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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Could anyone point me towards research/examples of eliminating transit fares? It's always seemed backwards to create barriers to systems that are more efficient at capacity, and fares recoup a fraction of costs at best. Is it just a political question, or are there reasons traffic engineers would recommend implementing fares for transit since that seems to be the default state in most places. free transit is a good idea but you want to means test it or zone for it or something, depending on where the agency serves. like there are plenty of people who can afford to pay for the subway in NYC but maybe not so much in like, san antonio also while a lot of agencies would like to reduce their fares to boost ridership, farebox return is still an important part of the funding portfolio. operating costs are daily and grinding, and you can't always rely on local sales tax or state subsidy to come through in case of an emergency expenditure. farebox is cash daily though. i'd say most agencies aren't really in a position to where they can set up a no fare program of some kind without similar cuts in service elsewhere
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Sep 28, 2022 04:17
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The thing with farebox revenue is that it helps you provide a better service. Even for a small system, having a couple extra million from the farebox could be the difference between someone having a half mile walk or a three mile walk to the nearest bus stop, or a 15-20 min headway versus a 30-60 min headway. That said, it is absolutely a good idea to establish programs that allow people in need to get low/no fare service, or implement fare capping. Work with community partners to fund those low/no trips so that the system is still able to provide quality service while also providing trips for those who may not be able to afford them. Varance fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Sep 28, 2022 |
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Sep 28, 2022 05:37
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Well, judging by the memery around Germany's recent 9€ ticket the most important use of a fare system is to keep the inner city poors out of the resort towns. Anyways, the experiment (of allowing county wide travel on slow trains for 9€ per month) was immensely successful for practically everybody. With the only resistance to extending the program coming from people who obviously just hate poor people. And paper pushers who have their job depend on the confusing ticketing borders between transit authorities.
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Sep 28, 2022 10:18
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I'm pretty sure that experiment also showed a lot of issues with overcrowding. The sudden increase in ridership without any additional trains caused all the trains to be crammed full, and further delays. At least in the more populated areas.
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Sep 28, 2022 10:34
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Entropist posted:I'm pretty sure that experiment also showed a lot of issues with overcrowding. The sudden increase in ridership without any additional trains caused all the trains to be crammed full, and further delays. At least in the more populated areas. This is true, but also trivially predictable. Nobody was surprised and so it is not really an interesting outcome of the experiment…
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Sep 28, 2022 15:28
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:free transit is a good idea but you want to means test it or zone for it or something, depending on where the agency serves. like there are plenty of people who can afford to pay for the subway in NYC but maybe not so much in like, san antonio means testing costs more which means you'd have to raise fares to pay for it. it'd be cheaper in the long run just to run the service on a flat rate of free. Also why does a transit company need to charge fares in the first place? It's a government agency. The Road Dept doesn't charge fares outside of the rare toll road.
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Sep 28, 2022 15:44
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Peanut President posted:Also why does a transit company need to charge fares in the first place? It's a government agency. The Road Dept doesn't charge fares outside of the rare toll road. Vehicle registration includes fees based on the weight and mileage of the vehicle, to offset the impact that vehicle makes on the roads it's driven on.
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Sep 28, 2022 16:39
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Vehicle registration includes fees based on the weight and mileage of the vehicle, to offset the impact that vehicle makes on the roads it's driven on. Also fuel taxes are earmarked for road maintenance and construction.
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Sep 28, 2022 16:48
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Peanut President posted:Also why does a transit company need to charge fares in the first place? It's a government agency. The Road Dept doesn't charge fares outside of the rare toll road. given the current state of public funding for many transit agencies, user fees are an essential part of the funding portfolio. you can't just slice away ~20% and expect everything to keep working as it was, and taxation gets much less flexible as you move towards the smaller local jurisdictions who provide funding for transit agencies. local governments, for example, can't simply raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, because they rarely have the ability to levy taxes on those entities. a lot of transit agencies have to rely on local sales tax contributions which are very fixed and cannot simply be raised or lowered without referendum it is much easier to control access to a transit system than it is to the roadway system. tolls, as you say, but otherwise people can enter and exit the system from any one of millions of points. this is why user fees for roadway systems tend to be distributed over space and time - gas taxes, vehicle registration taxes, tag fees, title transfer fees, etc. there are also additional taxes that larger vehicles pay because they put more stress on the road system. this is why weigh stations exist along interstate highways, as a regulatory and taxation system which only exist for heavier vehicles which place a disproportionate amount of stress on the system i agree with you that free or reduced fares are good! the problem is that its not as simple as dragging the 'fees charged" slider all the way to the left while dragging the "transit service level" slider farther to the right Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Sep 29, 2022 |
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Sep 29, 2022 00:38
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i agree with you that free or reduced fares are good! the problem is that its not as simple as dragging the 'fees charged" slider all the way to the left while dragging the "transit service level" slider farther to the right 
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Sep 29, 2022 00:51
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VictualSquid posted:Well, judging by the memery around Germany's recent 9€ ticket the most important use of a fare system is to keep the inner city poors out of the resort towns.
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Sep 29, 2022 09:15
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mobby_6kl posted:Is there a study of the results of that experiment? I'd really like to see some concrete outcomes rather than just "oh some trains were crowded" stuff. Like change in vehicle-km driven, # of public transit trips, etc. Personally it's never the cost of public transport that's stopping me. It was only a few months ago, detailed studies won't be out till years in the future with how that bureaucracy moves. e: Preliminary summation be the statisteschen bundesamt: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/07/PD22_284_12.html VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 11:15 on Sep 29, 2022 |
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Sep 29, 2022 11:10
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VictualSquid posted:It was only a few months ago, detailed studies won't be out till years in the future with how that bureaucracy moves. The numbers in the graphs in that press release are somewhat obscured, since almost everything is shown as % relative to the average usage throughout 2019. But the number of medium distance train trips (30-300 km length) increased massively, and there was a small drop in road traffic. It looks like it didn't move much traffic off the roads, but it got many more people traveling tho wouldn't have done so otherwise. I think it might be more interesting to study the impacts on businesses in the destinations that received more travelers.
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Sep 29, 2022 11:56
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On a different topic, what would you call this interchange style? The traffic lights are all on the side of the overpass.  Edit: of course I figured it out immediately after I posted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-point_urban_interchange smackfu fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Sep 30, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2022 12:53
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Oooh, I live by one of those! Never gave a thought to what it's called, thanks for posting that!
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Sep 30, 2022 13:00
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SPUI!
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Sep 30, 2022 14:54
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If you're doing an innovative interchange and it's not a diverging diamond, what are you even doing
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Sep 30, 2022 14:57
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Yeah, Utah loves them some SPUI. drat near every interchange on I-15 or Bangerter Hwy is a SPUI. Quite a few diverging diamonds down in Utah and Davis Counties as well. Note: I-215 was a mistake. You wanna talk about bad interchanges, I-215 and the 21st South freeway is horendous. That cloverleaf weave is no joke...  Edit: Speaking of Utah, here's something you probably haven't seen before: A SPUI missing the thru bridge. Future-proofed so that UDOT only has to install a bridge to convert Mountain View to a proper freeway when the time comes. 
Varance fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Sep 30, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2022 18:59
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I was just at the Australasian road safety conference this week and whew, there's a lot to process. Key takeaways: we need to make big network wide changes sooner rather than later and should have stopped focusing on efficiency decades ago.
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Sep 30, 2022 19:53
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Lobsterpillar posted:I was just at the Australasian road safety conference this week and whew, there's a lot to process. The Netherlands' famed bike-centric design was the result of them deciding exactly that 50 years ago, before which their roads and highways were basically designed the same as in the US and Australia, right?
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Sep 30, 2022 21:10
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"efficiency" here means maximizing throughput of road vehicles, I assume?
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Sep 30, 2022 21:32
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Fuschia tude posted:The Netherlands' famed bike-centric design was the result of them deciding exactly that 50 years ago, before which their roads and highways were basically designed the same as in the US and Australia, right? Yep, when people organized a "stop the child-murder" campaign. Since the Dutch people realized that car-centric infra is literal child murder.
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Sep 30, 2022 21:45
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Varance posted:Yeah, Utah loves them some SPUI. drat near every interchange on I-15 or Bangerter Hwy is a SPUI. Quite a few diverging diamonds down in Utah and Davis Counties as well.
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Sep 30, 2022 22:06
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:"efficiency" here means maximizing throughput of road vehicles, I assume? Yep, and trying to shave 30s off journey times here and there. (Unless, of course, it's public transport... Cutting journey times there is usually good)
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Sep 30, 2022 22:27
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Fuschia tude posted:The Netherlands' famed bike-centric design was the result of them deciding exactly that 50 years ago, before which their roads and highways were basically designed the same as in the US and Australia, right? It also helps that they were already a pretty small country with a dense population and very flat terrain. So nearly all transport infrastructure is going to be more urban planning, and most long-distance transit will be to outside the country where it's somebody else's problem to provide long-distance infrastructure the rest of the way. And for freight, the entire country is either on the coast or near a navigable waterway, which has always been the cheapest form of transport per mile, and can also be easily ignored by most transit nerds.
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Sep 30, 2022 22:51
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SlothfulCobra posted:It also helps that they were already a pretty small country with a dense population and very flat terrain. So nearly all transport infrastructure is going to be more urban planning, and most long-distance transit will be to outside the country where it's somebody else's problem to provide long-distance infrastructure the rest of the way. This post is a joke. The canals haven't been a cost effective mode of transport since the 1920s, and they only reach about 2/3rd of the country at most. Most canals and rivers are only navigable for small recreational boats these days, or not at all. We also have "long distance" and low density and rural areas, albeit on a smaller scale. Plenty of regions in the US have higher density than Drenthe or Zeeland. It's no excuse. Urban areas are smaller - we still have no city over 1M population - and always separated by some low density area though zoning. Entropist fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Sep 30, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2022 23:20
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If you want to look at a country with density and intense public transport just look at Japan
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Sep 30, 2022 23:45
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SlothfulCobra posted:It also helps that they were already a pretty small country with a dense population and very flat terrain. So nearly all transport infrastructure is going to be more urban planning, and most long-distance transit will be to outside the country where it's somebody else's problem to provide long-distance infrastructure the rest of the way. the main thing is very centralized land use controls. the netherlands have had to deal with this for centuries, as they're located in a pretty marginal and smallish region right on a river delta. when you're actively trying to reclaim more land from the sea and prevent it from turning back into sea, it leads to a certain philosophy of who should be in charge of land use decisions and how much control the government should be able to flex over privately owned land. for example, the dutch national government national spatial planning ordinances on a semi-regular basis (the riumtelijke ordeningen) and these modern laws have predecessors going back hundreds of years. in contrast, the american federal government is explicitly forbidden from doing something like this (10th amendment) and only a few states even try to publish or enforce land use standards, usually devolving land use to the sub-regional, local level plus, countries which have been settled agriculturally for longer tend to have longer histories of land ownership and tighter patterns of land use relationships with baked in walkability. fields, roads, and structures may be replaced over the years, but the legal definitions of parcels underneath the built environment tend to be sticky and influence each other. for example, rights of way can be thousands of years old, because it is a huge pain in the rear end to dig up a road and all the buildings along the road to turn it into something else. the age of land use relationships makes it generally tougher to change those land use relationships, meaning that in a way walkability in 2020 is influenced by walkability in 1720, and people in 1720 didn't have a lot of options when it came to traveling around the landscape on the other hand, the united states was effectively a blank slate and open for widescale redevelopment well into the era of mass car ownership. the united states also places a huge amount of emphasis on personal property rights and land use control at the most local level possible, meaning we have chaotic and volatile development patterns easily influenced by external factors like predominantly automotive travel modes and profit seeking in land development. this is by far the biggest difference between "european" and "american" style land use ("american" includes canada, australia, and much of the developing world) - the nations of europe tend to have strong regional planning and coordination of land use and transportation systems over broad areas. america... does not do that, and other nations with a fairly lasseiz-faire attitude towards land use control similarly lack strong regional planning, even if they're not as hardcore about mah properteh as america Lobsterpillar posted:If you want to look at a country with density and intense public transport just look at Japan yeah, japanese cities were in an ironically advantageous position post-ww2, because being obliterated knocks a couple early steps off the redevelopment process. the japanese government pumped a lot of subsidies into rail companies with the understanding that said companies would leverage value capture to also do urban redevelopment. the idea is, you have some underdeveloped land, so you buy or lease it, build a rail line there, build structures oriented to the rail line, then release the property at a profit. this is the same idea as streetcar suburbs in the west, but at much larger scale. its effective as hell and japan aggressively pursued this policy, which a few decades later meant japanese cities were more likely to have tightly integrated relationships between land use and mass transit Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Oct 1, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 00:39
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SlothfulCobra posted:It also helps that they were already a pretty small country with a dense population and very flat terrain. So nearly all transport infrastructure is going to be more urban planning, and most long-distance transit will be to outside the country where it's somebody else's problem to provide long-distance infrastructure the rest of the way. Haha, what an incredible take. I think this is somewhere on the top of "false reasons people use why other countries can't be fixed". If it's about dense population and flat terrain, why don't have US cities that are on flat terrain have barely any bike infrastructure if at all? Connecting all parts of a single city together with separated bicycle paths is already a huge gain. The Netherlands has a good network of trains and buses, with many trains going every 15 minutes, and every station being easily bike accessible. Yes, international connections aren't quite as good (we know, and the EU has started realizing this too and is taking action right now), but within the country, many tens of thousands of people take the train daily for places that are too far to bike. Other people already replied to your freight joke so I won't bother with that. I will say that freight is transported to large depots by train or, in case of the Rhine and some other big rivers running east-west by river ship, but most of the rest, especially last-mile stuff is done by road. This is not nearly as much a problem as in other countries. Because more people take the bike, roads aren't quite as crowded and trucks aren't in traffic quite as much. And because of the separate bicycle infrastructure, even in the inner city, trucks and bicycles don't have to interact all that much, which prevent accidents a lot. For the pedestrian and bicycle areas in the narrow city centers, usually resupply trucks can only enter at a certain time of day, for instance in the early morning before the shops open. I've heard Americans who moved to NL say that *driving a car* in the Netherlands is much more pleasant than in America, and I tend to agree. What truly matters is the holistic view, and making infra better and safer for everyone. As soon as you start focusing on a single group (e.g. only cars), it gets worse for everyone, including the car drivers.
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Oct 1, 2022 06:56
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I did check beforehand, and that sure seems like a lot of cargo going through waterways to me. And in a small country, that leaves not many areas very far from one. Population-wise, it's around putting the population of Florida into Maryland. That's dense.
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Oct 1, 2022 07:47
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carry on then posted:Ok so, how do Utah's weird street numbers work again? Same way that most other numerical grids work that radiate from a central point, but drop the last two zeroes if it's a multiple of 100. As far as what differentiates a Mormon Grid from your traditional radiant coordinate numbering scheme, beyond the atypical road names... the blocks tend to be much larger than typical street grids. There's a numerical formula for how wide each city block is in a true Mormon Grid, but I'm not going to go that deep. That said, they're big to the point that you can stick an entire NBA arena inside a single block without disrupting the road grid. The city center 0,0 location is usually a street intersection near the civic center of the city - City Hall, the city's major park, a town square, etc.. There's usually a Church Temple nearby and maybe less than a block away, but it is typically not the city center. For example, in Salt Lake CIty, the 0, 0 is Main St South Temple, and the actual Temple Square is 50 W North Temple. If you've got road names like "1300 South," the locals will just say "13th South." No different than saying "13th St South" without the trailing street designation. For street addresses, the cross street is usually fully pronounced, and the street you're on is shortened. For example, an intersection like 300 West 4500 South would be "300 West 45th South." For the super hardcore Mormon Grids, every NSEW road has a specific number, based on how close it is to the city center. In the more urban cities, many of the NSEW roads that aren't multiples of 100 have a traditional name with the full number underneath or to the side. Diagonals usually go by a name as well. A more recent trend has municipalities adding the city on the left side, so you know who's grid you're on. Here's a random chunk of Salt Lake for reference. You'll notice that most roads have normal names, except for the NSEW streets that are multiples of 100.  If you ever find yourself in "The Avenues" of Salt Lake City (northeast part of town where the rich folk live), the streets are a whole 'nother level of special. This intersection is both 8th Ave & H St -and- 550 East 400 North at the same time. Both answers are right, but you give the latter address if you want someone to get lost trying to find your house.  The fun part about the whole Mormon Grid thing is that the street numbering system is present in a LOT of United States cities, but most people don't know it. "Oh, such a wierd Mormon thing." Except... it's really not. Huge chunks of Florida are on the same radiant number grid as Utah, just with street names on top of the numerals. Same with many of the big cities in Texas. Chicago is another example, though you'll frequently find coordinates in public areas like CTA stations. You wouldn't know it unless you were looking for it.  
Varance fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Oct 2, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 09:32
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After reading that, thankful we had sat nav for our recent trip to SLC. That does remind me of a random question… they have express lanes there on I-15 that are either electronically tolled or HOV 2+. How do they tell whether to toll you or not?
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Oct 1, 2022 16:50
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smackfu posted:That does remind me of a random question… they have express lanes there on I-15 that are either electronically tolled or HOV 2+. How do they tell whether to toll you or not? I think I heard somewhere there are cams that have image recognition trained to see how many people are in a vehicle? I have no idea if they are used there, though.
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Oct 1, 2022 17:12
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I looked it up. I guess if you don’t have a transponder, they assume you are HOV. If you have a transponder and are HOV, you slide something on the transponder to disable it and it shows “HOV”. Apparently the enforcement is manual, with a trooper driving next to single drivers to see if they have a transponder in the right mode. So just spot checks, but pretty large fines.
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Oct 1, 2022 17:51
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SlothfulCobra posted:I did check beforehand, and that sure seems like a lot of cargo going through waterways to me. And in a small country, that leaves not many areas very far from one. I see two canals being used here, or three if you count the IJ to IJmuiden. Everything else is natural rivers (Rhine branches with stuff going to Germany mainly). This would have been much more fine grained 100 years ago. I don't have numbers but I guess this is only a marginal amount of bulk cargo being transported long distance, by far most stuff is transported by truck (unfortunately). Would be cool to see Amsterdam supermarkets being supplied by cargo ship or fuel going to every village by canal like in the old days, but no way.
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Oct 2, 2022 00:31
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lol asses
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Oct 2, 2022 08:09
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It's probably also worth noting that the Dutch drive a shitload of kms, despite being in a tiny-rear end country and all the constant talk about bikes and canals https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/transport/distance-travelled-by-car.html Just looking at this chart and pulling the correlations out of my rear end, I'd say that the biggest predictors is the income and fuel prices and maybe urbanization. You can mouse-over the Netherlands in the legend and it'll highlight the line vvv mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Oct 2, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 14:55
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Due what is up the color choices of the first chart? Could you, like, put a big fat arrow pointing at the Dutch line?
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Oct 2, 2022 16:13
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Again, the canals have played no meaningful role in transportation since before trucks and trains became a thing, especially for passengers. I have a car in the Netherlands too and it's actually great for driving, because there are so many alternatives. People only drive if there is a good reason to, which makes traffic not so bad. The road system is quite well designed with good separation of functions, and maintained much better than in the neighbouring countries. The highways have nice long exits/entrances, clear signage and also dynamic matrix signs everywhere. People always talk about the German autobahn system but it looks like an outdated mess in comparison (at least in the west), the only advantage is that you can drive fast. And let's not even talk about Belgian roads. I don't actually drive that often though, maybe a few times a month at most, because for most types of trips there are better alternatives.
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Oct 2, 2022 23:11
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Entropist posted:I have a car in the Netherlands too and it's actually great for driving, because there are so many alternatives. People only drive if there is a good reason to, which makes traffic not so bad. The road system is quite well designed with good separation of functions, and maintained much better than in the neighbouring countries. The highways have nice long exits/entrances, clear signage and also dynamic matrix signs everywhere. People always talk about the German autobahn system but it looks like an outdated mess in comparison (at least in the west), the only advantage is that you can drive fast. And let's not even talk about Belgian roads. Some more interesting stuff I dug up:   https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com...54439e7bc4f411f So NL isn't significantly different from even Germany or France in terms of annual distance driven, or number of trips. All the bikes seemed to eliminate public transport usage lol. Anyway, as a huge car nerd, I'm all for bikes and trains and whatever will get most people off the roads. It's good for the environment and good for me 
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Oct 3, 2022 09:33
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