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A Sassafrasin' Separate Thread about [Transportation]
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An autocar sounds great if you're just tooling around a populated area, running to the store, or doing something else mundane. Google maps could (probably) take care of that for you just fine. But frankly, I don't always trust GPS systems, I've had them do ridiculous things to me, like try to get me to drive off a bridge, or literally tell me to drive into a lake.
Not to mention that not everywhere is suitable for automated transport. I've had to go significant distances off-road for both educational and employment reasons in the past. What use is an automated car when I need to go five miles back into the woods down a horse trail, cut through an open field and then head through another trail to an isolated rock shelter? Nevermind the fact that some people, myself included, live on property where you might need to go along such roads to get to your house.
A much more sensible option is to continue to create more fuel-efficient vehicles and rely on green energy to power them. That, along with well-run public transportation systems and efficient urban planning designed to minimize vehicle traffic while maximizing foot traffic and greenspace, is a much more practical solution that robocars for all.
I find it very unlikely that self-driving cars will be designed to have a 'safety feature' that involves violently swerving to avoid an object. Swerving is very dangerous - I can't think of too many realistic instances where yanking on the steering wheel is better than just applying brakes and striking whatever is in front of you at reduced speed, letting the crumple zone do what it's there for.
Self-driving cars could solve so many public transportation problems, it's kind of staggering. I think they could create a whole new social paradigm, the same way the Internet & cellular phones did. That being said, I also think such a paradigm is only going to increase sprawl, because we tend to love pushing things to their limit, and widespread robot car use would set all sort of new limits to be pushed.
Like in Chicago, one of the big problems with the L is that as it gets further and further away from the core of downtown, the space between the spokes starts to get bigger and bigger, requiring longer and longer bus rides, just to catch a train.
When we lived out in Logan Square, and my wife worked downtown, She could drive to work in about 30 minutes(6.5 miles), OR she could walk 3 blocks, wait for a bus, ride a bus for 45+ minutes(3.25 miles), transfer take a train for 10 minutes, and then walk 4 blocks to work.
Also, If you want busses to actually work in a city, they can't be stopping 22 times in 3.25 miles, in addition to all the red lights. I feel like half a mile between stops is a decent target. Means once you get to whatever artery the bus is running on you aren't more than 1/4 from the nearest stop.
This, so much. Bus stops both before and after an intersection infuriate me.
Which is, in itself, I think an interesting question: should buses stop before or after intersections?
Ideally there's a bus lane so they avoid congesting traffic.
Ideally whenever traffic in an area gets so bad that's not enough the government would up the variety of transportation options to get people out of private cars.
If City A sets up growth boundaries, developers can go to City B next door to plunk down their Wal-marts. If a regional planning commission is set up developers can't go to City B. Instead they must infill blighted spaces in the core rather than expand ever-outward into farmland and forests, which gives you the density required for a successful rail/subway system. You can then plan and direct future growth by building new lines outside the city.
So this story is about how a (Democrat super majority) state legislature went and completely fucked up the GLX.
First off, the legislature was coming off a huge clusterfuck, called the Big Dig (replacement of overhead highway into a tunnel highway), and the GLX was one of those false promises made by representatives necessary to obtain approval for the Big Dig. Of course, once the Big Dig completed, nobody in office cared about the GLX, all hoping that the public would forget about it, until 10 years later, the city of Somerville (the main beneficiary of the GLX) sued the state to live up to its written promise.
Did I neglect to mention that our state legislature is corrupt? As in, all 3 living ex-speakers of the house (all Democrats) have been thrown in jail for corruption charges. If you lived in Massachusetts from 1991 to 2009, your speaker of the house went to jail.
Now that lawyers forced the state's hand, what did the state go and do? They gave the primary construction company, WSK, a no-bid contract. Yup, they just handed a cash cow contract to the state's largest construction firm (actually a merger of 3 firms). No bidding, better bids completely ignored. Actually, it was more like, other firms made bids and WSK would match their bid plus 10% and then WSK was awarded the contract. You read that right, WSK was guaranteed an automatic 10% profit margin over the other bids.
But of course, a guaranteed profit margin would've been fine, if WSK actually stayed within budget. But that didn't happen, as costs ballooned by 30% over their bid, to $3 billion, for a 4.7 mile overland track that parallels an existing set of tracks.
Note that at one time, before 2000, the MBTA could have covered this extra debt. But that was before the legislature decided to spin off the MBTA into its own entity, separate from the state, and saddle it with the $9 billion Big Dig debt. Yup, the legislature, in its wisdom, hid the $9 billion Big Dig debt from its books by passing all of it onto the newly created public transit entity.
Again, the MBTA could've still dealt with this, if they just tried to control costs from the beginning, before the costs spiraled out of hand. But they didn't because the job of controlling those costs came down to the MBTA chief Beverly Scott, hired by then Democrat governor Patrick Deval. Beverly Scott turned out to be absentee chief, who never bothered to do any actual work, like check in on the GLX progress, although that was to be expected, because at her prior job as head of Atlanta's public transit system, she was also an absentee chief, who neglected her job. Lots and lots of press about her horrendous track record, both in Boston and in Atlanta, came out during Boston's subway failures last winter, where Boston's public transit basically stopped running for over a month. Enough so that makes you wonder what the hell was Deval thinking when he hired her, or why he hadn't fired her.
So current Republican governor Charlie Baker (who didn't start until this year) says enough is enough, forced Beverly Scott to step down last winter, due to the subway debacle, put into place an independent team to look into the MBTA troubles, found out that the GLX was way over budget, and a few days ago, canceled the WSK contract.
It was the right move, but it basically puts the GLX on hold, after 2 years of construction, for at least a year.
I cannot envision Baker actually killing the GLX, as his margin of victory was slim enough that he'll want the support of the 50,000 estimated ridership of the GLX to win his re-election, but it still stings knowing that a 2018 completion date is no longer possible for a subway line that was promised, in writing, back in 1990. It still stings knowing that what we'll get is a scaled down version of the GLX, (probably less and smaller stations), which was already a scaled down version of the GLX envisioned in 1990.
Most cities run two buses through main arteries for this reason; an Express that only hits the depots and a regular bus that will hit every stop passengers need to get off on. The Express also always runs ahead of the regular bus, so you can jump on the Express, get to the depot closest to the stop you want, then transfer onto the regular route and go where you need to go.
Works pretty well.
I like that the NYT's headline completely contradicts the statements of the authors in the paper:
I mean, the NYT's science coverage is usually pretty bad, but this is stupid even for them.
You're welcome, NYT.
There's an argument floating around amongst mass transit scholars that New York City (and we're talking strictly the five boroughs here) has been able to sustain itself by charging a flat fee on the rather well established mass transit system, regardless of how long you travel. The view is that this eliminates the higher transportation fees one would usually expect by moving away to a cheaper neighborhood, allowing the free flow of people within the city. Therefore, it's not the time that matters, but the monetary cost associated with a lengthier commute.
The system is assuming hitting something is the worse outcome when in fact it may not be. Stuck on a railroad crossing is one example, or maybe a semi truck is going to hit my car so I'd rather swerve over and either collide with another car or hope they will see me.
If everything is AI-controlled it will be fine - until D-day of course - but the computer making decisions on incomplete information and having to interact with human drivers seems like a bad combination.
But man oh man living even kinda close to a place with actual public transit infrastructure is amazing.
Google has talked about this a lot. Driver assistance features are good (cameras, smart warnings & sensors, etc), but once you start to have the car drive itself, half-measures are completely unsafe. The car must be able to drive itself without any input from the human occupants, both from a standpoint of acceptable engineering parameters and from a standpoint of meeting the expectations of car owners / vehicle occupants.
I'm sure its convenient in large cities where even owning a car would be more trouble than its worth but I cannot relate. The idea of getting on a bus just makes me want to vomit.
Now, a high speed rail system that could quickly get me out of this redneck infested shitburg would be great.
...What's the difference to you between a bus and a train?
Well they're different things for different purposes.
But that doesn't help with understanding why you'd be willing to use one and not the other.
I have access to a railway line here, and also bus services. I usually use the train because it's a bit quicker (although the station is further away than the bus stop) but either are faster than driving during rush hour.
Yes.
It doesn't?
I thought I was being obvious with the implication that the idea of using a bus to get around town sounds repulsive, and less than preferable than just using my own car, but the idea of a high speed rail system that could quickly get me out of here and someplace better would be great.
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I've ridden in both on a regular basis, having no personal vehicle (albeit the trains were just light rail, not a maglev, but there's no difference in passenger experience. A 15 minute ride is a 15 minute ride no matter how fast the train is going).
Neither experience is more convenient or more grungy than the other. Trains tend to get you places faster, but have strict limitations on the areas they service & require very substantial physical construction to expand their service area. Buses won't get you there as fast (albeit mostly due to having to meander around a larger service area...), but can get you just about anywhere (and you can also actually talk to the driver and ask them to drop you off at specific places, ask them if they can give you a break on fare if you're short, etc).
The biggest difference by far is that a rail system requires a lot of up front investment in both time & capital (and local support, which is amazingly hard to rally!) to get up and running, whereas a bus system just needs the vehicles, drivers and depots. Buses are a realistic option for many communities whereas trains just aren't.
It amazes me how often people will turn up their noses at the 'ghetto' notion of waiting at a perfectly clean bus stop to get on what is usually a well maintained bus, but they'll happily wait around in train stations that tend to be littered with cigarette butts & half-erased spray paint tags to get on the roughly equally clean train, because trains have a largely undeserved reputation as being the superior experience (...I also wonder about how much of Ayn Rand's influence is responsible for this cultural attitude).
I already stated that I realize its a huge convenience for large cities, but for me the only kind of public transportation that would be a convenience would be a high speed rail system that could convey me quickly from say Chattanooga to downtown Atlanta, or Savannah, or Orlando in a fraction of the time it would take to drive there conventionally.
From my perspective using a car to get about generally takes longer for a journey of equivalent distance, is more restricted because the number of places you can reliably park is limited, and more expensive because parking generally costs as much for a couple of hours as public transport tickets
Also because "it makes me want to vomit" suggests a stronger opinion than mere preference
I think it's always likely to be the case that beyond urban areas there will remain a necessity for private vehicles in some form, but I don't think the currently popular model of living some distance away from an urban centre and commuting into it by car has much life in it.
It becomes pretty untenable as density rises and the area into which it is impractical to take a private vehicle tends to expand over time. This gets weird when that area starts to overlap with suburban areas where the residents tend to take it as a given that they will own a car and use it as their main transport.
Obviously this doesn't apply to bus systems that don't share right-of-way with car traffic; I've never seen that in the US but it was a thing in Ecuador when I was there.
Its a very strong preference. I'd happily board a high speed rail system to quickly get me from say Chattanooga to basically [Insert name of actual nice city here] much quicker than driving there conventionally.
But since I live in a world where not being able to just park, for free, in a parking lot is extremely rare I'd really just much prefer my own vehicle to get around locally.
That's mainly what I use. I live in the suburbs but there's a train station just a short drive or even a nice walk away. It's loads more preferably to use it to get to the airport or DC than to drive. And in DC the metro gets you literally everywhere you want to go down there. If I actually lived there I probably wouldn't own a car at all.
Buses stop way too frequently and have to deal with the same busy road traffic, so they are far slower than the train, even after factoring in walking distance to/from the subway station.
Now if buses consistently stopped less often, say at least a half mile between stops, that might change my mind about buses, but probably not. If I worked in Boston, instead of the suburbs, I would bike to work in non-freezing, dry weather and drive to the train station otherwise.
Over here the bus generally shares the same road as cars, but is allowed to take a special extra lane or trolley lane when traffic is heavy. Which means, given the terrible parking in the city, that it is usually somewhat faster, and much faster during rush hour. (The bus stays on schedule even in heavy traffic, which is convenient.)
In downtown Houston, they have bus lanes that commuters can use when no bus is around, and cannot use when a bus is near. This is driven by electronic signs that let you know when you can and cannot use that lane.
For instance, I live near the M6, which for long stretches in the vicinity of cities is now a "managed motorway". This basically means:
-variable speed limits enforced by average speed cameras (in other words, you are always subject to speed monitoring in the managed sections)
-use of the hard shoulder as an additional lane during times of congestion
-constant CCTV monitoring over its entire length for immediate response to lane blockages
The variable speed limits are kind of interesting, because their purpose is to damp out and neutralise the waves of braking that cause tailbacks, and also to raise the average speed of traffic by slowing the rate at which traffic arrives at contrasted junctions to within the capacity of the junction to disperse it
A lot of this is the kind of thing that people expect will happen with self driving cars - individual vehicles are obliged to make unintuitive decisions that lead to a reduction in congestion overall
Also Dallas has a pretty decent bus and light-rail system. I was kind of spoiled because I had a bus-stop literally in my front yard. That bus line had a stop about 2 blocks away from one of my best friend's house, a stop about 5 blocks away from my highschool job, and about 6 blocks away from my highschool. If I got on at the stop on the side of the street, it would take me to the light-rail station, where I could catch a train to the station about 2 blocks from my other best friend's house in Oak Cliff. That same bus line had a branch route that picked up 3 blocks from my house that went directly to my elementary school.
Sometimes people would ask me "Hey, where do I transfer to get to <x>" and I was like "I don't know man, I take the number 1 literally everywhere."
Hong Kong has a pretty great public transit system. Their subway stations and trains are clean and pretty easy to navigate, they have tons of buses and trolleys and stuff. Made me pretty jealous and sad I currently live in a city with a pretty minimal public transit system.
This is Seattle's big problem right now. The bus system is remarkable - but it still suffers the same traffic and bridge closures as cars.
That said, not having to find parking is a huge convenience for going downtown on busy nights; being able to get drunk is a nice benefit.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I do love having buses available for Minneapolis, because I refuse to try and drive that mess if I can help it (to say nothing of parking costs). But once you're in the suburbs it's a bit weaker, with most routes being only between bus stations or into the cities. Very good for the commute to work, but...
That aside, there is an interesting bus route here that works on the idea of people calling in to request stops, and then its route updates to accommodate the requested stops within its service area (the default route is otherwise just circling the area, so it's basically just deviating to drop off/pick up). I've never had cause to use the route, but I do think it's a good solution for lower-density suburban areas where you can't realistically run the number of routes that exist downtown.
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Hong Kong's system owes a lot to the fact that Hong Kong is millions of people packed into a shoebox though. Public transit in Hong Kong doesn't even compete with cars, even, because cars are so expensive to drive in Hong Kong. Development literally follows transit, because you can't develop anything in Hong Kong without pre-planning public transit there first, which gave MTR an effective stranglehold on real estate development.
That's the type of shenanigans that goes on when it comes to public transit, even in a deeply Democrat town. In this case, the city of Somerville, located bout 3 miles from Boston, is trying to use eminent domain to tear down 279 properties, replacing them with retail and luxury condos, using the Green Line Extension project (a subway extension) as an excuse. Even though the GLX only needed 2 of those properties eminent domained (this low number was on purpose, to reduce costs for the GLX, and to increase public support for the project).