Driving Peeves: SUV's & Turn Signals

[Evo]

Evo, if you have no guess, then what have you been arguing for the past hour or two? You don't know whether 90% or 10% could be helped by more buses, but you still think buses are a bad idea?

Guessing is irrelevant and a discussion based on guesses would be pointless, come up with some published numbers we can discuss.

I never said buses are a bad idea, they're just not the answer. Did you read that DOT link I furnished?

 

[BicycleTree]

And I say it's not 60%; come up with a rational guess. 1% sounds more reasonable to me, especially given your assumptions. Please clarify what you mean by:
1) without much trouble
2) a fair bunch of people

1.) who could drive to a bus stop, if such a stop were feasible for the bus company to create given that people who could use it were willing, in their town or in another town closer in that the bus stops at, and who both go to work and return from work during rush hours (more people than this could do it "without much trouble" but let's cut things clean)
2.) let's say 10 people as a lower bound

 

[BicycleTree]

Guessing is irrelevant and a discussion based on guesses would be pointless, come up with some published numbers we can discuss.

Whenever you make a qualitative statement about the effectiveness of busing, you're making a guess. An unquantitative guess, arguably less discussable than a quantitative guess.

If there were somehow published figures on this (how would you even harvest this type of information?) there wouldn't be a discussion at all.

 

[honestrosewater]

Does anyone want to talk about possible solutions?

 

[Huckleberry]

SOS has a good solution. She drives right over traffic with her M1 Abrams wheelchair. She doesn't even get ticketed for driving under the influence. Who is going to stop her?
http://www.sportbikes.ws/images/smilies/tank.gif

 

[BicycleTree]

Sure:
--Lots of advertising about the benefits of public transportation
--Taxes levied on SOV's (except for truckers) at tolls to discourage use
--More buses, and intelligently located bus stops and stations

 

[Evo]

According to the DOT study:

In 1985, 18.4 percent indicated having public transportation
available but did not use transit for any trip purpose. This
proportion increased to 21.5 percent in 1989 and 21.7 percent
in 1991.

Ok, so 21.7% of commuters have the option to use public transportation, this could mean bus or train most likely. Let's say 14% have bus transportation available but don't use it.

Ok, so 14% have buses available, but then we need to subtract those that can't use it because of the reasons previously posted. That could realistically drop the percent of people that could realistically use the bus to about 5% or less.

There you go, there are your numbers.

 

[Evo]

SOS has a good solution. She drives right over traffic with her M1 Abrams wheelchair. She doesn't even get ticketed for driving under the influence. Who is going to stop her?
http://www.sportbikes.ws/images/smilies/tank.gif

I[/URL] was thinking about SOS earlier today, there was a traffic jam near my office. Some guy in a wheelchair was driving down the road and had cars backed up for blocks. What was really crazy was that there was a perfectly good sidewalk right next to the road that was wheelchair accessable.

 

[Moonbear]

Here's yet another source corroborating that public transportation is not going to solve a number of current commuter problems (they do suggest more public transportation between cities, but not suburbs, would be good).

And, again, they mention the type of travel people do is quite different than it used to be and contributes to them not using public transportation.

It seems likely that the remaining small gaps in labor force participation and driver's license rates will be effectively closed. As a result, schedules become very complex. Travel is increasingly organized into "chains" of trips (work, shopping, child-related), and such trips are difficult to serve with public transportation.

http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/septoct00/skinner.htm

 

[Huckleberry]

I was thinking about SOS earlier today, there was a traffic jam near my office. Some guy in a wheelchair was driving down the road and had cars backed up for blocks. What was really crazy was that there was a perfectly good sidewalk right next to the road that was wheelchair accessable.

That would be hilarious if you weren't stuck in it. Was it this thread that I told the golf cart on the highway story? I wonder what goes through people's minds when they do things like this.

 

[BicycleTree]

Thanks for those figures, they give us something to work with.

But no, those are not my numbers. The availability of buses depends on the willingness of people to ride them. If people were willing to ride buses, the proportion of commuters with the option to ride public transportation would be much higher because more buses would be in operation. Also, the population for those statistics is all commuters, whereas I am only interested in suburban-to-city commuters, who probably have greater-than-average access to public transportation because of their central destinations. Finally, one would expect the amount reporting that they are aware of access to public transportation to be somewhat lower than the amount who actually have access to public transportation. And some of those polled would have answered "no" because they can't get _back_ by public transportation because of their workday; these people should have answered "yes" for our purposes.

Given these considerations, I think a reasonable shot at the figure of those who presently would be able to use public transportation is maybe 40%, and those who might in the future be able to use it, given that public transportation is established where it potentially could be used, maybe 50-60%. So for buses, using your guess of about 14/20 accesses to public transportation including buses, that would be 40% in the future who would have access to buses.

Now, your guess is that about 9/14 people can't take public transportation because it doesn't suit their workday. That gives around 15% who could reasonably use the bus if buses were established to meet the capacity of those who might use them.

 

[Evo]

That would be hilarious if you weren't stuck in it. Was it this thread that I told the golf cart on the highway story? I wonder what goes through people's minds when they do things like this.

I'm sure a golf cart can go faster than a wheelchair. I read about a guy here a couple of years ago that drove almost 50 miles on a lawnmower to visit his son.

 

[Evo]

Thanks for those figures, they give us something to work with.

But no, those are not my numbers. The availability of buses depends on the willingness of people to ride them. If people were willing to ride buses, the proportion of commuters with the option to ride public transportation would be much higher because more buses would be in operation. Also, the population for those statistics is all commuters, whereas I am only interested in suburban-to-city commuters, who probably have greater-than-average access to public transportation because of their central destinations. Finally, one would expect the amount reporting that they are aware of access to public transportation to be somewhat lower than the amount who actually have access to public transportation. And some of those polled would have answered "no" because they can't get _back_ by public transportation because of their workday; these people should have answered "yes" for our purposes.

Given these considerations, I think a reasonable shot at the figure of those who presently would be able to use public transportation is maybe 40%, and those who might in the future be able to use it, given that public transportation is established where it potentially could be used, maybe 50-60%. So for buses, using your guess of about 14/20 accesses to public transportation including buses, that would be 40% in the future who would have access to buses.

Now, your guess is that about 9/14 people can't take public transportation because it doesn't suit their workday. That gives around 15% who could reasonably use the bus if buses were established to meet the capacity of those who might use them.

No when the total percentage of ALL public transportation is only 21.7%, your estimate is WAY too high. I compromise and say 8%, tops. But realize, that 8% is not from one location, it is from ALL suburban locations and wouldn'y amount to very many people per locale.

 

[Huckleberry]

No traffic in this thread. It seems to be moving along quite nicely. I see my BT powered thread treadmill idea is working as planned.

 

[BicycleTree]

But you know, those are depending on your guesses. I think that public transportation could be established to meet the capacity of 90% of those in suburbs who could possibly use them; simply put a bus stop or station in every town surrounding the city. This would be something like 80 bus stops for Boston, and then everyone with a car can get to one of the bus stops. That would work out, given your guess of 5/14, to about 32%.

 

[Evo]

No traffic in this thread. It seems to be moving along quite nicely. I see my BT powered thread treadmill idea is working as planned.

Treadmill as in "going nowhere"?

 

[JamesU]

this thread has gone 4 pages in 1 day! do you people have enough complaints or what?!

 

[BicycleTree]

No when the total percentage of ALL public transportation is only 21.7%, your estimate is WAY too high. I compromise and say 8%, tops. But realize, that 8% is not from one location, it is from ALL suburban locations and wouldn'y amount to very many people per locale.

In my experience there is hardly any public transportation between suburbs unless the suburbs are on a radial line from the city, and the majority of commuters travel from suburb to suburb. So almost all of those suburb-to-suburb commuters are going to answer no, bumping the figures up by about 50%. And then when you factor in the other considerations, it easily goes up as high as I said. But I dramatically underestimated the potential for new buses as explained in my other post; to put a bus stop in every town within 30 miles of Boston would not be too much trouble. If every commuter who could use the bus, did, there would easily be more than 10 people at every stop. How many commuters are there from the suburbs to Boston? Better find that out.

 

[Moonbear]

1.) who could drive to a bus stop, if such a stop were feasible for the bus company to create given that people who could use it were willing, in their town or in another town closer in that the bus stops at, and who both go to work and return from work during rush hours (more people than this could do it "without much trouble" but let's cut things clean)
2.) let's say 10 people as a lower bound

Well, with the long series of conditions required for (1), I'd say slim to none.

As for 2, do you mean 10 people per bus, or 10 people in a town, total? If it's 10 people in a town, it's not even worth running a bus. If it's 10 people per bus going from the same origin to the same destination, maybe 100 people total to make it worth running 10 or 12 buses a day, assuming they can be concentrated during the rush hour travel time and all 100 people fit the criteria in (1), then that might be worth running a bus route for.

Though, if there's just one bus worth of people, then it's probably not worthwhile. The reason is that there's no flexibility at all. If you miss your bus, you're stuck. Not a huge problem if you miss it in the morning and can go back home and drive to work (except that by then you're probably already late and the extra time to and from the bus stop would make you even later), but a really big problem if you miss the bus home and don't have any other way to get back home.

Setting up a busing system and routes, even just adding one route, is a lot more complicated than you seem to think it is.

On a smaller scale, if you really mean just 10 people, then solutions other than buses work better. Some towns have smaller carpool lots near interstate or highway on-ramps. So, if I can locate a group of people who have compatible schedules with mine and are going to a close location to where I am headed, instead of driving all over town picking up people for a carpool, you can meet near the freeway entrance and everyone else can park their cars and the driver for the day drives everyone in. This gives more flexibility at the end of the day. If one person is running a bit late, you do get stuck waiting for them, but at least it's not like running for a bus that won't wait. In addition, if you miss your carpool in the morning (if people need to be at work at a certain time, they can't stand around waiting for the one habitually late person), then you already are in your car and on the way to the freeway anyway, so you're not stuck anywhere without a ride or being made any later like if you miss your bus in the morning.

In some places, there are efforts to help people find carpoolers.

But, this still doesn't solve the problem of increasing numbers of people who are combining their trip home with half a dozen errands, and all the other assorted reasons that prevent someone from traveling a fixed daily route on a fixed schedule.

 

[Huckleberry]

Treadmill as in "going nowhere"?

Kind of like a car tire. Relative to itself and the car it goes nowhere. But I can use it to actually go somewhere relative to the ground. If I were to print out this thread and stand on the end of it I would be moving rapidly, like George Jetson on those airport walkway things.

 

[honestrosewater]

I don't think buses, subways, and trains can fix everything. Indeed, in some places nothing needs fixing; If you only have one stoplight in your town... . I think they're the best option in some circumstances and could be improved.
My main concern about driving is the drivers. Just look at zooby's top 5: speeding, tailgating, driving under the influence, inattention, and yeild violation. This is why I added taxis. With professional drivers, I imagine those accidents would almost certainly drop. If their being professionals doesn't convince you, would you pay for a ride from a safe or unsafe driver/company? Unless price is a huge factor, I think safety would be a major deciding factor for most people, so competition should help improve safety even more. I'll check for some examples to see if this has been the case.
As for convenience, cost, etc., you can already schedule a taxi to be where you want, when you want, on a regular or temporary basis, go where you want, etc. If you need a ride at the last minute, I usually wait less than 20 minutes (and you can usually call a few minutes before you're ready). They are at least as convenient as private autos for most purposes. I'm not sure about the cost. They may be more expensive now, but this could change. People can share taxis, and so on.
Some possible drawbacks: Taking taxis and renting cars may cost more than owning your own (this doesn't worry me so much). But if people were driving less often, they may be more dangerous when they return to the road. I don't drive, so I don't really know if this would happen, or how often you need to drive in order to keep your skills sharp.

 

[Danger]

I spent about the first 45 minutes after I got home from work reading this thing, and got only half-way through it. Now that you're into political (?) stuff, I'm not going to go back and finish it. Your situation in the States is similar to here in some ways, and different in others. I will say that if I have to go to downtown Calgary, I park at a mall and take the C-train. I might drive if I had something with better visibility and more manoeuvrable in traffic (and low enough to get into parkades). Anywhere else in the city, I drive. Calgary also has the 'Plus 15' network of 2nd floor enclosed catwalks. I haven't been in that particular section for several years, but I think that you can cover about 50 square blocks (no, we don't have round blocks in Canada*) without going outside.

*Godrich, Ontario, is layed out like a bulls-eye, so its blocks are a little weird.

 

[Moonbear]

EPA and the Commonwealth announced a campaign to triple – from 33 to 100 – the number of Commuter Choice Employers in New England by Earth Day 2004. Commuter Choice Employers must offer their employees at least one major commuter benefit such as $30 per month in transit passes, vanpool subsidies or cash instead of subsidized parking spaces. Additionally, they must offer three other commuter benefits from a list, including carpool matching, bike lockers, compressed work schedules and membership in a transportation management association (TMA).

...

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts offers excellent commuter services, including a comprehensive transit system and services of the statewide commuter transportation organization, CARAVAN for Commuters Inc., to more than one million daily commuters. In addition, Massachusetts is one of a handful of states in the country with a statewide ridesharing rule, which requires all large employers to develop and implement a strategy to reduce single occupancy commuting among their employees.

http://www.epa.gov/boston/pr/2003/may/030512.html

 

[honestrosewater]

I don't think the taxi or other people being late is a real problem. Accidents and traffic jams make people late now and society hasn't crumbled. Of course, if you happen to ride with someone who is repeatedly late, it would be a problem- so just drop them. For those people who don't want to risk being late because of a taxi, they can just not use them. But how many such people can there be?

 

[BicycleTree]

Well, with the long series of conditions required for (1),

Ahem? There are two conditions. They must be able to drive to a bus stop, and they must go to and return from work during rush hour. And the first condition is virtually a given.


I mean 10 people per stop, for each stop the bus makes. I can't find the total commuters to Boston at the moment, but it's in something like a hundred thousand (my mom has seen the figure but doesn't remember exactly). 80 towns, with a stop in each town... using Evo's guess of 5/14, that leaves roughly five hundred in each town who could take the bus. Plenty of possible demand. My figure of 10 people was an absolute minimum; actually, if buses pass through the average town 10 times they could be filled to capacity each time.

I will easily dismiss your other objection in the following manner: Miss a bus? you got to the bus stop by car.

 

[Huckleberry]

I went about a year without driving and then I got a different car. IT did feel awkward for about a month as I adjusted to both. It's kind of like riding a bicycle, once you learn it is a skill that you have. There are cases where people lose confidence in their ability to drive and become unsafe drivers. I have an aunt who has this problem. She has panic attacks when she drives far from the small town she lives in. Very unsafe. I imagine someone who was recently in an accident might be afraid and react poorly to dangerous driving situations.

 

[honestrosewater]

I went about a year without driving and then I got a different car. IT did feel awkward for about a month as I adjusted to both. It's kind of like riding a bicycle, once you learn it is a skill that you have. There are cases where people lose confidence in their ability to drive and become unsafe drivers. I have an aunt who has this problem. She has panic attacks when she drives far from the small town she lives in. Very unsafe. I imagine someone who was recently in an accident might be afraid and react poorly to dangerous driving situations.

Oh, yes, I forgot that adjusting to a new car takes time. So this may be a concern. Anyone have a suggestion? I guess awareness would help. I don't know how well restrictions like having to take a test after not having dirven for extended amounts of time would work...

 

[BicycleTree]

And your other other objection, errands... you left your car at the bus stop and can do errands once you return to your town.

 

[Moonbear]

My main concern about driving is the drivers. Just look at zooby's top 5: speeding, tailgating, driving under the influence, inattention, and yeild violation.

I wonder how many of those are all related to inattention? Maybe not the speeding, but following too close can be due to not paying attention, and not yielding could be not paying attention. DUI is of course clearly a separate issue. At least around here, I'd say there are a LOT of drivers who just plain aren't paying attention to anything going on around them.

This is why I added taxis. With professional drivers, I imagine those accidents would almost certainly drop. If their being professionals doesn't convince you, would you pay for a ride from a safe or unsafe driver/company? Unless price is a huge factor, I think safety would be a major deciding factor for most people, so competition should help improve safety even more.

Once in a city, taxis are a convenience I like having. I certainly think the ready availability of a taxi to get around in a city is an incentive to use public transportation. If I know I can get a ride across town if I catch a bus or train to a station that's not close to where my final destination is, then that's not bad. On the other hand, I don't know if I could vouch for safety or not. Though, it would be hard to get any decent stats on it since there probably are a LOT of taxi accidents just because they are driving in places where there are a lot of cars and accidents are bound to happen even with the safest drivers.

If you need a ride at the last minute, I usually wait less than 20 minutes (and you can usually call a few minutes before you're ready).

Once outside a city, they aren't as convenient. And of course it's double the car travel time if they have to come out to your house to pick you up and then take you where you're going. In a city where they always have a passenger and people share cabs, it's more like carpooling.

When I first moved here, I needed to get a cab because my car was still in another state, and it was pretty expensive, plus the waiting time was really long.

But, they really aren't a solution to congestion or a form of public transportation, because generally, it's just having someone drive you instead of driving yourself, other than giving someone incentive to take public transportation into a city knowing they won't have to walk 15 blocks once there.

 

[BicycleTree]

Walking from a parking garage in the city is no different from walking from a bus stop in the city. Is it?

 

[Evo]

Taxis are almost non existent downtown (I see one maybe once every three months and I drive downtown every day). They do not exist in the suburbs here. I needed a cab once and my only option was renting a limo and I had to wait over two hours.

 

[Danger]

Walking from a parking garage in the city is no different from walking from a bus stop in the city. Is it?

Yes it is, because you can leave your stuff in the car and go back for it.

 

[BicycleTree]

That's right, as opposed to carrying a briefcase you can keep stuff in your car and spend 20 minutes going back for it. I forgot.

Also a parking garage costs $20 for the day.

 

[Moonbear]

Ahem? There are two conditions. They must be able to drive to a bus stop, and they must go to and return from work during rush hour. And the first condition is virtually a given.

Uh, nope, you had more conditions than just that. Remember this part?

if such a stop were feasible for the bus company to create given that people who could use it were willing, in their town or in another town closer in that the bus stops at

I mean 10 people per stop, for each stop the bus makes. I can't find the total commuters to Boston at the moment, but it's in something like a hundred thousand (my mom has seen the figure but doesn't remember exactly). 80 towns, with a stop in each town... using Evo's guess of 5/14, that leaves roughly five hundred in each town who could take the bus. Plenty of possible demand. My figure of 10 people was an absolute minimum; actually, if buses pass through the average town 10 times they could be filled to capacity each time.

What makes you think this doesn't already exist? It seems there is more to the problem than that.

More than three quarters of the 927,000 trips to the City of Boston daily are by private motor vehicle: 30% to downtown neighborhoods and 70% to the rest of Boston. While about half of the downtown trips were by public transit, only 22% of the trips to the rest of Boston were by transit, indicating poor transit connections across neighborhoods. The number of trips is increasing in every mode of travel. This increase is attributed to the growing complexity of people’s lives (only 30% of all trips today are work-related), growing household income, and increasing residential sprawl. The completion of the Central Artery/Tunnel project may reorganize trip patterns in Boston, since new connections have become possible, and recurring delay has been reduced.

Looking at commuting trips from home to work, Boston residents drove alone only 40% of the time, the second-lowest rate of any city or town in Massachusetts and far lower than the 64% drive-alone share for Metropolitan Boston and the 74% drive-alone share statewide. Boston residents used public transit for 32% of commuting trips, nearly double the 17% transit share for Metropolitan Boston commuting trips. This high rate of transit use occurs despite the fact that public transit commuters have the longest average commutes of all Massachusetts workers, with average travel times of greater than 60 minutes for commuter rail and ferry riders and 40 minutes for bus and subway riders, compared to 25 minutes for commuters who drive alone.

http://www.tbf.org/indicators2004/transportation/indicators.asp?id=2226

 

[Moonbear]

Walking from a parking garage in the city is no different from walking from a bus stop in the city. Is it?

It depends on where the bus stop is. For example, when I travel from NJ to NY, I take the bus to the Port Authority. My friend's office is not walking distance from there (despite my ignoring his instructions to take a cab thinking it was a nice day for a walk, I had to give up and hail a cab eventually ). He parks in a parking garage a half block from his office. Parking is expensive, but you get a monthly pass, so you're not paying the same rate as if you were just parking for one day. In Cincinnati, most downtown employers have parking garages for employees with assigned spaces, so you know you'll find parking (of course we don't have any real traffic problems either...not that people don't complain, but compared to NY, it's nothing).