Quote:
Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat
If I'm not mistaken, the 16th Street Mall redesign will eliminate the curbs separating the bus lane from the sidewalk, which would allow the entire strip or blocks of it to be readily convertible to pedestrian-only.
One of the main issues that I see, and I could well be wrong, is that our relatively large rail system is 1). primarily design for suburban commuters and 2). anchored at Union Station (which is often 1-2 miles away from the CBD where most suburban commuters work. The mall ride and the metro ride can help but they add enough time to the process where it really doesn't make sense for many people that don't simply prefer commuting via rail. If commuting downtown via car was less attractive (congestion pricing, bus only lanes, less parking) and there was a high frequency and quick connection between US, 16th and California, and CC, that might be a game-changer.
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as long as we allow uber and lyft to operate at these obscenely low costs, you can forget about all of it.
when going to the airport, i can walk a mile to the station and take close to $20 ride to the airport or take an uber and get door to door service for $30. if i'm traveling with somebody, it becomes significantly cheaper to uber.
the same choices are being made coming into and moving around the city. if it costs $7 to get across town and you can do it quickly, the notion of hiking to a station, waiting, then waiting some more with a bunch of people only to get not exactly where you're going for a couple bucks less is an unlikely proposition.
thus my original take on this. if we aren't going to stop uber, we may as well embrace the future of solar powered cars conveniently and safely taking us from one place to the next.
remember when streetcars were everywhere? well, neither do i, but they were here. then somebody realized busses could go to more places than just where the rails go. that's coming with trains as well. as automated clean cars come, they'll be efficient and safe and we'll laugh about crowding on trains. that and germs. there's some thought that we'll be stuck wearing face masks forever. riding on crowded germ filled trains vs taking a solo car ride is another no brainer.