Yes, in an ideal world, we would all live in walkable cities with great cycling and public transport.
But, particularly in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, we have been left with around 60 year’s worth of car dependent suburban sprawl.
In quite a few metro areas, the inner city has a great public transport network. Yet once you get out to the suburbs, you’re lucky to see a bus every half hour. Services often also start late and end early.
As a starting point, should there be more emphasis placed on upgrading suburban bus networks to a 10-minute frequency or better?
Better bus networks are less expensive upfront than large extensions to metro and heavy rail systems. And they can prove that demand exists, when it becomes available.
What are your thoughts?
@ajsadauskas It’s always cheaper to work on with what you have and improve upon it, rather than getting everything from 0. If you have some unused rails though, it’s better for you to use these instead, or in conjunction with the bus network (i.e. making the bus network serving areas where the line is not going).
My city has an extensive tram network and quite a lot of train lines serving former factories, now abandoned. The current mayor has plans for revitalizing these, electrifying them, and starting a metropolitan train service on it (sort of a RER or S-Bahn-like service), yet things are moving way too slow, and I’m afraid he’ll not finish the whole project until the next elections.