The West Coast is beating the East Coast on transportation? • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by eesmith » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #108

pc86 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 diffe…

I don't think history has taught us that technological progress is orders of magnitude slower than people expect. Every technology the OP mentioned exists in nascent form today and didn't 10 years ago. It's totally believable that all of them will be widely deployed in 20-40 years. The world 20-40 years ago was far more primitive than it is today.

You wrote: "Every technology the OP mentioned exists in nascent form today and didn't 10 years ago."

That is not true. Here's the list: "cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices and airbag helmets. Few, if any, combustion engine cars are left on the streets. Truly self driving cars are likely too. Drones that fly you across town? Boring tunnels in multiple levels? Shuttles to Mars?"

How cheap does a cheap electric scooter need to be? Because we had electric scooters 10 years ago. Definitely so if you include "nascent" forms. More specifically, the electric scooter dates from around 1920 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoped . The Segway PT came out in 2001.

Bikes of course are 19th century technology.

Airbag helmets are new.

Electric cars were popular in the early 1900s.

CMU was working on self-driving cars in the 1980s; the Navlab drove across the US in the 1995, and was autonomous 98% of the time. Surely that counts as "nascent", yes?

Drone taxis sound like the proposed helicopter taxis of the 1950s, or flying cars, or jet packs, though without a driver. Drones have been around for more than 10 year. Passenger-carrying drones? That is indeed new.

"Boring tunnels in multiple levels"; many subway systems have multiple levels. What has been new about that in the last 10 years which wasn't deployed earlier, not even in nascent form?

"Shuttles to Mars". I don't know how to judge that one. In 1989 when Bush Sr. announced the Space Exploration Initiative, would you have said that it was a nascent project? You didn't know that that it wouldn't pan out, just like we don't know now if SpaceX's plans will pan out.

The world 20-40 years ago was far more sophisticated than you seem to think.

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

#172

Post by dmode » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #42

nicoburns wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Got to remember BART carries around 400,000 riders a day, 365 days a year. Seems like the issue is lack of security/policing, not the number of passengers. There are plenty of subway networks with far greater traffic that don't have this problem to nearly the same extent.

CA doesn't do policing. It's all about the feel-good.

Is that why we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world ?

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

#173

Post by xster » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

hapless wrote: post #130

hannasanarion wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are there documentations for MTA and Port Authority being the best funded systems in the world?

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

#174

Post by sempron64 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #26

foota wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Embarking and disembarking passengers takes much longer on a bus.

On the Select Bus Service (certain express routes) in NYC, passengers buy tickets outside the bus and ticket inspectors spot check them during the ride, similar to trains. Passengers can get on through the back door as well. This significantly improves embarkation time, making it similar to a train.

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

#175

Post by sempron64 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #118

shhehebehdh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, but NYCs rarely go that fast. This is changing though. I saw a news article recently about how they are lifting the speed limits on some sections of track as repaired signals come online.

The DC Metro averages 33 mph, including stops. I’d be surprised if NYC’s express lines didn’t hit 50 routinely.

They do not, the max speed limits on rare long stretches of track are around 45 mph. Most stretches are well below this.

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/12/19/18146933/mta-new-york-subwa...

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

#176

Post by Rebelgecko » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

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…

Part of it is spreading out the costs over time. None of the individual construction projects is taking 40 years, LA Metro just has a grand plan for the next 15 years, the 15 years after that, etc. Some things take time because of environmental reviews, buying land (or legally forcing people to leave), planning, things like that.

Another reason why they are building in stages is that some of the new transit projects aren't as useful until other ones are finished. For example, there's plans for a big tunnel (a few miles longer than the one you linked) that they're trying to finish in time for the 2028 Olympics (although construction hasn't started yet). A lot of the projects on the other side of the tunnel are being done with the purpose of getting people to the tunnel,

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

#177

Post by magduf » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

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…

>Problem is that the same homeowners who brought you Prop 13 also want to keep getting places by car

As I've said said so many times before, every nation gets the government it deserves. Americans don't want bikeable or walkable cities, so we don't have them. Europeans do want them, so they have them.

>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.

Yep, I was in Germany recently, and the large cities I visited all had excellent subway/train systems, as well as bike paths on all the major roads. And unlike bike lanes in US cities, the bike lanes were on the same level as the sidewalk, physically separated from the cars. The cities themselves were far more dense too: not as dense as Manhattan, but still far more dense than your typical American suburban "city", so it was very feasible to get around by bike and subway and also tram (electric streetcar).

We're not going to de-prioritize the car because Americans just can't think that way; they can't stand the thought of having to share space with strangers. So we're going to continue building more roads, and getting worse and worse congestion. It's not ever going to get better, because generally, when you look at the history of human societies, things rarely get fixed before there's a total collapse or disaster of some kind. Humans in groups just aren't smart enough to avoid disasters even when they're plainly obvious.

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

#178

Post by magduf » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #161

naravara wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, it's almost like we could suddenly afford to do a lot of big projects if we just nationalized healthcare and pensions so it wouldn't have to be factored into labor costs.

The cost still exists — you’re just moving it. Instead of factoring it into the labor cost and being part of the money allocating to the particular job, you’d just see lower allocation, and have the same problem. The only real difference would be that the comparison in funding/cost between equivalent US and EU work would be more fair (also achieved by de-nationalizing healthcare and pensions in the EU). Unless of cou…

Not true. Healthcare service costs in other industrialized countries are much lower than the US, because of their better systems. So, for instance, if you need hip replacement surgery and you have to pay for it out-of-pocket, it'll cost you a small fraction if you get it done in Belgium than in the US.

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

#179

Post by magduf » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #144

marssaxman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplest solution for the transit planner, maybe; but for people who want to get around, who wants to be stuck in a bus? Why should we settle for a crappy, minimally-functional experience? Let's build good transit that people will actually want to use.

. . . I like riding the bus though. You get a window instead of being stuck in an underground tunnel. It's quieter than the train. And the drivers can actually make detours and improvise if there are problems. The only issue is traffic, which dedicated lanes and automatic right of way takes care of. There is also the issue of having to wait outside in bad weather for it, but if you keep headways low that's not so bad…

>It's quieter than the train.

Huh? What kind of trains have you been riding? Buses are noisy and have herky-jerky motion because they drive in traffic and have noisy diesel engines and are constantly accelerating and braking and turning. Trains ride on metal rails with no traffic in their way.

Of course, the shitty subways in America's east coast cities somehow manage to be extremely noisy and bumpy; I'm not sure how they manage that. Subways in better places don't have this problem in my experience.

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

#180

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

francisofascii wrote: post #150

marssaxman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplest solution for the transit planner, maybe; but for people who want to get around, who wants to be stuck in a bus? Why should we settle for a crappy, minimally-functional experience? Let's build good transit that people will actually want to use.

If buses arrived every five minutes and had a dedicated lane, people would not be stuck anywhere and people would certainly want to use it. Here is a thought. Walk to your nearest busy street. Assume you could convert half the number of cars to buses and that a bus would have about 20 riders. When you count 40 cars go by, that is how often the bus would arrive.

[deleted]