Funding roads (taxes, user fees etc)

[danbrotherston]

Dan, the cities have the density and size to support transit IN SOME AREAS only.  And, as I mentioned before, in order to eliminate personal use you need to be able to meet a wide range of use cases - most importantly getting from living place to work place in a practical way.  That requires efficient transit options along the whole route.

As for the rest, I mean yes, I'm talking about the real world that we live in now.  If you want to argue that your system would work in some hypothetical world, then, sure, probably?  But its hard enough to know how things work in our current world where we can actually measure stuff.  I don't know how we figure out what works in hypothetical world that Dan is thinking about.

The cities have enough people to support transit in most areas.  The problem is these areas are designed to make transit use difficult (or more accurately, to facilitate single occupant communting).  The last mile problem has numerous solutions, but one that nobody here ever tried, is "put a sidewalk in a straight line from where people live to the transit stop".  

The point is, land use and transit are inexorably linked, but land use is a decision.  You're using our land use choices (which support and necessitate single occupant car use in many cases) to justify continued support for single occupant car.

I'm not suggesting that a vision of lower car usage is achievable in the near future, but if we reject it on face as an imaginary hypothetical world, we won't make progress.  We must begin to shift societal views, at the same time as we start to build out a new form of city, one which does support transit.

As for the fact that pricing these things have an affect on low income individuals, that's absolutely true.  It's part of the reason that this transit nightmare we've backed ourselves into over the past 60s years is problem.  If someone is suffering to afford a 2 dollar toll each day to work, I imagine they're also suffering to buy and maintain their vehicle, and to fuel it and insure it.  Wouldn't it be better if they had another option?  Short term pain will be worth long term gain, but I'm happy to hear options for easing short term pain that *don't* compromise the long term vision (like guaranteed minimum income for example).