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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?

#121

Post by bryanlarsen »

BeeOnRope wrote: post #104
bryanlarsen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ride a dedicated BRT lane system every day. Part of the way they have overpasses and it's super fast. Then they hit downtown and have dedicated lanes but have to deal with normal intersections. It's dog slow.

It's all relative. Do you mean it is slow compared to the portion with no overpasses, or slow compared to vehicles w/o dedicated lanes passing through the same intersections? Passing through intersections is never particularly fast (except perhaps at night on empty reads with sensors far enough away to turn the light green before you even get there) - but at peak times dedicated lanes help a lot even when intersectio…

It's slower than the car lanes; there are so many buses that the bus lane is more backed up than the car lanes. They are in the process of building a subway that'll take many of those buses out of downtown, though. (Ottawa, Canada).

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

#122

Post by etiennemarcel »

chimeracoder wrote: post #117
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever been to Paris ? London's transit is fairly bad compared to it. Or to Lyon (which is vaguely SF's size) ?

> Ever been to Paris ? London's transit is fairly bad compared to it. Or to Lyon (which is vaguely SF's size) ? I have. As of 2010 (before Cuomo's tenure began), New York had unambiguously better public transit overall than Paris, in addition to serving a city with four times the population of Paris. Cuomo is doing his best to "fix" that, but in 2018, I'd still take NYC over Paris as far as public transit is concerne…

I have lived in both cities but I'm French so probably biased. The transportation system in Paris is overall much better. Denser, more lines, cheaper, and unlike New York it keeps growing. It's also more reliable (even though it has its share of issues).

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

#123

Post by donarb »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #83
bryanlarsen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Give buses priority at intersections, Or just give them the IR transponders that emergency services use to trigger the light in some places and have it go green for the bus rather than red for everyone. You'd accomplish almost the same result with less trade-offs. Giving one vehicle priority tends to increase complexity and causes a distraction which increases risk of accidents (which clog up the road making the bus…

Seattle has bus priority at multiple intersections and it does not cause problems.

At those intersections busses arrive at the curb lane to pickup/dropoff. Then a special light tells the bus driver that it is ok to proceed into the intersection, while all other cars have a red signal. The bus pulls out and leapfrogs traffic.

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

#124

Post by exabrial »

NYC's subway's are at a halt unfortunately. The MTA unions have paralyzed innovation and development.

The West coast has an opportunity to one up them, but a lot of money gets appropriated and given to contractors without a lot of actual results a lot of the time.

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

#125

Post by libraryatnight »

hannasanarion wrote: post #120
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #105

The thing that makes mass transit work is walkability. There are 3 million people in NYC who use the subway every day. They can do that because the walkability of the neighborhoods complements the mass transit. In some European cities, the bicycle is its own form of transit, and it can likewise be that because separate bike paths exist that complement the walkable structure of those cities. If we want to actually bea…

That's just the thing though: Western cities are increasingly de-prioritizing cars, and Eastern cities are falling behind. There are parts of Phoenix that are more bikable than much of New York. LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle have started pouring money into their new transit systems, while MTA and NJ Transit and Port Authority keep having their budgets cut, leading to reliability so low that it's driving people into c…

Phoenix's Light Rail is also a nice improvement - I hope it expands. I know they're trying, some neighborhoods are resisting though - they argue it brings in riff-raff lol

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

#126

Post by leetcrew »

balthasar wrote: post #101
francisofascii wrote: post #71

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 r…

"paid for by significant increases to gas taxes." Enjoy your yellow coats :)

I guess "paid for by the ridership" is out of the question?

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

#127

Post by crushcrashcrush »

hannasanarion wrote: post #120
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #105

The thing that makes mass transit work is walkability. There are 3 million people in NYC who use the subway every day. They can do that because the walkability of the neighborhoods complements the mass transit. In some European cities, the bicycle is its own form of transit, and it can likewise be that because separate bike paths exist that complement the walkable structure of those cities. If we want to actually bea…

That's just the thing though: Western cities are increasingly de-prioritizing cars, and Eastern cities are falling behind. There are parts of Phoenix that are more bikable than much of New York. LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle have started pouring money into their new transit systems, while MTA and NJ Transit and Port Authority keep having their budgets cut, leading to reliability so low that it's driving people into c…

Genuine question - what has SF poured money into? What we need here is expanded BART service and electrified Caltrain, unfortunately NIMBYs in Atherton/Palo Alto block that at every move.

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

#128

Post by maxxxxx »

hannasanarion wrote: post #120
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #105

The thing that makes mass transit work is walkability. There are 3 million people in NYC who use the subway every day. They can do that because the walkability of the neighborhoods complements the mass transit. In some European cities, the bicycle is its own form of transit, and it can likewise be that because separate bike paths exist that complement the walkable structure of those cities. If we want to actually bea…

That's just the thing though: Western cities are increasingly de-prioritizing cars, and Eastern cities are falling behind. There are parts of Phoenix that are more bikable than much of New York. LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle have started pouring money into their new transit systems, while MTA and NJ Transit and Port Authority keep having their budgets cut, leading to reliability so low that it's driving people into c…

"LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle have started pouring money into their new transit systems, "

As far as LA goes the results are not exactly convincing. I wonder if 't seven possible to have decent public transportation in an area that's as spread out.

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

#129

Post by leetcrew »

jcranmer wrote: post #62
foota wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't a bus have similar throughput to a subway though, with no traffic?

A single bus can move about 100-200 people. A single subway train can move about 1000-1500 people, an order of magnitude more.

wouldn't it be more fair to compare a single subway car with a bus? nothing stops you from running a "train" of buses.

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

#130

Post by hapless »

hannasanarion wrote: post #120
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #105

The thing that makes mass transit work is walkability. There are 3 million people in NYC who use the subway every day. They can do that because the walkability of the neighborhoods complements the mass transit. In some European cities, the bicycle is its own form of transit, and it can likewise be that because separate bike paths exist that complement the walkable structure of those cities. If we want to actually bea…

That's just the thing though: Western cities are increasingly de-prioritizing cars, and Eastern cities are falling behind. There are parts of Phoenix that are more bikable than much of New York. LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle have started pouring money into their new transit systems, while MTA and NJ Transit and Port Authority keep having their budgets cut, leading to reliability so low that it's driving people into c…

The MTA and Port Authority are the best funded systems _in the world_.

The problem is that they waste money profligately. What takes other cities millions of dollars and tens of weeks takes New York billions and decades.

The reason no one wishes to add billions to the MTA’s already large capital budget is that 99% of the money disappears into a black hole

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