I-695, Soutwst X-Way, Mystic Valley Prkway, S. End Bypass

[Equilibria]

Originally Posted by Matthew

The lesson I take from it is that congestion is fundamental and can only be controlled through demand-pricing. Like in the buffet example above, you cannot fix that mess by making your buffet bigger. More people will show up and pack more in their bucket. The only way to fix this is to charge by weight. People will either pay by how much they use, or they will pay by waiting on line for scraps.

You mention the conflict between transportation as a business and transportation as a social service with the implicit assumption that things would be better if focus was placed on the former. I have to disagree.

The fundamental flaw with the concept of large-scale congestion pricing is that societal expectations are the primary reason why large cities have peaks in the first place. Sure, if this were Hyannis and the roads clogged up on nice beach days in the summer, people are moving according to their own desires, but it isn't. Commute peaks at 6-9am and 4-7pm aren't done by choice - they're demanded by employers.

The people you say would be "waiting on line for scraps" wouldn't be economically-minded consumers with a low value of time, they would be people with low wages who would be priced out of a $10 toll each way on the Turnpike just because their shift goes from 9-5.

This is why the Interstate system banned tolls for a long time. The system isn't designed as a business. It's designed as a critical piece of infrastructure for defense and commerce. It has to be accessible to all Americans at all times.

[Matthew]

Originally Posted by Equilibria

You mention the conflict between transportation as a business and transportation as a social service with the implicit assumption that things would be better if focus was placed on the former. I have to disagree.

The fundamental flaw with the concept of large-scale congestion pricing is that societal expectations are the primary reason why large cities have peaks in the first place. Sure, if this were Hyannis and the roads clogged up on nice beach days in the summer, people are moving according to their own desires, but it isn't. Commute peaks at 6-9am and 4-7pm aren't done by choice - they're demanded by employers.

The people you say would be "waiting on line for scraps" wouldn't be economically-minded consumers with a low value of time, they would be people with low wages who would be priced out of a $10 toll each way on the Turnpike just because their shift goes from 9-5.

This is why the Interstate system banned tolls for a long time. The system isn't designed as a business. It's designed as a critical piece of infrastructure for defense and commerce. It has to be accessible to all Americans at all times.

I don't think transit as a social service should be abandoned. I think that it should be made explicit, is all.

I think you misinterpreted my metaphor. "People waiting on line for scraps" is intended to be the analogy to the current situation of being stuck in heavy traffic congestion. There is no relation to economic status intended. Everyone, rich or poor, gets stuck in the same traffic.

Being "accessible to all Americans at all times" is physically impossible. That's why we have traffic congestion. What you're saying is like saying that "bread should be free and available to Americans at all times." The result will be long bread lines, as demonstrated by the former Soviet Union. You either pay with money, or you pay with time.

[Equilibria]

Originally Posted by Matthew

I don't think transit as a social service should be abandoned. I think that it should be made explicit, is all.

I think you misinterpreted my metaphor. "People waiting on line for scraps" is intended to be the analogy to the current situation of being stuck in heavy traffic congestion. There is no relation to economic status intended. Everyone, rich or poor, gets stuck in the same traffic.

Being "accessible to all Americans at all times" is physically impossible. That's why we have traffic congestion. What you're saying is like saying that "bread should be free and available to Americans at all times." The result will be long bread lines, as demonstrated by the former Soviet Union. You either pay with money, or you pay with time.

You've also misinterpreted what I meant . By accessible at all times, I meant that everyone has the same access to the system, not that that access is free-flowing.

At a certain level, transportation can be a capital good. Air travel, for instance, is priced according to demand. For a few decades, people wishing to get from London to New York in 3 hours had a luxury option to do so.

On the other hand, public roads are public for a reason. I'm worried about the trend toward transportation being a good at every level, with privately-financed tollways for the rich springing up all over the country. I'm a planner, so I get all the arguments about people paying the true cost of driving, but this is a country designed for driving. You typically can't get to work without it unless you pay a steep premium to live near downtown or transit. Until that changes, I don't think it's justifiable to punitively charge drivers for driving at times they're forced to drive (and in this economy, don't think you're getting an additional benefit from employers to cover it).

[Matthew]

Then people will continue to build subsidized highway sprawl as long as they don't have to pay the true cost of it. I don't see the tollways as being only for the rich, any more than I see any other products as being "only for the rich" just because they happen to cost money.

Also remember there would be a reduced tax burden. And credits can be given out on a need basis, just like any other basic necessity.

[Commuting Boston Student]

Ultimately, highway sprawl is going to continue to happen no matter what you do. As rail technology gets better, rail sprawl should start to happen as well, following a demand that is already naturally being generated.

Infrastructure shouldn't be run like a business. I value infrastructure in a limited subset of goods and services (alongside first responders among other things) where running things like a business is ultimately detrimental to the community and to the country.

Not all taxes are inherently bad taxes, and not all spending is evil and needs to be curtailed. I agree that trying to run it as a business and a social service satisfies neither demand, but (and I never thought I would ever say these words about anything) this is not something that should be run like a business.

[Matthew]

Rail sprawl happened in the 19th century. We call them "streetcar suburbs" and railroad towns. Nowadays, in comparison to automobile sprawl, rail sprawl looks positively urban.

Everything we need out of railroad technology for commuters has been around for a century. It's a matter of correctly applying well established and understood techniques. Unfortunately for us, even this seems to be beyond the capabilities of the MBTA.

In terms of running transportation like a business, it's not a matter of making profit: it's a matter of being effective. As Jarrett Walker puts it, as an agency, do you put your dollars towards generating ridership, or spreading coverage?

Actually, I'll defer to him on the rest of that discussion. If you're interested in that question: http://www.humantransit.org/2011/09/...rofitable.html

[whighlander]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Rail sprawl happened in the 19th century. We call them "streetcar suburbs" and railroad towns. Nowadays, in comparison to automobile sprawl, rail sprawl looks positively urban.

Everything we need out of railroad technology for commuters has been around for a century. It's a matter of correctly applying well established and understood techniques. Unfortunately for us, even this seems to be beyond the capabilities of the MBTA.

Mathew -- actually you happened upon something fundamental which the advocates of rail at any cost seemed to have missed

Raid came into existence in the 19th Century for one funamental reason - Steam and sprawed everywhere for a second reason Steel

Everything including high speed rail follows as inexorable from that as the next 14 billion years follows the Big Bang -- like the Big Bang the decisions made in the 19th Century are still guiding our modern railroads of various kinds:
1) pull from the front because of the weight of the steam boiler and the difficulty of transmitting the steam
1a) slightly modified by the introduction of electric traction allowing each car in a train to be powered
2) essentially stop everywhere along the path from start to finish
3) correlary vehicles are big to accomodate a lot of people who get on and off
4) spend an inordinate amount of time stopped and accelerating / decellerating
5) stations need to be large to accomodate large vehicles
6) take no real interest in the other vehicles except for safety reasons
7) need superfluous things such as tickets and conductors

We have a second model which makes a whole lot more sense and which through the combination of making a car or train car into a computer on wheels can simplify and vastly improve our non human-powered ground transportation

The model to be followed is the packet switched data network which today carries everything from simple commerce, to gossip and fine multmedia including live performing art and sports

How -- by defining the start and finish of the journey and routing the packets by the best available means which cirucumstances allow at the instant of arrival at the junction point in question:
1) vehicles go point to point -- mostly non-stop
2) vehicles are small and self propelled
3) stations can be more frequent and smaller -- closer to the destinations
4) wheels and rails or wheels and concrete -- it doesn't really matter
5) everything is electric -- either centrally powered or also on-vehicle energy storage technologies
5a) certain special cases -- electricity is generated on-vehicle
6) no need for tickets, conductors, etc.

[Matthew]

Some steam locomotives are able to run in push-pull configuration, it was invented for them. Modern EMUs should only lose about 2 minutes per station stop, if operated correctly. And there's no need for conductors, just fare inspectors.

I too am very interested in self-driving cars and what opportunities they will offer. But to sort of bring this back on-topic, there's a problem that self-driving cars can't really solve either: single-occupancy vehicles take up approximately 20 times more space than a single person. Computer controlled cars can probably pack themselves together better than human drivers can tolerate, but it will still be a significant amount of extra space.

So if everyone insists on going to work in their self-driving SOV, then you are going to end up with gridlocked highways at some point. It's just a matter of geometry.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by Matthew

I too am very interested in self-driving cars and what opportunities they will offer. But to sort of bring this back on-topic, there's a problem that self-driving cars can't really solve either: single-occupancy vehicles take up approximately 20 times more space than a single person. Computer controlled cars can probably pack themselves together better than human drivers can tolerate, but it will still be a significant amount of extra space.

So if everyone insists on going to work in their self-driving SOV, then you are going to end up with gridlocked highways at some point. It's just a matter of geometry.

And energy. Self-driving cars are still not going to hack it in peak oil when large segments of the population get priced out of personalized transit. Any form of it. At a time when resources are stretched and will be more location-stretched such that more people living out of the density will have to drive into the density to find work (i.e. end of the sprawl office parks, equilibrium-level return to concentrated employment centers even if they include much more a mix of the 128 clusters or capital-"S" type suburb centers than traditional downtown urban destinations). There's no panacea for the energy dependence and sprawl nooses, and self-driving electric cars don't solve the problem more than tidying it up a bit and kicking the can a few more decades down the road.

It's gotta be a distributed solution. It always does. Unimodality doesn't work and never has once the gimmick runs out. As true in the RR and interurban speculation-and-bust days of the 19th century and early 20th as it is now with sprawl's and cheap energy's pending expiration date. Getting sidetracked into mode vs. mode contests where one has to win while the other loses always misses that point. Imbalance doesn't work. Never has, never will. Balance and integration not only work, but they're a prerequisite for survival. Boom and decay frequently breaks along those lines.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Some steam locomotives are able to run in push-pull configuration, it was invented for them. Modern EMUs should only lose about 2 minutes per station stop, if operated correctly. And there's no need for conductors, just fare inspectors.

http://www.eot.state.ma.us/downloads/DMU_Fairmount.pdf

p.10 of the Fairmount DMU scoping study...acceleration comparison between an avg. push-pull loco and a DMU. And that's still on inferior diesel...EMU's are even better. European EMU's that don't have the FRA's stupid (fake) buff strength requirements can do 0-60 in about 30 seconds (an avg. sedan on the expressway: 10 secs.). I don't know what a Metro North M8 is by comparison, but the weight penalty on them wouldn't be any more than +12 secs or so slower than its Euro counterparts.

Yes...fixed regional mass transit can be auto-competitive on accel/decel, and definitely beat the living piss out of a bus for nimbleness vs. passenger capacity. It already does most parts of the developed world beyond "...but we've always done it this way." U.S. of A. Even Amtrak passed up the opportunity to put EMU's on the NE Regionals by dropping close to $1B on a new generation of push-pull locos and coach tincans. Because living in the past is the American way.

[Matthew]

Checking out Metro North's New Haven schedule, with all the different stopping patterns, it seems like they figure 1-2 minutes for each additional station stop. For example, 1503 takes 54 minutes to travel from New Haven to Stamford, while 1507 takes 1 hour with 4 additional stops. So that's 6 minutes to make 4 extra stops.

Regarding self-driving cars, I was thinking they might become somewhat like trackless trolleys when under guidance on "electrified roadways", if usage of the internal combustion engine becomes prohibitively expensive.

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Checking out Metro North's New Haven schedule, with all the different stopping patterns, it seems like they figure 1-2 minutes for each additional station stop. For example, 1503 takes 54 minutes to travel from New Haven to Stamford, while 1507 takes 1 hour with 4 additional stops. So that's 6 minutes to make 4 extra stops.

And that's a slower schedule than usual because at any given time 1 track on the New Haven Line is out-of-service at any station stop because of the multi-year overhead wire replacement project. When I last rode it the platform-side tracks were the ones being worked on and they had bridge-plate walkways spanning the OOS track from the platform, matched up with every single door on the train. At each stop with this setup a conductor had to get out and motion the engineer to move up or back up X inches to get the bridge plates aligning exactly. Efficient process, but it's like 2-3 extra minutes per stop before the doors open.

And then when center express tracks are worked on there's some built-in dwells in the schedule to let an Amtrak pass. So that schedule will be a bit faster when this major-major construction project is done. Enough to handle the 2-3 more stations they either are building or are considering building on the line.

New Haven Line really is closer to a long-distance rapid transit line than a commuter rail line speed vs. density. There's no comparison with the MBTA commuter rail. Except, boy if we had those EMU's the performance difference would make Providence feel 30 miles closer to Boston and make some people swear off 95 forever.

[Matthew]

It usually takes about 35 minutes 1-stop from PVD to BBY in my experience on Amtrak NE Regional, vs 70-80 minutes for the MBTA commuter rail making more stops. Could probably cut that down by over 25 minutes using EMUs. Maybe they should rent an M8 and try it out for some runs, whet the public's appetite for electrification.

I've just realized that Amtrak's monthly pass is $360 for BOS-PVD and the new MBTA Zone 8 pass will be $314. I guess that also includes subway though. Still, I wonder if there are any folks who might consider it. There's only one morning departure from PVD, but there's two Regionals (6:10, 8:15) from BOS that might be attractive for reverse-commuters. And only two MBTA (6:20, 7:20) trains from BOS, so that's not much attraction.

[Commuting Boston Student]

Originally Posted by Matthew

I've just realized that Amtrak's monthly pass is $360 for BOS-PVD and the new MBTA Zone 8 pass will be $314. I guess that also includes subway though. Still, I wonder if there are any folks who might consider it. There's only one morning departure from PVD, but there's two Regionals (6:10, 8:15) from BOS that might be attractive for reverse-commuters. And only two MBTA (6:20, 7:20) trains from BOS, so that's not much attraction.

You couldn't pay me any amount of money to voluntarily relocate to Providence, monthly train pass or otherwise.

Also, there's a lot more than two trains out of PVD to BOS... are you discounting the trains coming up from Wickford now?

[Matthew]

Other way around, I was talking about the reverse commute from Boston to Providence. Maybe someone who lives in Back Bay and works in PVD. Odd, but it happens.

[whighlander]

Originally Posted by F-Line to Dudley

And energy. Self-driving cars are still not going to hack it in peak oil when large segments of the population get priced out of personalized transit. Any form of it. At a time when resources are stretched and will be more location-stretched such that more people living out of the density will have to drive into the density to find work (i.e. end of the sprawl office parks, equilibrium-level return to concentrated employment centers even if they include much more a mix of the 128 clusters or capital-"S" type suburb centers than traditional downtown urban destinations). There's no panacea for the energy dependence and sprawl nooses, and self-driving electric cars don't solve the problem more than tidying it up a bit and kicking the can a few more decades down the road.

It's gotta be a distributed solution. It always does. Unimodality doesn't work and never has once the gimmick runs out. As true in the RR and interurban speculation-and-bust days of the 19th century and early 20th as it is now with sprawl's and cheap energy's pending expiration date. Getting sidetracked into mode vs. mode contests where one has to win while the other loses always misses that point. Imbalance doesn't work. Never has, never will. Balance and integration not only work, but they're a prerequisite for survival. Boom and decay frequently breaks along those lines.

F-line, Mathew -- Note:

1) I never said anything about internal combustion engines
These postulated self driving cars could be:
a) all electric with local contact pick-ups, or magnetic coupling;
b) driven by linear induction motors in the guideway;
c) battery powered;
d) fuel cells or even internal combustion engines with hybrid propulsion

2) Peak Oil is a myth -- the recent discoveries in Baaken, Green River, etc -- hundreds of years of oil, hundreds of years of natural gas

3) headways can be 0 -- vehicles can be in contact as long as they are compatible -- as they can load and unload off the "line" there are 0 delays for acceleration and deceleration and minimal for merging and de-merging

4) they can be 1 person or more -- just as long as everyone is coming and going together to/from the same locations -- thus there could be a bus for a dozen leaving every 15 minutes running non-stop in a protected ROW from Harvard Yard to Harvard Alston Campus or Hanscom to Kendall or Kendall to SPID

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by whighlander

2) Peak Oil is a myth -- the recent discoveries in Baaken, Green River, etc -- hundreds of years of oil, hundreds of years of natural gas

Oh come on, whigh. That's almost as blatant a copy/paste of political talking points as the austerity meme.

These boundless new reserves are all hard to extract, expensive and energy-intensive as fuck to extract, and eleventy times as fracking environmentally devastating to extract. The gas, too...nobody seriously projects the current unprecedented cheapness to be more than an immediate-term condition this decade or at-most next. Peak oil is not about the center of the earth being sucked dry, it's about all the cheap-and-easy stuff being tapped out.

Fuel is not going to be scarce when we have to have it, it's going to be priced to unavailability for whole tracts of society who used to have equal top-to-bottom access to it.

[Matthew]

I too see eventual rising fuel prices tipping the balance in favor of electric propulsion with trolley feed. Especially if we really do get vehicles that can dynamically and automatically fit themselves into guideways.

Carpools and van sharing do alleviate the geometry problem. Perhaps somebody will come up with a computer-based "sharing" system that allows coordination of multiple people and one vehicle. Much like van shares today, but without the labor costs of a driver. Such vehicles can provide a convenient "middle road" between entirely private and public transit. They will still be too unwieldy to handle large volumes of people going to the same location though. So, public transportation on a fixed route will still be the most effective and efficient way of moving large groups of people along a predefined route.

[underground]

But lady in the oil company commercial said everything would be okay!

[whighlander]

Originally Posted by F-Line to Dudley

Oh come on, whigh. That's almost as blatant a copy/paste of political talking points as the austerity meme.

These boundless new reserves are all hard to extract, expensive and energy-intensive as fuck to extract, and eleventy times as fracking environmentally devastating to extract. The gas, too...nobody seriously projects the current unprecedented cheapness to be more than an immediate-term condition this decade or at-most next. Peak oil is not about the center of the earth being sucked dry, it's about all the cheap-and-easy stuff being tapped out.

Fuel is not going to be scarce when we have to have it, it's going to be priced to unavailability for whole tracts of society who used to have equal top-to-bottom access to it.

F-line -- I wrote what I wrote from a basic and fundamental understanding derrived from many years of interest in:

1) petroleum geophysics and engineering
2) energy economics
3) the oil bidness
4) the Baaken formation and the Green River and Powder River geology

as well as some 10 years living in Austin TX and a semester course called "Introduction to the Economics of Energy Systems" taught in-part by Prof. Wiliam Fisher, Ph.D., the then director of the UT Bureau of Economic Geology" and former Ast. Sectretary of the Dept. of Interior

where did your Leftwing talking points originate?