3 ms·

> Potentially a 30 minute wait for the next train at peak times. See, that's already an issue. Even in small European cities, you'd expect the trains at peak t

> Potentially a 30 minute wait for the next train at peak times. See, that's already an issue. Even in small European cities, you'd expect the trains at peak time to arrive every 5min, in larger cities even every 1-2min A train every 30min is what I'd consider "3am on easter sunday" level of service, not peak service. Sure, right now there's not enough demand for that. But as they say, if you build it they'll come.

vel0city 2y ago
I agree, the service level on that train is pretty bad especially for peak. Hopefully they'll be convinced to run it more. But change that wait, do the math, and compare it to the drive time again. Ok, we shaved a 15 minute average wait to 2 minutes or so. 13 minutes saved, awesome. We're still comparing a well over an hour public transit trip to a 30 minute drive on the tollways. In the end you'll need to convince people the costs of the drive (all the many different types of costs there) are worth the trade for more than doubling the commute time.
- kuschku 2y ago
  The question is whether that needs to be the case. By combining train and car you can usually end up faster and cheaper if done well as trains won't be stuck in traffic and commuter trains can reliably run at 120-160km/h. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41309489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41309489 for examples and details on how to solve this long-term.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Once again it kind of comes back to the density. Without the density, you'll end up with a lot of stations to try and make the line useful to people. With lots of stations, you're not realistically going 120-160km/h average speeds. These DART LRV trains do >100km/h peak speeds. But in the end if you halved the stations you'd really crush the ridership because there's just not enough stuff or people at any particular station.
    - kuschku 2y ago
      > Without the density, you'll end up with a lot of stations to try and make the line useful to people. With lots of stations, you're not realistically going 120-160km/h average speeds. > But in the end if you halved the stations you'd really crush the ridership because there's just not enough stuff or people at any particular station. Of course there's enough people left. First you build train stations near destinations. That's business parks, universities, airports, downtown areas, malls. Then you build train stations with lots of spacing into the suburbs so you can still hit peak speeds between them. Typical station spacing depends on train speeds, but you can estimate with: 50km/h at 500m spacing, 90km/h for 2km spacing, 120km/h at 5km spacing, 160km/h at 10km spacing. So you'll want to have 5km-10km spacing between the stations. That's not close enough for walking. But you can set up free parking at the station for anyone with a train ticket. At the same time you'll set up congestion charging for the destinations with stations. Now the fastest and cheapest way to travel to these dense areas is to drive to the nearest station, park your car, and take the train. For the rest of the city the car remains the fastest option. Nonetheless, at 2-5km average distance to the nearest station cycling becomes more viable, which primarily benefits teenagers and students. Later on you can improve upon this by: · creating bus and tram lines with cross-connections between the larger train stations to serve as distributor lines and connect more people · changing the minimum setbacks for properties near the bus and tram lines to allow semi-detached and terraced housing. This makes cheaper housing available, increases density, makes transit more viable and still keeps the suburban lifestyle · changing the zoning near the station to develop 5-over-1s, with 1 level of businesses, 5 levels of apartments and an underground parking garage. This would allow creating something resembling the "main streets" of foregone eras. Overall you can make these changes over the span of a generation. This is how cities grew during the industrialization in the first place (including in the US) and how european cities have recovered from the post-war car-centric urban design which had destroyed more cities than the war.
      - vel0city 2y ago
        Once again you're telling me how it should be instead of looking at the realities of what is. Take a look at the route for the Red/Orange lines on DART. Tell me which stations get the axe to make that spacing. Do we kill Downtown Plano or Cityline? Do we kill the stop with the easy bus transfer to the Richardson library and city hall? Do we kill the station next to the massive apartment complexes and the concert hall and office park at Galatyn? Or all the mixed use at Spring Valley? Do people lose access to the hospital and medical facilities near Forest Ln? No more shopping at all the stuff at the Shops at Park Lane and NorthPark mall? Do SMU students lose access to the network by taking away Lovers Ln? Forget all the mixed use at Mockingbird? Tell me, who gets the axe? And you really think we're going to keep ridership up if we eliminate the stop at the hospital or eliminate half the apartment complexes on the path? The only easy stops I see to eliminate are the ones downtown where it's acting like a streetcar. There were plans for a "D2" project to move these lines underground and change the number of stops. And all of this is also still assuming there is the bus connections to take you East/West, because there's still so much you miss at each stop on just the train alignment a few miles either direction.
- devilbunny 2y ago
  Just to throw something else into the mix: the Orange Line DART is at-grade in several areas (and around Las Colinas particularly). So you can't increase frequency too much without affecting traffic. My in-laws live in Irving, near the Ritz (ex-Four Seasons). The only thing they would ever consider using DART for would be the Texas State Fair (including the UT/OU game), and only because the parking is so expensive and so far away if you drive down there that the time penalty is much smaller. Then you have the facts on the ground that probably are older than DART: the North Lake College station is a perfect example of bad transit design, as the station is at the edge of the property while the buildings are centered. You could just as easily (with perfect foreknowledge) have put the buildings right next to the station and used the back of the property for parking lots, which adds almost no time to driving but makes transit much more appealing (as it is, those who disembark there have to walk across the entire parking lot to get to the school). Even worse, the University of Dallas station that has almost no pedestrian access at all. It would take ten minutes walking just to get to the other side of the highway because of the convoluted route you would have to take. Traffic has to be really bad before public transit with a lot of stops is faster than door-to-door in a car, assuming there's parking at the other end. You can do many things to make cities more transit-friendly, pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly. But drivers aren't epsilon-minus semi-morons, and while a car in central Paris or Amsterdam is a liability, in most of Dallas it's at best a minor inconvenience to find parking. And there's absolutely nothing that can ever beat the convenience of a private conveyance. There's a reason really rich people fly private. It goes where you want, when you want. I took my wife to the airport the other day. There is no public transit that goes to our local airport; you have no choice but to get in a private car or taxi unless you've got serious stamina for walking on fully-exposed public roads (no shade, no rain shield) with no sidewalks and 60+ mph (100 km/h) traffic for tens of miles. On the plus side (for the passenger), I dropped her off more or less right outside the check-in counter and security. She didn't spend more than a minute or two, tops, for all her indoor walking around to the gate.

vel0city 2y ago

I agree, the service level on that train is pretty bad especially for peak. Hopefully they'll be convinced to run it more. But change that wait, do the math, and compare it to the drive time again. Ok, we shaved a 15 minute average wait to 2 minutes or so. 13 minutes saved, awesome. We're still comparing a well over an hour public transit trip to a 30 minute drive on the tollways. In the end you'll need to convince people the costs of the drive (all the many different types of costs there) are worth the trade for more than doubling the commute time.

kuschku 2y ago
The question is whether that needs to be the case. By combining train and car you can usually end up faster and cheaper if done well as trains won't be stuck in traffic and commuter trains can reliably run at 120-160km/h. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41309489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41309489 for examples and details on how to solve this long-term.
- vel0city 2y ago
  Once again it kind of comes back to the density. Without the density, you'll end up with a lot of stations to try and make the line useful to people. With lots of stations, you're not realistically going 120-160km/h average speeds. These DART LRV trains do >100km/h peak speeds. But in the end if you halved the stations you'd really crush the ridership because there's just not enough stuff or people at any particular station.
  - kuschku 2y ago
    > Without the density, you'll end up with a lot of stations to try and make the line useful to people. With lots of stations, you're not realistically going 120-160km/h average speeds. > But in the end if you halved the stations you'd really crush the ridership because there's just not enough stuff or people at any particular station. Of course there's enough people left. First you build train stations near destinations. That's business parks, universities, airports, downtown areas, malls. Then you build train stations with lots of spacing into the suburbs so you can still hit peak speeds between them. Typical station spacing depends on train speeds, but you can estimate with: 50km/h at 500m spacing, 90km/h for 2km spacing, 120km/h at 5km spacing, 160km/h at 10km spacing. So you'll want to have 5km-10km spacing between the stations. That's not close enough for walking. But you can set up free parking at the station for anyone with a train ticket. At the same time you'll set up congestion charging for the destinations with stations. Now the fastest and cheapest way to travel to these dense areas is to drive to the nearest station, park your car, and take the train. For the rest of the city the car remains the fastest option. Nonetheless, at 2-5km average distance to the nearest station cycling becomes more viable, which primarily benefits teenagers and students. Later on you can improve upon this by: · creating bus and tram lines with cross-connections between the larger train stations to serve as distributor lines and connect more people · changing the minimum setbacks for properties near the bus and tram lines to allow semi-detached and terraced housing. This makes cheaper housing available, increases density, makes transit more viable and still keeps the suburban lifestyle · changing the zoning near the station to develop 5-over-1s, with 1 level of businesses, 5 levels of apartments and an underground parking garage. This would allow creating something resembling the "main streets" of foregone eras. Overall you can make these changes over the span of a generation. This is how cities grew during the industrialization in the first place (including in the US) and how european cities have recovered from the post-war car-centric urban design which had destroyed more cities than the war.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      Once again you're telling me how it should be instead of looking at the realities of what is. Take a look at the route for the Red/Orange lines on DART. Tell me which stations get the axe to make that spacing. Do we kill Downtown Plano or Cityline? Do we kill the stop with the easy bus transfer to the Richardson library and city hall? Do we kill the station next to the massive apartment complexes and the concert hall and office park at Galatyn? Or all the mixed use at Spring Valley? Do people lose access to the hospital and medical facilities near Forest Ln? No more shopping at all the stuff at the Shops at Park Lane and NorthPark mall? Do SMU students lose access to the network by taking away Lovers Ln? Forget all the mixed use at Mockingbird? Tell me, who gets the axe? And you really think we're going to keep ridership up if we eliminate the stop at the hospital or eliminate half the apartment complexes on the path? The only easy stops I see to eliminate are the ones downtown where it's acting like a streetcar. There were plans for a "D2" project to move these lines underground and change the number of stops. And all of this is also still assuming there is the bus connections to take you East/West, because there's still so much you miss at each stop on just the train alignment a few miles either direction.
devilbunny 2y ago
Just to throw something else into the mix: the Orange Line DART is at-grade in several areas (and around Las Colinas particularly). So you can't increase frequency too much without affecting traffic. My in-laws live in Irving, near the Ritz (ex-Four Seasons). The only thing they would ever consider using DART for would be the Texas State Fair (including the UT/OU game), and only because the parking is so expensive and so far away if you drive down there that the time penalty is much smaller. Then you have the facts on the ground that probably are older than DART: the North Lake College station is a perfect example of bad transit design, as the station is at the edge of the property while the buildings are centered. You could just as easily (with perfect foreknowledge) have put the buildings right next to the station and used the back of the property for parking lots, which adds almost no time to driving but makes transit much more appealing (as it is, those who disembark there have to walk across the entire parking lot to get to the school). Even worse, the University of Dallas station that has almost no pedestrian access at all. It would take ten minutes walking just to get to the other side of the highway because of the convoluted route you would have to take. Traffic has to be really bad before public transit with a lot of stops is faster than door-to-door in a car, assuming there's parking at the other end. You can do many things to make cities more transit-friendly, pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly. But drivers aren't epsilon-minus semi-morons, and while a car in central Paris or Amsterdam is a liability, in most of Dallas it's at best a minor inconvenience to find parking. And there's absolutely nothing that can ever beat the convenience of a private conveyance. There's a reason really rich people fly private. It goes where you want, when you want. I took my wife to the airport the other day. There is no public transit that goes to our local airport; you have no choice but to get in a private car or taxi unless you've got serious stamina for walking on fully-exposed public roads (no shade, no rain shield) with no sidewalks and 60+ mph (100 km/h) traffic for tens of miles. On the plus side (for the passenger), I dropped her off more or less right outside the check-in counter and security. She didn't spend more than a minute or two, tops, for all her indoor walking around to the gate.