NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/ba/transpor/2883

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 4.5 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!biosci!agate!ames!pacbell.com!pbhya!whheydt
From: [e-mail] (Wilson Heydt)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Cars as "something better"
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 22 Dec 92 17:48:59 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Wilson Heydt)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 90

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Joshua Levy) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John Ciccarelli) writes:
>>year head start, is now rarly used?  Or the one which pays for itself,
>>and is heavily used?
>
>    "Pays for itself"? Are you aware of all the government money
>that goes into highways??? Read Joseph Vranich's _Supertrains_, and he
>points out that in this country, about 38% of road costs are paid out
>of general funds, and not user fees such as gas taxes.

Given that the total gas taxes averages (state and Federal over the
US) between $0.20 and $0.25, and taking your figure at face value,
raising the combined tax on gas to $0.25 would *more* than cover all
those costs.

By comparison, some transit fares would have to rise 10-fold to
recover their *operating* costs--let alone capital expenses.

Note that after the reent BART derailment, folks at that system say
they need up to $1 billion to overhaul the system--after only 20
years.  Under a tit-for-tat system, BART would have to raise fares
enough to cover those costs from the system users.

>>Do you want to build your 21 century system out of the 20 century's
>>failure, or its success?
>
>    I guess you haven't visited Europe or Japan there, or ridden
>their abundant trains.

And yet...  Media reports indicate that the Japanese are buying cars
in droves...  And so are the Europeans....  If their systems are so
wonderful, why is their traffic congestion getting worse?

>    Even in the Bay Area, BART has been remarkably successful,
>despite the big initial infestation of bugs it had had. Even some
>CalTrain champions use BART as their model of heavy-rail service.
>
>    Joshua Levy, have you ever ridden BART?

I don't know if he has, but I use it routinely.  I use it in spite of
it's problems--not because of it's virtues.

>>Trains pollute a lot.  The CalTrain pollute as much as 600 cars, so
>>if you are on a train with less than 600 people, you would pollute
>>less by driving.
>
>    Where did you get _that_ figure? From scaling up from a 50 hp
>car to a 3000 hp F40 locomotive? Even so, the scaling is only by a
>factor of 60.

You're assuming the scaling in linear.  (This fails for several
reasons.  The gas-powered car probably has far more pollution controls
on it than the diesel locomotive engine, but a larger engine should
produce fewer pollutants proportionally because of cube-sqaure scaling
in the cylinders, plus it's run at constant speed much of the time.
Certainly the mix of pollutants is different...)

>    Cars pollute less? That's DEAD WRONG. They consume a lot more
>energy per person than (say) a BART train does. And BART's trains run
>on electricity, which shifts any environmental problems over to the
>power plants.

Ah... The 'efficiency' argument...  There's at least one experimental
car engine around whose exhaust is cleaner than LA's air.  Can't run a
train and clean the air at the same time....

The counter argument is time efficiency--a problem that mass transit
has yet to face sqaurely.  Cars are getting cleaner and more energy
efficient.  Will they ever match electric trains?  Unlikely.  Will
trains ever go to as many places as cars?  Very unlikely.

>    Government-beating again. You seem to trust that various road
>building agencies (all that g-word) coordinate with each other, so why
>not transit agencies?

There's a strong tendency to build roads that connect to other roads.
Think of it as job security for politicians.  If the roads don't
connect, somebody starts screaming about waste and fraud and politicos
lose their jobs...  Tehre are exceptions...  Okalhoma didn't like where
Kansas ended it's turnpike and never built a road to connect to it.
It just ended in some farmers field at the state line...

    --Hal

--
Hal Heydt                    |
Analyst, Pacific*Bell        |            You!
510-823-5447                 |    Out of the Gene Pool!
[e-mail]    |