zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
I find this article to be too high-minded. Most Americans don't own cars or support car-friendly policies due to some notion of car=freedom or some other culture wars nonsense.

Americans own cars because most of them live in single-family houses on large plots of land, and that doesn't make public transit for daily commuting a realistic possibility. In Paris car ownership is very low, maybe 1/3 of adults, but in rural France the car ownership rate is easily 95%+. I haven't seen a single developed area in the world that has violated the rule that low density = high car ownership and vice versa.

The other rule that I have never seen violated is that the large majority of middle and upper income people do not want to live near low income people, due to crime or other reasons. In Europe, poor people live in the suburbs, so the middle income live in the city with high density housing. In the US and some other places (south asia), low income people live near the business center, so the middle income live in low density housing in the suburbs. These are for historical reasons and cannot be easily changed.

>>poomer+le2
America actually has a huge public transportation system servicing most homes in the US. It’s the bus system for public schools. Running local loops to pick people up in moderately high density neighborhoods with 1 acre per house or less every half hour or so is actually pretty easy. Just read up on the old trolly networks before cars took off.

The real reason Americans own cars is because we’re rich enough to afford a more expensive and more convenient system. Public Transit at scale is surprisingly cheap when compared to all the costs associated with car ownership * 10’s of thousands of people in even a fairly small community.

>>Retric+Ef2
I lived in Copenhagen’s suburbs, Østerbro, for several years and the public transit—trains and buses with the occasional taxi—were finely grained enough schedule-wise for me to easily work as an appointment-based professional (video/film editing, compositing and FX). I LOVED not having to deal with a car.

I now live in the Seattle suburbs, Redmond — very close to the same distance from the work site as in Copenhagen — and there is no way I could realistically rely on public transit to hit appointments unless I left an hour or two early—and, in bad weather, many hours early. I can’t imagine doing what I do without a car.

>>Wistar+tn2
You might be able to (hypothetically) do it what might aptly be called Seattle's sister city, Vancouver, BC. You do still need to somewhat deliberately find a spot nearish the train, or a major bus route, or just bike, but it seems like it'd be more doable here. Haven't owned a car in years.

Last time I was down in Seattle though, I noticed they were building a massive elevated (40 mile?) train thing quite far north, which looks somewhat impressive if it wraps up in the near future.

>>brails+0w2
I'm not from Seattle, but it sounds like you're talking about the 3 Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Line_(Sound_Transit) which will join the current 1 Line and head north up to Everett, WA. Estimated completion date of either 2037 or 2041 based on funding.

When I visit Seattle I only use public transit or walk to get around. I use the light rail as much as possible, but it only gets you kind of the way to anywhere. Plan on an up to quarter mile walk to a bus stop and then probably an additional bus to actual get to where you want to go. The previous poster is right in that you need to add at least an hour to your transit time to account for waiting for connections.

Also, a large portion of 1 Line's southern section is at-grade with auto traffic.

>>yosham+dB2
Vancouver is across the border in Canada 2h north from Seattle.