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“Make the full cost of driving salient for employees” Give them the stick!! Seriously, why don’t we simply improve mass transit so more people want to take it

“Make the full cost of driving salient for employees” Give them the stick!! Seriously, why don’t we simply improve mass transit so more people want to take it? Even in NYC where it’s the best in America, it can still be painful. Try commuting from Brooklyn to NJ, or 4 miles to the east side of Manhattan from NJ. 25 years ago I lived 50 miles from Manhattan and the best an express train could do was 65 minutes to the city. I even wrote a letter to MetroNorth. We’re about to enter the third decade of the 21st Century. How about trains that go 125 mph? Where are the maglevs? China, of course: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-driverless-maglev-trains/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-driverless-maglev-t...

monksy 7y ago
> Even in NYC where it’s the best in America, it can still be painful. Try commuting from Brooklyn to NJ, or 4 miles to the east side of Manhattan from NJ. Or east-west in Chicago via train or North/South without hitting the red line. RANT Everytime the circle line is mentioned in Chicago you always get the crap that "it's too expensive". It's always going to be "too expensive." sigh.
bluGill 7y ago
To answer your first question: why can't we improve it. We don't know how to do that. A lot of money has been spent building "better" transit systems that nobody took. We would be equally as effective if we just paid the people building those systems to dig a hole and fill it back in, if we had them dig in their backyard we could have saved all the pollution of their commute to the job site. NYC is hurt because their costs to build something are typically 7 times what it would cost to build the same thing in Spain. (health care, cost of living, and harder soils should make NYC 1.25x harder than Spain, every other explanation of why this is I've seen doesn't stand when examined closer) Until NYC can get their costs under control they it doesn't make sense to build much more mass transit, roads are a better value. As for maglevs: they are a cute boondoggle, but not worth the expense. China isn't building them anymore because the cost isn't worth it. You can build 150mph trains without it for much less. This will probably change, but the reality is it isn't worth spending your own city/countries' money on it. The US could build maglev if we wanted, but it is a much better idea to just update and fix what we have already (Amtrak is historically incompetent, there are hopeful signs that might change but I'll wait to pass judgement on those signs for 20 years - there were signs 20 years ago that didn't amount to anything) Even if we solve the above, inertia is a hard problem. I have a car, the roads take me where I want to go, when I want to go, very quickly (except in congestion cases). It is very hard for mass transit to compete with that. Transit often doesn't get people where they want to go - political issues (like your NJ to Brooklyn) mean transit doesn't cross borders the road does. Often even if it does your costs go up even though the trip was short (that is your 4 mile trip is twice as much as a 20 mile trip if you hadn't crossed that border). Cars go when you want to go. Many transit systems run so rarely that you have to check the bus schedule before going anywhere. People who drive don't realize how critical this is because it never occurs to them that running late isn't arriving 2 minutes after the meeting starts, but a full hour. Quick is important. I'm trying to get someplace, not take a tour of the neighborhood (that was neat the first time, after that it is boring). Every time the bus stops to let someone else on/off that is robbing me of a couple minutes of my time, this can be acceptable if it is a quick stop - but if the bus has to spend several minutes going down a cul-de-sac it is unacceptable (note that a cul-de-sac where the end is still walking distance to the stop isn't bad, it is only when it is long enough that the bus would need to turn down it to get people that it is bad). This last is why transit advocates spend more time talking about zoning than transit - most suburbs in the US are dense enough that transit could be useful for not much cost (that is less than the cost of all the freeways we build). However the street design means there is no way to run useful buses.
- melling 7y ago
  “As for maglevs: they are a cute boondoggle, but not worth the expense. China isn't building them anymore because the cost isn't worth it. ” I mentioned that they are building them and provided a link. They are focusing on the cheaper low-medium speed maglevs. You don’t need 150 mph trains to travel within a city, or metropolitan area. 120 mph is sufficiently fast. Newark airport to JFK, for example, is only about 35 miles. Park at Newark and fly out of JFK. Manhattan is 20 miles long. How about an express, with a few stops, that covers it in 20 minutes?
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  I saw that Spain-vs-NYC article too -- 7x cheaper. We need a tech battle to drive down the cost of infrastructure projects. Just like Amazon did with e-commerce... ruthless efficiency.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Problem is it doesn't seem to be a tech problem. The tech side in NYC seems to be similar costs. Something is eating the money, but everything someone has suggested doesn't seem to be it.
fancyfish 7y ago
I live in NYC and have had so much frustration with the MTA being constantly delayed, very dirty, and with beggars abound. I'm talking a 40 minute commute just to get from Williamsburg to Midtown. Being stopped in tunnels due to trains broken down ahead. Homeless urinating in the trains and defecating off the side of the platform during rush hour. I ended up moving within a short walking distance to work and it has been the best decision I've made while living there. I appreciate Andy Byford's ambitious turnaround plan but for now I just use the MTA when absolutely necessary, like for sporting events. I don't expect to use MTA for my commute for at least the next several years, there is just so much improvement needed for train and signal reliability, and general maintenance. Byford has mentioned a potential "death spiral" of NYC public transit where if enough people forgo taking the bus or train, there will be revenue shortfalls causing further dilapidation. I guess this is possible given how "farebox revenue" makes a large portion of total revenues and MTA is required to adopt a balanced budget [1]. [1] https://new.mta.info/document/12481 https://new.mta.info/document/12481
usaar333 7y ago
Top speed is rarely the issue. It's the time wasted in stops.. or if you don't have stops, the time to get to the stations. I'm in China now and it is great the rail stations are high speed. Sadly it takes an hour to get there by any means if transportation.

monksy 7y ago

> Even in NYC where it’s the best in America, it can still be painful. Try commuting from Brooklyn to NJ, or 4 miles to the east side of Manhattan from NJ. Or east-west in Chicago via train or North/South without hitting the red line. RANT Everytime the circle line is mentioned in Chicago you always get the crap that "it's too expensive". It's always going to be "too expensive." sigh.

bluGill 7y ago

To answer your first question: why can't we improve it. We don't know how to do that. A lot of money has been spent building "better" transit systems that nobody took. We would be equally as effective if we just paid the people building those systems to dig a hole and fill it back in, if we had them dig in their backyard we could have saved all the pollution of their commute to the job site. NYC is hurt because their costs to build something are typically 7 times what it would cost to build the same thing in Spain. (health care, cost of living, and harder soils should make NYC 1.25x harder than Spain, every other explanation of why this is I've seen doesn't stand when examined closer) Until NYC can get their costs under control they it doesn't make sense to build much more mass transit, roads are a better value. As for maglevs: they are a cute boondoggle, but not worth the expense. China isn't building them anymore because the cost isn't worth it. You can build 150mph trains without it for much less. This will probably change, but the reality is it isn't worth spending your own city/countries' money on it. The US could build maglev if we wanted, but it is a much better idea to just update and fix what we have already (Amtrak is historically incompetent, there are hopeful signs that might change but I'll wait to pass judgement on those signs for 20 years - there were signs 20 years ago that didn't amount to anything) Even if we solve the above, inertia is a hard problem. I have a car, the roads take me where I want to go, when I want to go, very quickly (except in congestion cases). It is very hard for mass transit to compete with that. Transit often doesn't get people where they want to go - political issues (like your NJ to Brooklyn) mean transit doesn't cross borders the road does. Often even if it does your costs go up even though the trip was short (that is your 4 mile trip is twice as much as a 20 mile trip if you hadn't crossed that border). Cars go when you want to go. Many transit systems run so rarely that you have to check the bus schedule before going anywhere. People who drive don't realize how critical this is because it never occurs to them that running late isn't arriving 2 minutes after the meeting starts, but a full hour. Quick is important. I'm trying to get someplace, not take a tour of the neighborhood (that was neat the first time, after that it is boring). Every time the bus stops to let someone else on/off that is robbing me of a couple minutes of my time, this can be acceptable if it is a quick stop - but if the bus has to spend several minutes going down a cul-de-sac it is unacceptable (note that a cul-de-sac where the end is still walking distance to the stop isn't bad, it is only when it is long enough that the bus would need to turn down it to get people that it is bad). This last is why transit advocates spend more time talking about zoning than transit - most suburbs in the US are dense enough that transit could be useful for not much cost (that is less than the cost of all the freeways we build). However the street design means there is no way to run useful buses.

melling 7y ago
“As for maglevs: they are a cute boondoggle, but not worth the expense. China isn't building them anymore because the cost isn't worth it. ” I mentioned that they are building them and provided a link. They are focusing on the cheaper low-medium speed maglevs. You don’t need 150 mph trains to travel within a city, or metropolitan area. 120 mph is sufficiently fast. Newark airport to JFK, for example, is only about 35 miles. Park at Newark and fly out of JFK. Manhattan is 20 miles long. How about an express, with a few stops, that covers it in 20 minutes?
Tempest1981 7y ago
I saw that Spain-vs-NYC article too -- 7x cheaper. We need a tech battle to drive down the cost of infrastructure projects. Just like Amazon did with e-commerce... ruthless efficiency.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Problem is it doesn't seem to be a tech problem. The tech side in NYC seems to be similar costs. Something is eating the money, but everything someone has suggested doesn't seem to be it.

fancyfish 7y ago

I live in NYC and have had so much frustration with the MTA being constantly delayed, very dirty, and with beggars abound. I'm talking a 40 minute commute just to get from Williamsburg to Midtown. Being stopped in tunnels due to trains broken down ahead. Homeless urinating in the trains and defecating off the side of the platform during rush hour. I ended up moving within a short walking distance to work and it has been the best decision I've made while living there. I appreciate Andy Byford's ambitious turnaround plan but for now I just use the MTA when absolutely necessary, like for sporting events. I don't expect to use MTA for my commute for at least the next several years, there is just so much improvement needed for train and signal reliability, and general maintenance. Byford has mentioned a potential "death spiral" of NYC public transit where if enough people forgo taking the bus or train, there will be revenue shortfalls causing further dilapidation. I guess this is possible given how "farebox revenue" makes a large portion of total revenues and MTA is required to adopt a balanced budget [1]. [1] https://new.mta.info/document/12481 https://new.mta.info/document/12481

usaar333 7y ago

Top speed is rarely the issue. It's the time wasted in stops.. or if you don't have stops, the time to get to the stations. I'm in China now and it is great the rail stations are high speed. Sadly it takes an hour to get there by any means if transportation.