Posted May 15, 2022, 10:19 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 4,746
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Average commute times for 15 largest MSAs in 2019:
New York-Newark 37.7 minutes
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim 31.7
Chicago 32.4
Dallas-Fort Worth 28.6
Houston 30.7
Washington 35.6
Miami 30.3
Philadelphia 30.8
Atlanta 32.5
Phoenix 27.9
Boston 32.6
San Francisco-Oakland 35.2
Riverside-San Bernardino 33.9
Detroit 27.5
Seattle 31.6
Detroit has much shorter commute times compared to San Francisco. Seattle has longer commute times compared to Dallas and Houston despite being half their size. Phoenix is better than Washington, DC. And of course LA is better than NYC.
Dallas, Phoenix, Detroit, these are the metropolitan areas that stand out in their tier. They are ones that should be the models for rest of their peers, if speed is the priority.
But I think NYC, Washington, SF, which also stand out in their tiers, can be models too. Cars have their own advantages in terms of efficiency too, multiple people travelling together, but the efficiency of transit in terms using energy and space cannot be denied. And I don't think there is as much conflict and contrast between cars and transit as is often suggested, and we can learn from Dallas as much from NYC.
It's walking that is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to cars, not transit. Extreme long distances vs. extreme short distances. Transit is the grey area, the middle ground, medium distances. High transit usage can be a product of auto-centric urban design as much as it is of walkable urban design. I've seen it myself growing up as a suburban transit rider. People cannot walk? Workplace too far away? Distance too far? So they are forced to use transit. If distance is even farther, then they might be forced to drive.
So getting people in these post-war subdivisions to take transit is not actually difficult or a huge accomplishment, it is just a small first step toward cycling, and then toward walking. Walkability, that is the real ultimate goal. When we start to look at transit as the ideal, as some sort of outlandish fantasy or something, something that requires tremendous commitment and investment, a huge cultural shift, complete abandonment of autocentric urban design and infrastructure, that way of thinking is the real obstacle toward reducing car dependence. High transit dependence is not as bad as high car dependence, but it is still bad.
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