Well, read the articles on this topic in the San Francisco Chronicle
and you'll have a very good idea of what the future will be. No cars, a
great environment. David Suzuki said so himself.
"Jack May" wrote in message
news:o5WdnVTfa7Tzmj_fRVn-oA@comcast.com...
>
>
> "David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
> news:1117905837.a4c5047dd67088fcee36e629def10cfe@teranews...
>> On 6/4/2005 10:07 AM Jack May spake thus:
>>
>>> "Joey Jolley" wrote in message
>>> news:ZZjoe.6$Wn6.3999@news.uswest.net...
>
>>
>> Only in a topsy-turvy Reagan/Bush world where war=peace,
>> ketchup=vegetable, and trees cause pollution.
>
> It is economic, not politics. Just to make it easy for you, let us
> assume that trains take no energy to run and produce no pollution, but it
> takes money to buy and run a train.
>
> There is only a limited amount of available for transit and a limited
> amount of taxes that people will support for funding transportation. If
> you think there is unlimited money, I would like to hear the reason.
>
> Rail cost about a million dollars to get one person out of their car and
> 10K to 20K to support the running of the rail for that new rider. For
> example BART to San Jose is expected by VTA to attract 5.7K new riders.
> It is probably a lot less than that.
>
> Present estimates for BART to San Jose is 4B. Every body knows that
> overruns will push it at least into the 5 to 6B range and probably more.
> That is about a million dollars per new rider and a lot of those new
> riders will not just come out of cars because they counts some transfers
> from other transit as new riders.
>
> The operating cost of new rider is $32 per trip times two trips per day
> (low figure) for 5 days per week or over $16K per year. Even as bad as
> BART to San Jose is, I have calculated similar numbers for other systems
> over the last several years.
>
> That money could have been used instead to reduce congestion by building
> infrastructure to remove all stop lights on all expressway in Santa Clara
> County ($2.5B), have accidents and stalls moved from the freeways in less
> than 6 minutes as in Houston & Seattle, or put in ramp metering on all
> ramps.
>
> Everyone of those approaches would reduce congestion hundreds to thousands
> of times more than BART to San Jose for a lot less money per added
> capacity per person. So for each person you get out of a car with
> transit is going to produce far more congestion than spending the money
> directly on reducing congestion by putting the money into roads.
>
> The net result is that there will be far more pollution, fuel consumption,
> and CO2 produced by spending money on just getting people out of their
> car. Even though our example pollution free, fuel free train produces far
> more pollution and fuel consumption indirectly by increased road
> congestion caused by the money diverted to transit. That make rail a
> environmental disaster.
>
> BTW, this is not my theory alone. The EPA now concedes in court over and
> over again that not spending money on roads increases congestion which
> increases pollution. There is apparently no way to divert transportation
> funds to transit to get people out of their cars without significantly
> increasing pollution. The exception is if there is no congestion on the
> roads which is certainly not the case now.
>
> Of course this requires rail advocates to keep more than one thought at a
> time in their head (mainly about steel wheels) which makes it very
> difficult for them to understand.
>
>
>
>
>
|