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The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

nytimes.com

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Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#31

Post by LeanderK »

flexie wrote: post #10

The article doesn't really mention that most of these expansions will be ready 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed). If you buy a house in an LA suburb hoping that you will soon get subway nearby, you might get it once the mortgage is paid out and the kids have left for college. What will the technology be like in 20-40 years? Everybody surely have cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices a…

> 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed)

that seems to be unreasonably long. In germany, both the city I am studying at and the city I was born are undertaking big changes in their transportation infrastructure, and both don't take that long. In munich, building just started and is expected to last unit 2026 [1]. And we always complain that it's taking too long to plan and build!

40 years seems to be crazy! You would have to start repairing the old stuff when the whole project is finished.

Or are you talking about the whole process, including the financing? Then it's more understandable, many big project here also stall for 20 years until everyone has enough money and the political will to follow through. But I thought the financing is covered due to the sales-tax increase.

While it's easy to complain about projects not moving for 20 years, the sums are often quite enourmus and i am not sure whether inefficiencies are to blame, or whether gathering enough money just takes a long time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunk_line_2_(Munich_S-Bahn)

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#32

Post by wastedhours »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #12
xrd wrote: post #2

Can anyone in other west coast cities speak about the crime on the new transit systems? I'm in Portland, and for the first time in my life, I'm worried about crime on mass transit. Maybe it is just the automated news feeds that are circulating stories of stabbings and attacks that have heightened my internalized hysteria. At the same time, I've felt a larger presence of people on mass transit who seem to be dealing w…

When I listen to my friends that ride buses and BART the major complaint is people doing utterly foul things like pissing or shitting. Or being harassed. Being harrased depends a lot on sex age etc. My GF's who looks like she lives in Walnut Creek gets harassed. Me who looks like an old skinny biker does not. Got to remember BART carries around 400,000 riders a day, 365 days a year.

> people doing utterly foul things like pissing or shitting

Based on my (very limited) experience of SF, that seems like an area-wide issue. I've travelled reasonably extensively and SF is the only place I've been where I've suspected more of the shit on the path (inside and out) was human than canine.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#34

Post by pcr0 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #12
xrd wrote: post #2

Can anyone in other west coast cities speak about the crime on the new transit systems? I'm in Portland, and for the first time in my life, I'm worried about crime on mass transit. Maybe it is just the automated news feeds that are circulating stories of stabbings and attacks that have heightened my internalized hysteria. At the same time, I've felt a larger presence of people on mass transit who seem to be dealing w…

When I listen to my friends that ride buses and BART the major complaint is people doing utterly foul things like pissing or shitting. Or being harassed. Being harrased depends a lot on sex age etc. My GF's who looks like she lives in Walnut Creek gets harassed. Me who looks like an old skinny biker does not. Got to remember BART carries around 400,000 riders a day, 365 days a year.

Beijing's subway carries over 10m passengers a day and definitely has less harassment and human excrement.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#35

Post by Shivetya »

dangwu wrote: post #4

I’m surprised by this article. Most people seem to agree that the the metro systems of NYC, Philadelphia, and DC are much better than those of the west coast. LA’s is unusable for most people because there aren’t enough stops. Seattle’s light rail is definitely gaining steam as it adds more stops.

Well one part they don't discuss is ridership numbers increased as the number of in town jobs increased, not because they built out their systems. Plus when factoring in increased rail ridership much can be found in decreased bus usage. In some cities they reduce routes to force the issue.

Plus none of these systems brings in enough in fares to cover a majority of their expenses let alone put a dent in their deferred backlogs. Instead the new angle is to go after rider sharing services with new fees and you can bet the scooter invasion is ripe for taxation.

I do find it interesting they talk about the recent surge in EV scooters as being a benefit. I wonder who led that charge. I was amazed that just one company has twelve thousand scooters in the NYC area! Public planners cannot easily factor those in and given NYC weather where to these end up in winter?

If you want to see the statistics as reported to the Federal Government on ridership numbers and cost per mile check out the spreadsheets at [1] the FTA

California transit numbers show a decline and that two thirds and more are by bus in a 2018 June report. Plus the percentage [2]. A large share of the systems need replacement and this is not factored into new taxes. Throw in the transit only reduces emissions per mile when compared to solo drivers but worse those numbers are moving close to parity as cars become more efficient

Mass transit is a good idea but technology is rapidly displacing it and it only appears cheap because riders don't pay but a fraction of the cost. In fact most are paid by people who cannot even make use of it

[1] https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/monthly-module-...

[2] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3860

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#36

Post by flexie »

LeanderK wrote: post #31
flexie wrote: post #10

The article doesn't really mention that most of these expansions will be ready 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed). If you buy a house in an LA suburb hoping that you will soon get subway nearby, you might get it once the mortgage is paid out and the kids have left for college. What will the technology be like in 20-40 years? Everybody surely have cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices a…

> 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed) that seems to be unreasonably long. In germany, both the city I am studying at and the city I was born are undertaking big changes in their transportation infrastructure, and both don't take that long. In munich, building just started and is expected to last unit 2026 [1]. And we always complain that it's taking too long to plan and build! 40 years seems to be crazy! You…

It's simply the planning of it. A lot of the 100 mile expansion is not planned to start until 10-20-30 years from now. I guess that's due to financing.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#37

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Klonoar wrote: post #22
tallanvor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that places like Seattle and LA are expanding their systems. In New York, Boston, and DC it's rather stagnant.

Having lived in both Seattle and DC... this is wrong, at least comparing those two. DC managed to build a new line out to Dulles with others in the works, Seattle's light rail is a joke if you're trying to use it for more than a straight line through the city. A common misconception people have about the DC metro is that it belongs to DC, but the abbreviation WMATA has nothing to do with DC for a reason. Maryland, Vi…

Boston supposedly has the north/south station rail connector project under way again. It's only been half a century. I'll believe it when I see it. Even then I won't ride on it for a few years in case the ceiling falls down.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#38

Post by pishpash »

romwell wrote: post #13

Hahaha. I lived in Brooklyn, I lived on Long Island, spent a summer in Seattle, and I live in San Jose now. One can't speak for the entirety of the either coast, but no city in CA comes close to what NYC offers in terms of public transportation. And what NYC offers is a true car-free lifestyle which carries you to work, leisure, and back home via public transport. E-scooters aren't a reliable way to get anywhere yet,…

Yes, NYC is pretty much the only "city" in the US when viewed at global scale, that much is well known. Every other city may as well be podunk.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#39

Post by pishpash »

bobthepanda wrote: post #16
romwell wrote: post #13

Hahaha. I lived in Brooklyn, I lived on Long Island, spent a summer in Seattle, and I live in San Jose now. One can't speak for the entirety of the either coast, but no city in CA comes close to what NYC offers in terms of public transportation. And what NYC offers is a true car-free lifestyle which carries you to work, leisure, and back home via public transport. E-scooters aren't a reliable way to get anywhere yet,…

Seattle actually has extremely high transit ridership and walk commmute share, which is pretty impressive considering how the transit system is mostly buses right now. And by 2024, major centers in the region will be connected by rail transit that is faster than road travel. Anecdotally, I live pretty well without a car here; I use Uber and Lyft when transit don't work out, and if I want to hike usually one of my fri…

I think there is an objective measure here. Just plot a 30-minute transit radius around the centers of various cities and you'll get a sense of the transit size of the city vs. covered population. Some cities are notoriously "small," like SF, despite it being on some best-to-live-without-car lists. You can't go very far before practically needing a car: so what if you can get there by transit if it takes 1-2 hours and inconsistently? NYC, Boston are "large." Seattle is even worse than SF in this regard.

Transit is all about density. There is no way the west coast can beat the east coast in transit practicality for another 100 years.

Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?

#40

Post by tokyodude »

pcr0 wrote: post #34
Gibbon1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I listen to my friends that ride buses and BART the major complaint is people doing utterly foul things like pissing or shitting. Or being harassed. Being harrased depends a lot on sex age etc. My GF's who looks like she lives in Walnut Creek gets harassed. Me who looks like an old skinny biker does not. Got to remember BART carries around 400,000 riders a day, 365 days a year.

Beijing's subway carries over 10m passengers a day and definitely has less harassment and human excrement.

Tokyo's rail transit is at 40m passengers a day. We don't have the poo. We do have occasional vomit from drunk salary men. Fortunately it gets cleaned up relatively quickly. The cars are clean unlike SF.
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