And all because of our over reliance on cars in urban and suburban environments. Mass transit basically eliminates the need for moving violations, traffic citations, parking problems, cameras, and police stops. No more need for stroads, toll booths, etc. Our cities might actually be livable again. Walking and biking wouldn't feel like putting our lives at risk. Fewer parking lots means more stores and other amenities closer to where we live.
It's the cars. Autonomous or not, cars are the problem.
But just like health care, we keep choosing and voting for the absolute worst option because it's what we're used to and fear-mongers selling us a story about how any change will inevitably lead to a socialist hellscape. Fear: it's a hell of an addictive drug even as we witness our own obvious decline.
America is huge and its people are very spread out. Its cities are sprawling and low density.
For what it's worth, I don't actually shop at the supermarket closest to my house that is within walking distance because they don't offer good prices.
America does not have an even population distribution. East of the Mississippi is similar to Europe in population density, as is the far west coast (within ~100 miles of the Pacific). There is a lot of land between the Mississippi river and the Pacific Ocean, plus Alaska that few people live on that brings density down. However if you just focus on where people live density is high enough.
Even the sprawling suburbs are dense enough to support greats transit - but since they don't have great transit everyone drives creating a death spiral that is hard to break out of.
Yes, there is much work to be done. And it will have to be done to move forward. We've eroded sidewalks and put driveways along major stroads. Parking lots often match or exceed the size of the businesses they serve. We've reached maximum density with car-centric city planning.
There are some software decisions that worked well up to a certain point, but simply won't scale reliably to the current level let alone what you need for the foreseeable future. At some point you have to bite the bullet and refactor. Refactoring takes skill, and you need the right folks for the job, but it will get harder and more expensive the longer you wait. It typically doesn't have to be done all at once. Just fix as you go and stop following the older patterns. Have a plan and work toward the goal one step and a time. One commit at a time. One stroad at a time.
Folks may believe in the whole "personal freedom" with a car, but how personal or free are you sitting in bumper to bumper traffic? Cars = Liberty is a pernicious lie.
I live in a Czech city called Ostrava. You can look it up on Google Maps.
We have excellent public transport, but it is slowly becoming too expensive for the municipal budget. Given that the city is historically not compact (there are either old industrial brownfields or rivers with adjacent floodplains that are unsafe for residential buildings), trams and buses need to cross kilometers of mostly uninhabited territory before reaching dense parts of the city again. Of course, that costs money in fuel or electricity, extra wear and tear on the vehicles, plus the polycentric character of the city does not allow for a simple network of lines meeting downtown. You need more of a triangle.
And there is approximately nothing that can be done about it. The floodplains are dangerous to build in, the rust belt of brownfields would be too expensive to redevelop, the economy of the city is far from stellar and won't support any extensive redevelopment anywhere; we are already losing population, though not dramatically so.
I'm not sure what bullet we have to bite and why. I'd rather the personal freedom to just drive across town and shop. Our sidewalks are great, we have bike lanes, lots of parks. What we don't have here is a lack of space. We're surrounded by miles of farmland, as are all of the other cities near me.
There is only so far as you are willing to drive. In theory I have the freedom to drive to New York city for my shopping, but that is a 17 hour drive (best case, not counting stops!), so I would never do that.
Even for cities of normal size, the total distance across means you would not want to make it a regular event to shop on the other side of the city. So if we add transit, and increase density you can find there are more places you within a reasonable range for whatever activity even though you lost the freedom of the car.
Of course if your activity isn't shopping - something a city excels at - but instead camping far away from other humans: then a car means freedom. When the activity you want to do is something a city excels then doing it via transit should mean even more ability to do it and thus more freedom. Of course this freedom via transit only works out when there is great transit and high density. Getting there is often difficult.
It’s difficult for mass transit to ever beat a car in direct speed; even in Rome where the train literally goes from the airport to a block from the hotel my Uber with luggage beat the coworker who rode the rails, and he didn’t even wait very long at all.
Are you also including finding your car in the parking lot and finding a parking spot at your destination? I find a lot of folks neglect that part of the time taken.
When in Manhattan, the subway can 100% beat a car over the length of the island. (Car can beat the busses going cross town though unless of course you add parking back to the equation.) Getting to Queens seems to be faster on the subway than taking a car across the bridge too.
D.C. and San Francisco are both towns I'd also rather take mass transit than drive.
It's the cars. Autonomous or not, cars are the problem.
But just like health care, we keep choosing and voting for the absolute worst option because it's what we're used to and fear-mongers selling us a story about how any change will inevitably lead to a socialist hellscape. Fear: it's a hell of an addictive drug even as we witness our own obvious decline.