Amtrak ridership hits record high...again

[Steeplerot]

LOL, enjoy your public transport. It sucks, you know it sucks I know it sucks.

Why does it suck to you? I have used BART/MUNI daily for almost 20 years and it has served me well. Now that we have those GPS signs that tell you exactly when the bus is coming is all the better. BART has had this for ages.

Are you a east bay person? I go to the east bay once every 4-5 years and usually walk after I get off the the train.

Whats nice about that is it is literally a pre-party taking a train somewhere with friends. Good times.

Whats with the needless haterism? I count myself lucky to have reliable passenger service 24/7, 3 am stuck after the bar closes? It's all good, transfers last all night.

I literally ride in a old school internal combustion automobile once every few years, it is just not part of living here. Autos are a nuisance and blight on the landscape. If they banned them tomorrow from the city we would be all the better for it.

More parks, more open spaces, free flow of bicycles, no parked cars taking up space. Sign me up!

Hopefully the 21st century will move beyond the old horseless buggy finally.

 

[K1052]

wut

if light rail has no future in houston it's more due to metro's shit-tastic management than anything else. oh, and meddling from republican congressmen in the burbs.

It took 20 years of fighting to build a 7 mile LRT line. Woo.

Given public sentiment against paying for this kind of stuff and the laxest land use restrictions of any major state I think it's ok to claim that mass transit in TX is going nowhere fast.

 

[ElFenix]

It took 20 years of fighting to build a 7 mile LRT line. Woo.

Given public sentiment against paying for this kind of stuff and the laxest land use restrictions of any major state I think it's ok to claim that mass transit in TX is going nowhere fast.

More is soon to open and

 

[ElFenix]

Damn tapatalk doeant have edit. Anyway, more is just about to open (lines are in the ground east of downtown, just waiting on the DT portion). And much of the delay has been due to metro's corruption and mismanagement (the guy in charge was run out 2 years ago and metro continually failed to meet buy american rules.)

 

[K1052]

Damn tapatalk doeant have edit. Anyway, more is just about to open (lines are in the ground east of downtown, just waiting on the DT portion). And much of the delay has been due to metro's corruption and mismanagement (the guy in charge was run out 2 years ago and metro continually failed to meet buy american rules.)

New lines and extensions (totaling 14 miles, iirc) supposed to come online in 2015 (though dates have slipped several times). It is still a very unambitious network for a city of Houston's size but they are going to be handicapped by low population density for the foreseeable future.

 

[ElFenix]

New lines and extensions (totaling 14 miles, iirc) supposed to come online in 2015 (though dates have slipped several times). It is still a very unambitious network for a city of Houston's size but they are going to be handicapped by low population density for the foreseeable future.

density overall is low but that doesn't mean there isn't enough contiguous higher density housing built and being built to fill up rail cars.

my main complaint about metro's rail project as it stands now is that is it very slow to responding to newly dense areas such as the washington corridor. that area could use and would use light rail now, but it'll take 10 years even after approved by voters because suburban republicans are so opposed to it. and bob lanier hated trains for whatever reason so he had a lot of rail that could have been used for commuter ripped out.

 

[Steeplerot]

density overall is low but that doesn't mean there isn't enough contiguous higher density housing built and being built to fill up rail cars.

my main complaint about metro's rail project as it stands now is that is it very slow to responding to newly dense areas such as the washington corridor. that area could use and would use light rail now, but it'll take 10 years even after approved by voters because suburban republicans are so opposed to it. and bob lanier hated trains for whatever reason so he had a lot of rail that could have been used for commuter ripped out.

Republicans have been dismantling perfectly good infrastructure to enrich their corporate buddies for ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

The "automobile" mentality of the USA is nothing less then corporate PR, always has been.

 

[ElFenix]

Republicans have been dismantling perfectly good infrastructure to enrich their corporate buddies for ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

The "automobile" mentality of the USA is nothing less then corporate PR, always has been.

read the whole article, the streetcars weren't doing very well.

not sure what that has to do with republicans either.

 

[K1052]

density overall is low but that doesn't mean there isn't enough contiguous higher density housing built and being built to fill up rail cars.

my main complaint about metro's rail project as it stands now is that is it very slow to responding to newly dense areas such as the washington corridor. that area could use and would use light rail now, but it'll take 10 years even after approved by voters because suburban republicans are so opposed to it. and bob lanier hated trains for whatever reason so he had a lot of rail that could have been used for commuter ripped out.

The only way to get the suburbs on board is to offer heavy commuter rail into a CBD where the jobs are. Houston's downtown in this case would probably have to add tens of thousands of jobs to make that practical. There are unfortunately few levers for the local governments to pull down there to promote such a relocation.

Our suburban Republicans were not at all amused when their colleagues in the House were supporting a transportation bill that would have gutted mass transit (and their Metra commuter rail).

 

[K1052]

read the whole article, the streetcars weren't doing very well.

not sure what that has to do with republicans either.

Nothing. Streetcar systems were largely the victims of demographic and economic shifts.

New investment in modern streetcars for urban neighborhoods that have experienced resurgences is a more productive discussion. Busses are poor choices to service dense high demand areas where they share lanes with traffic.

 

[Steeplerot]

read the whole article, the streetcars weren't doing very well.

Ripping out perfectly good rail doesent help the situation. The point is it was a manufactured crisis by the auto/tire/big oil industries to destroy a competitor and reshape the American landscape into unsustainable urban sprawl. "suburbia" With a populace wholly dependent on their products.

 

[drebo]

Would probably have to use Ontario for such services. LAX does not want commuter flights further clogging up it's airspace and ground ops.

Ontario is sort of close enough.

Flying in to Ontario from a smaller regional airport, like Stockton, and then driving into the city is still faster, more efficient, and more convinient than taking Amtrak.

 

[K1052]

Ripping out perfectly good rail doesent help the situation. The point is it was a manufactured crisis by the auto/tire/big oil industries to destroy a competitor and reshape the American landscape into unsustainable urban sprawl. "suburbia"

Cheap roads/cars/gas combined with the baby boom and de-urbanization had far more impact. Cities where NCL had no stake converted around the same time for the same reasons.

 

[ElFenix]

between DT and the med center a couple miles south i assure you there are plenty of jobs. you seem to have odd ideas about stuff down here.

the main problem with offering a commuter rail solution is that the freight tracks were ripped out once the freight companies reduced service. so now there's not very many lines running near downtown from suburban areas as there used to be.

 

[Steeplerot]

Cheap roads/cars/gas combined with the baby boom and de-urbanization had far more impact. Cities where NCL had no stake converted around the same time for the same reasons.

All this was manufactured by the corporations to give themselves a advantage. Roads and cheap gas served no one in the long run but to line the corporations pockets leaving us with a mess of dysfunctional cities with their cores hollowed out by freeway spam.

And no, many cities resisted the freeways, and have thriving vibrant city cores to this day. Compare SF to Cincinnati, OH downtown for example. One is full of endless small family owned stores with neighborhood people who walk everywhere and interact, the other looks like a wasteland of concrete with homeless camping and trashed freeway onramps everywhere.

Who wants to live near a freeway and all the smell/noise? Much less start a business.

We tore out our freeways in SF, people all over said it would be impossible to function without. Yet the city just grows bigger daily. If not the most wealthy/desirable to live in city in the USA.


Cars are a blight. The more efficient the public transit service offered the more desirable the city becomes, and the whole economy grows.

I will go with the real world results over 20th century corporate rhetoric.

 

[K1052]

Ontario is sort of close enough.

Flying in to Ontario from a smaller regional airport, like Stockton, and then driving into the city is still faster, more efficient, and more convinient than taking Amtrak.

Amtrak in CA (except for LA-SD service) doesn't resemble anything I'd call efficient. I could see subsidizing some commuter flights until the HSR spur to Sacramento was built.

 

[drebo]

Amtrak in CA (except for LA-SD service) doesn't resemble anything I'd call efficient. I could see subsidizing some commuter flights until the HSR spur to Sacramento was built.

Sacramento already has plenty of daily flights to LA. They're not the ones that need better mass transit. The Central Valley is what needs better mass transit. Stockton, Modesto, Merced, etc. It's far too inconvinient to expect someone from Modesto to drive to Sacramento (60 minute drive on a good day) and then take HSR down to LA or San Francisco.

I'd much rather see BART extended further east, to Stockton or at least Tracy.

It took me 2.5 hours yesterday to drive to downtown San Francisco...then I had to go from there to San Jose, which was another hour. There was no mass transit that I could have taken, and believe me I would have liked to.

 

[K1052]

All this was manufactured by the corporations to give themselves a advantage. Roads and cheap gas served no one in the long run but to line the corporations pockets leaving us with a mess of dysfunctional cities with their cores hollowed out by freeway spam.

And no, many cities resisted the freeways, and have thriving vibrant city cores to this day. Compare SF to Cincinnati, OH downtown for example. One is full of endless small family owned stores with neighborhood people who walk everywhere and interact, the other looks like a wasteland of concrete with homeless camping and trashed freeway onramps everywhere.

Not really but I have little interest in arguing this conspiracy theory.

You remember the Embarcadero Freeway?

Most of the cities that successfully avoided the worst impacts of highway construction got their routes shifted ever so slightly away from the core downtown.

 

[Steeplerot]

Not really but I have little interest in arguing this conspiracy theory.

You remember the Embarcadero Freeway?

Yep, the Embarcadero is now a nice place to chill now. Provide shedloads of tourist money and is a attraction because it is right along the water. Now those old run down warehouses under the freeway are thriving stores and places to go. Not a big ugly smelly eyesore.

Then:

Now

 

[K1052]

Sacramento already has plenty of daily flights to LA. They're not the ones that need better mass transit. The Central Valley is what needs better mass transit. Stockton, Modesto, Merced, etc. It's far too inconvinient to expect someone from Modesto to drive to Sacramento (60 minute drive on a good day) and then take HSR down to LA or San Francisco.

I'd much rather see BART extended further east, to Stockton or at least Tracy.

It took me 2.5 hours yesterday to drive to downtown San Francisco...then I had to go from there to San Jose, which was another hour. There was no mass transit that I could have taken, and believe me I would have liked to.

My post was in response to flights from Stockton. I would include other central valley cities in that as well with the obvious exception of Sacramento since it has service already. Sac will eventually have an HSR spur serving a number of these towns.

Heavy metro mass transit rail is really not suited for that kind of run. Electrified commuter rail via Dumbarton with connection(s) to BART is what you'd be wanting to see.

 

[K1052]

Yep, the Embarcadero is now a nice place to chill now. Provide shedloads of tourist money and is a attraction because it is right along the water. Now those old run down warehouses under the freeway are thriving stores and places to go. Not a big ugly smelly eyesore.

*snip*

My point was that SF didn't magically escape the freeway building spree by smart urban planning. They made similar mistakes.

 

[Steeplerot]

My point was that SF didn't magically escape the freeway building spree by smart urban planning. They made similar mistakes.

The freeways always had major resistance to them here from the get-go.

The central freeway plans were supposed to have it all over the heart of downtown but was stopped by the citizens of SF and finally torn down -thanks to the earthquake of 89.

We cut down on the freeway spam, and kept most of the big box stores out, this is imo a big reason why we didnt turn into one of these terrible depressing parking lot/giant corporate chain store sign landscaped places to live in like the rest of the USA. (the mess of the east bay is a good example of the difference close to home)

 

[K1052]

The freeways always had major resistance to them here from the get-go.

The central freeway plans were supposed to have it all over the heart of downtown but was stopped by the citizens of SF and finally torn down -thanks to the earthquake of 89.

But they still went up and SF suffered the negative effects like many other cities. Not to the degree of some for sure, particularly the rust belt.

You think that's bad? Check out what Robert Moses wanted to do to NY in his later years.

 

[Steeplerot]

But they still went up and SF suffered the negative effects like many other cities. Not to the degree of some for sure, particularly the rust belt.

You think that's bad? Check out what Robert Moses wanted to do to NY in his later years.

Was that the dude who killed the overhead rail in NYC and NJ? I will check it out.

A damn shame imo, although overhead rail is a blight imo also. Its kinda dark/depressing/loud to live under commuter rail tracks -It's all about subways. But then we need massive investment.

Long term sustainability/innovation is not in corporate Americas agenda.

 

[Steeplerot]

Not really but I have little interest in arguing this conspiracy theory.
.

Conspiracy theory? It went all the way to the freaking supreme court and these corporate CEOs were charged formally for destroying infrastructure publicly.

So..its all a conspiracy that its a conspiracy?

Silly.

The legal term conspiracy is a different beast then a "conspiracy theory".

A few people colluding together for their own sole interests behind closed doors is conspiracy you could say.