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The Bay Area's lost streetcars

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Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#81

Post by bobthepanda »

JamesBarney wrote: post #79
bobthepanda wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city dump charges a minimum fee of $33 and that increases per ton. I junked a sectional for $50, I think?

But will the city dump pick up the sectional for you?

To be clear:

The city dump, even if you bring your own car, will charge a minimum of $33. They don’t offer curbside pickup themselves.

The movers/haulers charge $50 for a sectional, and there isn’t a separate line item for the dump fee. I consider this to generally be a decent price, since then I don’t have to pay for a car.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#82

Post by sammalloy »

uoaei wrote: post #73
sammalloy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a good question. Whenever this discussion comes up, my take on it is that people are concerned about being random victims. In other words, some aspects of this have to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not feeling safe in your environment. I think it would be helpful to change the frame of the discussion and ask what we can do to make people more safe and comfortable. The BBC recently had a…

Another question worth asking is: what is the rate of randomly directed violent crime ? I suspect it's small enough to be a rounding error vs violent crimes between people with pre-existing relationships. Still, I agree with your point about the rhetorical focus. Simply reciting the statistics isn't going to alleviate anxieties.

It sounds like you might be interested in the topic I was talking about.

Here is the case study the BBC was discussing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sarah_Everard

The proposed solutions under discussion are included in the "Women’s safety" section in the above link.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#83

Post by throw0101a »

rmason wrote: post #77
throw0101a wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? Suburbs are slowing falling into a state of disrepair, or at least more and more budget being taken away form other things: * https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQUOHlAocY

why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? Have you ever been to Michigan? We have the 48th or 49th worst roads in America. They weren't like that when I was growing up or first got a drivers license in the sixties. Our auto insurance rates are higher and we have higher repairs than average. We have the fifth or sixth highest gas taxes in the nation. Our Governor ran o…

> why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?

Who says they aren't?

> As small towns across the country confront rapidly deteriorating roads and shrinking maintenance budgets, more and more of them are opting for gravel roads over pavement.

* https://blog.midwestind.com/counties-municipalities-gravel-r...

Or it could be road maintenance is being paid for by money taken from other programs.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#84

Post by Tade0 »

washbrain wrote: post #80
Tade0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only there had been solutions to heating and cooling, or ride comfort. Effectiveness of heating and cooling is considerably diminished when a vehicle opens all its doors every few minutes. The transport authority of the city I grew up in tried to solve this problem by setting the temperature to a cool 18°C - you could catch a cold from taking a longer trip via tram in the middle of summer. As for ride comfort: t…

> there isn't much you can do against people drinking alcohol, having their phone on speaker or just urinating in the middle. What? Nothing about public transit is different from libraries, restaurants, cabs, or any other public space. You wouldn't say, "well, you can't go book shopping because you know book stores - people just urinating in the middle!"

Chief difference is that you generally get a much broader spectrum of people in public transport.

The places you mentioned aren't necessary for anyone on a daily basis. Transport, on the other hand, is.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#85

Post by NoToP »

toast0 wrote: post #9
NoToP wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up. Why would people who weren't willing to accept the taxes to maintain the street car willing to instead pay all the tax which subsidizes car infrastructure. This narrative doesn't quite add up because everything you said about why the street car existed and the commuter pattern that fed into the economics of developers applies equally well to why cars and suburb development exists. So once suburban homes were…

> why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? A street in disrepair is still usable, a street car line in disrepair becomes unusable much faster. Only one part of the rail needs to fall apart when nobody will pay to fix it and you can't use it anymore. Potholes and washouts and lots more problems are solved by driving slowly and carefully. Especially with earlier automo…

This is a plausible hypothesis, but the thing that's missing is how many times can rail be traversed before being unusable and how many times can a road be traversed by the same measure. Intuitively, I would imagine the net tonnage passed before wearing out asphalt is far lower than it is for a chunk of steel welded to the ground. Maybe the cost of maintaining rail feels worse / is a harder political sell because the full price is acutely concentrated in time, whereas each individual pothole is a mere budgetary papercut?

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#86

Post by NoToP »

rayiner wrote: post #58
NoToP wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up. Why would people who weren't willing to accept the taxes to maintain the street car willing to instead pay all the tax which subsidizes car infrastructure. This narrative doesn't quite add up because everything you said about why the street car existed and the commuter pattern that fed into the economics of developers applies equally well to why cars and suburb development exists. So once suburban homes were…

Because private cars are incredibly convenient compared to street cars. Faced with significant tax increases for street cars that only go a few places, and car infrastructure that can allow people to go directly from point to point, it was a no brainer. I just loaded up my Toyota 4Runner and dumped a bunch of junk at the town dump. I didn’t plan this in advance, I didn’t have to rent a truck (how do I get there anywa…

This comment is written from the perspective of cars and transit as they exist today in much of America, and the connotations associated with them. There are places you could be living where public transit is more convenient than a car. You don't have to plan your trips because the train is frequent enough that you just show up whenever you want. And you aren't limited to just one place because there's a network of them and you simply transfer to the line you need. It's not entirely the case that you can go "anywhere" with a car. You can go anywhere where a road has been built and parking is provided. But if the car is limited to built infrastructure, by that measure the train also goes anywhere.

Places like Tokyo prove there was an alternative path, and places like New York prove that it's not inherently impossible in America. So that brings us back where we started. Why did people vote / spend one way and not the other?

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#87

Post by NoToP »

mc32 wrote: post #35
hadlock wrote: post #2

What a lot of pro-transit (full disclosure, I am full transit) folks fail to mention, is that most streetcars were initially built, in particular, those out towards the sunset, big chunks of LA, were actually built by property developers, as an incentive, "look! see! don't need a car! just like urban living, but look at all this extra space you get! just take the street car into town". Street cars were run at break e…

It’s a classical conspiracy theory. There are truths interspersed with assumptions and fabrications sustained by a fantastical desire -in this case halcyon of dependable public transit everywhere which was razed by greedy bus manufacturing companies in cahoots with petrochemical companies. When in reality it’s closer to the story of the ferries that ferried cars across the bay before the bridges were built. Or the st…

The interstate system was a massive subsidy to cars and car dependant lifestyles. To compare it to tech disruption like what happened to ferries makes the death of interstate passenger rail seem natural. In reality, no industry could survive their competitor being so heavily subsidized. If we threw that amount of money at high speed rail, we could probably choke out a good portion of the airline and car industry combined.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#88

Post by JamesBarney »

bobthepanda wrote: post #81
JamesBarney wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But will the city dump pick up the sectional for you?

To be clear: The city dump, even if you bring your own car, will charge a minimum of $33. They don’t offer curbside pickup themselves. The movers/haulers charge $50 for a sectional, and there isn’t a separate line item for the dump fee. I consider this to generally be a decent price, since then I don’t have to pay for a car.

Weird, in Houston its hard to find anyone to move a couch 20 blocks for less than $200.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#89

Post by rayiner »

NoToP wrote: post #86
rayiner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because private cars are incredibly convenient compared to street cars. Faced with significant tax increases for street cars that only go a few places, and car infrastructure that can allow people to go directly from point to point, it was a no brainer. I just loaded up my Toyota 4Runner and dumped a bunch of junk at the town dump. I didn’t plan this in advance, I didn’t have to rent a truck (how do I get there anywa…

This comment is written from the perspective of cars and transit as they exist today in much of America, and the connotations associated with them. There are places you could be living where public transit is more convenient than a car. You don't have to plan your trips because the train is frequent enough that you just show up whenever you want. And you aren't limited to just one place because there's a network of t…

I’m not writing from an American perspective. I love Tokyo and go there a couple of times a year for business. Half the people in Tokyo have a car, and outside Tokyo nearly everyone has a car. Nobody takes the Tokyo Metro or Toei subway to haul junk.

Your comparison is invalid: building minimal road infrastructure is vastly cheaper than building rail. You need economies of scale to justify the expense of rail construction. It makes no sense to build rail past my wife’s grandma’s house in rural Oregon. At the same time, even when my wife was growing up in the city (Eugene, where the University of Oregon is), they were going to grandma’s house or somewhere similarly low density regularly enough where they needed a car anyway. And once they had incurred the expense of a car, it makes sense to vote for more car infrastructure in the city rather than the capital expense of rail infrastructure.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#90

Post by bobthepanda »

JamesBarney wrote: post #88
bobthepanda wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: The city dump, even if you bring your own car, will charge a minimum of $33. They don’t offer curbside pickup themselves. The movers/haulers charge $50 for a sectional, and there isn’t a separate line item for the dump fee. I consider this to generally be a decent price, since then I don’t have to pay for a car.

Weird, in Houston its hard to find anyone to move a couch 20 blocks for less than $200.

Oh, actual moving costs more.

How it works here is that you get charged for labor time and space taken up in a truck, and just plain junking requires very little of the former compared to moving where packing, unpacking, and possibly dismantling and reassembly come into play.

The company I used has a rate for using an eighth of a truck, which is what I was charged for a couch.

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