Why Is American Mass Transit So Bad? It's a Long Story. (citylab.com) 463
Jonathan English, writing for City Lab: One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.
This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies' only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.
Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations -- the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative -- are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers. And it very rarely is.
This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies' only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.
Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations -- the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative -- are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers. And it very rarely is.
It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fleets of on-demand, self-driving electric cars are the future.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Waiting for technology is the sign of failure of planning and thought.
Self driving cars are 20-30 years away. Wide scale deployment of waymos level 4 service is 10-15 years away.
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Waiting for technology is the sign of failure of planning and thought.
Assuming technology won't improve is an even bigger failure. Projects like California's $100B train will take decades to finish, yet are focused on fixing yesterday's problems.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every consider that the modern person just doesn't want to ride mass transit for their daily lives?
Even if it was clean, on time and lacked smelly bums.....why would I choose public transportation when I can more easily and directly have door-to-door services with my own car?
Not to mention, in my own car, I keep my own stuff it in and don't have to load/unload all the time, I have my radio programmed in, I keep some daily possessions in there, etc.
Unless you are down and out with regards to money, why would anyone choose it?
The times I come close to wanting to go somewhere and not drive or park....I uber. Again, it is door-to-door.
This is especially important when there is inclement weather, or when, like here, it is fscking 95F out with 98% humidity. If you're dressed at all to look nice for work, etc, you don't wanna be sweating your ass off by the time you get to work.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:4, Informative)
Even if it was clean, on time and lacked smelly bums.
But again, it isn't. While I was in the midst of moving, I had temporary accommodation in San Jose with a light rail station in front of my apartment. It was only 7 stops to get to work, where there was another station right in front of the building. I decided to give it a try.
Long story short: it reminded my why I hate public transport. It's slower: my travel time doubled. I have to work on their schedule: I have to wait for a train to come. Is that going to be 10 minutes? Or perhaps 25? While it's either hot or supercold outside. It just sucks.
And I didn't even mention the stupid rules they have:
- I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything;
- I can't have pepperspray on me;
- Not that I have one, but even if I had a firearm and CCW permit I would not be allowed to carry it;
Did I mention it's shitty expensive? Did I mention the amount of pandhandling bums? Did I mention the body odors of people from all over the world?
No thanks, I'll take my private transportation. Public transportation sucks.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And I didn't even mention the stupid rules they have: - I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything; - I can't have pepperspray on me; - Not that I have one, but even if I had a firearm and CCW permit I would not be allowed to carry it;
San Jose's public transportation sounds pretty poorly managed from your description, so it's no wonder people prefer to drive. However, if you feel the need to carry peppespray or firearms on you on your way to work, or wherever, I'd say San Jose has bigger problems than its light rail system.
Also, you complain here about not being able to eat anything on the train, while later in your post you complain about odours on the train. I'm sure you realize that, if everyone could eat on the train, the odours would be that much more unpleasant? The sweat and garlic... Finally, I hope you don't eat while driving, since that's a bit of a safety hazard.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Avoiding traffic and the hassle of parking and maintenance. Because you have a disability (say, blindness), or a general dislike of driving. Because you want to sleep/read/... an extra half hour. Because you want to do your bit for global warming. Because that extra bit of walking it requires keeps you just a little bit healthier.
Parking and traffic may be fine where you live, and I agree that walking in 95F/98% is unpleasant, but driving isn't the only solution and not everywhere has such problematic weather. Uber's fine on occasion, but not for regular use.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:3, Informative)
Every consider that the modern person just doesn't want to ride mass transit for their daily lives?
I can consider that avoidance of mass transit is what a lot of people do and personally like, but "modern" is not correct description of such behaviour. Plenty of modern people use mass transit.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every consider that the modern person just doesn't want to ride mass transit for their daily lives? Even if it was clean, on time and lacked smelly bums.....why would I choose public transportation when I can more easily and directly have door-to-door services with my own car?
Lucky you. I live in Chicago and it would cost me something like $450 per month to park where I work downtown.
Fortunately our public transit system is pretty good. I leave my car in the garage under my building and either walk 20 minutes to the train, or go to the corner and catch a bus. It's fantastic and it doesn't matter if I'm tired, drunk, high, whatever, it's a safe ride. My workplace is a block from the train stop and it's a 15 minute ride.
Even with the walk I get in to work faster than I would if I drove and parked. Plus, I'm burning like an extra 300 calories a day.
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why would I choose public transportation
So you can play on your phone instead of constantly making sure you're staying alive.
Re: It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your lack of experience of what modern mass transit is actually like, ie. what we, as Americans, for the most part do not actually have, can be forgiven as a basis for your negative attitude.
Modern mass transit offers multiple advantages over our current Hobsian all-against-all free for all of individually driven cars, given your ignorance, let me list some:
1) modern mass transit has amazing air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, I have never sweated or froze in modern mass transit. You don't have to sit in place warm up your transit for 10 minutes prior to departure in the morning, you don't have to sweat and gasp for air while waiting for your transit to cool down from 120 degrees Fahrenheit, upon entering your transit after a long days work. It's virtually never too hot or too cold in modern mass transit.
2) modern mass transit is clean, well maintained and quite pleasant, and you might just be sitting next to corporate executives and/or high ranked politicians, for in places with modern mass transit, even the well off prefer using mass transit. Only in *expletive* societies like the US is mass transit considered only good enough for the poorest of the poor.
3) modern mass transit allows you to make great use of the 3-4 hours a day that countless Americans waste driving their cars. Modern mass transit has internet, electricity, tables to work on and places where 4-6 people can, if they so choose, sit together. You can text safely while riding in modern mass transit, whereas in a car you threaten the life of yourself and everyone around you. You can read, write reports, hell you can even code, surf the web, watch videos or listen to music. And god forbid if you are so inclined you can even *speak* to another also present human being.
4) modern mass transit is amazingly quiet and smooth. In some cities the trams are so quiet that bicyclists wearing headphones cant even tell their coming, ie. that's how little vibration and noise they make nowadays. Rapid high speed trains, a critical part of modern mass transit, are so frigging smooth you can fill a glass of wine on your table and leave it untouched over a 500 miles trip at speeds in excess of 250 mph on average. We have nothing like this in America, so I forgive you for being ignorant.
5) modern mass transit systems consist of multiple separate yet inter-linked systems. Your experience as a passenger is as if there is a single moving sidewalk, because you can effortlessly and quickly switch from one to the next to the next of these separate inter-linked systems. Modern mass tranist systems usually consist of inter-linked high speed trains, subways, trams and bus systems. These inter-linked system connect cities and towns over larger geographic areas, metropolitan areas can extend hundreds of miles in all directions, meaning you can easily work or study hundred+ miles from where you live, and still spend less time in-transit than you currently do with your car.
6) modern mass transit systems are incredibly reliable in terms of timing, if for no other reason than that are entirely isolated from automobile traffic and do not compete with cars. Modern mass transit systems run almost 24 hours offering service from whee early in the morning (5:00AM), until quite late at night(12:00 - 2:00 AM), and they operate on the weekends. If you want to be guaranteed to be on time to work or classes, use modern mass transit.
7) modern mass transit systems ensure that where you want and need to shop is almost always within some smallish number of yards from mass transit stops. This means far less walking than what is entailed when shopping in places surrounded by epically large parking places. It also means you can easily do a little bit of shopping on your way back home from work or school 2-3 times a week rather than trying to buy everything needed for half a month and being exhausted from carrying 100 plus bags of goods for your family every time
Re: It's simple.. (Score:4, Informative)
You are correct in comparing buses. But you are missing the point of my previous post. Buses are fine when used in conjunction with other mass transit systems(subway, trams, light rail, hihgh speed trains), but buses do not cause the synergistic effects that permanent mass transit connections do, thus they have negligible effects on property value and utility, partly due to the fact that bus stops are moved around frequently and they don't generate the amount of foot traffic, except where bus hubs connect with other mass transit systems. When you couple this with the American system of having separate bus systems for children of school age, which have zero connection with other bus systems or other mass transit connections, because they are 100% decoupled, you end up with public bus systems that remain under utilized and inefficient.
Additionally you have a different social environment on public transit when each adult on the bus is responsible for safeguarding the well being of young children. In Europe 6-7 years hop on the trams by themselves to go to school, frequently in the company of other school-aged children, they are not accompanied by adults, but each adult on the tram understands their responsibility towards safeguarding the children. Let's put it this way, it's just really different than what we experience here in the US.
There are important exceptions, alternate implementations of bus systems that actually do have the kind of synergistic effects. One city in China, whose name I forget, actually has a setup with a major artery traversing the city alone one axis have something like 12 lanes, with the interior 4 lanes physically isolated from the surrounding 8 lanes, where there are bus stop every 100 meters and the buses run continuous loops up and down this artery, the buses hit each bus stop with something like 30 seconds between buses, creating a hyper efficient form of mass transit which actually surpasses subways in terms of utility and mobility.
But again most cities in America *only* have bus systems and they do not connect with any other forms of mass transit. Which means that bus systems utterly fail, on their own, to create the synergistic economies which are to be found everywhere where buses compliment actual mass transit systems.
I lived in a city named Marburg in Germany from 1994 till 1998, part of the 190 Deutsch Mark(60 dollar) tuition fee for University studies included free use of all public transit within 100km of the city. I had an opportunity to study Latin in Frankfurt which was roughly 90km distance from Marburg. Marburg has approximately 60,000 inhabitants, Frankfurt some around 1.5 million inhabitants. 5 days a week I would leave my apart, walk 100 yards to the bus stop, caught the bus to the central train station, caught a train to Frankfurt, went to the subway station beneath the Frankfurt central train station, rode the subway for 3 1/2 mites, exited the subway climbed up the stairs to the street, hopped on a tram for the remaining two miles, and then walked 100 yards to the Latin class, where I studied for 4 hours and then did the exact same trip in reverse.
The total trip time from my apartment to the Latin class was about 75 minutes, the same in reverse, and in 4 months I never ran into a delay, and I probably only had to walked about 250 yards total each way. And this was included in the cost of the University Tuition.
There is nothing like this in the United States, there are only a handful of American cities that have rudimentary mass transit systems, nothing approaching what roughly 300 million people take for granted across most of Europe.
Counter Point (Score:5, Interesting)
When I travel in Europe I never use a car. It's really rather liberating and I can stay longer because I'm spending less money. (Admitted minor point)
After that, I spent a good while being lower income when I was younger. Oh lord would it have been nice to live in a country where public transportation was widely available and I didn't have to spend such a significant portion of my income on a car and all of it's associated bills. When I go shopping or out to eat literally anywhere the vast majority of those people operating those stores are in the exact same boat as I was back then. The extra money saved by these masses would likely be spent elsewhere contributing far more to job growth then buying and maintaining a car whose construction is largely automated.
And then after that, I remember when I had to commute by car at a slightly older age. What a garbage fest it is commuting by car. I'd have a traded a slightly longer commute by mass transit where I could read, work, or just plane space out the entire time over stop and go traffic where I'm just stuck sitting there having to focus on the road.
And then after that, in all my travels in the US, our highways are never wide enough during high traffic periods and likely never will be under our current transportation model.
In summary, a car is a major expense for most Americans. Sure the convenience of car ownership is nice and I currently thoroughly enjoy it but for many Americans it's an absolute burden.
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From what I've read, it seems that cow farts (food animal emissions) do more damage to the atmosphere than cars do....
And really, I don't see the current ICE cars blowing up the earth before I'm done with it and dead and gone, so what do I care?
I'm guessing not long after I'm gone, you'll have electric vehicles....and again, why not have one per person?
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For mass transit to work and be as convenient you need 24h busses every 15-30m during the day and hourly at night with stops about every 0.5-1 km.
I can tell you're American, you folks think a bus or train every 15 minutes is "frequent service". LOL. No, you would need a sub-10 min. frequency during peak periods, and for certains modes of transportation (like buses), you would need a stop even less than every 500 m (for subways, sub-500 m doesn't make sense, both due to acceleration/deccelaration of large trains, plus the cost of stations, which cost more than the tunnels typically). You don't really need 24h service (although it's nice to have) 5 AM
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Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Informative)
Self-driving cars can drive in tight "platoons" that greatly increase the carrying capacity of roads.
Sort of like those tight collections of cars known as "trains"?
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It IS simple.
Population density.
Yards kill mass transit. Which works for us.
We can vote with our feet, but the social engineers don't like how we vote. Fuck them, right in the ear.
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument never makes sense. Sure, I shouldn't expect mass transit from SF to Wichita. But just within CA, the areas of SF and LA alone have the population density equal to that of Germany (between Munich and Berlin or Bohn, for example).
Ditto for NYC and Boston, which are very similar to that of Tokyo and Kyoto (both in distance between, population density within the city as well as rural areas in between).
The reason is nothing more than politics. And it would seem the ultra-liberal politicians of CA and NYC/MA aren't any better at adopting mass transit (despite the appeals to how well Europe or Japan does things as well as concern for greenhouse gas) compared to the ultra-conservative politicians of TX.
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SF and LA have moderate population density with a reasonably high density core (more SF). But they also have a huge empty space between them (that you could lose Germany in).
SF also has working mass transit.
Tokyo is 2,000 km^2, Boston is 130 km ^ 2. The core of 'Boston' has a 20% lower population density than the entire Tokyo prefecture. In other words 'Bullshit on you'.
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
GM paid to have trolley car tracks ripped out. Some cities were built with viable ways to expand mass transportation, and if they didn't they now face excruciating costs in buying easements, right of way, with a cost per mile that's gruesome.
Trains and trolleys used to link the US in astounding ways. The airlines wanted a taste of that. So did the auto industry. Train tracks became urban trails. Who's going to vote to rip up urban trails?
Then it became a class and race crisis, where people didn't want to have to ride with the poor, the unwashed masses, and heaven forbid, white people traveling with black people and Latinos. The rich white folk could all afford cars and the fuel, taxes, and insurance. The banks and auto makers made lots of dough financing driving by yourself. So did the oil companies. Public transportation in many areas suffered, just as the poor suffer today-- no one wants to subsidize those the needs poor people or pay the a living wage.
I take public transport wherever/whenever I can because it's cheaper and I don't have to drive. I can do my phone surfing, or just relax. Someone else is driving and they're usually good. I can't see a good reason to fly on the NE corridor at all. Between regional rail and Uber/Lyft, it doesn't make sense.
Summary: it's a class/race/economics/social-shunning problem, not to mention the financing underneath is controlled by people that never use it.
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You have never driven down I-5. Never. It's obvious.
I exaggerate slightly, Germany is 500 miles, LA to SF is 400.
Also you ignore the fact you are _wrong_ about Boston vs Tokyo. I bet you will repeat the claim again, next time this comes up.
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Same problem, a little closer, but still bullshit...NYC area is 790 km^2. Less than half Tokyo's. NYC _metro_area_ has an average density of 1800/km^2. About a third that of the Tokyo prefecture. NYC itself is dense as fuck, but note no cars.
Kyoto has an area of 830 km^2 and a population density of 10k/km^2. Boston isn't even close, in size of population density.
OPs claim is bullshit.
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
...The reason is nothing more than politics. And it would seem the ultra-liberal politicians of CA and NYC/MA aren't any better at adopting mass transit....
Actually, New York City and Boston are two cities in the US where a large number of people DO use public transportation. The NY Subway and the Boston T are both old and both in need of upgrading, but they are both in every day use by ordinary people. If you want to list liberal cities that don't have good public transportation, I'd go with LA and Seattle.
(Although, to be fair, LA actually does have a metro, IF you happen to live near a stop and only want to go somewhere near a stop.)
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to list liberal cities that don't have good public transportation, I'd go with LA and Seattle.
Transit use in Seattle is growing at an absurd rate - something like 40% of all downtown workers ride transit now. Light rail has been the primary driver in the shift.
For a long time Seattle relied totally on a bus system. Which is silly - busses travel the same roads as cars, and get stuck in the same traffic messes. They finally wised up and started creating dedicated bus lanes... and, in some cases, bus-only roads.
But the real game changer has been light rail. Quite expensive to build, but it’s reliable and moves lots of people.
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I still think we should have gone with monorail. That was so stupid to get that far with it and then pull the plug.
What ever happened to Dick Falkenbury?
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Interesting)
We also have NIMBYs. For example, BART wasn't allowed to go through the expensive Menlo Park so so there was no service to the south bay. Turns out the south bay became a hot item later where tons of people and the high paying jobs were, while S.F. slowly became more of a bedroom community. You plan for today but the result may not be as useful tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be no budget or capability to change. Also Menlo Park has not allowed expressways through the city, so there was often a fanout of autos coming off of the bridge.
Now BART is going to the south bay but it's still complicated, it goes around the east bay so as to bypass Menlo Park. It will help a lot of people for sure but not as many as it could if it became a ring.
Then there's the issue that it's not enough. To get to BART in the first place is tricky. There's park-and-ride which just means drive for awhile and then park in a high crime area before taking mass transit. Or you take a bus or light rail for an hour first. Plus the cost; still less than the cost of a car, but if you already have a car because you need it to go get groceries and take the kids to school then it's an added burden; especially with Cal-Train which is not cheap.
On the bright side however, I see more and more higher density (and luxury) apartments being built very close to mass transit stops, BART, Light Rail, etc. These are no longer associated with poor communities. On the downside, many of those who can afford the luxury apartments seem to prefer Uber or other inefficient modes of transportation that defeat the purpose of mass transit.
Overall, from what I've seen in many areas in the US, mass transit has these problems: sparse, does not go where you want to go, is slow and requires multiple changes, limited hours. Areas with high tax revenue are low density and don't want mass transit; areas with high density tend to have relatively low tax revenue and can't afford the mass transit or don't have the political clout.
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Powerful people don't use mass transit, therefore there is no priority on mass transit.
Powerful people don't use grocery stores either, yet they seem to work well.
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What does that have to do with mass transit? People simply die without access to affordable food. Hence grocery stores for most people, catering for the rich people, and meal ingredient delivery stores for the upper middle class. Doesn't relate at all to the economics and politics of mass transit.
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> What does that have to do with mass transit? People simply die without access to affordable food. Hence grocery stores for most people ...which they get to and from using transit. They also use transit to get to and from work, which they do to earn money to buy those groceries in the first place. So as dumb as the argument is, the OP's argument is even dumber.
=Smidge=
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Hence grocery stores for most people ...which they get to and from using transit.
I expect that using transit to get to and from a grocery store is only common in high density situations where either you don't have a car, or it is too expensive/inconvenient to park. Where I live people mostly drive to the store and stock up for a week at a time. In Europe or places like NYC, it is much more common to go to the store every day or two, so you don't need to manage 5 or 6 bags of groceries at a time.
That is a cultural shift that is in some ways more difficult than taking transit to work, b
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What does that have to do with mass transit? People simply die without access to affordable food. Hence grocery stores for most people, catering for the rich people, and meal ingredient delivery stores for the upper middle class. Doesn't relate at all to the economics and politics of mass transit.
If you look at what the stores actually stock, it is well beyond purely survival level. They provide what the market wants. What the market does not want is poor quality mass transit. If it did, someone would provide it. What it wants is easy and directed individual transit. Which is what Uber, Lyft, and traditional Taxis provide. And they are doing very well at it.
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Partly true, but in the past there were plenty of places that had streetcars as public transit. The problem was, streetcars competed with well, cars, so the powerful car lobby pretty much lobbied to get streetcar tracks ripped up so people would buy cars.
Naturally, as streetcars got more difficult to use, people bought cars and drove.
There was a time when basically everyone used "public transit" because only the very rich
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Powerful people don't use mass transit, therefore there is no priority on mass transit.
It could be argued that mass transit benefits the powerful because it provides a way to transport workers into their factories and offices. Personal transportation for the masses is just not economically feasible in the high-density institutions that are most efficient for capitalism. You would have to spend more in salaries to enable workers to pay the transportation costs.
Spend some time in Tokyo, Seoul, or Manhattan to see how it works. Or, for that matter, the Pentagon.
But of course the typical
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This article is not entirely accurate, as regional transit agencies like Sound Transit in Seattle Washington is seeing record breaking growth in ridership.
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer: The Koch Brothers (Score:5, Informative)
They are behind it for decades.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
Re:Answer: The Koch Brothers (Score:5, Informative)
We had a pretty forward looking transit plan up for a vote here in Nashville recently. It really was quite innovative and had good support.
The Koch Brothers came in and spent millions on anti-transportation ads. They rallied the residents in lower income areas behind the idea that they were going to be stuck with old buses when the more affluent areas would get the new infrastructure.
The proposal was voted down with more votes from those precincts casting ballots than for almost any other election.
Sad.
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No. Not really. Other things she had started like the Major League Soccer team have gone through. If you look at the results it was obvious that if the "non-traditional" voters hadn't have shown up that it would have passed with no issue.
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Other things she had started like the Major League Soccer team have gone through
Well I think the reason that stuck was because Jon Ingram had pored a lot into that. Pretty much if Frist, Ingram, or Smith (that's HCA, Ingram, and FedEx) say they want something, well they get it.
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As are the unions. As is the management. Oh, and that recession too. And, the homeless. Oh, and cheap ride-share services that are more flexible.
Bottom line is that there are a lot of pressures on public transit, and it isn't something most people want to use.
I would say the real culprit though is poor urban/metropolitan planning. You just can't have an elevated light-rail train stop that has 100 parking spots and is walkable for ~300 people and expect it to have an economically viable ridership. Each
There is also the issue of urban planning (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks, I'll take my car.
Re:There is also the issue of urban planning (Score:4, Informative)
My nearest bus stop is 7 miles away, nearest train stop is 3 miles from work (~12 miles for me). My options are ~35 min of drive time, an hour and a half of biking, an hour for car + train, or near two hours for some combination with a bus. As mentioned in one of my previous comments, even dedicated bike lanes are in short supply and I'd be taking my life in my own hands with 3000lb wrecking balls flying 3 feet next to me at 50mph.
My city doesn't even have buses, I'd be going to an adjacent city to get to work. How's that for fun?
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"Organically"? Are you serious?
If cities didn't force developers to build more parking than the developer's own customers want, would you still drive everywhere without a guarantee of a cheap place to store your vehicle at your destination?
And without so much land wasted on vehicle storage, wouldn't there be more places within walking distance from any point? More jobs, more commerce, more grocery stores and entertainment venues, and more tax
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Not to mention LA's "Everyone wants to go downtown" mentality.
For those not familiar with LA, there are essentially three urban/suburban centers there. Downtown, the Westside, and the Valley.
The major artery between the Westside and the Valley is the 405 Freeway, which essentially exists in a state of eternal gridlock.
The only direct transit existing between those two areas is by bus, which means you're stuck on the 405.
If you want to use rail, you have to take a bus from the Valley to North Hollywood (gran
Re:There is also the issue of urban planning (Score:4, Interesting)
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I was once working at an office that was across the street from a train station, and was next to a hospital... and between the hospital and train station there were multiple bus lines that converged within a block of my office. There was also bus stop less than 100 feet from my front door.
However, because my morning commute would be eastbound, and NYC is to the west - and so virtually all public transport was optimized for conveying people westward in the morning - it was literally impossible for me to take
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DING DING DING DING!!!!
I used to live two blocks from a train station (LA County Metrolink), and my work was also a few blocks from a Metrolink station. I *WANTED* to take the train to work, but it was the wrong direction -- it was going "outbound" in the AM in "inbound" in the afternoon. There were practically no trains going in the direction I needed, so I had to drive (20+ mile commute).
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Hang on. Riding 5 miles is any 30 minutes at a moderate pace. So it takes the train 2.5 hours to cover the remainder of that 17 miles?
Sounds like it goes in the opposite direction and loops back or something.
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They have been broken by design (Score:2)
Our current city / suburb design does not allow proper public transportation, but requires us to drive everywhere in personal vehicles. The place where people live, where they work, and where they spend their times are too far away, and not coordinated.
Back in time, the malls were actually designed to solve this problem by having enclosed living spaces. However given tax incentives that business had there, malls are currently (almost) always used by shopping, and not a tiny city as initially envisioned.
Also
We allowed it to be private, then let it collapse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Many US cities had streetcar lines up until the 50s/60s. They were by and large privately owned, later bought by GM/Firestone, and went bust to be replaced by busses, which required tires. So the cities tore out miles and miles of track.
Stupid right? It's a failure of government that just wanted to move on to cars, and didn't see any value in buying this infrastructure (already on the publicly owned and maintained streets).
The US has long had this fantasy that everything can just be done by private enterprise. For some things it's true. I'm not a fan of government telecom owned telecom monopolies or the government owned energy monopoly in Mexico. But some things provide positive externalities like transit, or roads or bridges really should be owned and operated by the government.
Most other countries figured this out long ago. We still thought we could give short shrify to transit, and hope people just get along with cars, and move further and further away (some weird obsession with wanting more property).
Physics of street cars (Score:3)
?
Things that move on tracks, accelerate and stop with far better behavior. A electric street car basically move like a high end electric car, where it can change speed in really elegant and powerful ways. The same with elegant stops. And a greater loading space versus how much padding the exterior adds.
These are on top of things like priority in right of way. Or being simpler mechanism means cheaper unit cost.
Basically: This isn't about cars per intersection anon, but people per intersection instead. Where
Transit in Utah (Score:3, Insightful)
I used it to commute for several years. The problem was the increased time spent in the commute.
Using the trains my commute was 1.5 hours from my door to my office. On motorcycle it is 45 minutes. In a car it was someplace in between. They offered wifi on the train, but the quality was too poor to do anything beyond a git push, email or basic browsing. Forget using a VPN. To make the train time useful I had to save work for the train. If I didn't have that kind of work to do, then the extra hour and half was coming out of my personal time. (my quality of life)
Now I work closer to home. Self transport is 15-20 minutes now. Mass transit is 50 minutes but only runs twice a day. But even if it was every ten minutes, I wouldn't do it because I want to be productive.
Self transport (Automobile/Motorcycle) equates to freedom in the US; go where you want when you want.
Mass transport puts you on someone else's schedule instead of your own.
Mass transit can't seem to function in the US because there is just too much space to cover. For densely populated areas there is enough mass to make it work. Without the population density, it cannot make enough money to pay it's own bills, so it naturally fails unless it is propped up by a government.
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NYC 1975 vs Today (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was a teenager in NYC, one could walk up to a subway platform and count on a train showing up in 3-5 minutes.
Today, that time is more like 10-30 minutes, depending on how broke the MTA is from it's monthly pension obligations that month.
The reasons ridership is down is because it's faster to simply walk or to take a cab.
Mass transit suffers from the Amtrak problem. It is unable to provide adequate service because 80% of its budget is spend paying the unsustainable pension promises of yesteryear, and paying absurd salaries to current employees. Seriously, clerks working in MTA token booths get a compensation package worth well in excess of $100K per year, just to change US currency into subway tokens.
Fix that problem, and you fix mass transit.
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Same reason why I'm not living large as a drug dealer, rakin' in the dough.
Money isn't everything, it's not, how I want to spend my time, and I actually have some other options available to me.
Mass transit can't possibly "compete" (Score:4, Insightful)
That statement presupposes that "improving service" could ever have allowed mass transit to keep up. How do you "compete" with personal transit that takes you from door to door, on your own schedule, day or night, from the convenience of your own home, without having to worry about being assaulted or robbed by someone riding with you? It was inevitable that mass transit would lose out when automobiles came on the scene.
The problem with the mass transit debate is two-fold:
(1) It is dominated by people who moan and moralize about what other people "ought" to be doing, rather than what they choose to do as a matter of personal convenience and time savings.
(2) Many of the people doing the moaning and moralizing don't believe in eating the dog food being served to the plebes; they drive their own vehicles. You see, their personal time is extremely valuable, even if they don't consider yours to be.
There is no "conspiracy" against mass transit. Commuters are quite capable of making their own choices about the quickest, safest, most convenient way to getting from point A to point B. Mass transit just can't compete with personal transportation, except in the very densest urban environments.
Re:Mass transit can't possibly "compete" (Score:4, Insightful)
Spoken as somebody who's never been out of the US, I'm willing to bet.
Re:Mass transit can't possibly "compete" (Score:5, Insightful)
Mass transit can compete with personal transport just fine.
Look at Japan. Train stations are major hubs. They often build a shopping centre on top of the station, and offices around it. Bus companies link up to get people further out. Any new development makes sure it has regular bus/real links and sells that as a benefit of living there - sail past the people stuck in their cars on congested roads with a rail track or purpose built bus lane.
The mistake other countries make is trying to graft on public transport later. Train companies in particular miss a trick by not using the land the station is built on for 10 floors of retail too.
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(1) It is dominated by people who moan and moralize about what other people "ought" to be doing,
No, it's dominated by people who assume the only way they know is the only way thats possible.
That statement presupposes that "improving service" could ever have allowed mass transit to keep up.
It has more than done so in other countries.
How do you "compete" with personal transit that takes you from door to door, on your own schedule, day or night,
How do you compete with being able to ride absolutely sozzled or
old cities (Score:5, Insightful)
Homeless and Criminals (Score:2, Troll)
Last Choice method in the USA.
Only the Homeless and Criminals use it.
It is a NASTY dirty way to travel with lots of chances to get robbed or raped.
Any POS car is FAR better and cleaner.
Because we're suckers for good marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Mass transit has no effective marketing. It's just there, like municipal water service. You can use it or ignore it. And as we keep telling people that the "good life" is outside the city - and hence outside the reach of many transit systems - they don't invest the effort in using them.
Re:Because we're suckers for good marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
> We are told we need single-family houses to make us happy and wealthy - so we buy single-family houses.
Is that why we buy them? I bought mine so I wouldn't have to share walls with inconsiderate assholes.
Re:Because we're suckers for good marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
> We are told we need single-family houses to make us happy and wealthy - so we buy single-family houses.
Is that why we buy them? I bought mine so I wouldn't have to share walls with inconsiderate assholes.
Also, a single-family home allows me to do things I enjoy that would make ME an inconsiderate asshole if I shared walls/floors/ceilings with someone.
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We are told we need single-family houses to make us happy and wealthy - so we buy single-family houses. We are told we need cars to make us happy and productive - so we buy cars. Mass transit has no effective marketing. It's just there, like municipal water service. You can use it or ignore it. And as we keep telling people that the "good life" is outside the city - and hence outside the reach of many transit systems - they don't invest the effort in using them.
Or ... maybe some people actually just have preferences different from yours.
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It's a Short Story (Score:2)
As people switched to cars, mass transit agencies cut service to save money instead of expanding service to compete.
If we want to make mass transit really work, we need to invest in it. In Boston, the infrastructure is ancient, many of the trains are extremely old, the service schedule is awkward, and the subway lines don't go far enough.
After all these years of neglect, making a system that people really use is going to take a huge amount of money. That means new taxes, probably focused on car drivers, s
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Yes, stories of corruption in large Massachusetts transportation projects are legendary, and that's another aspect that has to be taken into account in any reform.
Time is the problem (Score:2)
Sustainable Transportation Professional Here! (Score:5, Informative)
I work with transit agencies, city planners, major employers, and the commuters themselves. Here's what I know to be the causes:
1. Low population density - If you go to the denser parts of LA, you get good transit. Same with SF, NYC, etc. If you head out to the land of single-family homes, population density drops to the point where you need massive subsidies to keep a route going. But then, you're fighting against...
2. Suburban Road Network Design - When you have mile-long block-faces along arterials, you guarantee that transit riders will need to walk .5-.75 miles on average to a bus route... not even likely the route they need. Then there's the whole issue of...
3. People Don't Live Near Work - Most people have to balance housing affordability, proximity to work, and living in a home they like. Part of that is because those who can afford to buy a home typically want a back yard, front yard, and a two car garage (see #s 1 and 2) and the other part is that given the demand to live near major work centers, the cost per square foot to live near work is pretty damn high. And then there's the issue of people buying up homes for investment (rentals) instead of living in them thereby exasperating the "drive til you qualify" problem, but that's a whole other discussion.
4. Free parking and ignorance of the cost of commutes - People don't want to pay for public transit they're not using, so they vote down funding. That increases user fees and thus makes it unattractive to use because most people don't have separate parking fees. Instead, employers underpay their workers to fund parking costs. Moreover, people assume that "gas need to be bought" so they don't factor the cost of fuel into their commutes and thus can't accurately compare the cost of a monthly transit pass to the cost of a drive-alone commute.
5. Transit Fare Interoperability - Transit systems are typically city-wide or county-wide. Very few cross county jurisdictional boundaries. They are thus, in effect, silo'd. They have their own fare/rate structure (cost per boarding, discounts for multi-boarding passes), pass structure (monthly passes vs. 30-day passes), and absent a multi-jurisdictional agreement (Like Clipper in the Bay Area), many people need to purchase and maintain multiple bus passes for daily commutes. State SHOULD pass laws that require that each county get onboard with multi-jurisdictional pass/pricing schemes by 202X and then set another deadline to have groups of neighboring counties merge their pass/pricing schema until we have statewide transit passes. After all, it has taken over 20 years for the SF Bay area Clipper Card to get to where it is and it still only includes 22 of the local transit agencies. There are over 164 transit agencies in California alone.
I could go on....
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks ! Very interesting.
I would insist on 4. In most European cities, you just don't want to drive to cities. Parking is very limited, expensive and limited in time as well, plus gas is expensive. Public transportation is fast, frequent and cheap.
In the 70s, traffic started to become really bad and the answer to that has been to remove lanes for cars and replace them by public transportation lanes (because those are carrying more people, hence are more efficient), make city centers car free, build parki
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When someone else owns it, there is no reason for you to respect their property. If you own it, you take care of it.
This is a quite recent attitude in America. In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century public works were a point of major civic pride. When P.G. Wodehouse satirized small town Americans, they were friendly and enthusiastic and inclined to bend your ear about the local water-works. Because in the early 20th century, when communities built, say, a pumping station, they'd build it like this [wikipedia.org]. And lest you think that was an aberration, here [wikimedia.org] is one across town. When they built a simple gatehouse, it en
Employer support helps (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer is willing to deduct the cost of a monthly transit pass (in Portland, OR) from my check *pre-tax*, so they are showing their support by offering this incentive and convenience. (The pass arrives by mail each month)
That pass is good for; bus lines, train lines, streetcars, and the buses that run between Portland and Vancouver. It's quite convenient. (easy)
That ease of access should never be underestimated. Even though I got the pass for commuting to work, I have used it to travel to concert venues - I then don't experience that right-after-the-concert-crush of people trying to drive out of a huge parking lot.
Yes, using transit takes longer. There are many instances where I would not dream of using it because of the total transit time involved. But for a lot of reasonably-short-distance travel, it's great.
If more employers installed more bike racks, offered convenience in buying transit passes, encouraged telecommuting, etc. we would all benefit in many (some subtle) ways.
No real conspiracy here (Score:2)
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Of course. But they keep building them bec
Questions (Score:2)
No mention of General Motors streetcar conspiracy? (Score:3)
The US used to have the best mass transit in the world.
Then cam the streetcar conspiracy:
>>
Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California through a subsidiary, Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities.
The companies were sued for their conspiracy, but mass transit never recovered.
Re: (Score:2)
Oops. Forget the link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Will personal electric transports change anything? (Score:2)
Probably not. But I find it interesting.
Motorized folding bicycles, and skateboards, and what have you, could conceivably help public transportation because they help solve the last two miles problem.
The transports are getting better, and cheaper, all the time. Fun to watch them on youtube.
The only profit is money. (Score:2)
Every kind of profit in this country is about money. Since that is the only way the powers that be see profit we don't get to have decent public works. Its not just the powers that be though. Those that operate the public transit only do it for money and many care little about who get where. Those that do often don't get the support they need to make it happen. They don't plan for the future except in terms of cost and will not spend money to prevent things from breaking down. They only put a band ai
Not just mass transit (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true for Boston (Score:3)
The article mentions the Boston subway system frequently, but does not mention that ridership is way, way up since the Great Recession (almost 25% on the heavy rail portion of the subway, source: MBTA "Ridership Trends Final 022717", also see http://www.t4ma.org/boston_is_... [t4ma.org]). While there are plenty of reasons to dislike the subway system in Boston (including rampant corruption, gross ineptitude, poor management, inadequate maintenance, etc.), it is working at capacity during rush hour, and there are well-publicised plans to expand capacity. It's not clear how much more room there is for expansion, however, as, for example, the Red Line trains run every 3 minutes during rush hour, and need to maintain a minimum separation.
But declining ridership? Not in Boston.
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Does "cheaper" include the thousands for driver's ed (in countries and subsovereign regions that require 100+ verifiable hours of supervised driving before licensure), thousands for a car, and thousands for required insurance?
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in North America we don't require 100+ verifiable hours of supervised driving.
You are correct. The State of Indiana in the United States required 50 hours last I checked. But at least a couple states in Australia require 120.
Insurance for $850 a year
Or a lot more, I've read, for an unmarried male who enters the workforce before age 25. And is that minimum coverage or full collision coverage, as some banks require until the loan is paid off?
Total: $794 a month
Somehow your city's transit is overpriced. How does Citilink in Fort Wayne, Indiana [fwcitilink.com], get away with offering a $45 per month pass? The only things I can think of are that C
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As the article explained, the long times and poor scheduling are a result of poor transit policy in America.
Other places have done much better, and American transit could rival them if we choose to invest in it appropriately.
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For cities like LA, with a few exceptions, there's no practical solution involving public transport as it's impossible to cover either a) the large distances required without making several stops and/or transfers and/or b) the last mile (in reality two or three) to get to one's destination. What's left is to encourage policies that reduce the need use roads regardless of the means of transport. Not as simple.
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American culture is pure selfishness. It's all about "me me me" without any consideration to their community, municipality, country, state, or even country.
Because SANE people realize that they don't exist to serve the State, the State exists to serve them.
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Those in prison are **not committing any crime** outside it.
No, but by being imprisoned they are both (a) loosing much of their ability to make a living through non-criminal means when they get out (because people generally don't hire ex-cons) and (b) getting the connections and skills that set them up for committing more crime when they get out. That's why most of the data [police.uk] indicates that, when all other things are equal, people who are given custodial sentences are more likely to re-offend than people given non-custodial sentences. That in turn is why America havin