3 ms·

English is my first language and I have exactly the same confusion as you. It is not well expressed.

sltkr 3y ago
No kidding. If the author is on Hacker News: your spelling and grammar are impeccable, but you really need to lay out your ideas more clearly (which really is the most important part of a blog post!) Just from the start: > Garrett Wollman is giving an example, in the context of the Agricultural Branch, a low-usage freight line linking to the Boston-Worcester commuter line that could be used for local passenger rail service. Imagine, just for fun, that a reader might not know who the famous Garrett Wollman is, what the Agricultural Branch is, or where the Boston-Worcester commuter line is? (Isn't Worcester in England and Boston in North America? Is there a transatlantic train service I'm ignorant about?) What do you think the above paragraph communicates to the reader? > The more typical example of residential sprawl involves isotropic single-family density in a suburban region Ah yes, isotropic density, that perennial scourge! The word isotropic of course means: “exhibiting properties (such as velocity of light transmission) with the same values when measured along axes in all directions”, which I didn't need to look up in a dictionary because it's such a common English word, and the meaning in the above sentence is self-explanatory, really. Anyway, I think you get the point. This article is written in a way that's inscrutable to a general audience. That's fine if the blog is targeted at traffic nerds who talk about the isotropic density of the Agricultural Branch on the daily, but then why post it on Hacker News?
- j1elo 3y ago
  > What do you think the above paragraph communicates to the reader? Nothing, really. I read the whole article and was constantly having the feeling that they were only a random sequence of overly technical words which after the fact hadn't conveyed any information. What an obtuse way of structuring ideas. I was thinking my English comprehension was nonexistent (which might be the case), until reading these comments here kind of confirmed me that "it's not me, it's them".
twobitshifter 3y ago
I have some expertise in this area and I had to read it twice to get the point. Transit agencies want to attract riders traveling suburb-to-suburb on regional / commuter trains. These trains are lower frequency services mostly focused on moving people from suburban areas to city centers. The reason these trains don’t work for suburb-to-suburb commutes: Suburban offices aren’t close to suburban rail stations. This means making this trip requires a transfer to a bus. A car-train-bus trip isn’t more attractive than just driving your car the entire way because suburban traffic is lighter and you can route around the city. The author notes that driving to a commuter station is usually done to avoid city traffic and parking fees. The author thinks companies would need to site jobs near train stations to make suburb-to-suburb commutes work. However, US suburban density and land values favor residential property and companies would pay a high price for property near a station. With that prospect, they’d rather rent space downtown. The author jumps into issues with topology and connections midway through that point: US commuter lines don’t run through the city center to other suburbs and even when they do, it’s only ever possible to get to one other line without transferring. Moreover, the frequency of trains in the reverse direction (reverse peak) is lower meaning longer trip times when you transfer. US commuter trains often serve only one station in the city and require a transfer to one or more extra services. For example, in Boston there are metro job centers which are far from the two commuter train stations. The locations listed require multiple metro transfers to reach from the commuter rail stations which aren’t served by all lines. European systems like the German S-Bahn avoid this by having many stations throughout the downtown core that are shared between lines and metro services. The closest example to the S-Bahn in the US would be BART and SEPTA. (The author doesn’t get into discussing those lines and focuses on Boston as it had the lowest share of work commuters on its commuter rail lines.) —— My thoughts on the main development point: A more attainable goal would be to encourage development that allows employees to afford to live near their work or at least on the same train line. People shouldn’t need to live many miles from their job but they often do because property prices are sky high. Companies should locate offices near where their employees can afford to live.

No kidding. If the author is on Hacker News: your spelling and grammar are impeccable, but you really need to lay out your ideas more clearly (which really is the most important part of a blog post!) Just from the start: > Garrett Wollman is giving an example, in the context of the Agricultural Branch, a low-usage freight line linking to the Boston-Worcester commuter line that could be used for local passenger rail service. Imagine, just for fun, that a reader might not know who the famous Garrett Wollman is, what the Agricultural Branch is, or where the Boston-Worcester commuter line is? (Isn't Worcester in England and Boston in North America? Is there a transatlantic train service I'm ignorant about?) What do you think the above paragraph communicates to the reader? > The more typical example of residential sprawl involves isotropic single-family density in a suburban region Ah yes, isotropic density, that perennial scourge! The word isotropic of course means: “exhibiting properties (such as velocity of light transmission) with the same values when measured along axes in all directions”, which I didn't need to look up in a dictionary because it's such a common English word, and the meaning in the above sentence is self-explanatory, really. Anyway, I think you get the point. This article is written in a way that's inscrutable to a general audience. That's fine if the blog is targeted at traffic nerds who talk about the isotropic density of the Agricultural Branch on the daily, but then why post it on Hacker News?

j1elo 3y ago
> What do you think the above paragraph communicates to the reader? Nothing, really. I read the whole article and was constantly having the feeling that they were only a random sequence of overly technical words which after the fact hadn't conveyed any information. What an obtuse way of structuring ideas. I was thinking my English comprehension was nonexistent (which might be the case), until reading these comments here kind of confirmed me that "it's not me, it's them".

twobitshifter 3y ago

I have some expertise in this area and I had to read it twice to get the point. Transit agencies want to attract riders traveling suburb-to-suburb on regional / commuter trains. These trains are lower frequency services mostly focused on moving people from suburban areas to city centers. The reason these trains don’t work for suburb-to-suburb commutes: Suburban offices aren’t close to suburban rail stations. This means making this trip requires a transfer to a bus. A car-train-bus trip isn’t more attractive than just driving your car the entire way because suburban traffic is lighter and you can route around the city. The author notes that driving to a commuter station is usually done to avoid city traffic and parking fees. The author thinks companies would need to site jobs near train stations to make suburb-to-suburb commutes work. However, US suburban density and land values favor residential property and companies would pay a high price for property near a station. With that prospect, they’d rather rent space downtown. The author jumps into issues with topology and connections midway through that point: US commuter lines don’t run through the city center to other suburbs and even when they do, it’s only ever possible to get to one other line without transferring. Moreover, the frequency of trains in the reverse direction (reverse peak) is lower meaning longer trip times when you transfer. US commuter trains often serve only one station in the city and require a transfer to one or more extra services. For example, in Boston there are metro job centers which are far from the two commuter train stations. The locations listed require multiple metro transfers to reach from the commuter rail stations which aren’t served by all lines. European systems like the German S-Bahn avoid this by having many stations throughout the downtown core that are shared between lines and metro services. The closest example to the S-Bahn in the US would be BART and SEPTA. (The author doesn’t get into discussing those lines and focuses on Boston as it had the lowest share of work commuters on its commuter rail lines.) —— My thoughts on the main development point: A more attainable goal would be to encourage development that allows employees to afford to live near their work or at least on the same train line. People shouldn’t need to live many miles from their job but they often do because property prices are sky high. Companies should locate offices near where their employees can afford to live.