Comments on: Fighting Ourselves Over Funding for Intracity Versus Intercity Transportation

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:12:23 +0000

“Downtown to downtown passengers are likely to be business persons who should use Telepresence”

good luck trying to make a sales call via video conference. Video conference is also poorly suited for:
1) large transactions (anything from buying a car to buying a company)
2) Feedback driven design
3) Innovation

An entry level telepresence setup goes for about $200k so reliance upon it also ends up seriously handicapping small business and entrepreneurship.

By: Adirondacker12800

Adirondacker12800 — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:09:36 +0000

Downtown besides having lots of destinations, is also the place where the local mass transit goes. So if you want to go to the neighborhood ten blocks outside of downtown there will be a bus. Or if there is no bus the cab ride from the downtown train station is much shorter and cheaper than the cab ride from the airport.
Passengers destined for the suburbs can get off the train at the suburban station.

By: jerzy

jerzy — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 21:33:35 +0000

Only a small portion of travel between cities is “downtown to downtown”. If one spends huge amounts of money to blast their way into a metro area to reach the downtown (probably partially underground, at least)what do the passengers do to get to their desired destination. If the HSR advocates would agree that the HSR stations (very few of them to get decent average speeds) be built not in downtowns but somewhere else where there is lots of space to run a route, the cost of doing so would be substantially less. Then, what to do in getting from the outlying station to the desired destination? For some, it would be nearby, for other it would involve a longer trip.
Perhaps no longer that the passenger who gets off at a downtown station and needs to reach a suburban or exurban location. Downtown to downtown passengers are likely to be business persons who should use Telepresence and get their recreation where they live. As a society, we don’t need to subsidize them which letting the masses suffer with the terrible mobility that they experience daily with little or no choice in the matter

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:47:53 +0000

Jerzy, I’m not sure why you’re using the fact that cities have congestion as a way of arguing against me. I’m not saying that intraurban travel should be car-based; I’m saying that based on passenger volume metrics, investing a large fraction of transit spending in HSR is good policy. (Even the problem of last mile can be mitigated – many US cities already have commuter rail that’s good at getting people from where they live to the downtown train station, if not so good at getting them to their jobs.)

By: jerzy

jerzy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:39:14 +0000

I wonder if Alon has noticed the difference between the geography and size and urban densities in Japan, as compared to the US?
The worst congestion and negative impacts of autos are, by far, within cities and metropolitan regions. They are in great need of
solutions that can begin to reduce their impacts (not more rail transit). More and more autos, however green, are not the answer either. Seems there is a need for innovation as described so well in the publication entitled Tomorrow’s Transportation. Google it to see what it recommends.

By: Miranda

Miranda — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:33:01 +0000

That re-mix on the St. Louis Urban Workshop is priceless!
http://www.stlurbanworkshop.com/2009/08/newsweeks-high-speed-boondoggle-by.html

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:12:21 +0000

In terms of the number of passengers, intraurban travel has much greater volume than interurban travel. However, this is not necessarily true in terms of passenger-km or revenue. For JR East, whose commuter network is the world’s largest, the Shinkansen accounts for 2% of the total number of passengers, 15% of the total number of passenger-km, and 27% of the revenues. For JR West, the numbers are 3.5%, 29%, and 44%.

By: jerzy

jerzy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:46:22 +0000

Another call for “balance” without defining the current situation.
Intraurban travel is probably at least 100 times greater than interurban travel, in volume. So if funds are to be allocated between them, what would “balance” look like? And, what do you do about the first and last mile problem, since only a few people want a destination in the historic downtown and often want to leave from
“home”. Studies of air travellers have shown, over and over, again that only a small fraction of such travellers have an origin or destination in a historic downtown. That’s one reason that cities that have a rail connection between downtown and the airport tend t o have very little patronage, other than a few airport workers. If you must have a railroad, choose a modern one that can service multiple origins and destinations. CyberTran is an example: http://www.cybertran.com

By: TransitCommuter

TransitCommuter — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:56:02 +0000

@Sean “And the train is much faster and can hold WAY more people. HSR> intercity bus”

However when you compare the price of a bus ticket with that on the new high speed rail, I guarantee the bus will be much cheaper. It really depends if people will be willing to pay more for comfort and time saved by taking the HSR. In the current economy, most would opt for the bus.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:54:02 +0000

And as someone else noted, cars are only “fast” for short trips if there’s no congestion. In rush hour, cars are intensely slow for short trips and can often be beat by walking….

So due to comfort and speed, for some 0-200 mile trips, trains win out over all cars. Not for all such trips, but definitely for some of them.