Can public transit be reinvented to meet America's needs?

The answer is: not without changing how (where) we live. Vanpools, carpools, shuttles...they all stink, because they add enough time to each trip that they can't compete with single occupancy vehicles, at least until the money cost of driving alone outweighs the time cost of riding with your neighbor. Trains are fine, but they're wicked expensive. They make sense for moving people between densely populated areas (or from moderately populated to densely populated a la commuter rail) but not for moving people around in suburbs. Among transit folks I know, there's definitely a feeling that they appeal strongly to white, upper class people because of the perception that buses are for poor people, without making much financial sense from a cost-per-trip standpoint. Still, even buses are only viable when you can collect a bunch of people at one point, and move them to another point, en masse.

No. Not a chance. Have worked in public transit for 10 years. There is no economically viable system that can maintain communities planned around private autos. Everyone knows this, most can't face it.

I read one very interesting monograph a while back that argued public transportation can become more attractive if we were to transfer the costs of maintaining single-passenger car transportation infrastructure and environmental remediation away from property, income and sales taxes onto gas and wheel taxes. The argument was that the current system for funding road construction obfuscates the real costs of transportation.

http://www.pro-transit.com/lightrail.htm[Flash-y, sorry] has been kicked around here in Cincinnati. I'd really like to see it implemented, but I'm not optimistic taxpayers will bite anytime soon.

Any proposal based on a single change is wrong. Nothing will happen without several complementary forces. Also, cars and sprawl happened because the financial and legal environment allowed and encouraged it. Change the financial and legal environment to encourage different solutions. Some possibilities: 1. Cut all federal funding for new roads and new lanes to zero. The roads offer sufficient bandwidth for now and into the future, but the vehicles are inefficient carriers. 2. No new parking lots taking up acres of ground around shops and offices. Require businesses to build employee and customer parking under or over the place of business. 3. Double US http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/international/usgas_price/. 4. Reduce commute distances (especially private automobile commute distances) for employees and students. Make up any rules you like that encourage this. Adjust corporate taxes based on the average employee commute distance (to put a little pressure on employers to set up shop in sensible places and to offer telecommuting). Adjust private income tax based on the average household distance from work or school. Use zoning laws to encourage people to live near or even in the buildings in which they work or go to school. 5. Base car registration and parking fees (and other costs of car ownership) on vehicle size, weight, and top speed. Forcing the average car size and weight down makes more room for parking, more room on the streets for other cars, and more room for buses. Forcing the top speed down discourages people from running wasteful overpowered vehicles on grocery runs and bumper-to-bumper commutes. The goal should be that people drive vehicles suited to their daily needs, not built to do 200 mph with a ton of concrete in the back. Take a lot of the recreation angle out of driving. 6. Make suburbs more accessible to all incomes and less dependent on cars. Make multifamily dwellings legal everywhere, so that income levels are better mixed. You want blue-collar workers living next to white-collar workers, and you want all of them living near the buildings where they push pencils or push brooms, or you want them all riding the same trains and buses there every day. Locate all new housing developments on or near existing mass transit routes -- if there's no daily train or bus commuter service, you get no new building permit. In the end, you'll get fewer, smaller, cleaner cars on the road, shorter commutes, and more people taking trains and buses (or walking).

I've no idea how much redesign is truly necessary for "public transit", but that seems quite ambitious. I suspect that http://motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf/dx/06072006092840MWEASH.htm http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2008/06/13/saint-thomas-academys-safer-electric-motorcycle/ motor cycles will gain popularity soon, especially in Europe. If you're talking longer term, then : Electric & hybrid cars eventually usher in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply to extend their range (http://www.metafilter.com/75041/Official-GM-Chevy-Volt#2267295). So then you've got everyone is small vehicles that don't need to carry much fuel or battery. You also have a separate progression towards self driving cars, first the cars handle small tasks, next they handle slightly bigger tasks, and finally some roads become self-driving cars only.

I came up with http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/transportation/public-transit/ (see the little video, not mine) in about 1999 by thinking about what the current barriers to public transport use were, why people didn't use it more in Atlanta where I used to live, why I almost never used it... only to find out it had already been thought up decades previous. GRRR! I was going to be the guy that took us into our better and necessary future. Damn it! Anyway, people are working on various implementations of it right now. The general category is known as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit. Funding funding funding. They need funding and politicians' ears and pressure from society... like, say... crazy gas prices! I have been in touch with http://www.unimodal.com about his version (he also engineered the famous jetpack!), which so resembled mine down to even the pod car schematics that it made me howl (he had a much better propulsion idea though, and thought of it a lot earlier). His idea is a wholly elevated-track-based model, which ostensibly violates one of your requirements (but the tracks are comparatively inexpensive to even light rail), but that first video link above, at about 3:30, shows an adaptation to his model, which I think addresses your exurb needs. Gotta have an open mind about the ways in which people can and do and would be willing to adapt over decades given the right pressures and opportunities. That same concept is demonstrated a bit differently http://www.ruf.dk/, as one implementation of http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/dualmode.htm. As long as you're solving the exurb problem, you might as well solve others, which the above systems do to one degree or another. Answer why people don't take public transport and you'll have your better mousetrap: -It's not near me, so I have to drive to it. -I'm packed in with the great unwashed mass of strangers (discomfort, awkwardness, danger, etc.) - I'd rather have privacy -It smells/ it's dirty -It's not ready when I am - I want to go anywhere anytime right away, as I can in my own car -It doesn't go everywhere I need -It (often) takes me on routes that go out of my way -It's (sometimes) too slow (depending on the system and route) I think these all add up to independence and control of one's environment, which is what we all want. But our current implementation of that, our gas guzzling cars on choked streets, is not sustainable and isn't preferable to potentially better alternatives. Along the way to solving the above issues, you solve the problems of environmental impact, traffic, cost, etc. I believe one or more of these systems will happen because the world is demanding them in multiple converging ways. I want to be in this industry! As others have mentioned, city planning, distance, geography, and culture also play a role in these issues. But take the USA for example - our entire system of cities and roads won't be re-engineered in the next even several decades, and meanwhile we need solutions right now. I'm telling you, these systems are the future.

I don't know if public transit be reinvented to meet America's needs, but certainly America can be "reinvented" as a place where public transit can work.

Inspector.Gadget http://ask.metafilter.com/102786/Can-public-transit-be-reinvented-to-meet-Americas-needs#1489848 "For example, consider taxi medallions - they don't signify ANYTHING but serve only to limit the number of cabs on the road, ensuring that supply cannot meet demand and keeping the price of transportation artificially high" Wholly unregulated taxi service is a safety horror story. The barriers to entry are so low that the market is flooded and few if anyone makes enough money to cover fixed costs. Wages and maintainence continually suffer.