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mishaq posted:at least there's a pass the dc metro is a funky hybrid of commuter rail and subway the nyc subway is priced so that the longest rides are the cheapest, because the richest people live at the center and the poorest at the edges. so the edges are implicitly subsidized. with nyc commuter rail, you pay more the further you go, because no poo poo, you're a rich commuting suburbanite, you can afford it. dc metro is a subway system that uses a commuter rail attitude. they charge people in ways that make pretty much no sense, assuming somehow that the covered area is an undifferentiated mass of people who chose to live closer or further from work
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Nov 26, 2015 00:33
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Beeftweeter posted:meh you dont have to deal with metrocards. a fair trade the support contract on metrocards is running out and there is 0 plan to replace them soon metrocard will join the increasingly large suite of abandoned technologies for which the MTA fabs 100% of replacement parts themselves, in-house, at fabulous expense. a great union jobs program, terrible way to run a transit system.
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Nov 26, 2015 00:34
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Roargasm posted:the mbta has a $200M budget shortfall this year so good luck with your incipient expansion. I take the commuter rail into town and it fuckin sucks at being on time every transit system loses money, that is intentional. capital is provided by voters or not at all
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Nov 26, 2015 00:35
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Beeftweeter posted:good, maybe they'll do contactless finally the swipe card support contracts run out in 2019. if they started spending money on a contactless system right now, like, this past week, they could possibly have had a new system rolled out by 2022. mta purchasing and capital planning is so laughably incompetent that the best case scenario is three years of decreasing liability and spiraling costs. but it's the mta we're talking about. i'll probably be cold in my grave before they replace swipe cards
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Nov 26, 2015 03:24
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Beeftweeter posted:thats what i thought about mbta & tokens and welp i still have a charliecard charliecard was introduced on 12/4/06 the last mbta token was sold on 12/6/06 mta metrocard was introduced in 1993 the last tokens were accepted in 2003 you see the difference here
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Nov 26, 2015 03:47
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the other cool take-away from those dates: the mta phased out tokens around the time all other transit systems were moving to contactless 1993: mta begins pilot project with swipe cards 1996 - seoul adopts contactless 1999 - shanghai adopts contactless 1999 - rome adopts contactless 2001 - tokyo adopts contactless 2001 - paris adopts contactless 2003 - london adopts contactless 2003: mta finally finishes getting swipe cards deployed 2006 - boston adopts contactless 2007 - mumbai adopts contactless 2007 - los angeles adopts contactless 2010 - san francisco bay area adopts contactless 2010 - mumbai abandons contactless because they hosed it up 2013 - chicago adopts contactless 2013 - moscow adopts contactless 2016 - philadelphia adopts contactless 2020: mta deploys its very first contactless machine, if everything comes in on-time and under-budget (lol) naturally wikipedia had articles on every contactless system in the world AND tables of their various introduction dates. thanks, wikipedia Notorious b.s.d. fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Nov 26, 2015 |
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Nov 26, 2015 03:56
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mishaq posted:but if you look at major metro systems outside the US, where the dc metro is comparable in number of stations or track length (take the Berlin U-bahn) and they manage to be fixed fare no matter what distance, or at least zones so yes, we agree entirely. the dc metro resembles the U-bahn system more closely than the S-bahn, but retains the zoned S-bahn fare structure. that's kinda messed up.
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Nov 26, 2015 21:16
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Beeftweeter posted:tbf the rationale of "cmon guy its old as poo poo we need to work on it" (if true) is a good one, i've been in nyc for like 4 months and i've already had to deal with them doing bullshit repairs on the lines i need to use on the days that i need to use them for many years the mta refused to close the subway even while it was being worked on. they would just go down to a single track in service guys would have to jump off the tracks to let trains go by
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Nov 28, 2015 00:17
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Smythe posted:That owns. it doesn't own at all. it used to take months and months to do work that should have taken like a week.
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Nov 28, 2015 01:05
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MrMoo posted:The MTA is so petty they only do this so they can claim they are open 24 hours a day. The only difference between MTA and the Underground is that you can wait 6 or so hours on the platform in New York for the next train. they actually are open 24 hours a day. they do close stations and lengths of track on weekends and evenings to do repairs now though
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Nov 28, 2015 01:05
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Grandmaster.flv posted:this is me and everybody in my heavily Hispanic neighborhood. Night owl T service on every line except the Blue line is full of drunk college idiots. Blue line to East Boston is like 95% Hispanic men looking exhausted because we all just worked at a bar or restaurant that night you're a hispanic muslim who works in bar?
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Dec 11, 2015 18:29
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mishaq posted:if the bars in your city that doesn't suck close at 4-5 AM, you aren't leaving until 6 AM minimum and you can catch a morning train just fine? how do the bar employees get to and from the bar? if public transit closes at 1am, but the bar closes at 4am, how the gently caress is the bar back gonna get there to clean before the morning opening?
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Dec 11, 2015 18:45
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Cygni posted:i mean, $200m is still pretty cheap for a transportation project. especially in loving DC where I can't even fathom how lovely the politics game must be. they haven't actually built the project yet. they built a barn and a test track for $200M. also it's a streetcar. so it serves no purpose whatsoever. with $200M they could have set up a really nice bus line that would actually have been faster and more comfortable.
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Dec 11, 2015 19:07
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Grandmaster.flv posted:Malaysian. which is why living in a Hispanic neighborhood is hilarious because everybody thinks I'm the other kind of brown. but you're a muslim who works in a bar? that seems really uncomfortable (for you)
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Dec 11, 2015 19:08
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Cygni posted:but yeah streetcars without dedicated lanes are pretty dumb as actual transportation, even if the property value/tax boost is nice dc streetcar is actually even dumber than regular streetcars. normal streetcars suck up a lot of street space because they run in the center of the street and you have to space for pedestrians to get on and off the streetcar dc didn't want to do that, so they made the streetcars run along the outside edge of the road, like a bus. unlike a bus, they're on rails. so they can't swerve to dodge badly parked cars or avoid breaking off mirrors. someone fucks up their street parking and your streetcar system stops dead until it's towed lol
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Dec 11, 2015 19:09
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there is also option 3: dedicated busways. costs a little less than elevated rail, but delivers the same performance seems to work good in singapore.
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Dec 11, 2015 19:15
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Cygni posted:the track is done, its just short. at like $80m a mile its not a great deal, but its not really that crazy. LA's crenshaw light rail project is over $250 million a mile. los angeles is mostly dedicated right of way, so they are actually building stuff. that's why it costs 250 million a mile. (and when it's done, it might actually be faster than just walking to your destination.) dc is a car barn and a test track. and the test track is just rail embedded into existing streets. and if it is ever finished, it will still be useless because it will manage to be slower than a bus while also much more expensive to maintain.
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Dec 11, 2015 19:21
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Grandmaster.flv posted:what's uncomfortable? do you get weirded out eating at falafel joints? no, but my religion does not prohibit the consumption of fried chickpeas it's like a jewish butcher who specializes in pork. i guess it could happen but it is weird
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Dec 11, 2015 19:43
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at the date posted:funny that you're playing analogy police in here after this gem i'm pretty comfortable with the human trafficking analogy. you're totally cool with exploiting workers because otherwise they would be left in calcutta. and that's bullshit. why the gently caress can't we talk about, you know, easing immigration policy in a way that doesn't gently caress over workers and line the pockets of a narrow group of people?
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Dec 11, 2015 20:20
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Cygni posted:the downside of BRT in the states is that white/rich people hate buses, especially in some cities where they see buses as devices for subhuman pig people buses are stigmatized because they're slow and unreliable. a real BRT system, with dedicated busways that are not mixed with traffic, is just as fast as a subway. the stigma disappears pretty much overnight (new york style "brt," with a dedicated lane that's full of cabs and assholes, is just a regular bus that goes 20% faster. dedicated lane != dedicated right-of-way. as with a regular bus, only people with no other choice will ride them)
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Dec 11, 2015 22:35
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yard salad posted:i hope you're right. my midwestern city is adding one soon and i hope it works out a real brt system costs 80% as much as an actual train system. go figure that they don't get built very often. your midwestern city is almost certainly going to go for the new-york-style brt where it's not any kind of "rapid," it's just lines painted on the street. extra crapitude points: don't use a proof of fare system, so that you can spend 3 minutes waiting for people to pay every single time the bus stop
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Dec 11, 2015 23:17
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at the date posted:Just spitballing here, but maybe the reason the results were skewed was not the bigotry of those surveyed but (A) that trains are faster and more reliable than buses in every city on the planet, and (B) the people surveyed rightly paid no heed to projected figures about fantasy transit systems. right nobody would expect a brt to be good or fast because they have no experience with buses on dedicated rights of way.
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Dec 11, 2015 23:17
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yard salad posted:sounds like we'll get pre-boarding fare payment but a kind of half-assed dedicated right of way it's mixed with traffic, so it will still be hilariously unreliable like a bus. just a 20% faster bus
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Dec 12, 2015 00:10
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Shaggar posted:lmao that's the worst of all worlds they're better for the environment and quieter than a regular bus, but not as stupid as a streetcar
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Dec 12, 2015 05:26
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Smythe posted:i mean to clarify its like it has a train track thing. its like walled off from the road. but only the bus can drive on it. its like wtf. shouldt this just be a train. idk man. Smythe posted:oh also it has stops that more resemble a subway stop but theyre above ground. its like a train stop but then the bus comes. its a train bus. yeah, this is "real" BRT. it's like 80% of the cost of a train, but 100% as good for a known traffic volume. it's predictable, on-time performance is really good, you never have "bus bunching," you don't spend ten minutes at a stop waiting for people to pay, etc. turns out, when you eliminate all the bad dumb poo poo about buses, rich people will willingly ride them. "bus stigma" is all about how intrinsically lovely surface buses are, not about technology. tl;dr: w/ BRT, you save some money as long as you don't need to move a crazy huge number of people Notorious b.s.d. fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Dec 12, 2015 18:35
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also real "bus trains" exist the montreal subway uses trains with rubber tires that run in a concrete track. i have never ridden it but it sounds kinda cool, if pointlessly expensive. it's all very weird and french. 
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Dec 12, 2015 18:37
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infernal machines posted:shaggar lives in a state with a population density of 40 people per sq. mile and a total population lower than some urban neighbourhoods, asking him about transit is like asking a sub-saharan nomad their thoughts on indoor plumbing surface buses are to transit what the honey bucket is to indoor plumbing. it's a notch better than nothing, but nobody chooses it over any available alternative.
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Dec 12, 2015 22:05
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infernal machines posted:except in this metaphor we have cities with millions of inhabitants, all using honey buckets or just making GBS threads in the streets, because the government won't pony up the cash for anything better. people prefer private cars to buses for obvious reasons, and anyone who can afford one immediately stops riding the bus. it's not possible to make buses stop sucking. the suckage is built-in. totally unavoidable. the only way to get regular people to ride buses is to make private cars unaffordable. singapore and denmark have done this. infernal machines posted:alternatives are preferable, but ain't nobody gonna pay for 'em that's right, nobody's gonna pay for them it costs billions of dollars to construct even a crude rail system. hardly anywhere in the u.s. or canada has the population density to justify such an expense. it is admittedly something of a chicken/egg problem. much of the what is today the nyc subway was built speculatively. tracks and stations built into farms and cowtowns. and they spent an unholy amount of money to build it all -- the first bonds for subway construction were worth something like 50% of the property value of manhattan.
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Dec 12, 2015 22:15
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infernal machines posted:also, buses are fine on many routes. if the bus sucks it's because your ridership demand is high enough for LRT or so low that route is being run as a token gesture for the six poor bastards a day that need it. the only (transit) bus routes that work are routes that don't encounter any traffic. if there's no traffic, why is there a bus route? 
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Dec 12, 2015 22:27
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infernal machines posted:well there's a)dedicated row brt, b)time-of-day restricted transit only lanes, and c)routes with relatively low traffic volume (e.g. routes serving industrial and low density commercial areas) a. costs as much as rail b. doesn't work. even if you have jersey walls to keep assholes out, you still have stoplights c. ok this works i guess. a hella peaky traffic pattern where almost everyone is poor as gently caress anyway
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Dec 12, 2015 22:40
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infernal machines posted:it's still p. dumb, but the point is buses aren't just for poors, they can be implemented well, and they're actually used by pretty broad demographics in places where, you know, there are more people than cows. used pretty widely (by poor people)
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Dec 12, 2015 23:03
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people hate buses because they take for loving ever and make you late for literally any appointment you might have. it is not possible to ride a city bus and live up to basic obligations of middle class life. the racism is incidental. since only poor people ride buses, in many urban areas, most of the faces you'll see on the bus are not white
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Dec 12, 2015 23:04
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Cygni posted:also lots of people in lots of cities take buses to work everyday in the US. like, millions of people approximately 99% of those people would rather be taking literally any other mode of transport the other 1% are commuter buses. they have fewer of the problems that mark regular buses because they make very few stops. pick people up at three pre-arranged, pre-paid stops, drive for an hour, let everyone off. they're really expensive but people use them voluntarily and even pay for them
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Dec 13, 2015 14:40
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Jimmy Carter posted:G train best train the mta watches operating costs incredibly closely. on a thirteen billion dollar budget, a $1 million dollar cost to improve rider experience is the end of the freaking world. there's a long list of cool stuff you will never get for this reason. controlling operating costs is one of the mta's core missions and they are not going to back away from it. so on the operating side, if nothing else, they are trustworthy stewards of public funds. meanwhile, on the capital side, projects go 500% overbudget and nobody cares. entire subway systems have been constructed in europe in less time and for less money than individual stations in nyc. south ferry - a project to replace a single subway station with a new station a few yards away
east side access - a project to connect grand central to howard interlocking via a pre-existing tunnel under the east river
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Dec 13, 2015 21:07
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you'll never get your free transfer because the MTA watches operating costs too closely but you'll never get a tunnel or station extension because nobody trusts the MTA to watch capital costs on anything, ever. and with good reason. MTA capital planning purchasing is either incompetent, corrupt, or both.
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Dec 13, 2015 21:09
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The Puppet Master posted:I also appreciate that they charge by your distance traveled rather than per ride the fare scheme depends on development patterns and who you are trying to serve the argument for a fixed fare is that you don't want to penalize poor people for living far from city center, and you don't want to subsidize rich people who can afford to live 5 minutes from work. a fixed fare is not universally better than or worse than a variable fare, you just gotta consider your goals and poo poo
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Dec 14, 2015 15:54
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pointsofdata posted:I think you underestimate how convenient a good bus service can be. I often take a couple for distances which I would never drive or take a train, but because there's a bus every 3 minutes I can just turn up and hop on frequency is good, but on-time performance is better neither can be guaranteed with any kind of surface bus service
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Dec 14, 2015 22:56
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pointsofdata posted:On time performance shouldn't be significantly worse than driving, and perhaps even better if you have dedicated bus lanes unless you are literally the only passenger on the bus and the only vehicle on the road, it is guaranteed to be worse than driving
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Dec 15, 2015 17:55
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to be clear about where i am coming from, i am not saying that you shouldn't ride a bus. and investing in bus systems is still a worthwhile activity. i just want to point out the very real reasons that millions of people will not ride a bus. it doesn't matter how nice the buses are, or how many destinations they reach, or how well designed the system is. a large fraction of the population will never ride, because the downsides of buses outweigh any upside, period. that is ok it is still possible to have a transit system that improves everyone's lives even if half of adults won't ride it
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Dec 15, 2015 18:00
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Cygni posted:also ya we get it buses are bad, but they are also cheap and vital if you actually want to move people around and dont have 500 billion or a subway system already built pre-depression i just get tired of transit utopianism you see the reason people drive cars is that they're dumb, and cyclists and transit advocates just aren't preachy enough! that must be it. if we just yell at shaggar some more he'll sell one of his cars and commute to work by unicycle! buses are really bad and the shaggars of the world aren't wrong. (they just forget about the old people, the young people, and the poor people, who either can not or shoul not drive)
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Dec 15, 2015 18:08
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