Publications

- January 1, 2016: Vol. 3, Number 1

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Five Lanes to Nowhere: Whatever happened to world-class mass transit in the world

by Giles Goodhead

Have you tried driving across the Bay Bridge recently? Forget it! Leaving San Francisco in the afternoon is gridlock at the on-ramps. I guess that’s what happens when you live in a boomtown. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with five lanes across the bridge. Fortunately, we have other options.

You might have noticed how crowded the Bay Area Rapid Transit trains are too. BART recently added a few longer trains, but we need to think bigger. Go to London and watch how Piccadilly line trains arrive every two minutes. And they’re building a new line called CrossRail. Whoosh — it goes right across. It’s the same in Tokyo and Beijing. World-class cities have great and improving mass transit. It’s a public asset. It unlocks a city so that people who live there can actually flow around and take advantage of all the parks and restaurants and museums and neighborhoods.

City bike shares. Buses with their own lanes. New light-rail lines. When public transit is fast,

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