When C$119M is a “bargain” compared to US costs, it should come as no surprise why public transit has so little utility in most cities (as measured by utilization as a percent of total trips).
And you could argue that roads are actually even more expensive to invest in because they tend to create a feedback cycle that promotes even more spending on road construction. Because as more people use roads, you need to widen them to increase their carrying capacity, and because road-oriented infrastructure encourages sprawl that pushes people toward choosing driving, and spending more time on the roads, which increases the need for more roads to be built.
A nice case study here is Chicago versus Detroit. Proportionally speaking, they had similar and approximately contemporaneous population growth and loss trends over the 20th century. But that trend didn't cause the same financial catastrophe for Chicago that it did for Detroit, and one argument for why this is is that, since Chicago retained a denser, more public transit oriented urban plan, its infrastructure costs relative to population stayed lower, which in turn meant that it was able to weather a lot more population decline without its economy shrinking too much to be able to affordably maintain its infrastructure, including transportation infrastructure.
Which isn't a fair comparison at all because you are completely ignoring the positive values of vehicles.
I live in Christchurch, with very cheap buses. One destination I need takes me >2 hours by bus that is <15 minutes by car (bus is star network and long waits). Another destination I need has a bus one way once a day only on business days. And I often am carrying more than a backpack can take.
Making lopsided comparisons is just inane.
Star topologies coupled with infrequent service is often what makes public transit suck. It's why I can frequently leave my house later in my car than I'd have to arrive at my destination if coming by public transit. [0]
There's no practical action I can take to "get the problem fixed", because it requires completely re-thinking how my local transit system works [likely to include the transit system spending many 100s of millions more per year on increased service] and, well, I've got a lot of other shit I can actually make progress on in my life rather than shaking a cane at the sky.
If they spent 100x as much public money (our bus service is hugely subsidised and still completely inadequate), a mesh network would still not be able to cover my regular travel needs. Let alone the more complex needs of others.
Possibly we can solve the problem with a shared-Uber system. But there's no way my city government could be trusted to develop that. There are systems that have been developed out there but they are not in my country yet. It's been possible for a decade, so probably another decade away.
Your answer is that I need to wait a decade at a bus stop for a new technology to be deployed in my city.
Meanwhile "Full suspension of NZ Bus services impacting bus users from 2am Friday 14 July; Auckland bus users urged to plan ahead due to driver strike from Monday; Aucklanders urged to plan ahead with train services disrupted and Harbour Bridge closures possible; Auckland's buses are back on track - Bus driver shortage has reduced by 72%"
Fuck that.
There's a reason people spend a shit-ton on cars - because cars have value (they are not just status) and public buses don't work.
While it looks like your bus service is hugely subsidized,it is NOT! Sure the numbers are big, but look at per person in the city and the amount is tiny. If you forcefully took the money everyone spends on cars and put it to transit that would be many orders of magnitude more money than they are getting now. What great transit needs is about what you spend on a car in a month for just insurance and fuel (meaning maintenance and the cost of the car are not included), so if you get rid of a car (not all cars, one car!) you can save a lot of money and that is something your transit system could do in your city if you would invest.
The a bus can go on strike is a problem to work on. You don't allow your electric service to turn off service because of a strike. You don't allow the hospital close because of a strike. (both of them do have unions and go on strike).
> but look at per person in the city and the amount is tiny
In a city of about 400,000 people the per-person taxes that pay for the system are no-fucking-where-near "tiny".
For a grid public network that also works at night the costs would easily be thousands per year per person (I did look up the current figures).
The bus service is virtually unused by the vast majority:
On average, Christchurch residents spend 221 hours a year behind a wheel to just 10 hours on public transport. For Aucklanders, it's 187 hours to 25, and for Wellingtonians, 134 hours to 34.
I know because I try to use buses and this expensive system is usually unavailable to me (my parents place has no service, there is no service at night, I can't carry tools, trailer, zero recreational trips). I have lived without a car for plenty of time (6 months last year) so I know the actual individual costs and benefits.
Other people can't afford the compromises required to use the bus service. If you can afford a car you use one because the public alternatives are shit.
Only a despotic Stalin could force most people to use a public transport system in my city. Perhaps you don't believe in freedom of choice. You wish to tax people to pay for a system they don't want to use. Cars are the long term outcome of people voting with their feet and their wallets.
I understand why public transport is good. But you seem unwilling to listen to why public transport in my city is unusably bad.
> However for most of the trips people make every day a great transit system could exist that we be as good as - or better - than a car trip.
Condescending. Even the best public transport I have used is often a shit experience.
Wave that magic wand again and give us all our own unicorn
In Spain $100m/km gets you a subway.
Of course, the whole concept is moot considering the built form around said subway line needs to be able to support having ridership like that.
Car insurance alone in small city is what ~= 80$/month/driver * 1 million drivers = approximately 1 billion dollars per year.
When people drive less they don’t just use less fuel and save on maintenance etc, but also get into fewer accidents driving down insurance. People also avoid traffic tickets, and cities need fewer traffic cops etc. The city’s air quality improves which reduces respiratory issues saving not just lives but sick days etc. Local property becomes more valuable and congestion shrinks.
The costs comes out of cities budgets, but the savings largely goes to individuals.
That’s probably only 4 cities in the entire US: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston.
Large vs small vs tiny is an arbitrary separation, but Chicago is the 39th largest city in the world. Auston is so far down that list it’s a small city IMO. By comparison Terre Haute, Indiana with 60k people can be called a city, but it’s a tiny city.
However, simply reducing the number of trips makes a significant difference.
I often use public transport, but the downsides can be extremely expensive. The inconvenience of buses often means it is cheaper to use an Uber (only available due to roading network).
It isn't just a path-dependency. Public transport is often unpopular for extremely valid reasons (I personally hate cars and try to use public transport in the limited situations it has any use to me).
Public transport is a nightmare for the disabled and the infirm. Public transport completely and utterly failed after the Christchurch earthquake - bad luck if you needed to rely on it!
Building infrastructure is always an optimization problem and it impacts not just current users but also where people build apartments etc.
1: any successful public transport solution must be be desirable by individuals. The alternative is to force people to use the system - that would not be democratic freedom!
2: any public transport has to be better than what we currently have. Cars are pretty damn good - even though they have downsides they also have some very valuable upside features! Most public transport currently has huge negative problems. It can work in large cities, but buses fail abysmally in my own city (~400000) even though expensive subsidies pay for most of it. Chesterton's fence - we have evolved to cars because they have features that are hard to replicate.
I would like to see an Uber like shared transport on-demand system developed and deployed in my city. I did read about a city (I think in a scandy country) that has a working 24 hour system.
I strongly suspect that, although the price-per-kilometer might be lower, the price per traveled-kilometer is literally multiples of that.
I do know in my city-area, price to build, maintain and travel on bike infra, public transport and even dedicated bus infra is far cheaper than the same distances for cars. And that excludes private costs for fuel.
So 4, maybe 6 if you add Atlanta and Seattle (both of which I doubt have a majority share of transit), out of over 300 cities (or equivalent) with 100k+ people.
I live in Cambridge, MA (attached to Boston and sharing one of the top 5 transit systems in the US). We have one car per driver and expect to maintain or exceed that ratio for the next three decades as we can’t afford to spend the increased time needed to do all trips via transit. Or even transit plus ride-share.
That's exactly what needs to be fought. A bit of carrot, a bit of stick
What I mostly see are plans to nerf the utility of the auto, in order to make it competitive with the current utility of public transit.
Me, too. For instance, I'd like to see some modern effort to reduce the effects of the tinnitus-causing screeching of rail cars on the MBTA. For daily commuters who take particular routes, the noise pollution is a serious issue.
For another example, I'm reasonably sure regenerative breaking is not a thing for the light and medium rail, (might be for the silver line) because those systems are old enough designs that efficiency wasn't so much of a concern. Rather, I recall hearing they use big resistor packs to turn speed into heat, and maybe stink up a station when they fail.
And that's not counting all the other costs of automobile infrastructure. Endless parking lots, huge road footprint, 'free' curbside parking...