It wasn’t a trick question. I realize that a lot of people do not ride transit because it is not available everywhere.
[quote user=“Bucyrus”]
ontheBNSF:
Bucyrus:
ontheBNSF:
And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways.
If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don’t people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to?
because public transit doesn’t simply exist in high enough frequency for most and in enough places. You can’t pull “if it is so good argument why don’t people use it” when people simply aren’t given the choice and it isn’t available. Kinda a dumb argument.
It wasn’t a trick question.
Why couldn’t you just run the 100 people in their cars single file in a single lane? That is kind of what the bus would be doing.
you end up with this thing called gridlock and congestion thus you need more lanes. You are trying to go against simple geography.
A personal example - I am supposed to start commuting to Santa Ana in three weeks and have little desire to drive there on a daily basis. The good news is that I’m 4 miles from Amtrak’s Solana Beach station, so getting to/from that station will be easy. The almost as good news is that the NB morning express train takes 56 minutes to get from Solana Beach to Irvine. The bad news is that taking public transit from the station to the office in Santa Ana will take close to an hour, though the company is looking into other options for that part of the trip…
- Erik
Gridlock is just a word for a lack of capacity. That can happen with any form of transportation.
You have to consider that although you can compress more people into a rail line flow than a highway lane flow, the rail line costs a lot more than a traffic lane. And you need a train too.
And moving people is not just like moving high tonnage bulk materials when it comes to efficiency.
But suppose you had rail everywhere people wanted to go, any time they wanted to ride. What percentage of people driving cars would quit driving and ride rail?
I hope this will not happen!
Who raises the cattle, who builds the truck that ships it to the meat packing plant on roads or rails built by whom? Who delivers it to your supermarket and builds the car you use to go there? A healthy economy needs all three sectors - agriculture, industry and the service sector to serve those two. Unfortunately, we tend to forget this. We will always need transport, be it private or public.
I think that ontheBNSF’s post of 7/24/12 suffers from a very common misconception of what most electric interurban railroads were. The vast majority of interurban railroads would not be useful today (and, in fact, ceased to be useful by the late 1920’s or early 1930’s).
When people today think of “interurbans” (if they think of them at all), they understandably think of properties like the Pacific Electric in California, the North Shore, South Shore and the CA&E in Chicago, the Illinois Terminal in central Illinois and a handful of other properties which survived into the 1950’s or 1960’s. These were NOT typical interurbans. They were special cases which often represented a morphing of a property that started out as an interurban into something else. That’s most clearly the case with Pacific Electric, South Shore and Illinois Terminal, which morphed into very important freight railroads (a type of service most interurban railroads were incapable of providing). The Pacific Electric was actually controlled by the Southern Pacific raillroad for most of the 20th century. Railroads like South Shore, North Shore and CA&E (and Pacific Electric, on some of its lines) were also able to morph into major commuter lines because of entries into their principal cities which were free of lengthy running on city streets (the NSL, SSL and CA&E avoided any street running in Chicago; IT had ver
the south shore did survive as a combination profitable freight railroad (the other two Insull interubans did not have sufficient freight business and other commutor railroads were parrallel) and a subsidized (as usual) commuter railroad. Commuter railroads are subsidized because the land costs and constructions costs would be astronomical for highway transportation if the railroad service did not exist. But nearly all their passengers own cars. Used for pleasure instead of commuting. Like the average Sweiss and German, and with increased urbanization and congestion, possibly some day the average American. Cities like New York and Chicago would practially shut down without their “L” or subways and their commuter railroads…
I think St. Louis’ lite rail revival was fortunate to be able to utilize a former freight line tunnel under the downtown.
Well, here’s a new wrinkle on the transit demand.
In Northern New Jersey, specifically in Bergen County, there’s a bit of a flap going on about the revitalization of a freight line, CSXs Northern Branch, into a New Jersey Transit light rail commuter line. It’s the old Erie Northern Branch that runs through North Bergen, Fairview, Ridgefield, Palisades Park, Leonia, Englewood, and Tenafly. All the aforementioned towns want it once parking and traffic concerns are addressed, but not Tenafly. The Tenafly “Antis” are trotting out all the NIMBY arguments: noise, traffic, “it’ll run over our kids”, you name it. Unspoken is the worry it’ll bring in “undesireables”, ignoring the fact said “undesireables” don’t need NJ Transit to get where they want to be. Use your own imaginations to figure out “undesireables”, I won’t elaborate.
Ironic, since Tenafly is a child of the old Erie to begin with. My father grew up in Tenafly in the 30’s and 40’s and I asked him “Hey Dad, when you were a kid the trains ran through town about every 25-30 minutes. How many kids got run over?” “None”, said Dad, “we weren’t stupid!”
The terms being discussed have to be identified and defined. Public transit…in my mind it means transit agencies like rapid transit, light rail and commuter bus or train operations under the umbrella of a government sponsord or supported orginization. But the term could also be construed to mean any and all forms of transportation no matter what the form of owners or operators or even distances travelled.
Under my definition of public transit my conclusion is that it has not failed but is very alive and kicking. There are new routes and systems being developed in major and minor cities across the country and passenger counts up in existing situations. This is for bus, subway, light rail and commuter operations…ride any of them sometime, rush hour, midday, or weekends: you’ll find them well used point to point and every point in between, sometimes even to the use of standing room only!
Amtrak, that’s a political soccer ball well discussed many times, many ways, all over these posts.
But by your question, do you mean, why does private enterprise not flourish by opertaing these services? That, too is often discussed here.
One of the reasons that urban public transit is no longer a private enterprise is that it no longer enjoys the near monopoly it had prior to the 1920’s. The private automobile, overly restrictive regulation concerning fares and high labor and capital costs all contributed to the demise of public transit as a privately-operated non-subsidized operation.
Well, not everybody will telecommute. Industries like transportation fundamentally require the performers to be moving from one point to another. Agriculture already requires no commuting, so that is not a candidate for telecommuting. The same is true for construction j
[quote user=“Bucyrus”]
Sir Madog:
Bucyrus:
I think the problem of traffic and commuting will be solved by just ending commuting, rather than commuting by train. We are quickly becoming a service / information economy. People will just stay home and do their work on the Internet. This nonsense of driving off to work every day will seem like a relic of the horse and buggy era.
I hope this will not happen!
Who raises the cattle, who builds the truck that ships it to the meat packing plant on roads or rails built by whom? Who delivers it to your supermarket and builds the car you use to go there? A healthy economy needs all three sectors - agriculture, industry and the service sector to serve those two. Unfortunately, we tend to forget this. We will always need transport, be it private or public.
Well, not everybody will telecommute. Industries like transportation fundamentally require the performers to be moving from one point to another.
The trend is a decline of U.S. manufacturing. And perhaps you need to be reminded that the forum rules do not permit us to insult each other.
Telework has more sticking points than projected.
I telework with some regularity. My work laptop has different (older) versions of all the software I use in the office. You can immediately see how that’s an issue. Authenticating sessions is a hassle, and they time out regularly. Response times fall because I can’t lean back in my chair and yell at someone two cubes down. Accessing, controlling, and securing sensitive data is an issue.
Just from my own experiences, I can’t imagine not going into the office less than four days a week. My entire team had to telework recently because of construction in our building. We gathered together in conference room in another building instead of working from our houses.
I have lived among a very pro computer lifestyle society many of who believe what Buycrus says even their paternal leader said “people think, machines work”. Some work I do used to need a studio in order to do the complete job…now, 95% of the work can be done away from the studio, for some even 100% with the right equipment. But I don’t think that that is going to be a way much manufacturing will be done in the future. My grandmother used to sew socks and things doing piece work at home for a large factory back in the teens and twenties…but that is not what the future of industry is going to be. There will be commuting for industry and there is a consequence of quality, integrity, creativity and productivity that I think comes about in a physical group activity. I do not discount the idea of fewer commuter rides but do wonder about how such a social change will bring about a return to mom and pop agriculutral pursuits?
manufacturing is returning to the USA as energy prices fall, read oil shale and natural gas, and as living standards in currently low-wage countries rise binging rises in wages. More andmore USA companies are taking Henry Ford’s position when he first hired people for his newfangled assembly line and other manufacturers complained about the high wages he paid. Innovaton is better and quicker when the whole force of a particular company is motivated, not just the top brass.
I would say that the return of manufacturing to the U.S. is largely wishful thinking at this point. Energy is priced on the world market, so why would cheaper energy cause job growth in the U.S. in particular? If energy prices fall for the U.S., they will also fall for China.
Business follows opportunity, and when the third world suddenly was capable of competing for manufacturing, U.S. businesses followed the opportunity to China. Now the third world is offering another kind of opportunity in the form of a better business climate than the U.S. The U.S. is facing the prospect of rising taxes and regulations, and this discourages investment, and results in a poorer business climate.
I speculate that the impetus that caused jobs to leave for lower wages in the third world will not be nearly as strong as the motivation for jobs to leave