I will start off by saying I am a huge advocate of public transit whether it be Rail, Bus, or Hover vehicle I think for the betterment of society it is critical and that our society being Wedded (scratch that welded) to the automobile is not good for our society and it is a problem that not only needs to be addressed, but is a cost, drain, and burden on our society. However I view it as worthless to blame someone else for the public problems of our society, and I so see that there are advantages to automobile and that public transit should merely supplement not replace the automobile. I will use Los Angeles as an example because it's situation reflected much of the entire nation. Why do I discuss these issues? I discuss these issues because our nation is starting to see the light and starting to build public transit and invest in it again.
So why really did public transit fail?
For the most part interurban systems were used as a way to sell something and were privately owned by real estate vendors and utility companies. Once the businesses that supported these systems went away so too did the method of subsidy. The interurban rail systems lacked money to continue on and profitability. These systems were run for the sake of shareholders not the riders and thus the public generally distasted these private companies and were happy to see them go regardless. In the case of the pacific electric they needed to build a tunnel or bridge in Downtown LA or be given the boot but they had no money and couldn't build such improvements.
Another point I would like to bring up is that often the interurban systems suffered from differed maintenance of no maintenance all and thus systems literally fell to pieces due in large part to what I mentioned above ^
The obvious one is the automobile's convenience and flexibility is hard to match for most people and generally speaking automobiles were more available than public transit
Buses were seen as the solution because they could fit in without the need for extra infrastructure and added flexibility, but they brought added maintenance and less reliability not mention added emissions, but modern electrically powered or natural gas powered buses do help. I do see them as a great sollution for smaller trips in less populous areas. Buses also are generally found in pretty bad condition even on the best systems, something that detracted riders. Buses while integrating with regular transit also meant they slowed down traffic and suffered from the same problems as automobiles and for most people meant they might as well go with a car.
So what is to be learned from the death of the Pacific Electric and Various interurban systems
That public transit is a public good and should be operated for the sake of those it serves not for the sake of profit and shareholders. Public transit is a public good and profitability is hard to achieve (while not impossible) and should not be the end goal, the profit if you will is the people employed by public transit and the improved mobility not to mention reduced cost and burden to Society and Tax payers. An unavoidable consequence of this is that like any government institution it policies are often dictated by emotion, cronyism, or politics
Public Transit needs to be available to a many people as possible in as many places as possible
The right forms of transit for the right areas, use rail and buses in the areas they work best. For example the LA Light Rail would probably be best in the west side of town where density is highest and traffic problems are for lack of a better word a night mare.
Public Transit needs special right of ways and special priority to get out of the way of traffic and to speed up service whether this be though elevated or underground right of ways of through
Right of Ways should be protected not abandoned
This is these most important thing of all not technology, not the system itself, not how many people it carries, not anything, work has to be done to show to people that public transit is viable and convenient, that public transit isn't just some way for people without cars to get around and it isn't necessarily dirty or uncomfortable. This is a hard one but in people's opinions will change and thus adoption will increase, you can't do alot about this except incentivize people to use MASS transit and try to inform people about it as much as possible.
So essentially the main thing to be learned is that not only did the automobile change people's transit but it also changed the social and economic views and made society increasingly more individualistic.
I think that it also should be noted that GM really did nothing to kill public transit and that the "Taken For a Ride" took its viewers for a ride (aka they are full of it). GM despite how large and powerful they were weren't capable of completely destroying interurban systems. They merely sold buses. GM did play an important part by buying privately owned systems and making them use GM buses, but that is what any business would do. So Yes GM was involved in a very minor extent but blame can't be place solely on them.
Sorry for the really long post but I find this be a very interesting topic
Videos about sollutions to the problems
Public Transport: Who Needs It? (1968)
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3QT69KyPq4&feature=plcp
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ_bp3chws0&feature=plcp
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI-fIZkoPAE&feature=plcp
Let's Go To Town
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CElngLAjMaA&feature=plcp
Going Places
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB3-RB6Phlg
Some other sources
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/pedemise.htm
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm
http://www.1134.org/stan/ul/GM-et-al.html
Just My .02 USD
Railroad to Freedom
ontheBNSF That public transit is a public good and should be operated for the sake of those it serves... Public Transit needs to be available to a many people as possible in as many places as possible
That public transit is a public good and should be operated for the sake of those it serves...
When you say it needs to be available in as many places as possible, what are some examples of places where it would be impossible to be made available?
Bucyrus ontheBNSF: That public transit is a public good and should be operated for the sake of those it serves... Public Transit needs to be available to a many people as possible in as many places as possible When you say it needs to be available in as many places as possible, what are some examples of places where it would be impossible to be made available?
ontheBNSF: That public transit is a public good and should be operated for the sake of those it serves... Public Transit needs to be available to a many people as possible in as many places as possible
in sparsely populated areas public transit isn't impossible to offer but difficult to offer.
In sparsely populated areas there are things like dial-a-ride vans. While some auto owners want to be able to drive anywhere, other people want public transportation to be able to take them anywhere they want to go.
Population density is dictated by the transportation system. Once the government built the roads there was no way other systems could compete - the government doesn't pay taxes and has eminent domain. $4/gallon is the only answer - price the public out of their cars.
Another reason for failure is failure of government to control costs. I sight the current decline in the Pittsburgh PA system. Over the last two years over 30% of services have been cut to reduce costs. Further reductions are planned this fall to the point business are telling their employees there may NOT be parking available 'Dawntawn' and best to lease spaces now. Having traveled to Pittsburgh for over 15 years, I have seen a system of light-rail, modern bus-ways, and mix of public/private bus work very well (built out in the 1980's.) These systems were very heavily used, were on-time, and a pride of the city.
However, due to high on-going operating costs, the advances in modern day public transit is being forced into a death spril, cut back service and routes to cut cost, less riders/less funding, cut back more and lose more riders. The state of PA does not have the funding for schools, the sick and old-folks let along extra for mass transit. Additionally, look no futher than the $ 500 Million expansion project to bring the 'T' to the sport center on the North Side. It was a hoot on the first day folks used the 'T' to watch the Pirates only to be stuck after the game when there was not enough Motormen to run the cars! So the grand experiment that integrated light-rail, bus and roadways will be marked as a failure leaving the general population without any alternative transportation.
If we dare to risk a look over the fence to Germany or Japan, we will see people owning cars and still using public transport to a high degree. Just to be fair, this hasn´t always been that way.
Public transport, just like in the US, had been on the decline in the 1960´s and 1970´s, when streetcar lines were closed and replaced by bus service. Ridership figures went down at a higher rate than the no. of automobiles grew.
Change came in the late 1970´s, when people learned, that it being stuck over an hour in rush hour traffic may be not the smartest way to commute to work. That time marked a change in trend. Streetcar lines were re-opened, ROW´s were being separated from the roads or even put underground, new streetcars were put in service, and ticketing systems were unified in urban areas. This process is still not concluded and each year sees a number of improvements.
However, there is a price tag to that. These systems can´t be run as private enterprises, "doomed" to make a profit. While operating profits have gone up, none of the public transport systems we have in Germany recovers its capital cost. They all rely on some sort of subsidy from tax money..
As long as such subsidies are regarded as "un-American" or even "socialistic", any attempt to re-introduce public transport in the US is bound to fail.
OnthBNSF, I am also a big believer in public transit, and in reading your initial post, I realize that I would probably go on an on about it as well. That's why I try to hold back on my comments. Public resistance to transit, i think, is a mix of several different trains of thought. One is that over the last few decades we have developed a fear of each other. We don't want to be around people who are different from us. Radiating out in all directions from the town where I live are roads that mile after mile are lined with what I call "yuppie pods". Each has a gate facing the road with a name containing various combinations of words like"Timber", "Wood", "Lake", "River", "Forest", "Glen", etc. The houses in each are very simular, the residents are all in a simular financial "class", and they all have SUV's that try to look like each other. They go to work or shopping insulated in their own vehicles. Anyway, my point is that this pattern of population density makes public transit very difficult to manage efficiently.
Another problem is greed. There is a short-sighted attitude that "If it doesn't benefit me directly, I'm against it." Years ago, I used to drive 50 miles each way to work daily, and though there was a van pool directly to where I worked, I couldn't use it because my job required that I have a car available, and I was subject to working overtime with little or no notice, but every day I was wishing for subsidized transit just to get some of the traffic off the roads. Instead, I saw constant construction on interstate expansion, from two jammed-up lanes to three jammed-up lanes, etc, to where today there are six jammed-up lanes in some spots.
Well, I've ranted enough. I remember my teens in the 50's in New Orleans, when we, like most of our neighbors, did not have a car, but we could walk a block and a half to the streetcar line that was practically a conveyor belt, hop on, and for seven cents ride anywhere in town.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
petitnj Population density is dictated by the transportation system. Once the government built the roads there was no way other systems could compete - the government doesn't pay taxes and has eminent domain. $4/gallon is the only answer - price the public out of their cars.
Population density and the transportation system are interrelated. Most areas have at least crude roads, and if more people move in, improved roads and more of them will follow. If it gets dense enough, maybe even mass transit will happen.
one problem was that the transit systems were privately owned and the pols would not allow fare raises to meet rising costs.
I think the problem of traffic and commuting will be solved by just ending commuting, rather than commuting by train. We are quickly becoming a service / information economy. People will just stay home and do their work on the Internet. This nonsense of driving off to work every day will seem like a relic of the horse and buggy era.
Sir Madog If we dare to risk a look over the fence to Germany or Japan, we will see people owning cars and still using public transport to a high degree. Just to be fair, this hasn´t always been that way. Public transport, just like in the US, had been on the decline in the 1960´s and 1970´s, when streetcar lines were closed and replaced by bus service. Ridership figures went down at a higher rate than the no. of automobiles grew. Change came in the late 1970´s, when people learned, that it being stuck over an hour in rush hour traffic may be not the smartest way to commute to work. That time marked a change in trend. Streetcar lines were re-opened, ROW´s were being separated from the roads or even put underground, new streetcars were put in service, and ticketing systems were unified in urban areas. This process is still not concluded and each year sees a number of improvements. However, there is a price tag to that. These systems can´t be run as private enterprises, "doomed" to make a profit. While operating profits have gone up, none of the public transport systems we have in Germany recovers its capital cost. They all rely on some sort of subsidy from tax money.. As long as such subsidies are regarded as "un-American" or even "socialistic", any attempt to re-introduce public transport in the US is bound to fail.
Roads don't pay for themselves and we seem to be alright with that and airlines receive massive subsidies each year, why should public transit have to pay for itself what it gives you is a better quality life, convience, reduced congestion, and reduced societal burden and costs.
ontheBNSF Roads don't pay for themselves and we seem to be alright with that and airlines receive massive subsidies each year, why should public transit have to pay for itself what it gives you is a better quality life, convience, reduced congestion, and reduced societal burden and costs.
Yes, you can find subsidies for everything, but that does not mean that it is equally worthwhile to subsidize everything. On average, the people who pay for highways get a lot of use out of them, and so it is worthwhile to them.
And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways.
While I can't speak for the West Coast experience with public transit, I can tell you in the North Jersey area where I come from public transit, and by this I mean trolleys, intererbans, and the like died out purely do to lack of patronage. Prior to World War One all were heavily used by the public, but after the war the automobile came into it's own and the ridership began to inexorably drop. The Great Depression (no-one had any money) and then World War Two (no-one had any gas) gave the trolleys a bit of a reprieve, but by the late 40's the handwriting was on the wall.
Mind you, some electric mass transit systems did survive but did so by evolving into another form. The New York and Newark NJ subway systems are a good example.
I can't blame the auto makers. Henry Ford was no fool, and "The Great Bicycle Craze" of the 1890's gave him the idea that there was a VERY strong demand for personal transportation. He just came up with a way to capitalize on it.
Look at it this way: When there's a strong demand for public transportation it'll come back in a big way. Maybe when the Boomers are too old to drive? Who knows?
Bucyrus I think the problem of traffic and commuting will be solved by just ending commuting, rather than commuting by train. We are quickly becoming a service / information economy. People will just stay home and do their work on the Internet. This nonsense of driving off to work every day will seem like a relic of the horse and buggy era.
For some maybe. They have been saying this will be the future of "work." Right up there with flying cars like the Jetson's, IMO.
Many jobs, probably most, can't be done remotely by computer. But, then those jobs are usually considered to be the type that "Americans won't do," so probably don't count anyway.
Jeff
ontheBNSF And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways.
If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to?
Bucyrus ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways. If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to?
ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways.
Public transit doesn't get you EVERYWHERE you want to go - and people want to go everywhere.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
The person who's office job is now done on the internet may still need to commute to the unemployment office when his job is easily off-shored.
because public transit doesn't simply exist in high enough frequency for most and in enough places. You can't pull "if it is so good argument why don't people use it" when people simply aren't given the choice and it isn't available. Kinda a dumb argument.
ontheBNSF Bucyrus: ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways. If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to? because public transit doesn't simply exist in high enough frequency for most and in enough places. You can't pull "if it is so good argument why don't people use it" when people simply aren't given the choice and it isn't available. Kinda a dumb argument.
Bucyrus: ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways. If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to?
It wasn't a trick question. I realize that a lot of people do not ride transit because it is not available everywhere.
But people know what transit is. So, if most of the people who drive cars wanted transit, they would get it built. So apparently, they don't want it. If it is better than cars, why don't more people want it?
What is your basis for claiming that it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move the same amount by roads and highways?
Bucyrus ontheBNSF: Bucyrus: ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways. If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to? because public transit doesn't simply exist in high enough frequency for most and in enough places. You can't pull "if it is so good argument why don't people use it" when people simply aren't given the choice and it isn't available. Kinda a dumb argument. It wasn't a trick question. I realize that a lot of people do not ride transit because it is not available everywhere. But people know what transit is. So, if most of the people who drive cars wanted transit, they would get it built. So apparently, they don't want it. If it is better than cars, why don't more people want it? What is your basis for claiming that it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move the same amount by roads and highways?
ontheBNSF: Bucyrus: ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways. If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to? because public transit doesn't simply exist in high enough frequency for most and in enough places. You can't pull "if it is so good argument why don't people use it" when people simply aren't given the choice and it isn't available. Kinda a dumb argument.
do I really have to answer that. It is called economies of scale, it can be assumed proportional to the amount of people say a bus rail vehicle can carry vs the amount of cars required and the same amount of roads, the cost would be greater for roads.
As a for example If I wanted to move 100 people I could use several cars which take up several lanes traffic and thus costs lots of money to build the lanes of traffic and the cost of auto ownership on 100 people, or have a bus capable of moving 100 people and devote one lane of traffic for it.
ontheBNSF As a for example If I wanted to move 100 people I could use several cars which take up several lanes traffic and thus costs lots of money to build the lanes of traffic and the cost of auto ownership on 100 people, or have a bus capable of moving 100 people and devote one lane of traffic for it.
Why couldn't you just run the 100 people in their cars single file in a single lane? That is kind of what the bus would be doing.
Bucyrus ontheBNSF: As a for example If I wanted to move 100 people I could use several cars which take up several lanes traffic and thus costs lots of money to build the lanes of traffic and the cost of auto ownership on 100 people, or have a bus capable of moving 100 people and devote one lane of traffic for it. Why couldn't you just run the 100 people in their cars single file in a single lane? That is kind of what the bus would be doing.
ontheBNSF: As a for example If I wanted to move 100 people I could use several cars which take up several lanes traffic and thus costs lots of money to build the lanes of traffic and the cost of auto ownership on 100 people, or have a bus capable of moving 100 people and devote one lane of traffic for it.
you end up with this thing called gridlock and congestion thus you need more lanes. You are trying to go against simple geography.
BaltACD Bucyrus: ontheBNSF: And public transit simply carries more and simply gives you more for your investment it costs a lot less to move people by public transit than it does to move by the same amount roads and highways. If it gives you more for the investment cost than cars and highways do, why don't people get rid of their cars and ride transit? Why would they spend more than they have to? Public transit doesn't get you EVERYWHERE you want to go - and people want to go everywhere.
A personal example - I am supposed to start commuting to Santa Ana in three weeks and have little desire to drive there on a daily basis. The good news is that I'm 4 miles from Amtrak's Solana Beach station, so getting to/from that station will be easy. The almost as good news is that the NB morning express train takes 56 minutes to get from Solana Beach to Irvine. The bad news is that taking public transit from the station to the office in Santa Ana will take close to an hour, though the company is looking into other options for that part of the trip..
- Erik
ontheBNSF Bucyrus: Why couldn't you just run the 100 people in their cars single file in a single lane? That is kind of what the bus would be doing. you end up with this thing called gridlock and congestion thus you need more lanes. You are trying to go against simple geography.
Bucyrus: Why couldn't you just run the 100 people in their cars single file in a single lane? That is kind of what the bus would be doing.
Gridlock is just a word for a lack of capacity. That can happen with any form of transportation.
You have to consider that although you can compress more people into a rail line flow than a highway lane flow, the rail line costs a lot more than a traffic lane. And you need a train too.
And moving people is not just like moving high tonnage bulk materials when it comes to efficiency.
But suppose you had rail everywhere people wanted to go, any time they wanted to ride. What percentage of people driving cars would quit driving and ride rail?
I hope this will not happen!
Who raises the cattle, who builds the truck that ships it to the meat packing plant on roads or rails built by whom? Who delivers it to your supermarket and builds the car you use to go there? A healthy economy needs all three sectors - agriculture, industry and the service sector to serve those two. Unfortunately, we tend to forget this. We will always need transport, be it private or public.
I think that ontheBNSF's post of 7/24/12 suffers from a very common misconception of what most electric interurban railroads were. The vast majority of interurban railroads would not be useful today (and, in fact, ceased to be useful by the late 1920’s or early 1930’s).
When people today think of “interurbans” (if they think of them at all), they understandably think of properties like the Pacific Electric in California, the North Shore, South Shore and the CA&E in Chicago, the Illinois Terminal in central Illinois and a handful of other properties which survived into the 1950’s or 1960’s. These were NOT typical interurbans. They were special cases which often represented a morphing of a property that started out as an interurban into something else. That's most clearly the case with Pacific Electric, South Shore and Illinois Terminal, which morphed into very important freight railroads (a type of service most interurban railroads were incapable of providing). The Pacific Electric was actually controlled by the Southern Pacific raillroad for most of the 20th century. Railroads like South Shore, North Shore and CA&E (and Pacific Electric, on some of its lines) were also able to morph into major commuter lines because of entries into their principal cities which were free of lengthy running on city streets (the NSL, SSL and CA&E avoided any street running in Chicago; IT had very little in St. Louis; most of the major PE lines had street running in LA, but it was much shorter than typical interurban lines in other cities). NSLand CA&E also handled carload freight, although not as extensively as PE, SSL or IT.
The "typical" interurban railroad was nothing like these properties (except, perhaps, in the style of equipment used). They were, essentially, glorified rural streetcar lines, operated at somewhat higher speeds when on open track than city streetcars (some operated at much higher speeds on open track than city streetcars, but most didn’t). They typically had very lengthy operations in city streets, streetcar style, in the major cities they served, and also many of the minor communities as well. Most had physical plants which were incapable of handling carload freight with steam railroads The market they were designed to serve was town to town local passenger and package transportation, a market which seemed very promising in the late 19th and early 20th century (which, at the time, was very poorly served by existing forms of transportation). Trouble is that, once cheap autos and paved roads became available by the 1920’s, interurban passengers deserted the trolleys by the score for the automobile, and the package services went to truck, By the 1930’s, busses could easily handle the remaining business. Most of the industry was in big trouble after the mid 1920’s (some properties before that), and the industry was almost completely extinguished in the 1930’s. Only a few properties survived into the post World War II era.
Anyone who wants to know what the interurban industry was really like should read “The Electric Interurban Railroad in America” by George Hilton and John Due, which is the best scholarly work that has been done on the industry (including histories of individual properties) and is very readable (railfan warning – while it’s a wealth of information, it doesn’t have many pictures).
the south shore did survive as a combination profitable freight railroad (the other two Insull interubans did not have sufficient freight business and other commutor railroads were parrallel) and a subsidized (as usual) commuter railroad. Commuter railroads are subsidized because the land costs and constructions costs would be astronomical for highway transportation if the railroad service did not exist. But nearly all their passengers own cars. Used for pleasure instead of commuting. Like the average Sweiss and German, and with increased urbanization and congestion, possibly some day the average American. Cities like New York and Chicago would practially shut down without their "L" or subways and their commuter railroads..
I think St. Louis' lite rail revival was fortunate to be able to utilize a former freight line tunnel under the downtown.
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