Believe me, I wish I didn’t need a car, but I’m a field service tech and my job requires a work vehicle since I’m travelling with a ton of tools. I’d also love to get rid of my personal car, but my wife needs it for a 30-minute commute; the bus ride is close to 2 hours and there aren’t really any other practicable transportation methods.
Don’t even get me started on the lack of infrastructure outside of downtown, there are a ton of places around town where they don’t even have sidewalks, let alone bike or bus lanes.
I don’t know what the solution is when so many cities and municipalities either don’t want to invest in mass public transportation or (in the case of my city) cheaped out and ended up with a light rail transit system that barely functions. It just reinforces car ownership out of necessity.
Public transit doesn’t work in sparsely populated suburbs. You need medium density developments like we had all around the world before car-centric urbanism took over. Throw in some commercial buildings and public amenities and you often don’t even need transit because you can walk anywhere you want to go.
Households per bus stop: pi r sq x 50 = 157
Cars per stop: above x 2 = 314
Car cost per stop: above x $988 x 12 = $3,722,784
Annual Car hours per stop: cars x 380 { 112,000
Annual Bus hours per stop: car cost / 165 = 22,562
22,562 annual bus hours, or 2.5 busses running every hour all hours, per stop with 1 km bubble at the lowest possible density for suburbs.
At 3 km (cycle distance) you get 1,413 cars replaced with 101,530 annual bus hours. Or 11.6 busses per hour, every hour, 365 days a year.
Believe me, I wish I didn’t need a car, but I’m a field service tech and my job requires a work vehicle since I’m travelling with a ton of tools. I’d also love to get rid of my personal car, but my wife needs it for a 30-minute commute; the bus ride is close to 2 hours and there aren’t really any other practicable transportation methods.
Don’t even get me started on the lack of infrastructure outside of downtown, there are a ton of places around town where they don’t even have sidewalks, let alone bike or bus lanes.
I don’t know what the solution is when so many cities and municipalities either don’t want to invest in mass public transportation or (in the case of my city) cheaped out and ended up with a light rail transit system that barely functions. It just reinforces car ownership out of necessity.
Public transit doesn’t work in sparsely populated suburbs. You need medium density developments like we had all around the world before car-centric urbanism took over. Throw in some commercial buildings and public amenities and you often don’t even need transit because you can walk anywhere you want to go.
Public transit does work in sparsely populated suburbs. We just don’t want it to work there.
In short: at 50 households per sq km, we could replace cars with a bus every 5 to 24 mins 24/7/365.
Assumptions:
Density: 50 households per sq km (lowest possible before rural) Transit catchment: 1 km radius Cars per household: 2 Cost of a bus: ~$122 USD/hour ($165 CAD) Cost of a car: A car $988 per month on average Use of car: 380 hours per year on average.
Calculations
Households per bus stop: pi r sq x 50 = 157 Cars per stop: above x 2 = 314 Car cost per stop: above x $988 x 12 = $3,722,784 Annual Car hours per stop: cars x 380 { 112,000 Annual Bus hours per stop: car cost / 165 = 22,562
22,562 annual bus hours, or 2.5 busses running every hour all hours, per stop with 1 km bubble at the lowest possible density for suburbs.
At 3 km (cycle distance) you get 1,413 cars replaced with 101,530 annual bus hours. Or 11.6 busses per hour, every hour, 365 days a year.
Edit: added up front summary
Same here. I even have a bucket on my truck.