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Comment by RyanMcGreal | Hacker News Reader

>A longer and better Metro system -- most of all with better parking -- would have meant even more people moving to the suburbs.

Transit oriented suburbs are structured much differently from highway oriented suburbs.

There is a strong economic premium attached to proximity to the transit station - the closer you are to the station, the higher the premium. As a result, transit oriented development tends to produce dense nodes along the transit corridor. This leads to walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods that enjoy economies of scale, density and association and can become economic engines in their own right.

On the other hand, proximity to a highway is an economic drain - the closer you are to the highway, the bigger the economic hit. As a result, highway oriented development results in sparse, low-density land use that generally separates uses and requires car ownership to perform any errand.

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> Transit oriented suburbs are structured much differently from highway oriented suburbs.

A critical insight. Look at the great Victorian suburbs around London, built along the railroads. These suburbs did not empty out central London, quite the contrary. And the rail connections resulted in dense walkable towns along the railroad lines, with often no car required at either end (in the nearer, denser suburbs).

Even today, people judge the price of homes in greater London by adding together the annual cost of rent or mortgage PLUS the cost of a railroad annual commuter pass into the London central zone.

Cul-de-sacs where you'd have to cut through neighbor's yards are one of the reasons public transportation does not work in suburbs (straight line distance is not walking distance)

Modern development practices make the "sticks and lolipops" roadways that you're describing. And that style of residential street isn't all that old, either. Looking at the maps of roads, one could tell roughly what decade a neighborhood was built during.

> Typical urban street layouts generally follow five very distinctive patterns, they are as follows. The Gridiron pattern which dates back to the 1900's. The Fragmented Parallel dating back to the 1950's. Warped Parallel which is from the 1960's era. Loops and Lollipops which was a popular street style in the 1970's. Lollipops on a Stick, this style originated in the 1980's.

http://www.hammondindiana.com/cobblestone3.html

Also it should be noted that transit is much cheaper and much more efficient than highways. So if you are going to pay tax money to subsidize something transit is a much better choice simply because you get more bang for the buck.

Anyway you cut it it is cheaper to transport a single human than to transport a human traveling with a 2 ton metal shell around him.

To this I'd add the argument that transit is a public good - i.e. it benefits everyone, not just those who directly use it, by reducing congestion, reducing air pollution and GHG emissions, and encouraging the efficient, productive use of land and materials.

Highways, on the other hand, are a public bad (I think that's the technical term...) - i.e. they produce net negative externalities that must be borne by society as a whole.

In the early parts of the 20th Century, developers had to build tramways to their developments because there were no cars back then, and prospective customers needed some way to get to work (note that these neighborhoods would now be considered urban, although they were suburbs 100 years ago). That's why LA had over 1000 miles of tramways by 1910, and Devner had 300+ miles of tramways at that time as well. Some of the more upscale neighborhoods are ones along the tramways which had been dug by by the late 50s/early 60s.

The orange line train he's talking about runs down the middle of I-66, a major highway. There are dense, high price walkable areas all along the orange line corridor. They sprang up out of car dealerships and strip malls in the 25 years since the line was built.

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