I get what you’re saying, but just think of it like this for a second. NYC is compact urban development with densities above 60,000 per city block. When you put that many people in the same area it’s much easier and cost effective to provide the type of service people need at a lower cost.
Think about it in these terms. A bus travels down Poway Rd or say a subway system travel under poway rd and has a station right at the end of the Cul-de-sac somewhere in Poway. How many single family homes do you think are within walking distance of that stop. Likely about 25. Then you start to push peoples walk beyond a 1/4-mile, beyond what most like to walk.
Now take a step back. What is the chance that all 25 of those houses are commuting or heading to the same exact location during the AM commute? If you have 25 different destinations, how do you get a subway system at $6,000,000 a mile construction cost to service all 25 effectively and efficiently? How many billion dollar lines do you have to build to serve those 25 people, whom are all heading in different directions? You don’t because suburbia is designed around the automobile. It locks you into your car with no alternative. You are stuck.
Now on the other end of the route, the destination end of the trip. Say you’re headed to sorrento valley. Where would it drop you off? what office building and how direct could it get you there without serving the other 25 people first. How much would that cost to build, operate, and maintain a service of that nature? Off of 1/6 of 1cent sales tax that is dedicated to transit service in San Diego, you could never do it.
New York City.
Now, like I said before. New York City has a avg density between 70k and 90k per city block, a significant contrast compared to Poway’s and other San Diego Suburban environments of 5 per hectar. With densities in NY, it’s more complicated to find a parking space, more costly too. A subway line that costs a million a mile and connects to a grid of other service more effectively service many to many trip destination. It also cost effectively provides a network of transit service that you can transfer between and still get to your destination without needing to walk too far at on the destination end of your trip. The best part of New York is that it is flat. So when you get to the end of the subway line, without your car, even if your office is three or four blocks, you can walk it.. IF a trolley dropped you off in Sorrento valley 3 or 4 blocks from your office, you’d have to traverse and cross four 8-lane arterial roads risking your life, walk in the street because of a lack of sidewalks and then once you got to your office, hike through a parking lot built for 1,000 cars.
Lastly, mass transit is expensive to provide. It costs roughly $5.00 a mile for a bus route. Compound the mileage of a route, every trip it makes during the day and throughout the year, and the operating cost sky rocket. Say you have a Route that is 32-mile long (one-way) and there are 77-round trips a day, 365 days a year. This will cost you for one route about $9 million a year. With a 33% fare box recovery ratio (the amount people actually pay on a route when the get on the bus by paying a fare), the route still requires an annual subsidy of around $6-million a year to operate. So try to do this to every block in Poway, Escondido, Mira Mesa, etc.. on the cheap of 1/6th of 1-cent for every dollar spent on sales tax. Cost are probably even more now with rising fuel costs. Even though people pay a fare, it hardly covers the full cost to provide the service. Why, because in San Diego, you pick up two or three people every so many miles in between so much sprawl,
The bottom-line is, until land-use designation changes and become more dense, and more San Diegians start to realize that they are stuck in their cars, we’ll all be stuck in our cars forever.
