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Mass Transit in America. Or 'Get a horse!'
moniker
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With oil at record prices and the potential of $4.00 a gallon gasoline during the summer driving seasons (that beautiful time of year when wild fleets of SUV's drive upstream to spawn) things are finally coming to a head. Alternative energies/electric cars/hybrid synergization togetherness drive trains are not likely to bridge the gap soon enough where we can just blithely pretend we have free energy anymore, so shuttling people around en masse is the most likely solution to have the least issue and 'solve' the most obvious problems.
Ridership of bus and rail lines in most metropolitan areas is increasing, exurbs are actually open to the notion of sustainable planning for their communities to get a lot of tax monies as well as reducing the congestion on their infrastructure, and innovative approaches to the question of mass transit are arising. The rental bikes in Paris were massive successes and are being tried in London and New York right now with more cities likely to open up on the idea. The unbridled successes of cities like Curitiba, Brazil are also forcing politicians to accept the fact that a well designed public transportation system does indeed work.
So...mass transit. Whoo! Alternatively, boo! What should be done to promote its expansion or creation in various areas? What, do you feel, are some of its shortcomings that need to be overcome? Where does it need to be ignored in favor of other, more pragmatic solutions to the issues of congestion and rising fuel costs for commuters? Why are the floors on buses sticky? And when did that guy at the grab bar shower last, because, goddamn man, do us all a favor and put your arm down.
Ridership of bus and rail lines in most metropolitan areas is increasing, exurbs are actually open to the notion of sustainable planning for their communities to get a lot of tax monies as well as reducing the congestion on their infrastructure, and innovative approaches to the question of mass transit are arising. The rental bikes in Paris were massive successes and are being tried in London and New York right now with more cities likely to open up on the idea. The unbridled successes of cities like Curitiba, Brazil are also forcing politicians to accept the fact that a well designed public transportation system does indeed work.
So...mass transit. Whoo! Alternatively, boo! What should be done to promote its expansion or creation in various areas? What, do you feel, are some of its shortcomings that need to be overcome? Where does it need to be ignored in favor of other, more pragmatic solutions to the issues of congestion and rising fuel costs for commuters? Why are the floors on buses sticky? And when did that guy at the grab bar shower last, because, goddamn man, do us all a favor and put your arm down.
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Actually New York's system is pretty shitty when compared to London and Paris, and is nothing when you look to cities like Curitiba. The only reason it's considered to be good is because it gets compared to the likes of Atlanta and LA.
Ahh...I thought that we were talking about solely America. Indeed, I hear that a city in spain, I believe Madrid(?) has the best subway system in the world. I think that subways are better because it frees up road traffic and is unsightly. Subway stops can also be nice public meeting spots if done correctly.
Although you can't take on the underground - it's considered rude. Fuck that shit.
Alternatively, I can carpool with my wife 3-5 days a week depending on her school schedules.
On the other hand, I always drive to work. Basically the reverse commute from Cambridge to the burbs doesn't have much traffic and takes 10-15 minutes. If i wanted to take the subway to the commuter rail and then walk from there, it would take over an hour and 10 bucks each way.
The potential? It's over four bucks a gallon here in Alberta (1.09 CDN a liter). You guys have it easy!
The Tube in London was just fantastic, with the possible exception of the lack of air conditioning or adequate ventilation. It gets pretty hot down there. Other than that, I was zippin around the Tube within a day of living in London because it was so easy to navigate and make use of.
The NYC subway is second nature to me, but that's only because I'm used to it. When you think about it, it's really very confusing for people who don't go to the city often or have never been. Giving them simple letter and number designations sounds good on paper, but something like the Picadilly line or the Victoria line ends up being much easier to remember for tourists.
The things that are attractive to people about suburban areas are the same factors that make public transport not work: there's plenty of space, things are all spread out, there isn't a lot of through traffic, there aren't many people around (and very few "outsiders"), there's basically no reason to go into the residential areas unless you live there, the stores are large and specialized and convenient by car, there's plenty of parking.
When I moved from DC to the Northern Virginia suburbs, the difference in "way of life" between the two was staggering, even though the actual distance was maybe 10 miles.
Eliminate the need for automotive transit entirely.
Maybe I should buy that horse off my parents...
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The thing with commute times is that, very often, where businesses are and where good housing and, COMMUNITIES are are not the same places.
People also tend to get attached to where they live, while businesses will move whenever it's profitable to do so.
LA has a greater population density than London. London's underground and bus system is pretty good. Not 'zomg I can light my car on fire because I'll never need it' awesome, but above and beyond what most of our metropolitan areas have.
The NYC's subway's biggest draw is it's size. The London or DC subways are probably newer and cleaner but NYC's really services a good 80% of the city while the others do not.
Also, during rush hour, most trains are filled, so you have to wait four or five trains before one comes with enough space to squeeze in. Basically, Calgary has the worst mass transit ever.
On the plus side, the city claims all the power to run the C-Train is generated by wind power.
That's a big part of why we have light rails here in Portland. They thought that light rails would require less upkeep than buses (they don't) so they started up the building process. Of course buses then had to be rerouted to serve the rail lines (meaning more stops and longer commute times for bus riders) and overall transit ridership decreased.
I just watched a townhall meeting on the subject on OPB the other day; I'll try to track down the sources they used.
I wish that was the case with me. To drive to work (9.5 miles one way from Burien to SLU) takes 15 minutes going in and usually 20 to 30 minutes going home. When I ride the bus, it takes an hour and 15 minutes to work, and a good hour and a half going home.
Yes, but you can keep the openness of suburbia while reducing the amount of extended driving. You won't be able to compete with a drive from home to the supermarket and back, or maybe stopping off to windowshop the mall. However, that isn't the only issue. Most people live in the 'burbs but don't work there. Or if they do, they work in a different suburb that's across town or similiarly out of the way. Rail lines that connect the suburbs with each other and with the city proper are an easy solution to rush hour commuting that noone enjoys anyway. The point of a bus and rail system isn't always to make cars obsolete, over 2/3rds of all mass transit riders in Chicagoland own a car, it's to make them less necessary.
I mentioned it in the primaries thread, but Atlanta's system is pretty bad, not to mention ridiculously expensive and apparently looking to become even more so. Apparently because it's not getting enough business.
For fixing it, adding more buses and redrawing the routes to be more sensible would be a huuuuuge help. If you have a fairly populated college that's within about a 30 minutes casual walk from the bus stop, but it's somehow at the very end of the bus route, you are doing it wrong
On the black screen
This is what you get for living in Burien. :P
The Bus Lines could be good, they could be bad. I have no way of knowing, 'cause I can never tell where the bus stops are. Santa Cruz had a pretty decent bus system. All buses started out at a central downtown station and snaked their way across the entire town. You were usually never more than a few minutes walk away from a bus (based on my experience as a student).
I recently started taking the Light Rail to work. It runs pretty regularly, but it's slow. If it ran a straight route and didn't have to stop for traffic lights, you might be able to go from one end of the line to another in 30 minutes. But you can't do that, because both lines have to weave their way through downtown, averaging I'd say 3-5 mph. The other problem is that they don't GO anywhere. There are two lines, both of which share close to 30% of their stops. During the week you don't have to wait more than 15 minutes for a train, but it's not terribly flexible 'cause unless where you're going is ON one of those lines, it doesn't make sense to take the Light Rail. Still, for me it's a welcome alternative to sitting in traffic.
I'm not really sure what function CalTrain is supposed to perform. It occupies the largest railroad lines, runs very infrequently, is even more out of the way than the Light Rail, and is almost as slow.
BART is something that I don't have much experience with. It seems to be like a larger version of the Light Rail, in that all of its lines share the majority of their stops. It does hit damn near every major city in the North Bay, but us South Bay people are left out of the loop. Once again, not much in the way of coverage, but it seems to get the job done.
I wish I had spent more time checking out the London and Paris underground systems. They seemed to really have everything running like clockwork, and there were so many stations it seemed silly.
From my house to school is 20 minutes by car and 1 hour and 20 minutes by TTC.
And if you live in the ACTUAL suburbs? God help you if you don't have a car.
One of the few places we could even begin to afford to own a home in Seattle. [shrug]
Oh but they won't hesitate to require you to pay 80 fucking dollars for a mandatory vehicle emissions test.
Bastards.
Haha, that's funny. That's EXACTLY how Calgary's mass transit is designed and that's exactly the same times I posted earlier in this thread. :P Hooray for Canada having idiots planning our transit systems!
Well, it depends. I lived in Queens last year and getting from LIC to anywhere decent in Brooklyn took forever. The G used to be useful but now it's slogan should be "everywhere you don't want to be." So we used to take the 7 into the city, the 4/5/6 downtown, then head back out into Brooklyn. It would be much better if there were a good, safe way to go directly from Queens to Brooklyn without risking mugging and worse on the G.
It's cool dude, just playing around.
It's more about cheapness here. They do the same with the highways. Getting some places in Toronto is a HUGE pain in the ass because the city won't pay to have some shit built. And it's only getting more expensive as time goes on.
Calgary's council is planning a $700 million expansion to the C-Train to extend it into the Southwest. A bunch of people are complaining about it because they don't want construction going on near where they live (:roll:) so now there's talk the SW expansion just won't happen and a SE expansion will get fast-tracked. The NW line is currently being extended all the way up to Crowfoot, which is pretty close to the edge of the city.
There's also a major road expansion going on - Calgary's getting a ring road finally with a whole bunch of overpasses going in. Gotta love that oil money. Crowfoot used to be a nightmare to drive during rush hour. now it's better than Deerfoot.
Yeah, that's the contradiction that sucks so much. If I wanted to get downtown on an express it'd beat driving like a red-headed step child. However, they don't have many express lines so you have to stop at all the damn stations along the way which doubles the time at least. You'd think they'd have skip-stop lines or something to make it not so bad. I realize that other people want to live not here and still take the train, but have a cascading system so everyone gets a good short jaunt to the terminal. And without having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to make it.
Yeah, that's the attitude I'm used to. We've got a highway that goes nowhere (it literally just hits a street and stops at a stoplight) because of it.
No, I understand. It's certainly a special treat to live as close as we do to White Center.
I feel alot of people bitch about the idea of public transit because they've never spent a day in a city with good public transit. In my area, unless you're on the park & ride into downtown, metro is considered something only the disadvantaged would utilize.
Honestly though, I'd just like to see someone with real power actually stop the manufacturers and oil companies so that we could have a viable alternative in our personal automobiles.
I'm glad gas is getting this expensive, because that's what it's going to take before people actually get pissed off and do something about it. It's going to take an angry nation unwilling to pay high gas prices before we start getting and accepting smart cars, and 60mpg machines, or electric vehicles, or fuel cell as a mainstream source of energy.