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Cunninghams_right OP t1_j6o4pe3 wrote

Reply to comment by physicallyatherapist in Would be awesome if the JFX and Jones Falls river could be converted like this by Cunninghams_right

generally, what I get most from pro-transit people are

  1. not everyone can ride it, so it shouldn't be done (ignoring than some of these companies actually offer rentable mobility scooters)
  2. without bike lanes, it would be a problem for sidewalks
  3. we shouldn't subsidize a private company
  4. we should do X instead (where X is running more buses, or building trams, etc. )

the problem is that it's something that pro-transit folks don't necessarily hate, but they will advocate for something else instead.

the result is that you get 100 different ideas that each have a handful of supporters against a unified group of pro-car people that is 100x larger. the result of all of the disparate pro-transit voices is that the city council and mayor just keep doing more of the same.

if we made a decision matrix with factors like door-to-door time, construction cost, operating cost per passenger-mile, speed of implementation, accessibility, reliability, energy usage per passenger-mile, pollution, noise pollution, and any other performance metric of a transit mode, the result would come back scooter/bike subsidy every single time. it wouldn't even be close. it is an issue that anyone who advocates for non-car transportation SHOULD all agree is the top priority... but scooters have been in Baltimore more than a decade and yet they're still not getting any significant support from the city (they are getting SOME support, but a miniscule amount compared to a buses, PPM)

there is another obvious thing we should at least be looking into, but I don't even dare mention it because of its unpopularity in spite of objective evidence that is outperforming our transit by every metric.

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physicallyatherapist t1_j6oo787 wrote

I see what you're saying. I've never come across that much animosity towards scooters but I guess I see some of the points. However, that is only solution to the issue. Also, most of those reasons could be removed if we focus on more bike lanes which would free up space for scooters as well. I think most pro-transit people would support that, yeah?

What's the unpopular opinion?

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Cunninghams_right OP t1_j6ozoi9 wrote

>Also, most of those reasons could be removed if we focus on more bike lanes which would free up space for scooters as well. I think most pro-transit people would support that, yeah?

it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. the opposition to bike lanes comes largely from people thinking they're not worth being built unless they're filled with riders. most people don't think about it long enough to understand network effects, or that restricting car traffic is a good thing for livability and their slightly slower drive due to the driving lane being fully makes the city better and safer. so if you can inflate the number of people biking/scooting, it makes more pro-bike-lane people and reduces opposition.

I was actually saying in another thread a while back that if you took the budget for a single light rail line ($1-$2 billion), you could offer a voucher of $1k to anyone in the city for a bike/trike/ebike/etrike/scooter and still have enough money left over randomly give 1 in 25 people who are riding $1000 each month (each person can't win more than per year), and sustain that random lottery for somewhere between 2 and 10 years, depending on how many people take up biking in order to try to win that lottery. think about that; 1 in 25 people is VERY common. everyone would know at least 1 person who won that lottery and facebook/instagram would be FILLED with people celebrating that they won. you would pretty much entice everyone in the city to at least bike SOME of the time, but the more you bike the more likely you would be to win, so you may as well bike to work, bike to the store, bike when you're bored, etc. etc.. the result would be a MASSIVE demand for bike lanes and on streets without bike lanes, cars would be constantly driving near cyclists, so they would get used to having to watch out for them. by the time the lottery was finished, everyone would be used to riding and bike lanes would already be in place, so continued bike usage would be high. I think it would be absolutely transformative to an entire city, much more so than adding 1 light rail line.

but anyway, that's a pretty radical idea and might be hard to convince people to try. it would also be a massive and sudden change, which people hate. even sudden changes for the better are hated by many people.

edit: oops, hit submit too early, standby for the next paragraph

>What's the unpopular opinion?

to start, we have to understand the real-world costs of transportation modes (I'm using pre pandemic data, bus LRT costs have gone up since)

  • taxi/uber/lyft: somewhere around $1.50-$2.50 per vehicle-mile
  • DC/WMATA buses, pre pandemic: $1.99 per passenger-mile
  • St Louis light rail: $1.01 PPM (unfortunately, I don't have Baltimore data but I think St Louis is going to be similar to Baltimore, based on ridership)

so, how many people do you need in a taxi before the cost is on par with transit? well, in the case of buses, 1-1.25 person in a taxi. what is the average occupancy of a taxi? well, it's 1.3-1.56., so it's actually already cost competitive with the average bus. for light rail, you'd need 1.5-2.5 ppv. cool, so uber-pool would likely be right around the cost of a light rail system on a per-passenger-mile basis.

ok, for the next part, we need to understand the cost to construct different things.

the cost of surface rail in the US is around $125M/mi to $245M/mi. (source1 source2).

the cost of a simple car or utility tunnel is $60M-$88M/mi (source). if the TBM is brought to the surface for each station and a road deck installed instead of train infrastructure, it would be possible to make a tunnel for taxis for less than the cost of a light rail line.

now, the taxis would need to be electric in order to reduce the exhaust requirements (still need a directional vent at each segment for fire safety).

the average vehicle occupancy would need to be 1.5-2.5 in order to be on par or cheaper than a light rail line, so a Ford e-Transit would be an ideal vehicle as it can comfortable seat 4 with bags, and 6-7 in a pinch. so even if the vehicles had low occupancy (1.2-2 ppv) during off-peak hours, peak hours of 3-5 would be able to raise the occupancy enough to be on par or cheaper than a typical light rail line.

so, lower construction cost, much more frequent vehicles (more than one departing per minute at peak, a couple of minutes wait during off-peak).

if Waymo vehicles, which can already operate autonomously and seat 4 comfortably and 6 squeezed, can be used, then theoretically, the cost to operate each vehicle would drop by 30%-50% due to the elimination of the driver.

ohh, and if you're curious, regular roadway vehicle density with 4 ppv would easily cover weekday peak-hour on our light rail, and 6-7 ppv would even handle typical stadium even ridership (would actually handle DC stadium entrants per hour).

the key is for it to either be driverless or to only use regular taxi drivers. if you use buses or trains, then you need expensive drivers and expensive vehicles, which will make it more expensive to operate while also making longer wait times.

this concept would work, but people HATE it because Elon Musk is implementing a project similar to this and that has created a whirlwind of false information about safety, cost, capacity, etc.

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