From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Public vs. private transportation
Organization: LLNL
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 06:39:50 GMT

In article <57272@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <1992Aug19.014010.26867@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
>>In article <57138@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>>>In article <1992Aug17.214645.5769@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
>>>>In article <57056@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>>>>>In article <4245@wet.UUCP> editor@wet.UUCP (Eric Swanson) writes:

>>>Much of the roads would be needed even if travel between home and 
>>>work did not exist...

>>	But smaller and less traveled roads, I may add.

>Smaller, not much.  Freight and buses need at least two lanes in a given
>direction.  And visiting would be just about impossible without private
>cars or taxis.  Taxis would not be that much more efficient in using the
>roads.

	For relatively light traffic, you have justified 4-lane roads,
but not ones with 6 or more lanes.

	One good way of getting people and freight off the roads is to
send them on rails, and as a sometime railroad buff, I'm not
complaining :-)

>>	And if one could get fully loaded shopping carts aboard buses,
>>life would be even easier.

>I suggest that you consider what modifications would have to be made to 
>vehicles to put fully loaded shopping carts on them...

	I have a small cart with only 2 wheels that could easily fit
onto a bus. 

>>	Baloney. If one does not have to drive, one can be busy with
>>other things, such as reading. This is especially true on rail
>>systems. I've gotten a heck of a lot of reading done on BART, for
>>example.

>I find it possible to do light reading on trains, but not more.  One
>cannot do much significant reading on short trips.

	What about long trips? :-)

	I've had no trouble doing lots of reading on BART and Amtrak,
that is, when I'm not watching all the scenery :-)

	Since you don't seem to care very much about sightseeing, you
could get more reading done than I do :-)

>>	If I lived near an East Bay BART station and had to commute by
>>BART to San Francisco, I would pay about $5/day, or about $1300/year.
>>With BART's full operating and capital costs added in, it would be
>>about $4000/year.

>I have no objection whatever to public transportation if it had to pay
>all the costs for itself.  

	As long as road systems do so, also.

	It will take $400 million/mile to rebuild the infamous wrecked
segment of I-880 in West Oakland. Is _that_ the kind of government
spending you like?

>>	An aside: BART's electric bill for powering its cars, its
>>"fuel" bill, is about $12 million/year, equivalent to about 25 cents
>>for an East Bay -- San Francisco trip. The equivalent trip by car
>>would cost $1, _if_ one had a high-mpg car and _if_ one could travel
>>at cruising speed most of the way.

>But if you did not want to go to downtown San Francisco, if you drove
>you would be able to continue on to your destination.  And if you did
>not live near a BART station, your marginal cost would be little higher.

	Having been to San Francisco several times, I don't think I'd
want to drive through there.

	Perhaps out of curiosity, but not on a regular basis.

	Fortunately, SF has plenty of buses and trolleys.

>If you were visiting a friend in San Francisco, you are not going to 
>get there by BART.  Similarly if you are visiting a friend in the East Bay.
>I am quite familiar with the area.

	The same for the East Bay also, though there it's just buses.

	BART goes past many of the more "important" destinations; many
of the others I can get too by bus.

	Urbanized areas are the ones most easily served by public
transit; I will concede that it is difficult to get around without a
car in low-density areas like typical suburbs.

>>	Are long, boring drives your idea of fun? They sure aren't
>>_my_ idea of fun.

>What about boring rides on public transportation?  When my wife was a
>graduate student in New York, she had to take 3 vehicles and spend more
>than an hour on the trip one way.  New York subways never had enough seats.

	I agree that some public-transit systems are unpleasant.

	They should be made more pleasant and user-friendly; I think
that BART or the Washington Metro are good examples.

>I do not approve of long commutes.  What we need to do is to use electronics
>to greatly reduce them.

	Might be a good idea. But one will still have to meet the
other people one works with.

>>>Roads are needed for other than commuting.  There is no conceivable way
>>>that I would use other than car to go to another university within 
>>>several hundred miles...

>Let us take an example to see the problem.  Ohio State University is about
>250 miles from Purdue.  So how would you suggest that I go?  There has never
>been a reasonable combination of trains, and intercity buses are certainly
>no faster than cars.  I would have to take two buses, one of which might
>not make any other stops, but the other would make one or 2.  And there 
>still is the problem of getting to and from the bus terminals.

	Never been a reasonable combination of trains?

	I don't know where Purdue University or West Lafayette is, so
I can't really say anything about trains. One would have to check on
Amtrak for train service info (1-800-USA-RAIL).

	I agree that buses aren't as pleasant as trains, but at least
you don't have to drive them :-)

	250 mi = 4 hours at typical driving speed, so I don't see how
that is any fun.

	But then again, I'm not you.

>Another example, and here I will use plane travel, Michigan State University.
>The distance is again 250 miles.  So consider the time spent, with optimal
>connections.

>	To airport			 5 minutes
>	Checkin				20 minutes
>	Flight to Chicago		40 minutes	
>	Changing planes			40 minutes
>	Flight to Lansing		60 minutes
>	Collecting baggage		15 minutes
>	To the university		20 minutes
>	----------------		----------
>	Total			       200 minutes

>This excludes waiting times, etc.  It also excludes the problems of bad
>weather, which messes up plane travel quite badly.  

	I certainly agree that that's a hassle.

	That's what I like about trains :-)

	They are more weatherproof.

	Fast enough trains can successfully compete with air travel.
Consider the example of the French TGV, which travels at 180 mph in
some routes, or even the example of Amtrak between NY and DC.

	I've several times taken trips to DC from Philly by Amtrak
train, and it's 2 hours each way. And I don't have to go out to any
airport.

>How many public transportation vehicles do you think you could fill 
>on these routes?  Even a bus needs about 50 passengers.  The problem
>with mass transit is that it takes a mass traveling in the same 
>direction at the same time.

	I will concede that thinly populated areas are an excellent
excuse for a car.

>>	True, that's why I like trains :-)

>Trains, except for commuter trains, are a lost proposition.  Even in the Boswash
>corridor, they lose money.

	Surprise, surprise!

	NY-DC is actually a moneymaker for Amtrak.

	And Amtrak is prepared to add a conference car to its NY-DC
service. It may be reserved by business groups so that they can have a
meeting while they are on the move. It would just be attached to
whichever train they want to travel on. Try that in an airplane :-) Or
a car ;-) Or a bus, for that matter ;-)

	[On road damage...]

>>	Trucks are the worst offenders of all, actually. And there are
>>more of them than there are buses.

>And we need them, even if private transportation was outlawed.

	What kind of paranoia is that?

	The most that would happen is that most private cars would be
excluded from the most crowded areas. There is absolutely no point in
doing that in less-built-up areas like suburbs or small towns or rural
areas. What have you been doing, reading too much John Birch Society
literature?

>There is also another problem with public transportation.  The roads 
>cannot go on strike.  Labor unions are a form of monopoly, which would
>not be tolerated in anything else.

	Roads can't, but their bigger users can, by blocking the roads
with their vehicles. Consider some recent strikes in France by
truckers and farmers. You may wonder how they manage to get away with
it, but they do.

	How are labor unions a form of monopoly? And what's so
terrible about them, anyway?

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