What would you do to get the T out of its financial mess?

Right, as in, make it pretty much necessary to use transit because using a car is too annoying.

You're splitting word choice hairs.

But guess what? It probably STILL wouldn't be profitable because of all the accretions that have plagued transit since its inception. When transit was profitable, there were no unions, and none of the infrastructure was over 100 years old. And even with all incentives for car use removed, it will still compete with the flexibility of the car in many circumstances.

Keep in minds that roads (even toll roads) and airlines are heavily subsidized, too. Virtually no form of transportation is profitable under pure market conditions.
 
So part of the problem is public transit itself - as it stands, it's not an efficient system due in large part to unions and management. End the unions and overhaul the management to ensure that jobs are based on merit and the system is constantly working to improve the customer experience.

After these management issues are solved, the T needs to create a better product. Reliable trains and schedules, ease of access to information, streamlined stations (improve on the CharlieCard idea,) improved public image through marketing and graphic design, continued investment into infrastructure, expanding services offered at stations, etc. Instead of trying to make other modes of transportation to suck enough to be at the status quo of the T, improve the T to make it a superior option to the car. Competition is supposed to breed innovation, but it almost feels like the MBTA doesn't recognize the car as competition.
 
czsz said:
Keep in minds that roads (even toll roads) and airlines are heavily subsidized, too.
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Imagine if the 14.6 billion dollars went towards the MBTA instead of the central artery...
 
This whole idea that public transportation aiming to become preferable to driving a car is pretty silly. Now, being better than car ownership, on the other hand, is a very reasonable idea.
 
unterbau said:
Imagine if the 14.6 billion dollars went towards the MBTA instead of the central artery...
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Half of it would go to paying of their debt, the other half for new BRT service!
 
kennedy said:
All forums on the internet have trolls.

Um, transit should absolutely be profitable if the state can find a way to make it so. Create a product that people want will go a long way to attracting new customers who want to use transit as a choice, not because it is a necessity.
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Troll? Really? I haven't been complimented like that since late 1995.

statler said:
Half of [14.6 billion dollars] would go to paying of their debt, the other half for new BRT service!
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We have a winner.
 
Market-rate street parking in all communities served by the MBTA. Congestion pricing. Tolls in the Central Artery. Excise taxes on businesses offering free parking in MBTA-served areas. And then get all that new revenue going to the T.
 
^ Not bad!

Politically impossible.

Oh, I guess you could do it in China.

When they need to, they'll do it.
 
The sad truth is that the advent of electric cars will push the public transit and density agendas even further off the radar.
 
It's a Jevons in many senses. This is where the "denser is greener" argument begins to get unconvincing as we trend towards the future. If electric cars powered from renewable sources become just as efficient as public transit from a fuel and an environmental perspective, then there becomes no reason to maximize land - no rationale for density. The ideal cities in that world become Buckhead, Tyson's Corner, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Sandton.

Even if you count time as the resource in question, it could still be argued that while car commuting can be slow and congested, public transit and walking take time as well.

Should we try to be maximizing social cohesion? But what does that really mean? And does density and public transit maximize it more than suburban autopia?

Or maybe it isn't about maximizing anything... maybe urbanism is just about a certain aesthetic that some people prefer. So then why not let developers build us the Patriot's Place "citycenter" type of Disney-esque "streets of x" developments surrounded by parking?

Whatever we're trying to maximize, the electric car is going to make obsolete. The ultimate future of public transit may not be bleak, but intra-urban public transit will be set back at least a century. HSR and institutional car sharing may be the only foreseeable areas for public transit expansion.
 
There's an efficiency argument too, which has nothing to do with pollution and energy use and everything to do with congestion. Suppose you shut down the Red Line and put everyone who rides it into clean solar-powered electric cars. Even if every car is the size of a Honda Fit, you just can't move the same number of people in the same amount of time that way. (And now you have a bigger parking problem to solve, too.)
 
Teleportation is the answer to all our transportation woes. More money needs to be pumped into this kind of research.
 
That would be true in the short term if employment centers remained where they were and the red line was shut down. But long term, this efficiency argument too becomes obsolete. The electric car will herald exurban office parks like we have never dreamed of before. Oh, and as a bonus, our big boxes just got bigger.

Of course, we could with carrots and sticks push towards density and public transit. Taxes on car ownership and tolls on road use, zoning restrictions on set backs, parking lots, etc. But with the electric car people will ask - perhaps rightfully - why?

And what do we answer?
 
Shepard said:
Of course, we could with carrots and sticks push towards density and public transit. Taxes on car ownership and tolls on road use, zoning restrictions on set backs, parking lots, etc. But with the electric car people will ask - perhaps rightfully - why?

And what do we answer?
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Because otherwise, we can be sure this will get even worse.
 
^^Which panel do you think we should have stopped at?
 
Crumb's panels chronicle rural America's conversion into sprawl. Panel 4 is the last one that's rural.

I'm more interested in the conversion of urban America's conversion to essentially the same sprawl; I look forward to Crumb's take on this. He did about an eight-panel strip on Detroit in Motor City Comics.

He could use Charlotte, Houston or Los Angeles as his model --all long ago urban places.
 
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But this doesn't answer my question. Aside from aesthetics, and assuming that clean and limitless fuels propel us in our cars... why not? At that point is urbanity and public transit a lost cause? At that point are we just trying to preserve the telegraph in the face of the internet?
 
Sell the naming rights to the stations and lines, e.g.
Government Center=Preparation H Station
Essex=Viagra
Downtown Crossing=Shopzilla
B Line=Clearasil Line,
and so on.
 
Shepard, who's going to buy these $20,000 electric cars for private citizens?
 
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