Centerfield

Portland, OR's MAX light rail system is great - I use it every day to get to work. Moves a lot of people very quickly into and out of downtown. It's pretty generally considered a major success. Additionally, if I'm flying out somewhere, I can get from my house to the airport in about an hour and a half, which is pretty good considering it takes an hour to drive (if it's not rush hour!).

IMO, the short story is that in theory it could. If we were committed enough. If we were starting a big area from scratch and not retrofitting. If the main travel routes people wanted to take could be simplified and streamlined.

But in practice, it doesn't. It's expensive, not that convenient, often underutilized.

Consider Japan. They have mass transit that's fast, efficient, and heavily used. BUT Japan is a comparatively small and very densely populated island which is lengthy in one direction and narrow in the "perpendicular" direction. Culturally, demographically, geographically and geometrically, it's close to ideal.

Monorail! Monorail, monorail, monorail!

("My work here is done...")

San Francisco's cable cars are cost-justified based on their draw for tourists. (Its actual trolleys tried the same thing, but the case was a lot weaker.)

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a whole different deal. If you look closely, the tracks run damn near exactly where the Key System tracks ran a century ago -- before General Motors bought Key System and shut it dow so they could sell busses.

Then, when BART came along in the 1960s, the Bay Area allowed an extremely good bus system to deteriorate. As a result, what we now have is essentially a hub-and-spoke system where the AC Transit busses connect to the BART stations (and cover the short distance routes), and BART connects the more distant points. If you live in the right places, it works pretty well. If you don't (or if you want to travel after the parking lots fill up), it's a mess.

So, does light rail ever make economic sense? Sure. IF (and it's a big if) the local geography is such that lots of people go along a few narrowly defined routes. But if you have fewer people, or a complex web of routes, busses will win every time on speed and cost. Which is why light rail advocates spend most of their time pushing air-quality arguments.

Dang, I was just coming back in to toss in a plug for the SF cable cars and trolleys. What price tourism-drawing atmosphere? The cable cars and trolleys get MY nickel. I love 'em.

Likewise the "free" shuttle on Denver's 16th St Mall. When I lived there I had no qualms at all about that portion of my tax money.

Ooh, oohh! Electric bus! Electric bus! Electric bus! Electric bus!

FWIW, Boston hasd the same problem with transit...it's convenient if it's convenient, IOW. If you can craft a "one spoke" trip, you're in good shape. Otherwise, it's so unfeasible it's silly.

NYC has hydrogen and electric double length buses. The traffic is just too intense to get anywhere fast. Monorails will one day help. We can convert local biofuels into eletrical power and help relieve the streets. We did that once with an elevated train system. There may not be enough space to satisfy owners who will have obstructed views, but NYC fits Brian's criteria.

Very glad to hear that Portland's got it working well.

The balance of opinion here, by the way (which I share) is that Austin has density so far for ONE route, along an already mostly heavy-railed route, from downtown out along our tech corridor. So we're just setting up ONE route so far, with normal gauge, and ordered normal-gauge commuter-style cars.

But the Statesman wrote a recent article suggesting we're underproviding in the plan.

Most US mass transit systems suffer from using an outmoded spoke and hub design. The patterns of travel for the average person who would consider mass transit is usually incompatible with the current design.

In order for a light rail to work, It has to have an efficient feeder system and act as high volume backbone travel. The development pattern of most US cities can not support a light rail corridor/feeder system. I use mass transit. However, I can only use it three days a week because it does not run when I need it on the other two days.

Without a factor that pushes people to choose transit(i.e, high fuel prices, miserable parking situation and/or just faster than driving), it is hard to make a viable mass transit system in the US that will be used by enough people to make it efficient. Of course, it also helps that I don't pay because it is payed through tuition fees and I get subsidized by those students who do not use the system. If I had to pay, I might still use it. Don't really know since I do not have to address the issue.

Jim,

I assume that when you said that you take "Mass Transit" what you really meant is that you take "Public Transit." The masses drive to work in their own cars. Only a smaller percentage of people (outside of a couple of urban center) take public transportation.

If you look at the DC Metro system, even with record ridership due to high prices it loses tons of money, suffers its own parking issues, is horrible in bad weather, is a hub and spoke system built of right-of-ways.

Meant to mention that. Even in the places where mass transit is perceived as both useful and usable, even beloved, I don't know of a single mass transit system that does not require MAJOR subsidies, much less actually break even or make money.

Many places use a "radial pulse" pattern for their bus system rather than spoke-and-hub. You can get anywhere on the bus lines that way. Problem: Time for each trip is still pulse*2 if you have to change routes. Some cities use a hybrid pulse-and-multihub system that works much better, but (of course) costs more. Sometimes lots more.

Was at a public hearing on fare increases a while back, and someone waxed poetic and enthusiastic about Chicago's mass transit system, how the buses and ttrains were always near full, you could make connections and get places in reasonable time, fares were affordable, etc. Our city's transit director just sat there and smiled while they went on and on. When they finished he agreed entirely--Chicago's system was as good as it gets. He'd spent ten years working for it. And all it cost the fine people of Chicago was somewhat north of a million dollars a day in direct city subsidies, over and above ALL state and federal grant monies and fare revenues.

You should look at some of the cities that are outright failures.

Baltimore has a subway system that does not go where it needs to go. The joke is that it would have been cheaper to buy a car for every person who rides the subway. Baltimore also has a lightrail system that it famous for no one riding it.

The problem with the multiple hub system is that it destroys neighborhoods where people end up standing of the corners waiting for the buses all day. No one wants to open a business or live in an area where people are always waiting for the bus.

The LR systems I've seen in Boston...

Have you checked out the D line? Unlike the other three LR lines in Boston, the D line spaces stops further apart and is completely grade-separate while the E line not only runs at grade-level, it shares its lane with auto traffic for part of its route. The A line similarly shared a lane with traffic until it was "temporarily" replaced with a bus line. The performance of the bus has been such that as of when I was last in Boston, they were removing the tracks from the A line, and presumably have finished doing so.

However, there is one thing that the LR lines can do that buses cannot. That is run underground. Moving the traffic from those lines to the surface would be a difficult proposition. That is why the bus replacing the A line stops at Kenmore Square, where the B, C and D lines converge, for passengers to continue on the LR to downtown.

The light rail system in Denver was a huge success, ridership was 25% over the most optimistic projections when the project was started. Park and ride lots are filled to overflowing, even on weekends if there is a sports event or concert going on. The only problem with the system was that they had to scramble to add cars to meet increasing demand. My neighborhood will be getting a line sometime soon and I have no plans to ever drive downtown again, why bother with the traffic and parking hassles when you can ride downtown for the price of a parking space. Go downtown, enjoy the nightlife, have a few drinks and have no worries about driving home, downtown Denver is booming and one reason for the boom is the convenience of light rail.