The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[rookzie]

The proposed reductions and eliminations of service (WeGo), some of which have been implemented and then reinstated during past administrations, will act as a regressive tax structure.   It "taxes" those who need it the most─the transit-dependent─by eliminating routes of low ridership, such as Rt. Nº1, 100 Oaks via Vine Hill.  The income-poor out by Bransford Ave (Rt. Nº1) would be impacted, and the elimination of several other routes would mean no more One-Seat passage between downtown and many outlying points, even with rerouting of a few existing routes to accommodate parts of eliminated routes.

As far as the now-Free-Ride Blue Nº60 route is concerned, Bland proposes elimination of the Downtown portion, which also serves MCS train commuters (Riverfront) into downtown (primarily state workers), while reinstating the Fare-based Nº29 Jefferson Street, made free two years ago (and overlaid with the Blue Circuit), when Nº60 was extended from Downtown to the TSU Main Campus (John Merritt Blvd).   Perhaps the Nº61 Green Circuit Free Ride (Gulch) will be rerouted to include Riverfront.  Elimination of vital Sunday service on some routes (e.g. Nº21, 25) will impact Sunday commuters (e.g. medical workers), as well as students who might otherwise shuttle among Trevecca, VU, TSU-Main, Meharry, and Fisk.

Highly lamentable for a city still erecting and embracing the corporate world.  Raising fares is not necessarily a bad thing, although it does nothing to offset the increasing disparity between the have and have-nots, in terms of personal mobility.  Again, no dedicated funding source, beyond the cities annual operating budget.   Perhaps it needs to get "Worser" and "Worster" (with loss of public confidence) , before it can get any better.  A beefy, rather than a skeletal, bus network needs to be in place, before any rail-based component is instituted─airport or otherwise.

Edited May 21, 2019 by rookzie

[CenterHill]

Well stated, Rookzie.   I particularly agree with your closing sentence that bus service needs to be expanded, not contracted.   This is yet another example of short sighted leadership and misplaced priorities.   

[PruneTracy]

Replying to this in its rightful home.

The latest crash rate data from TDOT is for 2014 through 2016 (2016 through 2018 will be out later next month).

For all road types and classifications the crash rate in Tennessee during this period was 1.83 crashes per million vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). Of this, there were:

• 1.36 property-damage-only crashes per million VMT;
• 0.39 crashes involving at least one minor injury per million VMT;
• 0.07 crashes involving at least one serious injury per million VMT; and
• 0.01 crashes involving at least one fatality per million VMT.

In other words there was one property-damage-only crash for every 735,000 miles driven, one minor injury crash for every 2.56 million miles driven, one serious injury crash for every 14.3 million miles driven, and one fatal crash for every 79.5 million miles driven (or, as it's more commonly presented, 1.26 fatal crashes per 100 million miles driven).

For starters, however, we need to limit this to urban non-freeways as few people are riding scooters in rural areas and hopefully none on freeways. If we do this we get one property-damage-only crash for every 356,000 miles driven, one minor injury crash for every 1.75 million miles driven, one serious injury crash for every 14.4 million miles driven, and one fatal crash for every 90.9 million miles driven. (As you can see the fatal crashes went down but injury and PDO went way up which is to be expected for urban, low-speed environments.)

It is hard to find data on how many miles people have ridden scooters but there have apparently only been five deaths on scooters thus far. If you just use the mileage estimates from Bird and Lime (I assume those two have the lion's share of miles, don't know which firms are in other cities, and it's also BS as they should know exactly how far people have ridden their scooters instead of just having "estimates") that works out to 3-4 fatalities per 100 million miles ridden.

But this only tells us that scooting (nationwide) is more dangerous than driving (in Tennessee), which should be obvious since scooters don't have a giant metal frame with airbags and seat belts built in. So how is it compared to other modes? Nationally, bicycles range between 1.5-5 fatalities per 100 million miles ridden and pedestrians 1.5-2 fatalities per 100 million miles walked (the range on both of these. So while the rate is higher it is perhaps comparable with similar modes especially considering the small sample size for scooters.

The bottom line is that transportation-related fatalities are rare events and infrequent to the point where random chance becomes a significant variable when calculating rates. So while it's helpful to see the differences in rates between modes it may be outweighed by the practical benefits of that mode. Plus motorcycles are like 25 fatalities per 100 million VMT so if those death traps haven't been banned yet it's hard to get mad over scooters

[markhollin]

What Nashville's mayoral candidates say they would do about transit:

https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2019/05/22/what-nashvilles-mayoral-candidates-say-they-would.html?iana=hpmvp_nsh_news_headline

Also, the mayor and other 3 candidates all agree the the scooters have been a "failed experiment":

https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith-in-the-wind/article/21069926/briley-current-electric-scooter-regulations-are-a-failed-experiment

[deletethisaccount]

What is everyone's thoughts on driverless cars? Will business models such as Tesla's autonomous ride sharing fleets, and obvious upcoming competition drive the prices down for point to point transport that it impacts the needs for alternative modes of transport?

[titanhog]

The Tesla autonomous ride-sharing fleet is a very interesting concept.  I still feel we could be decades away from full acceptance of autonomous passenger vehicles.  I can’t imagine the technology is as good as it’s going to be in the future.  We’ve been able to accept that humans make mistakes while driving that leads to death...but it’s going to be much tougher to accept computers killing people in large numbers.  They’re going to have to work out all issues of ice, rain and other road hazards that are split second changes in conditions.

[markhollin]

I-440 Update.  Pillars being placed for another ribbon to be shot 75 feet in the air above the I-65/Franklin Rd. spaghetti bowl.

Looking west from Franklin Rd., 1/2 block south of Berry Rd:

Looking east from Franklin Rd., 1/2 block south of Berry Rd:

[grilled_cheese]

On 5/20/2019 at 3:22 PM, markhollin said:

WeGo proposes ending downtown's free bus loop amid $8.7 million budget shortfall:

https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2019/05/20/wego-proposes-nixing-downtowns-free-bus-loop-amid.html?ana=twt

Good thing we just generated $10m from the draft so that should clear this up, right?

[smeagolsfree]

I am sure they spent the money before it was even counted on studies for the East Bank, etc. IMO, all studies and non essential spending should be eliminated when there is a budget shortfall. Every penny counts and when you start spending a million here and then a million there it adds up to a lot of money.

[PaulChinetti]

13 hours ago, nativenashville said:

What is everyone's thoughts on driverless cars? Will business models such as Tesla's autonomous ride sharing fleets, and obvious upcoming competition drive the prices down for point to point transport that it impacts the needs for alternative modes of transport?

I think they are so far off that it's crazy that current politicians think they will solve traffic problems now.

If people think scooters not being policed are a problem, who gets in trouble when a billion different road situations happen. What happens when a carful of people hit's someone, then the date shows that the passenger grabbed the wheel at the last second when the car was trying to avoid someone. What happens when it makes the decision to kill 2 people on the street instead of a group of 4. ETC ETC ETC.

There are way more problems still needing to be solved with autonomous cars than the builders would like you to believe. And problems that can't be fixed by software, like moral quandaries about what to do in emergencies and everyday situations.

http://moralmachine.mit.edu

Here are some good examples. 

[BnaBreaker]

On 5/20/2019 at 4:22 PM, markhollin said:

WeGo proposes ending downtown's free bus loop amid $8.7 million budget shortfall:

https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2019/05/20/wego-proposes-nixing-downtowns-free-bus-loop-amid.html?ana=twt

Unbelievable.  Because what better way to develop a fully functioning service that people feel comfortable using than to strip away all of it's funding?   Making it more difficult and inconvenient for people to use the bus will really convince them to use  it! 

And for god's sake can we just change the name back to Nashville MTA already?  WeGo sounds like a child's potty training tool.  It's not like anyone using it calls it by it's name anyway... they just know it as 'the bus.' 

Edited May 23, 2019 by BnaBreaker

[deletethisaccount]

3 hours ago, PaulChinetti said:

I think they are so far off that it's crazy that current politicians think they will solve traffic problems now.

If people think scooters not being policed are a problem, who gets in trouble when a billion different road situations happen. What happens when a carful of people hit's someone, then the date shows that the passenger grabbed the wheel at the last second when the car was trying to avoid someone. What happens when it makes the decision to kill 2 people on the street instead of a group of 4. ETC ETC ETC.

There are way more problems still needing to be solved with autonomous cars than the builders would like you to believe. And problems that can't be fixed by software, like moral quandaries about what to do in emergencies and everyday situations.

http://moralmachine.mit.edu

Here are some good examples. 

I would argue that the tech will be deployed fast, aggressively, and without regard to a black hole of moral pontification. For better or for worse. 

As you said, the scooters are a fantastic example how decentralized systems can explode in a city overnight and never be the same from. The cars (Tesla's currently, other manufacturers racing to follow suite) are already on our streets, just waiting for the flick of an OTA update.

[PaulChinetti]

I wonder how the systems will work. Will there be a parking lot by the airport where the cars charge all night, say by the airport. You call for a ride in the morning and the car drives around depositing people until it has to go charge again. That would be a great way to get rid of parking spaces in the city.

Then a company could buy a plot of land builds a 20 story car-vana like vending machine and just deploys cars in the city as they are called. Have their offices/mechanics/services built into the floors above the car machine. That would be an interesting strategy. 

[titanhog]

Won’t the Tesla “fleet” cars just be privately owned (they would dock at homes when not in use)?  Or is Tesla also going to throw thousands of cars into their own driverless ride-sharing biz?  If they do that, then I would imagine they’ll have to build docking stations all over each city they operate in...right?

[AronG]

Driverless cars are already operating in carefully restricted areas, areas with clearly defined streets and year-round good weather. Most of the time they do still have safety drivers in the car.  Everybody knows about Waymo in Phoenix, but there's also Voyage in Florida, Optimus in Boston, Drive.ai in Texas, etc. etc. Here's a good writeup on the different strategies being pursued. They're going to spend the next 10 years removing the safety drivers and the next 50 slowly expanding the territory and weather conditions.

What's interesting to me is that it's going to be viable a lot sooner to use this technology for a transit-style system than it is for an anywhere-to-anywhere personal vehicle replacement. The tech is a LOT simpler and safer at low speeds, and with a local operation center watching over it. It's easy to imagine a smart city setting up a 5 mile loop on well-maintained and marked streets with a max speed of 25 mph and only right turns. Since there are no drivers it will be economical to run small shuttles, spaced every few minutes circulating around this loop. Add a couple more interlocking loops and you have a transit system that could move a significant number of people around, with labor and fuel costs (assuming they're electric) an order of magnitude or two lower than current systems.

The question is, how will municipalities interact with the tech companies that are building these. The business model for transit is very different than ride-hailing, much less personal car ownership. Prediction: Europe will do this right and we'll do it wrong. Their cities will get even better while we find new ways to choke on cars.

[deletethisaccount]

The Tesla model is private owners release their cars into the wild while at home or work and have the car make money for them. Tesla takes a % of the revenue from the vehicle. The charging snake prototypes they showed are to allow Tesla to operate their own fleets in cities in parellel, and be fully autonomous, driving, doing trips, plugging in, charging, all with zero human intervention a majority of the time.

I impress again that they will release stuff before certain laws are caught up, or tech is perfect. It's the nature of the beast.

2 minutes ago, AronG said:

What's interesting to me is that it's going to be viable a lot sooner to use this technology for a transit-style system than it is for an anywhere-to-anywhere personal vehicle replacement. The tech is a LOT simpler and safer at low speeds, and with a local operation center watching over it. It's easy to imagine a smart city setting up a 5 mile loop on well-maintained and marked streets with a max speed of 25 mph and only right turns. Since there are no drivers it will be economical to run small shuttles, spaced every few minutes circulating around this loop. Add a couple more interlocking loops and you have a transit system that could move a significant number of people around, with labor and fuel costs (assuming they're electric) an order of magnitude or two lower than current systems.

THIS. For all the push for 10, 15, 20 + year long construction for rail and other projects, they seem to be ignorant to the reality of the broad variety of autonomous based systems being able to scale and deploy for pennies on the dollar comparatively.

[12Mouth]

13 minutes ago, nativenashville said:

I would argue that the tech will be deployed fast, aggressively, and without regard to a black hole of moral pontification. For better or for worse. 

As you said, the scooters are a fantastic example how decentralized systems can explode in a city overnight and never be the same from. The cars (Tesla's currently, other manufacturers racing to follow suite) are already on our streets, just waiting for the flick of an OTA update.

Also, most of the moral problems on city streets can be significantly mitigated by dropping speed limits. Unlike human drivers, you can presumably make it illegal to put a self driving car on the road that is capable of exceeding the speed limit. Drop speed limits to 20-25 in residential areas/commercial districts and the chance that the car cannot stop for any hazard goes down significantly.  And they have to be better than human beings at driving. Not five minutes ago, I saw someone driving the wrong way down a three lane one-way street. Multiple people tried to flag him down along the road, but he was starting straight down at his phone, completely oblivious. 

[PaulChinetti]

1 hour ago, AronG said:

Driverless cars are already operating in carefully restricted areas, areas with clearly defined streets and year-round good weather. Most of the time they do still have safety drivers in the car.  Everybody knows about Waymo in Phoenix, but there's also Voyage in Florida, Optimus in Boston, Drive.ai in Texas, etc. etc. Here's a good writeup on the different strategies being pursued. They're going to spend the next 10 years removing the safety drivers and the next 50 slowly expanding the territory and weather conditions.

What's interesting to me is that it's going to be viable a lot sooner to use this technology for a transit-style system than it is for an anywhere-to-anywhere personal vehicle replacement. The tech is a LOT simpler and safer at low speeds, and with a local operation center watching over it. It's easy to imagine a smart city setting up a 5 mile loop on well-maintained and marked streets with a max speed of 25 mph and only right turns. Since there are no drivers it will be economical to run small shuttles, spaced every few minutes circulating around this loop. Add a couple more interlocking loops and you have a transit system that could move a significant number of people around, with labor and fuel costs (assuming they're electric) an order of magnitude or two lower than current systems.

They are operating in those areas because of the weather and other carefully chosen criteria. But even in Phoenix, with a safety driver, in perfect weather at night on a lite street, there was still a pedestrian that was killed. The car saw the pedestrian didn't know what to do, so did nothing, then decided to brake way too late and didn't get the safety driver enough time to react. 

So basically how this conversation all started by the guy turning into traffic on a scooter from the sidewalk. Would the car been able to recognize that fast enough, if it was set to 25 mph, he might have had a chance, I didn't see how fast the car was going.  

I always say a lot of these problems could be solved by urban planning pushing our city to more pedestrian friendly rather than car friendly. Demonbreun one-way each way,  with bike lanes and wider sidewalks, close Broadway to cars on the weekend, one lane each way during the week with wider sidewalks and bike lanes. Pie in the sky Paul, pie in the sky.

[Rockatansky]

2005: Driverless cars are just around the corner!

2010: Driverless cars are just around the corner!

2015: Driverless cars are just around the corner!

2019: Driverless cars are just around the corner!

[donNdonelson2]

Can we just skip the driverless cars and go directly to FLYING cars?

[smeagolsfree]

2050: Driverless cars around the corner!

[CenterHill]

6 hours ago, grilled_cheese said:

Good thing we just generated $10m from the draft so that should clear this up, right?

Not really.     WeGo's budget comes out of Metro's general fund, so the $8.7m shortfall would have to be made up from the general fund.     The vast majority of the tax revenues collected from the NFL Draft were generated in the downtown Tourist Development Zone and those revenues go to the convention center (MCC debt retirement), not the general fund.      

John Cooper (running for mayor) corrected Mayor Briley's misstatements about the use of the NFL Draft tax revenues in a recent tweet.  

 

[PaulChinetti]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637358/cruise-gm-self-driving-unprotected-left-turn

Relevant video. 1400 times in 24 hours, doesn't really seem like that many, unless that was the same car I suppose.

Interesting, I wonder if there was a driver in the seat, and what if any amount of times they ever had to take over. 

[Craiger]

 

 

[LA_TN]

Whether you like or dislike the rebranding of MTA to WeGo (potty), why was this done during a budget shortfall? Wrong time to spend money