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Comment by xvedejas | Hacker News Reader

I'm of the opinion that it depends on density. You could build a subway line in some US cities of 1M and nobody would ride it; you could build a subway line in a city of 50k and everyone would ride it. It depends on whether there is density to support walking directly to many things (businesses, residences, and other transit lines) or not.

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Building a subway system after the city is so dense that it will be ridden by “enough” people is exactly the wrong way to create livable urban spaces.

Building a subway is the solution to inducing density, not responding to it.

Density yes, but more importantly 1) speed vs traveling by car, 2) starting and stopping in places people want to travel between, 3) safety, 4) real estate prices/regulation.

Density goes to number 1 (more traffic = better reason to use the subway) and 2 (more likely to be able to serve people’s desired trip)

5) Weather. If it's under -20 C or over 40 C, walking five blocks is unpleasant for anyone and dangerous for some. Especially if the walk is unsheltered, which it typically is.

People do have to walk from their cars too (for any city I've been to)

The subway is the big expensive investment. In theory, businesses and housing etc would develop around the stations. Like how suburbs develop around train stations.

In theory. The commuter rail I sometimes take follows an old rail right of way. Some of the stations are in fairly developed areas. But some of those, like Concord, presumably predate even the original rail. And a lot of the towns are pretty spread out. You can't walk to much until you get to the last two stops in the city proper.

I imagine that at least one factor there is that building up is prohibited by zoning—a super brief glance at Concord's zoning map & code it looks like the only kind of residential buildings you can build anywhere without special permission are single-family.

Now there are surely people living there who would argue that this zoning has protected the shape and nature of the town they that they prefer, but the flip side of that coin is that, at $1.4m, a median home in Concord costs more than 3x that of the country overall.

There's probably some truth in that. On the other hand, Concord is a pretty far-flung suburb; you're probably over 30 minutes to get to Cambridge without heavy traffic. I believe the prison out there is closed now but don't know what the plans are for the land.

Sure, I wouldn't imagine it'd turn into a cluster of skyscrapers if the restrictions were not there, but I would imagine there might be some small apartment buildings near the train station. New Jersey has had some impressive housing changes happen by opening areas near transit to development in not-dissimilar environments.

Apparently, the governor is interested in using it for housing development but I'm sure that will be tied up in the courts for years--especially with it being Concord.

This is because the T is not a "real" transit system in the way that it's simply not designed to move enough people fast enough to compete with cars.

Well, if I’m going into the city 9 to 5ish I’ll usually take commuter rail because it’s less painful even if it takes as long as driving. But I do need to drive to and park at the nearby commuter rail station.

And then landowners who were “smart” enough to own land where this ends up going in get to reap all the financial upside, instead of the public which actually invested in that infrastructure.

Just imagine if the public could capture the (financial) upside it produces, then it could apply that money to do the same thing down the road, then do the same thing again down the road further.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem?wprov=sft...

In some countries the transit companies (public or private) also become the landowners of the adjacent areas - this would be the "rail plus property" model.

In fact, the rail plus property model allows the rail operate to better capture their added value, so it applies even in "private" scenarios. The most famous example would be Tokyo.

The goal shouldn't be for the public to be able to reap direct financial benefits from the induced activity around transit hubs, the goal should be to firstly to incentivize and maintain affordable, high quality, sustainable transit, secondly to provide more and better economic opportunities.

This is the case in Hong Kong as well. The subway company is also involved in the malls built on top of them.

There are malls and neighborhoods built entirely around the subway station

Same in Switzerland, with the added quirk/bonus that shops in train stations are allowed to open on Sundays, when shops outside of train stations usually can't open due to employment laws. This wasn't originally meant as a way to increase attractiveness of businesses in train stations and other public transit places, rather as a way to make sure that people travelling have services available while on their way. But nowadays it's definitely a big reason for people to come specifically shop in train stations on the weekend.

A version of this is common now in the US through Tax Increment Financing.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/value_capture/defined/tax_incre...

I don’t see how that is a version of what llamaimperative posts.

If anything, TIF increases rewards for landowners who do nothing or otherwise underutilize land. Taxing the product of work to make a piece of land beneficial for society is amazingly backwards.

The proper direction to go in is marginal land value tax rates, with increasing penalties the longer a spaces remains unused.

> Just imagine if the public could capture the (financial) upside it produces...

Like through taxes on the sale of the property or the increased business income it produces? The public will.

> Like through taxes on the sale of the property

That just encourages corporate ownership of property (unless you mitigate that), but overall I don’t know why we’d disincentivize moving closer to a new workplace or into a smaller home once it will do for you.

It also disincentivizes speculation, which is just a flurry of repeated transactions.

Spec can be loooooong term, even longer than natural person

Perfect is not the enemy of good.

In a lot of places, due to tax revolts there are now property tax caps which effectively prevent this from happening.

Then the people have spoken. They can speak again and differently if they like.

This typically goes to the higher level of government. Not the local one that manage and build that transit system.

Why should the transit system butt into the jurisdiction of the traditional government just because transit is built somewhere?

As a silly dystopia, imagine that a transit agency could grab revenue as you suggest it might. Then everything becomes a transit land grab.

No, taxes on the unimproved value of the land

Property taxes include that, generally.

Also the shape of density.

A small city in a straight line along the coast is going to get a lot more mileage out of a single line than something spread out across a plain.

In the ideal scenario you build the subway or other transit when density is low and land is relatively cheap, and THEN you make it high density.

Doing it after the fact is much, much harder.

> In the ideal scenario you build the subway or other transit when density is low and land is relatively cheap, and THEN you make it high density

Do we have examples of this working? (Genuine question.)

Outside the US, there are many examples (Japan and China both do this).

In the US, I don't know specific examples, but you can definitely use a combination of policies (building public transit, zoning laws to encourage high density, making parts of the city more pedestrian-friendly - and generally less car-friendly) to encourage high density.

Definitely! Here’s a video with some discussion

https://youtu.be/MnyeRlMsTgI?t=667&si=g-xwXEjLPPobUkzy

There’s photos of subway stops in random fields in china that sometimes get laughs but in actuality china is just smart enough to build the subway and THEN the buildings.

Meanwhile Japanese rail companies own land where they build rail and can make more money on the land than on the trains

You don't decide to make things high density out of the blue. People have to WANT to live there.

Well yes, one clear indicator of that is where homes are expensive. Like in places with great transit and amenities.

Cheap + quick commute to downtown takes care of that.

There is only a downtown if there are jobs there.

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