Proximity or space

"Cities cannot escape compounding distance costs through better planning or technology. Different urban forms simply create different patterns of who experiences these costs and when. Higher density concentrates opportunity close together, reducing distance costs for those who can afford proximity but often pricing out families seeking space. Lower density offers larger homes and lower housing costs, but imposes compounding daily travel costs on anyone without flexible schedules or the ability to work remotely. Both patterns are rational responses to the same constraint. Both create winners and losers"

Hamish Campbell "Why Distance Compounds Costs in Cities"; Cities + Transport 2026 February 2

This is the nut of the problem with American urbanism: we've still got a transportation policy designed to service families seeking space. They were good policies when they were enacted, when America was undergoing a baby boom and had decades of underbuilding. America was never a nation of single-family households with single earners, commuting by car, but we built a massive amount of housing for the kinds of people who were. But those are no longer the kinds of new households we are getting, and we need to make our transportation system reflect that. People like space, but they'd be willing to pay for proximity, but our legal and regulatory environment prohibits it, and our transportation investment paradigm not only fails to support it but is actively hostile to it. 

The point of transportation investments is to reduce transportation costs. So we need to seriously think about which transportation costs we are trying to reduce, and if those people are actually being served by those investments. And we may find that the people the subsidy is nominally expected to help aren't actually being helped. 

On the flip side, given what Hamish has articulated, it begs the question: "If it's ok to reduce daily travel costs, why is it not ok to lower housing costs?". Any economist will look at you in the eye and tell you that a subsidy is a subsidy, and when you want more of something, you subsidize it--basic economics. So theoretically, there is nothing to stop us from subsiding housing for families who want it. 

Be suspicious of Travel Demand Models

When it comes to transit forecasting, you should always be suspicious of anything coming out of a travel demand model. The Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZ) are often too large, and the travel times on the centroid connectors often reflect car access from parking lot, rather than walk-access from the curb, which, given the exponential decay in walking trips due to distances, leads them to over-estimate ridership for malls and strip-commercial.

Hamish Cambell Gets it

"This is why transit agencies obsess over frequency and easy connections. The difference between trains every 3 minutes versus every 9 minutes is not three times worse. It is exponentially worse. At 3-minute frequency, a missed connection costs 3 minutes. At 9-minute frequency, that missed connection compounds into schedule disruption, late arrivals, and cascading delays through your day. Add capacity problems where you might not fit on the next train, and the costs compound again. You are not just waiting 9 minutes. You are waiting 9 minutes, then maybe another 9, while also managing stress about being late and uncertainty about whether you will even make it on. Research consistently shows riders will choose a slower direct route over a faster route requiring transfers. They are not being irrational. They are avoiding compounding costs that planners can measure but riders simply experience as too much friction."

Hamish Campbell "Why Distance Compounds Costs in Cities"; Cities + Transport 2026 February 2

Key point is the anxiety acts as a travel time multiplier. "If I miss this one, how long do I have to wait for the next one?" Riding the bus already includes anxiety of boarding. Add a transfer doubles that. Reliability overcomes the anxiety. If you can't afford frequency, then you've got to manage reliability. Clockface scheduling is great, but--if you promise a bus every 15 minutes, but can't deliver, that's worse than not promising anything.