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The Wiggly Wizard posted:Lmao at BART being built through any part of Marin County just lmao. Marin was part of the original BART consortium, but after San Mateo County withdrew, Marin felt they didn't have the tax base to continue. http://www.bart.gov/about/history
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Aug 16, 2015 19:00
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The Wiggly Wizard posted:Lmao at BART being built through any part of Marin County just lmao. quote:Marin was part of the original BART consortium, but after San Mateo County withdrew, Marin felt they didn't have the tax base to continue. http://www.bart.gov/about/history
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Aug 16, 2015 19:11
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Marin was part of the original BART consortium, but after San Mateo County withdrew, Marin felt they didn't have the tax base to continue. http://www.bart.gov/about/history There's a reason you have to pay a surcharge to ride to SFO on BART and it's not just because it's an airport.
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Aug 16, 2015 19:56
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Zachack posted:Once the SMART train is built all we need to do is wait for the earthquake to damage it just enough to kill SMART and be absorbed by BART. That or you could expand the BART to San Rafeal then have a transfer from SMART though a common fare though, but that would require another cross-bay tunnel (probably not going to happen). Coming from Portland, I was surprised to see how little priority Muni trains were given, some at grade crossings don't even have a signal which seems nuts. Even if the Muni system has its limitations since it was basically an old streetcar system that was re-engineered into light rail, but there are some pretty obvious improvements that should happen or should have happened a long time ago. Prop 13 certainly did a number on the Bay Area as a whole though. Property values are some of the highest in the world while pretty much any piece of public infrastructure looks battered/desperate for funding (including roads). It isn't the only problem obviously but it certainly compounds the issue. Side note: Anyone use the new terminal at San Jose recently? They added a new privatized "priority" line for security screening in addition to first/business line cut line. Your suppose to pay a monthly fee for it. Overall it seemed pretty gross especially since they were constantly hocking it at passengers since only 2 x-ray machines were running. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 20:19
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Dr. Killjoy posted:Man I can't wait to experience that tropical storm LA got back in July but on a weekly basis. (For reals though it cleared out the garbage and homeless piss where I work down in Silver Lake That was legit amazing. It felt like I was in Kona. My more traveled brother said it felt like a nicer version of Thailand. Both are better than this devil's rear end in a top hat heat.
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Aug 16, 2015 20:21
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Honestly, I'm pissed there isn't a real ferry system, or at least ferries should cover the east and south bay too.
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Aug 16, 2015 20:47
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The Wiggly Wizard posted:Lmao at BART being built through any part of Marin County just lmao. 
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Aug 16, 2015 20:56
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etalian posted:It was originally intended as commuter rail type system to the Caltrain hence the really long waits outside the city. Here's are some maps for future BART lines that are being studied (which won't get built for 50 years of course): Possible alignment of a second transbay tube, and some lines running through it:   And here are all the possible new lines that could be added:  They're also looking at adding another station on the existing subway in SF, at 30th and Mission. source: http://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/...TED%20FINAL.pdf I guess the current extension to San Jose that's under construction is considered enough for the South Bay though. They're focusing on the core area in SF and Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond...plus the 680 corridor, which is a weird choice before more lines in and around SJ (but not a bad thing at all). Though maybe the idiot NIMBYs keeping San Mateo county forever excluded from BART have something to do with the lack of extra lines in the south.
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Aug 16, 2015 21:46
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So these at-scale renditions are slightly off in terms of including MUNI correctly, but do show just how huge of a service area BART covers: compared to MTA + PATH (as an example):  BART serves a community roughly a third the population of MTA+PATH too. (http://fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/) edit: Rah! posted:guess the current extension to San Jose that's under construction is considered enough for the South Bay though. They're focusing on the core area in SF and Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond...plus the 680 corridor, which is a weird choice before more lines in and around SJ (but not a bad thing at all). Though maybe the idiot NIMBYs keeping San Mateo county forever excluded from BART have something to do with the lack of extra lines in the south. I'm pretty sure the existence of VTA makes BART expansion into Santa Clara County more challenging. VTA is actually building and funding the expansion (http://www.vta.org/bart/), which obviously draws the ire of westward county residents. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 21:59
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You couldn't possibly run BART tracks across the golden gate bridge. Even if Marin embraced BART, the expense of bringing it across the Golden Gate would have to be enormous... there's no way SF would ever agree to defacing the world's most famous bridge, so we're talking about another transbay tube, or I suppose some sort of link via the Richmond bridge (which would also need a major re-engineering to support rail). And of course, we can't ignore the fact that the bottleneck in downtown SF limits the capacity of trains to run through there no matter what. Commute trains run through Embarcadero at maximum capacity for the system, and it's not enough capacity on many commute days. The trains run on some goofy French track gauge, so it's not exactly trivial to replace them with something with higher-capacity. The transbay tunnel isn't tall enough to run double-decker trains a la Caltrain, and the stations aren't long enough to run longer trains either. If you tripled BART's budget it still couldn't afford to just wholesale replace the existing infrastructure. And that means that no matter how much of an about-face we fantasize about, the Bay Area is simply stuck with intermodal transportation. The (possibly) silver lining to that is that it should limit the maximum capacity of San Francisco's businesses to employ people who don't live in San Francisco. No matter how willing people are to endure 2-3 hours of commuting daily, you simply couldn't add (say) 100,000 more jobs in the City and somehow bring in all the people to work in them. Not without expansion of non-BART commute modes into the City, which I suppose could include a huge expansion of ferry capacity, a replacement/upgrade of CalTrain, or both. The second transbay tube idea isn't terrible on its face: it'd remove the bottleneck. But it's still just tacking on more track to a system using technology pushing 50 years old, which is hugely expensive to maintain and upgrade due to the unavailability of standardized equipment to use on it. I suppose it's the best we can hope for, since replacing BART is out of the question, but it's not improving access from Marin at all and that's not going to change. The only long-term solution, even with a new transbay tunnel, is intermodal. Or, when the day comes that BART simply cannot be kept running any more (and that day has to come, whether it's in 20 years or 50 years or whatever), the cost to rip it out and put in something modern is going to be incredible.
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Aug 16, 2015 22:35
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Zachack posted:Once the SMART train is built all we need to do is wait for the earthquake to damage it just enough to kill SMART and be absorbed by BART. I know this is kind of a dark joke but the 1989 earthquake did lead to the Embarcadero Freeway being demolished so natural disasters can be the impetus for drastic infrastructure changes that would otherwise not happen. Once the San Jose, Livermore, and eBART extensions are done I do hope BART stops messing around with suburban expansion and puts all their efforts into building a second Transbay tube. II actually think the funding would be there, there's enough public support for it. The problem is everywhere else. High Speed Rail, Amtrak, maybe even Caltrain would want to get in on the Transbay tube action, which would make it a 4-bore tube. Then you have Muni in SF which has its own territorial ambitions (will Geary rail ever get built?). And that's not even getting into the engineering geology of it. So yeah, we'll all be over 60 years old by the time that second tube is operating for business.
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Aug 16, 2015 22:44
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GG Bridge was originally supposed to be a double decker with a train on it too. Minds blown. Thank God the freedom loving patriots of Belvedere and Tiburon stopped that nonsense!
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Aug 16, 2015 22:45
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A big part of the problem with intermodal is that many in the expensive Peninsula suburbs violently reject any kind of improved railway. They hate high-speed rail. They hate adding additional rails. They hate being delayed by crossing arms. They hate it when trains blow their legally-required whistles.
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Aug 16, 2015 22:51
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Leperflesh posted:And of course, we can't ignore the fact that the bottleneck in downtown SF limits the capacity of trains to run through there no matter what. Commute trains run through Embarcadero at maximum capacity for the system, and it's not enough capacity on many commute days. Which is why a second tube and more lines through downtown SF (as planned), would help expand capacity. Leperflesh posted:The trains run on some goofy French track gauge, It's Indian gauge, which was chosen for supposed stability reasons at high speeds and in windy areas, like crossing the golden gate bridge. There's no such thing as french gauge, unless you're talking about catheters. Leperflesh posted:so it's not exactly trivial to replace them with something with higher-capacity. No one is planning to replace the entire BART system, that would be insane. Leperflesh posted:The transbay tunnel isn't tall enough to run double-decker trains a la Caltrain, and the stations aren't long enough to run longer trains either. Neither of which are necessary to increase capacity...and none of BART's tunnels can run double decker trains. Also, where in the world is there a metro system that's double decker? CalTrain and other heavy commuter rail systems like that are an entirely different beast from a metro system like BART (which runs as a hybrid metro/commuter system, but is a metro system in terms of train design and how it operates within SF, Oakland, and Berkeley). Leperflesh posted:If you tripled BART's budget it still couldn't afford to just wholesale replace the existing infrastructure. And that means that no matter how much of an about-face we fantasize about, the Bay Area is simply stuck with intermodal transportation. Once again no one wants to replace it. All cities have intermodal systems anyways (buses, trains, ferries, etc), it's not like that's a bad thing, and it's unavoidable anyways. Are you suggesting that every bus line in the Bay Area should be replaced with a BART line? Leperflesh posted:The (possibly) silver lining to that is that it should limit the maximum capacity of San Francisco's businesses to employ people who don't live in San Francisco. How exactly would increasing transit access to SF limit the current capacity? Leperflesh posted:No matter how willing people are to endure 2-3 hours of commuting daily, you simply couldn't add (say) 100,000 more jobs in the City and somehow bring in all the people to work in them. Not without expansion of non-BART commute modes into the City, which I suppose could include a huge expansion of ferry capacity, a replacement/upgrade of CalTrain, or both. Expansion of ferry service, trans-bay bus service, and CalTrain upgrades (electrification, more trains, faster headways, an eventual extension to the transbay terminal) are all in the works. Leperflesh posted:The second transbay tube idea isn't terrible on its face: it'd remove the bottleneck. Which makes it a great idea, it's not terrible at all. Leperflesh posted:But it's still just tacking on more track to a system using technology pushing 50 years old, which is hugely expensive to maintain and upgrade due to the unavailability of standardized equipment to use on it. So what? Is BART going to suddenly lose all funding and lose the ability to maintain it's tracks? No. And modernization of the ancient computer system running BART has already happened, and will continue to happen. Leperflesh posted:I suppose it's the best we can hope for, since replacing BART is out of the question, Yup, and that's why it's what people are talking about. And I'm not sure why you're so convinced that completely replacing BART is the only way to improve public transit in a meaningful way. Leperflesh posted:but it's not improving access from Marin at all and that's not going to change. That's too bad, but Marin has only 250,000 people anyways, so it's not a big deal all things considered. They shouldn't have opted out of BART in the 1960s, if they really wanted it. And for the record, they just finished the SMART light rail/commuter system, which connects with the ferry to SF...which is definitely an improvement over what they had (didn't have) before. Leperflesh posted:The only long-term solution, even with a new transbay tunnel, is intermodal. Once again, intermodal transportation exists literally everywhere in the world. Or are you thinking of the mish mash of a million different transit agencies when you say "intermodal"? That is a problem that increases travel times and is confusing to new riders, and the Bay Area has the unfortunate distinction of having the most extensive hodgepodge of different systems of any metro area in the US. It would be nice if say, Muni, BART, SamTrans, VTA, and ACtransit, were under the control of one agency. Leperflesh posted:Or, when the day comes that BART simply cannot be kept running any more (and that day has to come, whether it's in 20 years or 50 years or whatever), the cost to rip it out and put in something modern is going to be incredible. Once again, why do you think BART is going to just stop working some day, and need to be completely replaced?  If cable cars can easily be kept running for 150 years, a modern metro system can easily be kept running for longer. Rah! fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 23:22
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Yeah the BART's gauge is really a non-issue.
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Aug 16, 2015 23:46
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Trabisnikof posted:Yeah the BART's gauge is really a non-issue. I thought it severely limited who BART could buy replacement cars from?
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Aug 16, 2015 23:55
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I really wish there was a BART line running to Santa Cruz, just so you could take mass transit to SF/Berkeley in less than 3 hours. Plus it would do a ton to ease traffic on the 17 during tourist season. It'll never happen though, at least until we get another WPA-like project.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:04
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I thought it severely limited who BART could buy replacement cars from? BART has already ordered 775 new rail cars, so it's not that much of a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#Future_railcars
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Aug 17, 2015 00:05
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Rah! posted:BART has already ordered 775 new rail cars, so it's not that much of a problem. Hey guys, we'd like to drop a billion on a contract for new cars, can you build them to our specifications?
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Aug 17, 2015 00:33
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The Golden State. http://www.npr.org/2015/08/16/432472821/when-a-budget-motel-is-home-theres-little-room-for-childhood quote:And in San Bernardino County, just shy of 10 percent of public school students are identified as homeless — twice the rate of nearby Los Angeles County. The US is dissolving and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atxbnLxd-ik
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Aug 17, 2015 00:45
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Spazzle posted:Hey guys, we'd like to drop a billion on a contract for new cars, can you build them to our specifications? You can read, good job.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:56
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VikingofRock posted:I really wish there was a BART line running to Santa Cruz, just so you could take mass transit to SF/Berkeley in less than 3 hours. Plus it would do a ton to ease traffic on the 17 during tourist season. There was a study done around 1990 regarding the possibility of connecting Santa Cruz to Los Gatos via rail. It concluded that the most realistic possibility was light rail as opposed to heavy rail from an engineering perspective. BART - at least the non-eBART or Oakland Airport trains - would, if I am not mistaken, have a lot of engineering problems. In addition to the obvious funding problems, the method of connecting it to anything useful in Santa Clara County would have added a number of problems even in 1990. Still would be nice in theory, though. Basically, Santa Cruz lost out when the railroad tunnels got blown up in the '40s.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:57
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Rah! posted:<jesus christ> Ohhhhkaaaayy uh I'm not going to respond to like twenty inline responses. Basically though every transportation system eventually becomes obsolete, with the possible exception of walking. Yes, when I said "intermodal" I was referring to the way we have multiple incompatible light/heavy rail systems throughout the bay area, plus ferries and in some commute directions long-route bus lines (like for example the M bus that crosses the san mateo bridge, and the marin busses that come into SF over the golden gate bridge). If you're at Point A in the bay area and want to get to Point B, there's a good chance you have to traverse multiple different transit agencies and transfer at least once, sometimes two or three times. Of course I'm not suggesting we'd run BART to and from people's doorsteps, come on. Yes of course we can buy replacement cars for BART. But they're way more expensive as a direct result of the system's uniqueness. Another direct result of the system's technology and design is the inability to run nighttime service - the tracks and stations require many hours of nightly maintenance to keep in operation. That maintenance is a big part of BART's huge cost, too. I'm aware another transbay tube removes the bottleneck, that's why I mentioned it. My point is that without that tube, SF can't realistically grow its job sector much more. Running BART to Marin isn't feasible and wouldn't actually improve things, assuming it was in the form of Marin service to Richmond and then to SF via the transbay tube. And when a lot of time in this thread is spent discussing the rising cost of living and gentrification of the city, the fact that job growth is limited may be of interest; it might set a ceiling on prices for things like city rents. If we add another transbay tube that opens things up a lot more. It's a big IF though. And my concern is, it's spending many billions of dollars to increase the size of a legacy system that is very expensive to maintain and operate. Someday that legacy system will be sufficiently obsolete that it just can't be kept operating. The same is true of things like freeways and airports/aircraft and cable cars etc. etc. but unlike a section of decaying freeway or an airport with short runways, you can't just upgrade part of BART to run whatever light rail is the new global standard in 2050. You have to replace the whole system at once, probably with new track, new power distribution, new signaling and control, etc. And that gets increasingly expensive the bigger BART gets. I know nobody's really talking about this, maybe I'm just full of poo poo, but I'm thinking in the long term. BART made a ton of sense in the 1970s but it should have been built out to the full extent of its potential at the time. Now? We're spending way more to get less than we could have had back then, and we're doing it to a system that I suspect is already halfway through its useful life.
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Aug 17, 2015 01:27
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Leperflesh posted:Yes of course we can buy replacement cars for BART. But they're way more expensive as a direct result of the system's uniqueness. Another direct result of the system's technology and design is the inability to run nighttime service - the tracks and stations require many hours of nightly maintenance to keep in operation. That maintenance is a big part of BART's huge cost, too. Do you actually have a source for the gauge driving up costs? Most transit systems have to buy unique cars anyway to match their platform heights and other service needs. The inability to run nighttime service has absolutely nothing to do with the BART's gauge or its "uniqueness" and everything to do with the fact the BART doesn't have enough excess trackage to run maintenance and operations at the same time. http://www.bart.gov/guide/latenight quote:That short window of time without service is used for essential nightly track maintenance. Unlike some public transit systems with multiple sets of tracks on the same routes, BART doesn't have the duplication that would allow us to run trains on one set while performing maintenance on another. Third-rail power has to be shut down for maintenance crews to be able to operate safely and do the work that keeps the system safe and reliable. And the trains can’t run when the power is down. Edit: Also...just for context Caltrain has effectively been operating under one name or another since 1863. So yeah...transit systems can last a while.... Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 01:31
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King Hong Kong posted:Basically, Santa Cruz lost out when the railroad tunnels got blown up in the '40s. Golly. Why'd they do that?
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Aug 17, 2015 01:41
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Rah! posted:That's too bad, but Marin has only 250,000 people anyways, so it's not a big deal all things considered. They shouldn't have opted out of BART in the 1960s, if they really wanted it. And for the record, they just finished the SMART light rail/commuter system, which connects with the ferry to SF...which is definitely an improvement over what they had (didn't have) before.
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Aug 17, 2015 01:45
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Yes, but like a poster after me pointed out, whatever the prevailing attitude in 1961 Marin County was, it's now dominated by Last One In and NIMBY. Plus it's expensive to live there, very spread out, and full of car fetishists who love to drive.
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Aug 17, 2015 01:52
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Trabisnikof posted:Do you actually have a source for the gauge driving up costs? Most transit systems have to buy unique cars anyway to match their platform heights and other service needs. This is the closest I get with a very quick google: http://www.bayrailalliance.org/question/why-does-bart-use-wider-non-standard-guage-rails quote:it means it can’t share tracks on any other railroads in the US, can’t be used to ship freight or use low cost off-the-shelf rail vehicle or maintenance equipment – everything, requires custom designed equipment to maintain and operate? That was part of a question, not an actual statement from a source, but it's what I've been reading in the media for decades. That BART, due in part to its wider gauge (but also because it uses a third rail instead of overhead electrics) can't use the common rail platforms and maintenance equipment manufactured and sold by many different companies all over the world. Yes, most commuter rail systems have unique rolling stock, but it's built on standardized platforms with customizable components... stuff like platform height and seat arrangements are much less expensive to adjust vs. having to manufacture unique stock from the wheels up due to the nonstandard gauge. Perhaps more importantly, the combination of a third rail and nonstandard gauge means BART cannot share track with any other bay area rail system. Even if you ran dual-gauge track, the third rail is incompatible with other systems and as you pointed out, power has to be shut down before workers can get on the track. It's just a combination of decisions that may have seemed to make sense at the time, but has resulted in a system that is more costly to operate and upgrade. Of course if you throw enough money at a legacy system you can keep it going... but the amount of money just keeps going up over time. CalTrain as a system has been operating for a long time, yes, but - crucially - they've been able to upgrade track, replace trains, etc. in no small part due to the fact that they're running on standard heavy rail gauge. And switching from diesel to electric is much less costly than replacing BART's power system would be, because overhead-electric standard-gauge rail is readily available and widespread, and fully compatible with diesel trains so both types can use the same track.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:00
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The Wiggly Wizard posted:Yes, but like a poster after me pointed out, whatever the prevailing attitude in 1961 Marin County was, it's now dominated by Last One In and NIMBY. Plus it's expensive to live there, very spread out, and full of car fetishists who love to drive. Also that plan was never even approved by the Golden Gate Bridge authorities, so its like got an extra level of moot on it. Look at those tunnels  Also the real deal thing that would fix a lot is reopening the dumbarton railroad bridge. Bam all of a sudden ACE rocks and several horrible road corridors gain a working mass transit replacement.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:18
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Golly. Why'd they do that? Landslides damaged some of the tunnels, Southern Pacific was already losing money on the route in the 1930s, the repairs were "expensive", and the route would definitely not have been viable after highway 17 opened that same year, so SP decided to dynamite the tunnels. Making good decisions for fifty years in the future is an impossibility, especially when $55,000 (1940) is considered a significant stumbling block. King Hong Kong fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 02:25
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Ohhh, got it. It wasn't spite. It was "If we don't commit $$$ to continuously keeping these tunnels in good repair they're going to collapse anyway, and may cause greater harm than dynamiting."
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Aug 17, 2015 02:36
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Ohhh, got it. It wasn't spite. It was "If we don't commit $$$ to continuously keeping these tunnels in good repair they're going to collapse anyway, and may cause greater harm than dynamiting." It was definitely a more legitimate - if understandably short sighted - reason than the myth that they were destroyed to hinder a Japanese invasion.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:48
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Leperflesh posted:Ohhhhkaaaayy uh I'm not going to respond to like twenty inline responses. Basically though every transportation system eventually becomes obsolete, with the possible exception of walking. Yes, when I said "intermodal" I was referring to the way we have multiple incompatible light/heavy rail systems throughout the bay area, plus ferries and in some commute directions long-route bus lines (like for example the M bus that crosses the san mateo bridge, and the marin busses that come into SF over the golden gate bridge). If you're at Point A in the bay area and want to get to Point B, there's a good chance you have to traverse multiple different transit agencies and transfer at least once, sometimes two or three times. I already mentioned the multiple transit agency thing, and that should be addressed in the Bay Area for sure, but "multimodal" transit isn't a bad thing, or a thing that will ever go away. Leperflesh posted:Yes of course we can buy replacement cars for BART. But they're way more expensive as a direct result of the system's uniqueness. You know what's way more expensive than buying new trains and building new lines? Replacing BART, like you've suggested. Leperflesh posted:Another direct result of the system's technology and design is the inability to run nighttime service - the tracks and stations require many hours of nightly maintenance to keep in operation. That maintenance is a big part of BART's huge cost, too. Incorrect. The reason there's no 24 hour service is because there aren't enough tracks going through the transbay tube, so trains can't bypass when tracks are being serviced. So they have to shut the entire system down. Leperflesh posted:My point is that without that tube, SF can't realistically grow its job sector much more. Are you sure about that? It would be harder for people to get into the city using BART, without a second transbay tube, but BART isn't the only way to get into San Francisco. Leperflesh posted:If we add another transbay tube that opens things up a lot more. It's a big IF though. And my concern is, it's spending many billions of dollars to increase the size of a legacy system that is very expensive to maintain and operate. Someday that legacy system will be sufficiently obsolete that it just can't be kept operating. The same is true of things like freeways and airports/aircraft and cable cars etc. etc. but unlike a section of decaying freeway or an airport with short runways, you can't just upgrade part of BART to run whatever light rail is the new global standard in 2050. You have to replace the whole system at once, probably with new track, new power distribution, new signaling and control, etc. And that gets increasingly expensive the bigger BART gets. Legacy system? Dude, BART is a loving baby compared to tons of metro systems around the world. The entire system is not going to magically break and need replacement anytime even remotely soon (because people do this thing to it called "maintenance"), stop saying that. Are you under the impression that nobody makes replacement parts or maintenance equipment for Indian gauge tracks, or something? If a new and better way of moving people comes around that everyone in the Bay Area wants, maybe it'll replace BART someday (and BART would likely be kept, at least until the new system is finished). But there's no indication that will happen any time soon, whatsoever. Leperflesh posted:I know nobody's really talking about this, maybe I'm just full of poo poo, but I'm thinking in the long term. BART made a ton of sense in the 1970s but it should have been built out to the full extent of its potential at the time. Now? We're spending way more to get less than we could have had back then, and we're doing it to a system that I suspect is already halfway through its useful life. BART still makes sense, that's why it's at its highest ridership ever, and that's why there are plans to expand it. Yeah it's more expensive than a typical metro, due to the indian gauge, but it's what we have, it works fine, and the plan is to keep making it work it better, as it's always been. But I guess we should just take your word for it it that it's for some reason halfway through it's useful life. Leperflesh posted:maybe I'm just full of poo poo, It kind of sounds like it, honestly. Leperflesh posted:but I'm thinking in the long term. So are the people who run BART. That's why they're planning to extend the system, so it can carry more people and better serve the residents of the Bay Area. Leperflesh posted:Ohhhhkaaaayy uh I'm not going to respond to like twenty inline responses. If you don't want to deal with getting corrected a bunch of times, don't make giant posts full of incorrect information and wierd ideas.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:52
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Zachack posted:SMART isn't done yet, it's a train (not really light rail), it serves more than Marin which is the big issue (Sonoma has about a half mil), it is planned to go to the ferry but it's unclear when that stage will occur, and the ferry itself is still a 30+ minute ride not counting boarding, disembark, etc and the $10 ferry ticket each way to go with it (SMART ticket prices are still unknown). And then you're still at the ferry building which isn't likely the destination for anyone. BART or something that connects directly to BART is what's needed. Yeah, but BART to Marin isn't gonna happen and having SMART is better than not having SMART. I never said it was an amazing and perfect system or anything, just that it's an improvement when it comes to public transportation in Marin (and Sonoma) county. And thanks for the corrections about SMART...I guess the trains look superficially like light rail, but I was totally wrong there. And I could've sworn they finished construction...i remember reading about test runs of one of the trains. According to wikipedia, it was supposed to be finished in 2014 (and most of it is finished), but it got delayed and won't open until 2016.
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Aug 17, 2015 02:57
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Day one of the SMART line will have a cackling bureaucrat peel off the SM to reveal a B.
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Aug 17, 2015 03:21
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http://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-affordability-crisis-has-an-unlikely-villain-2015-8 Kind of just covers some ground we've talked about here before, but it's nice to see it all in one place: SF wanted to be and was super-liberal, but in the process of trying to protect its residents, prevented growth of housing for decades when it needed to instead have some kind of progressive-flavored sustainable growth to keep up with demand. --- Rah! posted:Incorrect. The reason there's no 24 hour service is because there aren't enough tracks going through the transbay tube, so trains can't bypass when tracks are being serviced. So they have to shut the entire system down. If the system wasn't third-rail electric, you could single-track infrequent trains, presumably. There's two tracks going through the transbay tunnel and if you ran a train every 30 minutes in each direction, staggered by 15 minutes, that would work. Except workers on the lines might get killed if the power isn't shut down. Although this shows that at least some of the time, BART is willing to single-track through the tunnel. I don't know why they couldn't intentionally do that to allow late-night service. Maybe because most of the rest of the system isn't set up for single-tracking? quote:Are you sure about that? It would be harder for people to get into the city using BART, without a second transbay tube, but BART isn't the only way to get into San Francisco. 280, 101, and the golden gate bridge are also at or near capacity during commute hours. Ferries could maybe be expanded but ferry service is kind of slow, inconvenient for a lot of people, and only delivers commuters to SF's waterfronts so they still have to spend more time getting to and from work. I'm not sure if you caught the intention of what I was saying, though: I think it's potentially a good thing that new business should be looking outside of the City for office space rather than increasing jobs inside the City. quote:Legacy system? Dude, BART is a loving baby compared to tons of metro systems around the world. The entire system is not going to magically break and need replacement anytime even remotely soon (because people do this thing to it called "maintenance"), stop saying that. Are you under the impression that nobody makes replacement parts or maintenance equipment for Indian gauge tracks, or something? A few companies do. "Indian gauge" is just the distance between the rails, though: BART is weird in way more ways than just that. I'm really not just making this poo poo up, just go read some articles on why BART is so expensive to maintain and upgrade compared to other metro light rail! I find it very frustrating that apparently what I thought were well-understood basics are like, outrageous lies according to you. I mean yes, places like London, New York, etc. have much larger and more complex commuter rail systems... but critically, those systems are probably cheaper to run and maintain and upgrade because they're not third-rail electrics on an unusual track gauge. quote:If a new and better way of moving people comes around that everyone in the Bay Area wants, maybe it'll replace BART someday (and BART would likely be kept, at least until the new system is finished). But there's no indication that will happen any time soon, whatsoever. I imagine the "new and better way" would be a different light rail technology. But historically, people have been very bad at predicting new technologies, and I doubt I'm any better at it. Also, it's not always massive game-changers, it's much more commonly just incremental improvements made on existing foundations. High-speed rail maybe is a good example: it's still basically rail transportation, it can still use the rail rights-of-way that have existed for over a hundred years... but it's new technology, from the railbeds under the rails, the rails themselves, the power systems, the need to avoid level crossings, the trains, the stations, the maintenance tasks, the operators, everything. Hence, replacing north-south trans-state Amtrak service with high-speed rail is a monumental effort involving very high expenses that some folks in this thread are pretty well convinced are too high to jump. quote:BART still makes sense, that's why it's at its highest ridership ever, and that's why there are plans to expand it. Yeah it's more expensive than a typical metro, due to the indian gauge, but it's what we have, it works fine, and the plan is to keep making it work it better, as it's always been. But I guess we should just take your word for it it that it's for some reason halfway through it's useful life. I don't think it "works fine" I think it works, barely, at high cost. As the cost continues to rise, at some point you look at the cost of replacing it with a system that would be much less expensive on an annual basis to operate, and compare fifty years of that lower-operation-cost vs. fifty years of maintaining the current system and the numbers flip. This is how it usually works with old legacy systems, whether that's transportation, or an air traffic control network, or a big oil tanker, or a company's legacy computer systems. There's always compelling reasons to just keep going on with your current system, and those reasons are a lot more sound when incremental upgrades are affordable and can be rolled out in a way that doesn't involve too much down-time. quote:If you don't want to deal with getting corrected a bunch of times, don't make giant posts full of incorrect information and wierd ideas. I think your main points are: you disagree that there's anything wrong with BART, that it is likely to need to be replaced even in 50 years' time, that upgrading it is too expensive, or... whatever. Fine, I think you're wrong but whatever. I doubt this is informative to anyone else in the thread any more, if it ever was, and I was only mostly engaging in speculation from the outset as a follow-on to all the speculation and "what-ifs" about the dream of what BART could have been, if only there was unlimited money to build it and no political opposition to doing so. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 22:43
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Sydin posted:The VTA from South SJ to downtown is fine, because it mostly runs along the 87 and only has a few stops. It slows to a loving crawl going through downtown and up first street, though. If I worked downtown I'd take it every day over driving, yeah. It takes a full hour to take the VTA from an SJ 1st street stop into Mountain View. That is just nuts. Arsenic Lupin posted:A big part of the problem with intermodal is that many in the expensive Peninsula suburbs violently reject any kind of improved railway. They hate high-speed rail. They hate adding additional rails. They hate being delayed by crossing arms. They hate it when trains blow their legally-required whistles. Or in Atherton's case, they hate the idea of poors being able to stop in their neighborhood.
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Aug 18, 2015 00:00
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That quake this morning wake anyone else up? Every time I feel one I wonder if this is gonna be the one where the Hayward Fault destroys us all.
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Aug 18, 2015 00:04
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Like most job havers, I was awake and cooking breakfast. My cats started freaking out shortly before it hit so I was wondering what was up. My wife shot out of bed and asked, "what was that?!?!" We both knew what it was but settled on "king rat". Also, I don't get the third rail hate. MTA works on a third rail system and gets serviced just fine. Ditto on the rail size. In NYC public transportation started out as competing lines so there was a certain amount of incompatibility built into the system. Seems to me the problem is that the Bart that we have actually had fairly modest goals and didn't anticipate the Bay becoming what it is. Sucks that they didn't add a "but what if we want to grow?" Contingency but that's a crystal ball problem. Goingforward it's just another public will thing and if voting records are any indication, the public will is that self driving cars will replace public transportation. A bad belief, but one that had gently caress all to do with rail gauge.
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Aug 18, 2015 00:56
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Shbobdb posted:Seems to me the problem is that the Bart that we have actually had fairly modest goals and didn't anticipate the Bay becoming what it is. Sucks that they didn't add a "but what if we want to grow?" Contingency but that's a crystal ball problem. Goingforward it's just another public will thing and if voting records are any indication, the public will is that self driving cars will replace public transportation. A bad belief, but one that had gently caress all to do with rail gauge. Yeah I think its lack of growth planning and planning in a world where one could easily demolish a few neighborhoods for the big transit project. That's a lot harder now. So some of the growth planning of "well, just bulldoze another right of way through the neighborhoods like we did the first time, hopefully using cheap atomic powered tractors of the future" made more sense then.
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Aug 18, 2015 01:04
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