For the West Coast, the simplest solution is electric buses with dedicated lanes. Buses better serve the existing low density sprawl than trains. Lack of infrastructure is not the problem, the roads are already built. The real problem of course is lack of political will. Every road with two lanes gets at least one dedicated bus lane. Single occupant traffic would slow to a crawl making the buses faster. Buses would run on time because they have an empty lane. Additional bus routes would be added everywhere, paid for by significant increases to gas taxes. It would certainly work and be more efficient than our current mess, but of course would never be politically viable.
The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
71–80 of 205 posts
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Here in NYC we've been living off the investments of past generations for a long time, not even maintaining it adequately. That's a recent development. The MTA hit its peak of reliability and performance about a decade ago. Since 2010, which coincidentally is the exact time that Cuomo took office, things have plummeted.
It actually was a coincidence, as the practices leading inevitably to the current situation have been going on for decades.
> It actually was a coincidence, as the practices leading inevitably to the current situation have been going on for decades.
It's true that the corruption within the MTA and TWU have been around for decades, but it's not true at all that it's a coincidence that everything started to go downhill as soon as Cuomo took office.
Cuomo literally does not believe that it is his job to oversee a statewide agency, despite the fact that every other governor - including his own father, when his father was governor - have taken on this responsibility.
Unsurprisingly, when the public official in charge absolves themselves of responsibility for holding the MTA and TWU accountable, things fall apart pretty quickly.
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#73The 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…
> What will the technology be like in 20-40 years?
> Everybody surely have cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices and airbag helmets.
> Few, if any, combustion engine cars
> Truly self driving cars
If history has taught us anything, it's that technological progress is orders of magnitude slower than people expect. The infrastructure of NYC, LA, Seattle, San Francisco, etc will not look much different in 2059 than it does today.
We'll probably still be using JavaScript, too. :/
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#74Earlier 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…
don't forget the purple line in dc
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#75The 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…
I’m from an LA suburb. I’m able to get to Santa Monica/Culver City, LAX, and J-Town just with light rail and a free transfer depending on where I need to go. In terms of time efficiency, it’s comparable to driving (faster than driving/parking in rush hour but not as fast during off hours).
LA metro is dropping track like crazy and way more usable than it used to be. And it’s cheap. $1.75 each way or monthly pass.
Tl;dr it’s awesome now and getting better!
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#76How about beating Europe or Asia?
> How about beating Europe or Asia? London is the only city in Europe that even comes close to offering what NYC alone does in terms of public transit. Even Berlin, the second largest city in the EU, has pitiful public transit in comparison.
I think London has a greater ridership (5m tube, 6m bus) than NY (5m subway, 3m bus - http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/). Buses really are the secret to how London gets around.
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#77For the West Coast, the simplest solution is electric buses with dedicated lanes. Buses better serve the existing low density sprawl than trains. Lack of infrastructure is not the problem, the roads are already built. The real problem of course is lack of political will. Every road with two lanes gets at least one dedicated bus lane. Single occupant traffic would slow to a crawl making the buses faster. Buses would r…
Dedicated lanes don't do much to help; the capacity of virtually all city streets is limited by the capacity of the intersections, not the streets themselves.
Give buses priority at intersections, or even better build them dedicated overpasses if you want to see buses really move.
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#78Hahaha. 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,…
Also, Caltrain stops going south from San Francisco five minutes after midnight. BART stops going north 25 minutes after midnight. At 25 after midnight all rail service out of San Francisco stops - which is 90 minutes before last call.
In New York City you have the LIRR, PATH, NJ Transit, Metro North, Amtrak and subway trains running all night.
It's true NYC subways started having problems in the past few years as ridership has grown and long-needed maintenance has been underfunded, but the politicians are (supposedly) fixing that.
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#79The post's title different from the article's title : "Why the West Coast Is Suddenly Beating the East Coast on Transportation". Anyone else seeing different titles?
Also, the article is nothing but PR for the NYC transportation commissioner. Of course the NYC commissioner is going to say X is beating NYC because she wants more funding. She could have gone to Boise, Idaho and came back with similar story.
Electric scooters and a couple of test rides in self driving cars means the west coast is beating the east coast on transportation. Really? NYC metro area by itself outshines the entire west coast when it comes to public transportation. I couldn't take this article seriously. There is certainly room for improvement and investment in the NYC metro area, but what's the point of "east coast vs west coast" comparison that is simply not true.
Re: The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually was a coincidence, as the practices leading inevitably to the current situation have been going on for decades.
> It actually was a coincidence, as the practices leading inevitably to the current situation have been going on for decades. It's true that the corruption within the MTA and TWU have been around for decades, but it's not true at all that it's a coincidence that everything started to go downhill as soon as Cuomo took office. Cuomo literally does not believe that it is his job to oversee a statewide agency, despite th…
There’s a reason Cynthia Nixon’s campaign emphasized the subway: Cuomo was uninterested in maintaining it, aside from scant, hollow PR moments.