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Originally Posted by amor de cosmos
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A few thoughts:
1. US metropolitan areas almost always have many governments that run component cities. Getting anything done on a large scale involves excruciating political maneuvering, often with power brokers content to leave "things" as they are. This makes large scale transportation change very difficult, and, when possible, tends to be compromised into mediocrity.
2. US cities with urban cores (or aspirations to have them) tend to concentrate too much on making small footprint downtowns vibrant show places of alternate transportation, and, even nearby surroundings are subordinated financially. Extending bus/bicycle/pedestrian only corridors several kilometers out from downtowns, IMO, would have a far greater impact on reducing vehicle use than bicycle, bus, and pedestrian trophy developments downtown.
3. When rail or BRT or monorail lines are extended radially from city center, each station area should be considered a mini-downtown with it's own radial network of extending a couple of kilometers from the station.
This, as pointed out in point 1, is extremely hard to do in 2013 (but it is slowly changing) as profit generating plans developed since WWII have almost always had car access as front and center. Too many stations are being placed next to huge parking lots and have little or no bus or bicycle planning outside the property station footprint.