But that is a “dense” system. You’ve got the huge city at the center, with the network of local lines. Then the long commuter lines (traveling faster and making fewer stops) connect other dense nodes to the big one. The raw distance between station stops is less important than the total number of stations and the density clustered around each one.
Unless I’m completely misunderstanding what Chicago’s rail network looks like. I’ve hardly been there.
Chicago has always had a densely built up CBD, and increasingly a densely populated core. The suburbs, however, are as thinly populated as you’ll find anywhere in the country. There are some older railroad suburbs that were built around the commuter stops, some of which have small downtowns, and higher residential densities than newer suburbs accessible only by car. However, with the exception possibly of Evanston, none of them would be considered dense by city standards. People drive or get driven to the train stations. My point is that while commuter rail helps support a dense center, it’s not an important driver of urban form on the periphery.
I’m pretty much a lapsed SDMB member – I hardly ever come around any more – but I wanted to butt in here and say that this is one of the most productive and informative threads I’ve seen in a long time. Fascinating stuff. Kudos to all participants.
RR
In my opinion this is a fantasy. No question you could save a ton of money and provide terrific service if you could run a mass transit system without human operators, as though it were an elevator bank. However, except for airport shuttles and such, I don’t see it happening in my lifetime. There are too many variables, and too much to go wrong.
I may not have been clear. I’m not proposing a Skynet type scenario. There will still be men in the loop. They will just be in the central control rather than in the train. We just need to have multiple control paths, so the guys in the control room can take over the train if something unexpected happens. Under normal conditions the automated trains will be much safer, since the automation can react faster and doesn’t get distracted sending text messages to his girlfriend or whatever.
As I’ve said before, I don’t expect the United States to lead in this technology, since the lawyers will hamstring our ability to deploy it. We will probably see it in the far East first.
One never knows, but I remain skeptical that what you describe is practical except in limited circumstances. My concern is not the lawyers but safety.
London has been using automated trains since the 1960s, although they still have one driver in the cab to push the “Start” button.
Right, automated train control is common. But there’s still an operator in the cab, and he or she isn’t there just because of featherbedding or lawyers.
I am no fan of mass transit personally (i am an American, hence I love my car). However, the logic employed in comparing mass transit to cars is unsettling.
The entire article correctly compared apples to apples by converting all forms of transport into BTUs. However, Cecil calculates these using average ridership of transit systems. The nature of mass transit vs. the use of cars and the decision made by consumers between these two options requires us to look at the problem differently.
This should be viewed in terms of the incremental increase of an individual commuter’s contribution to energy usage when selecting between a car and mass transit. Assuming both options are available:
It is this difference between these two choices actually matters, not the average BTU’s per passenger calculated. Particularly in cities with under-utilized systems, the incremental BTU usage attributed to jumping onto a scheduled train would most likely be small in relation to the 5,500 used in a car. Most municipalities have a base requirement for transit availability, so many of these trains will run regardless of the level of ridership. We can expand on the downsides of mass transit by discussing how increased ridership eventually leads to more train and bus routes, but that would be the only potential downside when it comes to energy usage.
I think Cecil needs to audit some business school classes to freshen up on economic concepts of marginal effects and opportunity costs between individual choices.
I suspect Cecil is fully aware of your point (I also pointed out earlier in the thread that the need for mass transit to run outside of peak hours really hampers it).
But the question was “Is mass transit an energy loser compared to driving a car?” I think it’s fair to include the “wasted” (sort of) energy of under-utilized transit vehicles into that calculation.
Having worked with the Master on this column, I’m sure he’d acknowledge that what you say is trivially true - the marginal energy cost of one additional transit user is small compared to firing up a car. However, the relevant consideration isn’t whether it makes sense for you, personally, to ride transit, but rather whether transit is worth the public investment required given the actual number of riders.
Fair enough. As stated in the previous posts, energy efficiency per passenger is not the primary goal of public transit systems. Rather, it is availability of inexpensive transport that is the top priority.
I just wish my man Cecil would have touched on this decision point concept, lest readers get the impression that a person switching to a car would somehow not have any impact on their contribution to total energy usage. It will, in fact, have a large impact as the individual makes this choice.
Inexpensive mass transport - a crucial clarification, I’m sure you’ll agree.
We might have touched on any number of things, but our chief goal was to make the point that transit isn’t the sure road to energy independence, sustainable use of resources, and so on that many believe it to be - and I say this as someone who lives in a big city and rides transit often. Transportation choices at all levels need to be made more shrewdly than they often are.
I think a more accurate way to state it is that the stated purpose of a public transit system is to provide inexpensive transport.
The light rail system they are building for Orlando could have provided transportation for the same number of people more cheaply if they had given each person their own Prius. Meanwhile, we have a totally inadequate bus system that could have been expanded for a lot less money.
In reality, we have a raid on Federal, State and Local funds by people who have a financial interest in building the rail system.