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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
[quote]You cannot build more housing without fixing the infrastructure and adopting it to handle more population. It's already at its very max, highways are in need or repair and much expansion, too many cars/trucks. Subways are overcrowded and cannot handle all the population needing to use them, even bike lanes and sidewalks are crowded. The electric grid is stressed, and the water/steam system and sewage needs constant maintenance.  [/quote]

Here in DC the metro is NOT at its max, it has not recovered its ridership from ten years ago.  And we can build more bus only lanes to supplement, and if we had more population we could justify building more rail lines.

Not only are bike lanes (other than 15th street) not crowded, but anti bike people complain they are under used.  Most sidewalks could handle more people too.

Sewage systems have huge costs to fix out dated combined sewer outflows. More housing means more people share that cost.

In general dense cities can provide infrastructure much more cheaply than sprawling suburbs.

And we need to rely less on autos. [/quote]

1. DC is not a sprawling suburb, it's a medium size low rise -mid rise city. It's relatively dense already, not a village. Population of DC metro is over 6 mil, nothing to sneeze at, the fact that we can absorb this population while also providing more space and privacy is not a bad thing.
2. To increase ridership you need to make PT AFFORDABLE, increase train frequency and number of stations.  This isn't happening in DC, metro is only convenient to those who live nearby, which isn't a lot of people due to small number of stations and routes and not very frequent trains.  Metro costs are also distance dependent punishing people who live far away, vs. NYC where the fare is flat and monthly pass is affordable even for the poor allowing the to live further out in affordable parts and still living life without car ownership headaches. To make people use PT more than cars following has to happen:
 - PT has to be affordable, frequent, with many locations
 - cost of car ownership has to be exponentially more expensive than travelling by PT and much less convenient (insane traffic vs. rail at most hours of the day, non existent and expensive parking)
 - Basics have to be available to people within short walking distance, this doesn't exist in DC unless you live in its few very urban neighborhoods where you can do all your errands on foot. 
3. Residential housing has to be relatively a lot more expensive vs. high rise living, this isn't happening in lower density cities were new highrise construction is highly priced luxury condos for the most part, which is most of the cities in the US where rowhome/SFH living isn't too far away and isn't as unaffordable. People would always prefer more privacy and convenience vs. being crammed. The only way you can compensate them for wanting to be crammed is by making other options unavailable due to cost and/or distance.

On a side note, to not glorify the joys of mass transit, many people choose private vehicles like scooters and bikes over overcrowded and often delayed subways and buses these days and car sharing is pretty popular too, which increases number of taxis/uber on the street. Transit not only has to be more affordable, available and frequent, but has to be humane and reasonably clean and comfortable.  
[/quote]

A huge part of the DC metro area IS sprawling suburbs.  That is where population will go if we don't densify in DC and in transit oriented areas inside the beltway.

We could allow more people to live near transit if we allowed denser development near it.

People can use transit even if not all their trips are by transit.  Lots of people own cars but make many transit trips.

And rail is not the only transit.  Plenty of people ride buses and more would if we made them more convenient, including by dedicated lanes.

scooters and bikes work best where commutes are not too long.  They require the same kind of dense urban form that public transit does.[/quote]

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