German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
ChineseThe Case For Rail: Guest Posting at L.A. Times Emerald City
Siel over at the L.A. Times Emerald City blog asked me to offer my opinion on a recent anti-rail op-ed piece printed in the L.A. Times entitled “The MTA’s Train Wreck“. In classic style, I did just that… for paragraphs and paragraphs. Here’s a little sample:
…Herein lies my problem with the article by Mr. Moore and Mr. Rubin: they still see transit as little more than a welfare program for those who can’t afford cars (aka, “the poor”). I see transit as the solution to The Traffic Problem. Transit ridership increases or decreases don’t matter in regards to The Traffic Problem if the only riders are those can’t afford cars in the first place. And in Los Angeles, because of The Traffic Problem, transit can no longer be seen as a welfare program. In other cities, perhaps, but in Los Angeles traffic is The Problem, and if The Problem isn’t solved it’s likely we’ll all end up needing some sort of welfare. But this is the beauty of public transit: it doesn’t discriminate. I can’t just go pick up some food stamps, but I’m free to hop on any bus or train. So transit has the potential to be a both a way to help give mobility to those who can’t afford a car AND solve The Traffic Problem by getting those who can afford cars out of them. The big issue, of course, is how to get those people out of their cars.
I can tell you right now: buses ain’t gonna cut it…
Go check out the post on Emerald City for the whole shebang.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Great post Fred. The one thing that I think the United States needs to understand about these systems is the network effect. There are only a few systems in the US that get sort of close with the only real example as you said is NYC.
Well done Fred. However, the problem with framing a rail system as simply a means of getting people out of their cars opens it up to criticism from robdawgs and other number crunchers if it isn’t an instant success. The truth is that even if there were a comprehensive rail system today, plenty of people would still drive to work. But that doesn’t mean that a rail system shouldn’t be built. I think of a city’s transportation capacity as being like a paper towel, where transit alternatives ( rail, buses, easier bike access) greatly increase the amount of water the towel can soak up. Transit friendly cities like Chicago, New York, etc. would be like Brawny in this analogy, while we would be more like Costco discount single-ply. There’s a reason that New York comes in #4 for congestion while Los Angeles at half the size comes in #1. This is not to say that driving is evil, in fact for trips made off peak hours or away from densely populated centers I don’t think it should be particularly discouraged. But as Fred has said before, there is a dearth of transit options in LA, and as the city and region continue to densify (we are already the most densely populated urban area in the country) transit needs to become a viable alternative for commuting. The only way to do that is by building a rail network. Buses can only do so much, in fact LA has done a pretty good job of stretching its buses to accomidate as much as possible, as Fred points out in his post. Don’t expect roads and freeways to get too much better if a rail network is built, but expect them to get much worse if we stop building rail. And hey, maybe commuting by rail - or even bus - might not be as bad as you think.
On a somewhat related note, I think that the general public (not just MRLA junkies like myself) does want to see a train network in LA. The question is no longer “if?” but “how?” and more importantly “when?”, which I find encouraging.
Fred,
I thought your post was spectacular and I hope you submit it as an op-ed commentary to the L.A. times to be published in the Sunday Opinion section.
At no point do Moore and Rubin address keeping Southern California environmentally and economically sustainable now that the limits of sprawl and congestion have been reached, and what will happen if we don’t dramatically expand our rail system as the city will become more vertical and dense as millions more arrive over the next few decades.
It is also incredibly patronizing and unfounded, except in the mind of their inflated sense of car-culture-entitlement to assume that everyone on transit would surely buy a car and drive if they could only afford a car, and that slow, plodding buses are good enough for them if they are poor and cannot.
johnny said:
Well this is where we should come in (as well as Metro’s PR/Ad department) and get the word out. Obviously you’re not going to get everyone out of their cars… I mean even in NYC there’s still 25% of the population that owns cars. But our mission should be to convince people of the viability of this “lifestyle” I speak of. And I think that due to the current cultural climate, it’s never been a better time for the message. Global warming and “green” rhetoric is just about the most popular topic in the world right now, and that’s one angle we should be attacking. We should work to make transit riding seem “cool” and we should lead by example. Dump your car, ride the bus, and blow your friends and coworkers away with the fact that you live in Los Angeles without a car. It will catch on. The movement starts small, but if each of us spreads the word, and convinces just a few people to make the switch (I know I have), then slowly but surely a mini revolution will begin. It will probably hard to convince a lot of old people, but the coming generation will be a lot more eager I promise you. Just look how discussion and blogs and websites about Los Angeles transit have popped up in the last few years… it’s a growing conversation and the results of this movement have yet to be seen.
So yeah, we can’t build the rails, but we can do our best to build the ideological foundations of a “transit oriented lifestyle” in Los Angeles.
Well that lifestyle can also be improved with frequent efficient service. If some corridors operate every hour and don’t operate at late evenings how can we convince folks of this lifestyle if the service can’t accomodate the lifestyle.
Jerard Wright said:
No doubt about that, that’s why it’s also important to convince Metro that addressing transit as a lifestyle and not welfare is important. As long as transit in this city is seen as nothing more than welfare for those who can’t afford the car-culture, it will be doomed.
This being said, I feel I personally have more control of the feelings of others I come in contact with on a daily basis than the members of the Metro board. There are too many special interests at play there. So, right now I advertise the “transit oriented lifestyle” as an alternative lifestyle, for those with the guts to live a bit differently in this city and who are willing to face some of the challenges our incomplete transit systems presents to us.
“I can tell you right now: Buses ain’t gonna cut it.”
This is SO true. My friend, who is from San Francisco, is always having problems with parking tickets at our job [people have to park in the Santa Monica PLace lot, but they always get tickets if they don't move their car] and she doesn’t like to spend all that money on something that shouldn’t even be happening. I had suggested she use the 33/333 bus to take to work because she lives one block away fom Abbot Kinney[well, right behind it] Now, coming from the Bay Area, she’s used to riding public transportation and doesn’t mind riding BART in San Fran, but for some reason, she will NOT ride the bus.
So this one time, a couple months after telling her to ride the bus to work, we’re in the car waiting for the light to turn green on 4th/Colorado, I had mentioned that on that very corner is where the Expo line station should be [and giving ehr a little background on the line and how it would go to
Downtown] and she immediately said “awwww why can’t it be open NOW? I would SO ride the train if it was built. I was amazed.
Btw, great essay Fred.
What you thought I could stay silent? ‘Scourse not.
I see transit as the solution to The Traffic Problem.
Great. Examples? Here, let me short circuit several posts. Got any data that shows either transit reduces congestion or even any data that shows transit doesn’t make congestion worse? Heck. got any transportation regional plans that don’t rely upon increased congestion as justification for more rail transit?
Statement: Rail transit causes congestion.
That should be easy to refute right? Right?
Don’t get me wrong. Just because I assert rail transit causes congestion doesn’t make me antitransit and sometimes not even antirail transit. All I ask is for FActs.
Take transit away from New York City. Watch increase in traffic congestion.
It’s common sense Rob. It’s one person per vehicle versus multiple people per vehicle. Clearly, reduction in traffic congestion require transit usage, but the concept is very clear.
I say that rail transit, when used, does not cause traffic congestion. I say cars cause traffic congestion. Now tell me otherwise.
Los Angeles has reported an increase in population in every census ever taken, and barring some natural or political catastrophe, the population is likely to keep increasing. So if rail transit needs justification, I’d say that would be a pretty good one.
Since I don’t think Rob seriously believe this, I’m not going to bother refuting it. What I find interesting is how biased this statement is to cars as a means of transport. The 101 is more congested so rail is a failure, no matter whether or not people have been able to benefit from fast subway service between Downtown, K-town, Los Feliz, Hollywood, and North Hollywood. Rail will never really work until the majority of people see it not as a means of getting people off the freeway but a solution for them personally. And thankfully we are seeing the beginnings of this with more and more people “decaring”, or at least downplaying the role of cars in their transportation habits. Fred’s response to my earlier post is certainly good news, and hopefully we will see a positive feedback-esque situation in which greater awareness leads to better transportation options, which leads to even greater awareness, etc, etc.
Just a random example of why rail is important for LA. So my dad’s a well off guy, but he grew up poor in New York. Now I don’t know why, but for some reason he decided after he left New York that he’d never ride another public bus again. Who knows what specific reason it is (he likes to say “Buses are the worst. You’re in the same traffic with everyone else and it stinks.”). But he doesn’t feel the same way about trains. Those he’ll take.
It sucks that we have to take things one rail project at a time, but I think if they can get a real subway to the sea, and maybe one more useful line, then a tipping point is possible. Right now they’ve got a not very useful skeleton of a rail system in place, but one or two key lines or additions and maybe suddenly you’ve got thousands more people, people with money, taking a train to work down Wilshire. Or riding the train to the airport (a dream I know). Now all of a sudden you’ve got a base of people who are invested and care about the metro system, just as New York cares about its subway.
Development of rail transit is not a substitute or a corrective for car culture, it is an entirely separate process which provides room for economic growth. Witness the infill development of Hollywood and Downtown LA. Does anyone believe this could have happened without the Red Line? The Gold Line in Pasadena is now seeing similar effects, Long Beach is seeing it, and the rezoning of Washington Boulevard downtown will follow.
If the 101 were double-decked instead of the Red Line being built, would it have had the same effect? Or would we just have seen more sprawl further out into Rob Dawg’s neck of the woods, and no densification in the core?
It is not a question of providing “facts” to justify the place of transit at the table. All economic stimulus is speculative, as were the freeways in the 50s. It’s a good bet that infrastructure projects beget investment. The rail system is no exception.
Car ownership is not evenly distributed. It’s not 25% everywhere in New York. I suspect as certain neighborhoods get more dense and vertical, car ownership and usage will be varied accordingly.
No one I knew living in Manhattan owned a car or drove one unless they rented one and were driving away for the weekend. The people I knew who had cars lived in the outer parts of Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. They did not live in Brooklyn. Many people in suburban counties like Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and New Jersey own cars, but commuter rail is so good they don’t drive them into the city.
Over the next few decades as Los Angeles gets more vertical and dense, I would expect there to be parts of the city where there is much less car usage and ownership. There may even be neighborhoods where becomes is impractical to drive and park an automobile. (Downtown, Hollywood, Century City, possibly even North Hollywood/Universal City).
No one I knew in Manhattan ever drove a car within Manhattan.
Car ownership will remain higher in Chatsworth, La Canada Flintridge, Palos Verdes, Glendora, etc., than in the denser parts of the region.
If rail transit doesn’t cause congestion then why is NYC proposing a congestion charge? People didn’t seem to have any direct replies to my two statements. We are talking about spending tens of billions on rail transit in no small part on the assertion that congestion will improve. Hopefully someone can point to the supporting data.
Bert Green came the closest the analysis that rail would be a parallel development path leading to different outcomes.
Are you kidding me Rob? Congestion in NYC or London is a result of those cities having rail transit? You didn’t respond to my point that without rail transit in NYC, there would be 75% more cars on the road… in a city of 8 million, that’s 6 million more cars. Do you deny that more cars on roads cause congestion?
I guess then I’d ask you why places like Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Orlando have such terrible congestion? And if those cities had NYC/London style rail transit system that was used to the same extent as in those cities, would the congestion be the same?
Let me put it this way. For every person in a car in New York City, traffic still sucks. Congestion is bad. But, due to the fact that there is an extensive rail transit system, how fast or slow traffic moves in car is irrelevant because it’s possible and easier to get where you are going by rail. So 6 million people are unaffected by traffic congestion.
So let’s imagine a fictional city of 100 people and a one lane highway. In scenario one, the highway is the only mode of transportation. 100 cars fill that highway every morning as people go to work and traffic ensues. In scenario two, there is rail transit that 75% of the population uses in addition to the highway. So every morning 75 people board the train and 25 cars get on the highway. Now tell me, in which scenario is the traffic congestion worse?
Fred, seems to me that you made the case that rail transit doesn’t have any effect on congestion one way or another.
As to travel speeds. You know NYC has the longest commute times in the nation right? How does that square with rail transit reducing congestion?
In your theoretical you start coming closer to the truth. Your hypothetical assumes both rail transit and road capacity. Go for it and it would likely work. That’s why I was hoping for examples. Problem is when theoreticals turn into capacity there are tradeoffs and you don’t get all the rail or all the roads you need.
The example is that every major world city has rail transit and those trains don’t sit empty. When people are in trains and not in cars there are less cars on the street and thus less traffic congestion.
Travel speeds have nothing to do with traffic congestion. That’s commute time, not traffic congestion. Also traffic congestion is not pedestrian congestion.
The example is that every major world city has rail transit and those trains don’t sit empty.
That’s fine. I’ve no problem with people advancing the “World Class City” argument. I just want to know where the basis for “reduces congestion” comes from. If I told you single occupant auto commutes give you pearly white teeth you’d ask what I based that upon. If I said it was obvious or any of the other evasions we’ve seen here you’d be all over my case. Rightly so.
Travel speeds have nothing to do with traffic congestion.
Don’t be so quick with the dismissal. Think and try again.
No thanks All Mighty Rob, I don’t report to you as the Supreme Authority. You are the one who has to try again, no one here is convinced of YOUR argument.
Okay, then let me help. When travel speeds decline the time for any vehicle be it auto or rail using track or lane capacity increases. Not only that because congestion hetrodynes the onset of congested flow from free flowing conditions starts earlier and goes away later. These are basic transportation management precepts. Even increased speeds outside of periods of congestion result in trip demand remodeling that reduce congestion in peak periods. In short travel speeds have everything to do with congestion.
I am disappointed that my being polite and giving you a chance to reconsider what was obviously not fully thought through was rejected as being an insult. TDM is a deep post-grad topic in major universities. Among other things I was chosen to review the TDM for D.C. and my comments on their commercial traffic model were ultimately incorporated. It’s easy to say things like “Travel speeds have nothing to do with traffic congestion.” and quite another to back it up.
Back to rail. If rail were twice as fast, what would be the results? You like hypotheticals. Go with this one. Capital costs and operating costs decline. Ridership increases. Track capacity increases. Reduced interaction times with at-grade events reduces accidents and improves flow for both modes. Looks pretty good for something that you tried to claim wasn’t relevant.
Rob, I agree with Fred on this one, but for different reasons. You are too focused on the “reduces congestion” argument. The only people who need to be convinced that transit is a good idea based on that argument are non-transit users, because that is the sole criteria which would have them support transit expenditures. So, politically, it is always dragged out as the best reason for people to back transit.
The economic development argument is the best one, and it would be easier to get support if the politicians used that as the major justification for rail transit.
Millions more are coming to So Cal over the next few decades. We have already reached the limits of sprawl and congestion.
The question to put forward is whether or not we want all those people making the effects of sprawl and congestion even worse or whether we want to do sensible transit oriented development. We have the development, now let’s build the transit to go with it. Los Angeles is getting more vertical and dense. The fact that NBC is moving from Burbank to an adjacent rail stop shows that corporations know which way the wind is blowing. The economic forces that sent them sprawling out of downtown for cheap land in the past will also encourage them to become more transit accessible to their employees and customers in the future.
Put people’s focus on the future of what Southern California will be like if we DON’T build a rail network rather than have them pining for the days when a high quality car-culture, solo-driving lifestyle was possible to/from/in all areas of the city. Those days are long gone.
You misunderstand. I’m willing to entertain any argument. My point is that this one particular assertion does not stand up to scrutiny. All I’ve asked for is supporting evidence or merely examples.
Except economic development increases VMT. Even the most aggressive rail transit mode share estimates don’t exceed 40% thus leaving the lion’s share of the purported economic incentive to be handled by POVs. If rail transit increases economic activity it increases congestion. Quite the conundrum.
Rob said:
The commute times in NYC are based largely on the fact that the majority of people travel by rail, not car. It’s comparing apples to oranges. If it takes an hour for me to walk to work, it’s not because of traffic congestion, it’s because I’m walking! A commute in New York involves a walk to a train station, a wait for a train, a ride on a train with multiple stops, and then a walk to the final destination. None of that time has anything to do with the number of cars idling on the streets above.
All you have to do to prove your point is convince me that if NYC shut down their rail service and gave everyone who used it cars, that traffic congestion would decrease. In other words, you just have to tell me that adding 6 million cars on the streets of New York City would reduce traffic. If that’s the case, then yes, “rail transit increases congestion”.
Or, if you want to make it more local, assume Los Angeles had a New York caliber rail system and 75% of the population used it (in other words, 75% of the population didn’t own cars). Would removing 2.8 million cars from the streets of Los Angeles increase traffic congestion? If so, then yes, “rail traffic increases congestion”.
Dan W, you had a very different experience in New York than I did. In the 15 years I lived in Manhattan, I knew many people with cars. I also knew many people who would not ride the subway at all (but this was in the 70s and early 80s, when it was actually quite dangerous in NYC).
Congestion in NYC is not caused by transit, it is caused by people who use cars. The congestion charge is designed to create a disincentive to use your car in the city. Duh.
Rob, if you had said, “The majority of cities to build rail transit have experienced an increase in congestion”, I would agree with you. But “Rail Transit causes congestion”??? You can’t be serious, at least in the general sense. You could make the argument, as you do earlier, that rail causes congestion in localized areas by causing centralized development which many people will still drive to. But I really doubt that traffic citywide gets slower because of rail transit. You cite the Reason foundation’s favorite statistic, that New York has the longest commute time. But that doesn’t prove anything. The question is, would that commute time be shorter if no subways had been built and all the money invested in auto infrastructure instead? I doubt it.
Statement: In dense areas, rail transit mitigates increases in automotive congestion caused by development.
Hmmmm…I’m going to chime into this one.
Rob & Bert are getting to the point. Effecient rail transit does not reduce congestion. Effecient rail transit allows for density in a city. If rail were to reduce traffic, NYC and London would have none. Right? I lived in London a few years ago and it took 2 hours to get from the northeast to the southwest, outside of regular rush hour. Why? Because of the density in the city. London is sprawled, just like LA.
Rail transit will never reduce congestion, heck, we’ll probably get more congestion. Rail transit gives us alternatives and justifies cities to build denser. And with more people arriving in the city, come more people who can use cars. Albeit, maybe the %age of drivers will reduce, but traffic will increase.
Has the 101 gotten any faster with the Red Line? Nope.
i don’t necessarily disagree with you LAofA but lets just for a second think about wut the 101 would be like if the red line had not been built. what’s being lost in all this is the common sense truth that this city can’t sustain itself as is. rob dawg, you can semantic this to death if you want, i could careless, but Los Angeles can no longer just build wider and and wider freeways to keep up with the ever demanding needs of this city and its growing population. there has to be another option, and not to stop the expansion/improving of the former, but to help it. argue all you want about the proper way to define congestion but it makes no difference at this point. if your goal is to just build freeways and ignore the need of a working rail infrastructure to help lessen the future burden of those same ever exhausting freeways then you’ve made your point. good for you. however, your school of thought is thankfully dying away as more and more people realize the insanity Los Angeles is going to face in the very near future and what we’re only previewing now.
and as for cost, yes, the tunneling and possible lawsuits are going to be astronomical i’m sure. transit math, corporate math, or federal accounting math, it doesn’t matter, it’s gonna be a pretty penny, but then again, re-thinking an entire city for the good of the future is going to be expensive. however, you’re just delaying the inevitable and therefore the costs. waxman did it already and you’re just munching on his and others fodder to create more of it to feed others. but less and less are biting and whether you like it or not the subway to the sea will be built, rob dawg and the longer you and others deny it and try to stop it, the more expensive its going to be for you, me, and everyone else.
Efficient rail transit DOES reduce congestion when it is used by people who would otherwise drive. How hard is that to understand.
Because of rail, I don’t own a car. Because I don’t own a car, I don’t drive. Because I don’t drive, there’s one less car on the road. Because there’s one less car on the road, there’s less congestion.
Congestion is the number of cars on the road at the same time. If there are a lot of cars on a little bit of road, the congestion is higher than if there are a few cars on a lot of road.
This is why (non transit people) want more roads to be built and freeways to be double decked… if you don’t reduce the cars you have to increase the amount of road to reduce congestion.
Only one thing directly causes traffic congestion, and that’s more cars on the same road.
The only way rail could cause more congestion is if it brought more cars onto the road or if it took road away from cars.
I don’t know if it took you 2 hours by train or by car, but if by car, just imagine how much longer it would have taken you had their been no rail transit system. If everyone who was moving about London on the Tube that day instead joined you on the streets in their own cars. Congestion in London, New York City, Paris, any city where rail is a primary mode of transportation, would increase massively without rail transit.
Did a large portion of people who used to drive the 101 now ride the Red Line? Was that portion of people larger than the number of new people who moved in and started driving on the 101? Doubtful. Obviously a single pidly line is not going to make much of a difference, and likely won’t solve the traffic problem (but it won’t add to it unless it somehow steals road from cars or brings extra cars to the road). The only thing that has a chance at making a difference is a comprehensive rail system (New York, London, Paris stye) that can get a majority of the people where they need to go without a car.
Well that can be done like other cities, by taking away the zoning away from the politicians and put them back in the hands of the planners. One of the biggest issues with LA zoning and land use is that it’s speculative in it’s design so. No matter what infrastructure is build if the property is zoned R-4 or C-5 with R-4 but there’s single family homes surrounding it can be built to that density. That density will relate the parking requirements. Despite the potential transit infrastructure that is built there, they will still require as much or more parking than spots that had no transit there.
If this were the case, how come there’s not the influx of TOD’s around the Blue Line on the Mid-corridor section from Washington to Imperial/Wilmington?
A great example is Hollywood/Highland right under the subway, guess how many Parking spots they had to include? 3000! The transit is there but the zoning is out of whack.
That’s not to say I’m against building any transit, On the contrary
we need rail down the major corridors and available right-of-ways but we also need Bus only lanes and coordinated transit malls in other locations to help feed our system. Building the transit infrastructure is essential but the way our zoning/land-uses are designed to give the Councilmembers the ultimate land-use power with no regulation needs to be understood too before we make claims of changing lifestyles and the ability to increase density.
In the case of Paris, unless you’re refering to the suburban areas, I’d doubt it because their city is walkable and zoned around many sub-centers that are a short distance away from each other. NYC has the same essence within the boroughs, a great example of this was a few years ago with the transit strike, you know how the bulk of riders came into the city, by walking and yes congestion did increase, but that’s because of the number of pedestrians filling the streets that essentially made traffic for drivers worse.
Now London on the other hand is so similiar to Los Angeles because the distance riders and residents need to get to places. Despite it’s old world city layout, it is a model of dense Polycentric Sprawl, if the tubes/public transport goes on strike that city would be crippled and choking on it’s own congestion. But it’s not because the rail went down but because of the additional overlay network of bus only lanes to compliment the tube would be non-existent.
Fred…you are ascertaining that London and New York would have been built out the same if they had freeways/roads instead of rail transit. Absolutley not. If there was no rail transit in London, NY, do you think we’d have that type of density? The city planners would have gawked at that type of layout and made it more a la Los Angeles style.
What we’re saying, is that efficient rail transit gives the ability for a city to grow up and densify. But, your %age of car users decrease. LA would not be in the building boom it was/is for the last 6 years w/o the Red/Purple lines in Hollywood/K-Town, and Downtown. The reason we can densify is the excuse that we have Metro rail. And..yes, LA will get more congested. But, less people will complain b/c more alternatives will exist.
BTW..in London, that was 2 hours by driving. Sometimes people do drive in major cities. Check out the road traffic in London.
I lived in Manhattan from 1998 and 2005 and by then New York was a different place and crime had dramatically fallen, making it one of the safest big cities in America. I also lived in Hell’s Kitchen, and most of my friends and compadres where south of 125th Street. I don’t know a single person in all my seven years out of the countless people I met who owned or parked a car in Manhattan. I did have a friend who was a contractor who owned a truck, but he parked it in Brooklyn and never drove it into the City.
By the time, I had moved in, Times Square had started it conversion from America’s Red Light District into Disneyland North and the Meatpacking district became posh shortly thereafter.
The subways were both safe and reliable. I never once got mugged or assaulted or pickpocketed. Perhaps we did live in two different cities.
Every once in awhile, someone will say, “L.A. is not New York” to justify not spending money on rail. True, L.A. does not have New York’s topography. It is much more like London, a sprawl with a comprehensive rail and bus network.
London has heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, bus-only lanes. It’s a transit users paradise compared to L.A. Commuter rail is very important. There are several stations connecting Commuter Rail to the Tube (Paddington, Victoria, King’s Cross, Liverpool St., etc.)
Not only do we need to construct subway lines, but we need a dramatic expansion in Metrolink, running every 10-15 minutes 7 days a week. I have this dream of the Green Line going Metrolink (Valley) via LAX to Metrolink (Norwalk/SantaFe Springs).
As for New York, the transit expansion in Northern New Jersey is very interesting and encouraging. A new light rail has been built. PATH trains connect via subway, Manhattan and New Jersey. Newark has a mini-subway. Commuter Rail takes people into PENN station. It was quite frankly easier to get from Hell’s Kitchen to either Brooklyn or New Jersey than to the Upper East Side.
That is changing as New York has once again broke ground on the Second Avenue Subway and will be fixing the Bleecker Street Station to allow both northbound and southbound transfers to the B,D,F,V trains. Even their great system continues to improve. Let the good times roll!
No no, I’m not ascertaining that whatsoever. I’m saying that if TODAY, rail transit was shut down in those cities, congestion would increase. That simple fact completely negates the absurd generalization that “rail transit causes congestion”, because if it were true, taking away rail transit would reduce or at least not increase congestion.
Dude… first off remember that rail transit was what first allowed Los Angeles grow OUT, not UP. Secondly, rail was effective over in Los Angeles in 1960 and did not return again until 1990? Did this stop Los Angeles from densifying? Hell no! In the 30 years between the end of the Pacific Electric Railway and when Metro Rail first appeared, Los Angeles added over 1.5 million people (almost the same growth as between 1850 and 1960) and went from a density of 4,222 people per sq. mile to 7,468 people per square mile! Check out this map of density in 1960 and compare it with this map of 1990.
And has rail transit in L.A. really made a significant contribution to the overall density of the city thus far? It’s doubtful. The goal is to grow up and densify, but the system is so scant right now and the T.O.D’s have been so poorly done that it’s likely density in areas without rail have grown just as much or more as areas with rail. Sure, we can attribute Hollywood’s renaissance and Downtown’s revitalization to the Red Line, but they are still a drop in the bucket overall.
Bottom line is rail and density are not necessarily correlated, in fact if you look at this article from the New York Times in 1992, you find that the population density of both New York City and London decreased with the arrival of the subway because it allowed people to live further apart (people could now live in the burroughs and easily commute to Manhattan) .
EXACTLY. So if the percentage of car users decreases with rail, and car users are what causes traffic congestion, then traffic congestion will be lessened. Look, I don’t think the Metro Rail currently has made a massive impact on traffic, but not because rail doesn’t do that. It’s just because not enough people, and especially not enough people who drive, use Metro Rail. The majority of users are transit-dependent anyways. And those who are not are not large enough in numbers to make a significant dent in traffic. But it’s absurd to say that if these people were put in cars instead of seats on the train that traffic wouldn’t get at least marginally worse.
By current population projections, LA is going to get more congested no matter what. The question is if it gets congested with cars AND people, or if we build a transportation system that allows it to just get congested with people. Let’s not forget that cars take up a lot more space than people.
Okay, so do you believe traffic would have been better or worse that day if everyone on the Tube was in cars on the streets with you. Road traffic in London and New York and Paris IS terrible, but not because of rail, it’s because of people who aren’t riding the rail!
Well I was in Paris during the strikes in November, and according to our taxi driver, yes traffic was worse. But you make a point that there are plenty of alternatives to driving in Paris that aren’t the rails. When I was there supposedly the Velo bike rental service was being used more than ever because of the strike. But you’re losing the point… the point is that rail (and other non-car transportation alternatives) reduce congestion as long as they don’t steal/block roadway from cars or somehow add more cars onto the streets.
Fred,
I think you’re missing half the point too, in that creating the alternative non-car driving lifestyle starts with better land-uses and planning and within our existing network of bus and rail to operate them reliably and efficently.
Curtiba Brazil doesn’t have any rail system but the city was designed to promote access and walkability with many alternatives instead of the car with good people moving planning. All of these factors really have to be understood on top of the Transit infrastructure.
Oh I don’t deny that at all. My rant in these comments have been solely against the RobDawg’s statement that “rail causes congestion”. Clearly rail alone won’t solve congestion unless it’s combined with better land-uses and planning. This is why I rally against bullshit T.O.D’s with thousands of parking spaces and 60 mile light rail lines through suburbia to second-class airports. Rail lines to no-where aren’t going to help people get where they need to go, and if rail doesn’t go where people need to go then it will sit unused, and when it sits unused it does nothing to help congestion. But its existence alone does not CAUSE congestion!
Going back to those other rail systems (NYC, London, Etc) the only reason they work is because they are used and the only reason they are used is because they move people where they need to go. If NYC’s rail transit infrastructure didn’t take people where they needed to go it wouldn’t matter how many miles of rail it had or if it ran 24/7, it would sit unused.
I mean, I completely agree with Bert Green’s statement:
As I said in my original post on Emerald City (yeah remember that thing?):
Emphasis added. And when I talk about “an extensive system” I mean all the land-use and planning issues that go with that. Just laying down rail does not a “system” make.
nice yoda reference bro lol
There’s your error. Rail transit was NEVER effective and by 1960 no amount of life support could even justify even another year. And in case you are itching to bring up NCL, they maintained rail transit longer than those places where they didn’t invest.
Repeat after me: “Rail was not effective in Los Angeles in 1960.” You can come up with a dozen really good reasons why it wasn’t effective but you cannot come up with even one why it was. Hey, rail transit was definitely superior for decades and was competitive for decades after and even worked for decades after that by inertia and consumption of investment. What in the world has changed to reverse near a century of inferior comparison?
dewd remember in star wars, like on hoth and the falcon flew through the field of bombs and the death star was all pissed and when the anikan skyrocketed through the yavin hemisphere and all the ewoks were pissed so the bombed the star igloos so hard that darth vader died of aids. man that was totally awesome.
i think the real question to consider is this:
who would win in a fight? superman or iron man? look into it. the answer may not be as obvious as you think.
I think The Green Lantern would win.
You caught a typing error, what I meant was:
www world poker…
…
jouer poker virtuel…
…
texas holdem blatt…
…
jeu poker 3d…
…
completely instant loan online payday…
One of 30 day payday loan la règle texas holdem…
caribbean poker caribbean poker portales web caribbean poker portales internet…
Certain at black jack questionario bonus casino…
roulette spiel download…
Here is gratis online poker games casino online play…
como ganar a la ruleta…
On jeux de casino sur internet apuesta web…
ganar casino ganar internet…
The russian roulette cost loan low payday…
application canada card credit…
All the poker texas hold tilt poker…
low interest credit card low interest credit card uk…
Hierist hsbc credit card online spielkasino…
poker en ligne payant…
Also jeux poker omaha en ligne un jeu de poker à télécharger telecharger de poker la règle poker texas holdem en ligne…
logiciel video poker…
Notercela online casino gambling site texas holdem flash software poker gratis casino jeux de table strep poker gratis…
istruzioni gioco poker…
Al casino games pro gluck spiel online eurobet casino roulette online spielen spiel raum…