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Did they do an analysis of the tech buses in comparison to actually creating new municipal transportation open to all residents? That's what always seemed to be
by DannoHung 11y ago
Did they do an analysis of the tech buses in comparison to actually creating new municipal transportation open to all residents? That's what always seemed to be the real problem with them to me.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoWhat do you envision such an agency would look like? "Tech buses" is a thing that hauls thousands of people from all over six counties to a small area. The only thing similar in scope is BART, and we already have BART, and it's not that good. What we need is a S-Bahn-like service running up both sides of the Bay from San Jose to San Francisco and Richmond. The tracks are already there, we just suck at trains. An electrified two-track mainline railroad operating on 5-to-10-minute headways with bi-level cars would completely solve our traffic problems, and bring the Bay Area up to the standards of minor second-tier European cities.
- samstave 11y agoIs there any way any private access to said tracks could be had? What about designing rail cars based on Teslas open patents for small, semi-autonomous electric rail cars that operate on a very tight automated schedule along a public track.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoSee, that right there is the problem with Americans. There is NO NEED for some new kind of rail car. Ordinary bi-level passenger trains with 6 cars carry ~2500 people and can run on 2.5-minute headways (1000 people per minute).
- samstave 11y agoWell, to be fair the carrying capacity of Caltrain is immense, but they are slow as hell, poor coverage area and if you want to commute from the east bay simply to mountain view via Caltrain its three hours one way!!! So while technically you may be correct, they way they have been implemented here in the Bay Area, is, in my opinion, an utter failure. What's worse, is we knew they were a failure from an efficiency standpoint twenty years ago. So either we join all the agencies together and fire any schedulers they have and start from scratch. Or we find some way to do what these agencies can't.
- ropiku 11y agoI think there's also the US rule that passenger trains sharing the track with freight trains need withstand collisions. That's why they are heavy and less efficient than lighter european trains.
- khuey 11y agoAll forms of public transit in the region require subsidies. Why should we spend public tax dollars on a bus to Google, of all things?
- thrownaway2424 11y agoYour statement is suspiciously worded, because all forms of motorized transport, public or private, are deeply subsidized around here. Shouldn't the first subsidy to be reduced be the one lavished upon private cars?
- khuey 11y agoI agree that all forms of motorized transport are heavily subsidized. We're already subsidizing the highways, gas, lack of pricing of externalities such as air pollution, etc. Given all that, why should taxpayers further subsidize the vehicle itself and the operator, instead of letting Google pay for all of that?
- pmiller2 11y agoThe history of BART pretty much shows that's politically infeasible. Take a look at the original planned map for BART sometime if you want to get really depressed: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transit-bay-area.html http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...
- nitwit005 11y agoYep. I live in a county that openly opposed bart expansion. The only way to get a big transit expansion is if the state or federal government forces it over local opposition.