Public transportation needs to be part of the global warming solution
There’s a lot of attention being paid these days to EVs and solar power, but there are plenty of other ways to decarbonize human activity. Public transportation is one.
I’m certainly no stranger to public transportation. I didn’t have a car in college, so when I visited my grandmother in Johnstown or my sister in Philadelphia, I took the Greyhound. When I visited my folks in Manhattan, I got around by subway. My wife and I didn’t have a car in grad school, we got annual bus passes to get around town. On a two-week vacation in France, we both got French rail passes. On a 10-day vacation in Spain, we traveled exclusively by train. For out last 15 years in St. Louis, my wife’s employer paid for annual metro passes, and she took the train to and from work every day.
Back when I was a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, I was impressed by the Washington DC metro, although I understand it’s now fallen on hard times. Outside of a few metropolitan areas, public transportation in America is regarded as outré.
Here’s an article in the Boston Globe comparing the Boston T to the Paris Metro. The money quote:
“Not that I’m comparing this system to Boston’s, but my last trip from Braintree to State took 45 minutes. If Paul Revere had taken the T to Lexington, we’d still be His Majesty’s subjects.”
Gas prices are much higher in Europe. It’s gonna take another gas crisis here to change things, I’m afraid. Which is why carbon capture is essential.
Paris metro vs Boston T.
I’m certainly no stranger to public transportation. I didn’t have a car in college, so when I visited my grandmother in Johnstown or my sister in Philadelphia, I took the Greyhound. When I visited my folks in Manhattan, I got around by subway. My wife and I didn’t have a car in grad school, we got annual bus passes to get around town. On a two-week vacation in France, we both got French rail passes. On a 10-day vacation in Spain, we traveled exclusively by train. For out last 15 years in St. Louis, my wife’s employer paid for annual metro passes, and she took the train to and from work every day.
Back when I was a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, I was impressed by the Washington DC metro, although I understand it’s now fallen on hard times. Outside of a few metropolitan areas, public transportation in America is regarded as outré.
Here’s an article in the Boston Globe comparing the Boston T to the Paris Metro. The money quote:
“Not that I’m comparing this system to Boston’s, but my last trip from Braintree to State took 45 minutes. If Paul Revere had taken the T to Lexington, we’d still be His Majesty’s subjects.”
Gas prices are much higher in Europe. It’s gonna take another gas crisis here to change things, I’m afraid. Which is why carbon capture is essential.
Paris metro vs Boston T.
High population density is a necessary precondition for successful urban public transit. The US does not have useful urban public transit because US-style suburbs are incompatible with public transit.
Every public transport mode needs a certain minimum number of people within walking distance of every stop for the service to be viable. Subways need very dense population densities; this is why cities like Tokyo, Barcelona, Paris, and New York have subway lines. Light rail and bus rapid transit need fewer walk-up passengers per stop; these options can work in lower density cities, such as Seattle, Portland, and Ottawa.
US-style very low density cities and suburbs, however, are impossible to serve with public transport. Cul de sac suburbs consisting of only single-family dwellings are so low density that only a few hundred people live within walking distance of any point central enough to be considered suitable for a transit stop. This is not enough for transit service to be practically viable.
For the US to have workable public transit, the Karenburbs would need to be demolished and replaced with higher-density townhouses or apartments comparable in density to brownstone neighborhoods in the older parts of Manhattan and similar areas.
From the perspective of fighting global warming, it is far more practical to push suburban dwellers into EVs than to push them into the kind of housing that would make public transit possible.
@nobody,
Thanks for this thoughtful comment. There is a lot of truth to your analysis as pertains to local public transportation, which is nevertheless expanding. Part of the problem is that the negative externalities of urban sprawl aren’t priced into our current transportation structure.
I don’t think that explains why there are no high-speed trains in the US analogous to the TGV in France or the high speed trains in Spain, that connect cities over long distances.
What is a Karenburb? Is it a housing density measure? Never heard of it, but in context, that’s what I think you mean.
Looking up Karen on Wikipedia, I find it does not mean quite what I thought. I thought it meant telling people what to do from a position of having failed to get it right herself, but I guess it just applies from a position of privilege. “Karenburb” kind of makes more sense from my prior understanding.
Nonetheless, the growth of suburbs clearly failed to account for the environmental costs (or the externalities, since this is an econ blog).