
The Immobile Masses: Why Traffic Is Awful and Public Transit Is Worse - sageabilly
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-immobile-masses-why-traffic-is-awful-and-public-transit-is-worse
======
soyiuz
Two footnotes on this article:

1\. The problems it highlights can be reduced to low tax revenues. Our
infrastructure is crumbling because we do not collect enough taxes to
subsidize it. Things like roads and trains cannot (and should not) pay for
themselves---they are a public good. The train might be empty at night, but
the ability to take a train home prevents drunk driving, for example. One
cannot put a monitory value on services like that, they speak to our
collective quality of life. The SF transit situation is the direct consequence
of a failing tax base. The wealth of the local tech industry is not "trickling
down" to improve city infrastructure, in proportion to the industry's growth.

2\. Re: the conversation about walk-ability of cities. The key concept here is
_density_. We need to value density as it allows for more compact living.
Instead, municipalities in places like the Bay Area consistently vote against
new construction and against zoning laws that would allow for taller, more
densely populated buildings/neighborhoods. The law of supply and demand says
increase the supply of housing to make something affordable. This is not some
mysterious process: there's simply no political will on the part of existing
inhabitants to "devalue" their residences by increasing the supply in the
housing market.

~~~
PantaloonFlames
> We need to value density as it allows for more compact living.

rack em and stack em, eh?

recent research finds that people living in low-density suburbs are happier
than people living in cities. People living in rural areas are happiest of
all.

[http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=11673](http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=11673)

We can promote more "compact living" but the data shows it degrades human
happiness.

~~~
ch4s3
Serious question, why do rural areas have higher suicide rates per capita?

~~~
xnfndnx
Arguments presented without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
The guy you're responding to cited his, please cite yours.

~~~
cmurf
[http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/rural-
suicide.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/rural-suicide.aspx)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-
growin...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-growing-risk-
of-suicide-in-rural-america/387313/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/rural-youth-
suicide...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/rural-youth-
suicides_n_6867420.html)

------
massysett
This is not at all illuminating and is just a typical advocacy piece for more
transit funding.

Like most of these pieces, it compares road spending and transit spending as
though this is somehow a useful comparison. It isn't. For rail transit
systems, spending includes all labor and capital expenses--train operators,
cars, electricity, etc. Road spending does not include the enormous capital
investment that citizens and businesses spend for motor vehicles.

Putting that problem aside for a moment, it says that transit gets a smaller
share of the funding pie. So what? Roads blanket the nation--I don't think
this article would suggest operating public transportation to compete with
every road.

Then there's the usual "OMG induced demand": "road building as already
mentioned does nothing to combat traffic" because of induced demand. This is
specious. Yes building roads encourages people to go places. That's the point.

To top it off the piece says nothing about "why traffic is awful".

~~~
nostromo
Yeah, the article points out that only 20% of our federal and state transit
budgets go to transit, implying that it's underfunded. But it lacks the
context that only 5% of Americans use transit...

~~~
goodcanadian
It is a chicken and egg problem:

Transit sucks, so no one uses transit. No one uses transit, so funding is sub-
optimal. Funding is sub-optimal, so transit sucks.

This cycle can be broken by funding transit properly. I have been to plenty of
cities where transit was cheap, convenient, and useful. And before someone
trots out the density problem, I have been to plenty of places that are far
less dense than LA and have far better transit.

~~~
jim-greer
I'm curious about the sparse places that have good transit... Where do you
mean?

~~~
goodcanadian
Europe, mostly, where what are essentially small towns and villages are often
connected by good train or bus service to each other. You may consider it
inter-urban rather than intra-urban, but the distances would easily fit within
LA, and the density is clearly lower (because there are farms in between).

------
dkopi
The best method of transit is walking. A lot of the problems with traffic and
public transport are solved when we invest in walk-able cities. Cities where
you can live close enough to work to walk there, close enough to your friends,
close enough to the grocery store, your neighborhood bar or your kid's school.

No discussion of Mass transit or "giving up your car" is completely without
discussing the walk-ability of cities.

~~~
api
Tangent but:

I live in SoCal, and I can't get my head around the car culture mentality. Of
all the places that should be walkable, one that is 80 degrees and sunny 90%
of the entire year should rank very high on the list. But nooo.... the
walkable cities are in places that get run over by a glacier every six months.
Go figure.

~~~
greggman
Because it's large?

I'm all for public transportation and LA used to have the best in the world 80
years ago. But, a large city as large as LA is never really going to be
completely walkable unless everyone always moves close to their job. That
would mean moving away from friends and family because of a job change rather
than just commuting a little further. I suspect most people would chose to
stay near their friends and family rather than move closer to their job.

You can compare Tokyo which is large like LA but which has excellent mass
transit and yet the average commute is 80 minutes each way. Why? People can't
or won't uproot their families for new jobs. Also housing close to a job is
probably also often either too expensive (downtown) or undesirable (industrial
area).

~~~
jdmichal
Also, the popularization of two-income households complicates this quite a
bit. How often do you see partners that work near each other?

------
rsync
Can we just come out and admit something ?

Buses are terrible. They are terrible functionally, they are terrible
aesthetically, and they are terrible logistically.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that across a broad spectrum of
preferences, you _would be very hard pressed_ to find anything worse in the
urban, built environment than some big, loud, lumbering, clumsy (and usually)
sooty bus bungling about the place.

I love good public transit. I love light rail. I love the subway. I will _do
anything_ not to ride a bus. I am reminded of that quote from steve jobs about
the touchscreen phones and the stylus:

"if you see a (bus), they blew it."

~~~
nulltype
Well the reason light rail and subways are so good isn't because they're on
rails, but because they get their own track. If you put a bus on its own
street, suddenly they're not as bad anymore:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit)

~~~
rsync
I agree that BRT (which I have a lot of experience with)[1][2][3] does make
things a bit better. However, the successful BRT I have seen is always in very
specialized circumstances, while the proposals I have seen for BRT in (for
instance) San Francisco have been so full of weird compromises and bizarre
edge cases that I am not optimistic they will make anything better.

[1] Hop/Skip/Jump buses in Boulder

[2] 16th street mall shuttle in Denver

[3] "VelociRFTA" BRT in Aspen/Basalt/Glenwood

~~~
nulltype
Did they change the Skip? I used to take that and it was just a normal bus in
the normal street as far as I recall.

------
verg
Costs are a major part of the problem. US rail construction costs are by far
the most expensive in the world [1]. Other countries are able to build rail at
costs in the $100-250 million per km range (even in dense cities). The East
Side access project in NYC has costs around $4 billion per km. Los Angeles has
much better costs in the $400-500 million per km range [2]. Its hard to
imagine the US will be able to build much transit at those costs.

From 2012[3]: "When asked by transit blogger Benjamin Kabak about its high
construction costs, Michael Horodniceanu, president of the New York City
Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital construction division, gave a
two-word answer: “work rules.” Citing the example of the city’s revered
sandhogs, he said the MTA employs 25 for tunnel-boring machine work that Spain
does with nine."

[1]
[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-
rail-construction-costs/) [2]
[https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/category/transp...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/category/transportation/construction-
costs/) [3] [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-08-27/labor-
rules...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-08-27/labor-rules-snarl-
u-s-commuter-trains)

~~~
bradleyjg
There's problems on the operations side too. The same agency that is building
that East Side Access (LIRR) still does fare collection by sending well
compensated employees walking up and down every train to punch paper tickets
twice per ride.

I don't know if it's an urban legend or not, but I've been told that one of
those conductors punching tickets on every train is technically designated and
paid as a "fireman" i.e. person responsible for shoveling coal into a boiler
because the collective bargaining agreement forbids them from eliminating the
position.

------
FreedomToCreate
Cities need to prioritize walking, biking and transit. What this means is
that, these modes of transportation need to be made safer and faster.
Currently walking through a major city is bogged down by the number of
intersections you have to wait at. One idea would be to make intersection
movement faster for pedestrians and transit during all hours except the
morning and evening rush hour, during which vehicle movement should be
prioritized to get cars off the roads as quickly as possible.

~~~
pc86
With the exception of areas where it's impossible (NYC) IME the majority of
pedestrians and cyclists simply do not care about the crosswalks/laws/etc.
Jaywalking is constant as is crossing in the crosswalk against the signal.

What I'm saying is outside of structural changes to the roads themselves (like
you mention, eliminating some intersections) I don't see much change
happening.

~~~
dublinben
The very concept of jaywalking or dedicated crosswalks is a symptom of the
car-first mentality.[0] If pedestrians and cyclists had the right of way as
they should, this wouldn't be an issue.

[0] [http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-
jaywalking/...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-
jaywalking/1837/)

~~~
douche
Crosswalks are awful. Outside of the ones where there is an actual traffic
light, they are always placed in terrible locations. Moreover, they are just
about the worst place possible to try to cross a street. I've been doing a lot
of walking around the medium sized town I live in the past year, and I've had
to get very good at looking away from the road when I want to cross, otherwise
vehicles that have a quarter-mile of empty space behind them will come to a
stop, and make me feel like I have to rush across, when they could have just
kept going, and we would have both been able to go about our business at our
leisure.

------
BurningFrog
Traffic is awful because road owners aren't charging for access.

From an Economics standpoint, congested traffic is the same phenomenon as the
old Soviet bread lines. A underpriced good is inaccessible in practice, since
supply is way lower than demand at that price.

The solution is "Road Pricing", where drivers pay to drive. The price varies
depending on what road, time of day etc. Maximum revenue should coincide with
maximum throughput, giving everyone (ready to pay) a smooth and fast commute.
It also provides incentives to build more roads where they are mostly needed.

~~~
tribe
Isn't this the point of the gas tax? For every mile you drive, you use more
gas. The more gas you use, the more you pay. Tracking which roads people are
driving on would also require massive infrastructure investment, and have
significant privacy implications.

~~~
choward
The gas tax doesn't take time (or supply and demand) into account. Driving
during rush hour should cost a lot more than driving at 3AM on an empty
street. Sure, you use more gas sitting in traffic, but it doesn't make that
much of a difference.

~~~
ams6110
Tesla can solve this. They know when and where the car was driven, and each
time it's charged, the charging station can interrogate the car and compute
the appropriate congestion surcharge.

~~~
kalleboo
Singapore is now developing a new congestion charge system based on GPS that
will have high granularity. We'll see how that works...
[http://www.lta.gov.sg/apps/news/default.aspx?scr=yes&keyword...](http://www.lta.gov.sg/apps/news/default.aspx?scr=yes&keyword=ERP2)

------
louprado
To expand upon the specific discussion of the OP, I feel we are witnessing a
historical pattern: urban-flight -> under-valued urban real-estate -> then
urban renewal and economic opportunity -> influx of homeless and criminals
since high-population density is good for both -> then public criticism that
the cops are too heavy handed -> cops less likely to enforce + strain on
infrastructure and services (like mass transit) + urban unrest due to economic
disparity -> urban-flight -> ...

If the problem is that the BART is operating beyond capacity, adding capacity
might not matter if the population is set to decline for the other reasons
stated.

------
Tiktaalik
The declining gas tax problem is going to get worse as electric cars increase
in popularity. The solution is comprehensive road pricing, where a larger
share of the real costs of road infrastructure and parking infrastructure are
borne by the users.

The added benefit of correctly pricing driving is that people will make more
informed decisions about where they live and how they get to work, that will
result in more compact communities and less urban sprawl.

~~~
jessaustin
Another option would be pricing by weight. Big trucks currently get giant
subsidies from the rest of us, just measuring by how much they damage the
roads. Fixing that would probably drive up the costs of many goods that are
transported by truck, although it would also probably cause a redistribution
of which goods are sold, to favor lighter or more local goods. In any case, it
would keep the roads in better condition. On the interstate near where I live,
it's often a 10:1 ratio between trucks and cars.

~~~
ams6110
Big trucks do pay a substantial road use tax. I don't know the specifics, but
they don't get to drive for the same cost as the passenger cars. On toll roads
the trucks pay a lot more too.

~~~
jessaustin
They don't pay 40 times what passenger vehicles pay.

------
supergeek133
I live in Minneapolis, we have the light rail in the downtown area that runs
all the way down to the Mall of America and the airport. It also runs to St.
Paul. We subsidize it heavily, but it is also an honor system for paying for
it (no turnstiles). We also have a pretty decent bus system.

Problem is the further away you get from the city center the worse it gets.
They've talked about putting in a light rail line to the southwest suburbs at
a cost of billions of dollars, meanwhile the core roads don't get additional
help and are perpetually bad because of the winter.

It's a balancing act, and at some point everyone needs to decide who's
lifestyle is more important from a priority perspective IMO. If I decide to
live in the suburbs, and commute an hour a day, is a dollar more important for
that person? Or the person closer to the city core that wants more mass
transit options?

Honestly I can go both directions. I currently have a 10 minute commute (by
car). But I've also had the 60+ minute commutes for jobs. I also use the light
rail to get to the airport pretty frequently. However I never used mass
transit to get to work because I like to be able to leave when I want, and go
anywhere I want as needed from work.

~~~
kuschku
> However I never used mass transit to get to work because I like to be able
> to leave when I want, and go anywhere I want as needed from work.

But that’s possible in cities with working transit.

Take Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo.

You can get a bus/train/tram to anywhere from anywhere at any time.

~~~
supergeek133
I haven't been to any of those cities, so you might be right. Just working in
my own frame of reference.

~~~
jessaustin
I worked in Tokyo for a while. If you don't take cabs, you end up doing a fair
amount of walking. There _are_ a lot of trains and subways, so there is a
limit to how much walking you have to do. Even if your origin and destination
were both right next to a subway station, however, you could expect to do a
lot of walking underground, since there is a _lot_ of stuff underground in
Tokyo around which subways have to be routed.

I think walking is great, and frequently I would figure ways to skip a subway
line by walking a bit more, but I thought I'd mention this just to give a more
accurate impression.

~~~
kuschku
I live in Kiel, a 280k city in Germany, with a mediocre transit system.

I can get from anywhere to anywhere with, at maximum, 800m walking and 2h by
bus, but frequently I walk directly instead of taking transit.

Which is possible, since Kiel is small enough that you can get anywhere within
the city walking within of about 5h (one end to the other).

------
greggman
I'd really like to know what the true costs are.

Are Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore all massively subsidizing their mass
transit? Do they have enough riders that they're profitable? Are they more or
less efficient in how the manage them?

How about Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Antwerp, Koln, Barcelona, etc...
which are all an order of magnitude smaller than the previously mentioned
cities but all have pretty good public transportation.

These last cities are all on the same order of size as SF. About 1 million
people each and yet they have vastly better public transportation than SF

~~~
mike_hearn
London Underground funding info is here:

[https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-
ar...](https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-are-funded)

About 40% comes from fares. About 25% is government subsidies. The rest is a
mixture of borrowing, advertising/rental income, a central London road tax,
and 8% is funding for Crossrail (but this represents pure infrastructure
investment so does not affect the steady state).

I have to admit, having reviewed the figures, I am a bit surprised and
concerned at the level of borrowing involved.

------
CalRobert
One of the biggest issues is that we force businesses and housing to have
ridiculous amounts of free parking, which means that instead of dense areas
where buildings can be next to each other we have a sea of asphalt with a
building sprinkled here and there. In central areas these minimums amount to
parking welfare for suburbanites.

People say to me "but it takes 90 minutes to go 15 miles on transit!!" \- the
problem isn't that transit should be faster, it's that you shouldn't have to
go through 15 miles of primarily asphalt hellscape to get to basic amenities!

The core of Dublin is less than two miles across. I used to live in the middle
of it and never missed a car. The core of San Diego.. well it's not really a
core, and even then it's routine to have to travel several miles for basic
errands, even if you live fairly close to downtown. A downtown that is
prevernted from growing by parking minimums. Of course, if you ask a potential
employer about transit access they look at you like you're from Mars (and, of
course, choose to move on to a less hippie-ish applicant)

~~~
cle
Interesting observation, is there some data showing this?

~~~
verg
RE parking minimums: [http://graphingparking.com/2013/01/25/residential-
parking-re...](http://graphingparking.com/2013/01/25/residential-parking-
requirements/)

A similar issue is street sizes in the US are much larger than in countries
with good transit and walkability. Anecdotal, but compare image searches for
"American Street" and "Japanese Street". Not only is the driving area of the
streets much narrower, on street parking doesn't really exists in Japanese
cities. This contributes alot to the walking experience.

"japan street"
[https://www.google.com/search?q=japan+street&espv=2&biw=1440...](https://www.google.com/search?q=japan+street&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=801&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgrLPzj9rLAhXGs4MKHeNxBKwQ_AUIBigB)

"american street"
[https://www.google.com/search?q=american+street&espv=2&biw=1...](https://www.google.com/search?q=american+street&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=801&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicu__4j9rLAhXmloMKHbQBDqgQ_AUIBygC)

~~~
CalRobert
We put 25mph signs and crosswalks across ridiculously wide streets that
encourage people to do 40+mph and wonder why so many people die.

Of course, auto safety standards that worry only about the occupants of the
vehicle, and not whoever they hit, don't help either.

------
mrfijal
article is written in absolutes (talking about public transit and traffic in
general) but happily ignores the fact that there is a world outside of
america. maybe looking at places that are better commute-wise than sf despite
being a lot poorer would be a start?

~~~
Mikeb85
Of course. Because no one likes to mention that there are countries with far
better infrastructure, free education and health care, better quality of life
thanks to higher taxes.

Anything that suggests higher taxes are necessary seems to get ignored in the
US.

------
pklausler
Nearly perfect for me are (1) a city with great light rail, and (2) a Brompton
folding bicycle for the first & last miles. I realize that this combination
isn't available to all, but it's awesome.

~~~
pnut
Counting the days until my b-spoke Brompton arrives.

Folding bicycle is a life changer.

~~~
CalRobert
Congratulations on a whole new world of convenient transport!

------
marknutter
We created this wonderful thing called the Internet that allows us to work and
collaborate with each other from anywhere in the world, yet we all still cling
to the silly idea that we need to continue to expand and repair our physical
transit infrastructure so we can all travel two ways every day to sit next to
somebody in some office to... stare at a computer connected to the Internet
for 8 hours. It becomes even more absurd in areas like San Francisco where
there literally isn't even enough housing to fit everyone.

We could solve our transit infrastructure woes overnight with policy. Give a
tax break to companies who have remote workers. Either that or charge people
to use public transportation infrastructure on a supply/demand basis. If more
people use a freeway to get to work, the cost to use it goes up, and if you
don't use it at all, you don't pay a dime. This would force companies who
require their workforce to be physically present to pay higher salaries to
cover the cost of commuting, which may cause them to re-evaluate remote work.

Commuting to and from work really only makes sense if you are interacting with
things you can't take home with you.

And before you jump in and start spreading FUD about remote work, consider
this: if it suddenly became illegal to require employees who could do their
work remotely to come into a physical office every day, would businesses
simply shut down? Or would they figure out a way to make it work? I'm guessing
they would figure out a way to make it work.

~~~
mike_hearn
It's going that way anyway.

I work for a company in London, but I work remotely from Switzerland. Many of
the people who _live_ in the UK but work in the London office only come in a
few days a week because their commute takes a long time, and if there's any
kind of transit disruption at all that automatically means a WFH day.

It's not a big deal. Modern comms tech is really good.

------
trhway
Beside everything else, i can't get a dog or cat on public transit here. Thus
i have to have a car. In Russia, when i wasn't able to afford car, my cat rode
bus, train, subway with me when we had to get him somewhere. Of course, i'd
get a car there too the moment i could afford it, yet public transit was a
feasible alternative when i didn't have a car.

~~~
rsync
"i can't get a dog or cat on public transit here."

 _Thank God._

~~~
trhway
it is hard to understand that knee-jerk reaction to animals in US ( personally
i think it is rooted in basic Puritan habit of blaming somebody else
[government, immigrants, regulations, dogs, ...] for your own problems). I
understand that Russia isn't a good example of civilized society. Well, in
France you can take your dog or cat into any restaurant, cafe, bar, etc ...
pretty much everywhere. The public and personal health situation in France is
among the best in the world. Sanitary rules in US prohibiting dogs is just
red-herring.

~~~
Armisael16
I look at it as choosing to ban animals over choosing to ban humans with
allergies.

~~~
trhway
Do you seriously mean that France thus banned humans with allergies? It is
false dichotomy. Completely fits pattern of blaming somebody else.

To the comment below:

"but allowing animals that spread dander everywhere makes the environment
hazardous to anyone with serious pet allergies."

unfounded BS (sounds very similar to industrial bread producers propaganda 100
years ago about those dirty immigrants touching your bread with their dirty
hands in their dirty bakeries). Until it is a sterile OR, the surrounding
environment is full of living matter. Dog or cat in a cafe doesn't change the
situation. Or do you seriously mean that France doesn't care about such
dangerous hazard to people's health?

~~~
rsync
(parent here)

I have no allergies at all. I was not thinking of allergies at all when I
expressed my gratitude that your "dog or cat" is not allowed on public
transportation in the US.

You shouldn't bring cats and dogs onto public transportation because it's
rude, immodest and impositional. I have the same objective to your bringing a
cat on the train as I do to your boarding the train without pants on.

Grow up.

~~~
CalRobert
You shouldn't bring _children_ onto public transportation because it's rude,
immodest and impositional. I have the same objective to your bringing a
_small, poorly trained animal_ on the train as I do to your boarding the train
without pants on.

FTFY.

~~~
trhway
Unfortunately, even the pretty unhealthy and disturbing content of the
"modesty" standards of those types like the parent isn't the biggest problem
here. After all, people do have different opinions. Education, exposition to
facts and reasonable discussion are known tools in dealing with it in normal
case.

The biggest problem though is the underlying egocentric worldview of the likes
of the parent that the other people do something, like in this particular case
bring a dog or a cat on a public transit, with the specific goal of offending
those "modesty" standards. That immediately makes them feel offended and under
attack. It doesn't cross their mind that a dog or especially cat owner would
take the dog or cat on public transit with just the goal of getting to some
destination (especially when the public transit is the only realistically
feasible option in the given situation). It is the same situation like with
same-sex marriage - people marry same sex partners because of love or
taxes/finances/etc., and not because of the goal to destroy the "marriage must
be heterosexual" standard of and thus offend the "modesty"/"values" types.
Such deep-gut egocentric worldview - people is out there to get me - naturally
drives the aggressiveness with which they attempt to impose their "modesty"
standards upon the others and makes the things like education/enlightenment,
reasonable discourse, exposition to facts, etc. pretty ineffective,
unfortunately.

------
thatfrenchguy
Let's not forget that BART also made bad engineering choices, like non-
standard tracks and trains that probably cost a lot of taxpayer money...

~~~
samtho
BART is the only transit system in North America that uses the Indian gauge.
The wider gauge also contributes to the noise it generates and the wear on the
track around turns.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Why should the wider gauge do either?

Noise: It's just steel wheels rolling on steel rails. Why should the distance
between the rails change the amount of noise it generates?

Wear on the track: Presuming that the turns aren't too tight a radius (which
may be larger for the larger gauge), and the superelevation is correct (which
probably has to be larger for the larger gauge), why should wider track mean
greater wear on curves?

------
merraksh
_The money that funds mass transit [...] comes from a mix of four sources:
[...] On the federal side, most of that money comes from the federal gas tax:
18.4 cents on a gallon of regular gas 24.3 cents on the gallon for diesel,
[...] 19 percent going to mass transit. That’s right—mass transit depends on
people driving cars for a significant portion of its federal funding._

I don't find this counterintuitive: the more people use their car, the more
the mass transit system is strengthened and more capable to ease car traffic.
Maybe it's far fetched, but it's like tax on cigarettes to finance lung cancer
research.

------
pdonis
I find it interesting that the article points out that neither mass transit
riders nor automobile drivers pay the full cost of their trips. Yet it never
asks the obvious question: couldn't that be the main reason why both forms of
transportation are inefficient?

~~~
twoodfin
There's a difference though: If it were politically feasible, a marginally
higher gas tax could fund all road construction & maintenance. People might
drive a little less, but the system wouldn't go into a death spiral.

If mass transit riders had to fund the system purely through user fees, the
result for most systems would be a collapse, as fewer riders would require
higher prices leading to fewer riders...

~~~
CalRobert
At least in the US, the gas tax would need to be substantially higher.

If we accounted for the externalities (dead people hit by cars, mostly, and
perhaps the potential collapse of human civilization as we render much of the
planet uninhabitable) the gas tax would rise even more.

If anyone asks I'll dig up the math because citation is important (and I'm not
sure I did it right years ago), but I remember doing some calculation a while
back that we could pay to remove the carbon emitted by gasoline with a tax
that made it around $15 a gallon. That doesn't seem bad, really. Perfectly
happy societies function with $8-$11 a gallon gas, and not destroying
civilization seems worth it.

Edit - though I realize that by the latter argument, reducing the population
is, in a horribly macabre way, a positive externality. It's not one I support,
though.

~~~
pdonis
_> perhaps the potential collapse of human civilization as we render much of
the planet uninhabitable_

The problem with trying to base taxes on something like this is that you would
have to be really, really sure this consequence was unavoidable. I certainly
am not convinced that climate science is accurate enough to support such a
claim (or economics, for that matter, since part of the claim is really about
the economics of adaptation to climate change vs. mitigation of climate
change).

~~~
CalRobert
"you would have to be really, really sure this consequence was unavoidable"

Why? Wouldn't we actually need to be really, really sure this consequence was
extremely unlikely? If an asteroid had only a 50/50 chance of hitting Earth
would we be wise to disregard it?

~~~
pdonis
_> Wouldn't we actually need to be really, really sure this consequence was
extremely unlikely?_

No, because that would imply a level of predictive power that we do not have
in climate science and economics. Basically, with the accuracy of prediction
we currently have in those fields, it is impossible to be sure that the impact
of climate change will be extremely unlikely to cause severe disruption of our
civilization. And the key point is that that is true _regardless_ of whether
or not we spend trillions of dollars on trying to mitigate climate change.

So the only real choice we have is adaptation; any resources we spend on
getting better at adapting to climate change will at least move us in a
positive direction, whereas we can't be sure of that with regard to resources
spent on attempts at mitigation. In order for adaptation to not be a rational
response, we would have to be so sure that climate change _was_ going to cause
severe disruption that it was worth trying to mitigate the change even though
we can't predict what specific actions would do that. In other words, we would
have to be so desperate that it was worth trying whatever mitigations we could
think of without even trying to predict their effects. Climate change
alarmists would like us all to believe that we _are_ that desperate, but the
case for that does not stand up to scrutiny.

 _> If an asteroid had only a 50/50 chance of hitting Earth would we be wise
to disregard it?_

If an asteroid had a 50/50 chance of hitting the Earth, we would be able to
predict that specific actions we could take could reduce that probability to
something negligible, because we have very accurate predictive power with
regard to the orbits of astronomical bodies, at least on the relevant
timescales (years to decades). Given that, of course we would not be wise to
disregard the prediction.

But, as above, that argument does not apply to the climate, because we can't
predict the effects of any specific actions well enough to know how, or even
if, they will reduce the probability of a severe disruption to our
civilization.

------
sna1l
The fact that we don't have a couple operators instead of a driver for each
individual train on BART is beyond me. Look at all the private companies
(Magic Bus, etc) that are sprouting up because of how terrible our public
transportation is.

BART essentially holds a monopoly on our transport. I believe their contract
states even during a strike, new drivers have to be trained for 6 months
before they are allowed to drive BART trains. There is absolutely no way that
it takes 6 months to learn how to drive an AUTOMATED train. There should be
public bids submitted from private companies to run on these railways, which
would lead to better service and lower costs.

------
blizkreeg
I read someplace that a large part of the budget that is allocated to local
government agencies in SF goes to pay pensions and very generous benefits of
its employees. How true is that?

------
Spooky23
Public transit sucks because the quality of governance has corkscrewed down as
the media gets weaker and dumber. This is literally the best time in history
to be an inept and/or corrupt politician -- nobody is watching.

Roads suck because capital is easy to come by, so real estate squatters
control central business districts. It's cheaper/easier/more convenient to
build commercial space in he burbs.

------
pdq
The solution in the future will be driverless cars, shared driverless vans,
etc. These should improve overall commute times, since there will be fewer
accidents and denser transportation. Also people will be able to spend their
commute time reading books/news, doing work, watching videos, or other
recreation, rather than driving the car.

~~~
darkr
Sure, I mean if you want a WALL-E vision of the future. Personally I'd prefer
a Netherlands/Denmark present day kind of future, where people live within
5-10 miles of their place of work and cycle or walk. Less apathetic fat people
and psychotic auto-pilots.

~~~
continuational
I go by bike from west to east Copenhagen every day, a 25 minute ride, and
it's awesome. I wouldn't trade it for any perk.

~~~
ams6110
What do you do when it's raining or snowing? What do you do when it's hot, can
you shower at work?

~~~
Symbiote
I think this is like asking a Texan how they cope with rain (turn the wipers
on) or heat (turn the A/C on). Imagine getting the same puzzled look.

Rain/snow: wear a coat, optionally overtrousers.

Hot: go slower if you normally race in, and it doesn't get much above 20
degrees anyway.

------
known
Provide free public transportation.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)

------
Hermel
More human life-years get wasted every day in Europe's traffic jams than we
lost in the Brussels attacks. Maybe we should rethink our priorities.

------
coldtea
> _Public Transit Is Worse_

Depends on the country. In some places it is excellent.

------
cowardlydragon
Power assisted bicycles that take minimum effort to go 20mph would be amazing

------
stevewilhelm
> In fact, planners and economists call road building “induced demand” because
> it encourages people to hop into their cars instead of walking or taking
> mass transit.

In the Bay Area, building transit infrastructure is expensive and time
consuming.

Case in point: a five mile extension including one new train station of an
existing BART line costs $890 million and took seven years to build. [1] The
resulting extension is expected to increase in ridership by 5000 to 7000 daily
trips in the next decade. [2]

There are currently 400,000 daily automobile trips from East Bay to and from
Santa Clara County. [2]

[1]
[http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx](http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx)
[2]
[http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx/chronology](http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/wsx/chronology)

