No medieval city claims that. Hell, they are more walkable and transit oriented than more modern cities that were designed for cars. Stop with the straw men.
Bluebus 22: 5,460 m (17.9 ft)
Dodge Ram: 6,340 m (20.8 ft)
Cities should be transportation centric. Not just cars, not just bus, or bike, or walkable, it should be designed to fit them all together so people can use whatever they want and it’s not a headache. Cities currently are NOT car centric, otherwise traffic lights would be timed correctly by a standard that works. Cities are “create traffic” centric, and there is no intentional design going into making sure people can get from point A to point B under any circumstances. The metrics they currently use on traffic is how long people spend in it, so if you get frustrated and simply go home instead of running errands, they see that as a success. One less person. Instead of supporting local economies by making travel easier in general.
The opposite is true for the US. Because of the abhorrently large firetrucks you can’t have smaller roads.
Also because everything in the US is spread out except for urban areas, mass transit just won’t work well for a large part of the population. Didn’t help that what transit infrastructure existed came under assault by the oil/car companies of the time, so many places went full automobile.
i don’t think that’s really true… australia is hugely spread out and we have pretty great mass transit
Maybe you had a different history of development then, unlike what I mentioned in the second part. Lots of our 19th-20th century urban areas had trolleys and such, which “mysterious” disappeared when the car came along. Even now in the past decades the public has overwhelming wanted development of things like high speed rail, and yet somehow even mandates voted for on ballots are refused for “reasons”.
i think it’s more straight forward than that tbh… rail and infrastructure is expensive and takes more than 3y to build so it costs you and won’t gain you anything at the next election… in fact, the opposition party will probably get in and fuck with it, make it a total failure and then use it as a “so expensive and really bad” excuse to then attack you at the election after as well!
I can understand that, and it’s one of the many drawbacks of party systems. It’s also exactly what Republicans have done for decades for anything in government.
Ina world where corporations only care about the next quarter, and politicians begin their term by starting the next campaign, how can we get long range plans completed? We’ve done many huge projects over many years in the past, but in today’s instant gratification that seems impossible. Anything worth doing is going to cost a lot up front, it’s called an investment in the future.