Despite some early technical fiascos and an outdated infrastructure, Amtrak's 150-MPH Acela Express service has been competing very well against the airlines along the DC-NYC-BOS corridor.
despite the acela being ridiculously highly priced.
just think, with a 175 mph train, you could go the 386 miles from LA to San Francisco in under 2.5 hours, which is less than drive to LAX + go through security + wait for plane + fly an hour + arrive at SFO and get all your stuff + drive into the city
Weird, everyone I knew in Boston considers Acela a complete joke. In fact there's a strong current of resentment against it. It never runs in the time it's supposed to; even it's fastest time isn't high-speed by a long shot; and the prices are incredible! Every single time I looked at buying a ticket, it was much cheaper to fly. And the trains are *still* being taken out of service regularly.
In fact I know of two people who tried it out specifically to support the enterprise and gave up and returned to flying instead. I'd be amazed if anyone actually used it for a regular commute.
Our railroad system was drastically overbuilt during the latter part of the 19th Century. Railroad-building was the dot-com bubble of its day, and railroads were tripping over each other to build as many lines as possible in order to attract investors. Even though many of those old lines are now disused or abandoned, the rights-of-way still exist in many cases.
Even among active lines, there is a certain amount of redundancy due to the hodgepodge of private railroads. In many cases rival railroads (Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, etc.) each have their own lines between the same two destinations.
I'll have to get back to you later with my exact source, but I remember reading a comparison between the costs of upgrading an existing railroad to high-speed service, and adding one lane to an existing interstate highway. The upfront cost of the railroad was a fraction of the highway cost.
I would even speculate that the operational cost of a high-speed railroad is less than that of an interstate highway when all factors are considered; it just depends on who is coughing up the money and whether the cost is direct or indirect. However, I don't have any hard data to back up that idea.
In the meantime, here's a very cool site about the French TGV system. 186 MPH trains, and not a single passenger fatality due to an accident in 25+ years of operation.
My PM will shoot me in the face if I don't get back to work now...
I don't think we should dismiss the bus so quickly as being the transportation choice for muggers, junkies, and criminals, in other words: the dreaded lower classes.
Buses shouldn't be written off as a lower form of transport. In fact, they could be the most valuable and viable forms of public transport in the city for some of the reasons people cite as detractors. Imagine if busses were new, clean, on time, and routes were clear and plentiful. Furthermore, when compared to light rail, busses are flexiable and inexpensive.
Check out Copenhagen. They have big yellow busses. Bus stops have countdown timers to show when the bus is arriving. Doesn't that bus look fun to ride?
BRT (bus rapid transit) is a viable option in place of light rail. Same capacity as light rail, less cost, and less political will needed to enact it. Even better, BRT busses on dedicated busways can easily become normal city busses be getting off the busway. Light rail is stuck to an expensive infrastructure, which generally requires heavy intervention in a city's fabric to realize.
The biggest impediment faced by bus transportation is its image. Unlike light rail, which will first be laid from upper class neighborhoods to the city core (see Charlotte, NC), buses primarily serve the lower classes.
Light rail has a place within a public transportation system, but only a viable bus system can form the backbone. Don't dismiss the bus so quickly in the face of an expensive, elitest, and inflexiable light rail system.
A bus is a reation to the shifting populations with in the city. The rails define the population centers with in the city by the nature of their permanance. Would you locate your coffee shop next to a well used bus stop or a rail stop? You know the rail stop aint going nowhere.
Let me clarify rail = inner city - not city to city. High speed trains are in my opinion, bad imitation airplanes. The jetplane is the single greatest invention quite possibly.
I may be speaking out of my butt....The Airline industry is actually headed back to older technology...with prop/jets as they are less expensive to operate.....then again I might be wrong on this one...
Boston: small system, but found it reliable for the most part. Unless the Green Line trains were crashing into automobiles. Buses, not so good. They never seemed to show up on time.
Philly: smells like piss, slow as hell. Unless I'm carrying heavy stuff or going a long distance, it's raining or super cold, I walk. There have been several occations that I have gotten off the bus and finished my trip by walking and beat the bus.
Osaka: God sets his watch to that thing.
After going to Japan, I thought it would be so great to have their incredible train system in the US. But then i really thought about it. Japan is smaller than California, and the bulk of the population lives in the equivalent of Philly to Boston. Would be cool, but wouldn't work in our retardedly huge country (25 times the size of Japan excluding Alaska).
New york: super antiquated, needs a renovation like crazy.
Munich: like heaven on earth, especially the new subway cars.
New Jersey Transit: well, at least I don't have to drive a car into manhattan. But I sure as hell have to wash my clothes after I get off that filthy beast.
We couldn't support a transit system as good as Japan's but we have enough dense corridors you could certainly do something way better than we have now, maybe kind of like Berlin's (not a particularly dense city).
The US use to have an amazingly extensive rail system...Find an old railroad map of the country. It use to be the only way to go long distance. What happened to it?
Oh, wait, I think I know...its on the tip of my tongue...
Living in Gin: I couldn't agree more with your point about rail systems. Honestly, the way cities are getting exponetially more congested every second means rails are the only viable option. NYC is a perfect comparision for this. It takes 5 times as long to go the same distance via bus than via subway. Honest to g-d's truth, I I have lived in NYC my whole life, and I have only ridden a bus twice. It just takes forever.
Squirelly - Those are brilliant signs, I would love to get my hands on about 20 sets of those for strategic places in Manhattan. I think bikes are such an outstanding alternative tp cars, and I'm mystified why more people don't use them, and why Transportation boards don't encourage there use. Bicycles are incredibly cheap, extremely efficient especially in comparison to how mucg distance they travel on how much energy compared to a car or any other motorized form of transport. I'm a member of Transportation Alternatives, and we've managed to get a huge increase in the amount of bike lanes all over New York, but still cars are always given preference. If we could eliminate half the driving lanes in New York, and have them be just for bikes, the whole city scape would change for the better rapidly. Every time I visit the Netherlands I am so impressed by their bike culture. Everyone from families (all on the same bike occasionally) to little old women cycles, the streets are set up for it, cars respect bike riders and there is plenty of good places to lock up. In the US bikes are still mainly seen as children's toys, not the problem solving transport they are.
Overall, I think the NYC Subway is pretty brilliant. It definetly has its' issues, but for the most part it gets me to work and home everyday for a reasonable price, which is really all I need.
I just loved how all the light rail I rode on in Munich had a soothing woman’s voice that announced where you were and when you were coming to a stop in both German and English!
When I was in Munich, I imagined it being what American cities always wanted to be. Oddly, it felt very American with a twist of Vienna Schnitzel. It appears as though a lot of money to rebuild Munich after WWII came from America. Why can't we do that here?
?
The CTA has the best ad I've seen yet for public transit.
It is a huge ad plastered on the side of the main expressway coming into the city, which is pretty constantly jammed. It has a colorful icon of a CTA train, then an equals sign, and then like a bazillion little colorful car icons. Underneath it says something like, "Tired of congestion? ... Support mass transit"
Brilliant. I wish I'd nabbed a pic of it because I can't find one on the web. I used to think that if the MBTA in Boston marketed itself better (along those lines--there are pro-CTA ads allll over Chicago, and very clear signage to help people find the trains) then it wouldn't have so much trouble getting funding.
I always have such stupidly socialistic high expectations for amtrak rides and then they unvariably leave me feeling really disappointed. maybe i'm just being cranky at the moment though.
Amtrak, in addition to being forced by congressional mandate to adopt an impossible business model and being consistently starved for funding, is also at the mercy of the freight railroads whose tracks it uses. The freight railroads absolutely hate Amtrak because freight is much more profitable than passengers. Lumber doesn't complain when it's been sitting in a rail yard in Green River, Wyoming for sixteen hours. Also, the railroads are pretty lackluster about maintaining their own infrastructure. (Several of Amtrak's more recent wrecks have occurred on CSX tracks that weren't properly maintained.) In theory, Amtrak trains always have the right-of-way and the freight railroads get fined for interfering with Amtrak, but most of the railroads simply write off the fines as part of their operating costs.
And although Amtrak owns and dispatches the Northeast Corridor, they still must share it with various commuter railroads such as SEPTA, NJT, Metro-North, and the MBTA. If there's a problem on any one of those railroads, Amtrak suffers as well, which causes a ripple effect up and down the corridor.
As much as I support the development of high-speed rail, Acela has been an unfortunate debacle in many ways. Despite proven technology for high-speed rail that has been in operation overseas for 25+ years with a flawless safety record, Amtrak insisted in re-inventing the wheel with Acela and tried to force 21st-Century rail technology to operate on 19th-Century infrastructure.
The Federal Railroad Administration has also done its share to kill high-speed rail, mainly by insisting on reactionary crashworthiness standards that require American passenger trains to be built like Sherman tanks. As a result, the Acela trainset weighs almost twice as much as a comparible French TGV trainset, which makes it almost impossible for Acela to efficiently achieve true high-speed operation (to say nothing about wear and tear on brakes, wheels, joints, tracks, etc.). The French TGV's and Japanese bullet trains are built like tin cans compared to Acela, but they're operating on dedicated infrastructure with signalling systems that make the possibility of a an accident almost nil.
Despite all that, Acela has managed to become a mild success, but its early failures have been so well publicized that the national mood has soured on any future high-speed rail projects for the time being. Maybe when gas is $8 a gallon and we have more visionary leadership in Washington, the mood will change.
According to my book Chicago Transit: An Illustrated History by David Young, Chicago had over 1100 miles of street railways in 1914 (p. 51). Chicago also had the world's largest system of cable cars before the cables were replaced with electric traction.
"In Northeastern Illinois in 2002, adding one lane of new highway to an existing road cost $7.3 million per mile. Building a new railroad track on land already owned by the freight railroads cost between $1 million-$2 million. Upgrading existing track and signaling to handle 110 mph service ran about $1 million per mile."
I'll note that the website is referring to "high-speed rail" as 110-MPH diesel-powered trains.* Electrification for true high-speed rail would substantially increase the price tag, but I'd surmise that it still turns out to be less than $7.3M per mile.
* It's a sad testament to our low expectations when 110 MPH diesel trains are touted as "high-speed", when the North Shore Line was running 80+ MPH Electroliners between Chicago and Milwaukee in the 1940's.
after just moving to seattle ive found the bus to work fine. i walk outside my house and get on the bus> it takes me 15-20 min to work nonstop. seems arlight . maybe after a few weeks i'lchange my opinion
Ok, so 110 mph service isn't really high-speed, but I appreciate the source, and I will explore it more on my own.
As you've reported those numbers, however, they don't seem to include the capital expenditure for the trains, the stations, and the ongoing maintenance and fuel costs, all of which costs are shouldered by the consumer in the US Highway model. Laying the track is probably the cheapest part. That also doesn't take into account the cost of buying the rail right-of-ways back from the private companies that hold them currently.
I didn't know the safety part of the Acela development, interesting.
Don't forget that the costs for automobile travel don't end (or begin) at the offramp - You've got to add the costs for city streets, increased pollution, increased runoff, parking, light, traffic control...
And the CTA is mismanaged because the guy at the head is immune to the consumer of the product and specifically a "freind of Daley" - but as soon as Junior sees him as a liability (who knows, it IS election season here) he will find himself standing in the hole at block 37 with a concrete mixer bearing down on him. The CTA does remarkably well given its lousy funding and worse president - and we wouldn't bitch so much if we didn't have a soft spot for it, and really wish it will improve.
btw, LiG, I would like to say that I truly enjoy hearing your thoughts on all this. You are really the most knowledgable person I've heard talk about transit. Some day we should have a beer together in Chicago and talk trash about the govt's transit plans. I know a decent little joint under the brown line at Washington & Wells!
MBTA announces it will be adding 155 new buses and a new bus route, and will make changes to its busiest routes to mitigate the utter degradation one feels riding the bus in Boston. A key component of the change will be keeping buses on standby, so when supervisors start noticing overcrowded buses, they’ll dispatch another one to ease the crunch. PLUS 2 (if it works)
Thanks... I've always had a strong interest in trains and transit. I've actually driven Chicago 'L' trains and NYC subway trains at various times... Not in passenger service, mind you; these were vintage trains operating on railroad museum tracks.
Boston's transit system is a convoluted mess... I never could get used to it when I was living there. I loved the Red Line (especially the newer trains), but the Green Line at rush hour was like its own special circle of hell. If I end up at GSD I'll be faced with the dilemma of keeping my car and being prison-raped by my insurance company, or selling the car and signing my life over to the T.
"The CTA does remarkably well given its lousy funding and worse president - and we wouldn't bitch so much if we didn't have a soft spot for it, and really wish it will improve."
-right on, brotha
i don't think i could agree more.
it's a great system, until you ride around manhattan. but ny has a lot of advantages that we don't and has built a great system to deal with it's size. i think the main difference is the centralized vs. decentralized difference between chi and ny. a majority of people ride to work in the loop which creates an imbalance. there is hardly a balance of destination in chicago. once we grow a bit more and spread a bit, hopefully that circle line will really help.
it take me an hour from portage park, but a lot has to do with irving park rd. being overloaded with commuters in their cars. i don't think i could get their much faster if the service improved. the only thing that blows is waiting for 2-4 trains trying to go home. and i would like quicker service at night. i needs to get around to the bars ya know.
You know - Chicago is still a superb auto city. When I was in construction I was able to go from the lakefront to dupage county in the middle of the day in about an hour. Rush hour 1.5hr.
Snow destroys all commutes including CTA.
Metra is the way to fly!
A CTA belt line will transform Chicago like nothing has in decades. It will refocus the downtown centric growth politics to a district centric city, much the way it originaly formed.
Being from philly I am glad to hear someone complain about seattle's PT system. If I had a dime for everytime I heard "if we were more like seattle or portland..." I would be able to build my own light rail line. Hey, SEPTA (philly's system) does suck, but I do have to say buses are normally on time, trains usually are on time, and the el and subway are pretty efficient. The big complaints are some people feel superior to others and lament riding with "freaks and skeevy people" and the stations are just horrible...
But our gov, Fast Eddie Rendell, is working for us masses to get some dedicated dough for mass transit...Go get em Ed!
Nobody has mentioned the Washington DC metro, which I have been very impressed with on my visits there. Haven't lived there so can't really comment too much on it's usefulness for locals, but as a tourist it worked great.
My previous comments about busses are based on a friend getting mugged after he got off a CTA bus in Chicago's Lincoln Park area. The mugger got off with him and followed him for a block before pulling out a gun and taking his wallet. So maybe the bus isn't to blame but I still haven't heard of a similar situation on the trains.
I'm just very skeptical the middle-class will start riding busses en-mass outside of major commute times. Where I live there are several commuter bus lines to the suburbs from downtown. They all operate privately and at a profit. Those work as I believe commuter rail would work in its place. City busses however are a differen't slice of pie.
And lets not forget that busses for the most part run on diesel fuel. I don't particularly like those exhaust fumes in the city.
right on with the circle line
I definetly agree with the idea the the circle line will be a huge boost for the city.
I feel there are very few people who will argue with the idea that transportation hubs promote localized growth... (and if you would argue i would ask you to get off of almost any L stop, look around, then walk 3 blocks and look around again)
though a population will only support so much, i feel there is a lot more room for shoring up the density that already exists. especially in the underserved areas in the near south and near west and to a certain extent near north west.
postals comment about chicago being of only one centralized location, evilplat said it too i believe, is also very true, but i dont think its a terrible stretch to assert that the loop maintains is status as destination because all the trains go there. If secondary locus were added at a few spots serving the mid point neighborhoods i think it would begin to create destinations in them as well
Oh, and anyone living in Portland, OR, how do you pay for the MAX? Everytime I'm there I can't find a machine so I just get on and ride around for free. I don't mind paying and I feel guilty for not doing so.
Philly is an interesting case that seems to have elements of the best and worst of American transit systems.
Like Boston, Philadelphia has kept much of its original streetcar system intact. (What both cities have in common is that the streetcars run in dedicated tunnels when they reach downtown, which is no doubt a major factor in their preservation.)
The Broad Street Subway is actually very nicely-designed if you can look past its ugly orange trains and dreadful stations. Like the NYC subway, it is a four-track express/local operation north of Walnut. Unlike the NYC subway, the trains are incredibly fast.
The Market Street el has nice new trains and they're working on gradually rebuilding the stations, but like the BSS, it mainly serves very poor parts of the city where tourists and white-collar commuters aren't likely to venture into.
Philly's relative lack of an extensive rapid transit system is partly compensated for by the SEPTA Regional Rail lines, which serve many more stations within the city limits than you'd expect to find on a typical commuter rail system like Metra. As an added bonus, all the regional rail lines are electrified, thanks to the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The PATCO line to New Jersey is a very good way to travel, and was way ahead of its time when built. It was an early prototype for the automated train control systems that were later developed for newer systems such as BART, the Washington Metro, and Atlanta's MARTA.
Living in Gin. If you live relatively close to GSD you can just walk or bike, or take the red line if you are near that. Then just sign up for Zipcar when you need to go to the Depot or something. I lived there for 2 years with no car. I got jacked by carrying my groceries 1/2+ mile. I don't know what it was about that place, but I would move back to Cambridge/Boston/Somerville in a heartbeat.
I remember Rome's bus system seemed pretty cool, each bus stop had a sign for each route that listed the stops along it. I wish Philadelphia did that. I would probably take buses even more. Although some of the bus drivers are nice, asking most of them if the bus you are about to hop on (without a schedule in hand) stops at near a certain location is like asking them if they wouldn't mind having thier hands chopped off.
The nicest transit system I have ever been on is Disney World's (if you can call it one). It was free, on time, the drivers were courteous, the stations were clean, as were the vehicles. My guess was that for most guests it was the first time they used and depended on mass transit to get around. Which if that is the case, its a tough act to follow if you are any city's MT system. Its a good example of what properly funded and maintained transit can do and be like.
The down side is since the guests are mostly all friendly and there to have a good time they just start talking to you, which totally threw me off at first. I remember the first bus we got on to go from the hotel to the magic kindom this guy from Idaho sat down next to me and started talking to me. I gave him really short answers, and when he asked where I was from and I answered Philadelphia, he basically responded that now he understood why I was being such a jackass. Hey, it not my fault I was expecting him to ask me for money, you can't just shut that kinda street-thing off like a switch...
I also have noticed that Philadelphia has a lot of tourist routes that run parallel to alot of regular SEPTA routes. I find that interesting- is a regular SEPTA bus that intimidating? Maybe its the disney-fication of SEPTA.
Boston needs a circle line much, much, much more than Chicago does. Boston has a very decentralized population and is forced to use a train system with only a few interchange nodes--all in the heart of downtown. So if you live in Brookline, and want to get across the river to Cambridge--which is only a couple of mile north of you--you have to travel all the way into downtown, switch trains, and travel all the way out of town again. There isn't even a BUS circle line to connect the neighborhoods where people live.
In Chicago, the bus system actually helps, because the streets are grids and every couple of blocks you can either grab a N-S or E-W bus and you're set. You don't even really have to know the system, thanks to the grid. Don't the buses provide a decent circle function? Or no? I go between Lincoln Square and Wicker Park pretty frequently by bus, which would be a nightmare by train.
LiG, you will hate life if you attempt to have a car in Boston. Sign up for zipcar and sell yours. Rent a car for weekend trips to Maine.
i hate the bus... or why public transport sucks a**
"what makes you say that" was an honest question, btw! read it with a tone of query, not aggression.
Despite some early technical fiascos and an outdated infrastructure, Amtrak's 150-MPH Acela Express service has been competing very well against the airlines along the DC-NYC-BOS corridor.
despite the acela being ridiculously highly priced.
just think, with a 175 mph train, you could go the 386 miles from LA to San Francisco in under 2.5 hours, which is less than drive to LAX + go through security + wait for plane + fly an hour + arrive at SFO and get all your stuff + drive into the city
fo sho
Weird, everyone I knew in Boston considers Acela a complete joke. In fact there's a strong current of resentment against it. It never runs in the time it's supposed to; even it's fastest time isn't high-speed by a long shot; and the prices are incredible! Every single time I looked at buying a ticket, it was much cheaper to fly. And the trains are *still* being taken out of service regularly.
In fact I know of two people who tried it out specifically to support the enterprise and gave up and returned to flying instead. I'd be amazed if anyone actually used it for a regular commute.
Our railroad system was drastically overbuilt during the latter part of the 19th Century. Railroad-building was the dot-com bubble of its day, and railroads were tripping over each other to build as many lines as possible in order to attract investors. Even though many of those old lines are now disused or abandoned, the rights-of-way still exist in many cases.
Even among active lines, there is a certain amount of redundancy due to the hodgepodge of private railroads. In many cases rival railroads (Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, etc.) each have their own lines between the same two destinations.
Ahh, I see what you mean. Yes, there are a ton of disused rights of way and underused redundant tracks. Good point.
How would you propose making those available to high speed rail? What makes it pennies on the dollar?
I'll have to get back to you later with my exact source, but I remember reading a comparison between the costs of upgrading an existing railroad to high-speed service, and adding one lane to an existing interstate highway. The upfront cost of the railroad was a fraction of the highway cost.
I would even speculate that the operational cost of a high-speed railroad is less than that of an interstate highway when all factors are considered; it just depends on who is coughing up the money and whether the cost is direct or indirect. However, I don't have any hard data to back up that idea.
In the meantime, here's a very cool site about the French TGV system. 186 MPH trains, and not a single passenger fatality due to an accident in 25+ years of operation.
My PM will shoot me in the face if I don't get back to work now...
I don't think we should dismiss the bus so quickly as being the transportation choice for muggers, junkies, and criminals, in other words: the dreaded lower classes.
Buses shouldn't be written off as a lower form of transport. In fact, they could be the most valuable and viable forms of public transport in the city for some of the reasons people cite as detractors. Imagine if busses were new, clean, on time, and routes were clear and plentiful. Furthermore, when compared to light rail, busses are flexiable and inexpensive.
Check out Copenhagen. They have big yellow busses. Bus stops have countdown timers to show when the bus is arriving. Doesn't that bus look fun to ride?
BRT (bus rapid transit) is a viable option in place of light rail. Same capacity as light rail, less cost, and less political will needed to enact it. Even better, BRT busses on dedicated busways can easily become normal city busses be getting off the busway. Light rail is stuck to an expensive infrastructure, which generally requires heavy intervention in a city's fabric to realize.
The biggest impediment faced by bus transportation is its image. Unlike light rail, which will first be laid from upper class neighborhoods to the city core (see Charlotte, NC), buses primarily serve the lower classes.
Light rail has a place within a public transportation system, but only a viable bus system can form the backbone. Don't dismiss the bus so quickly in the face of an expensive, elitest, and inflexiable light rail system.
Eugene just built a BRT and it's awesome.
A bus is a reation to the shifting populations with in the city. The rails define the population centers with in the city by the nature of their permanance. Would you locate your coffee shop next to a well used bus stop or a rail stop? You know the rail stop aint going nowhere.
Let me clarify rail = inner city - not city to city. High speed trains are in my opinion, bad imitation airplanes. The jetplane is the single greatest invention quite possibly.
I may be speaking out of my butt....The Airline industry is actually headed back to older technology...with prop/jets as they are less expensive to operate.....then again I might be wrong on this one...
technos...please step up.
Boston: small system, but found it reliable for the most part. Unless the Green Line trains were crashing into automobiles. Buses, not so good. They never seemed to show up on time.
Philly: smells like piss, slow as hell. Unless I'm carrying heavy stuff or going a long distance, it's raining or super cold, I walk. There have been several occations that I have gotten off the bus and finished my trip by walking and beat the bus.
Osaka: God sets his watch to that thing.
After going to Japan, I thought it would be so great to have their incredible train system in the US. But then i really thought about it. Japan is smaller than California, and the bulk of the population lives in the equivalent of Philly to Boston. Would be cool, but wouldn't work in our retardedly huge country (25 times the size of Japan excluding Alaska).
Hassel:
Boston's system is okay but it sure is slow!!
New york: super antiquated, needs a renovation like crazy.
Munich: like heaven on earth, especially the new subway cars.
New Jersey Transit: well, at least I don't have to drive a car into manhattan. But I sure as hell have to wash my clothes after I get off that filthy beast.
We couldn't support a transit system as good as Japan's but we have enough dense corridors you could certainly do something way better than we have now, maybe kind of like Berlin's (not a particularly dense city).
The US use to have an amazingly extensive rail system...Find an old railroad map of the country. It use to be the only way to go long distance. What happened to it?
Oh, wait, I think I know...its on the tip of my tongue...
Living in Gin: I couldn't agree more with your point about rail systems. Honestly, the way cities are getting exponetially more congested every second means rails are the only viable option. NYC is a perfect comparision for this. It takes 5 times as long to go the same distance via bus than via subway. Honest to g-d's truth, I I have lived in NYC my whole life, and I have only ridden a bus twice. It just takes forever.
Squirelly - Those are brilliant signs, I would love to get my hands on about 20 sets of those for strategic places in Manhattan. I think bikes are such an outstanding alternative tp cars, and I'm mystified why more people don't use them, and why Transportation boards don't encourage there use. Bicycles are incredibly cheap, extremely efficient especially in comparison to how mucg distance they travel on how much energy compared to a car or any other motorized form of transport. I'm a member of Transportation Alternatives, and we've managed to get a huge increase in the amount of bike lanes all over New York, but still cars are always given preference. If we could eliminate half the driving lanes in New York, and have them be just for bikes, the whole city scape would change for the better rapidly. Every time I visit the Netherlands I am so impressed by their bike culture. Everyone from families (all on the same bike occasionally) to little old women cycles, the streets are set up for it, cars respect bike riders and there is plenty of good places to lock up. In the US bikes are still mainly seen as children's toys, not the problem solving transport they are.
Overall, I think the NYC Subway is pretty brilliant. It definetly has its' issues, but for the most part it gets me to work and home everyday for a reasonable price, which is really all I need.
I just loved how all the light rail I rode on in Munich had a soothing woman’s voice that announced where you were and when you were coming to a stop in both German and English!
When I was in Munich, I imagined it being what American cities always wanted to be. Oddly, it felt very American with a twist of Vienna Schnitzel. It appears as though a lot of money to rebuild Munich after WWII came from America. Why can't we do that here?
?
The CTA has the best ad I've seen yet for public transit.
It is a huge ad plastered on the side of the main expressway coming into the city, which is pretty constantly jammed. It has a colorful icon of a CTA train, then an equals sign, and then like a bazillion little colorful car icons. Underneath it says something like, "Tired of congestion? ... Support mass transit"
Brilliant. I wish I'd nabbed a pic of it because I can't find one on the web. I used to think that if the MBTA in Boston marketed itself better (along those lines--there are pro-CTA ads allll over Chicago, and very clear signage to help people find the trains) then it wouldn't have so much trouble getting funding.
Amtrak doesn't even announce the stops in English.
Yeah, amtrak blows. was it you who posted once about acela sucking, hasselhoff? or someone else maybe...
I always have such stupidly socialistic high expectations for amtrak rides and then they unvariably leave me feeling really disappointed. maybe i'm just being cranky at the moment though.
because...duh...everything is better in norway including the seven-eleven
7-11 is a lifestyle...
Amtrak, in addition to being forced by congressional mandate to adopt an impossible business model and being consistently starved for funding, is also at the mercy of the freight railroads whose tracks it uses. The freight railroads absolutely hate Amtrak because freight is much more profitable than passengers. Lumber doesn't complain when it's been sitting in a rail yard in Green River, Wyoming for sixteen hours. Also, the railroads are pretty lackluster about maintaining their own infrastructure. (Several of Amtrak's more recent wrecks have occurred on CSX tracks that weren't properly maintained.) In theory, Amtrak trains always have the right-of-way and the freight railroads get fined for interfering with Amtrak, but most of the railroads simply write off the fines as part of their operating costs.
And although Amtrak owns and dispatches the Northeast Corridor, they still must share it with various commuter railroads such as SEPTA, NJT, Metro-North, and the MBTA. If there's a problem on any one of those railroads, Amtrak suffers as well, which causes a ripple effect up and down the corridor.
As much as I support the development of high-speed rail, Acela has been an unfortunate debacle in many ways. Despite proven technology for high-speed rail that has been in operation overseas for 25+ years with a flawless safety record, Amtrak insisted in re-inventing the wheel with Acela and tried to force 21st-Century rail technology to operate on 19th-Century infrastructure.
The Federal Railroad Administration has also done its share to kill high-speed rail, mainly by insisting on reactionary crashworthiness standards that require American passenger trains to be built like Sherman tanks. As a result, the Acela trainset weighs almost twice as much as a comparible French TGV trainset, which makes it almost impossible for Acela to efficiently achieve true high-speed operation (to say nothing about wear and tear on brakes, wheels, joints, tracks, etc.). The French TGV's and Japanese bullet trains are built like tin cans compared to Acela, but they're operating on dedicated infrastructure with signalling systems that make the possibility of a an accident almost nil.
Despite all that, Acela has managed to become a mild success, but its early failures have been so well publicized that the national mood has soured on any future high-speed rail projects for the time being. Maybe when gas is $8 a gallon and we have more visionary leadership in Washington, the mood will change.
Sources for my information, as promised:
treekiller:
According to my book Chicago Transit: An Illustrated History by David Young, Chicago had over 1100 miles of street railways in 1914 (p. 51). Chicago also had the world's largest system of cable cars before the cables were replaced with electric traction.
myriam:
According to the website of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association:
"In Northeastern Illinois in 2002, adding one lane of new highway to an existing road cost $7.3 million per mile. Building a new railroad track on land already owned by the freight railroads cost between $1 million-$2 million. Upgrading existing track and signaling to handle 110 mph service ran about $1 million per mile."
I'll note that the website is referring to "high-speed rail" as 110-MPH diesel-powered trains.* Electrification for true high-speed rail would substantially increase the price tag, but I'd surmise that it still turns out to be less than $7.3M per mile.
* It's a sad testament to our low expectations when 110 MPH diesel trains are touted as "high-speed", when the North Shore Line was running 80+ MPH Electroliners between Chicago and Milwaukee in the 1940's.
after just moving to seattle ive found the bus to work fine. i walk outside my house and get on the bus> it takes me 15-20 min to work nonstop. seems arlight . maybe after a few weeks i'lchange my opinion
liggie,
not quite flawless records overseas:
germany had a big high speed rail disaster in 1998
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster
and their transrapid test track had a big fuckup a few months ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lathen_maglev_train_accident
but that's all minor i guess. every mode of transit has its flaws
Yeah, the bus sucks in LA.
My friend (who's a little crazy) swears the buses in LA are a hotbed of tuburculosis. He won't get near them...
Oh yeah, the Flyaway from Union Station to the airport is great though!
Back to an earlier topic, I actually have one of the coveted MBTA system maps... Maybe I could sell it on eBay and pay for grad school.
But if I end up at GSD, I'd need the map for myself. Damn.
Ok, so 110 mph service isn't really high-speed, but I appreciate the source, and I will explore it more on my own.
As you've reported those numbers, however, they don't seem to include the capital expenditure for the trains, the stations, and the ongoing maintenance and fuel costs, all of which costs are shouldered by the consumer in the US Highway model. Laying the track is probably the cheapest part. That also doesn't take into account the cost of buying the rail right-of-ways back from the private companies that hold them currently.
I didn't know the safety part of the Acela development, interesting.
I love the ridiculous 90 degree turn of the red line out of Harvard Square that makes the god awful screach.
Don't forget that the costs for automobile travel don't end (or begin) at the offramp - You've got to add the costs for city streets, increased pollution, increased runoff, parking, light, traffic control...
And the CTA is mismanaged because the guy at the head is immune to the consumer of the product and specifically a "freind of Daley" - but as soon as Junior sees him as a liability (who knows, it IS election season here) he will find himself standing in the hole at block 37 with a concrete mixer bearing down on him. The CTA does remarkably well given its lousy funding and worse president - and we wouldn't bitch so much if we didn't have a soft spot for it, and really wish it will improve.
btw, LiG, I would like to say that I truly enjoy hearing your thoughts on all this. You are really the most knowledgable person I've heard talk about transit. Some day we should have a beer together in Chicago and talk trash about the govt's transit plans. I know a decent little joint under the brown line at Washington & Wells!
timely news courtesy of Boston's Weekly Dig:
MBTA announces it will be adding 155 new buses and a new bus route, and will make changes to its busiest routes to mitigate the utter degradation one feels riding the bus in Boston. A key component of the change will be keeping buses on standby, so when supervisors start noticing overcrowded buses, they’ll dispatch another one to ease the crunch. PLUS 2 (if it works)
Thanks... I've always had a strong interest in trains and transit. I've actually driven Chicago 'L' trains and NYC subway trains at various times... Not in passenger service, mind you; these were vintage trains operating on railroad museum tracks.
Boston's transit system is a convoluted mess... I never could get used to it when I was living there. I loved the Red Line (especially the newer trains), but the Green Line at rush hour was like its own special circle of hell. If I end up at GSD I'll be faced with the dilemma of keeping my car and being prison-raped by my insurance company, or selling the car and signing my life over to the T.
"The CTA does remarkably well given its lousy funding and worse president - and we wouldn't bitch so much if we didn't have a soft spot for it, and really wish it will improve."
-right on, brotha
i don't think i could agree more.
it's a great system, until you ride around manhattan. but ny has a lot of advantages that we don't and has built a great system to deal with it's size. i think the main difference is the centralized vs. decentralized difference between chi and ny. a majority of people ride to work in the loop which creates an imbalance. there is hardly a balance of destination in chicago. once we grow a bit more and spread a bit, hopefully that circle line will really help.
it take me an hour from portage park, but a lot has to do with irving park rd. being overloaded with commuters in their cars. i don't think i could get their much faster if the service improved. the only thing that blows is waiting for 2-4 trains trying to go home. and i would like quicker service at night. i needs to get around to the bars ya know.
You know - Chicago is still a superb auto city. When I was in construction I was able to go from the lakefront to dupage county in the middle of the day in about an hour. Rush hour 1.5hr.
Snow destroys all commutes including CTA.
Metra is the way to fly!
A CTA belt line will transform Chicago like nothing has in decades. It will refocus the downtown centric growth politics to a district centric city, much the way it originaly formed.
back up to holz.box's first comment:
Being from philly I am glad to hear someone complain about seattle's PT system. If I had a dime for everytime I heard "if we were more like seattle or portland..." I would be able to build my own light rail line. Hey, SEPTA (philly's system) does suck, but I do have to say buses are normally on time, trains usually are on time, and the el and subway are pretty efficient. The big complaints are some people feel superior to others and lament riding with "freaks and skeevy people" and the stations are just horrible...
But our gov, Fast Eddie Rendell, is working for us masses to get some dedicated dough for mass transit...Go get em Ed!
For me, its so much better than driving everyday.
Nobody has mentioned the Washington DC metro, which I have been very impressed with on my visits there. Haven't lived there so can't really comment too much on it's usefulness for locals, but as a tourist it worked great.
My previous comments about busses are based on a friend getting mugged after he got off a CTA bus in Chicago's Lincoln Park area. The mugger got off with him and followed him for a block before pulling out a gun and taking his wallet. So maybe the bus isn't to blame but I still haven't heard of a similar situation on the trains.
I'm just very skeptical the middle-class will start riding busses en-mass outside of major commute times. Where I live there are several commuter bus lines to the suburbs from downtown. They all operate privately and at a profit. Those work as I believe commuter rail would work in its place. City busses however are a differen't slice of pie.
And lets not forget that busses for the most part run on diesel fuel. I don't particularly like those exhaust fumes in the city.
right on with the circle line
I definetly agree with the idea the the circle line will be a huge boost for the city.
I feel there are very few people who will argue with the idea that transportation hubs promote localized growth... (and if you would argue i would ask you to get off of almost any L stop, look around, then walk 3 blocks and look around again)
though a population will only support so much, i feel there is a lot more room for shoring up the density that already exists. especially in the underserved areas in the near south and near west and to a certain extent near north west.
postals comment about chicago being of only one centralized location, evilplat said it too i believe, is also very true, but i dont think its a terrible stretch to assert that the loop maintains is status as destination because all the trains go there. If secondary locus were added at a few spots serving the mid point neighborhoods i think it would begin to create destinations in them as well
Looky what I found...the infamous MBTA system map online
[url=http://www.mbta.com/traveling_t/schedules_pdfmaps_system.asp#[/url]
Now I just need a hard copy...
Oh, and anyone living in Portland, OR, how do you pay for the MAX? Everytime I'm there I can't find a machine so I just get on and ride around for free. I don't mind paying and I feel guilty for not doing so.
Sorry
Philly is an interesting case that seems to have elements of the best and worst of American transit systems.
Like Boston, Philadelphia has kept much of its original streetcar system intact. (What both cities have in common is that the streetcars run in dedicated tunnels when they reach downtown, which is no doubt a major factor in their preservation.)
The Broad Street Subway is actually very nicely-designed if you can look past its ugly orange trains and dreadful stations. Like the NYC subway, it is a four-track express/local operation north of Walnut. Unlike the NYC subway, the trains are incredibly fast.
The Market Street el has nice new trains and they're working on gradually rebuilding the stations, but like the BSS, it mainly serves very poor parts of the city where tourists and white-collar commuters aren't likely to venture into.
Philly's relative lack of an extensive rapid transit system is partly compensated for by the SEPTA Regional Rail lines, which serve many more stations within the city limits than you'd expect to find on a typical commuter rail system like Metra. As an added bonus, all the regional rail lines are electrified, thanks to the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The PATCO line to New Jersey is a very good way to travel, and was way ahead of its time when built. It was an early prototype for the automated train control systems that were later developed for newer systems such as BART, the Washington Metro, and Atlanta's MARTA.
pls pls thank to God that you haven't been inside of a public bus in Istanbul :D
Living in Gin. If you live relatively close to GSD you can just walk or bike, or take the red line if you are near that. Then just sign up for Zipcar when you need to go to the Depot or something. I lived there for 2 years with no car. I got jacked by carrying my groceries 1/2+ mile. I don't know what it was about that place, but I would move back to Cambridge/Boston/Somerville in a heartbeat.
I remember Rome's bus system seemed pretty cool, each bus stop had a sign for each route that listed the stops along it. I wish Philadelphia did that. I would probably take buses even more. Although some of the bus drivers are nice, asking most of them if the bus you are about to hop on (without a schedule in hand) stops at near a certain location is like asking them if they wouldn't mind having thier hands chopped off.
The nicest transit system I have ever been on is Disney World's (if you can call it one). It was free, on time, the drivers were courteous, the stations were clean, as were the vehicles. My guess was that for most guests it was the first time they used and depended on mass transit to get around. Which if that is the case, its a tough act to follow if you are any city's MT system. Its a good example of what properly funded and maintained transit can do and be like.
The down side is since the guests are mostly all friendly and there to have a good time they just start talking to you, which totally threw me off at first. I remember the first bus we got on to go from the hotel to the magic kindom this guy from Idaho sat down next to me and started talking to me. I gave him really short answers, and when he asked where I was from and I answered Philadelphia, he basically responded that now he understood why I was being such a jackass. Hey, it not my fault I was expecting him to ask me for money, you can't just shut that kinda street-thing off like a switch...
I also have noticed that Philadelphia has a lot of tourist routes that run parallel to alot of regular SEPTA routes. I find that interesting- is a regular SEPTA bus that intimidating? Maybe its the disney-fication of SEPTA.
Boston needs a circle line much, much, much more than Chicago does. Boston has a very decentralized population and is forced to use a train system with only a few interchange nodes--all in the heart of downtown. So if you live in Brookline, and want to get across the river to Cambridge--which is only a couple of mile north of you--you have to travel all the way into downtown, switch trains, and travel all the way out of town again. There isn't even a BUS circle line to connect the neighborhoods where people live.
In Chicago, the bus system actually helps, because the streets are grids and every couple of blocks you can either grab a N-S or E-W bus and you're set. You don't even really have to know the system, thanks to the grid. Don't the buses provide a decent circle function? Or no? I go between Lincoln Square and Wicker Park pretty frequently by bus, which would be a nightmare by train.
LiG, you will hate life if you attempt to have a car in Boston. Sign up for zipcar and sell yours. Rent a car for weekend trips to Maine.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.