JusticeZero

The space taken by a bicycle, the average injuries incurred on a bicycle, are all much less. It is possible that we will in time see a city is a density where bicycles are an issue - but since bicycles are requiring so much of a smaller share of public subsidy of valuable surface area and health care, they are much more desirable than automobiles.
This is not true. In fact the main subsidy created by private automobiles is surface space. Highways account for a huge amount of the ground surface in a city, and parking a massive portion. Businesses build high-rise buildings in downtown in order to recapture the value from high rents for square footage, then are expected to pay for square footage for parking. This subsidy has been calculated as exceeding the military budget of the U.S. military. (Donald Shoup, citing - i'll look it up next week if anyone really cares)
A single car parked next to a 10 story office building is costing the building owner the land rent of 12 offices. This cost is being paid whether the car is actually parked there or not. The car is not actually proucing anything for the firm by being parked there; if the firm wanted to be 'efficient' it would demand that employees hand over the car keys to drivers to use the car all day for deliveries and such, which would also free the need for the parking space. This is, for obvious reasons, not done.
CONGESTION is not the problem. Transportation is a good, and of course, rent for that good meters the use for that good. This is the popular explanation fo congestion pricing, but that is not needed.. TIME IS MONEY. The increased time created by congestion IS the "congestion pricing rent" of the good. To encourage more efficient utilization of the city over time, congestion can be ignored, as it encourages people to use the system during lower utilization times as per basic economic theory. Simple!
Which would require a massive increase in the already substantial, invisible, cross-subsidized costs to the people for transportation EVEN ASSUMING FREE FUEL in terms of massive subsidies paid for roadways, land rents, time, and the like.
Your argument is a non-starter. I am a fiscal conservative and I long ago recognized that private autos were a monstrosity against laissez-faire economics.

Roody

Designing new transit is a very timely topic. Ridership across the country is up 5 % to 15 % just in this year, following smaller annual increases since the 1990s. At the same time, transit companies are hurt by rising fuel costs, just as individual motorists are.

The Christian Science Monitor had a short article on this subject, entitled "For mass transit, mass investment". There were some facts and figures that relate to what we've been talking about. Here are the last couple paragraphs:

Doug5150

Much less than what?
Why not prohibit bicycles and just make everybody walk everywhere they go? Wouldn't that be even safer? And now about the police & paramedics? Should they walk everywhere too? Or could it be that there is some amount of value in motorized transport available on your own schedule, that can freely travel point-to-point?

It is not surprising that someone who builds a high-rise office building doesn't want to pay for parking; the whole idea of most multi-story office buildings is to maximize return on land. The question is, should they? Because if they don't, then they are basically pushing their transportation problem off onto others. There's already building codes that dictate much about building construction; people who finance high-rises also have to finance restrooms and fire exits, and they probably don't like that either.

Here you seem to place the blame for traffic congestion on cars and not population density,,, but if one lived somewhere with a lower population density, one wouldn't see as much traffic congestion.

Also I find that your whole "time is money" analogy counterproductive to your bicycle advocacy--because absent traffic congestion, a car is a far faster way to travel than a bicycle. The fastest RAAM rider is nowhere close to the slowest Cannonball Run contestant to finish.

From a technical and financial standpoint it's a lot easier and cheaper task to boost transit efficiency by raising the efficiency and decreasing the size of common private vehicles, than it is to throw blind money at the inherent problems of mass-transit.

The efficiency problems that public transit systems have (uneven rider distribution at different times and balancing accessibility with efficiency) are essentially intractable with current systems. It may be that there is something better but as long as the current systems are funded with government money, nothing better will be developed.
~

gwd

I'm not sure what the argument in this thread is about but I have to point out these two false statements. I live in the part of the DC area with the densest population - Ward 1. Since the Wards are determined by approximate population you can see from a Ward map that Ward 1 has the smallest area meaning the densest population. Transportation is much easier in my ward than say Tyson's corner or Springfield in the Suburbs. In fact I was in Springfield last Saturday night helping a friend who's car broke down so I experienced the transportation options in the suburbs first hand. Cab company wouldn't come, buses come once per hour, our walk home carrying a computer included many detours to accommodate the car culture.

In order for the RAAM example to hold up the car driver needs to get his exercise equivalent to the RAAM rider. The car driver can't do it while driving- even massive Kegel exercises would be too distracting. Simple arithmetic shows the car driver ends up way behind when after each 100 miles the drive spends 5 hours on a stationary bike. We are comparing multidimensional lifestyles money, mental and physical health etc. By the twisted car culture logic a private jet is a more efficient way to travel than a car. Never mind how long you have to work to pay for the thing or that you have to get to and from the airport- since it goes from coast to coast faster than a car it is better than a car for daily commuting even when you live within walking distance from work.

JusticeZero

Private automobiles, obviously.
Sure, but it is on the far side of the law of diminishing returns. Anyways, I don't see that anyone is trying to prohibit cars, so this isn't an analogy.
Yes, there is value in motorized transit, but that value decays as more people attempt to use it. When EVERYONE gets out and drives, the police and paramedics are actually able to arrive on scene faster on foot or bicycle - the police use police bikes and rollerblade police for this very reason. Paramedics, alas, are constrained by a necessity of a very large cargo capacity, and the effectiveness of paramedics falls off rapidly as more people drive.
Not if the parking demand is low. North SYdney abolished parking minimums and replaced them with parking maximums lower than the minimums; the area turned into a highly successful commercial mecca. Noone was inconvenienced by having parking 'pushed onto them' because EVERYONE was subject to the same parking abolition.
Not true; traffic congestion is a function of travel distance as well, and a low density area induces a lot of this. The Glenn Highway suffers daily traffic congestion, and it is 40 miles of RURAL freeway accessing an area of extremely low population density.
Hooray! That means we can get ambulances and fire trucks to emergencies faster!
Of all of the cities that are pleasant places to live, can you name one that solved it's congestion issues by roadbuilding? Any at all? That question was asked to a roomfull of people yesterday that I was in. Nobody could think of any. We're spending trillions of dollars and we have no working model?
Those are not significant problems.
The problems that private automobiles have (massive land consumption, severe subsidization and public expense, public health danger in excess of any other currently existing, perverse market effects, extremely high cost of use) are essentially intractable in spite of titanic efforts to solve them, and inherent to the mode itself.
Funny, that's exactly why I am advocating AGAINST cars - cars are funded with mountains of government money.

InTheRain

there is alot of money invested in roads and freeway systems. I used to commute 65 miles each way and it took 2-3 hours each way because of the congestion. I looked around and saw that 90 percent of the vehicles were single occupants (including myself.) lots of empty space in those cars that took up alot of space on the freeways.

I also noticed that there was constant construction on the freeways to create new lanes and carpool lanes. I've always thought it might be a good idea to create a small car (kind of like the smart car) that was narrow and short that had one front seat and one back seat (for your "stuff" when you weren't carrying another passenger.) With this vehicle design, you double the number of lanes available on the existing roadways because the cars would be so narrow (of course you would continue to have the full size lanes for existing vehicles.) These cars could be very fuel efficient since they would be small and lightweight - I'm sure that with existing technology they could be made to be just as fuel efficient as a large scooter (honda silverwing that gets 60-70 mpg... then if you add hybrid technology maybe you could be pushing close to 100 mpg.)

To speed up the conversion to this type of vehicle you could offer tax incentives. You could convert a few existing freeway lanes immediately and those people stuck in there full size vehicles would convert pretty quickly once they realize their commute time could be cut in half or more.

It seems like the production costs of this kind of vehicle could be kept rather low. I would think that it would come in somewhere similar to a large scooter or midsize motorcycle. It just seems that we should invest in this type of conversion rather than continue to invest in road and freeway infrastructure. We could be much more efficient with what we already have.

wahoonc

There are several of the type of cars you are referring to, already available, with Smart Car being one of them. But you will have an uphill battle to get American's to give up their larger vehicles, car pool or use mass transit. Higher gas prices are going to give it a push to get started, but it is going to take a complete social shift from the "I deserve it" and the "I can pay for it, so I can do what I want" attitudes to the "We are all in this together what can "I" do" I realize that this is a generalization, but a very high percentage of Americans are very selfish when it comes to personal transportation, and are going to resist change. They are also entitlement bent and seem to think that automotive transportation is a right and should be supported by the government, but ***** when confronted with the bill (increased taxes) to pay for the infrastructure. But are the first to want more roads paid for and don't want tax dollars going for mass transit projects.

I ride the train, use buses, subways or whatever is available to me (in addition to bicycles, scooters and a personal/work truck), the question I get asked most often is "what kind of people use the bus, subway, train, etc." My usual reply is "humans beings"...

Aaron

Doug5150

This gets back to the point that the problem of congestion is caused only by population density, and not by lack of roads.

In big cities that have already overbuilt, they have mass transit and yes it gets used--but only because it is the last resort. It works but doesn't work well, and that's why most cities usually have far more taxis than buses. If you want to find out how well mass transit works, try prohibiting taxis in any big city, and FORCE everybody with no car onto those buses and trains.

----

I would be willing to bet that overall (in real-world use) taxis are more efficient per passenger/mile for moving people than typical urban buses or trains are. Taxis are public transportation but they retain the key characteristics of private vehicles--they serve one rider at a time, they operate on the rider's schedule, they go directly between origin and destination, and they don't expend fuel circling a set route while carrying no passengers.
~

d_D

If taxis are so efficient then why are they so expensive? I've never used a taxi that wasn't 5 to 10 times more expensive than using a bus or train. None of the taxi drivers I've ever know have been that well off. How do the bus companies manage to do it so much cheaper if they are less efficient?

kmcrawford111

Don't you mean, "I can't really pay for it, but my credit card can!"

I very much doubt this.

* The majority of the taxis I see are of the Crown Victoria variety, and I bet most of them are running V8s. They certainly aren't running 4 cyls.

* Every single taxi I've ridden in has been driven very aggressively, which results in even lower fuel economy.

* Taxi drivers do expend fuel... by constantly driving around whether they have passengers or not. How many cabs do you see sitting around waiting for a customer? I've seen almost none.

That's three strikes against cabs. I very much doubt all of this is more efficient than a bus running a single engine while carrying many people. And since people are now starting to be priced out of their cars, this "many" is only going to go up. So what if the bus doesn't take you straight to where you want to go? It's carrying many people to many destinations all in one route, and that's far more efficient - in fact, it's the whole point of having a bus.

The only time I can see a bus being less efficient than a cab is if the bus is carrying only a small fraction of its capacity.

Don't forget the additional resources required in infrastructure for the less dense car.

JusticeZero

I spend a lot of time in Anchorage. Anchorage has a mindnumbingly low density. Anchorage has congestion. I spend even more time in the Mat-Su. The Palmer-Wasilla highway connecting two small, low density cities of 10k people or so? Congested.
Your idea of giving everyone cars and putting them in far-flung exurbs is the prescription for the worst possible public health danger from automobiles possible, and cars are already the most dangerous thing in our lives. Under your proposal, car crashes would likely cost the economy at least $.50-$.75 per vehicle mile travelled - they cost Anchorage $.44, mainly due to size and density.
In Portland, 70% of riders are choice - either they own a car, or they could easily own a car if they wanted to. Lots of suits and ties in trendy neighborhoods on the public transit system. Hardly the method of last resort. Zurich has a massive share of public transit use, and it is busting at the seams with wealth.
As for "not working well", in a time trial crossing downtown Melbourne, we were able to beat the time of a private automobile on public transit in spite of the horrible uncoordinated balkanized system they have there.

gwd

This is false. Just yesterday several of us got called to a meeting across town. I of course considered biking but we discussed how we would each get there. The private car owners discussed subway, bus and carpooling. Taxis weren't mentioned. The people talking were city and suburb dwellers who probably don't read this forum. We are real people living in the real world it wasn't a fantasy situation. I make use of taxis sometimes and am glad they are there.

cooker

Taxis function to increase the efficiency of public transit, and facilitate car free lifestyles. People who have a simple, direct commute to work can take the bus, but if it's late at night, or they slept in and are rushed, or are going somewhere unfamiliar or out of their way, or they are cyclists who got too drunk to ride, the taxi is their emergency back up.

That's ridiculous, of course they do. In the downtown of a large city, you can step out on the curb and flag a cab in seconds, because there are hundreds of them out there trolling for fares.

Doug5150

Re: they go directly between origin and destination, and they don't expend fuel circling a set route while carrying no passengers. ~

Yes but they don't wander over their entire ranges, including the emptiest parts. They stay in busy areas, or near events where they're likely to find passengers.

----

Here's a fun question...

Taxis are owned and run by private companies.

Every metro bus and light-rail line I've ever heard of was run by the city it was in, and had to be subsidized to keep operating. If buses and light-rail trains are more efficient to operate than taxis, then how come no private companies will do it?
~

cooker

Roads are far worse - they're extremely heavily subsidized - nobody pays a user fee to drive on them like they do to ride a bus, and the gas tax comes no where near to recovering all the costs.

EDIT: according to this 2006 book, fuel taxes, tolls and car registration fees recoup about 78% of the revenues spent on builidng and maintaining roads including policing:
https://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11568
however driving also generates a lot of other costs like health care and lost income costs for accident victims and their relatives, damage to crops and building foundations near highways, lower business productivity on smog days, and many others.

Because they aren't allowed to.

Urban rail tends to be a government monopoly partly because you can't have competing companies each building their own rail systems throughout a city.

As well, society seems to have decided public transit is a necessity and social good, and opts for complete service rather than serving only high yield lines, much like the post office. If private operators ran your municipal bus service freely and with competition, they would charge 50c to get around downtown and you could board every 17 seconds, and $10 to come in from the suburbs and you could board every 90 minutes. The people don't want that, so goverment gives everybody the same fare and the taxpayers (and the downtowners who pay more than their costs) subsidize the suburbanites.

Also people don't trust corporations to run essential services:

https://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm

patc

Yup. Locally (Ottawa, ON, CA) Public transit runs at 50% cost recovery - that is, fares pay 50% of operating costs. All other costs are paid for by the city. That means every bus and light rail car, every station, every km of bus-only roadway is half paid for directly by its users.

All roads in the city (save one) are maintained by the city and are run at 0% cost recovery. Or, if you prefer, 100% of the cost of the road is subsidized by the city. Users pay nothing.

ALL of the above is done through property taxes. License and registration fees go to the province, not the city. Gas taxes and income taxes go to the feds, not the city. We sometimes get funds from higher gov'ts for specific infrastructure projects, but those are few and far between, and never cover operating costs.

Doug5150

If you built a city without any roads, who do you think would move there?

There's competing cargo rail service in the US, isn't there?

This is an interesting question: that being, who decides to start mass-transit systems and why? Certainly it is generally not the wealthiest people who ask for them, and most of the middle-class doesn't need it either.

The primary example of a mass-transit city in the US would probably be NYC (and even they have more taxis than buses). Did NYC overbuild before it had mass-transit, or did they put mass-transit in as an excuse to overbuild?

Yea, but you forget--when the trolley companies tore up the streets to put trolley tracks in, there was no more room to ride horses anymore!!! It's an outrage, that continues to be ignored to this day!!!!
~

cooker

The problem in the developed world and especially the USA is that the roads are monopolized by cars and have swollen to accomodate them. Even when gas prices were low, that caused lots of problems like pollution, congestion, obesity, loss of agricultural land, and humungous rates of trauma. Now that gas prices are high, the car centric model is strangling the economy.

Cities that have what you might consider inadequate downtown space for cars, like Chicago, New York, Toronto, and especially European and Asian financial centres such as London and Hong Kong, are going to be much better shielded from the economic devastation of high gas prices than hugely decentralized, suburbanized cities where you can't function without a car.

They often own their own rails and rights of way, and ship freight from node to node through open countryside, but that can't work for light rail in a city. There's no room for more than one light urban rail system.

Actually the wealthy of New York benefit hugely from public transit. Some of them use it, but even those who are too posh and disdainful to go underground themselves, employ or conduct business with maids and butlers and tailors and bookkeepers and masseuses and shopkeepers and a million other service personnel who do use it. And when the rich cross town in their limos, they benefit greatly from the fact that so many other people are travelling undeground out of their way.

Cities have mass transit systems because they need them. They subsidize them because they are a public good, but they wouldn't have to subsidize them if the city was denser and hadn't developed around the car when gas was cheap.

Ironically horses probably pollute more than trolleys, and not just their poop, at least any that are fed planted, fertilized crops and not just turned out to untended pasture.

gwd

Cooker is right. Additionally here in DC we use cabs when we have a lot of luggage to haul to the train station or airport when we go on a trip. Neither the airport nor the train station has secure long term bike parking. I sometimes we haul our luggage onto the subway but for some reason we usually spend the extra money on the airport shuttle or a cab- maybe its the festivity of going on vacation or the luxury or our jobs paying for the cab. Car people also use them when they'll go out drinking. Some of my neighbors are unhealthy and use the taxis instead of walking a few blocks to the bus. I'm glad the people who are unhealthy have the self awareness not to drive. Its comical bud sad the way car people who have never lived car free, post on this forum making false statements about the way I live. All a car person has to do is come to my neighborhood and stand on the corner to see how we do it. Just keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut and you'll learn a lot.

cerewa

I lived in Anchorage and traveled along the Glenn Highway many times.

JusticeZero is telling the truth about congestion in Anchorage and along the highway to get there.

If people were willing to pay taxi fares for a bus ride, buses would be profitable. The lack of time-efficiency from the rider's standpoint, (not fuel-efficiency) accounts for the difference in the price people will pay.

Compared to taxis, buses and trains may be less susidized per-passenger-trip than buses and trains - publicly funded roads are expensive and gas tax doesn't pay for it all. Whether or not the vehicle itself is privately owned, that expensive road is not.

JusticeZero

But that "no transportation" scenario isn't a part of your argument, is it? That's special pleading if i've ever heard it. If you built a city without roads but with a robust transit system, people would go there just as much as they go to a city with roads and no transit.
Yes, and it doesn't run very well.
Transit in particular is very much a natural monopoly; in a balkanized system, certain things are shown to happen: For one, the trunk routes become overserviced with several competing services offering in identical product with duplication of infrastructure, and the feeders that bring people TO the trunk lines are canceled and abandoned as money losers. Result? System dies in a wasteful manner. Privatization has been tried in transportation, and all of the significant cases have ended in disaster. Some central body has to take responsibility for maintaining and designing the system, which can then contract out for how to fulfill it's needs.
You mean, like the wonderful mass transit system in Zurich, Switzerland, one of the wealthiest cities in the world? Or the ones in other wealthy cities in Europe?
It was "overbuilt" before mass transit. Mass transit allowed it to expand it's borders and increase it's multiplier effect that has given it such a powerful presence in the world economy.
Oh yes, true; one of the early examples of an environmental and public health issue being aided by transit infrastructure. I fail to see why you care, though.

scottieie

Someone probably has mentioned this, but the very road that they drive on is subsidized, heavily, and not just by gas taxes, but by property, income and sales tax, depending on who takes care of the road, so yes, taxis and cars are very much subsidized, unless you are off-roading it everywhere you go!

BTW, don't know the official figure on this, but have heard that a rail bed is way cheaper to build and maintain than a 4 lane highway. Anyone care to supply some figures on this if in fact it is true?

bike2math

As someone who has used bicycle, public transit, and inter-city buses extensively for getting around for much of my life I think the most important thing that needs to happen is that people need to come to grips with the idea of not going directly to their destination, and with the idea that the system may not be operating on their schedule.

I know its not sexy, because its not building something grand rather it is using what we already have (most cities I've visited recently have a passable bus system, well with the exception of Arlington Texas) and just asking people to adapt.

As someone who finds the current system perfectly useful I fail to see why we need extensive improvements, as gas becomes more expensive people will move over and it should be relatively simple to increase the capacity of our current systems. Even with the massive increases in ridership I haven't ridden a standing room bus, ever, here in C-bus.

wahoonc

YOUR current system...the ones in my part of the country suck, as in; the buses don't run before 7 am or much after 7pm, half schedule on Saturdays and none on Sundays. Many long distance passenger trains are already over capacity and they don't have the any additional equipment to add to increase capacity. Also according to an article I read on Amtrak if they ordered new equipment TODAY you are looking at 2-3 years to get it on line.

Aaron

bike2math

This is my original point: people need to get over the idea that the system will run on their schedule. If gas is expensive enough it will be worth it to find a way to make it work; or the public will begin to insist on expanded service. This certainly isn't a reason to suggest building a whole new infrastructure (at least not yet).

Forget the train. Greyhound and the other comercial inter-city buses are far more useful. I have yet to take an Amtrak journey that didn't involve a Greyhound leg on one or both ends, often you can do the same trip for cheaper (and quicker) by just staying on the dawg. It just seems that buying a whole new infrastructure just to make inter-city mass transit more convenient is a waste of money during this depression. Instead we should be tightening our belts and finding ways to make do with what we already have.

Also I don't know what Amtrak's problem is: If they are running cars that are full to capacity then why aren't they making enough of a profit to buy more? Sure it will take 2-3 years, but so what?

--------------

I think our society needs to get over the idea that a son and his family living in Oregon should be traveling to his parents in New York every year for Christmas. With the cost of energy today we should get back to the situation where it is exceedingly rare for people to travel long distances for vacations. and it will happen provided we don't do anything bone headed like build a new rail service to try and support this unsustainable habit we have developed.