Putting Traffic Into Perspective

There’s a lot of obstacles to public transport working well in America. How spread out things are because our land area is just enormous being the biggest one. Getting 50 people from 50 different houses in the suburbs to 50 different destinations 20miles away downtown isn’t quite as simple as putting them on a bus. Even when there are options it can still result in travel that is 2-3x as long as it would take you by car, even in traffic. And then you have to deal with America’s weather, which in some states could kill you if you’re out in it for very long.

So I’m sympathetic to the idea that public transport can’t work as well as advocates hope it would. But I came across a photo recently that put public transportation into perspective. One bus load of people is an entire city blocks worth of cars not on the road. That has a huge impact on overall traffic.

Then you add the environmental impact on top of it. A traditional bus generates a lot of C02 emissions. But not as much as that same number of cars. Again, it’s not quite a linear translation but it does make a difference.

Improving public transport significantly is worth investing in. Just from a traffic perspective. I-45 near me has been undergoing expansion to more lanes. One segment looks to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $230million. Work on segments downtown could exceed $10billion. Now much of this work, especially downtown, needs to be for repairs and improvements beyond simple traffic relief. But how much better could public transport around Houston improve with a portion of that money?