I'm amazed by people's ability to rationalize why it's okay to continue commuting long distances and driving cars in general, despite the toxic smog that gets deadlier every year.
Instead of making those hard changes like using public transit or living locally, I guess everyone is waiting for Elon Musk to save the world with his magic-mobiles.
Go ahead, downvote me for telling the truth. I got karma to spare.
Have you seen the public transportation in Utah? We got a commuter rail train in 2002 for the olympics, which was pretty much limited to a small area in downtown Salt Lake, and then a straight line down through sandy. Then a few years ago we got Front Runner, which is a somewhat fast commuter train between Ogden and salt lake, but which costs somewhere around $250/month last time I checked.
Buses are OK, about as good of a system as you would expect buses to be, but if you are looking to go from where I live to salt lake you are probably looking at an hour to an hour and a half, which seems pretty good when you consider that it takes 45 minutes - 60 minutes on Front Runner (30 miles).
A monthly premium pass (for riding buses, Trax, and FrontRunner) is only $190 per month, which seems fairly reasonable.
If you are commuting to/from downtown SLC, public transit is actually somewhat reasonable - I live in the southwest end of the valley and it is only maybe 50 minutes vs 35 to drive in ideal conditions. The bigger problems are:
1) The trains don't run nearly often enough. If you happen to miss one or need to go at a non-peak time, it is going to be really inconvenient.
2) Not only does much of our population live in suburbs, a large amount of jobs are located outside of downtown, too. In that case, a 20 minute commute by car can easily be a 1.5 - 2 hour public transit commute - I can drive to work in about 25 minutes, but according to UTA, the most optimal route by bus/Trax would take 1:30.
The way we've situated things here is pretty hostile to mass transit, but I'm glad we're at least making slow progress.
I'm just curious if you're aware how much money beyond that 250 a month is subsidized by federal money? You seem to imply that the cost is outrageous to expect people to pay, and I'd agree, yet the irony is that few things are as insanely subsidized as FrontRunner and TRAX (Utah's light rail system). TRAX has a per rider subsidy, if you factor in construction cost and maintenance, of 6-7 dollars. So if the people were actually paying full price for just ridding the light rail they'd be dishing out about 22 dollars for a two way trip. If they were smart they'd never have built light rail, but rather have taken that same money and quadrupled the whole bus system in Utah to actually give us a transit system that was actually responsive to the transit needs of our population. They would have moved more people, displaced more cars, and not have an absurdly 'tightly coupled' infrastructure where a single technological failure shuts down entire valley transit lines. But people see electrical trains, feel and see a smooth ride that can accelerate really fast and, to the best of their discernment isn't 'dirty'. And since they're protected from the real cost of the system they have illusions about it's capacity to cure traffic woes and save the planet. Never mind that when Utah was growing full tilt the number of new cars on it's roads replaced what TRAX's entire network managed to replace after hundreds of millions of dollars of investment.
Here's another interesting fact. When I looked into Front Runner's costs (which relative to other faster trains is relatively inexpensive) and did the math to spread it over the population for whom it was moving their commute off the road and found that the costs equated to over 50,000 dollars per rider. That's to say that we could have bought everyone a nice hybrid and we would have done likely a better job for the environment, for less money, and not have had to extend a rather limited and fragile infrastructure.
Trains make no sense, not even in Japan nor Europe. Look at the actual numbers, whether it's the fiscal costs or the total environmental costs of the system and it's support systems compared to their equivalents in a trainless world.
Not even in Japan or Europe? Have you really done the math, or are you extrapolating from a single data point? The costs of building rails and running a train are called fixed costs...cost per rider is inverse to the number of riders. That means that with higher ridership, cost per person decreases.
Don't believe me? The Calgary CTrain has costs not much different than TRAX. Operating costs, including depreciation, are $0.30 per rider...making the system profitable enough to subsidize the more suburban bus system. Why? Because they have 5x the ridership.
I'm saying that $190 is a decent amount of money for a lot of people along the wasatch front, especially when comparing it to just driving, ergo why it is likely that you see so many people driving instead of using public transportation which is the response to the root comment.
Indeed. +darrenkopp missed the Mid-Jordan line, the West Valley line (both currently operational), the airport line (opening in April) and the Draper line (also opening in 2013). These are mostly east-west lines. Also not included is the Sugar House street car line.
SLC mayor Ralph Becker says, "by the end of 2013, we will have witnessed the largest expansion of an urban rail system in the nation." [1]
"70 miles in 7 years" seems pretty ambitious to me. [2]
It is. The only cross line is up 4th South. I mentioned there's a fairly long straight line down through sandy, but stations are more sparse, and misses the majority of salt lake.
True that the Wasatch valley isn't sufficiently dense enough for public transit to be very effective, but they sure are trying! If you live in SLC and commute to the U, you are good to go, and I hear the airport line will be open (finally) soon enough, but I haven't been back in 7+ years.
The valley really needs to build up some density to make transit really work, but its difficult with all that land available + a conservative Republican state government (along with the people who vote for that government).
If you're looking to go to SLC frequently, perhaps living so far away is part of the problem thoughtcriminal is speaking of. Nothing on you personally, this is a society-wide problem.
That's the problem: I don't go to SLC very often. I work in Centerville which is 15 miles away from my house. The inversion does not affect just Salt Lake; it affects the entire Wasatch Front.
All the pollution from the entire area just aggregates into a massive inversion.
Except the air in most places has been getting cleaner, even with more vehicles on the road. First Stage smog alerts on Los Angeles, for example, used to be something that happened every few days. Now, they happen at most every few years. Yes, there is work to be done, but your mix of ignorance and outright lies doesn't help. At all.
This hasn't been true for almost a decade now...and even before then, all it took was a few cars (3-4) taken off the road for the bus to come out ahead.
What are you talking about? The idea is to reduce the total number of cars by getting everyone using public transit. One bus might make twice as much soot as a car, but the bus can bring a lot more than two cars off the road if people ride the bus.
Have you been reading research papers from the 1950's? If you get on any bus anywhere in the US, you are virtually guaranteed that the bus is less than 10 years old. The average replacement time for Municipal buses is 7 years...10 years with complete engine replacement.
I guess you are not as secure in your beliefs as you thought if you need to resort to swearing. You thought buses are modern and clean, and when you discover different you swear?
Diesel is very polluting compared to gasoline and I hate it. And stop/start diesel is the worst. So despite its great reputation public buses are not the automatic win they are made out to be.
They aren't beliefs. And yes, I have a tendency to curse when people advocate for very stupid policies using ideas that can be refuted in less than 5 minutes on Google.
Buses help with traffic and CO2, they do not help with soot. And the city in this article is having trouble with soot.
It would be wonderful if all buses were LNG, then there'd be little drawbacks. But right now they aren't, and because LNG is more expensive cities are buying diesel instead.
PS. In general cursing means you acknowledge your position is incorrect but you wish to use bluster to defend it anyway. It makes little difference if you don't intend this meaning - this is the meaning that is transmitted.
In general, being wrong makes you wrong. It makes you more wrong when you tell someone who is right that they are wrong. Soot per passenger hasn't been anywhere near car levels for over a decade. You have to go back past the 1990s to find buses that fare worse than cars on per passenger soot emissions. In 2007, diesel soot emissions were regulated to similar standards as gasoline vehicles. Stop being wrong if you want to be right.
As long as we are comparing apples to grenades, a 20 yro bus with hardly any emissions equipment produces about 200 times soot as a new car with modern emissions. Its one problem we are dealing with in Beijing, that some of the older buses are so utterly primitive that they do more harm than good. Thankfully, these are going away.
Beijing is quickly moving to battery-drawn electric buses (not to mention traditional electric trolley buses). LNG is another solution, but for some reason, electric is catching on here (maybe b/c a lack of natural gas when compared to the states?)
I'm amazed by people's stupidity in continuing to advocate solutions that just don't work. And hopeful for the future of electric and hybrid cars, which will do a lot to reduce this problem. Although, judging from the comments, it sounds like a pretty large amount of the problem has nothing to do with commuters.
Instead of making those hard changes like using public transit or living locally, I guess everyone is waiting for Elon Musk to save the world with his magic-mobiles.
Go ahead, downvote me for telling the truth. I got karma to spare.