Here’s a diagram that shows how much space is required to transport large amounts of people. To transport 15,000 people per hour in private cars on a freeway takes 7 lanes (as I read the graph) and a roadway 150 feet wide, but you could transport that many people with light rail in an area only 25 feet. It’s too bad that people aren’t robots. It is too bad that everyone doesn’t want to live in a high rise. Because in the real world, you don’t get that kind of public transit ridership. The reason is that today, the majority of jobs are in the suburbs, not the central cities. Subway (which I ride everyday) or light rail, does a good job at taking large amount of people from one location to another. The problem is that in the United States, he don’t have the population densities or the work densities necessary.

It’s worse when you look at the costs of the different systems. Roads, because they are so big, should be really expensive. But road users pay enough in gas taxes to pay for our road system. Rail, however, is a money loser everywhere (except Osaka, Japan I believe). It blows my mind that the Metro (subway) can’t pay for itself when it is crammed during rush hour, but it doesn’t pay for itself in Washington, DC, and it doesn’t pay for itself anywhere else in America. Metro doesn’t even cover its operating costs, let alone capital costs.

This graph is a nice trip down fantasy lane. But, the lesson for today is–people are not robots. If this logic worked, then we should show another graph that shows what a small area people could live in if we all lived in high-rise apartments. The exercise doesn’t consider the real world.