This is exactly how it is in the USA too, for about the past 20ish years now.
Wealthy people have largely eliminated poor/middle class people out of the core urban areas, and moved them mostly to the suburbs/exurbs. Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public transit" (mostly buses in the midwest).
This is sold, in theory, on being "green". But the new bus system covers less than 5% of the road system it replaces, and their gentrification efforts actually decrease the usefulness of the buses that already existed, since they cut down a small forests worth of trees on the edge of the city every time they displace an previously-urban neighborhood -- so the net result is almost always lower ridership - https://la.curbed.com/2019/5/22/18628524/metro-ridership-dow... - and their attempts to remove cars from the city (through intentional congestion, artificial scarcity, use fees, whatever) move this transportation to less efficient routes far outside the city, where they must burn more gasoline per person to accomplish identical trips, emitting more CO2 per person and in total.
So you get this ridiculous situation where US cities can point to all these shiny new bus lines and bike lanes as "progress", but absolutely no one can afford the housing needed to use any of that, so on a CO2-per-person basis, we've regressed significantly. And 1990's era cities with it's freeways and parking were often better for the environment on a CO2-per-person basis than 2019's cities are today that lack those.
This argument is far too loose to have any bite. You mention urban displacement and gentrification, but this has only happened in certain cities (downtown Kankakee certainly isn't gentrifying the same way that San Francisco is). You mention inefficient bus routes and link to an anecdote from LA, one of the most sprawl heavy, auto-friendly, and challenging metro environments for transit in the entire US. Gentrification and transit can be intertwined issues, but these sorts of hand-wavy accusations are more injurious to the discussion than helpful.
> So you get this ridiculous situation where US cities can point to all these shiny new bus lines and bike lanes as "progress", but absolutely no one can afford the housing needed to use any of that, so on a CO2-per-person basis, we've regressed significantly. And 1990's era cities with it's freeways and parking were often better for the environment on a CO2-per-person basis than 2019's cities are today that lack those.
There's no way this is true. Housing density has increased within cities themselves. Generally things have also become more CO2 efficient within the cities as well. More people live in cities than 20 years ago. If someone in the suburbs drives, it's the same (or less with modern cars). If they use transit, it's less. If they move out of the suburbs or stop commuting, it's also less. Where does the CO2 increase come from?
It's also important to remember that these trends vary vastly depending on the city you talk about. High density cities with good existing public transit infrastructure have very much succeeded and improved public transit, not destroyed it. LA is very much not a good example due to the sprawling nature. I lived in LA for 6 months and would not call it a city but rather 13 connected suburbs. A bus there is indeed a failed project. Heck, even the Expo line they just built to connect the west side is a lot of travel time and not much coverage.
Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public transit" (mostly buses in the midwest).
I don't understand... you are saying they replace roads and freeways and replace them with buses?
That's like replacing a glass with water. It makes no sense.
Yes. This is done either for public use (tearing out a lane of public travel, and replacing it with a lane for buses only) or privatizing the street altogether (tearing out a lane, and replacing it with front yards, or restaurant seating, or whatever).
I believe you but have never heard of cities anywhere removing roads or lanes, only adding more. Can you give any examples of cities that have actually done this?
I believe the person means something like taking an existing 2 or 3 lane road and making one lane a bus lane. So you took away a lane in a way. In Seattle they have done that but the buses work really well when they don't get stuck in car traffic. Buses are often faster than cars here. There's a huge number of buses, they get good use out the special bus lanes. On the freeway it's carpool lanes than include cars and buses. In the city they do have bus only lanes.
If you didn't have buses that go places people need and lots of them then converting a lane to bus only might not be useful. People make exactly the same claims you do about seattle but the bus system here is really effective.
Not sure if your question regards the US only, but this is how cities in the Netherlands became bike and pedestrian-friendly starting in the 70s, by removing a lot of roads.
For a few years now, every road construction project near my Amsterdam home has removed car lanes. Also parking. Usually the freed space goes to protected cycle paths, but sidewalks, trees, and playgrounds sometimes win some new space as well.
(N.b. there is a plan to add a lane to portions of the outer ring highway, so "more car lanes to reduce traffic" still has some advocates.)
One example is the conversion of the Embarcadero freeway into a pedestrian friendly waterfront zone, although that's not quite a fair example given that it took an earthquake destroying it to give it the oomph it needed to happen.
So what you meant to say was that they re-paint existing roads to make it harder for cars and easier for busses. Not that they pull out a road (a piece of infrastructure) and replace it with a bus (a vehicle).
Silicon Valley area is the perfect example. Terrible public transport apart from a very few, select areas and it's inconvenient and expensive. (BART, Caltrain, Lightrail, Amtrak)
I'm from the North East, so maybe I'm off base here, but...
Using Silicon Valley as 'the perfect example' of anything that is supposed to generalize to the rest of the country, or even within 100 miles, seems... bizarre.
Wealthy people have largely eliminated poor/middle class people out of the core urban areas, and moved them mostly to the suburbs/exurbs. Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public transit" (mostly buses in the midwest).
This is sold, in theory, on being "green". But the new bus system covers less than 5% of the road system it replaces, and their gentrification efforts actually decrease the usefulness of the buses that already existed, since they cut down a small forests worth of trees on the edge of the city every time they displace an previously-urban neighborhood -- so the net result is almost always lower ridership - https://la.curbed.com/2019/5/22/18628524/metro-ridership-dow... - and their attempts to remove cars from the city (through intentional congestion, artificial scarcity, use fees, whatever) move this transportation to less efficient routes far outside the city, where they must burn more gasoline per person to accomplish identical trips, emitting more CO2 per person and in total.
So you get this ridiculous situation where US cities can point to all these shiny new bus lines and bike lanes as "progress", but absolutely no one can afford the housing needed to use any of that, so on a CO2-per-person basis, we've regressed significantly. And 1990's era cities with it's freeways and parking were often better for the environment on a CO2-per-person basis than 2019's cities are today that lack those.