Re: North-South Rail Link
Seriously, are you really going to try to make this case? Because it's not a good one.
Yes, I am seriously going to make this argument.
Your argument could be made about roads and automobile travel before the interstates were built. Why do cars on highways work so well now? Because we invested in them! We were proactive! Now we are stuck in a situation where we have a 2002 road system and a 1952 rapid transit system. No one but the most desperate would live in a home that had not been updated in 50 years, yet we find it acceptable to maintain our transit that way.
Of course our rapid transit is going to suck under these circumstances! It's terrible, we should be ashamed of it. It's woefully inadequate, outdated, doesnt go anywhere that our current transportation patterns want us to go, and hasnt had a major update or overhaul ever. But there is no way in hell its going to get better if people keep saying "well, it sucks now, so its going to keep sucking." FIX IT! Build a rapid transit system
at least as good as the road network around it. Invest equally in transit as you do in roads. 50/50. Do it for the next 50 years. Then talk to me, if your still right I will eat my old-man shorts.
Because unless you're in Manhattan, they are the fastest way by far to get from "here" to "there". Virtually always.
Manhattan, unlike everywhere else, invested in their rapid transit. They didn't even do it well, with foresight, or that much: just a bit more than everywhere else, and its the best in the country.
Try some Google Maps scheduling. There's no excessive waiting or walking, no transferring from one line to the other. You can get from anywhere to anywhere in a car, at any time.
I don't have to use google maps. I live here, I own a bike, a car, and a charlie card. I make this decision every single day. For short trips my #1 choice is my bike. If I'm going downtown where there is congestion or scarce parking, I take the T. Otherwise I drive.
WOAH! Hold on, wait, just one second.
I choose driving for more than 50% of my trips even though I think driving should be all but banned in citys? Yes, because I am not somehow unaffected by the fact that our rapid transit system is an antiquated abomination. I need to get places fast too, and I drive to the seaport. I take my 2001 Jetta down roads repaved this decade to a 1960s interstate to a 2000s bridge to park in a parking lot that undoubtedly has a computer in the attendants kiosk. I do this versus taking a 1986 or 1998 trolley through 1900s tunnels designed for a different purpose than they serve now to a value engineered bus under the street.
The difference between you and I (and Kahta) is, I don't want to. I shouldn't have to, and I know it. I am being forced, against my will, to take a car I was forced by my job to buy to drive somewhere that I shouldn't have to drive to. I am being forced to by the one-two punch of a drastic underinvestment in mass transit combined with a massive overinvestment in personal transit. I want to have a transit system that is at least funded as well as the roads it should supplement.
Yet, even with that overinvestment, I can't (as you imply) just choose to go anywhere in a car at any time. I can't hop in my car at 5:10 on a weekday and go pretty much anywhere. In fact, I can go barely anywhere. I can't go from one end of Harvard Avenue to the other because traffic is so gridlocked.
I can't on a bus either, because it is stuck in traffic.
Traffic caused by the lack of sufficient alternate public transportation.
Lack of sufficient public transportation caused by the lack of investment in transit equal to that of roads.
The big dig doesnt work so well because it serves cars. It works so well and helps the economy because it is a great piece of infrastructure. If an equal amount was invested into the T we would have just as great an economic asset. Better in fact, because mass transit is a more efficient means for conveying people in an urban environment. A smart car, the smallest common auto around, can seat four, maybe five people. Really small, cramped, uncomfortable people. Those same people could fit in the same square footage on a train in vastly more comfortable quarters. If you make it uncomfortable, like the B line at rush hour, you can fit at least a dozen, possibly more.
You don't have to worry about train schedules.
But I do have to worry about traffic, and if I'm commuting anywhere around 128 I have to get up much earlier then should be necessary because someone might get in an accident and tie up traffic for miles in every direction.
For the most part, roads don't close. You depend far less on the competence of the government (or a company, for that matter) to run a system. It's easier and faster to get from one place to another off-peak, while with transit, off-peak scheduling can actually make it slower.
The T shutting down at night issue is a quagmire of political, managerial, and labor issues that are wholly unrelated to the operation of an effective mass transit system. More money would help, a kick in the ass from the mayor, or better coalition of mayors in the metro area would help a lot more. As for the other points, investment equal to that of roads would put them all to bed. The competence of your road people killed a girl in the tunnels and is allowing the overpasses we constructed for glorious cars to fall into ruin. The only difference here is that the roads are in general newer, and falling apart less. They are equally mismanaged. You get a lot more bang for your buck if you throw it at transit, and the other issues of peak/off peak travel level out with increased funding and usage.
You can bring lots of stuff with you, and shop at Costco and spend half or less what you'd spend to get the same stuff at a neighborhood supermarket. You get your own personal climate-controlled space. You can make pit stops at the cleaners and pick the kids up from the babysitter. As of right now I have yet to have a homeless person expose himself in my car, or get mugged in it.
Delivery trucks and zipcars can also haul lots of stuff. Costco is only sustainable because our investments in roads allow enough people to get to it to sustain its low prices and loss leaders with volumes of sales. It also helps that it took away sufficient business from local retailers that they had to raise their prices or go out of business. I would also imagine they operate some stores at a loss for greater brand presence and to ensure there is no base where competition can spring up (such as the Walgreens in Coolidge Corner, which I have been told looses money every day). The T is climate controlled/ You would have no need for pit stops on the way home if we had walkable communities sustained by transit, where everything is near your home. As of right now I have yet to have any person expose themselves to me anywhere, or get mugged anywhere. As for the two exposings I have been privy to, one was a guy who began slowly driving next to an ex of mine while masturbating before she ran into a gas station, the other a man masturbating in a car next to our bus on my high school trip to an amusement park. Neither was caught, as they were able to quickly drive away. Since we are grasping at straws here I will also say I have not heard of kids being lured into a trolley with puppies to be kidnapped, or platoons of teenagers plowing locomotives into trees driving drunk.
Saying that cars "kind of" work in the suburbs is crazy. They completely work, and transit is very obviously inferior in suburban areas. I live in a highly congested, dense suburb, and a trip that would have been 30 minutes round trip took me two hours by bus the last time I had to use transit. And the bus went basically took me door-to-door with no transfers!
Of course it did, because no one but the most desperate use it because it is so under invested in that it takes that long to get somewhere. Cars don't work in the suburbs, there is just no other practical option. They have to work because that’s all there is. I lived the first decade of my life in Bergen County, NJ. A lot of my relatives still live there. I know ALL ABOUT driving in the burbs. Saying cars work there is like saying the toilet at my store works. Sure, if you hold the lever long enough and maybe hit it with the plunger the mass will eventually wash itself through the hole. But it takes for ever, and sometimes it overflows and makes a huge mess. The suburbs overflow almost every day. You can keep upgrading the pipes to handle more volume, but eventually all you end up with is a giant sewer and nothing else.
The most realistic benefit of transit is to permit households with two spouses to own only one car, and to allow those without licenses (kids, elderly, etc) some means of getting around on their own. The fixed cost of owning a car is huge, and most two-spouse, two-car households have at least one of their vehicles unused the vast majority of the time - but they need two vehicles because during peak hours they both need to get to work. If one can use transit, that's a huge savings at little cost. You still get the enormous benefits of car ownership, but at a much lower cost.
The most realistic benefit of transit is to give people an equal or better alternative to driving. Sufficient investment would make this a realistic choice.
