You have to look at the big picture. While the 12 mile line may not be that big of deal now, it is only a piece of the puzzle. Look at Chicago, at one time the EL only ran a couple of miles, but as it expanded it became the viable system it is now, but it took time and money to build. Expanding roads is just putting a band aid over the problem, but starting a rapid transit system is the first step toward a solution.
Bert
No, Hugh, you are definititly not “thick”, I’ve learned a great deal reading your posts over the years, so you are definitely a sharp fellow.
I think the term “selective” would be more appropriate, you are (in this case) only willing to look at the idealized factors supporting the "pro rail"side of the coin.
You are still willing to make liberal assumptions that favor the rail option, evidenced by your willingness to ASSUME that the majority of riders have season tickets, so why prohibit liberal assumption for the auto option?
To wit, if we are gonna assume that all train seats are full for this measured benchmark, why can’t we assume that there are 5 passengers in every car as well?
Giving one competing mode a favorable “gimme” but intentionally NOT making the same allowance for the contending modes, seems…like someone is stacking the deck.
Likewise, if we are going to assume that the passengers to be measured for the benchmark have all already ticketed, boarded, found their riding position, and the train has already left the last station on the way to the measuring point… well, then lets give the auto option the same luxury, no stop lights, no cross traffic, just a flying mile head start towards the measuring point, just as we are giving the train.
Tell you what though, no need for me to brew ill feelings on a topic that really is of little consequence to me personally, I’ll just drop it, and let you folks have your party.
Fair enough?
Streetcars can be MUed and run into trains though New Orleans did not do that.
Up here on Lake Chaplain the Ferrys do a good job of carrng people. What many commuters do is car-pool to and from the ferry dock and arange rides through Vermont Rideshare.
The Commuter train to Charlotte VT. DID carry 500 people a day which was not bad for one train with 4 trips a day. If I remember Erie-Laccawanna train to Youngstown OH from Cleveland had that amount. If they extented the train to Essex and Mountpeiler and Middlebury VT they might have had 3,000- 4,000 people a day
I I remember right the artical talked about moving Tourists more then Commuters.
Heritage Trolleys I belive makes the most sence when you have to move massave amounts of people to special events like ballgames and concerts. The problem happens when ordanary commuters who dont take the train have to contend with with rush hour as they are trying like hell to get out of downtown and they come head on at 5:15 with already stoked up baseball fans coming into downtown. Heritage streetcars coupled with well planned satilite parking can be stratigy to seperate the two.
Most commuter trains, light rail cars, streetcars, buses, subway trans, entering the central business districts during the morning rush hours ARE FULL. This is not a “liberal assumption” but a fact (and I am a conservative who did by best to campaign for Bush anyway) Most cars entering the central business districts during the morning rush hours have one driver and also, about 20% of them, one passenger. Again, this isn’t a liberal assumption but a fact. Sure, the average car could carry five or even six, but the don’t.
Modern cities could not function without subsidized public transportation. So then the argument comes down to what is best for a particular situation/route.
I don’t know when it became written in stone that we don’t have any room to expand the freeways. We have gobs of room around Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I have heard that for the billion dollars that we spent on our 12-mile light rail hobby, we could have added another lane to the entire ring freeway, bridges and all. And a lack of room certainly did not stop the light rail project. We rearranged half of downtown to shoehorn that in.
That’s why the KRM Metra extension isn’t really intended for people wanting to do a full Milwaukee-to-Chicago commute. Rather, it is intended for inter-subruban commutes or subruban-to-city commutes (Racine to Milwaukee, Oak Creek to Kenosha, etc.).
I don’t know when it became written in stone that we don’t have any room to expand the freeways. We have gobs of room around Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I have heard that for the billion dollars that we spent on our 12-mile light rail hobby, we could have added another lane to the entire ring freeway, bridges and all. And a lack of room certainly did not stop the light rail project. We rearranged half of downtown to shoehorn that in.
[/quote]
From a google search
" Taxpayers have spent well over $800 million on 394 – and congestion in the western suburbs gets worse every year."
Bert
From a google search
" Taxpayers have spent well over $800 million on 394 – and congestion in the western suburbs gets worse every year."
Bert
[/quote]
Bert,
The 394 improvement is not in use, or even finished yet, so I don’t know how you can judge its impact on traffic in the western suburbs.
In general, if money is spent on roads, and traffic is still getting worse, they need to spend more to keep up with the problem or get ahead of it.
They just spent $1billion on the Hiawatha LRT, and its effect on traffic is so small that it cannot be measured. If they had put that money into the roads, there would have been a BIG improvment in traffic flow.
Yeah, add another lane. That’ll really help. By the time that is done - OOPS - we need another two!
We need to be proactive…not reactve. Adding lanes is not the answer. We have been doing that for decades and all it has gotten us is congestion.
(Yes I do realize the suburbs and exurbs add people, but if there weren’t 10 lane highways everywhere, maybe those suburbs and exburbs wouldn’t be so rampant)
Yeah, add another lane. That’ll really help. By the time that is done - OOPS - we need another two!
We need to be proactive…not reactve. Adding lanes is not the answer. We have been doing that for decades and all it has gotten us is congestion.
(Yes I do realize the suburbs and exurbs add people, but if there weren’t 10 lane highways everywhere, maybe those suburbs and exburbs wouldn’t be so rampant)
Its odd that in places that already have estished commuter rail systems thats extension of commuter rail has been blamed for causing sprawl
There are many areas where there is physicaly no more room for either more lanes or even more cars downtown. There is a very specific reason NYC is considering adding another train tunnel and not another auto bridge. London has a toll/tax per car to even enter downtown in the evening and morning rush hour to discourage anymore traffic downtown as there is just no more room for anymore cars. Maybe if the weather was more attractive in the Twin Cities enough people would move there too so your infrastucture would be at the breaking point? [?] [:-^]
Where I-5 and I-405 merge in Orange County, CA, at one point the resulting freeway is 26 lanes wide, 13 each way. And, twice a day, it is the location of one of the worst rush hour traffic jams. Adding lanes won’t work for long: the new capacity merely generates more traffic.
And, in South Pasadena, Caltrans has given up on trying to complete the 710 freeway on the surface. Due to the soaring cost of real estate they have concluded that it would be cheaper to dig a 5 mle tunnel (freeway wide) to link with the 210.
Meanwhile, increasing MetroLink, light rail, and subway usage has resulted in LA Union Station handling over 40,000 passengers per day.
Jack
Ahh yes, the famed “orange crush”
Exactly my point. How many commuters with ride this line? And the few that would ride it would be better served by a bus, which could bring them closer in to town.
I am not anti-rail by any means, and I would love to see trains on those tracks again. It is just that the cost of rebuilding the line north of Kenosha will be absurdly high (it is now only good for 40mph in a few spots, is all jointed rail, and has no signal system). I would rather see those funds go to something more practical.
Only 40,000? That is a drop in the bucket for what is the Nations Second Largest City.
Chicago and New Yorks systems handles Hundreds of thousands a day
It’s a pretty simple set-up. The spine is a commuter rail line serving the downtown areas of the lakefront communities (all of which are in the midst of revitalization and reinvestment with residential, offices, and retail–which equals new potential riders and detinations for those riders); the branches off this rail spine would be bus routes that run to outlying neighborhoods and other places like industrial/offfice parkls on the fringes where the trains don’t reach.
There are most definitiely people out there now who commute between various points within the corridor who would gladly take a train rather than drive their car to work, or to shop. And they’re not always older people who were around when the North Shore or C&NW commuter trains were still running…they’re also younger people, and newcomers, who never knew such things had even existed at one time.
Running a commuter bus line through those same communities instead might indeed be cheaper to implement, but that too has its drawbacks. Obviously to link those communities, they’d have to use a road…most likely Hwy 32 since it passes through all of them and runs through each of thier downtowns. But buses have to contend with other traffic on the road, as well as stoplights, and they must spend time twisting and turning along the surface streets as the road winds its way through all the towns. With the railroad, however, all of the