Although this thread is mainly transit it applies to all AMTRAK as well.
It Is a matter of total time to go from point A to point B ?
Before 1910 the only way for people to get around speedly ( relative term ) was by trolley or railroad.
As more automobiles were bought persons could get from their homes to another point quicker because there was either no parking or very limited parking around public transportation…
As well the transportation was hot in the summer and cold in the winter especially on the commuter cars as they were hand me downs from longer distance trains and transit.
WW-2 stopped this run away from public transport.
This dicotomy for loss of long distance travel was immediately pushed forward at the end of WW-2 with more autos, the rise of airlines and their ability to fly at night relatively safely…
The interstate system then crushed the shorter distance public travel since there was still limited parking at commuter public transportation nodes.
There were exceptions especially the high density cities that had a good local public transport such as NYC & BOS.
Starting in the late 1960s in the NEC and in California in the 1980s some rail was built with parking. Some Bus routes were co-ordinated with the train schedules out west. Then reduced time attracted some riders especially in southern CA however not to the extent of what transit promoters hoped.
The advent of the laptop computer has changed the time metric as travel on commuter rails enable ~~ 80% of that time to be used for laptop work or sleep if desired. Subway & bus probably not because of the worry about grab and run criminals.
Will the advent of Wi-Fi and cell phone 4G attract some additional riders? That question can only be guessed how many ? This is a definite chicken a
They are mostly #20 switches, which have a passenger speed of 45mph. As you point out, the higher speed diverging moves increase line capacity as well as reduce trip time. UP has some 60 mph interlocking for just this reason.
Although this thread is mainly transit it applies to all AMTRAK as well.
It Is a matter of total time to go from point A to point B ?
Before 1910 the only way for people to get around speedly ( relative term ) was by trolley or railroad.
As more automobiles were bought persons could get from their homes to another point quicker because there was either no parking or very limited parking around public transportation…
As well the transportation was hot in the summer and cold in the winter especially on the commuter cars as they were hand me downs from longer distance trains and transit.
WW-2 stopped this run away from public transport.
This dicotomy for loss of long distance travel was immediately pushed forward at the end of WW-2 with more autos, the rise of airlines and their ability to fly at night relatively safely…
The interstate system then crushed the shorter distance public travel since there was still limited parking at commuter public transportation nodes.
There were exceptions especially the high density cities that had a good local public transport such as NYC & BOS.
Starting in the late 1960s in the NEC and in California in the 1980s some rail was built with parking. Some Bus routes were co-ordinated with the train schedules out west. Then reduced time attracted some riders especially in southern CA however not to the extent of what transit promoters hoped.
The advent of the laptop computer has changed the time metric as travel on commuter rails enable ~~ 80% of that time to be used for laptop work or sleep if desired. Subway & bus probably not because of the worry about grab and run criminals.
Will the advent of Wi-Fi and cell phone 4G attract some additional riders? That question can only be guessed
The total time from the staring point (residence, hotel) city A to the ultimate goal (hotel, office) in city B, along with frequency of service and convenient departures will determine the preferred mode of travel: rail, auto, bus or plane. Cost is important but secondary if it’s in the same ballpark.
Maybe I did not make it clear. Parking is only one part of the metric. IMHO The real driver in ridership may be the perception ( not necessarily what is reality ) of total time gained or lost. Many persons appear to need all the time possible to complete tasks. The total time wasted ( may be misconception ) while driving vs doing productive work while riding public transportation ( another misconception ? ) may influence some to ride public transportation?. the younger generation’s use of laptops, texting, and cell phones has entered a whole new metric for whatever affecting ridership. All persons approach a task differently so how that affects their ridership will be different… Of course travel safety is another consideration.
It’s the “hassle factor”. A guy who has a meeting three hours away (by car) isn’t going to take the train if it takes 5 hours, no matter how long a nap or how much laptop time he can get on the train - particularly if he has first and last mile “hassles” with the train. However if there isn’t much cruise control time in that 3 hour drive, he might think twice…
DON; you have just reinforced my point. the example above has a 5 hour public transit ride. The car only takes 3 hours ? That is a no brainer in this example’s case. Take your car. Now if the times were reversed then that may be another case. However the Hassle factor is very important. Except for a few locations in the US transferring between transportation nodes takes way too long. Again it is somewhat about how much time a trip takes and for some the only consideration. One size does not fit all !!!.
If the total time by car or foot or bus plus train to the goal is 1:10 and driving is a only little quicker (50 min.), the hassle factor will lead them to take transit over driving most times.
Maybe in a single-person trip, but if you have two or more people in a car going the same place, most of us would snap up the auto trip in your hypothetical. The train would have to be a lot faster to tilt the choice the other way.
Yes. They (2 or more) very well might, but it would also depend on various factors such as what the drive is like in terms of traffic and stress and parking fees. On a longer, more rural drive, the auto would have an edge, hence the need for quicker trains to be competitive, along with a smooth ride in a pleasant surrounding. But since most cars on the road have only one occupant, only some potential riders would be lost to the auto.
Your theory boggles my mind, Streak. But there is one thing that strikes me.
I have a friend in his 30’s. He is always at work. Always. For a while his job required some driving to meet people. His only objection was that he was expected to be at work while he was driving. Now he’s gotten rid of the driving and things are a lot better.
This “always at work” situation arises because of the internet. So the ability to work while you travel on a train means that when you arrive you don’t have a back log of undone work and when you get home you don’t have a backlog. If you were driving you would have a backlog and you would have to put in extra hours to clear it up. This is very different from the way things used to be.
The hypothetical was that driving was faster. The presupposition was that there was so much “hassle” in driving that the choice for taking the train would be biased towards the train unless the train were much slower.
In the local passenger train advocacy group, we would go to great lengths to take trains/transit to get to distant meetings. In the local model train club, train enthusiasts, yes, but not passenger train advocates, we split the gas money, we stuff 4-6 guys in a small SUV, and we don’t even bother figuring out how to get places by trains/transit.
A person needs to step outside the bubble of how a train enthusiast makes a transportation choice and how the average person makes that decision. The general view is that any other choice besides the on-demand door-to-door one-seat-ride of a car is a “hassle” that one is reluctant to undertake unless 1) one is without access to a car or a ride from someone with a car, and 2) there is a considerable time advantage to the common carrier mode.
All the folks from Illinois “headed up North” towing campers and boat trailers? A train is not an option.
With public transit of any kind–trains, planes or buses–there are all sorts of rules and safety precautions that do keep people quite safe. In private automobiles there are crashes related to texting while driving. Then there are drug and alcohol related crashes.
There is, of course, the human tragedy of all of this carnage. And there are the dollar costs–loss of financial support by families when a bread winner dies, costs of medical care and costs to the public in disability benefits and health benefits.
Your view is limited by living in a great area too small for metro rail transit. The view in major metro areas where tail transit is an option to get into the central city is quite different.
Does growing up in Chicago count, along with my “life story” of Dad moving the family out to the suburbs to follow his job? Of Mom taking me along as a kid on an all-day transit journey to Marshall Field’s? I mean, the entire market for what she was shopping for has switched to the suburban and exurban “Big Box store”, and does anyone take long transit journeys to shop in a Downtown location these days?
Does the time in the mid-70’s when Dad moved the family to Detroit count, when we made frequent trip between Chicago and Detroit as part of a protracted move? The Chicago-Detroit trip was about a choice between “planes, trains, and automobiles.” We lived in a commuter rail suburb of Chicago, and we had a 3-seat ride – commuter rail to Downtown, we may have just walked between then Northwestern Station and Union Station, and then an Amtrak Turboliner ride to Ann Arbor. Detroit had nothing like the transit in Chicago, so the final leg meant leaving a “train car” parked in Ann Arbor.
There was and still is multiple Chicago-Detroit train departures a day, but when you factor arriving-in-time for the train and the change to commuter rail in downtown Chicago, that trip ran something like 8 hours whereas we were doing it in something like 6 1/2 door-to-door, even in the day of the 55 MPH speed limit. I remember newspaper stories of the cops with radar in Michigan City, Indiana handing out tickets to the Amtrak crews for exceeding the 25 MPH municipal speed limit – did Michigan City not want frequent and fast Amtrak service linking them to Chicago and Detroit and points in between?
Paul M; At no time do I or most of the posters on this thread state that there will be a mass migration to rail or public transit. If only the # of long distance increased by 1 % of total intercity or 10 % of local travel there would be a mass overcrowding of the systems. These percentages are only speculative.
The point is and always is -------- You cannot make one size fit all -----
Even WW-2 did not do that even with the national ( ? ) 35 MPH auto speed limit.
It is all about time. 1. Total time saved 2. Time that can be used for other items instead of driving
Simply ignoring others’ actual positions and substituting a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position is the essence of the straw man fallacy.