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ChineseProof That Grade-Separation Can’t Save Us From Stupid Drivers
I found this LOL worthy story from the Transit Sleuth blog. The headline reads: “Car drives into MAX tunnel, disrupts service”.
It seems that even grade-separated tunnels can’t keep us safe from law-breaking automobile drivers. Apparently a Portland drunk driver took an early Sunday morning drive into a Portland MAX light rail tunnel. Our drunk friend entered the tunnel from the east entrance and, according to Fox 12 Oregon, drove for over a mile until coming to a stop 75 feet from the Washington Park MAX station. It took hours to get the car out, service was supsended, and the estimated cost of actions of this one negligent driver? $20,000.
Luckily, this was all happening in the wee hours of the morning, so no one got hurt, including the driver who would have surely, as the Transit Sleuth points out, have been a top contender for a Darwin Award had he collided with a MAX train. Of course, in that hypothetical event it’s likely the train would somehow be blamed.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Sheesh. For a moment there, I thought that was a clip from The Italian Job…
The other amazing thing about this is that this drunk/drugged out fella actually got INTO the tunnel in the first place. Besides being grade separated you have to drive up and around a very oddly lit (but not a big deal for LRT because they have those strong lights), oddly not “road-like” section of the line just to actually get in the tunnel. In addition there is only two areas that a driver could even turn at to start this journey.
So he was stoned, drunk, and somehow managed to get around all of these obstacles and actually get into the tunnel – then made the 1/2 mile ride into it.
Pure insanity.
Same thing happened in a Muni Tunnel late last year. There is a youtube video of the prius getting dragged out of the N Tunnel at Duboce Park.
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Here’s the link The Overhead Wire mentioned, funny stuff:
Juadah’s Prius
Follow that Prius
But who saves Portland from the MAX?
MAX is a long way from grade separated. The at-grade portion of the West Side Max light rail line killed 5 pedestrians in its first year of operation.
http://www.portlandfacts.com/Transit/MaxKills1998-2006-04.htm
But who saves LA from the (un)Reason(able) Foundation and the BRU?
Rail-haters and race-baiters are a long way from grade separated. The at-grade portion of the BRU’s half-witted press releases have killed countless miles of rail throughout their many years of existence.
Personally, I suggest that the BRU and the Reason Foundation be grade separated to Manitoba.
>>The other westside MAX fatality before that involved a 51-year-old intoxicated bicyclist who rode around the lowered crossing arms and into the side of a train in September on Southwest Cedar Hills Boulevard.
>>Herbert Lee Johnson Jr., who lived in North Portland with his sister, was killed about 2:30 a.m. Sunday when he was struck by an eastbound light-rail train while walking on the tracks between the Washington County fairgrounds and the Hawthorn Farm station.
>>Witnesses said the youth went around the lowered crossing arms and was between the two sets of tracks, looking toward an oncoming westbound train when a train going the other direction struck him from behind.
>>The man apparently ran out from behind a brick signal control building on the north side of the tracks about 4:45 p.m., trying to catch an eastbound train that was stopped at the Millikan Way station at Southwest 141st Avenue, said Officer Mark Hyde, spokesman for the Beaverton police.
>>A 41-year-old Beaverton man was struck and killed by a MAX train early Monday as he walked along the light-rail tracks. … Fetsch said the area where Ruetz was killed is bordered by walls and fencing. “It is not an area where there is a lot of pedestrian access,” Fetsch said.
Bottom line, please don’t make me martyr if I get killed strolling down the middle of the 101 freeway.
Maybe we can chip in to buy them a Greyhound BUS ticket.
Yeah, Rob, bitch and moan about lack or grade separation and then fight like hell to deny funds to transit, resulting in sub-standard at grade lines that you claim we “can’t afford.”
And I deserve this why? My positions opposing rail passenger transit are grounded in design, cost and performance. Did you ever hear me bitch about the at-grade portions of the Boston Green Line? They are designed correctly. Ostensibly the SLC lines came in on time and on budget and even technically met use projections. I don’t bitch about it.
There are people reading now who remember my analyses of a decade ago coming true. Just try and get someone to defend some of Darrell’s wild guesses. So, being right about time, cost, ridership and design deficiencies I become the obstructionist. If the truth is obstructionist you need to review your real reasons for supporting Expo.
Hey Rob,
I’m still waiting for you to answer my previous comment (after your immature personal attack on me) about Boston’s Green Line. I’m going to give you another opportunity now, since you brought it up.
For the folks in the peanut gallery:
Rob Dawg:
My response:
You never replied to that. So here’s your next opportunity to answer the question you keep claiming to have answered but always avoid. Explain how Boston’s green line, which shares traffic with cars on Huntington Avenue, doesn’t have a single quad-arm crossing, relies on trolley bells that are older than I am (including on the new Breda cars, because people mistook the Breda “honks” for a car rather than a train), and passes more schools than a dog has fleas, is better than the Expo Line. We’re all anxiously waiting.
So it sounds like you guys need to take that offline and have a chat over a good solid beer or three!
Seriously though, the first claim that MAX killed 5 people in its first year of operation… no, those assholes killed themselves. Period, end of story. They’d have been just as dead if they did the same stupid thing (which is very likely) walking out in the interstate or some such nonsense.
In every situation when people bring up fatalaties with transit vehicles (at least grade separated) it is usually that they where doing something insanely stupid (like walking on the tracks). If you want to compare or say that deaths that occured based on transit – give me numbers that occurred ON the vehicle – i.e. when the vehicle ran into something. Not a single on board death has been recorded that I know of on the MAX in Portland. On most systems the number is exponentially lower than auto related mileage deaths IN VEHICLE. Fact is, you wreck a car you’re probably going to die. Fact is, passenger rail vehicles rarely, if ever wreck. Take the TGV for a prime example.
Another great example is a 90 mph wreck in a car compared to a 90 mph wreck on say – A Virgin Rail high speed train. A car wrecking a 90mph by going off the road will result in something like a 99.98% change of death, where a train wrecking at 90mph (both on level ground btw) will result in about a .67% change of death.
So really – don’t give me that hogwash about people getting themselves killed by walking in front of vehicles in clearly marked and orderly built right of way.
Actually not really. Aaron is baiting and getting increasingly strident every time I decline. It saddens me that his directly calling me immature and perversely me personally attacking HIM haven’t earned him the requisite minus 5.
Rob,
I’m just asking you to answer the question. It’s a serious question. You keep saying that you’ve explained this issue and, having lived in Boston, I think I’d remember if you addressed it. If you, in fact, addressed it somewhere, point me there and I’ll shut my trap about it. But as it is, you keep saying you’ve debunked the comparison and I’ve love to read as to where. That’s truly all.
Mr. Dawg-
I support Expo because we need transit. I would certainly prefer it be built underground, elevated, or at a minimum, with elevated or underground (cut and cover) stations. But no, it won’t. Ant it won’t be built as it should because of people who make your arguments. I agree that things should be built right, but that costs money. Money that the anti-tax people won’t honestly permit to be raised (by opposing all taxes), and money that is denied transit but lavishly wasted on roads, bad zoning, suburban planning, and redundant services for motorists.
Yeah, maybe there is some waste, and maybe things could be built a little better. So what. It’s no different with private sector projects, and its no different with the roads and other public works. But your scorn is solely for transit. It’s bigotry, pure and simple.
Fact is that all the rail lines exceed projections over time. Ridership is healthy, and people want more. More than 50% of the people who come into my business downtown do not drive there. The other 50% wish they had that option.
At-grade light rail is a beautiful thing. It activates a street more than subways, els, or trenches. If people can handle cars at grade, they can certainly learn to handle VEHICLES ON TRACKS.
Beautiful at-grade light rail in Bordeaux, France.
Also, THE GOLD LINE IS NOT SLOW. The Gold Line goes 14.92 miles in 30 minutes. That’s an average speed of 29.8 mph. The Red Line goes 14.64 miles in 29 minutes. That’s an average speed of 30.2 mph. So the fully grade-separated subway goes 0.4 mph faster than the SLOW Gold Line. And the subway has about 3 miles where it goes full speed under the Hollywood Hills between Hollywood/Highland and Universal City.
No, but the Gold Line FEELS slow (although much faster than it did when it first opened). When it’s on the freeway, it doesn’t keep up with traffic most hours of the day. In the section in Highland Park, it travels about as fast as a bicycle does over that segment. It does feel like it’s going fast along the elevated section through Lincoln Heights Chinatown, the curves south of South Pasadena, and through the north-south segment in Pasadena (since you are whizzing by those walls ten feet away).
Perception has a lot to deal with reality. There’s a reason Metrolink on the San Bernardino Line outperforms the competing bus service along that corridor. That train blows by traffic on its own right of way like there’s no tomorrow.
But in the end, reality is what matters. The Gold Line goes .4 mph slower than the Red Line. The Gold Line also cost about $3.7 billion less than the Red Line. Don’t get me wrong, the Red Line rules and light rail wouldn’t work for its route, but obviously the speed differences (real or perceived) are not worth $3.7 billion.
The need for speed is a creation of the car-culture. The need to go everywhere at 75mph is ludicrous. 29mph for public transit is an amazing speed. The blessed New York subway averages 22mph. A trip on the NYC Broadway Express (Q), goes 18 miles from 57th St. in Manhattan to Coney Island in Brookly in 52 minutes. That comes out to an average speed of 20mph. For an EXPRESS train. The London Tube averages 20.5mph. So the Gold Line, even when it was at its slowest (14.92 miles in 34 minutes) was still significantly faster than some of these great subway lines.
Fred,
The Q runs local in Brooklyn. A better example would be the A train which runs more of a true express train for the bulk of it’s route length.
Thanks Jerard, I’m not really that familiar with the NYC subway. Using the A train, from 207st-Innwood Station in Manhattan to Grant Ave. Station in Brooklyn (which I believe is a completely express route) spans 22.4 miles at takes 1hour 3minutes. This comes out to an average speed of 21.3mph. So, yah.
Yes, BUT when you are trying to get people to stop using their cars and use public transit, speed is important. They have to feel like they are going fast. On the subway, the train is moving fast enough and you don’t have landmarks to guide you on how fast it is going (unless you are going really slow, like BART through the Oakland Wye switches). The New York subway feels fast primarily because of the old track, which clickety-clacks through tunnels and on elevated segments. I think when people bitch about the Gold Line’s lack of speed, they are mainly thinking Highland Park, even though that segment is only maybe three minutes long. The freeway segments tend to skew the average speed calculation as well. Still, when that bike is passing you, it’s the longest three minutes in the world.
Shows how spoiled we are when we complain that our light rail lines are slow. I noticed some other cities rail lines average hovers around 20ish MPH, lets not forget our Orange Line (bus) averages 20MPH. Sometimes it’s faster when there is the right amount of riders boarding, no bikes or wheelchairs, a good set of green lights, and an attentive and speedy driver. I’ve once rode the Orange Line from Van Nuys to NoHo in 9 minutes for 4.5 miles – thats 30MPH average speed!
Houston’s METRORail is only 7.5 miles and takes 32 minutes; that’s an average of 14MPH; I can bike close to that speed. And for comparison, my everyday commmute to work consists of a Rapid bus, the Orange Line, and the Red Line – all 17.5 miles together, I usually do that in 1 hour, but sometimes I can do it quickly in 47 minutes or slowly in 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Sadly, speed is a factor that makes people choose the car for their trips. I go to a swapmeet that occurs near the Redondo Beach Green Line station and I take my friends with me; after trying the Metro route of taking the Red Line from NoHo and following my way to the end of the Green Line for about 90 minutes, my friends told me not to take the trains anymore, so I would drive them. Following the apporoximate routing using the 170/101/110 (Harbor Transitway)/105/405; I make the trip in 30 minutes, and that is starting more north than the NoHo station; lest this is a Saturday morning so traffic is light.
This is true, and this is a challenge transit faces when it comes to getting people out of their cars and onto trains. As I’ve noted, even fully grade separated subways are significantly slower than cars on freeways without traffic, so speed will always be an issue. Transit is not and will not be as fast as cars. For example, your North Hollywood to Redondo Beach trip takes 30 minute by car… that’s an average speed of 56mph. That’s almost twice the speed of the Red Line and almost 3 times the speed of the New York and London subways. So if there was a subway directly from NoHo to Redondo Beach it would have to go 56mph, with no stops, to get there in 30 minutes. Not gonna happen. At the Red Line’s average speed (30mph) the trip would take 56 minutes. If you have a need for speed, get a car my friends.
Despite the bitching in Los Angeles about traffic, there is not gridlock at all hours. I was in NYC recently, in a car with friends, on 7th Ave. South on a Saturday night leaving the city for a friend’s beach house in New Jersey. The traffic in the Village was gridlocked at that hour. Short of a CAR-B-Q on the freeway, you’d never see that in LA.
But the day will come. And when it does, if there is not a train to save people from themselves, the city will shut down. It will cease to be competitive.
Bert: Compared to Hollywood at night? 7th Ave is one of NYC’s biggest Downtown thoroughfares (5th ave is slower, and 6th and 8th are 1-way Uptown). I flew into LAX a year ago today, (Sat. the 24th I think) and we got stuck in a traffic jam getting to the Century Freeway, at 10pm.
There’s gridlock at all hours ;p. Maybe not as bad as Manhattan, but compared to any other US city, there’s gridlock at all hours. My father does highway design and other transportation civil engineering for a living (I’m sure he’s laughing inside somewhere at the fact that I’ll never drive) and he said that he’s never seen anything as bad as LA, not even NYC. He makes his living designing highways, and yet he said that, at least as to Downtown and the Westside, that building more highways is pointless, that more roads will no longer solve LA’s traffic issues.
The cool thing about LA traffic jams vs. NYC traffic jams is that the LA ones are on GRADE SEPARATED 8 LANE FREEWAYS.
Why can’t we get Zell from the Times over to METRO to trim all of the basics and just build rails all over the place, common sense be damned. Then the rails would be built and it’s not like anyone can repo them once they are built.
That’s how you manage, build, lie, cheat, and deal with the consequences later. The MTA does too much of the lying and cheating, but with no buiding and managing, if they did all of their sneaky stuff in addition to building very quickly we could have rails.
Don’t ask, just do it. No more silly meetings. The Metro and all of their meetings reminds me of my French Club in high school. We had all of these darn meeting and never accomplished a thing, I think we just had fun having meetings. So what is it, is METRO run by 16 year old girls?
Keep in mind I’m not necessarily for rails, but I could get them built if I were head of the MTA. I’d probably end up doing jail time, but they would get built.
Browne
I’m obviously sort of joking with this post, but I won’t say which parts…
there are few highways in manhattan(poor robert moses, thank you jane jacob!) – jfk and west side highway and about 1.5 million people jammed on the island. few people drive, but when all of new jersey and long island come in on the weekends, their hummers, escalades and navigators clog the surface streets.
bloomberg should implement congestion pricing from about 6pm on friday to 6pm sunday and have it start at delancey street and stretch north, not south. he’d make a mint for the city, lol.
i remember people would do this sort of thing in the duboce tunnel in san francisco. i walked through it once with a friend. amazing graffiti.
great post! thanks!
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