The ways we have used zoning (minimum lot sizes and setbacks, and putting housing over here and work and shopping way the hell over there), and engineering our roads to make automobiling as quick as possible, has disenfranchised a large part of our population.

Presumably a sizable portion of that third isn't capable of getting around on their own regardless of public transportation options.

You'll see many of wheelchair-bound people outside every day, interacting with people. I can't imagine how lonely it must be to be disabled or elderly (to where you can't drive) in a car dependent area. You'd rarely leave your house.

Walkable areas are also more liberating for children. Where I live, we have some areas that are pedestrian only, and you'll see children hanging out and playing. They can walk there from nearby homes.

The disabled, elderly and minors do ride public transportation.

That car is a big part of WHY you feel so lethargic and dread walking further than between the car and the edge of a parking lot.

Contrast with the most pedestrian friendly area I've ever seen: central Tokyo, with density so high that within a short walk of most homes there are all the services you need. I routinely see bent over grandmas that in the US would be considered incapable of traveling outside the home, calmly and slowly walking with a grocery / walker contraption holding some groceries.

I'm an Aussie too living in London. I'm a keen cyclist and love walking. I've been hit by several cars while cycling, three times very seriously. I walk whenever humanly possible, cycle for a lot of odd jobs that most would use a car for.

I just have to say my bit in defense of cars. You (cletus) didn't seem to be attacking them per se, I'm mostly chiming into your anecdotes.

* Some localities are just too hilly/valleyey (sp?) without cars.

I cycled from Bondi/Maroubra/Neutral Bay daily in Sydney and the hills killed me. The Harbour Bridge is just two massive ramps BTW. I've heard HongKong is too hilly for bike/cycle.

* Cars are great for Kids and Shopping

* Vans & Trucks bring in all our vegetables and consumables. Rail okay for heavy goods, but laying rail everywhere would bankrupt us all.

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My suggestion on how to make cars better/greener is to gradually introduce automated driving vehicles. Specially equipped vehicles should be allocated special roads and given priority. They'll still have manual controls for the normal roads of course.

Regulating the speed of the vehicles will make everything much cheaper/cleaner.

Having commuted on Brisbane's buses I know they're top notch, and the ferries aren't bad if you're near the river and have some extra time in the mornings. The trains are getting a lot of money thrown at them, too, upping service frequencies and extending them further north.

There's definitely cultural lean towards living in the suburbs and having a back yard big enough to play cricket on, but you only really know what you see. What used to be called outer suburbs are now called inner suburbs, and they're getting dense and very transport-accessible.

The basic problem with aiming for fewer cars and more public transport and walking/cycling is that neither alternative is actually a viable alternative for a surprisingly large proportion of journeys made by car today.

Public transport essentially relies on having critical mass. If you have enough people wanting to travel similar routes at similar times, then you can make great economies of scale, avoiding congestion, using natural resources more efficiently, and reducing environmental damage.

Unfortunately, while megacities like London typically achieve this critical mass, smaller cities like Cambridge rarely do. You see mostly full buses for an hour or two at the start and end of each working day, or on major routes like those between the Park and Ride car parks on the edge of the city and the centre. However, the average number of passengers on a bus, taken across all times they run and all routes in the UK is only something like 7 IIRC.

At that point, buses are actually more polluting per passenger-mile than the average family car with an average of 1.5ish occupants, not so much in the carbon oxides that get all the press, but certainly in the really nasty stuff like PM10s. They don't compare so favourably on things like fuel consumption either.

This lack of critical mass also creates problems for financial viability, which in turn means that you get less frequent services and that those services that do run have to follow fewer, more circuitous routes. That makes the whole thing less efficient than personal transport, and at some point, you reach the stage where getting the bus simply doesn't save you any time over walking, and not because we're talking about a short journey where waiting for the bus dominates.

On top of all of that, buses are basically a menace to every other class of road user. They are obviously dangerous to cyclists. If you don't have space for dedicated roadside bus stops so the buses have to block the main driving lane while picking up and droping off passengers then a single bus can hold up an entire queue of traffic, slowing everything down to its stop-start pace. That is inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and dangerous, all at once. Moreover, dedicated bus lanes and other priority features tend to violate the normal road layout rules, causing difficulties for just about everyone else at major intersections.

Basically, if you've got enough people to run frequent bus services on fairly direct routes between everywhere and everywhere else, buses have a lot going for them. Otherwise, they suck and have almost no redeeming features whatsoever.

Cycling and walking have a lot more going for them, and if we could just ban buses around here then we could probably get a lot more people cycling. They are clean and efficient methods of transport, and of course they have side benefits in terms of health and fitness. Unfortunately, they aren't much use if you're trying to get somewhere and still look presentable at the other end, it is impractical to carry large/heavy/young and wriggling loads on most journeys, and they are pretty unpleasant in bad weather. Oh, and a single cyclist can hold up a whole queue of traffic on a narrow road as well, and even on a relatively wide one the choice is between a hold-up or a stream of other vehicles passing dangerously close.

On the face of it, the solution to most of the drawbacks of cycling is to provide better cycle facilities: dedicated cycle lanes away from the main traffic, secure cycle parking, mandatory shower facilities at places of work, and so on. Sometimes, the results are inconsistent or counter-intuitive, though, particularly with the idea of separating cycle traffic. Nervous/inexperienced cyclists often prefer to ride on separate paths off the main road, but more experienced/capable cyclists typically prefer the main roads rather than having to give way to motor traffic so much when separate cycle paths need to cross main roads (or vice versa, if you prefer).

My personal feeling as a driver and cyclist is that if we could redesign the city around a good quality cycle path network from the start, and then overlay a road network for motor traffic on top with suitable under/overpasses to avoid breaking up the cycle network (since it's much harder for cyclists to stop and get going again if they have to yield priority) then a lot of these problems could be overcome. But right now, the local authorities here are proud of the fact that they have got a couple of major cycle routes from one side of the city to the other coming together after several years. I don't think it will ever be practical to implement something as comprehensive as I've described in an old city like Cambridge.

The only solution, therefore, is to give up on finding a workable transport infrastructure for the city as we have today, and change the planning policies so that over the coming years there simply isn't as much need for so many people to travel into the same small area at the heart of a small city from everywhere around on the same few roads. Urbanisation might be inevitable, but we don't have to design every city so everyone is trying to get to the same place right in the centre when the area feeding it isn't big enough for public transport to reach critical mass.

I went to a presentation in Melbourne by a who worked on the CrossRail business case, and he said that the benefits of agglomeration alone made the case for the link. In his eyes urbanisation wasn't a necessary evil, it's was goal, at least as far as London was concerned. He did make a point to say that it wasn't for everyone, and that it'd be a good thing to keep some jobs in the satellite towns to cut people's hair and sell and entertain tourists, but...

There were two talks on transport economics, the first quite general and the second on Crossrail. My notes on the second presentation, hopefully somewhat meaningful:

"Cross-rail: Wider economic benefits"

- Biggest infrastructure project GB has done. ~16M GBP, good BCR, but lots of smaller, "less risky" projects with worse BCRs have been getting built anyway.

Rail is very expensive. Often most expensive infrastructure project. Usually lose money on them, often lose money on them forever. Almost never repay any investment.

3 lines build since the '60s, BCR all <1: Jubilee Extension, Fleet st sometihng, something else. ThamesLink and CrossRail have consistently had BCRs >2, but couldn't build due to opposition.

Productivity gains:

- agglomeration. Cities are good for business.

- biger employee pool/labour market.

- Product market - supply specialisation, drive to compete. (Not only provider in area)

- "Knowledge spillover" - ideas spread fast. Conferences, gossip, recruiters, recruiting from competitors often.

Also: Move to more productive jobs (M2MPJ). Relieves capacity constraint. Need to prove it works, though, which is hard to do. Big win, though.

Big value differential in jobs in city/suburbs. Melbourne average salary difference is 75k:50k.

"M2MPJ" --> "Absolute density"

"Pure agglomeration" --> "Effective density"

Other things.

BCR guys were forced to assume no socio-economic benefits (an economic efficiency assumption, I think - don't want any double-counting). The argument goes that if the improvement in commute times makes someone change their job, then the difference in utility between the old job and the new job can be at most the utility gained in travel time savings. Presenter's argument is that people aren't logical homo economicus, I think.

Still argue to be able to measure a win from these benefits, though, through a "tax wedge". Commuters are indifferent to things after tax, so differences before tax can go to treasury. I don't understand this completely, but the idea seems reasonable (if a little contrived). Makes an important difference.

Wider Economic Benefits ("WEB") push the BCR from 1.8 to 3-5. Huuge change, turns it from a good project to a "do this now" project.

Presenter argued for WEB things to be included in the "Wider Benefits Working Group" (govt thing). Some things got in, other things got rejected. Got enough, though, project got funded.

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Transport benefits not enough for rail projects - "Investment in growth" is/should be a higher priority.

Imperfections in the market allow for this. There are real value differences not explained by the "pure" economic theories.

Work with market w. economic policy. The old "satellite town" idea didn't really catch on in London, was a top-down decisionthat didn't address the real needs.

- --

Erm, hope this was interesting.

The models are already out there and working nicely, other cities just have to emulate them.

That's OK if you're starting from scratch, but very few new city-scale developments are started from a clean sheet, at least here in the UK. I don't think many people would look kindly on demolishing historic city centres just to build new tramways or light rail...

I wonder if you could build a network that optimized for both bicycles and small motorized vehicles (ranging from segways and mopeds to enclosed three wheelers like the auto moto or carver one). Allowing and optimizing for enclosed three wheelers gives options for the elderly or commuting in bad weather. Full size automobiles would be relegated to major thoroughfares and highways.

Sorry, but that's just not true. In a relatively small city with narrow streets like Cambridge, buses have just as many problems navigating around cyclists, awkward intersections, and indeed other buses. And the problems buses cause, particularly when only sparsely occupied, have nothing to do with cars at all.

> Why not build new roads solely for the use of buses?

Where are we going to put those?

They're trying to create new roads only for the use of buses, by taking away lanes that used to be for everyone and designating them to be bus lanes instead. That is making things much worse for everyone else, because it means 50% of the road surface on major arterial routes is unused most of the time. And it isn't even helping buses that much, because they still have to get to and from those major routes on the back roads they serve, and they still have to stop at lights or give way at roundabouts just like everyone else.

(Cambridge also has far too many sets of traffic lights for its size, which introduces an entirely artificial ceiling on the capacity of its road network for reasons no-one seems to quite understand. You can usually tell when the lights fail at a major intersection, because the drivers all start being polite and taking turns to proceed, there are hardly any queues in the area, and journeys are invariably quicker and more pleasant. Note to people wanting saner traffic systems for cities in future: competitive routes and stop/go lights are an evil that will cripple your efficiency.)

Incidentally, I did hear about a study that indicates that roundabouts are far better for safety than traffic lights. Unfortunately, I don't remember the reason they concluded for this. Suffice to say... I don't really see much reason to ever use traffic lights if they can be avoided.

This is generally an improvement for everyone, because you only ever have to worry about merging with traffic from one other lane at once. It's also an improvement for cyclists in particular, because you can construct those single lanes so that either they are wide enough to pass a cyclist with a good clearance or they are narrow enough that overtaking is clearly not an option. When there are several adjacent lanes, an aggressive driver will often force a cyclist into the next lane over (even if there's another vehicle there). When doing so requires driving through solid concrete lane dividers, funnily enough it doesn't happen so often...

You also have to consider that the cyclist needs to give way to the traffic from the right. If they've stopped, they need an extra large gap in the cross traffic, since acceleration on a bike isn't quite as good.

* - This is for areas where you drive on the left, obviously.

In practice, modern design practice for roundabouts ends any separate cycle lanes well before entrances to the roundabout, thus allowing everyone to merge on approach in plenty of time. Also, the roundabout itself should be designed to limit both the number of potential points of conflict and the speed of traffic crossing those points if shared use is expected, for example by the use of solid islands and dedicated lanes that must be chosen on approach and then followed throughout in a predetermined spiral path around the roundabout. That means cycling on such roads is usually both more efficint and safer than cycling through signal-controlled crossroads of a similar scale.

For larger roundabouts, cycling around with several lanes of traffic is rarely advisable anyway and alternative provisions will need to be made. Although dedicated cycle routes like underpasses come with their own safety concerns, particularly at night and not necessarily anything to do with traffic, most roundabouts on that scale are signal-controlled anyway these days (at least here in the UK) so a separate system of crossings to allow cyclists to move around the outside like pedestrians can be provided.

No, they don't - as a cyclist, you can do a hook turn: http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com/2009/05/the-hook-turn/. Even if this is technically illegal in your jurisdiction, I'd still do it, since it's much safer than trusting car drivers to do the right thing.

Solid islands are also dangerous, since they narrow the road and most drivers will try and push past rather than slow down to cyclist speeds. Neat fact: the handlebars on my old bike are higher than the wing mirror on a VW Golf. How do I know this? They passed me on a roundabout, and the wing mirror passed under my handlebars. Lucky I ride a bike with flat bars, and not a racer.

Given that we have a vocal (to put it mildly) local pro-cycling campaign and there is another one down the road in London, while I'm not questioning your own experience, I am a little surprised that no-one has been talking about and promoting such an alternative cycling technique if it really is safer in general.

In fairness, drivers around here are also very familiar with and aware of cyclists. While some drivers pass too close, and some cyclists complain at any driver passing less than an absurd distance away, for the most part the two groups do actually get along. I've never had any problem waiting to turn right on a normal line in mid-junction, nor with drivers passing as close as you describe while going around a roundabout.

We just don't have the land area to go throwing up new construction (including buildings or roads) willy-nilly -- if the US land area was populated to the same average density as the UK there would be around 6 billion people living there, not 300 million.

This goes for most of the living urban cores of European cities, similarly. Urban sprawl is cheap and lets you build around the automobile -- although it's intrinsically hostile to public transport by reducing population density. But if land is astronomically expensive to re-purpose, urban sprawl simply isn't a viable solution to the transport problem.

TL;DR: we need teleport booths, stat.

That means we're pretty tightly squeezed here in the bits that are densely populated.

These are called railroads. One of the biggest advantage of buses over trains is that you don't need to build new infrastructure.

>Why not build new roads solely for the use of buses?

I wish more places would have showers at work though. You're right about the issue of still looking presentable once you get to your destination. :/

And if you're studying at Cambridge University, the Computer Laboratory is waaaaay the hell out of town.

Not only is it easy to get around in HK without a car, it's often easier than driving, parking, tolls, etc (owning a car is a huge status symbol).

Whenever I think about mass transport, I'm reminded of the Planetary Transit System [1] from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game... Hong Kong is much closer to the "gas" state than any other place I've been.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eutDVI_egGM

The Ocotopus card is better-implemented than most of the similar systems I've used in the US, specifically because reading the card is properly debounced. In Chicago, using the RFID card to ride the bus is always difficult because if the card becomes readable, unreadable, and readable again very quickly, you get an error message even though your card was charged for the fare.

Not to mention that automobile traffic strangles the bus lines. Bank (Zone 1) and Manor House (Zone 2/3) are approximately 5 miles apart. The 141 bus runs a direct route between them. On a good day, the journey takes 45 minutes. Taking the tube (Northern Line -> Piccadilly) will hardly shave any time off the journey and turn it into an unpleasant, claustrophobic experience.

The decision to cut down the congestion zone and divert a lane from an East-West artery for the Olympics is sure to make public transport just peachy.

That said, taxis aren't the problem. At least they're always on the move and always picking up passengers. The parking lanes on the major streets should absolutely be turned into dedicated bus lanes -- but it's not taxis that are using that parking.

Cletus, Melbournite here. Isn't the majority of the population urban and concentrated on the eastern sea board? The density is high. The picture you paint of car dependence is not quite as bad as you portray it in Melbourne at least. Public transport is actually pretty good compared to the roads cost wise & safety. It's not at European standards, but Europe is far denser and politically different. It's also hard to lump the cities together. Melbourne has had good public transport, Perth better. Sydney is pathetic. Having said that, if you live outside the 50km zone (less in some capitals) of Melbourne you will either get a car or depend on day and irregular public transport, if at all.

The key point to remember here is, traditionally the major capital cities of Australia moved from serviceable public transport to car based travel, only when the sprawl of the 70's occurred where land use, surpassed infrastructure and the will to supply it. Transport moved from communal and "tax based" to private and "user pays".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension#Proposed_New...

I don't know what the solution is though, they have to do maintenance and upgrades sometime or other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_to_the_Regions_Core