How the US can stop wasting billions of dollars on each transit project
&gt; The outskirts of cities have better roads &amp; less traffic. I regularly travel cross country &amp; find traffic jams to be rare. There are slowdown in construction areas &amp; traffic jams in the cities during rush hour, but for the most part, the highways more than match capacity. You might not be able to drive as fast as the autobahn, but given there are many traffic fatalities, that&#x27;s not a good idea here.<p>Yes of course the 20-lane highway is mostly empty. And your experience is fine, but in terms of actual statistics, of how long actual people are stuck in traffic it is actually very relevant. There is constant political demand and pressure to expand capacity, to add more lanes and so on. Because when most people see the roads they are full.<p>The problem is that you are forcing poor workers, who need to go to the city, in order to live the have to go to ever further sub-developments and travel ever further, forcing them to have a car and to spend a lot of money on gas.<p>This is why the Living&amp;Transport share of peoples income is ever rising. You have land that is worth insane amounts with the best companies in the world having office close buy, but many that work there have to do a 1-2h commute to get there.<p>&gt; There&#x27;s a rising home schooling network...spurned on by the spirit of independence, political conditions, technology, covid, work from home, etc.<p>Maybe in the US, not in most of the world. And even if you do school at home, I think childhood where you are in car depended suburb and you never get to leave sounds horrible. There is a reason so many movies get made in the US about teenagers stuck in suberibia, and only hoping to get a car so they can finally do something.<p>If in general its a good idea is questionable, most countries in the world don&#x27;t want this. Kids actually walking to school is also health. Of course getting dropped up in your moms 5t SUV isn&#x27;t as healthy.<p>&gt; Many people do not want nor can afford rising property taxes. The property values are largely fueled by the now ending long cycle of inexpensive credit. There&#x27;s plenty of land here, much of it is unavailable due to large institutions &amp; government owning it. This also drives the prices &amp; taxes up. As a result, many independent-minded people are fleeing densely populated areas to be able to own a home in a safe &amp; friendly area.<p>This analysis is just totally wrong. Sorry, its just factually wrong. Property values might influenced a little by credit but the relative prices are mostly fine.<p>And the idea that most land is owned by large institutions and government is wrong. Unless you mean like McDonald and Walmart. But they do pay property taxes and the reason its not available is because of bad zoning laws.<p>Those people that are fleeing these areas for their own home are not actually paying for the infrastructure that they need to support it. This is crystal clear in the data, these 1-family home subburbs are economic kills for their cities, they are getting subsidies massively by the poor and the city center. The taxes of a typical Cul&#x27;de&#x27;sak parley even finance the road replacements, not to mention everything else.<p>&gt; The US cities are broke for spending. Transportation is one line item &amp; any improvement will help. However, there is also manipulated credit-heavy markets coupled with political grift which seems to account for the majority of the spending.<p>You seem obsessed with credit markets. Short term credit market changes have nothing to do with it, these are systematic problems built in the pattern of development.<p>The cities are broke because they simply don&#x27;t have enough income to maintain all their commitments. Its not just transport, its water, policing and so on. I have shown the data on this. You can listen to talks by Urban3 and Strong Towns on yt, they present this data in a very clear way.<p>&gt; Again, I have not experienced many bad roads...except in some secluded areas &amp; in some inner cities that don&#x27;t seem to function very well on a whole. Note that these inner cities learn toward a decades long trend of heavy centralization as a &quot;solution&quot; to the problems...yet the problems keep on getting worse...due to centralized corruption.<p>Because you normally don&#x27;t drive in all those suburb unless you live there. And partly why inner cities are so bad, is because while they make money they use that money to fix roads in the suburbs.<p>I&#x27;m not American, but given the constant complaints about road quality I hear everywhere I not sure this is up for debate. When I watch videos like Tesla Self Driving videos I regularly shocked about the state of the roads, and those videos are from a pretty broad amount of places. Many of those videos remind me of Ukraine more then Switzerland.<p>&gt; Given that you are not American &amp; from your statements, I doubt you have the broad &amp; nuanced context of the American experience.<p>I have been to the US multiple times both on the East and the West coast.I read about US history for a long time. I listen to a lot of experts and city planners on this topic. And most important its based on data.<p>Some friends of mine that are not as well informed just came back from San Fransisco and they were absolutely shocked by the state of the city, the homelessness and so on.<p>There is simply no arguing with some of these facts:<p>1. Suburbs are economically terrible for cities and are subsidized<p>2. Property tax system gives intensive for low value building<p>2. The US road network is pretty unsafe<p>3. The US has incredibly low numbers of pedestrians and cyclists<p>4. The US has an incredibly badly develop public transit network<p>5. Suburbs measure badly when it comes to environmental factors, people that live like that have incredibly high rates of driving. With many trips being less then 5 miles.<p>6. US roads on avg are not as well maintained as countries with comparable GDP, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands.<p>7. US zoning codes with functional separation and overwhelming amounts of single family zoning, is a huge part of the homelessness crisis.<p>Witch of these facts would you disagree with?<p>&gt; There&#x27;s many foreign interests who want to influence &amp; in cases degrade American life, largely through corporitization, closing of small &amp; local businesses, credit markets, &amp; buying up land that they don&#x27;t live on.<p>Here is an idea. If to have a continent store you need to buy a full block, have minimum parking for 200 people attached to 6-lane strode, your not gone get many &#x27;small &amp; local business&#x27; operating those stores.<p>If to buy a coffee you have to go into a huge parking lot and then wait at the Starbucks drive threw for 10 min, then you are not gone have many &#x27;small &amp; medium&#x27; business operating those business.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;EclecticHams&#x2F;status&#x2F;1589281938530967552" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;EclecticHams&#x2F;status&#x2F;1589281938530967552</a><p>If your commercial zoning plots are 80x80m and your not allowed to develop it in a mixed use way, your not gone get many local and small business.<p>Land use where you have single family homes with absolutely no local economy connected with 6 lane strodes to commercial districts with big box stores and big box fast food joints simply simply isn&#x27;t environment where small and local business do well.<p>Stop blaming foreign considerations, credit markets, those are all things directly related land use policy. Many cities in the US have 80% single family non-commercial zoning, but yet you believe that its foreign cooperation and big institutions that buy up all the land that is the problem?<p>&gt; There&#x27;s many foreign interests who want to influence &amp; in cases degrade American life<p>These are choices made by Americans, by American planners and American governments. Foreign interest didn&#x27;t do any of those things, and foreign interest are not trying to destroy America.<p>I would actually like to visit the US more, as I like the US, but in most places without a car is simply not very practical and I can&#x27;t drive.