11–18 of 18 posts
Then tax cars on the road to reduce congestion as the busses use the road more efficiently.
Do municipalities collect and release any data on how people move around the area? For example, start and end points, with usual times for leaving or arriving. A large enough sampling of something like this seems important for planning, and I assume the real planners have it.
Here's something I've been thinking about recently. Why can't we replace public transit with automatically routed busses? You could order a bus like you would an Uber, and the bus would automatically come up with the most efficient route to meet everyone's demand. Then tax cars on the road to reduce congestion as the busses use the road more efficiently.
Do municipalities collect and release any data on how people move around the area? For example, start and end points, with usual times for leaving or arriving. A large enough sampling of something like this seems important for planning, and I assume the real planners have it.
I feel like Ggogle should be altruistic and donate Maps usage data for this purpose.
The peninsula routes drawn are not fantasy at all, the stations in San Jose are already determined and are being worked on
This will likely take 90 minutes or so to get from SJ to SF, which is a Had they ran BART up the peninsula, which takes Caltrain 1 hour 10 mins to get from Diridon in downtown SJ to the Millbrae station, which again doesn't get you into but only close to the airport, the BART could have likely made it in less than 1 hour, making it somewhat useful if you wanted to get from SJ to SFO without taking a $150 cab ride or taking 2 hours and 3 separate fares door-to-door going Uber -> Diridon - Caltrain -> Millbrae -> BART SFO connector.
By running BART down the east bay, they're also limiting the options for going useful places on the peninsula. Only Caltrain could get you from e.g. SJ to Palo Alto. If you want to go to Stanford and you start at the SJ Caltrain stop (so, best-case) you're looking at 60 minutes of travel to cover 15 miles and a 30 minute walk from Caltrain to Stanford once you get off.
For as many people as the Bay Area has, and for as much money as the Bay Area has, our public transit really doesn't work for many use-cases, and we pay for that with our time spent in traffic, along with all the accidents, pollution, and stress that brings. Drunk driving deaths are also caused because people have no good way to get home after BART and Caltrain stop running at midnight.
Elect me and I'll declare eminent domain on the NIMBYs in the peninsula and build 4 tracks of BART so it can run 24x7 all around the bay, from Santa Cruz up to Tiburon, from Santa Rosa down to Gilroy, with a Sacramento connector. And I'll make the billionaires and local corporations who currently off-shore corporate and capital gains taxes pay for it.
Here's something I've been thinking about recently. Why can't we replace public transit with automatically routed busses? You could order a bus like you would an Uber, and the bus would automatically come up with the most efficient route to meet everyone's demand. Then tax cars on the road to reduce congestion as the busses use the road more efficiently.
Really, you'd need to do these both at once and getting support for such a thing would be extraordinarily difficult without it being proven first.
Also, I doubt it could work as well or better than trams/streetcars in dense areas. I mean the model used by trams/light rail in European cities (the one that comes to my mind is Zurich) rather than that used by Muni. In Zurich there's a stop every 2-3 blocks and it'll usually have a tram coming within a few minutes. I've seen cities were a wait longer than 3 minutes during the day is rare.
A bus like you describe would certainly be more convenient (it can turn and go down streets without rails, as well as come to pick me up) but I'm not sure it would be better overall (the pickup costs time that's lost by the current passengers of the bus for example).
Here's something I've been thinking about recently. Why can't we replace public transit with automatically routed busses? You could order a bus like you would an Uber, and the bus would automatically come up with the most efficient route to meet everyone's demand. Then tax cars on the road to reduce congestion as the busses use the road more efficiently.
The first part doesn't work so well without the second part (buses are terrible on congested roads) and the second part is unlikely to work well without the first (who'd accept that tax?). Really, you'd need to do these both at once and getting support for such a thing would be extraordinarily difficult without it being proven first. Also, I doubt it could work as well or better than trams/streetcars in dense areas.…
Well we could solve the second two problems, and not needing rails seems like an advantage.
Do municipalities collect and release any data on how people move around the area? For example, start and end points, with usual times for leaving or arriving. A large enough sampling of something like this seems important for planning, and I assume the real planners have it.
I feel like Ggogle should be altruistic and donate Maps usage data for this purpose.