We have had thai discussions multiple times but here we go again.
1) Europe has had its own suburban sprawl. But for some reason we in the US pretend otherwise. The only thing that stopped it in London was the green belt laws. What stops it from being an issue in much of Europe is that they have so little land compared yo the US that all land is expensive. And they cant afford to convert farmland like we in the US have. (Historically most suburbs in the US are built on former farm land) It is not great mass transit that stops suburban spread. It is that it is often economically unsustainable, or they pass laws against it.
2) Passing laws to prevent spread is not going to work. You may get a state or city to pass something like green belt laws but you won’t get it to be common much less everywhere.
3). We like to pretend that Mass transit in Europe is universal but it is not, it is in Major cities to one degree or another but not even all major cities have as extensivecof a system as some seam to think. Rome for instance has a joke of a subway system and the bus lines are not that great. It is better then most US cities but.. let’s not pretend that every city is like London.
4). We also seam to think that people in Europe don’t use cars. Try driving on an expressway in France, Germany or Great Britain. Their highways are just as busy as most of the US highways are. So they are driving somewhere. And if you look cites have to place laws restriction driving in them Italy’s infamous restrictive zones that so many tourists run afoul of of Londons famous congestion charge. If the mass transit was so great folks would just give up driving (what we seam to be trying yo accomplish with these topics) But with great mass transit expensive and limited land (compared to the US) and Greenbelt laws you still have so much car traffic in London that you can’t get any more cars on the streets durring working hours. So SOMEONE in London prefers cars enough to put up with the traffic and the expense.
5). Mass transit is not all that. It is hideously expensive, almost always loses money (more about that later) and you have yo walk often many blocks to get to it on both ends of you trip. You also have to wait for it and it only goes so many places, in many places in London it is faster to walk then take the tube or a bus because you will have to gro from walk from A to B take mass transit from B to C change then take transit C to D then walk from D to your destination E. Or Walk from A to E skipping the middle steps.
This is not all it‘s cracked up to be.
6). Many US cities get hotter, more humid and or colder than many of the Cities in Europe that are renowned for Mass transit. comparing say London to Detroit. Detroit is consistently hotter and more humid in the Summer and Colder and snowier in the Winter. Making it much much less pleasant to make those walks to the Subway or bus stop.
7). Cars are simply more convenient. It is more convenient to get in a car when I want and go directly to where I want yo go. I have a buddy that lives in the DC area. He is within a typical London walking distance of a Subway/light rail line. At both home and his Job. He has a rented parking spot at his station near his place because the weather. And he still drives into the office about 40-50 percent of the time. Because he dies not want yo walk or the weather sucks or he wants to go places on the way that mass transit is not great to get to etc, peaople are generally lazy we LIKE the convenience of getting in a car in our driveway and getting out at our destination.
8). What do we have to do to get rid of the false narrative that the “evil car companies “ destroyed mass transit in the US? Mass transit in the US was mostly for profit. And it is hard to make a profit on it (see London). Mass transit (street railways) in the US we’re having issues as soon as the car was invented (and more then a few before cars were common). Places like Cedar Point were created by Street car companies in an effort to get passengers on the weekend. This was not done because these companies were rolling in profits. In order for Mass transit to work you have to cover a lot of routes to be close to all destination, and you have to run a lot of trips in order to be available all the time with relatively short wait times. This means you will have lines/times that have very few passengers. But your cost is the same as if you were in rush hour. This is expensive and often barely profitable or not profitable at all. So many (most?) streetcar lines were barely hanging on and some were going out before cars were really common. Did some car companies buy them up or take parts as trade ins and such? Sure. But mostly that was in order to win the bus sales. But lets think this through. If you are an owner of a Street Car system, and GM approaches you to buy you out and replace your cars with Buses or just shut you down so they can sell cars. How much are you going yo ask for. It is not like GM can force you to sell. Now if you are profitable you will want many years of that profit as a sales price, because you are forever giving up future profits. But if you are hardly hanging on or about yo go under you will ask a lot less. Now consider it from GMs point of view. It has to be cheep enough that A) they can afford it, and B) that the profits from a few years of car sales (to ex riders) will pay for it. When you do the math if these transit systems were making a profit then GM could not afford to buy them out.
Alternativly replacing the Streetcars with Busses is even harder. The streetcar line must think that Buses will be cheeper then continuing with a the Streetcars, and GM can only offer less in trade in then they will make in profit for one round of busses. In this case most times (probably all) it was the streetcar line either going bankrupt or deciding the streetcars were too expensive and buses a better idea. And GM just worked a deal to win the sale.
Note that if you look into it most streetcar systems started to go way starting about 1900 and only big city systems survive past the 20s.
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