5 ms·

The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way people commute into the city. This might be true in some places, but for most cities PT and residents

The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way people commute into the city. This might be true in some places, but for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk of commercial traffic in a city - it makes sense when you consider that most roads only let a few dozen cars a minute through, vs a few hundred people per train (and way more during peak hours). However, you look at the built environment in a city and the pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between buildings, while cars get 80%.

ghaff 3y ago
I can't speak to averages but I'll say car traffic into Boston is at least as bad as ever and commuter rail is still way down relative to pre-pandemic. So, yes, people take train but a huge number of people drive. (I try to take train the rare times I go into the office although it takes about the same 2 hours as driving.) And the commuter rail is totally impractical to use for an evening event.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  Hah, I was about to respond roughly the same thing: Taking the rail into Boston is so impractical that it's easier to drive. FWIW: The T/Commuter Rail (apologies for blending the two) has more than 90% of US rail accidents. I noticed a ton of maintenance problems the last time I rode it (in 2021) and I don't know if/when I'll try it again.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I know there have been efforts to improve things but service was also cut back during the pandemic. (There are some express trains again.) I'll still take it preferentially for 9-5ish situations like one I'll have next week but it's not actually any faster in general (though I can sort of relax for most of the trip) and is totally unusable for going in for an evening play. And that's almost certainly a pretty good commuter rail system by large urban US standards. (Not as good as NYC of course.) So, to my original point, saying "don't drive" is essentially equivalent to saying stay out of the city in general.
    - bedobi 3y ago
      Car skeptics are not saying “don’t drive” They’re saying “allow viable alternatives to driving”
      - ghaff 3y ago
        You wrote "Private automobiles do not belong in cities." I'm not sure what's ambiguous about that. Certainly if you tell me I don't belong someplace, I would take that literally.
    - gwbas1c 3y ago
      > pretty good commuter rail system by large urban US standards I used to take the Caltrain from Palo Alto to San Francisco. The line from Kingston to Boston doesn't even compare. Caltrain: Tinted windows, comfortable seats. I'm comfortable using a laptop to check email while I ride to work. MA Commuter Rail: No tint on the windows, seats so bad I'm uncomfortable using a laptop. I wouldn't call MA commuter rail "Good" by US standards. It's treating MA residents like a captive audience, and then the politicians and leaders scratch their heads and wonder why we'd rather clog the freeway with luxury cars instead of taking the train.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Why makes it impractical for an evening event? I've seen in other cities that, bizarrely to me, the rail shuts down before the end of sporting events, concerts, and other things that would attract people to the city. Maybe they don't want drunks?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There are very few nighttime trains and it would take me a good extra hour to get home even once I caught one of the sparse trains. If I had to take the train in for a play I'd simply pass.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Out of curiosity, how hard would it be to take a rideshare home? Too expensive?
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Yes. Probably close to $100. (I'm about 45 miles outside.) And probably hard to get a driver later at night. I do book a private car to and from the airport but I'm not going to do that for a random evening out. (The small theater I have a subscription to also has a free parking deal at a nearby garage so that doesn't even factor in.)
- bedobi 3y ago
  Meanwhile in Tokyo 40 million people virtually all take the train, and those who do drive never experience traffic or gridlock
- Panzer04 3y ago
  I like to think of PT as placing an "upper bound" on how bad traffic can get. If PT is faster than sitting in a car, people will take PT instead, alleviating congestion. This more or less results in traffic getting worse until it reaches the speed of PT, at which point people start switching transport modes and it stops getting worse. If the train took the same amount of time as driving I'd take the train every time - driving sucks, whereas I can read or watch videos on the train. This works because (grade-separated) PT can (at least relative to roads) take on an effectively unlimited amount of extra commuters without getting slower, as pretty much all of its costs and transport times are fixed, whereas roads just continually get slower with additional traffic. This is part of the problem with busses and the like - they get caught up in traffic, so unless they get their own dedicated lanes you won't get the same traffic-reducing benefits as you would with heavy rail and the like.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    When I was an undergrad there was I think one bus route I took in 4 years because it was marginally quicker than walking an extra 15 minutes to catch the subway depending on where I was. My preference within the city when I'm there these days is subway or walk. But the connection to the subway really only works on a commuting timetable and, if I'm going to park on the outskirts anyway to catch the subway I'll mostly just drive in.
  - jprete 3y ago
    It's very, very possible for public transport to be overloaded to the point where people have to wait for another train because there's just no room left. Some NYC subway lines are like that routinely during rush hour.
    - Panzer04 3y ago
      Yeah, that's why I specified "relative to roads" :P. There are capacity limitations, they are just much more generous than the alternatives.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk of commercial traffic "According to the American Community Survey (ACS), public transportation commuters constituted about 5 percent of all workers in the United States in 2019. Though public transportation (transit) was a relatively uncommon method of traveling to work in the United States as a whole, it played a prominent role in certain places, like the cities of New York, where over 2 million people commuted by public transportation, and San Francisco, where over one third of workers did so." -- https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-48.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... So even pre-pandemic when public transportation was in higher usage, there was maybe one city in the US that meets your criteria. For the other 19,494 of the 19,495 cities in the US, private transportation was a large majority. 5% of commuter trips in the US are by public transportation. Under 3% are walking. 85% are car, truck, or van, either alone or carpooled. If cars only get 80%, sounds like they are being cheated. They should get 85% instead.
- bedobi 3y ago
  So your observation is US cities don’t have transit, therefore we should invest more in car infrastructure?
- Panzer04 3y ago
  It will depend on your definition of "city". I live in Melbourne, AU, and realistically only the inner couple of km around the CBD are "proper" city area where space is truly at a premium. In the CBD and surrounding area you'd have to be insane to drive - there's simply not enough space. However, in the "metro area" which sprawls for many km in all directions, I would expect a lot of commuting is done by car, due to poorer PT service coverage and frequency, along with lesser traffic congestion.
wolverine876 3y ago
> you look at the built environment in a city and the pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between buildings, while cars get 80%. How is that significant? I very rarely have run out of room on the sidewalk. Cars are larger than I am, they need more space. I agree with the general consideration that cars waste real estate, but sidewalk width hasn't been a problem that I've seen.
- bedobi 3y ago
  Uh, I encounter that everywhere from San Jose to NYC to Miami
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    You run out of room on the sidewalk? Like a traffic jam? Maybe we're talking about different things. I rarely have to stop moving on a sidewalk, or if I do it's not for more than a moment, and I'm talking about the most dense cities. Maybe NYC in the theater district when some plays are letting out ...
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Times Square can get pretty bad. But, yes, that's unusual.
- Panzer04 3y ago
  My more conventional frustration is wide roads with shitty traffic signalling that hold up a crowd of pedestrians while 10-15 cars crawl through the intersection. That being said, at peak times some areas definitely get extremely busy with pedestrian traffic. Realistically you do need vehicles in cities for logistical reasons etc, so it's not really a sensible line of thought - but it's still annoying :). It's probably worse in other cities, as Melbourne has plenty of street-level trams with separated rights of way as well as many roads being single-laned both ways, so it's honestly not that bad here.
zdragnar 3y ago
> The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way people commute into the city The number of cities this is true for in the US is extremely small.

ghaff 3y ago

I can't speak to averages but I'll say car traffic into Boston is at least as bad as ever and commuter rail is still way down relative to pre-pandemic. So, yes, people take train but a huge number of people drive. (I try to take train the rare times I go into the office although it takes about the same 2 hours as driving.) And the commuter rail is totally impractical to use for an evening event.

gwbas1c 3y ago
Hah, I was about to respond roughly the same thing: Taking the rail into Boston is so impractical that it's easier to drive. FWIW: The T/Commuter Rail (apologies for blending the two) has more than 90% of US rail accidents. I noticed a ton of maintenance problems the last time I rode it (in 2021) and I don't know if/when I'll try it again.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I know there have been efforts to improve things but service was also cut back during the pandemic. (There are some express trains again.) I'll still take it preferentially for 9-5ish situations like one I'll have next week but it's not actually any faster in general (though I can sort of relax for most of the trip) and is totally unusable for going in for an evening play. And that's almost certainly a pretty good commuter rail system by large urban US standards. (Not as good as NYC of course.) So, to my original point, saying "don't drive" is essentially equivalent to saying stay out of the city in general.
  - bedobi 3y ago
    Car skeptics are not saying “don’t drive” They’re saying “allow viable alternatives to driving”
    - ghaff 3y ago
      You wrote "Private automobiles do not belong in cities." I'm not sure what's ambiguous about that. Certainly if you tell me I don't belong someplace, I would take that literally.
  - gwbas1c 3y ago
    > pretty good commuter rail system by large urban US standards I used to take the Caltrain from Palo Alto to San Francisco. The line from Kingston to Boston doesn't even compare. Caltrain: Tinted windows, comfortable seats. I'm comfortable using a laptop to check email while I ride to work. MA Commuter Rail: No tint on the windows, seats so bad I'm uncomfortable using a laptop. I wouldn't call MA commuter rail "Good" by US standards. It's treating MA residents like a captive audience, and then the politicians and leaders scratch their heads and wonder why we'd rather clog the freeway with luxury cars instead of taking the train.
wolverine876 3y ago
Why makes it impractical for an evening event? I've seen in other cities that, bizarrely to me, the rail shuts down before the end of sporting events, concerts, and other things that would attract people to the city. Maybe they don't want drunks?
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are very few nighttime trains and it would take me a good extra hour to get home even once I caught one of the sparse trains. If I had to take the train in for a play I'd simply pass.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Out of curiosity, how hard would it be to take a rideshare home? Too expensive?
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Yes. Probably close to $100. (I'm about 45 miles outside.) And probably hard to get a driver later at night. I do book a private car to and from the airport but I'm not going to do that for a random evening out. (The small theater I have a subscription to also has a free parking deal at a nearby garage so that doesn't even factor in.)
bedobi 3y ago
Meanwhile in Tokyo 40 million people virtually all take the train, and those who do drive never experience traffic or gridlock
Panzer04 3y ago
I like to think of PT as placing an "upper bound" on how bad traffic can get. If PT is faster than sitting in a car, people will take PT instead, alleviating congestion. This more or less results in traffic getting worse until it reaches the speed of PT, at which point people start switching transport modes and it stops getting worse. If the train took the same amount of time as driving I'd take the train every time - driving sucks, whereas I can read or watch videos on the train. This works because (grade-separated) PT can (at least relative to roads) take on an effectively unlimited amount of extra commuters without getting slower, as pretty much all of its costs and transport times are fixed, whereas roads just continually get slower with additional traffic. This is part of the problem with busses and the like - they get caught up in traffic, so unless they get their own dedicated lanes you won't get the same traffic-reducing benefits as you would with heavy rail and the like.
- ghaff 3y ago
  When I was an undergrad there was I think one bus route I took in 4 years because it was marginally quicker than walking an extra 15 minutes to catch the subway depending on where I was. My preference within the city when I'm there these days is subway or walk. But the connection to the subway really only works on a commuting timetable and, if I'm going to park on the outskirts anyway to catch the subway I'll mostly just drive in.
- jprete 3y ago
  It's very, very possible for public transport to be overloaded to the point where people have to wait for another train because there's just no room left. Some NYC subway lines are like that routinely during rush hour.
  - Panzer04 3y ago
    Yeah, that's why I specified "relative to roads" :P. There are capacity limitations, they are just much more generous than the alternatives.

rufus_foreman 3y ago

>> for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk of commercial traffic "According to the American Community Survey (ACS), public transportation commuters constituted about 5 percent of all workers in the United States in 2019. Though public transportation (transit) was a relatively uncommon method of traveling to work in the United States as a whole, it played a prominent role in certain places, like the cities of New York, where over 2 million people commuted by public transportation, and San Francisco, where over one third of workers did so." -- https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-48.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... So even pre-pandemic when public transportation was in higher usage, there was maybe one city in the US that meets your criteria. For the other 19,494 of the 19,495 cities in the US, private transportation was a large majority. 5% of commuter trips in the US are by public transportation. Under 3% are walking. 85% are car, truck, or van, either alone or carpooled. If cars only get 80%, sounds like they are being cheated. They should get 85% instead.

bedobi 3y ago
So your observation is US cities don’t have transit, therefore we should invest more in car infrastructure?
Panzer04 3y ago
It will depend on your definition of "city". I live in Melbourne, AU, and realistically only the inner couple of km around the CBD are "proper" city area where space is truly at a premium. In the CBD and surrounding area you'd have to be insane to drive - there's simply not enough space. However, in the "metro area" which sprawls for many km in all directions, I would expect a lot of commuting is done by car, due to poorer PT service coverage and frequency, along with lesser traffic congestion.

wolverine876 3y ago

> you look at the built environment in a city and the pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between buildings, while cars get 80%. How is that significant? I very rarely have run out of room on the sidewalk. Cars are larger than I am, they need more space. I agree with the general consideration that cars waste real estate, but sidewalk width hasn't been a problem that I've seen.

bedobi 3y ago
Uh, I encounter that everywhere from San Jose to NYC to Miami
- wolverine876 3y ago
  You run out of room on the sidewalk? Like a traffic jam? Maybe we're talking about different things. I rarely have to stop moving on a sidewalk, or if I do it's not for more than a moment, and I'm talking about the most dense cities. Maybe NYC in the theater district when some plays are letting out ...
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Times Square can get pretty bad. But, yes, that's unusual.
Panzer04 3y ago
My more conventional frustration is wide roads with shitty traffic signalling that hold up a crowd of pedestrians while 10-15 cars crawl through the intersection. That being said, at peak times some areas definitely get extremely busy with pedestrian traffic. Realistically you do need vehicles in cities for logistical reasons etc, so it's not really a sensible line of thought - but it's still annoying :). It's probably worse in other cities, as Melbourne has plenty of street-level trams with separated rights of way as well as many roads being single-laned both ways, so it's honestly not that bad here.

zdragnar 3y ago

> The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way people commute into the city The number of cities this is true for in the US is extremely small.