Meanwhile, the 47 Muni bus that connects the Van Ness transit corridor to Caltrain has been “suspended” since 2020, and the extension of Caltrain to the transit center is still unfunded.
I appreciate solutions that meet us where we are, but it’s depressing that we don’t seem to actually have the will to make a sustainable, integrated mass transit plan.
Cars are also subsidized (roads) - isn't that what taxes are for?
If we could go back to pre-pandemic ridership levels, the subsidy rate would be inverted (fares covered 70% versus 30% now). Public Transit struggles with low utilization. It'll take 10+ years to get back to that ridership level though.
Sure, but cars aren't subsidized at $18 dollars per trip. The cost to the government of providing and maintaining roads is on the order of several cents per vehicle mile traveled.
For BART, that number is:
$1.07B operating expense / 892.5M million passenger miles traveled = $1.20 per mile. Then subtract out the fare per mile and the government is paying $0.84/mile for people to ride BART.
If you look at how American cities are laid out, the cost on society of car infrastructure is massive. Roads and parking space use up a very significant percentage of the real estate in an American city. Public transit is far more efficient with space, so it saves society as a whole a lot of money.
Private autonomous transportation will allow that public infrastructure to be tenfold more productive.
Public transportation will never have the incentive to minimize cost and headcount.
Where we do have public transportation, it should always face competition from private offerings - including on the tracks, as they do in Italy, for example.
That's not true. For example, France is rapidly automating its metros. The US is quite unique in viewing public transport as a jobs program rather than a public service.
When someone says incentive in this context, they usually mean the individual incentives of each of the workers to make money for themselves, get promoted to get a share of profit, not the overall fuzzy public pressure.
On the contrary, our biggest cities started as little groups of houses. Letting places increase their density is a natural solution to a lot of this. The core problem is that we need to take away the power of local government to limit development.
The roads and houses are constructed with such separation and space that it is literally impossible without eminent domain of basically every lot. It’s simply not a possibility to turn the suburbs with huge stroads and subdivisions into mixed use high density living.
The separation and space tends to resolve itself slowly and naturally as density increases. You get the pressure from the new people who live there to make crossings shorter and safer. It's slow, but it is effective.
dcrazy · · focus · HN ↗
I appreciate solutions that meet us where we are, but it’s depressing that we don’t seem to actually have the will to make a sustainable, integrated mass transit plan.
tristanj · · focus · HN ↗
For comparison, federal spending for the interstate highway system is about 2-3 cents per passenger mile.
milesskorpen · · focus · HN ↗
If we could go back to pre-pandemic ridership levels, the subsidy rate would be inverted (fares covered 70% versus 30% now). Public Transit struggles with low utilization. It'll take 10+ years to get back to that ridership level though.
tristanj · · focus · HN ↗
For BART, that number is:
$1.07B operating expense / 892.5M million passenger miles traveled = $1.20 per mile. Then subtract out the fare per mile and the government is paying $0.84/mile for people to ride BART.
DiogenesKynikos · · focus · HN ↗
intrasight · · focus · HN ↗
Public transportation will never have the incentive to minimize cost and headcount.
Where we do have public transportation, it should always face competition from private offerings - including on the tracks, as they do in Italy, for example.
throwaway473825 · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
Schiendelman · · focus · HN ↗
lotsofpulp · · focus · HN ↗
Schiendelman · · focus · HN ↗
lotsofpulp · · focus · HN ↗
Schiendelman · · focus · HN ↗