What seems to be impossible is to locate businesses, their employees, and stores geographically close together. I have lots of friends who drive over an hour each way for work. I used to drive 30 minutes to my job. Now my wife and i work from home and for the first time in my life we have only one car. But there's no way we could go without a car. Family lives 120 miles away. Groceries are 10 miles, and other necessities are 26 miles. The US was laid out to require personal vehicles. It's too spread out to have a functioning mass transit system that's convenient to use.

Using the such a system in the US, even if convenient, has risks. During the peak of COVID, many riders refused to wear masks. There's no security, no hygiene or conduct standards for riders (try to sit next to a crazy homeless person or someone higher than a kite for 45 minutes), and when you try to get help from law enforcement, nobody shows up.

[–] Lucky@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

All of that is fixable with the right policies

End zoning restrictions which requires all single family homes in a given area and allow mixed zoning. Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs are doing this right now and there are apartments going up with the ground floor being shops, grocery stores, etc. Minneapolis is the first US city to rein in inflation below 2% because housing hasn't been as much of an issue. They started funding higher density housing back in 2018 and it is paying off tremendously right now.

One you build a few apartment buildings in the same area you can support bussing to the surrounding area, and most people can get around to where they need to for work.

Ideally you get light rail, but nimbyism is a huge pain that is hard to overcome. Still though, just getting to that point reduces the number of trips you need especially if you build bike trails to make short distance commuting even easier without a car.