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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

> If NYC didn't have a third dimension for transportation (subway and trains), no amount of busses and bikes would fix the soul-destroying traffic.

Yes they would. If you took the existing surface street network and made it 100% buses and/or ground-level trains you could accomodate current subway and road capacity with room to spare, even before you reclaimed all the space currently used for car parking. Private cars are an astonishingly inefficient use of space, and taxis are barely any better.

> The listed alternatives are all nice, but none of them allow you to move at 125+ mph.

We don't need to though. There's no conceivable need for a city to accommodate more people than could live within a 30-minute commute at current speeds if we were willing to build at the high densities that are actually possible.

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"Private cars are an astonishingly inefficient use of space, and taxis are barely any better."

... and buses are even worse.

NYC works because of trains and as a proponent of train travel and public transportation (except buses) I believe they have indeed solved many problems with their diverse rail network.

Buses are a canard - they are the minimum viable public transport option that were pried out of suburban taxpayer hands and presented to poor urban (usually black) riders by planners who didn't care about public transportation at all.

This ruse has gone on so long that in 2017, well meaning (and brainwashed) proponents of public transportation see buses as one of the core components of a transport network. Wake up. This is false. You need subways and trains.

Well-functioning transit in cities that prioritize it use very few buses and they use them for weird stopgap or edge cases (or emergencies). BRT is a farce[1]. You should be demanding real, not fake, investment in transit networks. You should be demanding trains.

[1] To be fair, I have seen two very functional BRT models - both in very specific (and wealthy) environments: VelociRFTA in Aspen and Hop/Skip in Boulder. In both cases, however, a well-designed rail corridor would be even better.

> ... and buses are even worse.

London buses have a capacity of 80 to 130 people and are often full. How can that be worse than 60 to 110 cars for each bus? Even at half the capacity (single deck) you use the space way more efficiently than cars.

Now if you live in a city where the planning was botched, the transit routes made inefficient, and poorly targeted at ghetto areas that's a different problem. In fact you'd probably have the same problem if the same routes were done by trains.

Buses are just a way to transport a lot more people than cars and I can't see how that's a problem...

I agree that buses a terrible solution, but are definitely better than no public transit at all. Sadly, Seattle is almost entirely dependent on buses for public transit, although things are getting slightly better here with recent investments in light rail. Of course, the costs are astronomical and the most important parts of the project won't be complete for decades, so it's cold comfort for anyone currently stuck with a 7 mile, 1 hour commute by bus (or worse).

What's baffling to me is that, in addition to "real" light rail, Seattle is also building out a network of street-level trains. These trains barely carry more passengers than an articulated bus, are subject to the same traffic issues as the buses since they don't have a dedicated right of way, cost way more than adding bus lines, and their tracks create significant hazards for cyclists. I could be wrong, but it seems like this is an example of "buses = bad; trains = good" thinking gone awry.

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