Off-Peak Public Transport Usage

(pedestrianobservations.com)

61 points | by luu 1526 days ago

11 comments

  • ummwhat 1525 days ago
    I'm skeptical for many reasons.

    First, where is he getting that car commuters outnumber rail commuters (just barely) in New York? Last I heard the split was 60/40 in favor of rail.

    Second, where did he get that it is unusual for management to not use a car? Rather famously Bloomberg himself used to commute to city Hall by subway. By the authors own admission, even the lawyers use the subway. New York doesn't have that weird anti-transit classism of the rest of the country.

    Third, what is meant by multi modal and why is it a relevant figure if merit.

    Fourth, he clearly used New York metro area, not the city proper in his calc. Can I get some footnotes on if the cross comparison did the same thing to other cities?

    Fifth, 10 min headways is exactly the threshold where you can just show up and not pre plan your trip. When you get to the station you will wait on average five min. Compare that to the amount of time spent looking for parking or waiting for an Uber. I am unsatisfied with the conclusion that of peak wait times are the reason for underutilization or that there even is an underutilization problem in the listed American cities.

    • Symbiote 1525 days ago
      10 minute gaps sounds like a long gap for a city the size of New York.

      Most metro lines in London have 2½-5 minute gaps off-peak.

      10 minutes is more like the waiting time for the next train from London to Birmingham, after the morning peak: https://traintimes.org.uk/london/birmingham/1000/monday

      • jkaptur 1525 days ago
        Many of those gaps take place at night. Last time I visited London, I was nastily surprised to find that the tube has a several hour gap during that time.
    • jakobegger 1525 days ago
      I agree that 10min is a threshold. We have a bus line nearby that has a 15min interval. It's close to useless for short trips, and I only use it rarely.

      The busses with 10min interval are okay. The average wait is still longer than I'd like, but it's not quite as frustrating.

      But a 5 minute interval should absolutely be the goal. It's probably not possible for many bus lines because of traffic, but for rail and tram lines its not a problem.

      With a 5 minute interval public transport becomes more appealing than driving.

      One reason why wait time is so important is that people often need to change lines. If you want to take two busses with a ten minute interval, you have to leave 20min early to make sure you get there on time. That makes driving a lot more attractive...

      • ummwhat 1522 days ago
        The thing is in parts of New York City 5 min gaps aren't possible in the rail lines even at peak. The reason is traffic in a manner of speaking.

        The New York City subway uses extensive interlining which means that two or more services share track for part of their route (typically the part in Manhattan). If trains on the shared track are every 3 min, by conservation of mass, trains on the split part need to be every 6 min.

        NYC also is still upgrading it's signaling system so for now train are a 5 min interval even in the best parts and 10 min intervals everywhere else. There is physically no easy fix.

    • jcranmer 1525 days ago
      > First, where is he getting that car commuters outnumber rail commuters (just barely) in New York? Last I heard the split was 60/40 in favor of rail.

      He's getting that number from American Community Survey data, and it's including the full MSA, which includes the entirety of Long Island and half of New Jersey, even if you don't work anywhere near NYC itself. The 60/40 split you're talking about is more representative of the mode share for people who live in NYC proper.

      > Second, where did he get that it is unusual for management to not use a car? Rather famously Bloomberg himself used to commute to city Hall by subway.

      He's talked with several staff at the NYC MTA, and it's fairly well-known that most of the upper management at the MTA don't use its own services. Bloomberg is an exception, not the rule.

      > Fourth, he clearly used New York metro area, not the city proper in his calc. Can I get some footnotes on if the cross comparison did the same thing to other cities?

      The author does spend a lot of time trying to compare like-to-like. Official city boundaries are notoriously bad indicators of urbanization--Staten Island is basically a suburb within NYC boundaries, to say nothing of places like Houston, while Boston and Washington, D.C. have core parts of their key business districts just outside official boundaries. The official metric that tends to be most comparable across countries is various approximations of the MSA.

    • bobbiechen 1524 days ago
      Tiny nitpick, you'll probably wait longer than five minutes:

      >In the case of a nominally 10-minute bus line, sometimes the span between arrivals will be longer than 10 minutes, and sometimes shorter, and if you arrive at a random time, you have more opportunities to encounter a longer interval than to encounter a shorter interval. And so it makes sense that the average span of time experienced by riders will be longer than the average span of time between buses, because the longer spans are over-sampled.

      https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2018/09/13/waiting-time-parad...

    • resonantjacket5 1525 days ago
      I am not sure why you're skeptical about any of these stats. A visit to any modern metro system outside of America will reflect what Alon says. 10 min headways while decent in America is still kinda annoying. Note that the 10 min headways is really more like 15 when taking into account American transit's unreliability in actually adhering to the schedule.

      That being said, I don't think the lack of off-peak usage is because of low frequency, but rather lack of density on the suburban stations. If there's only offices at the core stations then people can only really use it for going to work.

  • Pfhreak 1525 days ago
    > When there is a deficit, agencies cut there first, leading to frequency-ridership spirals in which lower frequency deters riders, justifying further cuts in service until little is left. I

    This is one of the things that drives me nuts the most about American attitudes towards public transportation -- that they must make a significant portion of their revenue from fares/ridership.

    If we think that large scale people moving is important to a healthy city, we should all be funding it, even if we're not all riding it. Everyone benefits when ridership is high -- businesses, other commuters, people who cannot afford cars, etc.

    Why do we always seem give transportation (or public housing, etc.) a heavy initial investment then immediately start neglecting it but tightening the purse strings. We're just making our initial investments that much less valuable.

    • rayiner 1525 days ago
      > Why do we always seem give transportation (or public housing, etc.) a heavy initial investment then immediately start neglecting it but tightening the purse strings.

      We don’t. New York’s operating budget per passenger is double London’s. (And also much more heavily subsidized. Tickets cover half of operating costs in New York, but all of operating costs in London.)

      Public transit advocates need to acknowledge the reality that one of the things killing public transit in the US is spending multiples of what other countries spend to get the same service. For what the second avenue subway is going to cost, France or London would have been able to build three more lines in Manhattan. American governments are selling Kias for the price of Bentley’s and transit advocates are stumped why the public isn’t interesting in buying.

      • taffer 1524 days ago
        > Tickets cover half of operating costs in New York, but all of operating costs in London.

        According to Wikipedia New York has a farebox recovery ratio of 47% and London has 65%.

    • Larrikin 1525 days ago
      This has become my disillusion with most services in America, not just public transportation. Although public transportation serves as a good example.

      There is absolutely no reason the government can not provide an effective service that serves most people well, but there is a belief among the wealthy and those convinced they will be wealthy one day that nearly every single service the government provides is better provided by someone super wealthy running a for profit business.

      It would be fine if it was a truly competing view point. Bureaucracy can in impede fast growth to better ideas. But most of those people in the US decide that the best way to to prove their point and gain wealth is to purposefully implement bad policy so that the government isn't even a potential floor level competitor.

      Post offices around the world provide many services to their citizens including health insurance. Public transportation is a pleasure to use in Asia vs rush hour traffic even with crowding. Yet taxes in the US are extremely complicated and potentially expensive despite the government knowing all our nearly all the information needed to file for most citizens because corporations and those seeking to prove a point the government should not tax them have purposefully made it complicated and seek to make it complicated.

    • progval 1525 days ago
      > American attitudes towards public transportation

      Unfortunately, this is happening in France too. SNCF used to be publicly funded to manage all inter-city/town railways and trains, but is now privatised and expected to make a profit.

      • xvedejas 1525 days ago
        "Privatized and expected to make a profit" reads a lot more like Japanese transit to me, than it sounds like any American system I'm familiar with. I'm inclined to understand France as moving in a different (perhaps better) direction than the US is moving (or rather, is not moving).

        https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-pr...

    • uoaei 1525 days ago
      You know the answer to that question but it bears repeating:

      Americans have a kneejerk aversion to any sort of taxes because they think they will never see the benefits. So these agencies are forced to fund themselves and/or look to the private sector for support.

      • mumblemumble 1525 days ago
        > Americans have a kneejerk aversion to any sort of taxes

        And how. My hometown is near a state line. There are somewhat lower - about 10¢ per gallon - gasoline taxes on the other side of the border. People will habitually make special trips to a gas station in the next town over - at a cost of half an hour of time (at least) and $2 worth of gasoline - in order to pay $1.50 less in taxes. To another state.

        That said, I'm not so sure about

        > because they think they will never see the benefits

        People don't seem to be quite so opposed to public spending on things like highways and airports. I would guess it's more that America's cherished spirit of individualism means that there's a greater tendency to oppose public spending that benefits society as a whole, but doesn't directly benefit oneself.

        • danans 1525 days ago
          > I would guess it's more that America's cherished spirit of individualism

          I suspect that the drive at the individual level to ...

          > directly benefit oneself.

          ... is universal. Germans, Swedes, Chinese - they're all just as self serving as Americans. In America, we've just built a mythology around that "cherished spirit" that often impedes us from doing common sense things like investing in comprehensive mass transit in places that it makes a lot of sense to do so. It doesn't hurt that the narrative of individualism has been very effectively used by the auto industry.

      • thomascgalvin 1525 days ago
        Americans have a kneejerk aversion to any sort of taxes because they have been conditioned to think that any sort of public good is communism, and therefore evil, and that they are therefore righteous for protesting against it.

        And they have been conditioned to accept certain exceptions, like the military, or corporate welfare.

        That is evidence that the problem could be corrected, with correct (and ubiquitous) messaging, but we are competing against fifty years of effort and most of the major media outlets.

      • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
        > Americans have a kneejerk aversion to any sort of taxes because they think they will never see the benefits.

        Close. It’s not that they think they will never see the benefits, but rather they know it.

        Look, here is a good example of what you and the parent suggest. The ST3 passed in the Seattle ballot, which promises expansion of the public transit network. The project includes light rail to my neighborhood, in about 20 minutes of walking distance from my home. However, the planned date for delivery of the project is 2035. Knowing the realities of public projects in the US, I don’t expect it before 2040s. I’ll be long retired by then.

        At the same time, the ST3 involved a tax increase, which for me means about $10,000 (today’s dollars, more in inflated ones) I’ll pay in additional tax before the construction is complete.

        In addition to that, since the farebox recovery is only around 30%, the city subsidies covers 70% of operational costs of public transit, and the subsidies come from my taxes too. To put it in concrete terms: assuming I use public transit only for commuting, annual fare costs would be $2.75248 = $1320, and so the whole operational costs apportioned to me would be $1320/0.3 = $4400, so the subsidy would be around $3000 per rider. Fortunately, only 10% of people in Seattle commute via public transit, so it roughly translates to $300/person/year now, which I’m paying to support public transit that I don’t even use. This number is so low only because the driving majority subsidizes the public transit riding few. Thus, since operational costs grow roughly linearly with the number of riders, if majority of people were using transit for commuting, the cost per resident would have to rise significantly. This would make my public transit costs significantly higher than my driving costs, with greatly reduced convenience. So why would I want to support public transit?

        The big issue here isn’t that public transit is always a bad idea, it’s just it’s a bad idea in places where government cannot do large projects quickly and cheaply, and cheaply operate them, which in 2020 is the whole US.

        • Pfhreak 1525 days ago
          Except Sound Transit has come in under budget and ahead of schedule on other recent light rail projects. Or, at the very least they've come in on schedule.

          ST3 costs you 0.5% sales tax, 0.8% motor vehicle excise tax, and a property tax of 25 cents per $1,000 in assessed value over 25 years. If you have a million dollar home, you'll pay $6,250 in additional property taxes. With a hundred thousand dollar car you'd still need to be spending hundreds of thousands a year on taxable stuff.

          So yeah, you are wealthy and are being asked to put in more than some others. But you'll still see benefits -- light rail stations increase local business, remove vehicles from the road, pollute less, and you'll help leave a legacy for your children and your community.

          > This number is so low only because the driving majority subsidizes the public transit riding few. Fortunately, only 10% of people in Seattle commute via public transit...

          Have a source for that? Because from what I've read 25% of commuters use a single occupancy vehicle (car or motorcycle), 10% use a rideshare (car/vanpool), 49% uses transit, and 10% use walking or biking. [1] And the number of transit commuters is on the rise overall.

          [1] https://www.seattlebusinessmag.com/seattle-using-public-tran...

          • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
            > If you have a million dollar home, you'll pay $6,250 in additional property taxes. With a hundred thousand dollar car you'd still need to be spending hundreds of thousands a year on taxable stuff.

            Sorry, looks like I'm bad at mental math. I'll edit my comment.

            > Have a source for that?

            See [1], page 14. It's probably something like 14-15% now. Your link only talks about people who commute to downtown area.

            [1] - https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/transportation/metro/ac...

        • throwaheyy 1525 days ago
          You're ragging on public transit because you feel you have to pay for something you don't use.

          What about my taxes that go to paying for roads I don't drive on? There's no way the $~200 car registration is covering all the costs involved in maintaining an extensive road network.

          On top of that, while we’re counting up taxes I pay for which I do not receive a direct benefit: on the odd chance I did drive in my own neighborhood, why should I be paying taxes to subsidize all the roads in every other neighborhood.

          The point I’m making is: you can get as petty as you want in comparing what you pay with what you get, but in the long term, do you really want to live in a society that can’t have nice things because there’s one person who might just benefit slightly more from them than you can?

          Are Americans already so far down the road of considering public transit beneath them, that the only people who use it must not be able to afford cars, so it's not reducing car usage so it's OK to hate on?

          • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
            My complaint is not that I am paying for transit I don’t use. It’s not even that I’m paying for transit I can’t even use. Rather, it’s that in the alternative universe where hardly anybody is driving and almost everyone is using public transit, which as I gather is the goal, my transportation costs will go significantly up, while the convenience will go significantly down. Really, what would be the benefit for me? Why would I ever want to move to that place?

            The analogy about transit riders complaining at paying for roads they don’t use is wrong, and for more fundamental reason than the simple fact that the transit does in fact use roads. The biggest difference is that since overwhelming majority people drive instead of using public transit, so majority of the costs of roads is covered by drivers. Look, I’d love to move to system where you are charged for road use in proportion to your use of it. However, it would then only be fair to do the same with public transit. If public transit was actually paid for by the riders, instead of being subsidized by non-riders, bus fares would be pretty much as high as Uber fares on the same routes.

            Again, the issue is not that public transit is universally bad idea, it’s just most US cities simply aren’t able to build and operate them cheaply enough for it to make sense.

            • throwaheyy 1525 days ago
              > transit does in fact use roads

              No - If I take the train, I’m not using the road. If I take a bus, I’m using the bus lane and I’m not using the other lanes. In fact, I can’t use them because my bus is already using the bus lane, so why should I pay for them?

              To apply your logic, I’m being over-taxed by 3x too because the road is 4 lanes wide but I can only drive in one lane at a time.

              See how silly this complaint is?

              • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
                Can you respond to the rest of the comment, instead of cherry picking a part of a sentence? The rest of the sentence you’re quoting from makes it pretty clear that this is not the biggest problem with the argument, and in fact addresses your response.
        • manacit 1525 days ago
          I'm guessing you live in Ballard, which I do think ST3 hasn't prioritized getting done quickly enough. I would love to see Seattle kick more money into getting Ballard <> Downtown done sooner than 2035, that is a perfectly valid complaint. With that said, I also think you're not being fair to ST3 - it's a regional program, and it's paid by everyone in the ST region. Long before 2035 there will be a host of improvements[1], including more BRT and other deliverables: Link to Redmond, West Seattle, etc.

          Sound Transit has consistently delivered projects on-time, and outside of an increased land acquisition cost, has been relatively on-budget[2].

          I don't want to debate on a fact-by-fact basis, but I'll say that you're off on the percentage of Seattle that takes transit to work: it's north of 20%[3] (from what I can see), and bucking a nationwide trend of that falling in other cities. Seattle is, IMO, doing the right thing to work through the massive influx of population it's gotten. I only wish it was started 20 years ago (or more!) and could be done faster.

          Personally, I am more than happy to pay the increased vehicle registration tax, sales tax and property tax. I purchased a house close to the light rail explicitly because I wanted to have convenient transit access, and I see the benefit of how these tax dollars were spent every day. Even if you don't directly ride the Link, it's taking traffic off the road and making commutes easier.

          I think transit _options_ are an extremely important quality of life item that creates a more dynamic and healthier city. They're just that though - options. I own a car, and I use it for trips that don't make sense to do any other way (e.g. going Skiing). That doesn't mean I want a world where nobody drives, but a world where people have multiple choices for personal mobility.

          [1]: https://st32.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/Document%20...

          [2]: https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/article/12171636/ahead-o...

          [3]: https://seattletransitblog.com/2019/09/28/census-reports-ste...)

          • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
            I would love to see Seattle kick more money into getting Ballard <> Downtown done sooner than 2035, that is a perfectly valid complaint.

            This is only the symptom of the real problem, which is way too high cost of building. Light rail construction costs are planned to be around ~$500M/mile. In comparison, whole subway line in my home town of Warsaw, finished in 2014, built 6 miles of underground subway for ~$200M/mile. Considering that subway typically costs 5-8 times more than light rail per mile, $500M/mile is simply insane.

            The cost, and not construction schedule, is the real problem. The construction schedule is so slow precisely because money is scarce. If we could build light rail for $50M/mile instead of $500M/mile, the project would make way more sense, and would also most likely be more than halfway done by now. On the other hand, since the money is scarce, not only we know that we won't get the project finished by 2035, but it also means that won't get anything more than ST3 by 2035.

            I think transit _options_ are an extremely important quality of life item that creates a more dynamic and healthier city. They're just that though - options. I own a car, and I use it for trips that don't make sense to do any other way (e.g. going Skiing). That doesn't mean I want a world where nobody drives, but a world where people have multiple choices for personal mobility.

            I agree. At the same time, I'd like everyone to internalize the cost of the options they choose. That means charging the costs of transit to transit users, and at the same time, charging drivers for congestion they cause.

            • techsupporter 1525 days ago
              Depending on the exact route, West Seattle to Ballard via Downtown will involve one or two tunnels, one regular-height bridge, and possibly one very tall bridge. If we take the "preferred EIS alternative," it's two tall bridges and one long tunnel. Plus all of the station work and the myriad extra stuff that neighborhoods and regional politicians insist on being crammed into light rail expansion.

              Add on that Sound Transit, unlike most transit agencies, has pretty stout restrictions on its borrowing capability. Sound Transit cannot sell bonds to pay for the entire project, or even most of it, up front, due to a debt cap imposed by the Washington State constitution. So it borrows, builds, pays down with tax revenue, then borrows again, and so on. This form of borrowing incurs more interest expense and requires a much longer timeframe for construction because the money simply isn't available and isn't available efficiently. (Also, the voters of the Sound Transit tax district have consistently voted in favor of these tax increases over the past 21 years, so it isn't like we didn't have a say in the spending.)

              Here's where I'll editorialize for a little bit, and I am sorry if this sounds like I'm personally attacking you. I promise I'm not, but I do get a little frustrated: All of this is endlessly debated, particularly in transit advocacy circles. Sound Transit isn't operating like this because someone woke up and thought "well, better do a shit job and spend 15 years building because fuck the taxpayers." We got where we are through a series of decisions made over the course of sixty years--dating back to the original votes on Forward Thrust and the freeway revolt and an earlier taxpayer revolt against public borrowing--and now we live with those consequences.

              It's not fair or reasonable to point to a country with a cost of living half of Puget Sound's and a wildly different tax and public agency system. For one big example, I checked and the bulk of the Warsaw Metro's M1 €230 million expansion was financed in one big block by a consortium of investment banks and the Polish central government. The M2 €1 billion expansion is half-funded solely by the EIB. We don't have the benefit of those public banks in Washington. The closest we get is Federal Transit Agency funding from the US federal government in the other Washington, but even that is usually a third to just under half of a project's cost (and is often in the form of loans, not direct grants, that further reduce borrowing capacity). Local borrowing, a piece at a time, from tax revenue makes up the rest.

              We'd love to discuss all of this with you instead of you just being mad that you feel like you're being screwed by a bunch of freeloading transit riders.

              Expansion map: https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/west-seattle-b...

              M2 funding source article: https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/warsaw-receives-eib-funding-fo...

              • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
                > Depending on the exact route, West Seattle to Ballard via Downtown will involve one or two tunnels, one regular-height bridge, and possibly one very tall bridge. If we take the "preferred EIS alternative," it's two tall bridges and one long tunnel. Plus all of the station work and the myriad extra stuff that neighborhoods and regional politicians insist on being crammed into light rail expansion.

                Still more expensive than 6 miles fully underground line with 10 stations, and 1/3 mile of under river tunnel in very permeable sand soil.

                > Add on that Sound Transit, unlike most transit agencies, has pretty stout restrictions on its borrowing capability. Sound Transit cannot sell bonds to pay for the entire project, or even most of it, up front, due to a debt cap imposed by the Washington State constitution. So it borrows, builds, pays down with tax revenue, then borrows again, and so on. This form of borrowing incurs more interest expense and requires a much longer timeframe for construction because the money simply isn't available and isn't available efficiently.

                Yes, that's what I meant when I said that it's only so slow because money is scarce. If the construction was cheaper, the shenanigans you describe wouldn't be necessary.

                > (Also, the voters of the Sound Transit tax district have consistently voted in favor of these tax increases over the past 21 years, so it isn't like we didn't have a say in the spending.)

                Sure, but 54% to 45% vote is hardly a large margin.

                > Here's where I'll editorialize for a little bit, and I am sorry if this sounds like I'm personally attacking you. I promise I'm not, (...)

                And yet you drop lines like:

                > We'd love to discuss all of this with you instead of you just being mad that you feel like you're being screwed by a bunch of freeloading transit riders.

                That's simply a nasty ad hominem strawman. I'm mad, because I'm complaining that this project in particular, and Seattle public transit in general is way, way to expensive for what it is?

                > All of this is endlessly debated, particularly in transit advocacy circles. Sound Transit isn't operating like this because someone woke up and thought "well, better do a shit job and spend 15 years building because fuck the taxpayers." We got where we are through a series of decisions made over the course of sixty years--dating back to the original votes on Forward Thrust and the freeway revolt and an earlier taxpayer revolt against public borrowing--and now we live with those consequences.

                Again, the debt service costs of ST3 are less than 10% of the cost of the project, and the problem with the very schedule is not lack of money, but rather too high of an expense. This whole thing proves that the taxpayer revolt against public borrowing was very much correct: without it, instead of overpaying by factor of 5x on one project every 20 years, we'd do the same every 4 years.

                > It's not fair or reasonable to point to a country with a cost of living half of Puget Sound's and a wildly different tax and public agency system. For one big example, (...)

                Again, this excuses why project takes 20 years, but not why it costs 5 times more than what it should. If the costs were reasonable, the schedule would also be shorter.

            • manacit 1525 days ago
              > This is only the symptom of the real problem, which is way too high cost of building. Light rail construction costs are planned to be around ~$500M/mile. In comparison, whole subway line in my home town of Warsaw, finished in 2014, built 6 miles of underground subway for ~$200M/mile. Considering that subway typically costs 5-8 times more than light rail per mile, $500M/mile is simply insane.

              It's worth noting that if you look at the cost of ST2's University Link Extension, I believe it was $1.9b overall (with half of that coming from the federal gov) for 3.5 miles of completely underground Link, which would make the cost about ~$540M/mile all in, by my calculations. This is, at least, as complex as a "subway", no? I don't want to come off as attacking you personally, but I don't think saying that the cost of the University Link expansion should have been "5-8x less than $200M/mi" is reasonable.

              I'm no expert, but I would love to see a cost breakdown of both projects - land acquisition, construction, cost of debt services etc. There's surely some complex work to be done in tunneling under the Montlake Cut, I would be land costs more to acquire in Seattle, etc. In addition, ST is bound by some really weird debt cap rules that mean they literally can't borrow money in the most advantageous way, which definitely increases the cost.

              > I agree. At the same time, I'd like everyone to internalize the cost of the options they choose. That means charging the costs of transit to transit users, and at the same time, charging drivers for congestion they cause.

              Sure. Looking at Sound Transit's numbers, they estimate that ST3 costs the typical adult $170 annually: https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news....

              If you have a more expensive house, or a more expensive car, it's bound to cost you more. This seems appropriate to me - people with more money paying more than people with less money. As someone who is fortunate to be able to afford to own a home and a nice(r) car, I'm happy to pay a greater share of that pie.

              Beyond that, it's not like we do a great job of externalizing the car here either, especially when the impact to the environment is taken into account. Do you think that people who only drive should not pay for the transit that takes cars off of the road so that they can afford to? It's not a zero sum game.

              I don't feel like I'm getting fleeced by the government when I pay my ST-related taxes, and I don't feel like ST is trying to 'take advantage' of me. I'm confused where that mentality comes from, honestly.

              • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
                > It's worth noting that if you look at the cost of ST2's University Link Extension, I believe it was $1.9b overall (with half of that coming from the federal gov) for 3.5 miles of completely underground Link, which would make the cost about ~$540M/mile all in, by my calculations. This is, at least, as complex as a "subway", no?

                No, because it only added 2 stations, and that's where the real cost is. Tunelling is relatively cheap, it's the underground station construction that's adding real expense. The 6 mile Warsaw line has 10 stations on it. Typical cost of subway construction in the US is on the order of $800M-1B/mile.

                > I don't want to come off as attacking you personally, but I don't think saying that the cost of the University Link expansion should have been "5-8x less than $200M/mi" is reasonable.

                Indeed, but I didn't say that. That $500M/mi figure I gave was for ST3, most of which will be above grade. Of course light rail construction in the US will have different costs than light rail construction in Poland, but the difference here is too extreme to excuse it by talking about cost of living differences.

                > There's surely some complex work to be done in tunneling under the Montlake Cut,

                Surely not as complex as 10 times longer tunnel under Vistula River.

                > ST is bound by some really weird debt cap rules that mean they literally can't borrow money in the most advantageous way, which definitely increases the cost.

                By less than 10%. It's all in ST reports.

                > If you have a more expensive house, or a more expensive car, it's bound to cost you more. This seems appropriate to me - people with more money paying more than people with less money.

                This only seems appropriate to anyone in the context of taxation. If grocery stores charged you more for food just because you make more money, you'd most likely be outraged.

                > Beyond that, it's not like we do a great job of externalizing the car here either, especially when the impact to the environment is taken into account. Do you think that people who only drive should not pay for the transit that takes cars off of the road so that they can afford to? It's not a zero sum game.

                Which is why I recommend charging for congestion. This automatically makes mass[1] transit more attractive.

                > I don't feel like I'm getting fleeced by the government when I pay my ST-related taxes, and I don't feel like ST is trying to 'take advantage' of me. I'm confused where that mentality comes from, honestly.

                Honestly, I don't feel too fleeced by local government either -- this is rather my complaint for federal government. However, just because I can afford something doesn't mean that it's a good decision to spend money on it. I make this kind of cost-value analysis everyday in my life with my after tax money, and I don't see why I should be silent when the government spends my before-tax money on stupidly expensive projects of little value.

                [1] - mass, but not necessarily public transit, that really depends on average passenger load per bus.

                • manacit 1525 days ago
                  > No, because it only added 2 stations, and that's where the real cost is. Tunelling is relatively cheap, it's the underground station construction that's adding real expense

                  Which is why that viaduct tunnel with no underground station was so inexpensive :).

                  Broadly: I'm not arguing that it's cheaper to build a subway in other parts of the world, that's absolutely true. A lot of ST3 cost is forecast in 2040 dollars, which slightly inflates the cost. Of course, even if you bring that back to 2020 dollars, take away the 10% for debt cap wonkiness, you still end up paying more than you would in many other countries, this has been true here, in NY, LA, SF and everywhere else in the USA.

                  I'd love to see that fixed!

                  But in the interim, I'd rather use progressive taxation to fund quality of life improvements for everyone in the area - even folks that don't directly take the light rail will some benefit.

                  I don't think it's fair to compare taxation to grocery store shopping, either - that's a strawman much like comparing a household budget to the national debt doesn't make sense in reality. It's fair to say we'll fundamentally disagree on that, and that's ok!

                  I'd love to see a congestion charge as well - passing more of the real cost of using a car would go a long way to exposing that the normal way of life in the USA comes with a lot of hidden costs, and I hope would shift the balance to public transit. I would love to be able to couple that with a more efficient construction cost as well - unfortunately, I don't have the answer to that.

                  • xyzzyz 1525 days ago
                    > Which is why that viaduct tunnel with no underground station was so inexpensive :)

                    It is six times as large as each of University Link tunnels, and in fact was largest tunnel bored by a TBM in the world. But yes, it’s high cost was also a travesty. This place cannot get anything done cheaply.

                    > But in the interim, I'd rather use progressive taxation to fund quality of life improvements for everyone in the area - even folks that don't directly take the light rail will some benefit.

                    I’d rather not, but since I don’t have much choice, I’d rather have government project clear higher bar than “some benefit”. It’s easy to get “some benefit”, the question is whether benefit is commensurable to the cost, and when it comes to Seattle, the answer is usually “no”.

                    > I don't think it's fair to compare taxation to grocery store shopping, either - that's a strawman much like comparing a household budget to the national debt doesn't make sense in reality.

                    I think it’s very fair, and you don’t like it because taxation is a clear loser here.

                    > I'd love to see a congestion charge as well - passing more of the real cost of using a car would go a long way to exposing that the normal way of life in the USA comes with a lot of hidden costs, and I hope would shift the balance to public transit. I would love to be able to couple that with a more efficient construction cost as well - unfortunately, I don't have the answer to that.

                    Indeed, I’d love people to be able to build more dense places, so that people who like them can move there, instead of remaking my place in their image at my expense.

                    • manacit 1524 days ago
                      Is that not exactly what the rezoning and increased construction in Seattle is attempting to do? Sounds like you’re frustrated because you’ve been outvoted - it is no more your place than anybody else’s who lives/works here. You can move with your feet as much as any other privileged tech worker in this country.

                      I don’t think this conversation is going much farther, but I appreciate that it’s been even keel. I hope you find what you’re looking for somewhere!

        • greglindahl 1525 days ago
          > Fortunately, only 10% of people in Seattle commute via public transit,

          And the other 90% are mostly in cars, which occupy finite road space that can't be expanded very much. Which is a roundabout way of saying that that's the biggest benefit to pitch at die-hard solo drivers.

  • pedantsamaritan 1525 days ago
    I know NYC subway runs 24x7, while many other systems do not. I was curious on the actual number of trains.

    I made a bunch of assumptions, picked a city to compare NYC to (Berlin), and did some math.

    NYC Subway may run ~960 trains per week per line. Berlin s-bahn & u-bahn may run ~1270 trains per week per line.

    I am curious how other cities compare

    Assumptions:

    - u-bahn day peak = 5 hours @ 4min/train

    - u-bahn day = 8 hours @ 10min/train

    - u-bahn night = 8 hours @ 15min/train

    - u-bahn weekend = 24 hours @ 15min/train

    - s-bahn day peak = 5 hours @ 10min/train

    - s-bahn day = 9 hours @ 15min/train

    - s-bahn night = 7 hours @ 30min/train

    - s-bahn weekend = 24 hours @ 20min/train

    - nyc peak = 5 hours @ 10 min/train

    - nyc off-peak = 19 hours @ 10min/train

    - nyc weekend = 24 hours @ 12min/train

    • laurencerowe 1524 days ago
      It's hard for NYC's subway to run at the frequencies others manage since the system has so many branches and reverse branches. In London I believe there are plans to split the Northern Line into two separate lines to enable running at higher frequencies. The Victoria Line now runs at 36 trains per hour at peak, 100sec/train.

      Conversely NYC can run trains all night because so much of the system is double tracked, letting them close one track each way for maintenance overnight.

  • kccqzy 1525 days ago
    > This strongly suggests that non-work public transportation usage is much higher in European than in American cities even when the usage level for work trips is comparable.

    Sounds about right. For work trips, the origin and destination are both predictable. I can carefully choose where to rent in order so that I would live conveniently close to a public transport stop. But for "fun" trips and anything else, there's a lot more spontaneity in the destination, often not served by public transport, so a car is still necessary.

  • tom_mellior 1525 days ago
    I don't understand the point of giving a big table of numbers and then not doing any comparisons or calculations based on the data. Maybe it's just meant to make the whole article seem more scientific than the hand-waving that it really seems to be?

    Anyway, I can't say for any other cities, but a population figure of 3.7m for Vienna is ridiculously overblown. The actual figure is 1.9m for the city, Wikipedia gives 2.6m for the metro area. But even just the city itself is sprawling and very badly connected towards the outskirts, so even the 1.9m are very unevenly served.

    Also, it's not true of course that the French (and Germans, and Austrians) typically take their 5 weeks of vacation in a single block in the summer. That wouldn't leave any vacation time for the winter holidays, other school holidays, etc. Two-, maybe three-week blocks are much more typical in my experience.

  • Nerada 1525 days ago
    I love when I come across sites like this, where someone is just so wholly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about something I would have dismissed as mundane.
  • mjevans 1525 days ago
    Frequency of service correlates with Freedom to do useful things with the service.

    Lack of frequent service or worse gaps in service mean that someone might have to drive or even worse suffer lost opportunity if they cannot drive/pay for a ride of some sort.

    Though I would prefer if transit had dedicated underground routes to insulate the noise and make service independent of the weather.

  • dweekly 1525 days ago
    Possible alternate explanation: Americans, when not heading to work, get in their car for the pleasure of driving. Disproportionate US car ownership - even in areas with abundant public transport - might help support such a theory, as well as generally American attitudes towards driving being an expression of autonomy.
    • herval 1525 days ago
      Germans are fairly well known for their love for cars, and a lot of folks have cars “for pleasure” (convertibles, sports cars, etc). Autobahns are also insanely fun - you can actually speed up that sport car, unlike here in the US of A. All anecdotal of course, but I would be surprised if that theory has any evidence to support it..
      • kube-system 1525 days ago
        They also have legal requirements for ownership which go way way beyond what most of the US does. I think part of their car culture can be attributed to self-selection bias.
        • herval 1525 days ago
          I come from a “third world” country, and gotta say the vehicles that are allowed to be put on the street here are shocking. Lost count on how many cars glued together with duct tape I’ve seen around - I’d be shocked if those are driven “for leasure”...
          • kube-system 1525 days ago
            Many are primary transportation for lower income people. But it's also not uncommon in some circles in the US to have a 'beater car', as an alternative to their typical transportation.
    • kube-system 1525 days ago
      I definitely think some of the effects falls into “if you have the option, you might exercise upon it” effect.

      The US makes it easier for people to own a car as a non-primary form of transportation than much of Europe. Taxes, licensing, insurance, fuel, and used vehicle prices are all comparatively cheaper, and parking spaces are more abundant.

      Germany for example, requires more than 550 times the amount of automobile bodily injury insurance than my state here in the US. Pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to afford to have a car just sitting around for occasional use if I lived there.

      • distances 1523 days ago
        Driving is much safer in Germany than in the US though (less than half the deaths per car), so I would assume similar insurance is quite a bit cheaper. But there's no denying it's more expensive to have a car in Europe.
        • kube-system 1523 days ago
          I don’t even think you can get similar insurance in the US. The highest liability limits I’ve ever seen offered in the US are still more than an order of magnitude lower than Germany’s minimums. (And I specifically look, because I always max out my liability limits)
    • thomascgalvin 1525 days ago
      I don't drive for pleasure, but when I do drive, it's in the opposite direction of my office. I go into the city to work; I go into the suburbs to play. The restaurants, movie theaters, and stores I visit are all outside of the city.
  • lelandbatey 1525 days ago
    Every time I have to sit and wait for the Seattle light rail (the red line) outside commuter hours this is what I think about. It's 3:30 pm right now in Seattle and the light rail is scheduled to come only every 12 minutes. I dream of the times this article quotes for Germany and France; 5 minutes between trains would be amazing!
    • Analemma_ 1525 days ago
      Normally the light rail is every 8 minutes outside rush hour; bear in mind, there’s a temporary disruption due to construction in the Chinatown station [0] It will be done by March.

      [0]: https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/service-alerts/lin...

    • cookie_monsta 1525 days ago
      Does 7 minutes really make a difference? Presumably departure times are available in real time, meaning you could shave a few minutes off your time at the stop and spend them somewhere more pleasant
      • wott 1525 days ago
        It brings a completely different way of using the transport, in fact.

        When the period between 2 trains/buses/whatever is below 5 minutes, you don't check the timetables, you don't plan anything, you don't calculate anything, you just walk to the stop without thinking.

        When the period is 10 minutes or more, you handle it more like an intercity train, you check, you plan, you calculate. Or you don't and you wait, and wait, and wait.

        Personally, I don't have a problem with it, but it is a bit of an obsession of mine to plan and calculate everything... also I've lived most of my life in places where you'd be happy with a train, or a bus, every 2 hours (supposing there was a line). For people who have been accustomed to the comfort of mind of the first option, it is felt harder to switch to the second option.

        -------

        But then there is the problem of transfers. There, low frequency strikes badly and there is nothing you can do about it, contrary to the first wait at the first stop. Personally, I had no problem with 15 minutes period buses, but the transfers were killing me, and it was getting much worse during low-activity times. Just a small-looking increase in the period has exponentially bad consequences.

        Less terrible, there is also the case when you have to arrive at a fixed time. Unless the arrival time matches, a low frequency forces you to start earlier. So, the time is wasted even if you calculated your first wait.

      • usrusr 1525 days ago
        It's the difference between just walking to the station whenever convenient and making an effort to time your arrival to the schedule. There is a big jump in UX quality between stressing yourself about punctuality and not caring, because a train will come soon enough.

        And it's not just a subjective "good enough" thing where it's not worth optimizing the last few percent: even if you did want to perfectly optimize to the fraction of a second, you'd still want to include some buffer time for unpredictable delays on the way to the station. When the train interval isn't bigger than your buffer then all that synchronization effort is completely wasted.

        (PS: not related to your post, just a remark on the wider discussion: it's quite misleading to say "Germany" when referring to a service level that is pretty much exclusive to Berlin)

      • thescriptkiddie 1525 days ago
        Transfers are the big issue. Many if not most trips will require at least on transfer. When you show up at the station at a random time, you have to wait on average 1/2 of the headway time, but if you miss your transfer, you have to wait the entire time. With buses and streetcars typically being delayed by traffic, you have to count on missing the transfer more often than not. If you have to make two transfers on a 15 minute headway, then count on adding 30 minutes of waiting to a trip that might have only taken 30 minutes total. There is a massive difference between a 5 minute headway and a 15 minute one.
    • monksy 1525 days ago
      I dream of the London or Hong Kong peak train frequencys. 1-2 minutes between trains.
  • wott 1525 days ago
    It is always difficult to compare such figures. Not only because of different geographic/demographic situations, but simply because of the figures themselves.

    First, there is the problem of being careful understanding which figure is given to you.

    For example, for Toulouse, he quoted 125.7 M metro+tram trips. But 125.7 M is not the number of trips, but the number of metro+tram "validations" (each time you transfer to another bus or metro line, it counts as an extra validation (yes, in this city, even between metro lines)). The total number of trips (132 M) is 30% lower than the total number of validation (188 M). There is no detailed by mode number of trips, so you cannot get the number of metro+tram trips. I guess the best you can do is apply the 30% discount to get an approximation of 88 M metro+tram trips [and I shouldn't even write that because that depends how we decide to count mixed-mode trips].

    Then, there is the problem of deciding if some assumptions which are valid here are still valid there.

    He has decided to ignore bus network.

    Still in the case of Toulouse, the bus network usage is a bit bigger than one metro line, but the thing is that there are only 2 metro lines... Very roughly, each of (metro line 1), (metro line 2) and (bus network) is 1/3 of the total passengers. Worse, if you consider the number of kilometres ran, the bus network represents 73%!

    Now you may argue that most bus passengers transfer from or to the metro. It could be true. But that would only affect the relevance of the figure of trips/inhabitant.

    However if you want to talk about the quality of the service, the quality of the offer, I don't think you can neglect something that represents 1/3 of the passengers transported and almost 3/4 of the kilometres offer (those figures mean that the metro lines only cover a very small part of the territory, and that's indeed how it is, the bus network is 50 times longer than the metro network). The frequency and spread of the bus offer has to be taken into account, hasn't it? Maybe in other cities the bus network can be neglected, but I don't think it a good idea to neglect it by default.

    (One could add that in the case of Toulouse, the bus traffic has grown clearly and steadily, while the metro traffic plateaued years ago.)

    And at this point you fall back on the first difficulty I mentioned: how difficult it is to compare networks which grew differently and developed different structures.

  • monksy 1525 days ago
    I wonder what this looks like for Chicago.