6 ms·

Doesn't having a car do this too?

dpe82 2y ago
Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.
- thehappypm 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - geysersam 2y ago
    Almost every road project is paid by public money.
    - thehappypm 2y ago
      $200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles. $4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions. Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
      - geysersam 2y ago
        You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.
        thehappypm 2y ago
        There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.
        geysersam 2y ago
        > But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive I'm not sure that's true, and I don't see any obvious reasons why that would be the case. Do you have a source to back that up? Of course we need roads. But the question is how many and how big they need to be.
        thehappypm 2y ago
        I gave data showing that the hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent on roads supports trillions of miles traveled, while billions of dollars spent on Amtrak (largest rail system in the US) leads to an order of magnitude less miles traveled
        geysersam 2y ago
        Yes but like I said the comparison is totally flawed since you counted all costs for Amtrak but only a subset of costs for car traffic. If you are convinced roads+cars is an order of magnitude more efficient than rail, maybe you can explain what you think is the cause of that difference. Does rail require more land? Does it require more maintenance hours? Does it require more expensive materials? Does it require higher insurance fees? What's the reason?
        thehappypm 2y ago
        operating and capital costs for transit in the USA are absolutely sky-high compared to the rest of the world. It doesn’t cost Japan billions to extend their subway a couple miles, but it does in NYC. The “why” is complex but well documented.
- gruez 2y ago
  Source?
layer8 2y ago
A car is more expensive, and clogs the roads, which causes other costs to the economy and penalizes commutes.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.
- dreadlordbone 2y ago
  That's a goalpost moved from my response.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
- nsokolsky 2y ago
  True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience. Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available. I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.
eertami 2y ago
Anecdotally, I frequently take day (or weekend) trips to other European cities by rail. It is usually quicker than the roads but also crucially you can be productive on the train. If I had to drive my car there then I probably wouldn't bother.
- netsharc 2y ago
  This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments offer more privacy for groups.
  - intellix 2y ago
    you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.
    - beAbU 2y ago
      I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself. We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly. If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper. We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further. Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!
postpawl 2y ago
Trains scale better than cars in dense areas and offer more than just emissions reductions. Good rail infrastructure is a big part of makes a large city world-class and improves everyday lives. Subsidizing trains is better than a lot of other uses of government funds.
CuriousCosmic 2y ago
No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to cities on either ends of the line while still being a relatively accessible commute for anyone in between the cities. And of course as great as that is, the rail line will be able to relatively trivially scale capacity by adding more trains to the same line at a rate far above massively expensive road expansion projects that cost comparable to the entire planned rail line. So if you want to grow past a certain density you do have to start switching to rail and higher density does mean more business opportunities and generally greater options for prosperity for the populations in the area.
- kyleee 2y ago
  Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas). Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.) Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".
dxuh 2y ago
Germany has a pretty high population density and the metropolitan areas have evolved around medieval cities, so they are sometimes very bad a carrying a lot of traffic. Getting around by car in lots of major German cities is a major PITA and parking your car there (if you live there) is just as horrible. Inside cities, public transport is much more efficient.

Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.

thehappypm 2y ago
[flagged]
- geysersam 2y ago
  Almost every road project is paid by public money.
  - thehappypm 2y ago
    $200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles. $4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions. Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
    - geysersam 2y ago
      You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.
      - thehappypm 2y ago
        There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.
        geysersam 2y ago
        > But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive I'm not sure that's true, and I don't see any obvious reasons why that would be the case. Do you have a source to back that up? Of course we need roads. But the question is how many and how big they need to be.
        thehappypm 2y ago
        I gave data showing that the hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent on roads supports trillions of miles traveled, while billions of dollars spent on Amtrak (largest rail system in the US) leads to an order of magnitude less miles traveled
        geysersam 2y ago
        Yes but like I said the comparison is totally flawed since you counted all costs for Amtrak but only a subset of costs for car traffic. If you are convinced roads+cars is an order of magnitude more efficient than rail, maybe you can explain what you think is the cause of that difference. Does rail require more land? Does it require more maintenance hours? Does it require more expensive materials? Does it require higher insurance fees? What's the reason?
        thehappypm 2y ago
        operating and capital costs for transit in the USA are absolutely sky-high compared to the rest of the world. It doesn’t cost Japan billions to extend their subway a couple miles, but it does in NYC. The “why” is complex but well documented.
gruez 2y ago
Source?

layer8 2y ago

A car is more expensive, and clogs the roads, which causes other costs to the economy and penalizes commutes.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.

dreadlordbone 2y ago
That's a goalpost moved from my response.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
nsokolsky 2y ago
True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience. Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available. I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.

eertami 2y ago

Anecdotally, I frequently take day (or weekend) trips to other European cities by rail. It is usually quicker than the roads but also crucially you can be productive on the train. If I had to drive my car there then I probably wouldn't bother.

netsharc 2y ago
This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments offer more privacy for groups.
- intellix 2y ago
  you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.
  - beAbU 2y ago
    I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself. We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly. If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper. We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further. Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!

postpawl 2y ago

Trains scale better than cars in dense areas and offer more than just emissions reductions. Good rail infrastructure is a big part of makes a large city world-class and improves everyday lives. Subsidizing trains is better than a lot of other uses of government funds.

CuriousCosmic 2y ago

No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to cities on either ends of the line while still being a relatively accessible commute for anyone in between the cities. And of course as great as that is, the rail line will be able to relatively trivially scale capacity by adding more trains to the same line at a rate far above massively expensive road expansion projects that cost comparable to the entire planned rail line. So if you want to grow past a certain density you do have to start switching to rail and higher density does mean more business opportunities and generally greater options for prosperity for the populations in the area.

kyleee 2y ago
Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas). Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.) Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".

dxuh 2y ago

Germany has a pretty high population density and the metropolitan areas have evolved around medieval cities, so they are sometimes very bad a carrying a lot of traffic. Getting around by car in lots of major German cities is a major PITA and parking your car there (if you live there) is just as horrible. Inside cities, public transport is much more efficient.