is that despite all those obstacles, regional transportation planners are big fans of transit.

By: ValidGarry

ValidGarry — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 19:10:27 +0000

As an immigrant here in the USA, I find the language of ‘transportation’ both amusing and frustrating. It’s ‘roads’, not ‘transportation’ and largely ‘private’ not ‘public’. Transportation implies more than one mode, or it does in countries who use more than one mode. Even when speaking to ‘transportation planning’ professionals here, most concur that they have never gone beyond road networks in their entire careers.
Has America gone beyond any sensible multi-modal transport network? From what I see, the suburban sprawl has killed any potential for at least another generation.