Americans discover mass transit!

[Neo]

Americans discover charms of living near mass transit

There is an interesting article on mass transit in cities at Yahoo! News (original from USA Today). The link is below to the full article, it's lengthy but a very good read.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...nearmasstransit

[Urban_Legend]

That was a great article. It only took us half a century to pick up on mass transit, lol. But I've always wondered: if/when transit finally relieves commute times, will people then switch back to cars for a smooth ride?

[antonyj11]

Fantastic article...if even LA realizes that perhaps mass transit is needed for a vibrant urban city, I hope other cities w/o it follow suit (aka Detroit). I didn't realize that LA was making such an extensive investment into mass transit. It looks like they have subway, light-rail, and bus rapid transit as well as commuter and heavy rail...pretty impressive.

[Cotuit]

That was a great article.  It only took us half a century to pick up on mass transit, lol.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well it's taken a half-century for us to re-pick-up on mass transit. My great-grandmother used to tell me about taking the trolleys around Greater Boston. They went way out into the boonies, and there was a convertable trolley to the beach. She loved it.

[Urban_Legend]

^You know, I do stand corrected. Many cities had light rail/trolley systems in place, and some streets still have old tracks in them. We just shifted to the car in the 50's and 60's because it was the "smart" and "modern" thing to do. What a novel idea....

[Cotuit]

I've seen old trolley maps of New England. It's stunning, the whole region was criss-crossed with trolleys, even really small cities like Haverhill and Salem had trolley systems, and those systems interconnected all the cities.

I don't really think we'll ever see that level of satuation again. The car is a better way to go, trips that took a couple hours via the trolley network can be done in 20 minutes in a car, there's really no competing. But we can do more to have people take their cars to an area, and then use transit to move about the area once they are there. Or air travellers should be able to move about cities with ease, you shouldn't have to rent a car when arriving in any of our cities.

[MJ_Taylor]

I don't really think we'll ever see that level of satuation again. The car is a better way to go, trips that took a couple hours via the trolley network can be done in 20 minutes in a car, there's really no competing. But we can do more to have people take their cars to an area, and then use transit to move about the area once they are there.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If these people have their way, we will have that level of saturation again, and it will even allow trips as timely as currently using a car.

http://tritrack.net/

Granted while I think the Tri-Track developers have taken one too many 'socialism' pills, the potential for combining their system with something like an all weather power assisted pedal vehicle;

http://pedalyourselfhealthy.org/ <= On the cusp of building one.

and add an interconnecting Tri-Track type system along major interstates could allow fast house to house travel between major cities.

The combination of all of the above gives me the feel that possibly in the not too distant future we might have our 'cake' and eat it too.

Regards,