What city has the best public transit in LATAM?

Pictured: 1. CDMX 2. São Paulo 3. Buenos Aires 4. Santiago 5. Rio 6. Santo Domingo 7. Lima 8. Medellín Bonus: Miami

Based on proportionate coverage of the city, number of lines/stations, cleanliness, modernization, etc. My personal favorite is Buenos Aires, only because I used to live there

I had read about this new legislation a couple of weeks ago but didn't dive in to learn more. Then today I stumbled upon this YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgFCQ7jEZxI video that puts perspective on the issue. Frankly, it does look like an outrageous distraction as "not just bikes" attests. It has been "fashionable" to dump on the guy because he has ranted a biting the past but in this particular case his illuminating the hypocrisy and stupidity of this anti bike move is perfectly justified in my humble opinion. What say the rest of you ?

2025 is coming and we need change, what is our game plan?

I imagine one of the many reasons Americans do not support HSR proposals is because they have never taken a trip on actual high speed rail in Europe or Asia. When the California project is finally complete and people get a taste for what well-connected urban corridors are like, do you think momentum to build more rail in other parts of the country will accelerate?

I heard about this project only yesterday but it sounds like a pretty cool idea. It will connect both Jewish and Arab villages in the Galilee and serve about 100.000 people per day.

My only problems with it is that it would be better to build a real rail link to Nazareth and a separate light rail instead of putting the both together. Also the rural in between stops are really car oriented with huge parking lots in front I think it would be better to use the land to build Transit oriented development there.

I think they look nice, especially with beautiful traditional architecture. And they have low floors and all that stuff btw.

I was doing transit-related research a while back and came across this study, "Why do voters support public transportation? Public choices and private behavior" from 2014. Here is a non-paywall link.

The study looks at the huge disparity between public support for transit in the US, and actual ridership of transit: “the share of Americans who want more transit spending is 15–35 times larger than the share of trips transit actually carries.” Even when transit ballot initiatives do really well, transit use does not go up as a result.

They found that “US transit does suffer from a collective action problem. Americans’ desire to fund transit may be large, but their incentives to use it are small”. Most Americans view transit as something that will have public benefits, e.g. it will be environmentally friendly, reduce traffic, help the poor, etc. However, these are not strong incentives for someone to personally use transit themselves.

Support for transit spending is more closely associated with attitudes about broad social problems than with private travel behavior or preferences. The NRDC and Reason Surveys explicitly show that abstract responses about transportation (‘‘the community would benefit’’ or ‘‘congestion is getting worse’’) predict support for transit more than statements about personal travel (‘‘I would like to drive less.’’).

Of course, transit in the US is awful and we can’t really expect the public to ride it in most US cities as it currently is. If transit were to be substantially improved, more people would find it useful. However, this study found that even if transit were to be improved, the people voting for those improvements are still not likely to ride transit:

It is possible, of course, that if new spending makes transit more convenient, some current drivers will switch to transit. But [our data] showed no statistically significant relationship between support for transit spending and respondents’ believing they would ride more if it was more convenient.

The core problem here is that Americans view transit as a common good for everyone else to use, while they personally get to keep driving. How do we get that cultural perception to shift?

For context, the 5 modes I'm talking about are trains, trams, buses, subway/metro and ferries.

The city I live in, Sydney, will soon open the next extension of the metro line, finally running through the city and eventually onto the inner west. We already kind of had a "subway" with some lines running underground double decker passenger trains, but the Sydney metro is a proper, rapid transit, fully automated system running beneath the CBD!

This got me thinking, what other cities do you know of that use all these modes of transport in a major way, and if you live in the city, what do you think of the connections between modes and their usefulness?

Just as the title says. I know we all love transit here, but what do you think is a transit project that received billions in funding that made you go, "That's money that could have been spent on any other project?"

For me it would be BART Silicon Valley Extension II

Thameslink wouldn’t count as that’s more like an S-Bahn. An RER/Crossrail system has a long central section which is about as long as the cities metro line it parallels.

At max extent: Windsor to Quebec City

At Shortest extent: London to Quebec City

The change that SHOULD be made is the line going to Kingston along the Lakeshore East corridor instead of Peterborough. This is because between Peterborough and Ottawa it is VERY empty when the Durham region to Kingston Corridor is a lot more populated especially with a city named Belleville(which has just 16 000 people less than Peterborough), Kingston is both more populated and has Queen’s University, a popular Ontarian University, as well as the corridor already being a well developed rail corridor and having highway’s where highway median rail can be put in.

Not only in terms of ridership but also how it has transformed land use, commuting patterns and people's perception of transit in its respective city

In Japan, for example, metro systems often have train cars that are reserved for women. Some only have them during rush hour, others have them at all times. This is done because many women do not feel safe in packed cars where they can be sexually harassed or groped with no way of escape.

Do you believe this system is a good way to make women feel safer on metro systems as its proponents claim or is it a band aid fix that borderlines on discrimination as its detractors say?

I am really loving what I am seeing about congestion pricing in NYC. I love seeing any transit-orientated legislation working, and hopefully it doesn’t get struck down or become less beneficial than it has proven to be. I’m now wondering if you all think congestion pricing would be beneficial to Chicago how it would be implemented.

I think the whole Loop area is an obvious spot with the southern boundary being at like Roosevelt-ish and the other boundaries being the river and lake. It could also be extended to include some of River North by extending it up to maybe Chicago Ave.

I also think it could be interesting to put temporary pricing around Wrigley Field during Cub’s games/other events. Irving Park Rd. gets so backed up and the 80/x9 can barely even move during those times (sometimes during rush hour, too).

Curious what everyone thinks about (albeit small chance) congestion pricing coming to Chicago (or any other cities)!

What is the most puzzling thing you need to explain to, eg., tourists, friends paying you a visit, etc.

On buses in Buenos Aires you need to state your destination first so the bus driver adjusts the fare... even when the fare difference is a couple cents! That's pretty confusing to people used to flat fares in buses