|
- Mass transit in older cities was developed primarily to deliver workers/labor from very dense housing areas to centralized corporations, manufacturing facilities, factories, etc. The modern economy is more service orientated and few companies have large labor forces in one centralized location. Modernization has also allowed companies to spread themselves out over multiple locations. The nation’s 3 largest employers are WalMart, McDonalds and UPS. The overwhelming majority of their workers are spread all over, not jammed into a single huge office building.
- As mentioned, older cities were designed around this confluence of office and manufacturing jobs with nearby housing, so even as the economies have changed, those city structures stayed intact. Phoenix is a relatively new metro area (post industrial) in terms of big cities and its DNA is simply different.
- We have no port, docks, massive railyards, no significant labor-intensive manufacturing of goods, steel mills, garment districts, etc. – the kinds of clusters in more traditional cities that had a large amount of jobs and also tangent/support industries - transport, warehousing, energy, raw materials, etc.
- Meanwhile the largest Phoenix based companies are headquartered all over the map… North central PHX, Southeast, North Scottsdale, etc. Almost none are tethered to where they are based due to necessity, but mostly by choice.
- Phoenix has a huge percentage of people working for small businesses and a good many of them are service industry types who need a vehicle readily on hand to go to meetings, deliver product, buy supplies, etc.
- Of any larger city in the world, we’re the most perfect grid. There’s no geographical impediments squeezing commuters as there are in other cities. For example, in Los Angeles there are only a few major thoroughfares to cross from LA proper into the San Fernando valley. It’s a nightmare commute and 24/7 bottleneck. More mass transit options would be ideal in that situation. In Jersey they are putting rail along their side of the Hudson. That makes sense as the river is a geographical barrier that has created a very high density zone of housing and commuters, many of whom want to travel to various points across the river to NYC. Meanwhile you can take 20 workers in downtown Phoenix and send them in 20 different directions and they can all find a place to live along their particular trajectory. In order to serve them via rail, you’d need 20 different routes extending out. And that’s assuming downtown PHX is the epicenter of jobs. On a giant grid, who’s to say the center square is where most people want to go? It could be that the best route serving the most people would be between Chandler and North Scottsdale, for example.
- Many point to the popularity of rail in Salt Lake City, and use it as a peer city, but in reality, SLC is very long and thin. The majority of residents live a narrow channel, so a rail line down the middle is both close to most residents and mirrors the travel routes and desitinations of the population. We're not 10 miles wide, but hundreds of square miles.
- It’s also assuming that most people would choose rail over cars. How many people are in jobs where they need to make sales calls, visit clients, deliver products and in general, be mobile on demand? How many people tie their commute into other activities, such as going to the gym or picking up skids from school, after school activities, etc.? I’d guess a significant number.
- In many other cities, housing cost is a significant factor in where you live relative to work. Those making 50K a year in San Fran, NY, LA, etc. will most likely be renting apartments if they want to reside near work. If they want to own a house, they’ll be looking at a much longer commute. In Phoenix, on the other hand, a lot of people live near to work because they can afford it. Even if you have a modest income and work for an office in the Biltmore area or N. Scottsdale, it’s not too far from affordable housing. If your housing budget is $250,000 and you work in downtown Chicago or NY, your picket fence might require hours of commuting a day.
- Meanwhile, everything touched on thus far is related to work-related commuting. We also take many other car trips for many other reasons. We go to the grocers and other stores, visit doctors, gyms, banks, movie theaters, vets, bars, restaurants, get haircuts, etc. How many of these car trips will be replaced by rail usage? Hardly any. And again this relates to the complete decentralization of PHX as a city. You can live in just about and part of town and be close to these services. Outside of work and perhaps family obligations, I’m sure that most people have little need to go more than a few miles out of their way for most things they need. In fact it’s perfectly conceivable that someone who lives and works in one part of the valley need never set foot in another part.
- So if you really want to eliminate a mighty chunk of car trips, it would seem that better localized transportation options would be the better investment.
- Meanwhile, only a single digit percentage of the population will live near enough to the rail line to use it without taking a bus to it or driving to it… two activities the rail was supposed to replace. If I’m going to hop in my car and drive several miles to the nearest station to me (Priest/Washington) and hope to find parking, I might as well keep driving another 15 minutes and be downtown via surface streets.
- In a relatively un-dense metro area, we’re building a system that apart from a bridge across Tempe Town Lake, is almost 100% shared with existing street traffic… buses, cars, pedestrians, bikes, etc. In contrast, San Diego’s system is only 11% shared, Boston is 18% mixed use and Calgary’s route only shares 7% of the line with other traffic. In pretty much every other city with rail, the percentage of accidents increases with the percentage of rail line shared with other uses. Statistically, PHX should have more accidents than any other city. And one nasty accident along the route will presumably shut the whole down – even if that accident had nothing to do with the trains. How are they going to get around a head on collision between two passenger vehicles at Central & Thomas, for example? If there are a lot of shutdowns, I’d expect a lot of potential riders would shift back to using cars, given their ability to avoid problem areas.
Again, I think it’s a viable transport option for more densely populated areas and places with historical commerce/worker patterns, and places with geographical and housing challenges. But given how decentralized Phoenix is, I think the money would have been better invested in transport options that serve a greater number of people in all parts of the region…. Neighborhood shuttles for those many local trips, improved bus services to all parts of the grid, etc. We're now heavily subsidizing the cost of moving a person who wants to go from Central and Indian School to Mesa. But that person's neighbor, who needs to go from Central to their job at 24th street will see no improvement in options, nor will the guy needing a ride to 24th Ave.
|
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 400,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 14,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. Within the last few months our forum was cited in an article in 15 newspaper and in a story on AOL's homepage.
10-13-2008, 04:38 PM
You will meet THUGS!! on Public transportation.
Linear Mode
