[sustran] Re: More on Portland and metros

[Mark Potter]

on 11/12/01 1:13 AM, Wendell Cox at wcox at publicpurpose.com wrote:
(snip snip)
> there is little hope of providing comprehensive mobility
> throughout the urban area with rail systems and generally,

They are part of a comprehensive solution, not the entire solution.

> to the extent
> they are built, they consume money that could be better used to provide a
> higher level of people more mobility/access.
> 
> So long as public transport is content to  principally serve destinations in
> the CBD and dense inner city, the car will become king outside.

But how far outside and how invasively?  And at what real costs in ignored
and hidden subsidies?
> And once
> this starts, it is likely to be irreversible. There are exceptions --- the
> highly dense natural corridors of Hong Kong and Mumbai come to mind.
> 
> Enough for now....

If this presumed relative uselessness of trams and relative superiority of
buses over trams/light rail is so true, why aren't cities like Vienna,
Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels, Melbourne, Wroclow (Poland), Prague ripping out
their systems and replacing them with buses, wider roads and freeways?

Some of these cities are downright tiny by Asian standards, and yet these
systems, oftentimes extending into the countryside,  seem quite popular and
useful.  I've used all of them and found the cities and systems on average
environmentally superior to cities and systems of comparable size lacking
such systems.  I was told by some folks at a bicycle club in Essen, Germany,
that when bus lines have been replaced by trolleys in Germany, ridershp on
the line goes up 30% on average. (anyone know of confriming/refuting
evidence?)

I know that I'm not alone in preferring light rail/trolleys to buses.  In
Sydney, which is rife with buses, the quality of the street level experience
is generally lower than in trolley-loving Merlbourne.  When I mentioned this
to a resident of the rather upscale Paddington section of Sydney, his
comment was "Yeah, seems some politician got the bright idea of getting rid
of the trams sometime back around the 70s", his voice plainly expressing the
irony he felt.  Interestingly, Sydney has recently put in at least one line,
though I wasn't able to guage how useful or popular it was.

Buses lurch more jarringly, sway unpleasantly; they're noisy, they belch
carcinogens and assorted asthma-inducing effluvia.  Trolleys and light rail
are sedate and well-mannered in comparison.   Personallly I avoid riding
buses like the plague when there are alternatives, and know plenty of others
who feel the same. 

Re metros, here in Fukuoka,  (a city which foolishly removed its trams years
ago) we do have a metro, albeit not very extensive and limited in hours of
operation from 5:30 am to slightly before midnight.   Despite these
limitations,  it is immensely popular, with trains running as often as every
3 or 4 minutes during busy times, 5 to 8 minutes most other times, this
despite the city's moderate size by Asian standards of 1.3 million.  It is
instructive to compare rents within walking distance of this system with
rents on streets which are on noise and fume-choked bus filled streets.  In
a city-to-city comparison, Fukuoka wins hands down as a desirable place to
live over nearby similarly sized and located but relatively transit-deprived
cities like Kitakyushu and Hiroshima.    For people who value quality of
life as well as thinking about the capacity of a system, my guess is that
all else being equal,  cities with viable  alternatives to buses and cars
win over comparably sized cities without such alternatives.   I would argue
that quality of life and the intrinsic value of desireable alternatives
needs to be entered into people's thinking.


Thanks for listening--

Mark L. Potter
millennium3
Fukuoka