Why do these "car free" utopias always include Taxis? Shouldn't they be first to go... As they are easily replaced by busses.
Accordingly, the taxi costs significantly more than a bus.
I’ll happily take a bus or rail for commuting where I know what to expect for service reliability and connection times.
If I’m doing a one off trip it’ll be a hired car.
Now, I walk 5 mins to a bus to the train station, another 5 mins to my train, wait 5 minutes, then enjoy the half-hour ride (while reading a book) to the next train station, and finally hop on a bus that takes me 5 minutes from work. Total commute time: 45 + 15 minutes walk.
By car: 70-90 minutes.
Why? The train goes 180 km/h while cars only go 120, and there is usually a traffic jam during rush hour.
If you put bus stops where people actually live and work, you can get pretty good coverage.
Jarrett Walker over at humantransit has written extensively about this.
https://humantransit.org/2010/02/the-power-and-pleasure-of-g...
And on LA in particular: https://humantransit.org/2010/03/los-angeles-the-transit-met...
Everyone using a taxi cuts on traffic more than everyone driving a car.
Fewer places need to be space wasted with ugly, hot pavement.
Taxis service a need that are not realistically handled by large mode transportation loops.
People who say we need to go car free also acknowledge reality and don’t absolutely need to take things to the extreme to make slippery slope argumentative muddy water.
Why “car free” and not something more in tune with the actual idea? Why “serverless”? Why “lock free data structures”? PATRIOT act? “Truth” social? I mean. The list of obviously ridiculous names that are not true their reality goes on and on and on and on.
In China in 1999, I would take a tuktuk to the subway stop and then often from the subway stop on the other side of my trip. Later on when I lived there from 2007, I didn’t feel like I needed a car since we had subways and taxis, why bother?