Public transport usually requires a medium-to-high density to be sustainable. However, it can get saturated - in Paris, the subway and the trams are full for long periods during the day, even at midnight! It makes the experience really unpleasant when you have no alternative.
Man, you really public transportation, you've been all over this thread sniping every positive comment about public transportation
I love quality public transportation. The problem is that most of the time people make cities less car-friendly, but don't improve public transport, as it's expensive and their electorate wants bike lanes, making the situation worse for everyone. In my city, they removed the parking space near the farmer's market, but didn't add any bus line or renovate the tram, which doesn't allow disabled people or just strollers to hop in. How are we supposed to come there?
> The problem is that most of the time people make cities less car-friendly, but don't improve public transport,
That's my complaint too. We've added plenty of things to make driving worse where I am, but there's no real alternative presented. I can walk a mile to a bus stop in the sun where the bus may or may not show up for an hour (they promise they will improve it eventually) and will then drop me off somewhere I still have to walk most of a mile from. They made the road to the bus stop a bit worse to walk on and I gave up.
I would love to not have to drive. But I'm not really given the option, I'm just given less parking so that there's a nice bike lane I can jump into when someone comes barrelling down the sidewalk.
I'm not really arguing that the world adopts the Paris metro system. First of all, there are turn stills everywhere which is nowhere to be found in Zürich. Why not create choke points and erect this annoying block everywhere in front of people who wish to reach their destination as quickly as possible. Great idea.
In Luxembourg, public transport is for free. Also great.
That's the reason nobody uses public transport in Paris: it's too crowded.