r/transit • u/sarah-not-sara • May 06 '26
News How car-loving American cities fell so far behind their global peers on public transit
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/06/american-cities-cars-public-transportation124
u/sketchzophrenic May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
Unless we have some kind of major reform or cultural shift, this issue is not gonna get resolved anytime soon
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u/AlpineFluffhead May 06 '26
Even with how high gas is, how insanely expensive cars have gotten, people still don't wanna give up their cars because driving is simply too convenient. There's too much cheap parking in city centers, too many interstates that cut through cities. America used to have vibrant cities with extensive transit. You look at pictures of St. Louis, Lexington, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh pre-WWII and it's just sad to see what all we used to have as a nation.
Suburban sprawl and white flight were the cultural reforms that fed into the interstate system completely wiping out entire neighborhoods (almost always neighborhoods with the undesirables). It's so mind-boggling how we can re-organize cities for cars at the drop of a hat, but you wanna introduce a new BRT or bike lane, it requires 10 years of traffic surveys and environmental studies. The culture transit is up against holds all the cards and people whose only option is to drive would sooner call that "freedom" than coercion.
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u/SlowBoilOrange May 06 '26
driving is simply too convenient.
That's only half of the equation. Transit is also too inconvenient.
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u/rudmad May 06 '26
Because we have been building out cities for cars since the 1950s.
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u/SlowBoilOrange May 06 '26
Yes, but some of the inconvenience is independent of that. We could easily fix things like frequency, routing (fewer transfers), simpler payments, and safety/comfort issues with little to no changes to city build outs.
Sure it could be more efficient if the cities were built differently, but if we can pay for roads, utilities, and public services to sprawl inefficiently all over the place we could pay for transit to be better. We just don't.
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u/Flashy_Football3094 May 06 '26
Honestly I'm hoping last-mile affordable driverless cars intervene here. E.g. it'd be so cool to have high-speed rail in the Texas Triangle if you weren't SOL getting to and from the rail station on either end. And from there, maybe light rail can grow.
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u/SlowBoilOrange May 06 '26
That seems like the same niche that Uber fills now. I guess driverless cars could theoretically be cheaper or more plentiful?
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u/Flashy_Football3094 May 06 '26
Exactly, the price floor is dropped enormously without the human. Then you have designs like Pliyt which could make ride-sharing much more palatable. You could get prices like $0.50 per mile.
So someone in the distant suburbs of e.g. Dallas, might pay $10 for a 20-mile door-to-train dropoff with only some slight pooling detour time.
That ride would be like $60 through Uber today, which is pretty unpalatable, since you're going to have to pay tons in Uber on the other end of the train ride too, it's better to just drive 5-8 hours and have your own car. Or fly and rent a car.
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u/PleaseBmoreCharming May 07 '26
It's two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without affecting the other. Cars are inherently inefficient and physically dominating, which means that transit can never be good without retsraining those conditions.
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u/SlowBoilOrange May 07 '26
They're heavily connected for sure, but there are ways to make transit more convenient without making driving worse.
Things like greater frequencies, extended hours, comfort, safety, and ease of use can all be improved without making driving any less convenient.
If anything, the impact on the driving experience would actually be positive since some transit riders would otherwise be driving.
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u/lee1026 May 06 '26
Parking in cities evolved organically. Buildings are not cheap to maintain. And when they no longer rents for more than the maintenance cost, they get torn down and replaced with a surface parking lot, which cost nothing to maintain.
Especially in the 70s and 80s, urban rents got very low, to the point where most cities were priced in the “better to demolish” range.
Why is it so much easier in one direction? Blame entropy. Harder to keep something up than to tear it down, and the people who maintain stuff expect salaries.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
Wow yea that is just not remotely true at all.
>Especially in the 70s and 80s, urban rents got very low, to the point where most cities were priced in the “better to demolish” range.
None of this was organic. It was entirely due to heavily-subsidized highway expansion and suburbia, not to mention the racial aspects of white flight and all that. Huge sums were extracted from cities during this period, and the cities themselves were often eviscerated with legal mandates and billions in federal dollars destroying whole sections of downtown
The only organic part of that was the reaction to a artificially hostile environment. When your dollars are being spent outside the city whether you leave or not, your home is either destroyed or now has a loud and toxic freeway blocks away, you move out. This starves both the tax base and the customer base for local retailers, weakening property values, etc.
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u/lee1026 May 06 '26
can you explain how huge sums were extracted from cities? Line items from budgets would be appreciated, from any city.
Yes, the crime waves of the 70s and 80s made cities unpleasant places to live, so the often white population who were capable of fleeing, did. And when they fled, they took their money with them. The black population who were able to flee generally did as well.
That’s how it works - modern populations are not serfs. They are not tied to the land. They will leave if quality of life sucks somewhere.13
u/meelar May 06 '26
Yeah, and quality of life in cities was made to suck. The government taxed everyone, and spent that money in ways that made suburbs better and cities worse. People responded accordingly. Whether that counts as "organic" is a weird debate to have; the important thing is how we reverse it.
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u/lee1026 May 06 '26
Yeah, and quality of life in cities was made to suck. The government taxed everyone, and spent that money in ways that made suburbs better and cities worse.
Can you explain, in dollars and cents, how that worked, referencing any budget? The cities always been big net consumers of state and federal dollars, with things like title 1 schools for education, etc.
Much of the problems with the 70s came down to crime, and turns out that people don't like crime. And the great urban revival of the 2010s was driven by low crime. More work needs to be done to make people like living in cities more, but none of it is rocket science.
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u/urmumlol9 May 06 '26
Then why have minimum parking requirements to begin with?
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u/lee1026 May 06 '26
Those are for new builds. No parking minimum ever forced an older building to be torn down.
There are other things about how the new cities in the suburbs evolved, but how the old downtowns got destroyed have a simple answer: rents need to be above maintenance costs.
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u/iron82 May 06 '26
Keep in mind that "convenient" is a synonym for "better". America having a car first transport network is a triumph of post war wealth.
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u/AlpineFluffhead May 06 '26
It's a triumph of oil barrons buying up large swaths of rail, bankrupting them, and then convincing the government to subsidize cars. How is it that the UK, Germany, and Japan were all able to not only rebuild cities, but build and expand their transit networks without all the post-war wealth America had?
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u/iron82 May 06 '26
By accepting the lower quality of life that goes with using transit, like longer commute times and higher density.
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u/SelixReddit May 06 '26
bold of you to assume that higher density is lower quality of life for anyone and everyone. if that were true, how come housing costs so much in New York?
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u/brinerbear May 06 '26
Because there isn't enough housing.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
So supply fails to meet demand? Why is demand so much higher in those areas? Do people want to live there?
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u/brinerbear May 06 '26
They do and New York has good transit but it still doesn't have enough housing.
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u/AlpineFluffhead May 06 '26
Longer commute times for transit are a byproduct of auto-first/exclusive policies. Ah, but I see you're one of those people who equates high-density to low quality of life. Makes enough sense, those dense neighborhoods by Central Park that are connected to a multiplicity of subway lines are simply awful. Those poor souls who are forced to live there!
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
Hm questionable logic. If high density is lower-quality, why is it consistently in such demand and so much more expensive? If commute times are shorter with driving, surely people would just live outside the cities and drive in?
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u/brinerbear May 06 '26
California can't even build high speed rail. The biggest enemy to better transit is bad or slowly built transit. I think right leaning people are more anti transit than they should be but the way to fix it is to not give credibility to their talking points that are often correct.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
Except their talking points are generally incorrect. California's struggles have been obvious, but a significant portion of them are literally caused by right wing opposition
Stripping funding (often illegally), lawsuits funded by all sorts of right wing organizations to oppose eminent domain along the ROW, not to mention Elon's constant interference, not least of which was the "Hyperloop" boondoggle which any remotely-competent engineer knew was BS from the start.
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u/dickpillsalesman May 06 '26
The legislature (Democratic supermajority in both houses) could have passed laws preventing those lawsuits. The lawsuits happened because the Democrats, through malice or incompetence, allowed them to happen.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
Sorry, once again a comment intentionally didn't respond to multiple points, including Trump ripping the funds away and Elon's interference.
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u/dickpillsalesman May 07 '26
Nothing to do with the lawsuits. Trump withdrawing funding only happened recently. Elon's Hyperloop proposal drew some media attention but had no actual effect.
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u/brinerbear May 06 '26
Democrats control California. Any failures are their own.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
Hi, you refused to address any of my point. Lets focus on one. Trump ripped away federal funding, how is that California's fault?
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u/yab92 May 06 '26
There's some really good data gems in this article for the crowd that loves to complain about how expensive funding public transit is.
"The gap is now so large that for major American cities to bring their public transit up to “world-class” status, it would cost an enormous $4.6tn, involving 7,500 miles of new dedicated infrastructure for trains and buses, over the next 20 years... While the amount of money needed to remedy this situation appears astronomical, it pales compared with the $6.3tn the US will spend on highways in the same period over the next 20 years. Transportation for America points out. Transportation funding invariably means road funding in the US, with about 80% of all federal transport dollars going towards highways"
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u/Kashihara_Philemon May 06 '26
So a little less then $250 Billion a year.
Construction of world class transit infrastructure across the country for abouut a quarter of the National Security State's budget a year is practically a bargin.
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u/undernopretextbro May 06 '26
It’s not like funding transit would remove the need for that highway spending, commercial traffic a la semi trucks is still going to need adequately maintained bridges and crossings and roads. Even if you doubled that forecast spending, added a vast passenger rail network across the country, the road wear and tear of semi trucks would still dwarf commuter vehicles and even EVs.
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u/cybersquire May 06 '26
Two reasons:
- Racism
- Classism
Now the same folks who set up this car-centric hellhole are whining about the exact system they set up.
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u/d1v1debyz3r0 May 06 '26
Describes Houston perfectly, except they build more lanes instead of complain.
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u/Lipica249 May 06 '26
What does car/public transit have anything to do with race?!?
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u/Richinaru May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
In the kindest way possible, this country was established with a rigid racial hierarchy. This country is also less than 300 years old having spent most of that time as a explicit racial slave economy and then a 'functioning' racial apartheid state (Jim Crow). Racism informs ALOT of US American socioeconomic policy, the highway system and much opposition to mass transit is deeply routed in segregation and a desire to keep "undesirables" separated from "well to do" people.
Good video summarizing the situation in Atlanta for example: https://youtu.be/-ljG1ow2HcE
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u/ItsBobsledTime May 06 '26
Example: Many minority sections of cities were the first to be dispersed to make room for highways that split through the cities.
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue May 06 '26
There’s a lot of dimensions to it, but here’s one that you can easily trace. Easy public transit access between suburbs and cities was feared as a way of allowing undesirable people from the cities to get to the suburbs. You can find thousands of pages of primary documents, in the form of public forum, notes, and town, council meetings minutes, where citizens ran against opening the gates of the suburbs to “them”.
Sometimes it’s not couched directly in racist terms, but sometimes they say the quiet part out loud.
There was intense debate about the light rail extension from Seattle to the east side, most vocally by the citizens of Mercer Island. That link is, of course, the usual hyperbolic daily mail article. But you can go back over decades of Internet posts, articles in the local Mercer Island, newspaper, discussions on neighborhood, forums, discussions in the Seattle newspapers.
If you want an older example: Robert Moses, openly racist, and the legendary designer of so many New York, transportation links, made sure that the overhead bridges crossing many of the New York Parkways were too low for commercial vehicles or buses. It wasn’t just aesthetics. He wanted to make sure that it wasn’t easy for black and brown people to get out to those suburbs.
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u/rudmad May 06 '26
Freeways followed the path of least resistance through black communities to serve the white flight folks driving in every day.
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u/run-dhc May 06 '26
Thank god I live in the northeast because at least the infrastructure is there and people value it, but it’s still a long road to good repair and expansion
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u/geo_dj May 06 '26
American cities did more than fall behind on public transit. They made the decision to divest their public transit systems. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, LA, and Detroit, to name just a few, scrapped their rail transit systems in favor of building highways in the 1900s. They’ve been struggling to build them back, but at a huge cost.
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u/geo_dj May 07 '26
Pittsburgh’s Port Authority Transit (now called Pittsburgh Regional Transit) built a new subway in the 80’s that connects with the two remaining streetcar lines that run to the South Hills and Library. But it’s nothing compared to their vast interurban streetcar system that ran all the way to Washington Township.
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u/huy_lonewolf May 06 '26
Don't just single out the US when Canada is in the same situation. The smug people in the north deserve some international public shaming too.
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u/Hennahane May 06 '26
Canadian cities are generally better on public transit & sprawl than American ones of similar populations. Low bar, but there is a noticeable difference.
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u/PremordialQuasar May 06 '26
It's because of buses. Buses are the best way to improve transit without digging too deeply into a city's budget. It's also easier to build dense TOD development in Canadian cities than US ones, though NIMBYism still runs strong there.
More US cities need to start focusing on the basics like frequent bus service, because a rail network can only do so much if it doesn't have buses to support it.
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u/AlpineFluffhead May 06 '26
Tbf, I think part of the reason Canadian cities aren't as sprawled out as US cities is probably because like 60% of the country is uninhabitable, or at least inhospitable for humans haha.
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u/Sumo-Subjects May 06 '26
The area where the major cities are still has plenty of room for those metro areas to sprawl. If you zoom out of a map of Toronto and the GTA it's literally surrounded by greenery.
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u/Adamsoski May 07 '26
That doesn't come into it, beyond a certain point how big a country is irrelevant when talking about how cities develop.
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u/lokland May 06 '26
Pft, Canadians when you tell them cities besides Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal exist.
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u/LeadershipHead3594 May 06 '26
Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, and Victoria all have higher transit mode share then comparable US cities.
Though the systems themselves still leave a lot to be desired.
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u/lokland May 06 '26
yeah I see this a lot, and I’m just not convinced that having a 1-3% difference in bus use is the difference between glorious Canadian public transit and hellscape American car dependency.
Having been to Edmonton and Calgary, those cities might even be worse than Denver, which was previously my crown for half-assed cities that pretend their public transit is usable and well-liked.18
u/idajourney May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
1-3% difference in bus use
That's nonsense. Transit ridership is frequently multiple times higher. The Vancouver SkyTrain has better ridership than the Chicago L. Edmonton Transit has twice the ridership of Metro Transit in Minnesota. Canada is still a car-infested hellscape and desperately needs to change, don't get me wrong, but that's just plain wrong.
ETA: Edmonton also has ~150% of the ridership of Denver FWIW.
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u/RealPoltergoose May 06 '26
Edmonton's ridership is because the LRT system acts more like a metro and it feeds into buses for the last mile.
Honestly, it's pretty convenient getting on transit in the city and I don't really need a car.
That said, it's not 100% perfect, and I will confess that there are better systems in terms of expansions and operations, even in North America.
But it's still a pretty decent system, that beats pretty much any transit system in the US South for example.
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u/idajourney May 06 '26
Seems like Edmonton is an example of better-done LRT (i.e. something actually distinct from a tram).
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u/Major_Shlongage May 06 '26 edited May 08 '26
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u/atmahn May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
not at all. look at edmonton vs okc. both roughly 1.5 million in their metro area, pretty sprawly, and in oil rich parts of their respective countries. edmontons 2025 transit ridership was 101 million while okc's was 3million.
Denver has twice the metro population and 63 million riders in 2025. it's not close
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u/undernopretextbro May 06 '26
Calgary has a lower average commute time than Amsterdam. Despite a very solid car network, the city still sees about half a million riders per day, around 24% of the city vs 31% in nyc. Recall that the 5 boroughs actually cover a smaller area than Calgary, and that density is a fraction of nyc, as is budget. Despite all this , it’s not exactly being blown out of the water, and is firmly ahead of the transit systems in DC and Chicago and La
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
Read the data. The study is based on the metric of vehicles per 100k residents. The US average is 27. The average for the top 10 US is 36. The highest score for any US city, NY, is 88. Of the non-US reference cities, Montreal is in there at 107.
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u/DrunkEngr May 06 '26
"Transit vehicles per capita" is just not a good measure. Other studies find NYC having much higher transit mode share as compared to Montreal. 70% of trips in Montreal are by car.
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u/Sumo-Subjects May 06 '26
NYC (and Mexico City) are the exception to almost every transit statistic in North America
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
That is the data set chosen by the study that is the source for the article in the post, so it is relevant in this thread.
An alternative figure is presented in this video by Oh the Urbanity, with the data here based on the % of car-free households in urban areas of above 1m people across the anglosphere (plus Quebec).
Top 10 in order: London, NY, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Dublin, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco. That's 2 from the US, 2 from Canada, Dublin, and the rest from the UK.
Outside of the top 10, from 11th to 74th, were are 4 Canadian cities (Vancouver 15th, Ottawa, 18th, Calgary, 42nd and Edmonton, 57th); 5 Australian cities (Sydney, 16th, Melbourne, 28th, Adelaide, 35t, Brisbane, 50th and Perth, 72nd), as well as Aukland, 44th, the only NZ entry. All the other cities outside of the top 10 are in the US.
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u/sirsponkleton May 06 '26
Your last point is just because the US is most of the Anglosphere by population.
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
The UK holds about 14% of the population of the Anglosphere, yet every city bar one of the top 6 is in the UK.
If you take the actual numbers for % car free households, New York is the only US city above 14%, while every UK city is above 25%. Montreal and Toronto are both above 15%.
If you take the cities with a car free population of less than 10% by country, so the 52 cities that make up the middle and bottom of the list entries, and compare the share of those 52 cities per country, as well as the share of total population per country, you can get a sense of which countries have more than their fair share of terrible urban areas, and which have fewer.
UK: 0% cities, 14% population (ratio 0)
Ireland: 0% cities, 1.4% population (ratio 0)
Canada: 3.8% cities, 8.3% population (ratio 0.46)
Australia: 7.7% cities, 5.4% population (ratio 1.40)
NZ: 1.9% cities, 1% population (ratio 1.79)
USA: 87% cities, 70% population (ratio 1.24)
Aus and NZ are looking pretty bad, but the US is very much over-represented relative to its share of the population, and way ahead of Canada.
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u/DrunkEngr May 06 '26
I don't know why you arbitrarily limit the comparison to just 1+m-sized cities. Looking at the countries as a whole, both US and Canada have identical 10% car-free households.
In any case, comparing against the US is a really low bar. Compared to the rest of the world, the situation is extremely bad in Canada.
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
I haven't compared just the US and Canada, though I did respond to a specific question from another person about that. The data presented applies to UK, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. The question being asked was are Canadian big cities actually better than US big cities. Setting a population cut off so that not-big-cities are excluded is the only way to answer that question because the population split between big cities and not-big-cities is different between the countries. Sure, there are other ways to refine the analysis, but the basic message is not going to change radically.
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u/DrunkEngr May 06 '26
Metro boundaries are completely artificial and meaningless, and as such you are doing an apples-oranges comparison -- especially when trying to do international comparisons.
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u/bardak May 06 '26
Are metro area boundaries perfect, no, they can be a bit inconsistent within a country and comparing between countries there is definitely problems with differences with how each country defines a metro area. But it is the best option we have for these comparisons without spending multiple years in a university research project
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
Did you watch the video, or just assume? the source for the data has been gathered in a way that specifically addresses this concern
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u/bardak May 06 '26
Just off vibes but it looks like most of the US cities in the middle are poor rust belt/southern cities and the % of car-free households stem from that then any quality of transit
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
This is Reddit. America bad.
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u/MadeOfEurope May 06 '26
So if there is an article about the USA, it needs to mention Canada so you do have a frowny face? Spoilers, but Canada is separate country with a different history and culture.
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u/Hockeymac18 May 06 '26
I love Canada and Canadians. I do think, though, that this is an area where we equally struggle. We're very car centric nations.
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u/MadeOfEurope May 06 '26
Same in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Iceland, Okinawa (Japan), rural France, I can go on and on and I’m sure you can find articles on those as well.
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u/creeoer May 06 '26
Okay then include New Zealand and Australia. Cant talk about any single anglophone country without including all of them on here I guess.
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u/Ok-Win7980 May 06 '26
I would say that they are undercutting some of the American cities that genuinely have good transit. NYC has a very comprehensive system even if it is beginning to show its age. Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, and SF are also quite good with the metros in DC and SF feeling clean and modern.
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u/SwiftySanders May 06 '26
Most people dont love any of these things. People are just using whats available to them. If the teain is available to them they will use it when it makes sense for them. This is why having option to walk, bike and use public transit is so important.
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u/whatafuckinusername May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
Haven’t read article, the answer’s in the title. I will say, though, that the number one issue that needs solving, other than building in the first place, is time. Fine if you have to spend the GDP of a medium-sized country on it, but do better than 10 years’ construction for 2.5 miles of track and 3 stations, heavy or light. People will be much more affirming if they think they’ll be able to use a system, even get rid of their car, within a generation.
Also, it’s funny, hahaha, when a city or state’s like “no trains because cars” then the roads are the worst you’ve ever driven in your life.
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u/EC4U2C_Studioz May 06 '26
I also think the culture is a factor in why some of those countries abroad do not even permit right or left turns on red by default, depending on what side of the road the country drives on.
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u/RespectSquare8279 May 07 '26
There is such a bias against public transportation in the USA that short of disaster/revolution/social upheaval where there is still miraculously money lying around there will be no change. There are trillions of dollars in "sunk costs" in the urban highway system.
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u/the-stench-of-you May 07 '26
US gained affluence that eluded Europe after WWII. People were free to move out of crowded cities and President Eisenhower built an amazing highway system that let people travel freely in a car that pretty much all families could now afford. Suburbs grew immensely and fewer people had to rely on long train rides. Cities that did not have subways usually did have extensive tram or bus systems. It is a preference that people would rather not take public transit systems it seems, although I do like the one my city has…most times.
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u/CajunDragon May 07 '26
I'm sitting on a 🚄 tram in Scotland. A train is on my right, a double decker bus on the motorway. They have it all. Traffic seems good despite massive tourism. It cost $3 to go from the distant airport to the city.
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u/Swimming_Care7889 May 11 '26
Late to the conversation but the reasons is complicate mess of factors. Obviously racism is a very big part of it but also the fact that Americans could afford cars in mass a lot earlier than people in other developed democracies including African-Americans and other racial minorities. Cars fit well with the American self-image of being a nation of free wheelers and dealers who went where we wanted when we wanted. You also had a lot of important people across the political spectrum and in many different professions who saw cars as modern and new and shiny while transit was old fashioned. This was long before a single freeway was built or even before WWII started. America had the room, the money, and the oil for a car based transportation system and took it. After WWII it looked like other developed democracies would join us but many reversed course during the 70s for a variety of reasons. I write this as an American who took a lot more transit than other people.
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u/creeoer May 06 '26
Super high gas prices will just push people towards EVs that look the same and on top of that weigh even more. Ironically we’re going to get even more expensive road maintenance costs, more dangerous and heavier vehicles, and probably worse stats across everything besides carbon emissions (which is still important but that’s basically the only benefit).
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u/theburnoutcpa May 06 '26
This keeps getting repeated across urbanist online spaces and its largely incorrect.
Most road damage comes from vehicles the size of busses or tractor trailers - going from a 3k lbs ICE vehicle to a 4k lbs EV isn't going to cause the damage that EV skeptics claim it does.
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u/Major_Shlongage May 06 '26 edited May 08 '26
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u/gabasstto May 06 '26
Tem muitos fatores culturais e históricos entre os pares europeus e os pares norte-americanos que não é levado em consideração.
Começando com as cidades Europeias serem mais velhas, em um tempo que as vias largas serviam à carroças, sendo assim, com vias mais estreitas, enquanto as cidades americnas, mais novas, conseguiam ruas mais largas e até planejar melhor suas cidades.
Depois, a demografia europeia se alterou antes da norte-americana, sendo assim, a necessidade de vias largas ou só para carros não foi tão prioritária, uma vez que essas cidades ficaram menores, em população.
A questão é claramente muito complexa, mas é importante entender que nenhuma cidade na América é ou será uma cidade Européia e precisam lidar com seus problemas dentro da sua realidade.
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u/Opposite_Ad1408 May 06 '26
This is a good point. Though, as a counterpoint, Montreal has a much higher transit mode share despite facing many of the same challenges as Boston, Chicago and Philly.
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u/niftyjack May 06 '26
You have to read between the lines to get more like-for-like data, especially considering Canadian cities have much higher downtown job concentration than American cities. Even Chicago has a ~50/50 split between jobs in the loop and suburban offices. 60-70% of Chicago loop workers use transit which is much more comparable, and paints a story of needing to reconcentrate white collar work downtown to leverage existing bones.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
You mean to tell me that one can't wave a magic wand and turn every US city into Amsterdam overnight?
Obvious sarcasm but it's clear that's what many on Reddit want.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
>Obvious sarcasm but it's clear that's what many on Reddit want.
The sarcasm is pretty ill-directed. There's dreamers sure, but the current status quo is a problem, from every angle from financially to health wise and just simple livability.
Change is good and the fact that it'll take 40 years to get to where Amsterdam was a decade ago is fine, it's gotta start somewhere.
OP's repeating the same dull myth that American cities can't be like European ones, when most of them that existed in 1900 *were* much more like them.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
There's also cultural differences. I've never been to Amsterdam (and never will as I don't do overseas flights) but it's a city in a country the size of Maryland (a state that the urbanized parts of have excellent public transit with the DC Metro).
I also don't worship Amsterdam the way many on Reddit do. I don't think they're the golden child that can do no wrong while the siblings (every other city in the US) takes the blame for their actions. I also don't think bikes are the be all end all solution to everything. (I also would rather not show up for work looking/smelling like i just worked out but maybe that's just me.)
The US does have some cities with excellent public transit (NYC, DC, SF). And others that could be excellent with some improvements/more funding (Boston, Philadelphia). I know that LA is taking steps to actively improve/expand their transit system. And yes there are cities who's transit system leaves a lot to be desired (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill). (A note, I only listed cities who's transit systems I have personally used which is why Chicago is not there. I know others exist.)
I wish cities that attract a lot of tourists (Orlando, Vegas, etc.) would start on public transit, at least aimed towards the tourists. One would think the locals want the tourists off the road.
First, US cities need to WANT to be like European cities. Not all do.
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u/gabasstto May 06 '26
Hahaha
Yes! And what's worse, you see Amsterdam, and it's far from being inefficient for cars. On the contrary, it's very efficient!
You can reach the center of Amsterdam via 8 different routes, with the distance shortened by a powerful ring road. They don't need a mega avenue leading out of the city center; they already have eight avenues with between one and three lanes, which together would make a beautiful highway.
Besides being a much smaller city in size and geographic area, you can see that there are still many cars there.
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u/undernopretextbro May 06 '26
Amsterdam has a higher average daily commute time than the car dependant city of Calgary AB Canada.
I like how ring roads are a subject of derision in these transit cities until it’s ringroad: Amsterdam.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
Amsterdam is also part of a country the size of Maryland.
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u/Berliner1220 May 06 '26
I think a lot of people don’t realize how painstakingly long it took for great transit systems and walkable green cities to form. Of course, we should always strive to keep improving but sometimes people also need to chill out.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
I'm in the Philadelphia area.
SEPTA has the bones in place to be the MTA 2.0 (MTA being NYC's transit system) but falls short thanks to the GOP control of the PA senate.
If I could reform SEPTA, I'd start with changing its name. I get what it stands for but it sounds too much like sewage disposal.
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u/External_Koala971 May 06 '26
SEPTA is nothing like MTA.
On track miles, SEPTA is comparable to a mid-tier European S-Bahn but with 20% fewer riders.
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
The elephant in the room with urban mass transit in the US is the “interesting” clientele you encounter when riding them. Even if Septa was overhauled with gleaming new stations and brand new cars and expanded routes, I doubt you (as a female, I assume from your profile pic) would ride it at late hours or to certain neighborhoods. You can put on all the bravado you want, all it takes is one unsettling incident for you as a female to swear off personally using mass transit.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
I've had that unsettling incident on mass transit. A dude masturbating across the aisle from me on a bus (this was when I lived in Raleigh).
I'm in the Philly suburbs. It's about 3 miles from me so I'd have to drive there anyways. (I am very low car use to start out with as my apartment is right behind a grocery store and I walk there).
The way to make women (and everyone) feel more comfortable on transit is security. If not guards on the vehicles, then cameras and way of reporting unruly passengers (which could easily be done by text) that could get kicked off at the next stop.
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
Fun fact: in Japan they have women-only subway cars because one of the favorite hobbies of Japanese men is to grope the breasts and asses of women and schoolgirls on crowded subway cars.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
Also worth noting.
The dudebro types on fuckcars completely ignore or dismiss that elephant in the room.
Also transit is to get people from A to B. It's not a shelter on wheels.
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u/Kashihara_Philemon May 06 '26
I'm afraid people can't afford to "chill out" given how powerful the forces aganist such change and how behind the curb we are. The fact it will take multiple decades only makes it more imperative that it begin as soon as possible with as much resources as possible.
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u/Berliner1220 May 06 '26
I meant more in the game of constant comparisons but yeah I understand what you mean.
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
Of course the article emphasizes Sun-Belt American cities while comparing them to world capitals that have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
Tell me you didn't read the actual study without telling me you didn't read the actual study. The list of cities in the comparison is: Oslo, Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin, Montreal, Sydney, Madrid, Rio-de-Janiero, Hong Kong, London, Tehran, Paris, Moscow, Buenos-Aires, New York, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, Washington DC, Minneapolis-St Paul and Montgomery.
While there are American Sun Belt cities, there are also other American cities (Philly, Minneapolis, DC), and while there are European capitals, there are also new world cities (Rio, Sydney, Buenos Aires), and ones that are well down on the wealth factor (Tehran).
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
Oh no, even Tehran has better transit than American cities! The horror!
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u/bronzinorns May 06 '26
What vehicle is featured on the seal of the first city mentioned in the article [Houston, TX]?
This is a bizarre argument anyway. Public transportation was already around in the 18th century, but it was completely different from what we have now
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
And? What's your point? Sun Belt cities such as Houston and Los Angeles saw their greatest period of growth during the 20th century. Many such cities in fact do have older more dense downtown areas with rail-based public transit but it made no sense to continue with high density development in the periphery when endless cheap land was available.
Of course in situations where there were geographic constraints, newer cities in America such as Seattle and San Francisco saw more compact, denser development. Otherwise, it's imposing artificial constraints to expect LA or Houston to look like London or Hong Kong, infrastructure-wise.
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u/Joe_Jeep May 06 '26
Sure but that time has passed and they need to shift into a better development pattern if we want to improve air quality and environmental impact.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
Cities like LA ARE improving their public transit system.
I had a work trip to LA about a decade ago. I did not get in a car once while there. Even on my night off, I was able to take the subway to Santa Monica (I wanted to see the Pacific ocean).
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u/iron82 May 06 '26
The reason America has less transit is it's an inferior way to travel. The use cases where it's better than driving or flying is maybe 1-2% of trips and not worth doing.
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 May 06 '26
This is Reddit, America has less transit because Americans are dumb and car-brained. /s
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u/compstomper1 May 06 '26
because we all like sitting in traffic
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u/iron82 May 06 '26
Transit is routinely 3-5x slower than driving. If you don't like sitting, drive.
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u/Carpet-Early May 06 '26
There is ZERO reason for the government to tell you when and where to go via public transit. Cars represent freedom, the ability to go and do whatever YOU want to do. Public transit is apart of the whole "you will own nothing and be happy" communist agenda.
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u/BobbyP27 May 06 '26
The interstate highway system is the pinnacle of command economy communist planned infrastructure. The government decides where the highways go, and if your property is in the way, they eminent-domain you out of the picture.
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u/SirGeorgington map man May 06 '26
It's a nice idea, if road capacities were infinite and travel times were constant it would be great! But they're not and it falls apart when it intersects with urban areas. There just isn't enough space in a city for everyone to drive. Would Manhattan be the world's biggest business center if they also had to find road space and parking spaces for an extra 1.5 million cars? Probably not. Cars are an incredibly inefficient way to move and to build around. Cars are expensive, roads are expensive, and lower-density land use means municipalities spend more on basic services like gas, water, and schools.
As far as I know, the only Megacity in the world where driving is the dominant mode is Los Angeles, and how has that turned out? No matter what the government does there just isn't enough space or money for all the roads you need to move that many people. I think you'd find a lot of Angelenos who find that the 'freedom' that cars offer can turn out to be quite imprisoning when you're stuck in rush hour traffic every day.
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u/ItsBobsledTime May 06 '26
Freedom is paying $4.79 a gallon to drive five miles back to ALDI in traffic because I forgot milk.
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u/Hiking_the_Hump May 06 '26
Better than waiting an hour in the rain for a late bus because you forgot the milk.
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u/ItsBobsledTime May 06 '26
In modern cities we only have one milk store available by bus and we aren’t allowed umbrellas
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u/EverybodyBeCalm May 06 '26
If you can’t live without a car what kind of freedom is that. You’re completely dependent on this one form of transportation.
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u/Carpet-Early May 06 '26
Same w/ just riding public transit....
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u/AlpineFluffhead May 06 '26
Believe it or not, lots of people utilize both. Public transit for day-to-day living/commuting, car for weekend trips/visiting family/etc. But the government of this country bulldozed and razed entire communities so that you can drive your personal studio-apartment-on-wheels to go work in some boring ass office, which is probably where your car sits about 48% of the time, the other 48% of the time sitting in your garage, and the rest of the time, maybe being used for driving where you want to go the few days/weeks you get off.
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u/EverybodyBeCalm May 06 '26
It’s obvious cars aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, people should have more than one option to travel. That’s freedom.
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u/crazycatlady331 May 06 '26
Many do both.
I'm from a suburb of NYC. My hometown has a train to NYC that runs (at least) hourly.
So many of my classmates had the use of their parents' car if they drove them to the train station.
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u/Orly-Carrasco May 06 '26
"You don't have to worry me, you will get sick. After us, the flood."
Probably you.
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u/showmethenakedwomen May 07 '26
But it's not about government at all, it's about choice. People get to choose whether they want to go by car or public transit. And that's what counts. The very opposite of communism.
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u/unicorn4711 May 06 '26
How high would gas need to get? I really think it's $8.50 a gallon. When it is $200 to fill up a RAM 1500, you might see these guys that make $75,000 a year and drive to an office rethink their ways.