5 ms·
>light rail is an easy approach that is guaranteed to always be slower than street traffic. That alone wouldn't have been half bad, but with the ultra-low cove
by romwell 8y ago
>light rail is an easy approach that is guaranteed to always be slower than street traffic.
That alone wouldn't have been half bad, but with the ultra-low coverage / density of this network, it becomes useless for 95% of the people living in the city.
For example, in North San Jose, my 4.5-mile commute would take 12 minutes by car, 25 minutes by bicycle, and a whopping 75 minutes by public transportation. At that point, one might as well walk (90 minutes).
- jogjayr 8y agoYou'd think that over longer distances, it might be faster than biking, but you'd be wrong. Downtown MTV to Campbell takes about 1hr 15m, which is how long it takes you to bike the same route.
- not2b 8y agoI live in Campbell and work in MV. You are right, of course, but the reason is that the light rail route is ridiculously inefficient for that trip. It first goes way northeast, to Milpitas, before heading south. It's so bad that, depending on schedules, you can get from MV to Campbell faster by taking Caltrain to SJ and then switching to light rail at Diridon (but you pay more).
- hadlock 8y agoI've actually gotten off at Palo Alto station a couple of times and biked the difference between it and Mountain View, and made it to the office before my coworkers, who were taking the non-baby bullet. Between accel/deaccel and loading the local train is better than traffic, but roughly equal to a good road bike.
- quicklime 8y agoWhat's crazy is that a fit cyclist on a road bike can easily beat a local Caltrain (stops at every station) all the way from San Francisco! For example, travelling from Google's SF office to the Googleplex in MTV on the weekend will take about 2 hours and 45 mins via Caltrain/buses, and 2.5 hours via SF2G's Bayway route (http://sf2g.com/bayway.html http://sf2g.com/bayway.html).
- usaar333 8y agoI can't think of any light rail systems that beat a reasonably fit cyclist. This is true even when you compare biking to SF's Muni Subway systems. People just take light rail since few want to bike places, let alone at "workout pace"
- zeruch 8y agoThis assumes everyone in all weather conditions, would prefer to brave the street traffic routes...and frankly how many 'reasonably fit cyclists' there are commuting, out of the superset of "people going places, including work"
- jakelarkin 8y agohow pointless that the state is spending decades and tens of billions on HSR from SF to LA for a hypothetical sub-3 hour journey, while it still takes 1.5 to 2.5 hours to get between various important locations in the Bay Area by public transit.
- AdrianB1 8y agoIf the option was one versus another, then the question may be valid on why that one is chosen (I don't know, I don't have the full background). If you are suggesting that both could be done with the same money, that's a completely different story. What is your point?
- lfittl 8y agoFor what its worth, the HSR plan includes Caltrain electrification, which will eventually cut down SF to San Jose to ~45 minutes. And the state is bigger than just the Bay Area :-)
- joe_the_user 8y agoWell, public transit in the rest of the state is in an even worse condition than public transit in the Bay Area. HSR duplicates the functionality now provided by planes. The umpteen billions being demanded for HSR hypothetically could provide decent bus service across the state. But given the current bureaucracy, the situation feels more like "how much money would like us to embezzle and what story would you like to hear while we're doing?" Which isn't to say I'm pro-car or pro-private-instead-of-public. If anything, a spot light needs to be shown on the clot of public-private corruption apparently controlling US transit decisions.
- not2b 8y agoLong-term, we need to switch from planes to HSR for trips of 400 miles or less, unless someone can come up with a carbon-free alternative to jet fuel. Americans tend to have a warped perspective because our trains are so crappy compared to what is standard in Western Europe or east Asia.
- joe_the_user 8y agoIndeed, In a lot of ways Buses are a more plausible solution to public transit than the idiot train-tracks nowhere you getting built (here in Sonoma County, we see the SMART train between Santa Rosa and San Rafael running once an hour and costing ~$15, a failure before it hit the ground). The quandary is if the voters approve a railroad, it will be half-done and run at half-speed but if voters approve buses, they might run right for a year and then get sabotaged down to nothing once public attention has gone elsewhere. Effectively, long ago, whoever is America's powers-that-be decided cars were for transit and mass-transit was for soaking tax-dollars (back when General Motors destroyed the trolley systems, say). Now that the car model is falling apart, switching directions isn't possible 'cause it would disturb the feeding of too many swine-at-the-trough.
- thatoneuser 8y agoComing from a rural area, I’m really appalled at how inefficient public transit is. It’s clearly only functional enough to be used by people a) fortuitous enough to live right by public transit centers or b) people without a choice. The last time I used transit it turned a 20 minute drive into a 50+ minute bus ride. I’m not about to trade away an hour+ of every day for the sake of being green. I had coworkers suggest biking to another route that was quicker, but that bike ride included an extra 30+ minutes of biking, had me hauling the bike on and off the bus, risking having my bike stolen (we had an enclosed cage, but people had bikes stolen occasionally) plus now I’m either a bit sweaty or have to take a shower at work (and then be sweaty at the end of the day). I know this isn’t an easy solution, but from an outsider perspective I see why people don’t use public transit that much. It disrupts life to the point where it’s simply not an option for most.
- joe_the_user 8y agoIndeed, but it doesn't have to be that way. Frequent, low cost timely bus-and-light-rail service is possible. It existed in other countries. Portland, OR, a quite spread-out city, once had it (I don't know it still does). BART was once an excellent system and after years of neglect is still better than many. One factor in this country is public transit is expected to pay for itself while the automobile is effectively massively subsidized.
- danans 8y ago> Coming from a rural area, I’m really appalled at how inefficient public transit is. A highly utilized public transit system is often far more efficient than cars when measured in people-miles/hr during hours of peak transit demand, whereas rural transit is a totally different and non comparable transportation problem space. The inefficient bus and rail systems are usually ones in areas where people mostly commute using cars, places like Silicon Valley. In these places, the bus and rail lines are sparse relative to the population, so they take longer to get to any individual's destination. > It’s clearly only functional enough to be used by people a) fortuitous enough to live right by public transit centers or b) people without a choice. It's true that housing with easy transit center access is a privilege for working and professional class people today, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon since less than a generation ago, people of some means completely eschewed transit.
- kerng 8y ago4-5 miles seem like a good "run to work" distance every morning, problem is just how to get back... if you are lucky and have showers at work. I tried that a few times but didnt sustain it because of lack of return options.