Okay, here’s a critical analysis of light rail in general and Minneapolis light rail in particular. I was asked my opinion on this. Without my opinion prejudicing you, tell me what you think of it.
Getting a word in edgewise
Okay, here’s a critical analysis of light rail in general and Minneapolis light rail in particular. I was asked my opinion on this. Without my opinion prejudicing you, tell me what you think of it.
I really only have one problem with it. That is this:
“This raises an important issue. How shall we judge the success or failure of light rail. I would argue that the test is not the number of people who ride the trains — most of them are former bus riders, former car pool riders or people who did not previously make the trip. The test is how many automobiles light rail takes off the street. And the answer is “precious few.” Think about it. All of the world’s major cities have traffic congestion. Indeed traffic congestion tends to be worse in cities like London, Paris and Rome, which are served by comprehensive rail systems.”
I don’t think that’s the proper test. If more people are moving around, that indicates greater commerce (except in the diminishing other systems case). Now, he makes a good argument that busses can, if properly subsidized, provide a better and more cost-effective solution than light rail, and I don’t disagree in prinicipal.
I think it is a good argument really if properly used. But just saying, oh say London’s, auto traffic is congested which must mean mass transit isn’t working is sooo bogus.
Chicago is served by 2 rail transit systems which are heavily used. Car traffic here is pretty bad too. By the author’s measure – our rail systems must be a failure.
But of course if you shutdown the rail systems – you would have utter gridlock on the roads. Many times worse than today. So I’d say they are working! 😀
So I think the “cars off the road” measurement is a good one if used properly.
I think you’re misrepresenting what’s going on. If there were no trains, and traffic really were that bad, you’d have people carpooling just so they wouldn’t have to drive through the muck every day on their own, so that they could at least switch off. You’d also have more people working different schedules due to the pressures. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be pretty, but to say that it really affects the number of cars on the road significantly is probably not a good metric. That is not to say that mass transit is bad or anything.
Where I am now, there really isn’t that much traffic, but the roads are *so* poorly designed for the load, that you’ll frequently run into huge traffic problems. Design *is* hugely important.
Naw I don’t really think so. Sure people would HAVE to change schedules to make the commute semi-tolerable. However, here in Chicago, that would be roughly 2 Million more cars on the road each day(at some point or another). That’s a pretty wicked increase. Carpooling would help a bit – but I know at my work, we have people in a 3 state area. There wouldn’t be many carpool candidates who live close enough together to make it worthwhile in a vast majority of the cases. (and certainly the commute would be longer for the carpool-ees). So you would have a sharp increase in the number of cars – and an exponential increase in delay as the road bandwidth goes to zero. That is very measureable.
And if you did get rid of trains – the urban core (aka downtown) would start to rot since people would, over time, want to “be closer” to home and not do the horrid drive downtown. Companies would relocate. Which over a bunch of years would make it harder to re-instanciate mass transit. So proper urban planning and mass transit go hand in hand.
And I do agree – good road design helps … but people just drive to fill the lanes or improved inefficiencies until the roads fill up to a certain uncomfortable level of congestion. Of course you would get more people through which is usually the idea.
That’s just it…mass transit *needs* to have been designed in the city from the get-go.
No one should claim that it should make money, or even break even. The argument should be whether or not the resources used to improve mass transit in one way could better be spent by improving it another way, or improving other infrastructure in a radically different way.
Bingo, mass transit will never make money. Indeed that isn’t the point. 😀
And if people realized how much “tax” (cost of car, insurance, oil, gas, etc) they paid for their cars and from the get-go threw that sum cost per person into a train system – I suspect the result would be beautiful. But that’s just a little fantasy of mine.
So I think we’re basically on the same page then. 🙂
Can’t really argue with it, though my knowledge of the subject is minimal. In the US, I’d think bus could serve nearly as well in most cases — we simply do not pack together that tightly. (Not like Hong Kong, which apparently had one new subway station open a couple years ago with half a million people within a quarter mile radius. I don’t think any place in the US really comes close….)
With new technologies coming out for busses, too, pollution will go down on that front. I think the one that would be noticed the most is the hybrid-style system that uses the electrics to start moving, thus avoiding the ‘black cloud of choking doom’ that one usually sees from a bus. (Though perhaps my perceptions are unduly influenced by the busses I see in China. ~shrug~)
That said, light rail/subway/whatever has it’s uses… I just don’t think many are in the US, possibly barring cities with existing systems (like NYC, though even there they’ve spent themselves into a hole with expansions). China in particular has a horrendously weak rail system in Beijing and Shanghai… Shanghai in particular is also expanding expressway service (I think Shanghai will be the first “Mega-City” a la Judge Dredd, with the multiple layers of roads and the like…) but both need the subway/light rail expansions desperately.
Alright, gonna stop there, since I think I’m getting well and truly off the paper. ~grin~ Can pontificate a bit more if you want, but as I said, this is all more impression than from any actual training or scholarship or the like….
Mostly, I was struck by how it sounded like a High School paper. A C+ one.
A couple brief thoughts:
1) Retrofitting a rail system onto a urban sprawl’ed type city is probably pretty tricky for some of the reasons he points out. (where people need to come/go from/to has many more variables and things are less dense – the odds of the rail system being available and taking you where you want to go is much lower) So saying rail won’t work when you are using this type of city (a city “designed” by cars) as your design guideline is faulty logic.
1a) The Paris story I think is woefully undersupported but is a good “sound bite”.
2) I don’t think you can ever really “develop” a good road system that won’t be congested. Adding lanes is always temporary. So that leaves rail systems in cities that might be able to support them.
3) I know here in Chicago – if Metra/CTA stopped running the roads would be many times worse. Both systems move several million people a day to the Loop and back. I’d hate to see what would happen without our present systems. Of course Chicago is a hub-spoke system that naturally fits rail superbly. (and much of the system was build in the 1800s when rail was the only option)
2) That’s pretty much false. If you have designed the system such that there are no reasons to slow down (exits, etc, do not back up), adding lanes easily handles more traffic. This is difficult, but I’ve seen enough *bad* systems to know that most of the problems roads have are correctible. And by all means, give people reasons to carpool.
Incorrect. What happens is that more people then use that road(because its faster after all) and it fills up to capacity. Just as it was before. This is basic traffic theory. Sure you will move more cars – but at the end of the day, the road will be just as congested.
Perhaps I was misreading what you said, but in that case, congested doesn’t mean slow, or ineffieient. So, I don’t see a real problem with it, if it is working more efficiently than the alternatives.
Agreed – making roadways more efficient is always a good thing since it moves more people – of course it all depends on the penalty for doing so. But here is the real question.
If you have a hub-spoke city and you have ~120ft of roadway easement in which you can either:
a) Add a train line along the highway
b) Add one more lane of car traffic each way
I think there is a great case to be made that long term, (a) will move many more people than (b) ever will. Because it takes many more cars off the existing road than a new lane would*. Of course this quantification of trains also ignores the “happiness” of its citizens. Since adding lanes would move more people, but the actual commute would be just as unpleasant for the drivers – I suspect trains can be even sold even more strongly. Lord knows, I know the people I work with – love our Metra system.
(* of course assuming that the train system/roadway is designed in such a way that people would want to use it. Usually hub/spoke systems do have sufficient demand – but the necessary homework needs of be done of course)
Oh and one last thought:
A former Paris transit official recently suggested that the only effective way to handle the growing traffic demand in the Paris urban area is more automobile capacity. And, it is to be added. The long term regional plan includes a significant amount of new freeway construction.
Perhaps they need to look at why people are flocking to the suburbs. Once again, proper urban planning is very important. I suspect “fixing” that problem would have long reaching benefits.
Building more roads just allows people to keep building out in the suburbs and pushing the sprawl and congestion furthor.
Please tell me you’ve seen the monorail Simpsons episode.
If you really want me to lie to you, I suppose I can. =)
OMG, required viewing. I can probably BitTorrent it. It’s basically about how a slick developer who goes from town to town convincing them that light rail will solve all their problems to make off with their public money.
Maybe we’ll be able to view it on my new mac later. 😉