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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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95% of Londoners are 400m or less from a bus stop. The bus service suits everyone for any journey. And then we have trains and the tube. There's never a need for a car no matter where and when you go.
That's cool that Londoners all live so close to each other and have a city built around public transportation. Unfortunately as someone who lives in Texas a car really us practically mandatory. Our Urban sprawl is large and it's not something that can or will be easily fixed even over multiple lifetimes. To give an idea of what it is like over here, the nearest grocery store is a little over 3 miles (~5 km) away from where I live. There is no bus route within a 2 mile (~3km) area of me that provides transportation to that area.
The public transportation we do have is lacking in availability, accessibility, and coverage. and while there are ongoing efforts to update it. These updates primarily apply to the inner parts of the large cities and rarely cover the urban living areas where people actually live at. And these living areas are frequently very far away from where public transportation is available.
The main problem is that Texas cities are just too expansive in size for public transportation to currently be effective. This isn't even factoring in how long commutes would take to be for some people even if they where somehow magically available tomorrow.
For example, many of my co-workers on my overnight shift live far enough away that commuting to work in a car during the dead of night on an empty highway road where they drive 75+ mph ( 120+kph) still takes them an hour or more to arrive to work daily. This is consider a common and even somewhat normal commute time and distance in Texas. If they had to take public transportation they would be looking at an over 2+ hour commute everyday at best. So that is not really a viable option for them.
Im really happy that Europeans have more dense cities and don't have to deal with the same problems we have. But it honestly gets tiring hearing everyone say public transportation be the solution for everything in Texas. Yes it would very much help and efforts are being made. But due to how Texas cities where laid out and planned with urban sprawl in mind multiple decades ago before even my grandfather was able to give input. We can no longer have public transportation be a viable option for a large segment of the people who live here.
What Texas needs is both public transport AND better highway road planning, for example more exits and on ramps, more alternative routes to free up congestion on major feeder arteries. Not more lanes on the same congested routes, off ramps, feeders, etc.
Sorry for the rant, I just fucking hate the traffic here and it's causes have become my mini soapbox of annoyance
Well, I understand that. But the change should start somewhere and somehow, right? I can only provide you with examples how the public transport works elsewhere, but you'll have to do some ground work yourself, like advocating for public transport, voting for more responsible government, etc. Or... Make America Great Britain Again!
London wasn't developed after the automobile. Houston's metroplex covers a much larger area with a much smaller population, which makes London's solutions much less practical.
The closest bus stop to someone in Alvin or Bellville may be 20 miles away, and they'll have to change busses 7 times to get where they're going.
And to put numbers to your points, London’s population density is 14,600 people per square mile, while urban Houston is only 3,340.
And if you want to talk about the broader metropolitan area, then London goes down to 3,900 people/sq. mi., which is close to Houston’s urban area. However, if we look at Houston’s equivalent to that the density drops to 862/sq mi.
Also, London’s metro is 3,236 square miles. Houston’s is 10,062.
Anyone who compares these as equivalent is disingenuous or ignorant (not necessarily maliciously so, but likely just unaware or oblivious to the massive sprawl that Texas cities have).
I haven’t seen anyone try to claim they’re equivalent yet