8 ms·

// So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. Doesn't this mean, that the rea

by petra 7y ago

// So in places where road space is the bottleneck, we expect driving speed to be similar to the speed of the alternative mode. Doesn't this mean, that the real "battle" between the public transportation and cars, should be based on a better experience ? And since driving a car in traffic, everyday, is a negative experience and will stay so until autonomous driving - in theory, we could create the right public experience, that will win over most drivers ? And so, why haven't we done that ?

rayiner 7y ago
Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2015/02/24/funding-challenges-in-highway-and-transit-a-federal-state-local-analysis https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/.... The majority of people, quite reasonably, will not pony up even more money for transit until it can actually improve their commutes. And it can’t, for two different reasons. First, it costs us five time as much money to build a unit of rail as it does say Paris (a city where the majority of people don’t drive to work). That kneecaps your ability to increase coverage of the transit network—making it a viable choice for the majority of commuters. Paris has a dense network of subways and commuter stations, which means that people can take a reasonable walk to a transit station. You can’t build a dense network like that if each mile of track costs you five times as much. Second, our cities don’t look anything like the cities where most people take transit to work. People are catching on to measuring population density of metro regions in weighted terms (calculating the density in a way that shows the density in the places where most people live, rather than using arbitrary administrative lines). Under those measures, places like Paris and Barcelona have metro are densities of 30,000-50,000 people per square mile. Only New York City comes close. San Francisco and LA are at 12,000. DC, Seattle, Portland, etc. are in the 5,000-6,000 range. Taking both figures together kills you. When you build 10 miles of subway in Barcelona, you might cover 250,000 people (assuming you get people walking from 0.25 miles on either side). And say it costs you $1 billion. In DC that same 10 miles of subway covers 30,000 people. And it costs you $5 billion. Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Presumably why Googles New London office is next to two of the main rail stations St Pancras and Kings Cross and Euston is only a 10 Min Walk.
- usaar333 7y ago
  > San Francisco and LA are at 12,000 Small nit. SF is about 19k people per square mile. (Almost 900k people on 47 square miles of land)
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I’m talking about the population weighted density of the metro areas, not just the cities. Most people in the Bay Area don’t live in San Francisco (just like most people in “Paris” don’t live in the city itself). So you’ll never move the needle on transit usage if you’re just limited to the city itself. The arithmetic density of the Bay Area is 800 people per square mile. That’s not a very useful measure because that is dragged down by lots of sparsely populated areas where few people live. 12,000 is the population weighted density (basically, the density of the areas where most people actually live). Paris and Barcelona are 3-4 times that.
    - cgiles 7y ago
      I visited the Bay Area for the first time (as an adult) a few weeks ago and was astonished by the difference between what I was expecting based on HN comments, and reality. All I saw of the city made it seem like a giant suburb. BART stations were miles apart and therefore practically useless. It is really not that dense and traffic is not bad. I am sure some areas are different. I was mainly in the area around SFO, and my conference was not hosted in downtown because apparently the homeless problem is bigger there, but at that level of low density and congestion, I fail to see how public transit is much of a win. People will not realistically take public transit if it doubles their travel time. And this case applies doubly to medium-sized suburbanized cities in the central US. On the other hand, I can see what people mean about a housing problem when there are virtually no buildings taller than 3 stories except hotels in such an urban area.
esotericn 7y ago
Private transportation is fundamentally at odds with public transportation as far as I can tell; public transport campaigners just don't "get it". In cities where public transportation is a huge success, it's because driving is completely impractical due to congestion. Even a first class compartment on a train is frankly uncomfortable compared to sitting in a car. An autonomous car or a chauffeured car beats it hands down, because public infrastructure is never going to be as clean or as luxurious as an individual can afford. I love public transport and I want it to do well because, well, it's ultimately the only thing that's going to scale. But it's just not acceptable to say "oh well the train is warm and smelly, deal with it". Unless it's a cause that really matters to them, most people who can afford it are going to opt out of that.
- pathsjs 7y ago
  Well, it seems to me that you don't get it. In the city where I live, car traffic is not especially impractical, and I drive from time to time. But if I have the chance to go somewhere by subway, I prefer that, since I can read or do seomthing else in the meantime. If I can walk, this is even better. For longer travels, a train is always better than a car for me: I can read, watch a movie, study. The time of arrival is known in advance unless there are delays and I can just relax. You seem to assume that everyone prefers to be in a car, but this is just not the case
  - esotericn 7y ago
    I can't speak for 'everyone'. The thing I'm getting at here is not whether you, or I, personally drive or not. It's that public transport is built (necessarily) for the public. It's lowest common denominator. Very, very few systems worldwide are actually comfortable places to be. A car that has air conditioning, your own seat, space, etc is more comfortable than a tube carriage that's crammed to the rafters and is 30+c. A specific individual might prefer the cost/time/whatever tradeoff of one over the other. But to pretend that cars are just strictly inferior is only true in a situation where public transport actually works properly - which is really vanishingly rare. Even in a place like London with its' fantastic tube network, it's completely normal for people to stand armpit-to-armpit in a sweltering carriage. A car might be slower, but it provides an opt-out for that discomfort, and some people will choose that unless you literally ban it.
jsight 7y ago
Comments like this make me really wonder if companies like the boring company actually have the right idea, but maybe a slightly wrong implementation. What if the tunnel networks were based on pedestrian traffic rather than vehicle traffic? The tunnels wouldn't have to be exceptionally large, but they could carry a tremendous amount of traffic. Even better, they would be insulated from the weather, which is by far the worst part of the pedestrian experience in big cities, IMO. Cars on surface streets are quite probably the worst approach possible from an efficiency standpoint, but they appeal for experience reasons.

by petra 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

Because it would cost too much. About 90% of commutes are driving, versus 5% for transit (mostly buses). But even though transit accounts for only about 5% or commutes, it accounts for 25% of spending at the federal, state, and local levels (combined): https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2015/02/24/funding-challenges-in-highway-and-transit-a-federal-state-local-analysis https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/.... The majority of people, quite reasonably, will not pony up even more money for transit until it can actually improve their commutes. And it can’t, for two different reasons. First, it costs us five time as much money to build a unit of rail as it does say Paris (a city where the majority of people don’t drive to work). That kneecaps your ability to increase coverage of the transit network—making it a viable choice for the majority of commuters. Paris has a dense network of subways and commuter stations, which means that people can take a reasonable walk to a transit station. You can’t build a dense network like that if each mile of track costs you five times as much. Second, our cities don’t look anything like the cities where most people take transit to work. People are catching on to measuring population density of metro regions in weighted terms (calculating the density in a way that shows the density in the places where most people live, rather than using arbitrary administrative lines). Under those measures, places like Paris and Barcelona have metro are densities of 30,000-50,000 people per square mile. Only New York City comes close. San Francisco and LA are at 12,000. DC, Seattle, Portland, etc. are in the 5,000-6,000 range. Taking both figures together kills you. When you build 10 miles of subway in Barcelona, you might cover 250,000 people (assuming you get people walking from 0.25 miles on either side). And say it costs you $1 billion. In DC that same 10 miles of subway covers 30,000 people. And it costs you $5 billion. Oh, there is really a third reason. Because you have to drive everywhere anyway, our job centers in the US are widely dispersed. Google’s main Paris office is in Paris itself. Google’s main Bay Area office is in the suburbs of San Francisco. Google’s main DC area office is in the suburbs of DC. Fixed transit networks are awful for such layouts.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Presumably why Googles New London office is next to two of the main rail stations St Pancras and Kings Cross and Euston is only a 10 Min Walk.
usaar333 7y ago
> San Francisco and LA are at 12,000 Small nit. SF is about 19k people per square mile. (Almost 900k people on 47 square miles of land)
- rayiner 7y ago
  I’m talking about the population weighted density of the metro areas, not just the cities. Most people in the Bay Area don’t live in San Francisco (just like most people in “Paris” don’t live in the city itself). So you’ll never move the needle on transit usage if you’re just limited to the city itself. The arithmetic density of the Bay Area is 800 people per square mile. That’s not a very useful measure because that is dragged down by lots of sparsely populated areas where few people live. 12,000 is the population weighted density (basically, the density of the areas where most people actually live). Paris and Barcelona are 3-4 times that.
  - cgiles 7y ago
    I visited the Bay Area for the first time (as an adult) a few weeks ago and was astonished by the difference between what I was expecting based on HN comments, and reality. All I saw of the city made it seem like a giant suburb. BART stations were miles apart and therefore practically useless. It is really not that dense and traffic is not bad. I am sure some areas are different. I was mainly in the area around SFO, and my conference was not hosted in downtown because apparently the homeless problem is bigger there, but at that level of low density and congestion, I fail to see how public transit is much of a win. People will not realistically take public transit if it doubles their travel time. And this case applies doubly to medium-sized suburbanized cities in the central US. On the other hand, I can see what people mean about a housing problem when there are virtually no buildings taller than 3 stories except hotels in such an urban area.

esotericn 7y ago

Private transportation is fundamentally at odds with public transportation as far as I can tell; public transport campaigners just don't "get it". In cities where public transportation is a huge success, it's because driving is completely impractical due to congestion. Even a first class compartment on a train is frankly uncomfortable compared to sitting in a car. An autonomous car or a chauffeured car beats it hands down, because public infrastructure is never going to be as clean or as luxurious as an individual can afford. I love public transport and I want it to do well because, well, it's ultimately the only thing that's going to scale. But it's just not acceptable to say "oh well the train is warm and smelly, deal with it". Unless it's a cause that really matters to them, most people who can afford it are going to opt out of that.

pathsjs 7y ago
Well, it seems to me that you don't get it. In the city where I live, car traffic is not especially impractical, and I drive from time to time. But if I have the chance to go somewhere by subway, I prefer that, since I can read or do seomthing else in the meantime. If I can walk, this is even better. For longer travels, a train is always better than a car for me: I can read, watch a movie, study. The time of arrival is known in advance unless there are delays and I can just relax. You seem to assume that everyone prefers to be in a car, but this is just not the case
- esotericn 7y ago
  I can't speak for 'everyone'. The thing I'm getting at here is not whether you, or I, personally drive or not. It's that public transport is built (necessarily) for the public. It's lowest common denominator. Very, very few systems worldwide are actually comfortable places to be. A car that has air conditioning, your own seat, space, etc is more comfortable than a tube carriage that's crammed to the rafters and is 30+c. A specific individual might prefer the cost/time/whatever tradeoff of one over the other. But to pretend that cars are just strictly inferior is only true in a situation where public transport actually works properly - which is really vanishingly rare. Even in a place like London with its' fantastic tube network, it's completely normal for people to stand armpit-to-armpit in a sweltering carriage. A car might be slower, but it provides an opt-out for that discomfort, and some people will choose that unless you literally ban it.

jsight 7y ago

Comments like this make me really wonder if companies like the boring company actually have the right idea, but maybe a slightly wrong implementation. What if the tunnel networks were based on pedestrian traffic rather than vehicle traffic? The tunnels wouldn't have to be exceptionally large, but they could carry a tremendous amount of traffic. Even better, they would be insulated from the weather, which is by far the worst part of the pedestrian experience in big cities, IMO. Cars on surface streets are quite probably the worst approach possible from an efficiency standpoint, but they appeal for experience reasons.