From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Cost of transit systems vs highways
Date: 28 Aug 92 17:51:38 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <9208281421.AA05078@asia.fai.com> vaughnw@asia.fai.com (Vaughn Wolffe) writes:

@From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
@	And it works -- only half of the San Francisco -- East Bay
@commute traffic goes by the Bay Bridge. The other half goes by BART,
@which travels in a tunnel beneath the Bay. Guess who has the more

>According to Greg Bayol(sp?) Caltrans district 4 in charge of the
>Bay Bridge, it carries over 250,000 vehicles a day at an average 
>occupancy of 1.13 per vehicle. Considerably less than half use
>BART.

	250,000 vehicles/day??? That strikes me as a bit much.

	It's a ten-lane bridge, and if one vehicle/s managed to pass
through each lane, then they would take 7 hours for all of them to
make it.

	The slowdowns I experienced at the San Francisco end on the
late weekend times meant vehicle passage rates of less than 1/s/lane,
and I don't see how Rush Hour would be much better.

	Furthermore, the commute traffic uses only five of the ten
lanes at a time.

	But I'll have to check BART's figures to see if I didn't
misunderstand about carrying half the traffic: half the Bay Bridge
traffic or half the total commute traffic. If it isn't half the Bay
Bridge traffic, then it would be 1/3 of the Bay Bridge traffic.

>According to BART's ridership reports it carried 120,352 riders
>in June( highest in last 3 months) in transbay service per day.
>BART transbay travel has dropped 2.6% from June 1991. 

	And what happened to Bay Bridge traffic in that time?

>It is not working. Highway expansion along the BART corridors
>continues.

	Like what?

	What would you suggest as an alternative???

@	The only criticism I consider really serious of BART I have
@seen is its cost, but I think it is difficult to avoid that for a
@system with its performance. If there is any good reason to think
@otherwise, then give reasons, rather than flames.

>Using published facts instead of your personal unfounded conjecture,
>it lacks the speed and seating capacity to lure people out of their
>cars in sufficient numbers so as to prevent congestion or highway
>expansion. In fact(as opposed to conjecture and fantasy) ridership
>is decreasing in real numbers and in percentage of total travel
>for the Bay Area. Your failure(refusal) to consult establish sources
>negates any claim to reason.

	Give me a break, Vaughn.

	BART _does_ work, even if not as effectively as one might
want.

	How well does CowTrain, er, CalTrain work???

	It is much _less_ successful than BART in getting people out
of their cars.

	And your proposed BART clone can be had only at the expense of
buying _lots_ of extra rolling stock, to say nothing about upgrading
the stations to make them look like BART-clone stations.

	What's this grudge against BART that you seem to have?

>	>And how much is a CalTrain tunnel to the Transbay Terminal
@expected to cost? At least $600 million, and probably $1 billion. And
@this for only 1 mile of tunnel.

>That is less than a tunnel under San Jose, which you seem to support.

	In total cost, yes.

	But cost per unit length???