It shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.
The main issue is it takes like 10-20 years of concerted effort in the US to approve/build a bridge, and nobody except the government is willing to wait that long. This is mostly a political problem.
> https://www.fastcompany.com/90978855/googles-plan-to-build-1...
20 miles is more than the entire length of Seattle. Heck it is more than the entire width of the Seattle Metro area (western most tip of Seattle heading straight east until it turns into farmland).
There should be sufficient housing stock such that people don't need to drive 20 miles to work!
Public transport is key, especially trains that can bypass traffic at high speeds. In my city in Australia I live about 25km out from the CBD, but I can get there in under 30 minutes via train if I ever need to - it works very well and I don't have to live in a tiny shoebox on top of 100 other people.
When tenure at a job was 20+ years, and a house could be paid off in 10 years, it made a ton of sense.
The fact that such an idea is absurd now is not because the idea itself is absurd, but because how we have structured our economy is absurd.
People shouldn't be wasting their lives commuting.
In older books they have kids and the dad coming back home to eat lunch together! Heck I have friends who grew up in countries where 20-30 years ago that was still the norm.
Another thing that's happened is that all the good jobs in many industries have hyper-concentrated into a small number of locations. There's plenty of space to live available in many "main street" towns, but not necessarily anywhere nearby to work if you do choose to live there.
My own city (Chicago) does have new construction, but it can't possibly keep up with demand from people moving into the city, because all the land is already full of lower-density housing, and you can't replace half a city block's worth of two- and three-flat dwellings with a modern high rise without first getting all the people who already live there to move out. Which, best case scenario, takes time. So instead most the new construction consists of replacing 130 year old 2- and 3-flat residences with luxury single-family homes, because nimbyism or now, reducing housing density is just more economically feasible. All it takes is one wealthy family buying one lot of land, and there area lot more individual lots up for sale than there are contiguous blocks of eight.
It is funny because here in the Puget Sound, if we had two and three flat dwellings that would be a major improvement over the bullshit we have now. Like seriously, 3 story flats would be a dream for density and alleviate much of the area's high house prices.
Unfortunately due to a confluence of factors there are only two types of "density" being built around here:
1. Giant apartment blocks owned by multi-national investment firms where the rent goes up by LOL each year that exist just to drain money out of the community.
2. Awful 4 story townhouses that are inappropriate for anyone who has small children, or knees that aren't perfect.
Also because of reasons, the townhomes don't have usable yards (they have to be set in the lot such a way that neither the front or back are usable), and they can only be built in a few designated "upzoned" areas.
Zoning changes are slowly supposed to come that upzone[1] more and more of the city, but if building actual usable housing isn't even possible, just pure zoning changes aren't enough.
[1] Where upzoned means not just SFH, but still most of the city will be zoned SFH only.
There is your problem. Personal automobiles aren't a feasible method of transportation past a certain population density.
The choices really are two: subway (or any dedicated rail thing) or car.
You’re right that they aren’t much use if they get stuck in the same traffic as everyone else.
Every bus lane you build is ~800 cars you don't have to deal with in traffic, assuming an approximately two hour rush hour
While if they run in dedicated lanes there is a counterbalance: the more people drive the worse traffic is, making the bus a comparatively better option, making people drive less... :)
I would never dare to do so where I lived before: I'd almost certainly be a blob of blood and guts splattered on the road by now.
It's infuriating how little thought is given to anything that is not a road for The Car. Billions of taxpayer money spent on massive road construction and repair but god forbid we build bike paths for 1/20th of the cost and 1/100th of the upkeep.
If biking works for you, where you are, great. But it's at best a pretty small part of the solution.
In the Netherlands kids bike everywhere with their friends, because it's safe and comfortable to do so. If they want to play sports they grab their bikes and go, they don't have to sit in traffic for 45mins in the back of their parents SUV. The Netherlands also has some of the happiest children on earth according to studies. Go figure :)
Ironically that makes cycling a much better choice for people who aren't fit. Finally something where being lazy gives you an advantage.
Raising the heart rate much faster is also part of a better self-regulation of a fit person.
These countries have been doing this for a long time.
> congested, underbuilt roads
- If a safe, reliable bus or train went to and from close to my house to close to the office, I'd take it. Key is safe and reliable.
- If the roads were designed with enough capacity and planning in mind such that groups of vehicles are not stuck driving 15 MPH on a 70 MPH speed limit stretch of highway for 30 minutes or longer every day, that'd be fine.
- If zoning laws/tax laws/whatever were such that it would be easier to build away from yet close to city centers and have smaller or additional offices closer to where people live, that'd work for me.
- If city apartments were in reach costwise or even somehow subsidized by my employer in an equitable way (don't really know how that would look), and crime was not an issue, I would consider moving within walking distance of my workplace.
If you build that, then more people see that there is a nice quick road between where they work and a place where they can buy a more affordable home. The road gains more commuters until the congestion returns.
Your other suggestions are more scalable. If housing is expensive, there should be more, denser housing. If commutes are long, we should be zoning such that houses can be near workplaces, and conversely workplaces can be near housing.
If you create pockets of higher density housing and workplaces, instead of only building large swaths of low density single-family residential, you can preserve the options to live in a city, a walkable town center, or a more quiet location, while still having dense enough groupings to make transit lines viable.
But regardless of fault, they aren't mostly just some people down on luck that at best ask for some change like in my childhood. enough are dangerous, unpredictable, and mentally unwell that public transportation is a non-trivial risk here.
> Do you mean it could crash at any moment? Or it is usually full of unsavoury characters?
Both. Buses/trains should be secure places and properly maintained at all times.