Comments by "Panama Fred" (@panamafred1) on "Will the coronavirus pandemic reshape mobility and transportation? | COVID-19 Special" video.

  1. Transportation can't be studied in a vacuum. If city planners transform cities to have walkable/bikeable neighborhoods that combine street level businesses, with a number of floors of offices above, and residential housing above that, then less public transportation will be needed. And given the future of online work and online shopping, then we can function without nearly as much public transportation. Even ride-sharing or car-sharing is problematic from a sanitary perspective and from the need to have more roadways. With more centralized and self-sustaining neighborhoods, in a way, we would be returning to our history of smaller tribes. There are many benefits to having smaller tribes. If cities don't change and mass transportation is still needed at the current rate, and social distancing is promoted to make public transportation safer, then a transit capacity of several magnitudes would have to be provided -- more transit vehicles, more frequency, more sanitation workers to clean the vehicles, more energy usage, and etc. Add to all of this the sprawling high density growth of cities due to significant future population growth (have you seen the size of some of the cities in China?), and I don't see mass transit being viable unless cities change their live/work/play structure. I'm thinking about this not because I live in a city (I don't, I live remotely in the mountains), or because I am a city planner (I'm not). I'm thinking about this because I am a model railroader. I would like to build a new layout that models a future green city. This morning, I asked myself the questions, "Is transit rail dead?" "What will transportation be like in future cities?" I'm watching numerous YouTube videos about city planning for the future and although I want to model light rail, subways, elevated trains and the like, I just don't see the need for nearly as much rail in well-planned future green cities. Great. What a dilemma. A model railroader with no railroad to model.
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