this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Imagine if all the space between the primary radial arms of trains was filled in with street cars and pedestrian/micromobility centric spaces. Like the problem you are saying cars solve just doesn’t exist in the first place and people can still get around very easily. Even more rural folks can simply drive to the edge of this style of urban design if they need access to something. The reason bus rides are 45 minutes is because of the number of cars they have to put up with. The density of people that can be moved with shockingly good area coverage if cars are not a factor is incredible.
It's still bad.
My old commute was a 25-30 minute drive. For a while though, I had to do it by public transport.
I'd be walking for less than 10 minutes because both my house and my work were close to the train station. The rest of it was on 4 different trains, but all within one metropolitan area. The changes were no more than 5 minutes each, pretty good really. However, the number of stops and the number of changes killed any progress. The end result was that it took 1h45m to 2h.
Changing a 8hr + 2x30m day into an 8hr + 2x2h day is a significant change in lifestyle. Losing 3hr day means you don't enjoy your evenings, you don't socialise, and life is only work. It's miserable.
On a different job I worked at I could get there with just 1 train. That was about 35 minute drive or 55 minutes by train once you included the walk (again about 10-15 minutes total). Even with that you're asking yourself "Why am I not driving?".
This sounds great but isn't really feasible in cities that are already built unfortunately.
Look at the history of transportation in whatever city you’re imagining. Cars took over, but I guarantee that city had the transportation infrastructure you think isn’t feasible. The automobile industry has you brainwashed into thinking cars are the only option, but one just has to look at the history of transportation in any given city to know that that isn’t true.
What does this even mean? Are you claiming all cities had railroad and public transportation hubs prior to cars being invented? I'm brainwashed because I don't believe you can just seize private property and demolish tons of homes and businesses to build more efficient infrastructure in every moderate to large city in the country? Prior to cars existing, most cities were tiny and people didn't commute 50 miles for work every day.
Can you point to the cities elsewhere where this transformation has occurred or where this already existed outside of maybe a handful of examples on the entire planet?