I just returned from a trip to Hong Kong this summer and one of the most profound discoveries I made there is to notice how HK uses 'private' property to facilitate public mass transit. Buses, subways (the MTR) and pedestrian walkways are all somehow deeply integrated with private property to the point that one soon realizes that it isn't that private owners are altruistic; rather the city likely mandates it as a condition before granting any license to build. This Bus Station was directly beneath a private luxury apartment building. The pillars holding up the building were not just pillars, but also huge ventilation conduits that sucked out exhaust fumes so quickly that one couldn't even smell any exhaust. The beauty of something like this is, it takes the bus traffic off the streets and more importantly, customers don't ever have to wait in the dark or the rain. Imagine if NYC mandated that HK style bus stops depots (along with taxi and mini-bus stands) be ensconced on the ground floor of every commercial buildings along with walkways, escalators and tunnels that connected it then to the NYC subway? Recently, I noticed that in my neighborhood of Queens, the pedestrian traffic has grown to such proportions that they city had expanded the sideways outward into the already narrow streets, thereby diminishing the sparse roadway to almost a single lane of traffic on one of Queen's most congested thoroughfares. In HK, they would have likely made an overhead pedestrian walkway, like they did in Mong Kok years ago. City planners from NYC should all be made to take mandatory vacations in Hong Kong.
The same could be said about us in Boston, our public transportation really needs to take a page out of Hong Kong's book. Their MTR works very well/on time/clean/organized and I agree with all their other public transportation is done very well. It's a relatively easy system to learn and integrates very well with their communities
I think Australia particular Sydney is starting to do something similar. They gave it a fancy name. I think it's called Value Capture Infrastructure or something like that.
