Yes, Yes, Yes.
Build the trains to macth the freeway traffic patterns.
You take the slawson cutoff until you get to the fork in the road, then go to the next gas station and ask “Where the hell am I”
I haven’t worked out all the numbers exactly but I’m pretty sure that once we have a mass transit system in place, between low gas prices and the interest on that $2 billion, everyone will end up being rich. And own a complementary set of noise-canceling headphones.
The 1 year increased tax on fuel is only to bootstrap the project for 10 years. After that it becomes a perpetual motion machine.
Yes it does OPEC doesn’t have to sell US one more drop of oil, our debt to them is like a perpetual motion machine. They can live off of the interest that we pay each year alone .
What is retiring on an annuity. It provides a constant income year after year without eating into the investment. Or the LOTTO is the same way. It is perpetual motion. No work for dollars out.
But trains don’t travel like cars do, and so the traffic patterns can’t match. Trains are great for moving large numbers of people from point A to point B at the same time. Cars are great for moving smaller numbers of people from points c, d, e, f, g, h, q, x, and z to 16 zillion other places. Trains certainly make some sense, but people drive cars for a dozen different reasons. You can’t expect a single commuting solution to work for everyone.
I’m just waiting to hear about building these new rail lines. It sounds quite a lot like building a bypass:*“Come off it, Mr Dent,”, he said, “you can’t win you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.” He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn’t do it.
Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.
“I’m game,” he said, “we’ll see who rusts first.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it,” said Mr Prosser gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, “this bypass has got to be built and it’s going to be built!”
“First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, “why’s it going to be built?”
Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again.
“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.”*The free booze, and noise-canceling iPod headphones sounds pretty cool, though.
Stranger
A different color every day, to match my shirt?
They can be. Go out and watch the metro freeways during rush hour. You will see that people take the same route at the same time day after f…king day.
Now visualize hitching together those cars withing 10 miles of one another (10 minutes at 60MPH) on the freeway that end up within lets say a 10 mile radius of one another. You will have trains of 10, 20, 30 cars all going to the same place.
Now the final leg requires that employers provide shuttle service to/from the train station.
The commuters will work out the details of their part of the solution if the service is free and they save $4.5 billion on fuel each year (St. Louis typical).
So you’re advocating that the bus system be dismantled? 'Cause in Denver (which I have familiarity with), the light rail created very small parking spaces at the stations in an attempt to force riders to take the bus at both end of the train.
After light rail came down south there, I investigated it. I would have had to walk about five minutes to the bus, wait at the station for the train, either a fifteen minute walk (no sidewalks!) or a thirty minute bus ride, then a one minute walk to work. The evening connections were worse.
So by taking mass transit, I would have had a 1 1/2 hour commute (pushing 2 in the evening), opposed to a twenty minute drive. Without the ability to stop and throw a shitload of groceries in the trunk.
Which is something else you’re forgetting: services are not in walking distance anymore. In Denver I didn’t have a grocery store (or a liquor store, or a cigarette store, or a dry cleaner, and only one decent restaurant (breakfast place) in walking distance. Had I taken mass transit, after a two hour trip home; I’ve got to get in the car to go shopping, run errands, or eat out if I want to, then by the time I’m settled in at home, it’s fucking midnight.
I’ve said it, and someone else has.
Telecomute.
Not everyone can do it. But many can. Just one day a week would make a difference.
Certainly, I agree. I think it’s a great idea. But I think telecommuting would take a far greater change in the American Business Management mindset than even the OP’s scattered ideas.
Hadn’t considered it in initial design but according to what I read somewhere they are less efficient than private vehicles on a per passenger mile bases. And if true phase them out.
Remember the existing mass transit systems have all been an experiment to satisfy some environmentalist/political scientist future Utopian dream. As a result their was little interest by the consumer resulting in piecemeal/token funding wioth little or no synergy in the design. In case of Denver extension of light rail and the upgrade of I25 worked well and reduced cost.
We are talking new commuter trains like we used to talk about interstates, we claim imminent domain to integrate the personal vehicle with the commuter train buying property as needed for parking and stations and rights of way. All funding is upfront from fuel taxes to do it right and inexpensively with economies of scale. In case of Denver buy and build a parking lot that works at that terminus with the first dollar.
Didn’t forget just did not elucidate, The way metro’s are laid out these days in cookie cutter fashion with retail all along the freeway routes and when the railway system uses most of the same right of way as the freeway which it is intended to replace then your last leg home is just like it is now. When trains are used to replace commuter traffic on metro highways then those trains can now use those traffic lanes which have become superfluous.
As we pursue this project always keep your eye on the prize, $4.5 billion payback per year of fuel savings for the St. Louis example design.
You mean the commuters will just have to cope? Brilliant! 
Telecommute has been fully implemented and run its course it is now called ‘out sourcing’.
I used mass transit to get to and from work for 24 straight years.
Now I’m unemployed.
Somehow, I was hoping that all the good karma I’d built over the years would pay off somehow, but so far nada…
see post 112
OK, I get that point. You should get the point that in my commute I never get on a freeway.
So I get off the train at Nine Mile Station, work my way through the parking lot and across the street to the King Soopers (through their parking lot), do my shopping, cross the parking lot and street to the bus station, stand on the bus with my groceries 'cause all the seats are taken up by people who caught the bus at the train station, get off at Mississippi to buy my smokes and a bottle of wine, get back on the bus for one LONG block, or walk extra to home.
You’ve just added close to two hours to an already close to two hour trip. Then I decide that I’d like to go to La Cueva for dinner. By the time I work my way there, they’re closed.
This would be fine except for the fact that you’re completely wrong. Certainly, some people commute to the city center, but in the greater Boston area where I live there are people working pretty much everywhere within a 30 mile circle of downtown. We have two circumferential highways, each with major industrial parks at every exit. People are coming from suburban towns in every direction.
Boston already has a pretty major commuter rail and subway system. But many people don’t like to give up the freedom that cars allow. They like the flexibility to change plans when they want, to run errands, to shop and transport what they buy each day. Many use the subway and commuter rail, but many don’t. Attempting to force people to do so, and to pay an outrageous price to do so, won’t work no matter how many times you say it.
Help me! Help me!The future is all about teleportation. The Weekly Reader said in an article in the early 1950s that someday it would be possible. We would be instantly transported “out into the streets of Calcutta” it said.* That was in the same article about some magical oven that would cook a baked potato in just a few minutes.
“It’ll never fly, Orville!”
Welcome to the Straight Dope, focusonz. Have fun.
My eight year old car has about 25,000 miles on it. The secret? Encourage agoraphobia!
*Anyone hearing Vincent Price in falsetto voice saying, “Help me! Help me!”?
Don’t forget the oral sex. (Modified from “blowjobs” for equal opportunity observance.)