This graphic makes a good point, which is that trains are much more space efficient at moving people.
One also can’t underestimate the aspects of transportation that are about urban planning and economic (dis)organization. Why are people in their cars, buses, and trains? Usually to move from home to work and back. Where is work? Where is home? How are they connected by the transportation network? These things influence each other and the dominating group in all instances is capital: where you can afford real estate, where you want to live in the first place (schools, utilities, etc), what jobs are available and where.
For example, in the US, car culture and suburbia are inseparable. In terms of urban planning, suburbia is designed to be difficult to enter and exit. Winding streets and cul-de-sacs, it can take 20 minutes to drive to a place 300 feet away. This was sold to (largely white and racist) families and yuppies as a form of safety through isolation from the “urban” (everyone else, particularly black) population. Suburbia’s housing costs and streets were subsidized by the government and everyone else was redlined. In addition to the systemic oppression, which serves capital’s interests of dividing up oppressed classes and making them fight each other, the result is a labyrinth of inefficient, car dependent, and very expensive infrastructure. In contrast, an entire suburb could be replaced by a single high rise or a few medium-sized complexes, which is easier to network with transit by creating a natural hub. And in the reverse, new transit induces land speculators to buy up properties and replace them with larger buildings and higher rents. Even when you add some central planning to the mix (building trains and stations), capital steps in to disrupt the optimistic goals. Under capitalism, new train stations means gentrification, and now the people who lived there must now move to other places they can afford, and now that is, yes, suburbia, where the disconnectivity is correctly perceived as a problem. The poor and marginalized benefit on the margins, like when they can get subsidized housing near transit, while everyone else sees their conditions degrade.
In contrast, consider what could be done when housing itself is more planned, as well as industry. The falsely-labeled ghost cities in China are a good example of this, as they provide ample cheap housing near transit and accounting for actual travel needs, connecting to industrial centers and service jobs and commercial needs for e.g. the elderly. Even though capital still exerts pressure, much of it is ameliorated by the centralized planning of transit and urban planning in concert.
This graphic makes a good point, which is that trains are much more space efficient at moving people.
One also can’t underestimate the aspects of transportation that are about urban planning and economic (dis)organization. Why are people in their cars, buses, and trains? Usually to move from home to work and back. Where is work? Where is home? How are they connected by the transportation network? These things influence each other and the dominating group in all instances is capital: where you can afford real estate, where you want to live in the first place (schools, utilities, etc), what jobs are available and where.
For example, in the US, car culture and suburbia are inseparable. In terms of urban planning, suburbia is designed to be difficult to enter and exit. Winding streets and cul-de-sacs, it can take 20 minutes to drive to a place 300 feet away. This was sold to (largely white and racist) families and yuppies as a form of safety through isolation from the “urban” (everyone else, particularly black) population. Suburbia’s housing costs and streets were subsidized by the government and everyone else was redlined. In addition to the systemic oppression, which serves capital’s interests of dividing up oppressed classes and making them fight each other, the result is a labyrinth of inefficient, car dependent, and very expensive infrastructure. In contrast, an entire suburb could be replaced by a single high rise or a few medium-sized complexes, which is easier to network with transit by creating a natural hub. And in the reverse, new transit induces land speculators to buy up properties and replace them with larger buildings and higher rents. Even when you add some central planning to the mix (building trains and stations), capital steps in to disrupt the optimistic goals. Under capitalism, new train stations means gentrification, and now the people who lived there must now move to other places they can afford, and now that is, yes, suburbia, where the disconnectivity is correctly perceived as a problem. The poor and marginalized benefit on the margins, like when they can get subsidized housing near transit, while everyone else sees their conditions degrade.
In contrast, consider what could be done when housing itself is more planned, as well as industry. The falsely-labeled ghost cities in China are a good example of this, as they provide ample cheap housing near transit and accounting for actual travel needs, connecting to industrial centers and service jobs and commercial needs for e.g. the elderly. Even though capital still exerts pressure, much of it is ameliorated by the centralized planning of transit and urban planning in concert.