The Mass Transit Myth

Why not just work from home?

More freeways just means more cars, and public transportation in big cities work, go around Tokyo then you know what i mean.

Mass transit is used effectively in some countries other than the US. Japan where I live is a prime example. Efficient and on-time, mass transit is much better than driving, regardless of how many highways are built. Do I like mass transit? No, but I find it easier, despite the crowds. The problem with mass transit in the US (my home country) is that it is neither efficient nor on time. I remember waiting in Penn Station to find out when or even whether there would be a train to take me home one evening; in Japan, there's a fuss if the train is even a minute late. Whether or not mass transit is consistently on time is I think a major reason why it does not get more use in US. If you could be sure (barring a major accident) that the train would leave the station at a certain time and arrive at its destination at a certain time, wouldn't that be more convenient than leaving 30 minutes or more early to be sure that you aren't late due to traffic?

I live in Japan too!

But i have to clear one thing up. Japanese public transportation is very good around the big cities, but on the country side it is a lot less.

Yes, way out in the countryside the public transportation is a bit less convenient. One train every 30 minutes or maybe even less seldom. But still on time:). And even on the narrow mountain roads, I still see bus stops. But for commuting into a city, if you are within commuting distance (say 1.5 to 2 hours) of a fairly large city, the train service is excellent. I'm a bit outside of Osaka, but there's a train every 10 minutes on weekends, and more often on weekdays at rush hour. And even if I assume no traffic on the highway (a very rare case here, regardless of the time of day!), going by train is faster than by car, even allowing for the one transfer I need to make between surface train and subway.

Well i am in Aomori, only JR here and Busses, people rely a lot on cars here.

Before i lived in Kobe There you have JR railways, Hanshin subway and the Hankyuu subway which are very convenient

Mass transit may work in smaller nations, but it's difficult to see it working here. There are spots where it may make sense. However, in many smaller cities, there are building restrictions in place to prevent population congestion as we see in smaller countries.

Cost is a tough one to beat. I can buy a house for 1/2 the price 40 min out of the city. I can buy a lot of cars and gas for the difference. Plus I would rather drive on a nice clear highway than a congested city street. My little car cruising down the highway probably uses a reasonable amount of fuel compared to the stop-start-idle commute.

Someone should talk to those that I see driving around me every day. The ones that drive an SUV to work.

Freeways lead to urban sprawl. People move further and further away from where they need to be creating more and more need for freeways and cars, creating more pollution. This kind of "counterintuitive" thinking is what got us into this mess.

Why not have everyone live within 20 minutes walk of work? This would improve health care and eliminate the environmental problem.

"Why not have everyone live within 20 minutes walk of work?"

On the surface that sounds a good plan. The problem is that it would not work very well in practice. Especially here in the US. If everyone were to live with in 20 minutes of work everyone would have to live in a few small highly conjested areas. While apartments and row houses work well in most of the big cities, many would not go for it. People like their space and aparment living is considered akin to the antichrist by some, myself included.

Just like Japan! In Japan a lot of the major shopping centers are all around the main train station in town. Ebina is exactly like this and Shinjuku is about the same. You get a lot of clustering of apartment complexes in the vicinity of train stations too.

The system works pretty well. You can live in Japan for years and not need a car. But you have to like to walk.

As far as a 20 minute walk in the US goes; that's all well and good until winter....

When I lived in Brooklyn NY (Thanks to the US Navy) I used the NYC mass transit system extensively. Far better then trying to drive in that mess. When I went back, now married, on vacation this summer, my wife refused to use the subway. She was afraid. Maybe that is the key, fear of crowds, fear of muggings, fear of catastrophic failure leaving her in the dark of burried alive? Who knows...

Where in hell are they supposed to bulild them?? The areas where congestion occurs is heavily populated. Oh, I know - they could go up, say six to ten stories high. Then, 10 yesra after completion, your taxes would pay to have them refurbed because of the countleyy inspections. Would also give you a place to jump off!!

The key to mass transit systems working is density. Some cities, especially older ones that predate cars, have the necessary density for mass transit to be feasible. Local climate also plays a role. If it is 90+ degrees outside 250 days out of the year, you probably won't be willing to walk appreciable distances to get to and from the mass transit stops. You also need a single concentrated business district where most workers work as well as concentrated residential areas where most people live.

Houston is the poster child for a city that does not lend itself to mass transit. The population density is low, the climate is hot most of the year, and there is no one central business district. There are at least 30 distinct business districts within our metropolitan area. There are at least as many residential areas. As a result, it is virtually impossible to serve a significant percentage of the population with mass transit. But despite all of that, our METRO transit authority is bound and determined to spend billions on fixed tramway at-grade light rail serving less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the population. We call it the Dangertrain because of all of the collisions it has had with automobiles.

I'm in Houston too. The recent death of my car has forced me to substitute the use of Metro for my roughly 6 1/2 mile (call it 10 K) commute. What previously was a quick 15 minute drive - tolerable even in summer with no A/C - is now a minimum of 2 hours, involving 3 bus routes, and quite often much longer. I now spend a longer time walking to the bus stops than my previous commute.

Yep, same song with me. using METRO's trip calculator, to get from Spring (I-45 and Cypresswood specifically) to the Bush intercontinental airport area where I work, I would have to drive 2 miles to the Spring park and ride, ride all the way to downtown, chqnge buses, ride all the way back out to E Mt. Houston and US 59, change buses again, to get to my stop which is about half a block from my office. and reverse the trip going back home. I would have traveled the linear distance of going halfway to Galveston and taken 2 hours to go 15 miles as the crow flies each way. How does that remove congestion or save fuel or reduce pollution when a bus gets an average of 4 mpg and my toyota pickup gets 20?

If the bus averages 20 passengers, though (and I hope that's a low estimate) then the mpg on a per-person basis is four times better than your pickup. Of course, you still have to sacrifice the time difference... Some people can't afford the choice, though, having more available time than ready money.

Given Metro's average ridership for two of the three routes involved, that is probably a high estimate. You also need to factor in the fact that I would have traveled at least 4 times the distance too. so the fuel usage is probably at best a wash, the miles travelled increased thereby increasing congestion, and my day would have gotten 4 hours longer to boot. And diesel is more polluting than gasoline given the particulates/soot given off.

Which is why Houston is constantly building Freeways!

Which promptly fill up with cars, thus necessitating the building of yet more freeways, which fill...saaaay, do I detect a pattern here?!?

E-man, you probably do. It is not hard to do so after all and nobody is arguing that is not the case, but the fundamental question is: Will mass transit change the pattern? The answer is: No, at least not cost effectively or practically. That is the point so many people fail to grasp. And METRO bless it's absent little heart, really fails to get it because instead of adding more bus routes and designing a mesh system instead of a hub and spoke system, they have instead cut bus routes, cut runs on the remaining routes, and folded a huge chunk of their operating budget on a light rail system that will cost 10 times more per rider than buses would and is being built at grade in the middle of roadways that used to carry cars in the space taken by the railway. The first (and so far only) 7-1/2 mile section has had close to 300 accidents with automobiles trying to turn in front of it. and every time it comes a gully-washer here, the train must shut down because it cannot operate if there is as much as an inch of water standing on the tracks. To add insult to injury, the system was installed improperly and has problems with stray current damaging foundations and infrastructure near the tracks.

I'll probably butcher this because I'm going from memory but our former mayor Bob Lanier once said something to the effect that first they will say it will be good for the environment. when you prove that it is not then they say it will stimulate growth, when you show that it will not then they say it will be cheaper, when you prove it is not then they say you just have to give the system time.

Uh, no. I don't think so.

Would a properly planned, well-executed, and decently constructed system work, though? I think it might, but there are likely too many variables for our style of bureaucracy to deal with.

more freeways = more cars = more freeways

let's do something even more counter intuitive; ban the car from cities!

Oddly enough, as I was driving to work this morning, I heard on the radio that the public transit systems in our major cities were suffering from a lack of capacity. A whopping 85%+ usage during "rush hours". I'd say that pretty well puts the lie to people not liking these forms of transportation, at least while the cost of gasoline is sky-high.

For one, I disagree. We have one of the best freeway systems anywhere, and most of our freeways are stop-and-go traffic bottlenecks almost daily, for 4 to 6 hours each day. Building more freeways - where do we find the land w/o eminent domain? We will fill the new freeways and highways to capacity with little relief on already overcrowded raods. Mass transit ridership has doubled and trippled in the past few months, in reaction to the high price of person vehicle commuting by one and two occupancy vehicles. American car makers continue to build 290 - 400 and even 500 HP vehicles, and they don't understand why Americans continue to buy foreign designed or foreign manufactured cars that are small and more economical hybrids, or all-electric vehicles that get 45 to 60-plus miles per gallon of fuel. Toyota is about ready to push GM down to # 2 supplier of automobiles and small trucks due to American-made gas guzzlers! Look at any major freeway around our bigger cities during crunch time, and you'll see millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel just being burned by standing or crawling vehicles. If we went to all-electric or electric-hybrid cars, together with improved mass transit, we could eliminate a major portion of our Mid-Eastern imported crude oil, at $100 to $ 150 a bbl!! Use our coal, natural gas and biomass-fuels to generate electricity. Our crude oil imports would fall drastically! Look at the building boom and luxury building in the Mid Eastern countries, that we are paying for. There must be a few others out there that understand that our gas-guzzlers are NOT the wave of the future! More highways are not the answer. That mass transit has a key position in our commuting into and out of cities. Bullet trains in Japan and Europe add to mass transit capabilities. Do you want to hear a scream heard around the country? Build toll booths on all major roadways into and our of major cities, using mainly electronic counting and billing to reduce traffic conjestion at toll booth areas, and use that money to build and maintain mass transit, building new stations, new trains and surface and subway, or elevated, tracks. Force people to use mass transit or pay for the privilige of driving gas guzzler vehicles. Parking in cities is getting rather expensive even now. Wake up, America!!

Why do you say people dont like using mass transit. I'm a people and I like it.

I've found that at least in Houston, most of the people cheerleading for more Mass Transportation would never actually be caught dead on a bus or a train. The CEO of METRO gets a $40,000 a year car allowance for chrissake even though he has a bus stop a block from his house on a route that goes directly to the building he works in, he never rides it. City Councilmember Peter Brown, heir to the Schlumberger Riches (by marriage) and huge proponent of mass transit never rides either.

Mass transit is for "other people" to them.

Part of this is a social problem. People think that they are "above" mass transit. That is for the "rest".

The other aspect which contributes to that social problem is that there are subsidies for airlines, subsidies to the oil companies, and many other things, but little or no, or steadily reducing levels of aid for mass transit which "has to be cost efficient."

Of course, more freeways just attract more cars and more congestion.

Mass transit also is a cultural as well as a town planning problem. One only has to see the monstrosities that a lack of town planning in the USA has led to. Houston is one good example ! Or should one say "lack of GOOD town planning".

In any case, the car user is in great part himself/herself responsible for his own pollution, noone else is. Maybe the US culture in this area is sadly lacking or misplaced; on the one hand, generated by profiteering real estate developers who took no account of such passé ideas as mass transit, even to the point of deliberately making mass transit a difficult solution- a "more exclusive neighbourhood" does not ask for mass transit at least at present, and on the other hand the failure of the US car industry to even think of suitable low pollution alternatives.

Now we are in a chicken and egg situation. No mass transit because the neighbourhood is badly designed for it. Start building cities and neighbourhoods that allow mass transit as an integral part of it- it does not have to be metro, there are other lower capital cost alternatives like urban rail- Tyneside UK has one such system but I am sure that there are plenty of others.

And of course when the real price of oil starts to hit, then there will be little choice !

So now you will dictate to everyone where and how they will live and work? That is what "city planning" is after all. In every case "City planning" or "zoning" or whatever you want to call it, has led to far higher housing costs, higher prices for goods and services, and higher unemployment. How can that possibly be a good thing?

Houston is growing by leaps and bounds, while the rest of the country stagnates because Houston is business and housing friendly. We have no controls over where you must live or work and people and businesses LIKE it.

And since a large portion of Houston's economy is tied to the price of oil, we don't much care if the price of gas goes up to be honest, it keeps us employed.

And what makes u think u got choice now? Let's say tomorrow you don;t have a car and need to go to grocery store. Can you make a choice between renting a car or taking a public transit? Lack of public transit means people have to own the car to survive. What choice they have? If you are a min. wage earner, half of your income get spent in rent and from the rest more than half on the car and health insurance ... two worst systems in the country! Only people who currently got choice are the ones with money and they are the lobbying for other alternatives as "anti-American". And guess who got money?

Not only to do I have a choice, I can actually type in complete words and sentences too.

I can walk to 2 grocery stores, a dry cleaners, 12 restaurants, a movie theater, a Best Buy, a pet store, three gyms, a wal-mart, two home improvement stores, and most important of all, a liquor store. All are within a mile and a half of my house. I do not rent, I own my house and the land that it is on. My Wife DOES use mass transit to get to and from her work and when one of my two vehicles is out of action I can drop her off at the park and ride and pick her up on my way home. If you don't have money and you make only minimum wage then you probably blew off all of your educational opportunities and either dropped out of high school or barely graduated which means it is your own dang fault for putting yourself in that situation to begin with. The constitution does not assure you of a given standard of living, only the right to try to attain it. If you can't be bothered to try, don't come to me expecting me to waste my hard earned income on your lazy butt. (take careful note of my signature line.)

This is the knid of attitude that must be changed to save our environment. People who have the attitude that they can drive SUVs, pollute as much as they want, as long as they can afford it. This is why mass transit should be mandated.

Days like to today when a hurricane is bearing down on you, mass tansit will not be much help getting you out of town...

But then again the cars aren't making much progress either....

That is what is called communism. I shoot Communists dead when they come around trying to take my freedom away.

uh right, you got issues,what has regulating cars & freeways to do with freedom?

When gasoline prices go through the roof SUV's we dissappear by itself

"Regulating" cars and freeways means that you will be telling people where they may live and where they may work and how they may live their lives "for the greater good". How is that NOT communism? And just who exactly gets to decide these things? And what gives them the right to do so? And who makes sure that the decisions that person makes aren't really intended to benefit that person or someone who that person has some kind of relationship with? Who watches the watchmen?

Freedom is also some personal responsibility buy an ATV (All Terrain vehicle) then you don't not have to rely on the government.

Any the government makes roads for economical reasons not for the people but for their own gain.

Actually governments build roads, generally speaking because it's citizens have a need for such roads. Granted a certain amount of corruption plays a role as well. The Interstate highway system was Eisenhower's attempt to duplicate on a much larger scale Hitler's Autobahn's. He recognized that the ability to move men and material was vital to the nation's defense as well as to interstate commerce. The nation's roads up to that point were mostly unpaved and did not lend themselves to cross-country commerce. America's economic dominance in the world economy can be directly attributed to Eisenhower's interstate highways. We would still be a third world also-ran nation if it were not for our highway system. Every other industrialized nation has emulated our system for the same reasons.

You mean every other industrialized nation has emulated Germany's autobahns.

Point taken.

Leland doesn't live is a big city does he? My experience in Houston was that more freeway lanes mean more cars changing lanes. This means more cars and no one gets where they are going any faster. Leading to more pollution and more oil comsumption.

Mass transit works in Europe. It works pretty well here in Denver. We don't like buses but trains do well when they are coupled with short bus routes in small buses and are well located.

The real myth is the relative costs of mass transit vs. freeway. The extra lanes of freeway are often far more expensive then we account for.

This is an IDENTICAL TOPIC with IDENTICAL CONTENT and TITLE, originally posted 7/28 in the Industrial Automation Blog. I thought CR4 was better than this!!

--John Mueller

Supply and demand and "let the free market come up with its own solutions" is what has lead to incidences such as the Love Canal. You can't keep fiddling while Rome burns.

"Got a man of the people says "Keep hope alive",

Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive,

Keep on Rockin in the Free World,"

Neil Young

How do you know how much taxation is necessary? How do you define Defense? Is defense just defending against attack from foreign activities? or defense is overall protection of the residents whether from criminal elements or the environmental degradation?

I think Enviroman made a good point that reducing the R&D funding would not affect common man's taxes significantly.

I disagree that "Free market" would do what's needed. For e.g. there are diseases that effect such a small population and the cost of their treatment development would be so high that most pharma companies either won't or can't do the research for them. In such situation, you need govt to provide incentives either as RD funding or tax breaks (I would rather prefer the former) or something else to have treatment developed for such diseases.

I understand the concept of "free market". However, I believe that most of the free market that's not corporate does not having resources (motivation, time, talent, money...) to conduct research at the scale required to deal with the issues of alternative fuel sources and such. The concept of "Free market" is perfect in theory just like "socialism".

Regarding socialism, I am not able to grasp whey most americans hate it. Especially, when their entire retirement is based on such concept. Yeah, that crappy social security system where current generation pays for the older generation's retirement. That has to be among the most socialistic concepts ever. And this system exists because few geniuses can't think about saving money for retirements and everyone else to suffer.

Despite having such socialistic concept being the part of the lives, there is huge opposition towards public healthcare and mass transit developments. Big brain wash from corporate and corporate's govt friends can explain such hypocrisy.

Mass transit vehicles (well, might as well talk something related to the original topic of this thread) might not be that fuel efficient, but with optimum number of passengers you can easily compensate for that with the number of cars you removed from the road. The traffic reduction from that would also help. And few the drivers on the road the lesser the accidents probability and, hence, lesser the time lost sitting in traffic due to them. I am no way suggesting banning of personal vehicles. However, such privileges should be taxed heavily and thereby should be a luxury for those who can afford. Such taxation would not only fund the public transit, but also would remove crappy drivers from the road further helping with the lowering the potential for the accidents. If you worried about those rich brats being crappy driver, have them take rigorous driving courses (would help economy). To be fair you can determine the taxation based on the availability of the alternate transportation sources because the public transit would not be possible in mid-west or areas where your closest neighbor is few towns away. In a decent size towns and cities like philly, atlanta, houston ... you should have no need for personal vehicles.

Now why the mass transits aren't popular even in such areas? Here's my understanding from what I have seen in this country. The mass transit term means its for the masses. That precisely why most americans don't like it. They think they are above everyone else. Its the psychology that's been imparted from never being anything but the top. Remember, since the introduction of the cars in the market, USA has been the superpower in the world. Hence, they think the crap like mass transit is for extremely poor and those third-world immigrants.With globalization and rise of Asian giants (china, india), this power and, hence, the priviledge of the resources (fuel to everything) must be shared. This would require a change in culture where taking public transit doesn't mean you are below anyone.

I am not aware of the inconvenience issue associated with using public transit as it currently stands. I empathize with that. That's where the local/state/federal govts need to show leadership and invest in public transit. Of course, initially there would be losses. Isn't that the nature of business? You need to put in something to get something? Capitalism, right?

Phew, that was long and finally a post remotely relevant to the original topic :)

5. A century ago, when the alternative was horses, mass transit was a big success, and private companies were happy to build profitable lines. If it's such a good idea now, let private companies do it. Don't require billion-dollar taxes to provide inferior service.

So do you advocate ending federal highway subsidies?

What is your free market solution?

A century ago, most workers lived within walking distance of their workplace. The freeways allowed people to move to the country, while working in the cities. The freeways are the cause of the problem. By building more and bigger freeways you are perpetuating the problem, not solving it.

A more comprehensive approach to planning & growth, where every neighborhood is mixed use, instead of gated suburban enclaves, would seem to be in order.

Yes, a century ago, people lived within walking distance of their employment. Look at the pictures of cities in 1909. People lived in slums, next to streets slimy with horse dung, amid the noise and smell of industrial work, with children gowing up never seeing grass or trees or wildlife. The electric street car, and later the automobile, changed that. People could enjoy suburban living, with birds and flowers and clean air and quiet and stars at night and... If you think the "cure" for pleasant living is city planning with mixed use neighborhoods (the school is next to the chemical plant) where people will again walk to work, you had better check with the workers. Likely they would prefer to move elsewhere, where they can drive to WalMart, not walk to the corner store.

It's easy to point out what's wrong

I notice you made no reply to #78.

Using a chemical plant for an example is cherry picking...

Mixed use probably not a solution for all situations.

Change is inevitable, much has changed since 1909.

I taught at a school which was next to a brass foundry, but not a chemical plant. I have parked my car and, twenty minutes later, been able to write my name in the soot on the windshield. I wouldn't like to live there.

Yes, federal highways (the Interstate system) are subsidized, using money from fuel taxes and user fees. Some of those same taxes are now diverted to subsidize rail travel. Historically, where there have been private toll roads, they have done well. Historically, when the state builds toll roads, the bonds are paid off and the tolls remain, as a source of revenue to the general fund. Can anyone name a passenger carrying rail line in the US which is not subsidized? (There's a historical steam-train ride in Felton, CA which probably makes money, but it doesn't go anywhere) I understand that Portland, OR, prohibits new parking spaces, even on your own property, in an attempt to force people to ride the light rail, and it still loses money. You will get to the airport in half the time in a cab, and if there are two or three of you, the cost is about the same as by rail.

I like trains. I have a large model railroad in the basement. I ride trains when I can. I don't let nostalgia for trains make me advocate wasteful spending on obsolete technology.