Here in Seattle I have transit options for my 20ish mile commute. However they are 3x (probably more like 6x right now) my fuel cost for taking either the Prius or the 400cc bike so even counting maintenance it is a wash at best. Then there is 1.5 to 2 hours travel time ONE WAY by transit on top of being at the office for 9 hours umm fuck that.
Montreal has a pretty good public transit system for a North American city, probably because of the fact that itâs on an island, which tends to limit the sprawl. And there are only a few huge sprawls of mono-culture land use. Residential and commercial space tends to be intermixed there. I havenât been to Germany but I suspect itâs roughly the same.
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Youâre only calculating the cost of the gasoline, no? What about all the other costs of owning a car? (the car, the insurance, the maintenance, parking fees, all those taxes for roads, your gym membership ('cuz youâre not walking enough)).
This is advice Iâve given to another American years ago: you need to elect a democratic socialist party to power every once in a while. Theyâll institute a lot of good stuff that the majority want. For example, subsidizing public transit so as to make it much less expensive than driving a car, which will increase ridership, which will bring the cost to the government down.
Then after a while, you âthrow the bums outâ.
(Bonus question for extra credit: âWhy do youâall keep electing right-wingers?â)
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Good point. Yes I was thinking of income taxes.
The bigger problem is that this has been a dominant business model since the nineties: infect a successful organisation like T. gondii, subvert its management so that it is no longer able to do what it was developed to do, strip its assets, sell it to another organisation. They did it to each other, then the survivors moved on to government services: in the UK they did it to British Rail, theyâre doing it to the British civil service, theyâre trying to do it to the NHS and the emergency services. In the US the methodology is slightly different, but the process is more advanced.
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Required reading:
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Now I have to ask if you live in a city large enough for mass transit. $2 wonât pay for an hour of parking in a lot of places.
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A lot of this, though is the result of the infrastructure compromise between supporting cars and public transit together, and trying to transition from one to the other rather than making a bold decision. Cities trying to do both fail at both, and a failing system almost always drives (pun accepted) people back toward the more individualized solution. If all the voters concerned understood and appreciated the value (and had a good, working example to refer to) of a highly functioning, integrated public transit system, they most definitely would. Of course, all they see is the constantly under-performing starved-for-funding half-efforts.
NYC is so dense that cars are just not a real option, and yet they remain, and the city suffers. The roads are literally contantly under repair, as are, I imagine, the suspension systems of every driver. Meanwhile, the burden on the incredibly dense canal street station in Chinatown is just insane, with narrow stairwells and crazy platforms with millions of people flowing throug. whenever I see cars driving down through lower manhattan, honking away, I think âWhere the fuck did you think you were going to get to in a car?â There are definitely vast areas of the country where one could consider one or the other system viable, but at certain urban densities, the necessity of public transit and the insanity of cars is undeniable.
Personally, in NYC Iâd like to see all the commercial and freight underground in the tunnels (to take the trucks off the road) and convert the subway stations into shipping and re-supply hubs. All the human traffic above ground in light rail, bike and foot traffic (maybe a fleet of speed-governed electric golf carts as cabs) with enormous car garages on the outskirts of all the boroughs.
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Federal gas tax? So not only is funding depressed by the declining cost of gas and more efficient vehicles, but also dependent on people driving a lot. This reminds me of Louisiana public defenders, which I was recently reading is partially funded based on the conviction rates. Which means in both cases, the more successful they are, the less money they have, which seems like a deliberate feature to keep either from getting too successful.
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Iâm currently sitting on a Spanish bullet train going more than 220km/h, and it feels like Iâm living in the future. Itâs freaking sweet.
Iâve gotta say, Barcelona craps all over Melbourne for transport.
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As someone who has used both BART and CalTrain, CalTrain makes BART look like a remarkable model of efficiency and value.
In Houston one problem is that Republicans oppose rail.
After Tom DeLay, we had Congressman John Culberson who opposed rail on Richmond Ave, but supported expanding the Katy Freeway (I-10 on the west side of Houston.)
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Whatâs the lavatory look like?
You should probably see a doctor about that.
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Ridershipâs not up in Washington, DC, thanks to the problems with our metro system.
The cause is not so simple as lack of funding, though lack of funding is an issue. In DC, our system has been unable to spend all the money allocated to it for a variety of reasons, and thanks to gross financial mismanagement has been operating under strict spending rules.
The system in many ways also operates as a patronage / jobs program, which is also true in many other cities (the number of Long Island Railroad employees making over $100,000 a year is staggering - google it). In DC, itâs very tied up in racial politics as well. Normally the Washington Times is not a great (or even good) source of news, but this series of articles about our transit system and the corruption, cronyism, and racism embedded in its culture is very enlightening (and based in facts and named sources):
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I used to hate the disabled access toilets on Virgin trains - sometimes that was the only one available and you knew that if the electric door opened unexpectedly (e.g. if you hadnât locked it properly and someone pushed the button), the huge doors would swing open and everyone in the carriage could see you. I prefer physical locks, especially when thereâs no way to interrupt the door opening process and you have to spend ten seconds staring at your travel companions (it never happened to me, but I seem to remember it happening to some other guy).
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I used public transit exclusively for over 20 years. I never bothered to learn how to drive a car. I have never been the sole occupant of a moving vehicle. Itâs been rough, at times, and itâs a lifestyle possible only in cities with a barely reasonable transit system.
Later on, I ended up in a relationship with someone who couldnât stand public transportation. A car became necessary. During the transition to car ownership, I noticed something curious: I lost time.
Sure, the car got me to work faster. But that time was lost in concentrating on the anarchy on the road. Even though Iâm not the one driving! During my 20 years of riding the bus, I got the equivalent of a college education just sitting around reading books. Sometimes, I even jumped off and ran quick errands before jumping on again. Yeah, it was slower, but it was also more like having a life instead of a commute. Now I have to dig into my spare time to find the time to read. And itâs much harder to save money.
There is so much wrong with car culture. It is literally the worst. I could go on for hundreds of pages with stats and citations. Nobody cares â they are convinced that hating their commute is all that there is to life.
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I donât live in the states, and thereâs good public transport - but I do save some 10-15 minutes going by car. But after driving for a while I had the same revelation you had - going by public transport, I can read, write or do things on the way. Going by car, I arrive in a bad mood from all the traffic, and I spend all the time focused on driving.
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