America:Cars, Suburbia, and Conspicuous Consumption | 72 comments (72 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: America:Cars, Suburbia, and Conspicuous Consum (none / 0)

You don't need on-the-fly re-routing (and I think it'd be a royal pain to implement). Just take a look at how Berlin does their subway. I'll admit that I've only used it as a tourist, not a commuter, but I don't think I've ever had to walk more than two blocks in downtown berlin to find a subway station, and I don't think I ever had to change lines more than twice to get from point A to point B. And they run all the time, at least during the day. Needless to say, travel times are very manageable.

Or even how Göteborg does its tram lines. I've used those as a commuter and damn they are good. Cover everything they need to cover, the trams run all the time in the daytime and every hour or half-hour during the night (depending on how far into the suburbs you need to go). Car? Pffft. Bus? Yeah, it's there - and the coverage is very good, actually, but it's not like you need it.

And it's not like Göteborg is a big city - about half a million people in a semicircle with a 20 km radius or thereabout. Half the area of Denmark has that kind of population density. We could cover somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of our population with light rail service to their local city/high-speed rail hub.

A little intelligent planning and a big check to a couple of German train factories and we could cut our personal car fleet by at least 50 %...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jul 16th, 2008 at 11:21:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: America:Cars, Suburbia, and Conspicuous Consum (none / 0)

The importance of continuous service must be underscored. In an urban environment, people should not feel the need for a car ; that requires evening and night service. Even if they are less frequent, or of a different kind. For example the Paris metro shuts at night, but this is compensated by a night bus service, the Velibs, and taxis... Whereas in many provincial towns, going out for the evening means needing a car. And once it's there, it begs to be used...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Wed Jul 16th, 2008 at 03:26:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Subways versus Jitneys (none / 0)

I agree that a ubiquitous and continuously running subway would be better than jitneys for most purposes. But we don't have that kind of time.

We will have to build the subway (or other light rail) at the same time as we are deploying jitneys and banning non-commercial vehicles from the city centers. Eventually most of the jitneys move out to the area beyond the light rail lines... assuming we ever get those lines built.

Transportation fuel has become a major near-term crisis for the whole world. The longer we wait, the worse things are going to get. At this point we no longer have the luxury of letting some envisioned optimal solution prevent the quick implementation of some kind of working system.

We no longer have a choice.

by Ralph on Thu Jul 17th, 2008 at 12:05:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Subways versus Jitneys (none / 1)

Come, now, it doesn't take that long to slap together a sensible light rail system. But FWIW, if you want an over-the-counter solution, you could just levy a prohibitive congestion charge on cars going into the city and equally prohibitive parking fees on cars staying in the city overnight and then increase the bus coverage to compensate (I assume you have a more or less working bus network that can be easily expanded). Flourishes and details such as an exemption for trucks delivering goods (or centralised logistics and delivery system, if that would work better in your city) might be applied as needed. Then migrate from bus to subway and light rail as you go along.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jul 17th, 2008 at 04:50:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

America:Cars, Suburbia, and Conspicuous Consumption | 72 comments (72 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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