Uber Troubles For Uber

[YNM]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

When you already have a huge cargo railway network, it's cheaper to subsidize passenger trains rather than make a parallel network of roads.

... All of which are private.

 

The US is absolutely shocking from some angles.

 

19 minutes ago, tater said:

For people doing their day to day stuff that they use cars for in the US? Rail teaches us absolutely nothing at all.

You don't mix rails with everything else.

If so, go at snail's pace.

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, YNM said:

.. All of which are private.

Not in all countries.

And btw about trams...

[Kerbart]

On 3/22/2018 at 11:54 PM, YNM said:

Down here, if you're involved in an RTA with a road user of "lower class", and you report it to Police, the "higher class" always lost, no matter what, no matter who (alright, apart from if you have buckloads of money). Even if there was no direct hit involved, you have to help them. That is humane, that is sensible. (fortunately I haven't involved in one when I drive cars.)

It doesn't work like that in the US where the car is king. When I moved here, I was shocked to learn that "I did not see him/her" was apparently considered a valid defense in court when a car driver hit a pedestrian or cyclist. In the Netherlands that's pretty much considered an admission of guilt, but not here in New Jersey, apparently (that doesn't clear you from blatantly plowing over someone, but it does from flying over a hilltop or around a corner without consideration what might be on the road that you can't see, without adjusting your speed for that).

[YNM]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Not in all countries.

And btw about trams...

Welcome to USA Freedom™, baby !

Trams are super-lightweight trains with OD brakes (they clamp straight to the rails in emergencies). They brake bloody short compared to rubber-tired road vehicles.

 

6 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

It doesn't work like that in the US where the car is king.

Yep.

I hope something awakes them.

Edited March 24, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

When you already have a huge cargo railway network, it's cheaper to subsidize passenger trains rather than make a parallel network of roads.

The roads already exist, we're not talking about Mars.

The nearest East-West train track to me requires that I drive south for almost an hour at 100 kph+. I can get to the E-W highway in ~15 minutes at 60 kph. It's not like they could abandon the highway, people live on the other side of the mountains and need a way to get into town. The region where I live, going south, has discrete mountain ranges with passes allowing roads/trains E-W every 50km or so. Population density is so low outside Albuquerque, that building rail lines would be absurd, there would not be a need for cargo to a town of 200 people. Every level crossing for rail in the US costs several million dollars, BTW, and all end up with a certain number of fatal accidents, anyway.

NM built light rail from Belen (where the E-W tracks are) to Santa Fe. The capital expense was about 0.5 billion $. It costs ~40 M$ /yr to operate (subsidy). The ridership is pretty low, and consists mostly of State employees going between courthouses, etc, in ABQ, and the South Capitol complex in SF. It basically subsidizes the travel of State employees. It's pretty much useless as transit, because you still require a car. If you lived in SF, and commuted to ABQ outside of where the courts are, you'd have to drive to the train in SF, take train for an hour and a half, then have to spend an hour negotiating buses to get anywhere. so 2-2.5 hours for a trip that should take about an hour door to door.

[Kerbart]

10 hours ago, tater said:

Rail is never cost effective. The only rail that doesn't lose money is cargo, and engineering requires making things cost effective. Or you trade off that, and everyone gets to live in tiny houses, because all their money goes to taxes to subsidize the rail, etc. Trade offs.

I like my large house, relatively far away from other people, for example. I pay enough taxes, I don;t want to pay more for rail that I can't use, anyway (unless they erect a cog railway up to my house, the grade is too steep otherwise).

You forget to offset the cost of not building an extensive road network vs subsidizing mass transit. If instead of building big 4-lane highways requiring big 4-lane highway bridges and intersections you can get away with "local roads," subsidizing rail is all of a sudden not so bizar anymore. That's pretty much what's happening in densely populated NW Europe and Japan where the alternative would be unbearable congestion that could only be solved by spending a lot more on road infrastructure while lowering the quality of life due to smog and air pollution.

In a situation like that, your selfish desire to live in a large house should not result in everyone else paying more taxes (by foregoing public transportation) to subsidize that.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Kerbart

[tater]

15 minutes ago, YNM said:

You don't mix rails with everything else.

If so, go at snail's pace.

So you have rail lines running in a grid across the city ever few hundred meters?

Just now, Kerbart said:

You forget to offset the cost of not building an extensive road network vs subsidizing mass transit. If instead of building big 4-lane highways requiring big 4-lane highway bridges and intersections you can away with "local roads," subsidizing rail is all of a sudden not so bizar anymore. That's pretty much what's happening in densely populated NW Europe and Japan where the alternative would be unbearable congestion that could only be solved by spending a lot more on road infrastructure while lowering the quality of life due to smog and air pollution.

So you propose a time machine to unbuild the existing roads?

Just now, Kerbart said:

In a situation like that, your selfish desire to live in a large house should not result in everyone else paying more taxes (by foregoing public transportation) to subsidize that.

People in more expensive houses pay more taxes anyway, for services they use no more of (or less, we pay for public schools, and our kids don't use them).

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

The roads already exist, we're not talking about Mars.

Not Mars, but Russia.

Also, railways have several decisive advantages as a transport of future:
- train always has a source of energy, it doesn't need accumulators for 500 km trip.
- train always accurately moves along the same exact trajectory
- train is 1d, while car/truck is 2d. It doesn't need a map, it just needs an itinerary. It doesn't need a steering wheel, just gas and brake.
- railway can be magnetic, then speed limit is like in aviation
- railway timing can be perfectly accurate, you can always know how many seconds will require a payload transfer

Railways can be easily automated, this decides.

Edited March 24, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

So you have rail lines running in a grid across the city ever few hundred meters?

You do. You did.

The same could be applied to cars - high-quality highways or snail's pace or outback.

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

So you propose a time machine to unbuild the existing roads?

No, you will keep carrying this cross.

[YNM]

29 minutes ago, tater said:

So you propose a time machine to unbuild the existing roads?

Just hire a local digger who needs spoil. I'm sure they're more than happy to help.

 

Or someone being really clever with a brush and a white paint (and black paint to undo what was there). I'd happily volunteer to be that one, just fly me there and give me a shelter.

The two lanes often featured there is IMO overkill.

Edited March 24, 2018 by YNM

[LordFerret]

6 hours ago, YNM said:

Keep the doors locked, when car windows broken call 911 and immediately leave.

Here in NJ alone, I could take you places where you'd change your mind and view about that in 5 minutes. I give you for example, the city of Newark, where carjacking was invented, a city which is touted as the carjacking capitol of the world. Such places are but one reason folks are armed... but we'll not get into that.

 

Trains. We've got trains here. I used to commute by train years back. I rode trains from northern NJ where I lived down to Hoboken, the hub, where I'd then ride the Path into NYC and the WTC. I still ride the train from time to time with M'Lady, a novelty during the summer, the North Jersey Coast Line. During the height of the summer season, with all the 'tourists' and their cars, the coast is total gridlock... so the train can be fun as it runs through the center of most all the coastal towns. Convenient for attending various summer events. Bring a good book. Hope you find a seat. Trains are expensive, my monthly commuter rail ticket was expensive, and all Path has ever done is gone up in price. Trains are also noisy. They're also dirty and a serious health hazard (the asbestos brake linings)... and how it is that environmentalists never jumped on that bandwagon, I'll never know.

And, @Kerbart, being you know the 'Elmwood Park' area, you should also know that - for example - the town of Garfield has approximately 1 rail death per year (for like the last 15-20 years running). And Garfield isn't alone. Nearly every single town alone that northern NJ line (which splits into 2 lines up near Hawthorn and Glenrock area, before merging back to 1) on up through Mahwah/Suffrn, straight on out to Port Jervis, all are faced with these same issues... pollution, noise, expense. And, fencing or walling-in the rail paths is not practical in these areas; Access is still gained at crossings.

[tater]

56 minutes ago, YNM said:

You do. You did.

The same could be applied to cars - high-quality highways or snail's pace or outback.

I don’t live in sfo. I live in Albuquerque.

SFO only has a few cable car lines, and they are more of a tourist thing. Regardless, already a walking city.

45 minutes ago, YNM said:

Just hire a local digger who needs spoil. I'm sure they're more than happy to help.

 

Or someone being really clever with a brush and a white paint (and black paint to undo what was there). I'd happily volunteer to be that one, just fly me there and give me a shelter.

The two lanes often featured there is IMO overkill.

You mean 2 lanes each way? On main streets that’s a minimum. Residential areas are single lanes each way here.

[YNM]

5 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Here in NJ alone, I could take you places where you'd change your mind and view about that in 5 minutes.

I can also do the same down here.

1 minute ago, tater said:

I don’t live in SFO. I live in Albuquerque.

I know, go west.

3 minutes ago, tater said:

You mean 2 lanes each way? On main streets that’s a minimum.

And that is overkill.

[tater]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

I can also do the same down here.

I know, go west.

We would be sleeping on the street in San Francisco, lol.

just checked listings. Looks like a 3 bedroom apt (2 teens, boy and girl, they need rooms) that is 25% the size of my house starts around a million bucks. It’s the Bay Area, so that will bid up. Call it 1.5M$, for a house that is likely not that great. I have no desire to live like a college student again, been there, done that.

While that is something we could actually do, this is not true for the vast majority of the population. Most people in the US could not afford sfo under any circumstances.

[LordFerret]

10 minutes ago, YNM said:

And that is overkill.

One might consider this...

...as overkill and a waste..... until you run into this...

...which is a prime example of summer traffic looking to head to the beach.

 

And then there's the GSP (Garden State Parkway)... in the summer, picture 6 (six!) lanes of the above.

[tater]

Buses are the only easily scalable mass transit. They use existing infrastructure, and are cheap. People don’t like them, though. Also, buses share the same safety issues cars do, and add others. I see news stories of criminals on buses fighting passengers, or the driver, buses here have killed pedestrians, as well.

Obviously the deaths per seat mile would be lower (1 bus killing someone also carries many cars worth of people, all of which would also be at risk of a crash).

At a certain point adding lanes doesn’t help traffic at all, apparently. Single lanes are terrible, though, since a single car problem can stop all traffic.

[Kerbart]

26 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

And, @Kerbart, being you know the 'Elmwood Park' area, you should also know that - for example - the town of Garfield has approximately 1 rail death per year (for like the last 15-20 years running). And Garfield isn't alone. Nearly every single town alone that northern NJ line (which splits into 2 lines up near Hawthorn and Glenrock area, before merging back to 1) on up through Mahwah/Suffrn, straight on out to Port Jervis, all are faced with these same issues... pollution, noise, expense. And, fencing or walling-in the rail paths is not practical in these areas; Access is still gained at crossings.

The railroad crossing of Midland Ave in Elmwood Park was apparently one of the deadliest in the US. Improving that significantly was one of the last projects of mayor Richard Mola (RIP). 

Your story does highlight a major point though: the discussion gets significantly polluted by the Americans in this thread applying their knowledge of rail transport to the problem. And rail transport, especially but not only passenger transport, is absolutely 100% god-awful in the US. Even here in NJ which is considered to be light years ahead of most of the US is an absolute joke. I cannot effectively commute to work as it would take me 2 hours each way. and the shuttle for "the last mile" (more like 3, so not something I'd casually walk every day in addition to spending two hours in the train in each direction) costs me more than gasoline when driving myself.

Compare that to the Netherlands where the train would take me to work (door to door) in 30 minutes and the car would cost me over an hour, and where even the most expensive option (buying one way tickets every day) would beat gasoline prices alone (and not depreciation, and cars in Holland are expensive). Add to that clean trains that ride on time (and where the worst case schedule if you live in the outback is once per hour, and not once per two hours as on the bergen/main line through one of the most densily populated areas in New Jersey during off-rush hours) and you can see why the train can be an option.

Of course, for the rural US it never will be, and it would be silly to expect that. But to say that the train is never a solution is just as short-sighted and mis-informed as stating that it is always a solution. There are definitely cases where rail-based mass transit is the way to go. Keep in mind that the US is exceptionally rural, even with what we call "suburban" areas. Neighborhoods like Queens and Brooklyn are exceptions in the US; in NW Europe the are the norm.

12 minutes ago, tater said:

Buses are the only easily scalable mass transit. They use existing infrastructure, and are cheap. People don’t like them, though. Also, buses share the same safety issues cars do, and add others. I see news stories of criminals on buses fighting passengers, or the driver, buses here have killed pedestrians, as well.

Visit the NYC subway. At rush hour in Manhattan you'll have trains stopping every 5 minutes, easily unloading 500 people. That's 15,000 people per hour per stop. Please explain how to handle this with "scalable" busses.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Visit the NYC subway. At rush hour in Manhattan you'll have trains stopping every 5 minutes, easily unloading 500 people. That's 15,000 people per hour per stop. Please explain how to handle this with "scalable" busses.

I know the subway well.

It works because the City is a walking city. I was taking generically for US metro areas. 

Tunneling costs are what, a billion a mile? ABQ is maybe 400 square miles. How many miles of tunnel are enough? You also need enough people moving to justify trains every 5 min. Our rail to Santa Fe makes 1 trip every 1.5 hours, and is not used much.

So go ahead, explain how subways will work in Abq, or Tucson.

Note also that nyc transit at rush hours have vast numbers of people (exceeding local pop, likely), pouring in on PATH and MetroNorth trains.

[tater]

Rejiggering the vast majority of US metro areas that developed largely post-automobile would be absolutely cost prohibitive. There is also a chicken and egg issue. Transit requires walking cities, and vice versa. The existing cities are largely spread out, and designed around auto traffic. If you try and manufacture limited areas of higher density like Bijmer, it never seems to work out, at least in part because people still have other options, and nothing hits the ground fully formed... the housing exists, but not the support businesses, etc.

Because of this, I would argue that mass transit in the US would need to be scalable. In spread out areas (most US metros), this means that the stops need to be much closer to door to door that are likely to ever happen within the suburban areas that will drive the economics. This is why I am in fact so much in favor of self-driving cars (of the sort that won't kill me, or my kids, mind you!). Low noise/emission vehicles (electric/hybrid) that are occupied a much larger % of the time creates the sort of door to door transit that would actually enable larger systems like rail or buses to actually work in places like ABQ and other flyover cities.

Take a rush hour use case. We complain here because it might take 30 minutes instead of 15 at rush hour to get downtown from our house (literally as far from downtown as you can be and still have an ABQ address). Any transit system would need to deliver us in something like that timeframe, 30 minutes, ~15 miles. It would likely take much of that time just to walk down to the nearest large street where a bus might run for me (1 mile and 500 ft downhill). No bus would go directly to destination, and would make many stops, I've already lost a bunch of time. With self driving cars, the rail that runs down the valley could run more like a subway, with trains every few minutes---assuming they added a second rail, since all the trains here share 1 rail, except a couple sidings for passing---and I could be at the train in 10 min, then downtown in something like 20 min. Totally worth it. In reality, the nearest bus is a 75 minute walk from my house, lol.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Buses are the only easily scalable mass transit.

Trains are for the average. Buses are for the fluctuations.

[Green Baron]

For almost 20 years i used to live in towns (Karlsruhe and Tübingen) where it was much faster to hike than to ride a private car. Only for journeys out of town one would take a public transport, or a private car.

But Germany is different, shops are around the corners, buses or trams run every 20min (every 10 actually during day time in cities like Stuttgart), etc. No comparison to American style spread-out cities.

I now live in a rural area with thin population. Buses run every 2 hours to 30 min.

Cost of a subway: depends on how many stations, kind of ground one has to dig through, etc. But it is not a billion/mile. Maybe an order less.

 

Uber: idk, but what i read in the media casts a bad light. I only have the media ...

Edited March 24, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, tater said:

How many miles of tunnel are enough?

While a walk duration is lesser than a bus waiting + parking time.

1 hour ago, tater said:

Tunneling costs are what, a billion a mile? ABQ is maybe 400 square miles. How many miles of tunnel are enough? You also need enough people moving to justify trains every 5 min. Our rail to Santa Fe makes 1 trip every 1.5 hours, and is not used much.

So go ahead, explain how subways will work in Abq, or Tucson.

Same way as it works in Moscow (970 mi²). 5 min of walking between the stations in the city center, ~15 min between them on, figurally, 75% of it. Average trip ~5 min per station.

1 hour ago, tater said:

If you try and manufacture limited areas of higher density like Bijmer, it never seems to work out, at least in part because people still have other options, and nothing hits the ground fully formed... the housing exists, but not the support businesses, etc.

Is it something like this?
 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited March 24, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Usual bus ride of mine:

Go to the stop, look up departure time: in 15min. Hike to the next stop (6min), next one (7min), ne.. there goes the bus, 2min early. Can equally now hike into town.

 

[YNM]

8 hours ago, LordFerret said:

One might consider this...

...as overkill and a waste..... until you run into this...

...which is a prime example of summer traffic looking to head to the beach.

Believe it or not, the two might have near-similar capacity (passenger car unit passed / hour) despite their massively different average speeds. What you need is to fix whatever's the bottleneck somewhere down the road.

And that's also why they are very, very terrible.

7 hours ago, tater said:

Tunneling costs are what, a billion a mile?

I thought someone was going to change that...

8 hours ago, tater said:

Single lanes are terrible, though, since a single car problem can stop all traffic.

Get a hard shoulder, or an extra-wide lane. (the latter is basically just someone being really clever with paint.)

Edited March 25, 2018 by YNM