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How America Killed Transit

citylab.com

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Re: How America Killed Transit

#71

Post by njarboe »

bobthepanda wrote: post #69
njarboe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single passenger vehicle could have a parking footprint about 1/10th of what they currently have. My hope is that we could have electric bikes that are like a mountain bike, can go in bike lanes (at slow speed) or on the street but can go fast enough to take on a freeway.

A single passenger vehicle could have this. The (American) market has shown that people overwhelmingly do not like small personal cars when presented with other options, without the distorting effect of subsidies and tax breaks.

Unfortunately there has been a 25% import tax on trucks since the 1970's and only a 2.5% tax on import cars. Is it any wonder that somehow(marketing for decades) people have been convinced that only losers would drive a minivan (counted as a car).

If someone like Apple or another new company could make a one passenger car really cool looking and inexpensive (Say $5-10k), probably electric, small enough so a least two go into a regular parking space, and a way that those people can share spots, it might just take off. Imagine that when you went to the city, if you see an empty spot in your mini transport, you park. No spots? Well you can park with someone else with a mini (and share the price). Set this sharing up in software and let the cars automatically switch positions, if needed, and I think you could have a real winner. Maybe three or six could fit in one spot. Electric cars sucked and only really strange, low status, people drove them. Post Tesla, I would say that is not the case any more. Similar thing could work here.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#72

Post by njarboe »

lylecubed wrote: post #61
njarboe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single passenger vehicle could have a parking footprint about 1/10th of what they currently have. My hope is that we could have electric bikes that are like a mountain bike, can go in bike lanes (at slow speed) or on the street but can go fast enough to take on a freeway.

There's no way to make ebikes safe at 70mph. Plus, quite a bit of the US is under snow 4-6 months of the year.

As safe as a smallish motor cycle? I would think so. But "safe"? The word describes a feeling a person has, so unless you specify some kind of measurable metric, like "50% of the population would feel safe using it" or fatalities per mile would never be less than 3 times that of cars, using it is just you personal feeling about things. Useful to you but not so useful to people that don't know what safe means to you.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#73

Post by njarboe »

adrianN wrote: post #66
njarboe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can scale with tunnels. I also suggested congestion pricing in my last paragraph. Having congestion pricing on highways is also a good idea because it can reveal the price people are willing to pay for uncongested travel. That gives people an idea on how much a tunnel could make and motivate spending money on building it.

You can scale a lot better if you put trains in those tunnels.

How about trains of vehicles that are automatically driven, can spit apart and only pieces with people in that that want to stop, stop, and the rest of the train just keeps moving? You could even let people pay extra to have a train car just to themselves and their friends. It would never have to stop for other people and go directly to where the group of people wanted to go. These train cars could even be designed to run on public streets and you could take it from the train tracks onto the road system. People could maybe, if they thought it was worth it, even own their individual train cars. They might like to carry around lots of stuff or pick up some furniture or a pile of groceries. Who knows. With such flexible train cars, most people might like using the train.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#74

Post by bobthepanda »

njarboe wrote: post #71
bobthepanda wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single passenger vehicle could have this. The (American) market has shown that people overwhelmingly do not like small personal cars when presented with other options, without the distorting effect of subsidies and tax breaks.

Unfortunately there has been a 25% import tax on trucks since the 1970's and only a 2.5% tax on import cars. Is it any wonder that somehow(marketing for decades) people have been convinced that only losers would drive a minivan (counted as a car). If someone like Apple or another new company could make a one passenger car really cool looking and inexpensive (Say $5-10k), probably electric, small enough so a least two…

I mean, there are still small status cars with good marketing (Mini) and those are not really that small, nor do they sell as well as large cars.

You can blame it on marketing, but it's still a problem. What you're proposing just moves cars into the "small, cheap, and shabby" category; people buy cars for status, not just economics.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#75

Post by lylecubed »

njarboe wrote: post #72
lylecubed wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way to make ebikes safe at 70mph. Plus, quite a bit of the US is under snow 4-6 months of the year.

As safe as a smallish motor cycle? I would think so. But "safe"? The word describes a feeling a person has, so unless you specify some kind of measurable metric, like "50% of the population would feel safe using it" or fatalities per mile would never be less than 3 times that of cars, using it is just you personal feeling about things. Useful to you but not so useful to people that don't know what safe means to you.

> As safe as a smallish motor cycle? I would think so.

No. Compare even a beefed up e-bike like the greyp to a smaller motorcycle like a Suzuki DR-Z400 SM. The wheels, fork, frame, rear swingarm, geometry and rake are all different. They need to be to handle freeway speeds safely. By the time you've souped up an ebike to be as safe as a motorcycle at high speed, you've converted it into a motorcycle. Those same changes make it less nimble, and therefore less useful, as a mountain bike. I'm not sure I would mix even small motorcycles in with bicycles on a public road.

> Useful to you but not so useful to people that don't know what safe means to you.

I'm an avid motorcyclist, but most people are not. They don't feel comfortable going those speeds unless they have a cage lined with airbags around them. The fatality statistics suggest they're not crazy for wanting such a thing.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#76

Post by CamperBob2 »

shirakawasuna wrote: post #58
burfog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads do. Compare the size of the gap between vehicles. Fixed rail is a really inefficient use of land. Most of the time, the rail is just sitting there without a train anywhere in sight. It is normal for the rail to be idle for long periods of time. The density of a packed-full train does not make up for this. Of course, many systems are running trains that are far from being packed full.

Roads, which is the default everywhere, have literally the least capacity. Single-occupancy vehicles have the worst, followed by normal buses, followed by rapid transit buses, followed by rail.

Trains already work as well as they possibly can. There is no room for improvement in fixed rail, no space for progress. Fixed rail is, well, fixed. If it doesn't exist where you are at the moment, or go where you want to go, that's too bad.

And if everyone achieves their dream of living next to a fixed rail station, as advocated so enthusiastically in this thread, this is what their homes will look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdzJpM-EMNg&feature=youtu.be Or does everyone on here just naturally assume the penthouse with the tennis court and helipad will be theirs?

Conversely, if you can look at a crowded, congested city full of automotive traffic and think, "This is as well as this system can possibly work," I have to wonder what you're doing on a site called Hacker News.

What a single road lacks in capacity, it makes up by being part of a larger network. In every other context on HN, that's considered a good thing. When it comes to transportation, not so much. I will never understand that.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#77

Post by CamperBob2 »

adrianN wrote: post #65
burfog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads do. Compare the size of the gap between vehicles. Fixed rail is a really inefficient use of land. Most of the time, the rail is just sitting there without a train anywhere in sight. It is normal for the rail to be idle for long periods of time. The density of a packed-full train does not make up for this. Of course, many systems are running trains that are far from being packed full.

You're comparing roads that run at full capacity to rails that are basically unused. Heavily used lines have intervals of less than two minutes between trains and the trains are absolutely packed during rush hour. No road can compete with that. Imagine these people would each occupy a car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMZhQLhcB08 Take note of the intervals between trains.

Never mind that the reason all those people are crammed into one train is that that's where the train is. (Also, I have to ask, are you trying to sell me on this lifestyle, or trying to scare me into further entrenching my existing beliefs?)

In other areas of life, deliberately creating bottlenecks is frowned upon.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#78

Post by CamperBob2 »

EliRivers wrote: post #56
CamperBob2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone can live near a road, if they wish to do so, and most people do. Not everyone can live near a train station. Seems like this should be obvious, but...

... but you must be thinking in a different context or have a different set of assumptions to other people, given that it's presumably not obvious if you've had to say it. Here's an opportunity for everyone involved to expand their minds by trying to understand other people's assumptions, axioms and contexts.

The context is reality. The assumptions are necessarily biased. And the axioms are those of Euclid ("There's only so much space next to the train station") and Pauli ("It's already full.").

Re: How America Killed Transit

#79

Post by CamperBob2 »

EliRivers wrote: post #55
CamperBob2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life living next to a train station, and the rest of your career working next to a different one? Didn't think so.

What counts as "next to"? I've lived within ten minutes walk of two or three different stations for the last thirty years, and I've worked within fifteen minutes walk of one for the last twenty years over a number of different jobs. When I'm considering where to live and where to work, I won't consider a house more than ten minutes away or a workplace more than fifteen, and have rejected houses and jobs on that basis…

When I'm considering where to live and where to work, I won't consider a house more than ten minutes away or a workplace more than fifteen, and have rejected houses and jobs on that basis in the past. I'm not alone.

A cynic might say something like, "Fine. Enjoy Kowloon. Just don't make the rest of us endure it or pay for it," but I'll refrain on the grounds that it's more provocative and less respectful than I want to sound. But my counterargument would definitely be along those lines.

At the end of the day, rail scales in only one dimension, while roads scale in two. That's important, IMO. Cities should not dictate the movement of people and goods; it should be the other way around.

Re: How America Killed Transit

#80

Post by MrMorden »

bobthepanda wrote: post #74
njarboe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there has been a 25% import tax on trucks since the 1970's and only a 2.5% tax on import cars. Is it any wonder that somehow(marketing for decades) people have been convinced that only losers would drive a minivan (counted as a car). If someone like Apple or another new company could make a one passenger car really cool looking and inexpensive (Say $5-10k), probably electric, small enough so a least two…

I mean, there are still small status cars with good marketing (Mini) and those are not really that small, nor do they sell as well as large cars. You can blame it on marketing, but it's still a problem. What you're proposing just moves cars into the "small, cheap, and shabby" category; people buy cars for status, not just economics.

The current MINIs' size is, for the most part, dictated by safety requirements. They don't sell as well as large cars because they're BMWs and are priced accordingly.

Kei cars (which are similar in size to the classic Mini) do sell large volumes in Japan and are quite cheap, but they don't meet the aforementioned safety requirements (in either the US or EU) and their sales numbers are heavily inflated because you don't need proof of off-street parking to register one.

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