Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected • Hacker News Board

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#301

Post by ninetyninenine » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #297

ninetyninenine wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t. It’s economically feasible. We have the most powerful military in the world we have the highest gdp per capita in the world. It’s economically feasible. When I say we are incapable of building mass transit I’m referring to every single type of incompetency in existence except for economic incompetency. You change the zoning laws it will be utilized.

>Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t. I didn't think it was necessary to specify "under normal economic constraints and not a thought experiment where we can spend unlimited money on transit". I forgot where I was. Lesson learned.

We are not under normal economic constraints when we have the most money per capita on the face of the earth. The financial capital to do this exists.

I’m baffled at how you think it’s not economically possible when it completely it is. How does Tokyo even exists if it’s not economically possible?? It’s possible it’s just we can’t do it due to incompetence.

Just look at the high speed rail in California. That is a framed picture of American incompetence.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#302

Post by okdood64 » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #151

blintz wrote: post #3

The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before. Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!

Still loud as ever until they get rid of the horns.

People don't understand and respect public transportation (train in this context) in this country. There's a lot of dumbasses who will be on the tracks when and where they should not be. Hence we need those loud horns.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#303

Post by bagels » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

okdood64 wrote: post #302

bagels wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still loud as ever until they get rid of the horns.

People don't understand and respect public transportation (train in this context) in this country. There's a lot of dumbasses who will be on the tracks when and where they should not be. Hence we need those loud horns.

People have much easier access to roads, where many more deaths occur. We don't require automobile drivers to use their horn at every intersection. Why do we require trains to sound the horn at every intersection? Why can the train not reserve the horn for when there is someone on the tracks?

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#304

Post by sofixa » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 7:23 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #290

sofixa wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're going to end up in a position where you're telling a farmer how to manage Funny you say that. Not only does that actually happen in pretty much all developed country, it's actually needed for a variety of reasons. There are subsidies to incentivise the "correct" crops (you don't want all farmers only doing cash crops for export, rendering your country very vulnerable to import markets to sustain itself), the…

> Not only does that actually happen in pretty much all developed country... "Everyone does it" isn't much of an argument when it comes to economics, the field is littered with a long history of group-think episodes where most people do things in a way that was, in hindsight, a mistake. And being steamrollered by more economically productive societies that don't ban progress. The modern policies developed countries a…

> And the rest of your comment is straightforwardly telling farmers how to farm. On average, I bet they know all that stuff better than the legislators. They're farmers

Strongly disagree. The incentives are just not the same. If farmers use pesticides which will kill all bugs and pollute nearby rivers to increase their yield a tiny bit, that's not good for everyone else. If they decide they're only going to do tobacco because it's very lucrative to export, that's not good either. If the techniques they're using are obsolete (and thus inefficient and resulting in them barely being able to survive against foreign competition) or very bad for the soil/environment.

Farmers produce food, it's one of the most critical things in a country. If things go wrong, there are famines or economical crisis (cf. Egypt, Sri Lanka in the last few years, Soviet Russia in the past century). Hell, many countries were couped to take over control over their farming sectors for commercial interests (Hawai, Central America and the Caribbean, cf. the Banana Wars).

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#305

Post by lswainemoore » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #64

lswainemoore wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so negative? Given that the served population is conservatively a quarter of either of those areas, doesn't seem like a fair comparison. More to the point, I've been favorably impressed with the transit options since moving here, and in terms of reliability it's been better than NYC, though obviously there are fewer trains/branches. I'd love to see BART open later, like NYC, but even Tokyo trains stop at midnight…

It's fair. NYC is 8.8 million, bay area is 7 million. Tokyo is about double that. Not being negative. Being realistic. It's unfortunate that being realistic often is negative. Transit here is garbage. You either luck out and live and work near transit or you're like most people and have to drive. A couple million in energy savings doesn't mean anything compared to the amount wasted by cars.

Those are not the right population metrics to compare. If you're talking full Bay Area, you might as well talk NYC metro area (MTA claims to serve 15.3 million [1]). Tokyo's even trickier, but I think 36 million [2] seems closer to right.

It's probably not worth arguing about too much, because ultimately I agree with you that there's a lot more to be done to reduce car ridership. But pointing at those places and saying "copy them" misses a lot of structural differences.

[1] https://mta.info/about [2] https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0056b6a98b8b4a48869f822...