There’s a need to drastically improve the public transportation system and infrastructure to modernize how people travel, commute, and move around. Enhancements to the current infrastructure would create benefits such as lowering dependency on personal vehicles, reducing traffic congestion, decreasing pollution levels, and improving overall safety by minimizing traffic accidents and the risks associated with drunk driving. Furthermore, an improved public transportation network could increase accessibility for underserved communities, boost local economies by connecting people to more job opportunities, and promote healthier lifestyles by encouraging walking or biking to and from transit hubs. Such improvements would also support the shift towards sustainable urban development, making cities more livable, efficient, and environmentally friendly for future generations. A modernized transportation system is essential to address current challenges and adapt to the growing needs of rapidly urbanizing populations.
We need comprehensive public transportation and infrastructure overhaul! The technology is available to make transit convenient, safe, and quick! We need to step away from car only infrastructure and modernize. Take the opportunity to make our cities greeier and more human focused (not car focused!)
To the contrary. There is no evidence whatsoever that there is any need to improve transit in the US. If fact, there is ample evidence that Americans don’t want transit.
Claimed benefits such as “lowering dependency on personal vehicles, reducing traffic congestion, (and) decreasing pollution levels“ are wished for benefits that seldom, if ever, materialize.
In order to realize those benefits you claim, there would have to be a sizable, if not massive mode shift from cars to transit. Unfortunately, that never happens.
According to an April 2020 CATO Institute study, “Transit: The Urban Parasite”, since 1965, federal, state, and local governments have spent well over $1.4 trillion on operating and capital subsidies for transit, at least $450 billion of which came from the federal government. In spite of those generous subsidies, transit ridership fell to only 37 trips per urban resident per year in 2019. Nationwide, transit ridership never exceeded one percent of passenger travel. Today, 4 years after the pandemic, transit ridership is still hovering at 25 percent less than 2019.
According to the report, transit is more energy efficient than the average car in just 4 of the nation’s 488 urban areas that have transit and it is more greenhouse gas friendly than cars in just 8 of them, which suggests that permanently parking the buses in the other 480 urban areas would be a viable, if not excellent, strategy for reducing greenhouse gases.
The Trump administration would do well to eliminate, severely reduce, or phase out federal transit subsides and spend the money instead where it will do more good, i. e., on reducing highway congestion.