Washington subway crash

[classicman]

snicker @ glatt.....

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Sure thing, Glatt old man. They were called toll roads. Still to be found here and there. You could research that.

[Holding the Snickers back... preferring a Pay Day...]

[glatt]

OK. I'll research that.

According to the CIA Factbook, the US has 6,465,799 km of roads. 4,209,835 km are paved, and 2,255,964 km are unpaved. Of the paved roads, 75,040 km are expressways. Of the expressways, according to Wikepidia, 4700 km are toll roads.

So to summarize:
6,465,799 km of roads total
4,700 km are toll roads and are presumably self supporting

That works out to about 7 hundredths of one percent of the roads in the US are paid for directly by the people who use them. 99.93% of the roads are a "tax-supported entity" which is some sort of evil thing according to you.

Let's contrast that with the DC Metro system, the topic of this thread. Its 2010 operational budget is funded roughly 52% by passenger fares.

7 hundredths of one percent vs. 52 percent. Which one is the bigger tax supported entity?

Before you get the wrong idea, let me be clear that I think all roads should be free and should be tax supported entities. We all benefit from them. But I also think public transportation should be subsidized because we all benefit from it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Whoa, where the hell do you think all those state and federal gasoline taxes go? That's why we have the roads we do. And the roads aren't just to get your ass to work and back, they also move your groceries to the store and the emergency services to your house.

[glatt]

Yeah. I agree. That's why I said that we all benefit from roads and that I support having them paid for with taxes.

I'm arguing that public transportation shouldn't be criticized for also being supported partially by taxes.

If you raise fares to cover 100% of the cost of public transportation, that's the same as killing public transportation. It wouldn't be able to compete with cars, which drive on roads that are 99.93% funded by taxes. And it's not just gasoline taxes that pay for the roads, it's also property taxes, income taxes, and maybe even some sales taxes that pay for building and maintaining roads.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Fine, subsidize your commute with taxes on the people served by that system. Why should I pay part of your fare?

[Undertoad]

Because it makes the roads semi-usable at rush hour? Right now my treasured Route 422 is basically a joke between 7:30 and 9am, and between 4:30 and 6 pm. They have so far failed to put a regional rail route out my way. I would pay to take cars off this road.

But then again, the regional rail they wanted to build was so damn expensive. This is the part that I just don't get. It's just goddamn rails and the rails are already there, even, but they wanted like 2 billion dollars to do it. Really? WTF! They built an entire fuckin transcontinental railroad in 1869, but nobody can add a Septa route without an ass-searing federal subsidy? What is so hard and expensive about this shit?

[glatt]

The same reason I help pay for the roads around you that I never use.

The benefit of the public transportation here to people here who never use it is that the roads are less congested. There are 1.2 million trips each day taken on the metro system here. If those 1.2 million people each got into a car and got on the road, there would be gridlock. 1.2 million additional cars each day will overwhelm any city. Just think of what traffic is like when there is a sporting event going on and there are an additional 30,000 cars on the road.

There's the whole issue of one region being taxed and having their money sent off to pay for services in another region, but that's been going on since the beginning of time and is not unique to mass transit at all.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Why should I pay part of your fare?

Just guessing here - Do any of the goods or supplies you use/purchase travel along those roads? Probably.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It's just goddamn rails and the rails are already there, even, but they wanted like 2 billion dollars to do it. Really? WTF! They built an entire fuckin transcontinental railroad in 1869, but nobody can add a Septa route without an ass-searing federal subsidy? What is so hard and expensive about this shit?

Because they must lay all new tracks for that route. Tracks you refer to are the Main Line. Roads are lousy for moving good. Rail must do that. Existing tracks must get freight from Chicago to NYC (actually Newark), Philadelphia, and Baltimore in two days. That means no train stops until it arrives. That means no passenger trains must be on that line.

And that must exist because roads are inferior for moving freight any significant distance.

To provide mass transit on the 422 corridor, new tracks must be built. And suburban towns must provide 500 and 1000 car parking lots. Everybody wants. Nobody wants to give.

Septa management, once people who came from mass transit, were replaced by business school graduates. Another major transit line goes through Gywneed Valley. A large open tract existed right next to the railroad on Route 202 - a major highway. A 1000 car parking lot, easily accessed from a highway, provided easy parking and a high speed direct access to Philadelphia. Express trains that fill up and then don't stop for the next 15 or 20 miles.

But that means one had to think like an engineer. No longer possible in an America dominated spread sheet thinking. As soon as business school graduates took over, the plan died. Now the entire large open space contains maybe 30 or 50 homes.

Another example of myopic thinking; why your mass Route 422 plan will never happen.

Well Pottstown - a major hub on that rail link, once had large open spaces to support parking for that rail link. With so many thinking myopically, Pottstown built a new town hall and other structures on that land.

Let's see. Traffic signals were failing about 8000 times every week - for at least five years - probably longer. But fixing them costs money. Requires management who thinks in terms of reality - not in terms of spread sheets. This had nothing to do with who pays for what. This is directly traceable to the same myopic reasons why that Rt 422 mass transit plan can never be implemented. People who think like myopic business school graduates. Same people who designed GM cars. People with a graveyard mentality. Cheaper was to let people die in a major train crash rather than fix the signals. Doing so made all spread sheets look better.

No difference between any of those events and the people who murdered seven Challenger astronauts. It’s not about solving problems when myopia and business school thinkers are doing the planning.

Don’t worry. Be happy. Business school graduates incapable of vision - and plenty of spread sheet analysis. Myopia. Also called political correctness. It completely justified 8000 signal failures weekly on the Washington Metro - for almost a decade without any intention of fixing it.

[classicman]

snark/All those graduates from those liberal schools can't think for themselves.../.snark

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by glatt

The same reason I help pay for the roads around you that I never use.

And I pay for roads around you, why should I pay for part of your train ticket too?

The benefit of the public transportation here to people here who never use it is that the roads are less congested. There are 1.2 million trips each day taken on the metro system here. If those 1.2 million people each got into a car and got on the road, there would be gridlock. 1.2 million additional cars each day will overwhelm any city. Just think of what traffic is like when there is a sporting event going on and there are an additional 30,000 cars on the road.

And when the roads are gridlocked, plus the cost of parking in DC, paying the actual cost of that train ticket won't look so bad, will it?

There's the whole issue of one region being taxed and having their money sent off to pay for services in another region, but that's been going on since the beginning of time and is not unique to mass transit at all.

Oh excuse me, I should pay part of your ticket, Because We've Always Done It That Way.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by tw

Because they must lay all new tracks for that route. Tracks you refer to are the Main Line. Roads are lousy for moving good. Rail must do that. Existing tracks must get freight from Chicago to NYC (actually Newark), Philadelphia, and Baltimore in two days. That means no train stops until it arrives. That means no passenger trains must be on that line.

Tracks I refer to are not the Main Line but a freight line going up to Reading. I did further reading and the line is owned by Norfolk-Southern. N-S is, for the most part, fine with passenger use on those tracks.

To provide mass transit on the 422 corridor, new tracks must be built. And suburban towns must provide 500 and 1000 car parking lots. Everybody wants. Nobody wants to give.

This is true; on the R5 Paoli, which is on the Main Line, the parking lots are 150-250 spots and they are all rated at 99% capacity every day.

Another example of myopic thinking; why your mass Route 422 plan will never happen.

I think it will. The current plan is to toll 422 with EZ-Pass, to pay for the strategic long-term "master plan" that they have come up with, which includes creating the R6 Norristown extension, improving Rt 422, improving the roads people will take to avoid 422 so they don't get tolled, revitalizing some downtowns, etc. and whatever else the hell they wanted to put in there. They paid real engineering firms real money to create real fancy multi-colored maps and stuff. It looks all scientriffic.

They figure Route 422 drivers will cough up enough money on a routine basis to pay for a $500 million bond, and they think the R6 line can be done for that, including $50M in Rt 422 bridge re-do at the Schuylkill river crossing.

The question of why did it cost $2B when the feds wanted to do it, and now costs $500M when the locals want to do it, is moot, since the federal project was shot down. It's just one of those things that makes you go Hmmmmmmmm. Senator Spector never did have the pull to make his $2B project go, but you know, I like the local people more. They're local and somehow they saved $1.5 billion dollars.

[tw]

Washington Metro will again demonstrate competancy. Silver line will connect the Metro system to Washington's Dulles International Airport. Rumors suggested this line terminates before gettting to the airport. To cut costs. Recently the Washington Post said system critical functions do not work. Well, we will see in July.

Meanwhile, the Metro executive responsible for making this work is resigning. Does he come from where the work gets done? Of course not. Patrick Nowakowski's education is listed as Drexel University - College of Business and Administration. IOW he is a bean counter. A business school graduate doing construction work or operating a mass transit system. We will see what this business school graduate accomplished.

In a previous example, an economics major designed the Obamacare website. Not someone who comes from where the work gets done (ie health care or computer programming). So that was flawed. A new Metro line was constructed by a business school graduate.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by tw

A new Metro line was constructed by a business school graduate.

I hear what you are saying, but this guy wasn't out there pumping concrete. He was sitting at his desk and on the phone.

The construction firm completed the line, and it was quite amazing to watch the construction. Metro looked at it and found many minor problems, and a punch list was created. The construction firm worked through the punch list and claims to have completed it. They turned the new line over to Metro for testing. And that's where we are now. Metro needs to do a few months of testing, and then they will open the line to the public.

We'll see in a couple months.

And yes, the line doesn't go all the way to the airport. Metro runs through several jurisdictions, and each jurisdiction needs to come up with funding, including the Feds and each state. The Dulles area (I can't remember which jurisdiction that is, maybe Fairfax County?) didn't want to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars right now to extend the line to the airport, so that part is on hold for now. It's pretty dumb, because extending the line to the airport is the main idea. Now it just goes to some of the neighborhoods on the way to the airport.