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?

  • AJ Sadauskas @lemmy.mlOP
    2·
    2 years ago

    Population density isn’t the only variable that determines the number of passengers. The other two critical variables are service levels (the quality of public transport services and how frequently they run), and modal share (the percentage of trips taken by public transport.

    High population density doesn’t automatically guarantee either good service levels, or high ridership (although it can help with both of those things).

    There are high-density cities with low ridership and low modal shares, and very low density villages (think Switzerland) that have high public transport modal shares and relatively high levels of public transport ridership.

    There are real world examples where increasing service frequency leads to a huge growth in public transport use. It’s the same area, with the same population density, upgrading to higher service frequencies has led to higher public transport modal share, and higher ridership. Here’s an example: https://www.busnews.com.au/industry-news/0907/patronage-on-new-smartbus-route-highest-on-record

    In many suburbs, the modal share for cars is well over 90% because there’s no viable alternative.

    If the public transport option is one or two buses every hour, then of course it’s not going to be a viable option for many people.

    Increase the frequency to one bus every 10 minutes, and it becomes a more viable option for more people, and suddenly it becomes a much better option for more people. This leads to a higher percentage of trips being made by public transport.

    • uthredii@beehaw.orgM
      2·
      2 years ago

      These are good points. In general I think it is good to increase bus frequency everywhere.

      However I do still think that we should prioritise adding bus services to try and maximize usage (and stop as many car journeys as possible). Population density is definitely a factor here but (as you pointed out) so are other things like car usage in the area.

      • Christian Kent@urbanists.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        @uthredii @ajsadauskas Car Dependency ≠ Transport Choice

        It’s not really a war on cars. It’s a war on having no choices but the cars. Even the cars have a nicer time when the lanes are replaced with bikes and trams. Ask any Dutch car driver.

        Fine, ask any TV commercial for a car. Do you see other cars in it? Well, DO YOU?

      • AJ Sadauskas @lemmy.mlOP
        2·
        2 years ago

        Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for higher density and transport-oriented developments.

        But at the same time, there are still a lot of suburbs out there, and until we can retrofit them all, we should aim to get at least some decent public transport out there.