A couple of Aussies don’t think so:
Dr John Stone, of the University of Melbourne, and Dr Paul Mees, of RMIT University, argue that many city dwellers have been presented with a false choice – live in apartments and enjoy
good public transport or retain the house and land and rely on cars.
‘Many planners, and other commentators on urban issues, appear to believe that getting significantly more people on public transport will not be possible until massive changes in suburban densities are achieved’, they write. ‘The evidence challenges this view’….
Dr Mees said higher densities did not always mean better mass transit, citing the relatively low rail and bus use in Los Angeles, even though it is the most densely populated city in the United States.
‘There is no doubt that a compact and connected urban form enhances the potential for oil-free mobility through walking, cycling, and greater public transport use’, the authors write. ‘However, we … argue that it is not necessary to intensify land-use across the whole city before significant improvement in both patronage and economic efficiency of public transport becomes possible’.
The keys to increasing public transport use in outer suburbs are more frequent buses, running at least every 10-15 minutes, and not just in peak hour; better co-ordination with rail services; more convenient transfers; and fares that allow free transfers between modes.
And way more here in Paul Mees’s book, Transport for Suburbia – which I referenced back in October.
To be fair, I haven’t actually read the book, but my knee-jerk reaction is skepticism.
I like the practical solutions like better connections, co-ordination and transfers.Yes, public transit needs to be more frequent to increase market share. But I question the frequency solution, since it requires more money. To increase frequency traditionally anti-tax suburbanites are going to have to be willing to pay more in taxes, or fares, to support public transit and make it a viable alternative to the car.
In addition to these things, suburbanites tend to be the most vehement defenders of the car dominated urban form and the biggest opponents to taking away space from the car (another effective way of making public transit more attractive vies a vis the car) .
And here is why that book is terribly misleading: http://www.humantransit.org/2010/09/the-perils-of-average-density.html
Poverty helps too. If people can’t afford to maintain and fuel a car, then the bus becomes virtually the only option for long distance trips. However,since the typical Canadian suburbanite has a car, and probably has to make multiple stops on the way home at widely dispersed locations (shop, school, gym, etc.), I’m pretty sure that better connections and service frequency alone will not be sufficient inducements to get them to leave the car at home.
Thanks, Tessa, for linking to my work on this. Mees does a good job making the case for network effects in transit, which Vancouver already understands better than many cities. But his argument about density is very easily misread, and sometimes he seems to be encouraging the misreading for the sake of headlines. He wants to encourage low-density cities like Melbourne to pursue transit despite their low-density, but unfortunately this has the side effect of suggesting that you can pursue lower densities everywhere and anywhere without having a negative impact on transit. What really matters, of course, is the pattern of density, which is why average densities — the basic of Mees’s argument as well as Newman-Kenworthy’s — are misleading.
My two pieces, best read in this sequence, are …
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/09/the-perils-of-average-density.html
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/10/can-we-make-density-make-sense.html