The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[Will]

My friends, this line of reasoning might be a good way to sell used cars, living room suites, or fidget spinners, but it's not a compelling reason to hike four major local tax rates and commit to billions of dollars worth of improvements that don't really address the shortcomings of the current system. Vote for or against the proposal on its merits, but please don't vote for it because it'll never be cheaper, it's the last one on the lot, and I guarantee you it will be gone tomorrow, etc. etc.

Also note the article in the TN today tracking the lack of progress on sidewalks, which are a key element of any transit plan. We have allocated $60 million since Barry took office and gotten 3.5 miles of new sidewalk. That works out to about $3,250 allocated per FOOT of new sidewalk, which is more than 3x what it costs to put in a sidewalk on a small residential job. I realize there are repairs and planning costs baked into these figures but there is a parallel to be seen here in how inefficiently Metro is managing infrastructure costs. Do we really want to put billions in Metro's hands when we see what it's done with the $60 million budgeted for sidewalks?

 

[markhollin]

^ ^ ^ The article states that much of the money hasn't been spent yet.  It is allocated and will be spent on sidewalks as time goes by.  Part of the problem in this city is that civic leaders for over a century thought sidewalks and curbs were not important, and so there are vast swaths of the city with neither.  There is a LOT of catching up to do, and it can't all happen overnight. 

[PruneTracy]

41 minutes ago, Will said:

Also note the article in the TN today tracking the lack of progress on sidewalks, which are a key element of any transit plan. We have allocated $60 million since Barry took office and gotten 3.5 miles of new sidewalk. That works out to about $3,250 allocated per FOOT of new sidewalk, which is more than 3x what it costs to put in a sidewalk on a small residential job. I realize there are repairs and planning costs baked into these figures but there is a parallel to be seen here in how inefficiently Metro is managing infrastructure costs. Do we really want to put billions in Metro's hands when we see what it's done with the $60 million budgeted for sidewalks?

A word in defense of the sidewalk program.

It's not really that simple to take a roadway with shoulders and ditches and add sidewalk, curb, and gutter to it. I would expect the hang-up is drainage; the ditches have to be replaced with a stormwater drainage system that itself has to be designed and is much more complex than a sidewalk would be on its own.

Even if the roadway has existing curbs and (presumably) a storm system, they are not often up to current standards. I've seen a couple of locations around town where the sidewalk replaced old, six-inch sloped curbs and dated inlets; I would imagine the pipes and culverts underneath were in similarly bad shape.

We have a lot of areas where roadways will flood even during modest storms, and after 2010 I imagine Metro Water Services is not going to let Public Works (or any developer, for that matter) touch these systems, much less add flow, without making sure the system can handle it first, and trying to fix flooding issues second. And they should, it doesn't make sense to make the problems worse, then lay concrete over them, if you have an opportunity to fix it instead. But that's a tricky proposition; even changing a single pipe or inlet along a system can have repercussions far upstream and downstream.

So I can see why it might take a while, and cost more than a first take would suggest. The sidewalk itself is always fairly cheap (about $30 per foot), but it's not as simple as just pouring it.

[bnacincy]

On 10/31/2017 at 6:21 PM, Pdt2f said:

My primary concern about this plan is the finances. I can appreciate the boldness and ambition but I just have a feeling that this is going to cause some severe financial issues in the future. 

I hate to beat a dead horse but there is nothing streetcars are going to give you that an improved bus service couldn't. Buses involve lower infrastructure costs, they are more versatile and easier to maintain. It's why most cities did away with streetcars after the Second World War. Cities expanded into new suburbs and extending streetcar lines became cost prohibitive compared to buses.

The streetcar here in Cincinnati between downtown and Over The Rhine is currently running about 27% below expectations in terms of ridership. Right now it is little more than an expensive novelty and the mayoral candidates for next weeks election are hardly mentioning it.

For 5 billion dollars you could bribe CSX into commuter rail and come out with a much more effective system that could share costs with the surrounding region.

Please, for the love of Nashville somebody down there please contact your local representatives and see if the city has bothered to approach CSX since that company's restructuring.

Just sayin'.

[Neigeville2]

4 hours ago, Will said:

Do we really want to put billions in Metro's hands when we see what it's done with the $60 million budgeted for sidewalks?

 

This isn't an argument against this transit plan, it's an argument against having a government.  Governments need oversight, not griping and oversimplified ideological arguments, which is unfortunately a lot easier to do.

[titanhog]

I'm going to say something that I'll probably get blasted on.  

I just think if you build a system that is not either below ground...elevated...or on railway tracks with no stops other than pickup/dropoff...the system is not going to be much better than what we have / don't have right now.

I would rather they being with that $5 billion and see what kind of start we could get with a small subway line or elevated rail system.

[fieldmarshaldj]

16 hours ago, Neigeville2 said:

This isn't an argument against this transit plan, it's an argument against having a government.  Governments need oversight, not griping and oversimplified ideological arguments, which is unfortunately a lot easier to do.

Nope, it's an argument against wasteful government spending. The one thing it has proven time and time again (be it federal, state or local) is how to get us trillions of dollars in debt, with little to nothing to show for it. To continue to pour money down a black hole and expect it will somehow be efficiently spent is ludicrous. If anyone in the private sector operated as the government did, they'd be out of business and in prison in short order.

[Pdt2f]

http://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/11/01/what-nashville-can-learn-dallas-about-transit/811026001/

Interesting short article about learning from Dallas’s past transit mistakes. 

[AronG]

It's happening...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/11/07/our-driverless-future-begins-waymo-transitions-to-robot-chauffeurs/

[MidTenn1]

12 minutes ago, AronG said:

It's happening...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/11/07/our-driverless-future-begins-waymo-transitions-to-robot-chauffeurs/

What could go wrong with that?

Edited November 7, 2017 by PHofKS

[markhollin]

Former Mayor Bill Purcell and County Clerk Brenda Wynn will co-chair the Transit and Affordability Task Force,  designed to help prevent displacement of existing residents associated with the proposed $5.2 billion mass-transit overhaul.  They will hold which will hold the first meeting Nov. 8, according to a letter released by the mayor's office Monday.

https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2017/11/07/barry-picks-former-mayor-to-lead-new-transit-task.html

[Neigeville2]

8 hours ago, AronG said:

It's happening...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/11/07/our-driverless-future-begins-waymo-transitions-to-robot-chauffeurs/

But not here.  I was suspicious how all these tests seem to happen in the desert and took the liberty of googling those suspicions:

Current autonomous cars can operate only in sunny areas with little rain and without snow. In the US alone there are hundreds of cities which fit this profile and where fleets of autonomous cars can operate safely long before the harder problem of autonomous driving in very adverse weather is fully solved.  http://www.driverless-future.com/?page_id=774

I just stumbled onto this site and haven't read much, but it seems to be a trove of info.  I don't the date of this article, but from the above quote, I'd say autonomous vehicles may be a mere novelty in most of the country for some time after commercial adoption in the Southwestern states. 

[nashvylle]

10 hours ago, AronG said:

It's happening...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/11/07/our-driverless-future-begins-waymo-transitions-to-robot-chauffeurs/

Apart from drivers looking for parking, will driverless cars really deem mass transit unnecessary? I certainly do not think so. In fact, I think driverless cars will increase mass transit- you can get picked up and dropped off at closest mass transit locations and then take the subway to your destination. 

1mm driverless cars for 1mm people without mass transit will not alleviate traffic.
1mm people with just mass transit and no other transit options will not alleviate traffic.

Driverless cars have to work with mass transit together. 

[titanhog]

2 hours ago, Neigeville2 said:

BCurrent autonomous cars can operate only in sunny areas with little rain and without snow. In the US alone there are hundreds of cities which fit this profile and where fleets of autonomous cars can operate safely long before the harder problem of autonomous driving in very adverse weather is fully solved.  http://www.driverless-future.com/?page_id=774

Yeah...never thought about that.  You get into a driverless car and it drives the same speed over ice that it does on a dry road and things could get tricky real fast. 

[Hey_Hey]

Autonomous cars (even semi-autonomous cars) will make the commute much, much more tolerable. I recently bought a Tesla Model S and have been using it's "enhanced autopilot" frequently. It is still in its infancy, but it will drive me miles and miles on the interstate without ever having to intervene at all.  Stop and go interstate driving is a breeze now and mentally much less fatiguing.  Widespread adoption of this currently accessible technology in the future could harm demand for mass transit because the alternative of driving in stop and go traffic is less negative.

However, I do see a much less expensive mass transit alternative also becoming more viable financially.  Currently, the suburbs of Nashville are not conducive at all to mass transit. Buses are too large to use in the 'burbs. However, I could see an 10-15 passenger vehicle that picks people up at the entrance to their subdivision and drops them off near their place of employment become financially viable if the driver of the vehicle could be a computer that has no labor costs. I don't know what will win out, but I do know that it will drastically change our lives when it becomes available. 

[BnaBreaker]

The main draw of an autonomous car is , presumably, that you can commute to work without having to be an active participant.  You could listen to music, take a nap, get work done, eat breakfast etc. etc instead of having to actually drive a car.  Coincidentally, that is also one of the main draws of mass transit as well, and you can enjoy those benefits without the $60,000 price tag of a fancy new robot car.  Of course, the car offers the added benefit of privacy, but that seems a steep price to pay for not having to sit next to another human being for 45 minutes per day.  

[Pdt2f]

8 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

The main draw of an autonomous car is , presumably, that you can commute to work without having to be an active participant.  You could listen to music, take a nap, get work done, eat breakfast etc. etc instead of having to actually drive a car.  Coincidentally, that is also one of the main draws of mass transit as well, and you can enjoy those benefits without the $60,000 price tag of a fancy new robot car.  Of course, the car offers the added benefit of privacy, but that seems a steep price to pay for not having to sit next to another human being for 45 minutes per day.  

There’s also the fact that you don’t have to walk to a transit stop (half a mile in the rain sucks), you don’t have to worry about missing your bus/train, your self-driving car wouldn’t be dependent on city transit finances and good transit labor relations, etc. I’m totally not in a position (nor is it in my character) to spend $60,000 on a car with unproven technology, but I can definitely see the appeal of it over mass transit. 

[Hey_Hey]

4 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

Coincidentally, that is also one of the main draws of mass transit as well, and you can enjoy those benefits without the $60,000 price tag of a fancy new robot car.  Of course, the car offers the added benefit of privacy, but that seems a steep price to pay for not having to sit next to another human being for 45 minutes per day.  

That $60,000 is not the true cost, however. I think you have to do a full accounting to get the real picture of why people choose what they do.

-First, the $60,000 is not the marginal cost of an autonomous car. The marginal cost would be much less as the vast, vast majority of people will still own a car for the foreseeable future regardless of whether or not it is autonomous or not. The marginal cost for autonomous tech over their comparable base models is around $3000-4000.

-You didn't account for the usage cost, once the initial cost of the car is accounted for. Again, the vast, vast majority will have an automobile, so the decision isn't "no car/yes transit" or "yes car/no transit."  The decision is going to be "yes car/yes transit" or "yes car/no transit."  Once a person has a car the mental accounting then is, "what is the marginal cost of me driving to work vs taking transit to work?"  With increased efficiency (and especially electrification) of autos, the cost of transit is higher than the cost of driving a car to work. I've driven electric or five years, and my per-mile cost is 2.5 cents. 

-The car does provide privacy, but it also provides point-to-point transportation. Very few people are going to live and work  in places in which they can take mass transit point to point which means transit will take longer to get to their destination. Currently, one of the biggest benefits of transit is that a rider can relax and do other things during their trip. If autonomous tech comes around then that benefit of transit suddenly goes away.

 

[12Mouth]

15 minutes ago, Hey_Hey said:

That $60,000 is not the true cost, however. I think you have to do a full accounting to get the real picture of why people choose what they do.

-First, the $60,000 is not the marginal cost of an autonomous car. The marginal cost would be much less as the vast, vast majority of people will still own a car for the foreseeable future regardless of whether or not it is autonomous or not. The marginal cost for autonomous tech over their comparable base models is around $3000-4000.

-You didn't account for the usage cost, once the initial cost of the car is accounted for. Again, the vast, vast majority will have an automobile, so the decision isn't "no car/yes transit" or "yes car/no transit."  The decision is going to be "yes car/yes transit" or "yes car/no transit."  Once a person has a car the mental accounting then is, "what is the marginal cost of me driving to work vs taking transit to work?"  With increased efficiency (and especially electrification) of autos, the cost of transit is higher than the cost of driving a car to work. I've driven electric or five years, and my per-mile cost is 2.5 cents. 

-The car does provide privacy, but it also provides point-to-point transportation. Very few people are going to live and work  in places in which they can take mass transit point to point which means transit will take longer to get to their destination. Currently, one of the biggest benefits of transit is that a rider can relax and do other things during their trip. If autonomous tech comes around then that benefit of transit suddenly goes away.

 

I'm not so sure that the vast majority of people living in moderately to heavy densely populated areas will still own a car for the foreseeable future.  All of the major players have made their subscription-based autonomous transportation intentions clear. If I can pay $2-300/month (I just made this up - I have no idea what their pricing intentions are, but assume that there will be partial subsidies from employers, advertisers, and in-ride purchases) to have a specific car that fits my needs at that moment pick me up and bring me where I need to go, I would totally do it. I don't need to worry about parking, I get the real estate in my garage back, etc. I think that we will be at or close to this point in 15 years, rendering car ownership as well as a traditional urban bus system useless.  The only advantage that I can see to public transportation in the future is dedicated lanes to avoid traffic. But even in this case, would it not make more sense to make dedicated lanes for shared autonomous vanpools instead, which would presumably still pull some cars off of the road or at least give people an alternative (vanpools would be cheaper and avoid traffic). If we are concerned with moving around people who cannot pay for this service, I have to imagine that it will be cheaper to just pay for or significantly subsidize the trips of people below a certain income level than to run  an entire bus system.

I really think that we could come up with an interim dedicated lane BRT system (or this) and just convert it into an autonomous vanpool lane when the technology gets there.

[AronG]

12 hours ago, nashvylle said:

Driverless cars have to work with mass transit together. 

I totally agree that in 20 years the best cities in the world are going be the ones that got out in front of this and built policies, street grids, and transit systems that integrate driverless cars with mass transit in a way that makes their urban environment more pleasant and liveable. The NACTO recently published a 60 page PDF with some awesome ideas for how to do that: https://nacto.org/publication/bau/blueprint-for-autonomous-urbanism/

If history tells us anything, though, it's that many American cities will not do anything to try to proactively channel this new form of transportation. And I don't think anybody really knows what that's going to yield. It's going to be fascinating, with plenty of imaginable positive and negative factors. Driverless cars are going to enable a whole new level of sprawl and neighborhood/social isolation for those that want that. But they're also going to drastically reduce the need for parking, which will be a wild improvement in the urban and suburban streetscape and will significantly reduce the cost of building (no more wasting the bottom 10 floors on structured parking and/or building 17 football fields of parking lot for the shopping mall). What will Phoenix look like after 5 or 10 years of everybody being able to subscribe to a Waymo app for $50/month and go anywhere in the city with no car payment, gas bill, or insurance?

It's going to be a wild ride, and in the same way that personal vehicles reshaped American cities over the last 80 years, we're going to spend the rest of our lives watching transportation grids and land use patterns slowly reshape into something new.

[FromParkAveToTN]

When will we get to vote against this Mass-transitplan? I want to put the date on my calendar and make sure I don't miss it.

[Neigeville2]

33 minutes ago, FromParkAveToTN said:

When will we get to vote against this Mass-transitplan? I want to put the date on my calendar and make sure I don't miss it.

People for it vote on May 1st, those opposed vote on May 2nd.

[Neigeville2]

One point made on the page I linked to above is that self-driving vehicles will be in real-world application as fleets of taxis/vans/whatever long before they are available for individuals to buy.  An individual wants a vehicle that can go anywhere but it is currently and for some time to come only practicable to have them on specific routes that have been thoroughly mapped and vetted.  So they won't replace individual ownership of not-fully-autonomous cars for some time, but they will obviate the need for an individual car for many users long before you can buy one as an individual; these people will get out of the habit of owning a car. 

We really have to wait to see how cities, car owners, taxi companies and developers adapt and none of us can predict what will happen.  I would advise trying to keep transportation as multi-modal as possible and certainly not put all our eggs in one basket which we haven't even seen yet.  My gut feeling is that we may have robots driving smaller buses around but dense urban areas will always want high capacity mass transit options and autonomous vehicles seem likely to solve the "last mile" problem.

The only thing I'm sure of is that being able to call the nearest autonomous vehicle is going to be a great new amenity in urban areas where one will be there in a minute; worth the wait but not as great in the suburbs; and of little to no benefit for rural dwellers.  I think this is going to be yet another thing that makes urban life preferable.

[tragenvol]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/self-driving-bus-involved-in-accident-on-its-first-day/ar-BBEKNxm?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Day One...surely a Monday.

[Hey_Hey]

Of all the accidents that autonomous vehicles have been involved in, I can think of only one that was the fault of the car or driver. The fairly high profile Tesla crash in 2016 in which the car didn't recognize a white semi truck silhouetted by a light colored sky is the only one that comes to mind.  I would be curious in seeing video of all of the crashes.  While the autonomous vehicles weren't at fault, did they follow the rules of the road to a fault? For example, if someone is putting the nose of their car into the lane during stop and go traffic, most human drivers let them do so even if they technically shouldn't.  Do autonomous cars not yield to these cars because by the written letter of the law that car isn't supposed to do what they are doing?

Edited November 9, 2017 by Hey_Hey