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| Re: Cuomo Reluctant To Dig Deep For New Hudson Rail Tunnel (1363802) | |||
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Re: Cuomo Reluctant To Dig Deep For New Hudson Rail Tunnel |
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Posted by ElectricTraction on Sun Aug 23 22:50:48 2015, in response to Re: Cuomo Reluctant To Dig Deep For New Hudson Rail Tunnel, posted by Jackson Park B Train on Sun Aug 23 20:38:30 2015. Wow, you've bought into the media hype hook, line and sinker. While all of these "alternatives" to motor vehicle ownership have had explosive growth over the past few years, they are still teeny, tiny, little things compared to driving a car places, and most of the non-car uses are because people can't afford cars. That's obviously not the case in NYC, but virtually everywhere else, that is the case.The data shows that even in transit-heavy cities, the vast majority of people still drive cars basically everywhere. NYC, and to a lesser degree, Chicago, Philly, Boston, and Washington couldn't exist as they do today without their mass transit systems, but once you move much out of the downtown areas, the share of car transportation goes through the roof. Even in Portland, OR, which has epic traffic and the amazing MAX light rail system, transit has a 7% market share. There is no question that there is a generational shift in attitudes towards transit and cars and urban living, but the fact of the matter is that most places that most people want to go are still car-only, and even where there are transit-heavy urban areas, a lot of people can't afford to live in them because they are so expensive. I hope that more neighborhoods are redeveloped and built in a smart manner using TOD moving forward, although from what I've seen, I just see blunder after blunder in land use planning here in CT. It's hard to say exactly what VMTs being down actually means. It may be that roads have hit their maximum capacity so people just stop going places. Telecommuting and lower numbers of people employed may affect it. More people flying places and not driving long distances may affect it. And people living in more urban areas, but still driving everywhere may also affect it. |
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