5 ms·

I'm always impressed with America parking requirements. Public transport looks like an alien concept.

by neves 6y ago

zepto 6y ago
It’s not an alien concept. It’s that the Bay Area is extremely low density compared to other comparable population centers such as New York, London, or you-name-the-city. It’s just not practical to use conventional forms such as busses and light rail, and this is partly why Uber and Lyft had the leverage to force the state to back down over classifying workers as employees.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Bay area has plenty of density. What it lacks is the ability to get enough momentum that transit works. If we waved a magic wand and suddenly there was a great system (trains, buses...) running around routes that are not hard to design they could have in total lower costs for most people who no longer need to pay for a car. Even if you waved that magic wand, beware that it will take two years to even have more than a trivial increase in ridership - trivial - not enough to make it wroth the investment. In 20 years you will see a difference, but who can wait 20 years? And this is a full system up and running at once - in the real world things go incrementally which means it is years before the system can even take you enough of the places you want to go fast enough that you would consider selling the car. Which is why transport is hard to add. It takes upfront investment and then years of hoping people change their living style. Though I will point out that if California had any notion of cost control they could have their current high speed rail idea actually running the full route. I'm not sure where the problem is but I know by best in world standards they are spending something like 4x as much as it costs. This only makes it harder for any system to get started and self-reinforces the idea that the bay area doesn't have enough density.
  - zepto 6y ago
    To summarize - you believe I’m wrong about my statement about density, and that the cause of poor public transport is wrongheadedness, poor financial management, and short term thinking. You assert that these attitudinal qualities cause a false perception of inadequate density. I don’t dispute the attitudes you describe, but I assert that the causality is the other way around. Individual Bay Area cities - e.g. Mountain View, SF, Oakland. Have plenty of density - comparable with other major cities. They also actually do have reasonable public transport internally. The region taken as a whole doesn’t. This is a function of density. The distance between north and south suburbs of london is about 15-20 miles and can be traversed in about 1 hr - 1 hr 15 minutes by either car or tube. The shortest route between say, downtown Oakland and the Apple Campus is about 50 miles. It can be traversed on the freeway during low traffic in about 50 minutes. By public transport it’s 2 hrs 47. That’s because you have to go around the bay. Not because the transport system doesn’t exist.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      > cause of poor public transport is wrongheadedness, poor financial management, and short term thinking. No, not at all. Getting there is HARD HARD HARD. it would be a bad move to go all at once. However not going all at once is a recipe for failure. The region has the density to make such a system work. What is lacking is political willingness to make it happen. Caltran runs a poor schedule that only commuters have a chance of finding useful (you still need a car for everything else), BART is a little better, but both ought to be able to do trains every 10 minutes or less all day - this is something every transit advocate has said for years. If the core can't do every 5 minutes, then the rest of the system will fail because it is too much effort to look up the schedule. How do cars get around the bay in 50 minutes? I'm going to guess a bridge across. There is no reason you can't build a bridge for transit - in fact for the amount of people carried a transit bridge is cheaper than a car bridge. One full bus every 3 minutes is more humans moved than the maximum amount of cars that same lane can move, leaving plenty of room for more buses, thus your bus bridge is much cheaper than a car bridge because only two lanes are needed. (trains are even better) Poor financial management doesn't help the cause, but the real problem is poor operations on the systems you already have. Fix that and results will show (a little - but remember you will need to accept low ridership on the 2am trains that you need to run anyway just because 2am is assurance that you can always get back home)
      - zepto 6y ago
        You say ‘not at all’ but then go on to seem to confirm my point about short term thinking. Also, no bridge is involved in the 50 minute route. It’s actually quite a straight path. The difference is that the distance is far because of the low density and the car doesn’t have to stop the way public transport does. As the distance goes up, the time penalty for stops becomes magnified.
        bluGill 6y ago
        Transit should be able to get there faster then. Trains can safely go 150mph. Of course this means careful plans so the local transit gets to the fast train just in time, then the fast train only makes a few stops. The above is commonly done in the world.

I'm always impressed with America parking requirements. Public transport looks like an alien concept.

by neves 6y ago

I'm always impressed with America parking requirements. Public transport looks like an alien concept.

It’s not an alien concept. It’s that the Bay Area is extremely low density compared to other comparable population centers such as New York, London, or you-name-the-city. It’s just not practical to use conventional forms such as busses and light rail, and this is partly why Uber and Lyft had the leverage to force the state to back down over classifying workers as employees.

bluGill 6y ago
Bay area has plenty of density. What it lacks is the ability to get enough momentum that transit works. If we waved a magic wand and suddenly there was a great system (trains, buses...) running around routes that are not hard to design they could have in total lower costs for most people who no longer need to pay for a car. Even if you waved that magic wand, beware that it will take two years to even have more than a trivial increase in ridership - trivial - not enough to make it wroth the investment. In 20 years you will see a difference, but who can wait 20 years? And this is a full system up and running at once - in the real world things go incrementally which means it is years before the system can even take you enough of the places you want to go fast enough that you would consider selling the car. Which is why transport is hard to add. It takes upfront investment and then years of hoping people change their living style. Though I will point out that if California had any notion of cost control they could have their current high speed rail idea actually running the full route. I'm not sure where the problem is but I know by best in world standards they are spending something like 4x as much as it costs. This only makes it harder for any system to get started and self-reinforces the idea that the bay area doesn't have enough density.
- zepto 6y ago
  To summarize - you believe I’m wrong about my statement about density, and that the cause of poor public transport is wrongheadedness, poor financial management, and short term thinking. You assert that these attitudinal qualities cause a false perception of inadequate density. I don’t dispute the attitudes you describe, but I assert that the causality is the other way around. Individual Bay Area cities - e.g. Mountain View, SF, Oakland. Have plenty of density - comparable with other major cities. They also actually do have reasonable public transport internally. The region taken as a whole doesn’t. This is a function of density. The distance between north and south suburbs of london is about 15-20 miles and can be traversed in about 1 hr - 1 hr 15 minutes by either car or tube. The shortest route between say, downtown Oakland and the Apple Campus is about 50 miles. It can be traversed on the freeway during low traffic in about 50 minutes. By public transport it’s 2 hrs 47. That’s because you have to go around the bay. Not because the transport system doesn’t exist.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    > cause of poor public transport is wrongheadedness, poor financial management, and short term thinking. No, not at all. Getting there is HARD HARD HARD. it would be a bad move to go all at once. However not going all at once is a recipe for failure. The region has the density to make such a system work. What is lacking is political willingness to make it happen. Caltran runs a poor schedule that only commuters have a chance of finding useful (you still need a car for everything else), BART is a little better, but both ought to be able to do trains every 10 minutes or less all day - this is something every transit advocate has said for years. If the core can't do every 5 minutes, then the rest of the system will fail because it is too much effort to look up the schedule. How do cars get around the bay in 50 minutes? I'm going to guess a bridge across. There is no reason you can't build a bridge for transit - in fact for the amount of people carried a transit bridge is cheaper than a car bridge. One full bus every 3 minutes is more humans moved than the maximum amount of cars that same lane can move, leaving plenty of room for more buses, thus your bus bridge is much cheaper than a car bridge because only two lanes are needed. (trains are even better) Poor financial management doesn't help the cause, but the real problem is poor operations on the systems you already have. Fix that and results will show (a little - but remember you will need to accept low ridership on the 2am trains that you need to run anyway just because 2am is assurance that you can always get back home)
    - zepto 6y ago
      You say ‘not at all’ but then go on to seem to confirm my point about short term thinking. Also, no bridge is involved in the 50 minute route. It’s actually quite a straight path. The difference is that the distance is far because of the low density and the car doesn’t have to stop the way public transport does. As the distance goes up, the time penalty for stops becomes magnified.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        Transit should be able to get there faster then. Trains can safely go 150mph. Of course this means careful plans so the local transit gets to the fast train just in time, then the fast train only makes a few stops. The above is commonly done in the world.