Anybody who has waited far too long on a street corner for the privilege of boarding a lurching, overcrowded bus, or wrestled luggage onto subways and shuttles to get to a big city airport, knows that transit on this continent tends to be underfunded, ill-maintained and ill-planned. Given the opportunity, who wouldn’t drive? Hopping in a car almost always gets you to your destination more quickly.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Done right, public transport can be faster, more comfortable, and cheaper than the private automobile. In Shanghai, German-made magnetic levitation trains skim over elevated tracks at 266 miles an hour, whisking people to the airport at a third of the speed of sound. In provincial French towns, electric-powered streetcars run silently on rubber tires, sliding through narrow streets along a single guide rail set into cobblestones. From Spain to Sweden, wi-fi–equipped high-speed trains seamlessly connect with highly ramified metro networks, allowing commuters to work on laptops as they prepare for same-day meetings in once-distant capital cities.
In Latin America, China and India, working people board fast-loading buses that move like subway trains along dedicated busways, leaving the sedans and SUVs of the rich mired in dawn-to-dusk traffic jams. And some cities have transformed their streets into cycle-path freeways, making giant strides in public health and safety and the sheer livability of their neighborhoods—in the process turning the workaday bicycle into a viable form of mass transit.
If you credit the demographers, this transit trend has legs. The Millennials, who reached adulthood around the turn of the century and now outnumber baby boomers, tend to favor cities over suburbs, and are far more willing than their parents to take transit. Part of the reason is their ease with iPads, MP3 players, Kindles and smartphones: You can get some serious texting done when you’re not driving, and earbuds offer effective insulation from all but the most extreme annoyances. Even though there are more teenagers in the United States than ever, less than a third have a driver’s license (versus half, a generation ago), and half say they would rather own a smartphone than a car. Baby boomers may have been raised in the suburbs, but as they retire, a significant contingent is favoring older cities and compact towns where they can walk and ride bikes. Seniors, too, are more likely to use transit, and by 2025, there will be 64 million Americans over the age of 65. Already, dwellings in older neighborhoods in DC, Atlanta and Denver, especially those near light-rail or subway stations, are commanding enormous price premiums over suburban homes. The experience of European and Asian cities shows that if you make buses, subways and trains convenient, comfortable, fast and safe, a surprisingly large percentage of citizens will opt to ride rather than drive.
For those who prefer their lives bubble-wrapped in gated communities, sports utility vehicles and security-patrolled malls, public transport will probably always seem seedy, dangerous and inconvenient. But around the world, there is a revolution going on in the way people travel. It is rewriting the DNA of formerly car-centred cities, making the streets better places to be and restoring something cities sorely need: Real public space.
© 2012 by Taras Grescoe. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Related Stories
Taras Grescoe isn’t ashamed to ride the bus
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2015.
Its hilarious that people think we all need to be “saved” from our cars. I love my car, its always worked great, is cheap to maintain, and allows me to freedom to headed to PEI for the weekend on a whim if i so desire. Sure, parking downtown is a pain and so is commuting, but if you live within the urban core of the city it really isn’t an issue.
I chose not to use public transit as a preference because i can afford that choice, and I understand some can’t. I also will say that the bus was more convenient and i did take it quite a bit this winter but that was due to the weather, not any changes Halifax Transit has made to their service. Its still not a desirable place to spend your morning commute and until Halifax Transit makes some major changes that’s the way it will remain.
The strike a few years ago didn’t help.
@Mwagon – You come off pretty selfish in this comment. The current management of Halifax Transit will never make any significant improvements until more people (like you!) start riding the bus consistently. We’re all in this together, aren’t we?
A book on how cars are a pollutant, how novel!
Mahon (not @Mwagon) is correct in the assertion that no one will consistently ride public transit as it is the worst experience. Driving is far more comfortable and convenient. Buses don’t get you to where you are going faster than a car can. Until the dummies of the world prioritize the use of public transit and make it so that public transit is more convenient no one will use it. Don’t be a dummy.
@Mwagon – We got off on the wrong foot. I was not trying to start an argument but rather a discussion. I said you came off as selfish in your comment, not that you are selfish. I am sorry if that insulted you. It insults me when people proclaim that taking the bus is somehow beneath them. I take the bus everywhere I can. I am one of the people you mention that cannot afford to choose to drive. But if I could afford it, I still wouldn’t drive a car within the city. It’s a free country and I can chose to not spend my money on a car, insurance, registration, licensing, and maintenance. Of course we can all spend our own money on whatever we want.
My point was this: choosing to drive a car if/when the bus is a perfectly viable option is doing our city a disservice. More cars on the roads means more roadwork will be required to repair regular wear and tear. Traffic is hellish in rush hours on the bridges, and that often could be alleviated if more people chose to ride the bus. Exhaust fumes from cars are unpleasant, whether you believe they contribute to climate change or not. These appear to be facts, correct me if I’m wrong.
But this issue isn’t about you and I as individuals, drivers vs. transit-users. It’s about the city and its citizens as a whole system. Responsible modern cities should have functional and welcoming transit systems, and responsible modern citizens should take advantage of those systems. Admittedly, Halifax Transit has many problems. The network of routes is in dire need of upgrade and refinement to make it run more efficiently. According to HT, this is in development right now. Personally, I’m not expecting much as HT has a pretty weak track record when it comes to making significant improvements. As far as I can tell, part of the reason for this is that the bus is not very popular, so the management can’t be bothered to implement change. We need more people to ride the bus so that HT will take themselves seriously. The unfortunate scenario here is that most people will not chose the bus until improvements are made. A bit of a paradox.
So which is more likely to happen? HT makes some major changes that can attract new riders? Or more people start making the responsible choice to ride the bus and HT is forced to make changes to accommodate their growing ridership?
PS: I went on a weekend trip to PEI on a whim just last month. My friend who owns a car suggested it and I agreed it was a great idea. We had a pretty sweet time. Cars are awesome. They get you where you need to go quickly and comfortably. The issue isn’t about weekend road-trips though. This is about city driving. Do we really need every person driving their own car on every street in this city every day? That is the issue.
MOD – there was a response from Mwagon but now it’s gone and my response to his/her response seems unnecessary but I put a lot of thought into it so I’m leaving it. Hooray for internet comments!
@MWagon
I think the point of Grescoe’s book is that people like yourself (and sometimes me) choose our cars over transit because most urban transit systems in North America are mediocre at best. (I’ve lived in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax, and Edmonton. Of those, I’d say Montreal and Vancouver had okay transit. Calgary has the LRT, which is great, but the system is pretty bad otherwise. The rest are crap, even Toronto, relative to the city’s size and needs).
But if we make transit better, we can reduce pollution, alleviate traffic congestion, make cities more pleasant, and save a hell of a lot of money (there is no more expensive means of getting from A to B than a private car, with the gas, insurance, taxes, maintenance, and purchase price added up).
Unfortunately, some people come off as not simply critical of cars, but critical of the people who use them. But of course we all use them, sometimes. What we need to do is say, “cars are fine, and we understand why people prefer them. But the benefits of robust transit and so huge, that we should work on making it the preferred option for most people, most of the time.”
Criticizing people for driving is silly. Instead we should understand why they drive, an change our cities and our transit systems so they don’t have to.
You won’t be catching me wasting 4 hours (2 in the morning and 2 in the evening) every day for a 15 min commute each way in a car. My heated seats and air conditioning make a pretty convincing argument against the cold, rain, heat, people, etc…
I would love to be able to use public transit more in Halifax but it’s not practical at the moment for my needs. I used to use it exclusively for years but could no longer afford to spend two hours or more trying to get somewhere that would only take 15 minutes by car. My time is too precious for that.
Also, it needs to be safe and safe for women specifically. I’ve travelled on public transit extensively both here and in Europe and we need to address the sexual harassment and assaults that happen both in crowded and relatively empty transit areas. Women (and young girls!) should not have to face the prospect of one or several men threatening to rape them or groping them or masturbating in front of them while everyone else looks on. Bus drivers in the UK are even advised not to get involved! It’s shameful. The situation is somewhat better here but you still get harassment and sometimes assaults and dark bus stops are all we have in most parts of town. More investment in public transit to make it more viable, absolutely, but don’t shame people for not using a broken system in the meantime.
The only thing that could possibly make public transit tolerable in the North American context is open carry.