Context: i am in Europe so might be irrelevant to US.
I was thinking : we already have a usable solution to traffic jams. It’s called parking lots, as the ones in airports. You drop your car, then you take public transport to go anywhere. So imagine doing the same, but on daily basis. Build many such parking spots outside of the city , irrigate with public transport, make the price reasonable for daily usage (fuck you Charles de Gaulle Airport and your 14€/day fee). Boom, reduces your traffic by X% every morning.
As someone who drives regularly from Reims to Paris, I d be glad if such option existed, so I wouldn’t have to drive on Périphérique.
The two reasons I think it’s not used is “planning” and “politicians”. The latter isn’t good at former.
The problem with park and ride is that the math doesn’t easily check out. Think about how much space around a railway station, say, 30 spots take up. Now you’ve built a sizable parking lot around a railway station but only gotten rid of 30 cars, which isn’t a lot.
And that’s the most valuable real state when it comes to transit oriented development. We should have dense mixed use developments in this area instead of car parks
park and ride should be done where land is cheap, like at the edge of an urban area.
Then you just slap down a station and a cheapo parking garage and maybe a small convenience store/café and bam
Just because land is “cheap”, that doesn’t mean it should be ruined.
so how precisely do you suggest we transition away from cars in cities? just tell people living rurally to suck it up until 30 years in the future when we’ve gotten around to making public transport in their area usable?
park&ride when done right is fine, it’s a fine way to prevent people from losing their minds about change, don’t let perfection be the enemy of improvement.