See there are some problems here.
I can’t get to my doctor, or dentist, or grocery store, or pharmacy, or bowling alley, or friend’s house, or closest pond, or my parents, or the airport without driving to each of those places.
The only way this gets solved is if there is a huge network of buses going to every neighborhood at tight intervals then each business Park and public attraction, etc at tight intervals. In a town of what 150k-200k?
Outside of metro areas, this doesn’t work. At all.
It can work well though. My city of about 60k is a great example.
- As a city built out hundreds of years ago, it’s more centralized than most American cities, with a town square, offices, library, post office, etc in a tight walking radius.
- As a bedroom community of a major city, we have a couple train stations.
- As a city dedicated to quality of life and transit oriented growth, we grew the train station into a transit hub for buses, cycling, taxi, ride share, rail trail and micro mobility. It’s all surrounded by higher density housing - bigger apartment and condo complexes than elsewhere
- As a city watching its business interests, that walkable town center is a center of shops and restaurants from many culture
As someone in a neighborhood of single family homes, I have frequent buses stopping at my corner. However I frequently walk to the town center, to see a movie, enjoy a restaurant, etc.
Yes, transit can work well in medium and even small towns, depending non how they’re set up and run
This is because a lot of well-built towns (or cities) have been bulldozed and rebuilt for cars instead of people. Or some built directly with only cars in mind (I wonder if car and oil companies had a role in this…, they did). This is why one of the key points (maybe the first step and the most important one) is to allow, invest in and develop better urban areas: allow two or more stories buildings, so not only areas are denser, thus it makes sense to serve them with transit, but also your doctor is allowed to have their office there; so your dentist; so are stores and pharmacies (that can only thrive in an environment where people live, not a suburban sprawl of cars and megastores). Cities built like this always have fast and efficient transit to the airports, to recreational areas (parks and your pond) and most likely to your parents.
Banning cars where you are FORCED to use a car to do anything doesn’t make sense. Building fake “bike-lanes” that lead to nowhere in zero-density areas with no point of interest (a store, your doctor, a station…) also doesn’t make sense.
What you can and should do is advocate for the abolishment of outdated zoning laws and the proposal of new transit projects. Change in those areas takes the most because it’s like starting to cultivate strawberries on a desert.
Buses can go all of those places. A system of regional light rails in buses would probably work. Urban sprawl makes it difficult.
