Yes. Roads can also be optimized.
The number of buildings within close commute distance of an airport is even more limited, airports are big and loud and no one wants one close to the city center.
Take, for example, travel from Buckingham Palace to the Louvre, the cities are they are connected by a high speed train, but neither source or destination is within close walking distance. The total trip length by train is 3:30 including taking a train to St Pancras, Eurostar high speed rail to Gare du Nord, then a train to the Louvre.
By plane, LHR to CDG is only 1:20. Paddington station to LHR is only around 15 minutes, but it'll take you 20 minutes to get to Paddington. And once you get to the airport, allow 10 - 15 minutes from the Heathrow Express train to the terminal. So you've got 50 minutes of travel time to your get. And you need to allow time for security, and to get to your gate so get there 30 minutes early. Now you're up to 1:20 just to get to your flight.
Airports, being so large, are located far from downtown, so it'll take you 45 minutes by train to get from CDG to the Louvre, but add 15 minutes to get off the plane and walk to the train. So that's an hour.
So you've got 1:20 + 1:20 + 1:00 = 3:40 by air.
Yes. Roads can also be optimized.
LA has devoted around 30% of its land area to roads, yet they still have some of the worst traffic congestion in the country, how much can roads be optimized?
And you can only stretch out the commute so far with congestion pricing before the morning commute runs into the afternoon commute, already in the bay area (pre-covid), I was seeing stop and go traffic from early afternoon through 8pm or so. COVID has been a nice reprieve from the traffic, but many companies want their employees back in the office, so within a year or so, traffic levels will be back to pre-covid levels, maybe worse because many people moved farther away when they were working from home.
