The advantage here is in the ability to construct small amounts of very good public transport, right?
Thus the advantage of the long city 5 mins wide is that you can service the entire thing with a single *really good* train line? (I'd do two in parallel actually, one going at much higher speeds for the longer ranges, or have buses for the short-range anyway even though you only have one bus route).
This opens up *so* much optimization-space that you couldn't do otherwise, I bet. Though probably you might have trouble getting the bandwidth you need if you weren't stupid you'd be commiting a lot of money from the get-go to making sure you were.
no subject
Thus the advantage of the long city 5 mins wide is that you can service the entire thing with a single *really good* train line? (I'd do two in parallel actually, one going at much higher speeds for the longer ranges, or have buses for the short-range anyway even though you only have one bus route).
This opens up *so* much optimization-space that you couldn't do otherwise, I bet. Though probably you might have trouble getting the bandwidth you need if you weren't stupid you'd be commiting a lot of money from the get-go to making sure you were.