Surface Transportation

If we look at the history of long-distance transportation in America, it starts with low-cost right of way. We stuck with ships for decades. While railroads operated within and near cities for decades, getting the transcontinental railroad built took huge subsidies. After the transcontinental railroad, the next time a non-subsidized boom in transportation took place, it was in air travel. It was like water travel all over again: all governments had to do was build a 'port' to plug into the network, and enjoy the access it provided. Building the second surface transportation network (1st = transcontinental railroad, 2nd = interstate highway network) again required billions in subsidy: Neither the right of way nor the infrastructure came cheap or quickly.

In Europe, there was no need (or desire) for a transcontinental railroad; the urban distribution (a great many historic cities no great distance apart) supported the gradual and incremental expansion of surface transportation networks (both road and rail). I suspect that commercial aviation came later to Europe than America, simply because the competition was fiercer, because the trains were better. Adoption of jet aircraft were slower as well: while the capital costs of upgrading rail lines is higher, operating costs are lower.

Within an urban transportation context, personal transportation relied on human muscle, animal muscle, and the internal combustion engine. All relied on a network of 'improved' surface transportation routes.

Mass transit has always had an advantage in urban areas, simply because it required less space per person: more people could be fit into a single vehicle. True of horse-cabs, steam railroads, steam ferries, electrified inter-urbans, diesel trains or natural-gas buses. Without massification of passenger flows, every passenger trip requires a vehicle. And every vehicle requires both space to move, and a space to be stored when not moving. Due to their weight, vehicle storage can only take place on the ground, or within special structures. The problem of vehicle parking is the most fundamental limitation on any form of personal vehicular transport: Where do you put all the horses, bicycles, cars, and/or personal copters?

Finding a place for vehicle storage is a constant problem for central cities: Doesn't matter if the vehicles under consideration are trains, buses, automobiles or bicycles. And when land is expensive, stacking them in structures becomes an attractive proposition.

'Garaging' difficulties are a serious limit to an urbanism based on personal copters: as aircraft carriers demonstrate, doing so requires both an elevator and a crew. While 'automated pickers' like Amazon's warehouse robots might replace the crew, the need for access remains.

There are two ways to garage vehicles: Either each storage unit has its own access (a 'garage door') or they share a door and an access alley between the storage unit and the shared door. The movie, the Fifth Element showcases the former. In the Fifth Element, flying cars are the norm. The urban form consists of long, skinny, tall buildings (to maximize exterior surface area), maximizing the number of units with direct external access. Corbin Dallas's apartment is a coffin a single parking slot wide, windowless.

In such a world, why build a shared access alley? Why internalize vehicular circulation within a building, when it can be provided by public right of way? Far better to front each garage onto the public right directly: (Like curb-cuts onto arterial streets).

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