Living Car Free - Driven to Despair :PBS=NOW

Buses, trolleys are all viable...if the population density is high enough.
'You need high density to make transit work' is actually a misnomer; it comes from flawed research in the 20's. You can run public transit in densities that are damned close to rural, if you plan it right. Also, a well-planned network isn't all that far from door to door convenience; you have to transfer once or twice but you can get from anywhere to anywhere without a long wait.

Do you or anyone else have any examples of how privatization is bad for mass transit? I am in favor of the market. Have it been tried before to have "the market" rule mass transit? What was the result?
Daniel
It has been tried in Australia and the UK, and was a disaster both times. Main reasons are as follows:


Incentive is to eliminate transfers in order to capture revenues. This results in slow, spaghetti routes that serve nobody very well in an attempt to have one bus serve everyone.
Collector services are low density; trunk routes have much higher trip density. Tendency is for transit companies to try to compete on the trunk with overlapping services, creating inefficiencies and wasted investment, then to drop the low density collector service that feeds the trunk.
Individual carriers seek to have their own unique branding on vehicles and stop signs. In Melbourne, we had several bus stops pointed out to us which we were not aware of the existence of, because they looked different than the transit signs we normally used, and because the buses we were used to riding drove by the stops without stopping (they were served by a different company). Awareness of public transit was low, as there were many buses of many colors driving around, and one could not tell by looking who the bus was meant to service.
As incentive to transfer was low, transfers were needlessly difficult. During a timed trial we conducted, we had a transfer between a train (headway=19 minutes) and a bus (headway=42 minutes). As we came into the station, the bus passed. We walked out of the station, around a cyclone fence, jaywalked across six lanes of highway with no pedestrian crossing in sight, passed a person coming the other way to the train, and walked three blocks down the road to sit in a vandalized bus shelter to wait for the bus. Research by Dr. Carolyn Whitzman indicates that the difficulties in transferring may account for as many as five deaths annually from crime, due to the dangers of sitting in unmanned transit stops.
Best practice requires systemwide coordination at a full system wide level. Some routes must be operated at high frequencies at very low efficiencies in order to better serve the needs of the area; in short, to make a system run well, many routes, equivalent to local streets, will be required to "take one for the team" in an economic sense. When these routes are examined in isolation, they tend to be the first to go.


Transit systems aren't analogous to the car, they're analogous to a road. If you rip up all of the local streets because "the freeways are the only ones that are paying for themself", then the whole system will fail.

Paul Mees "A Very Public Solution" compared Toronto vs. Melbourne, found that transit efficiencies in Toronto were much, much higher in spite of far less infrastructure investment because Melbourne's balkanized privatization system made transfers nigh impossible.

Peter Kain "The Pitfalls in Competitive Tendering: Addressing The Risks Revealed by Experience in Australia And Britain" reviews results from Thatcher's privatized debacle, concludes that the agency needed to ride herd on private transit operators to keep the system working is more expensive than just doing it as a government operation.

HiTrans Best Practice Guide tries to be neutral, but the advantages of free market competition come out as quite minor and unimportant compared to the vast problems likely to happen - this is also in the same book that gives a lot of best practice that involves a lot of schedule manipulation and transferring that would wreak havok on a libertarian system.

There are actually quite a few papers and journal articles about how badly public transit in free market based systems have fallen on their face, and if needed I can dig through bibliographies and pull out some references.

Did anyone notice the "car wash" design of the suburban houses in that video? Most if not all had large multi-car garages built prominently to the front of the people's living space. Houses in the early 20th century might feature a small detached garage behind the house. Those built in the 1950s to 1970s often didn't include attached garages. Our society's present insistence on bedrooms for cars says something about our changing values.
porches don't exist anymore either, long since killed by air conditioning. and with it went some social aspects of the community, what with people never outside anymore.

Gradually re-engineering America to operate on mass transit will provide huge economic benefits. People are blind to the cost of cars. Massive taxes already support the car culture. The gas tax, for example funds something like 60-80% of the cost of roads, with the rest coming from other revenues. Rail lines could be built right down the middle of existing freeways, displacing 2 or 3 car lanes. The cost of building and maintaining the rails isn't any more than the cost of maintaining those paved lanes. Buses, carpooling, walking and biking would bring people to the train station. In many cases, the travel would be as fast as or faster than using a private car because the train wouldn't be subject to gridlock. People would be healthier and more productive, not just because some walked or biked to the station, but because they wouldn't have the stress of 2 hours of rush hour driving every day. Imagine - no road rage! They could work or relax on the train as they chose. The number of automobile deaths and the strain they put on the economy and the emotional health of the nation would be cut 5 or 10 fold. Families that trimmed their own vehicle fleet from two SUVs to one city hybrid would save something like $10,000+ per year. Even if the amount they now pay in gas taxes was replaced with a similar amount in transit fare and public transit-dedicated taxes, they would be be much better off financially than they are now.

If I were the mayor or city planner of an existing suburb, I would be lobbying hard to be the first to receive upgraded bus and rail service, in order not to be left behind as a slum as suburbanites gradually shift their mentality as the family in the video did.

An excellent summary of the problem and solution! The society we live in has not yet figured out the high cost of transportation - both in economic and social terms. Even the cost of keeping an extra vehicle as a backup (which many people do..) puts an enormous strain on the family finances.

Still, there is a lot of room for optimism. In my city bus ridership was up 35% in 2008 and when the election is over (and gas prices start to climb again...) I think this number will increase.

It has been tried in Australia and the UK, and was a disaster both times. Main reasons are as follows:

[LIST]

I'll add some more to this list.

1. Private bus companies tend to run them to the ground, ofen dirty with poorly working A/C or heating.

2. Often times, these private bus companies hire drivers that are working for just above minimum wage!

3. Weekend or holiday service suffers under private ownership.

4. Buses tend to be late or break down more often.

5. Bus shelters are non-existant or dirty or vandalized under private ownership.

6. Express service is discontinued as buses go local to pick up more passengers under private ownership.

I'll add some more to this list.

1. Private bus companies tend to run them to the ground, ofen dirty with poorly working A/C or heating.

2. Often times, these private bus companies hire drivers that are working for just above minimum wage!

3. Weekend or holiday service suffers under private ownership.

4. Buses tend to be late or break down more often.

5. Bus shelters are non-existant or dirty or vandalized under private ownership.

6. Express service is discontinued as buses go local to pick up more passengers under private ownership.

Sounds like a lot of the UNDER FUNDED public systems around here. Also every time they ask for more money, the typical CAR DRIVING taxpayers refuse to vote for it and whine about needing another $25 million for an highway interchange because the one they use is too congested.:rolleyes:

Aaron:)