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The stats are sort of misleading. Of COURSE 97% of people drove to an office park in an Illinois suburb, because that was the only way to get there. OF COURSE
by rconti 8y ago
The stats are sort of misleading. Of COURSE 97% of people drove to an office park in an Illinois suburb, because that was the only way to get there.
OF COURSE almost every commutes to downtown Chicago by transit, because parking costs are insane.
I'm not saying I'm not pro-transit; I am. Very much so. But these stats don't capture how many of the 97% hated commuting by car but had to, and how many of the 90% "non-automobile" commutes are being done by people grudgingly (or AFTER driving a car to a train station, paying for parking, waiting for a train, and wishing they had a nice big free parking lot at their destination).
- sdenton4 8y agoAs a human living on earth, I don't actually much care what the 97% or 90% actually think about their commutes. Using transit instead of single-occupant cars is a huge improvement from an environmental and economic standpoint.
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- nostromo 8y agoYou should care because the real way to get people to use transit is by making it better than the alternative.
- jchanimal 8y agoRaising the price of gas helps too.
- timr 8y agoOr from the other direction: not subsidizing automobile transportation. If we funneled as much money to mass transit as we do to vehicle infrastructure, there'd be no competition.
- bitshepherd 8y agoNot really, no. Raising the price of gas negatively affects the working poor more than helps the environment. That subset of society may not live in an area accessible by transit, or their employment requires them to be in a different location than is feasible to travel to by transit.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> Raising the price of gas negatively affects the working poor more than helps the environment In the short run. In the long run, the proceeds could be used to encourage the working poor to move to cities where they don't need a car. Given how financially terrible car ownership is for America's poor--between traffic tickets, civil forfeiture, police violence, predatory lending and collection practices, insurance practices, et cetera--I think it would be a net boon.
- RandomInteger4 8y agoThis is a horribly naive statement which disregards the existence many different jobs other than office and retail.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> disregards the existence many different jobs other than office and retail Gas taxes can be raised in a way that is neutral to our working poor. It's a minor adjustment to the lowest tax bracket.
- kenneth 8y agoSo what? Should the environment be subsidizing a benefit to the poor? We have better ways to help the poor than to let them trash our planet.
- francisofascii 8y agoYou can raise the Federal gas tax, and simultaneously lower the bottom tax rate from 10% to 0%.
- RandomInteger4 8y agoNot everyone works in an office.
- jgh 8y agoNot if we want to achieve aggressive climate goals.
- Daishiman 8y agoOr, you know, charging for the true externalities of owning a car like Denmark does.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoAnd the way to do that without discharging a loaded 12ga into the foot of the economy and everyone's quality of life is to make public transit better and more plentiful, not artificially raise the cost of private transit (which raises the cost of everything that depends on it). While the HN crowd had the economic stability to absorb an increased cost of private transit a huge chunk of the population would be negatively impacted in a way large enough to be worth avoiding. Carrots > sticks.
- briandear 8y agoI agree except that often means to make car driving worse so transit seems better. Making transit actually better would be the key.
- francisofascii 8y agoConverting single occupant lanes to dedicated bus lanes would help, too. Prioritize vehicles carrying the most people.
- dionidium 8y agoThe thing to remember whenever “better than the alternative” comes up is that transit is good where cars are bad and cars are good everywhere else. Transit is never going to beat out cars in environments where traffic is light, density is low, and parking is cheap. But traffic isn’t light and parking isn’t cheap where density is high. This is about deciding which kind of city you want and building the transportation options that fit that environment. Cities built for cars are very different from cities built for density and walkability. You can’t compare the two modes devoid of that context.
- baddox 8y agoThat doesn’t address the point about people driving to the transit station. If someone is willing to tolerate driving their car one hour, adding a transit leg will just allow them to drive one hour while living slightly further from their office, which in isolation doesn’t help the environment.
- siculars 8y agoAs a human living on Earth, I don't actually care much what you think. See how that feels?
- baybal2 8y agoYou seem to be very anxious. Is that so bad in Chicago? How big is the percent of population in Chicago live so far from the downtown that they need a transport to commute?
- wenc 8y agoThe population of the City of Chicago is 2.7 million. The population of the Chicago metropolitan area i.e. "Chicagoland" is 9.5 million (almost the size of Michigan). So 6.7 million people are technically not in the city. A significant fraction of them commute to downtown Chicago for work.
- baybal2 8y ago6.7 / 9.5 = 0.7. That's really a lot, 70%! How big of a portion of them are commuting to downtown?
- nkrisc 8y agoMight be hard to find that, but based on the info I can find, a good many do commute in to the city. You could dig down more into station level numbers to get a more accurate count. For example, if you wanted to exclude stations on the line that are within city limits, but not downtown. Anecdotally, as someone whose walk to work (from other transit) takes them against the flow of people coming from Union Station: it's a lot of people indeed. September 2018 Metra ridership report: https://metrarail.com/sites/default/files/assets/planning/ridership/september_2018_ridership_report_standalone.pdf https://metrarail.com/sites/default/files/assets/planning/ri... All reports: https://metrarail.com/about-metra/reports-documents/operations-ridership-data/monthlyannual-ridership https://metrarail.com/about-metra/reports-documents/operatio...
- lenzm 8y agoI can't find the source now, but I think it's about 600-700k commuters into the city center (Loop, River North, West Loop) every weekday.
- jdlyga 8y agoWhen done right, subway commuting is amazing. I live in Manhattan, and my commute is 15 minutes.
- rkuykendall-com 8y ago> When done right > live in Manhattan You and I have had very different experiences with the subway over the last year.
- adamson 8y agoWhen it works, it's great, and in spite of so-called "statistics" to the contrary, it works pretty reliably for me during rush hour.
- ryguytilidie 8y ago
- Karrot_Kream 8y agoOn the flip side, the previous office in the suburbs with 90% car ridership probably forced everyone to own a car and drive in. The other stat didn't show how many people wanted to drive in, either. This seems like an apples to apples comparison to me.
- rconti 8y agoFrom my comment: > But these stats don't capture how many of the 97% hated commuting by car but had to
- vharuck 8y agoThe important part of that stat: > 97 percent of our folks were arriving by themselves in a car Emphasis mine. Cars carrying just one person to and from work every day is a waste.