Quote:
Originally Posted by RC14
No, it isn't.
I use to have almost door to door TRAX service between Home and work with no transfers. It still takes longer than driving, not including the time spent standing in adverse weather waiting for your train. Transit will never be able to compete with cars when it comes to convenience. In my example I am only talking about going strait to work and strait home, if I ever had to go anywhere else, that's 2-4 more hours of travel added to my day. In contrast, when I drive , it's only a 15-20min detour.
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What were the road designs like? Knowing Salt Lake City, they were probably 4 or 5-lane roads, with too many curb cuts, swooping corners that encourage taking corners at high speed, and other general road design features that encourage car travel and discourage walking and biking. And if it was TRAX downtown, it's running on surface streets without signal priority, adding another barrier to the speed of TRAX.
I don't think anybody truly believes that public transit is ever going to make car travel obsolete. But it's a fact that our transit is so inconvenient because the car industry and lobbying have encouraged getting around everywhere very quickly on cars, and this goes from underinvesting in public transit, all the way down to road designs that encourage fast speeds and convenience of driving.