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Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation, is the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when Generation Y starts and ends. Commentators use beginning birth dates from the latter 1970s, or the early 1980s to the early 2000s (decade). Generation Y - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I thought these kids are moving back in with their parents.
I agree, Portland is a way different city than Burlington, Concord, etc. Portland is also a very convenient city in all regards. Our New England cities will never have the conveniences that Portland has. It's just because of how old our cities are and how they are laid out. An example would be the extremely bike friendly layout of the city. They have entire lanes for just bikes. At best in Vermont you have to ride the shoulder of the road. The Burlington area is spread out. They can't even provide adequate public transportation as it is. The way our public transportation works (in the Burlington area) is if a town want to be part of it, they have to shell out a huge amount of money every year. Not popular with taxes most people can't afford to pay as it is. This is why towns like my own refuse to pass funding for CCTA to provide public transportation to our town. I think if the area was more developed there would be a bigger need or demand. I'm from Southwestern CT and have family there. They do have Metro-North and it's used, but there are more and more cars running on 95 and the Merritt Parkway than ever before. That area could really take advantage of train service, but it's not even exploding in that area. Electric cars and fuel efficient cars will not help rail IMO.
Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation, is the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when Generation Y starts and ends. Commentators use beginning birth dates from the latter 1970s, or the early 1980s to the early 2000s (decade). Generation Y - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I thought these kids are moving back in with their parents.
Depends on the region , the Northeast , Midwest , and Northwest there moving back into the cities in the South its back to there parents.
I agree, Portland is a way different city than Burlington, Concord, etc. Portland is also a very convenient city in all regards. Our New England cities will never have the conveniences that Portland has. It's just because of how old our cities are and how they are laid out. An example would be the extremely bike friendly layout of the city. They have entire lanes for just bikes. At best in Vermont you have to ride the shoulder of the road. The Burlington area is spread out. They can't even provide adequate public transportation as it is. The way our public transportation works (in the Burlington area) is if a town want to be part of it, they have to shell out a huge amount of money every year. Not popular with taxes most people can't afford to pay as it is. This is why towns like my own refuse to pass funding for CCTA to provide public transportation to our town. I think if the area was more developed there would be a bigger need or demand. I'm from Southwestern CT and have family there. They do have Metro-North and it's used, but there are more and more cars running on 95 and the Merritt Parkway than ever before. That area could really take advantage of train service, but it's not even exploding in that area. Electric cars and fuel efficient cars will not help rail IMO.
1. Concord's Density is slightly lower then Portland's , Manchester and Nashua if there Master plans go through will be denser then Portland , same with Burlington....and way the New England building boom is going everybody will increase there density by 2020. So all New England Cities should be on the same level by 2030 , it won't be as dense as the Mid Atlantic states or the same height as NYC but it will be dense. Portland is the first of many cities to become dense , along with Providence , Worcester , Chelsea , New Haven and Hartford...
2. Portland doesn't even have a bike lane or path system yet , those can easily be put in anywhere , you don't need a dense town or region. South Jersey will have bike lanes and paths on all roads and regional highways by the end of the decade forming a network connecting towns and cities funneling it into the Transit / Rail Network Burlington and Urbanized New Hampshire can be similar....its not that hard. Alot of our roads are being upgraded into Muti-Modal approaches for walking , biking , transit and driving....mostly along busy corridors and in the Downtown areas of each town or city.
3. You focus on connecting areas like New North End , Old North End , Winnooski , Shelburne , Essex Jct to Downtown Burlington via a Bus system with a circulatory system running in the Downtown area. Then you thread in the Regional / Intercity Rail Network thus Servicing most of the population thats how the rest of the Northeast does it....its not that hard. It may be a bumpy ride , you'll need to hold numerous workshops dicussing route changes and future Rail stations but once the dust settles the system should be more friendly to use and see higher usage. They recently did this in several smaller cities like Portland , Lancaster , Reading , Long Beach and Springfield , the ridership spiked and they also saw investment along the lines either refurbishing old buildings or building Infill developments. I wasn't aware of the tax situation....maybe Private can pick up the slack...
4. Metro North New Haven line takes 60% of the travel share along that section of the I-95 Corridor , the problems with traffic getting worse and worse are the Neglected Feeder lines like the Danbury Branch , Waterbury Branch and the Sheveled I-287 Railway Corridor all Projects would have lessened the growing strain on both highways... Another reason for increased 95 usage is the growing population of the region hence why Amtrak wants to build a New Northeast Corridor targeting the booming areas of the region like Hartford , Providence , Worcester... I-95 is the first Interstate in the Northeast to reach full capacity , its not the last...all Interstates in NJ , Eastern PA , DE , MD , NOVA , MA , RI , CT and Southern NY will reach capacity by 2020...there really isn't anything to do built invest in Rail.... Electric cars are still 2 decades off , as for Fuel Efficient cars that doesn't mean usage levels stay the same , they often drop like in Japan or Europe which has a slightly higher driving rate then America...
Depends on the region , the Northeast , Midwest , and Northwest there moving back into the cities in the South its back to there parents.
The movement of a segment of younger folks into urban environments in their 20s is nothing new. They tend then migrate out of the cities when they want to raise a family and realize the steep cost structure and logistics of doing so in the city. Some people will always be city-folk, none of this is really a new phenomenon.
I thought about this thread last night as I had to attend a holiday dinner for work which was only a few miles outside of an urban area currently with plenty of rail service. If I were to take public transportation to arrive on time at 6pm, my wife and I would have had to our house at 3:45pm walk 15mins to a bus stop in dress clothes, wait for buses which run every 20-30mins. Take that to the MBTA station to catch the 4:35 train outbound. Wait X mins for the train to the town we were dining in (about a 43min ride with the stops in between), then hail a cab and take that for 10mins to the restaurant, a 2 hour & 15min process. Then reverse all that at 9pm and pray the trains are running with reasonable frequency, which we know isn't true as the last train we could take is at 10:10pm so we would be standing around on a platform at 28 degrees for about an hour......
Instead, we left the house at 5:20pm and arrived there at 5:55pm in "rush hour" traffic and were home in 20mins after the event at 9:20pm .
That in a nutshell is why I believe the thought that in the Northeast people will abandon their automobiles to become a slave to someone else's schedule in the foreseeable future is a pie in the sky unrealistic outlook. Time is money and quality of life. Most people would gladly spend 1 hour in their car over 1-2 hours crammed in a train with a bunch of people staring at their iphones like they hold the secret to the universe.
I believe as long as their is an efficient automobile available in the US people will prefer cars unless they are in an immediate urban area. For example if I were to swallow a bitter pill and purchase a Prius, gas would have to be about $16/gallon to match my fuel expense currently. That means that even with today's technology there are plenty of options before I hand myself over to wasting my time on train platforms and bus terminals.
The movement of a segment of younger folks into urban environments in their 20s is nothing new. They tend then migrate out of the cities when they want to raise a family and realize the steep cost structure and logistics of doing so in the city. Some people will always be city-folk, none of this is really a new phenomenon.
I thought about this thread last night as I had to attend a holiday dinner for work which was only a few miles outside of an urban area currently with plenty of rail service. If I were to take public transportation to arrive on time at 6pm, my wife and I would have had to our house at 3:45pm walk 15mins to a bus stop in dress clothes, wait for buses which run every 20-30mins. Take that to the MBTA station to catch the 4:35 train outbound. Wait X mins for the train to the town we were dining in (about a 43min ride with the stops in between), then hail a cab and take that for 10mins to the restaurant, a 2 hour & 15min process. Then reverse all that at 9pm and pray the trains are running with reasonable frequency, which we know isn't true as the last train we could take is at 10:10pm so we would be standing around on a platform at 28 degrees for about an hour......
Instead, we left the house at 5:20pm and arrived there at 5:55pm in "rush hour" traffic and were home in 20mins after the event at 9:20pm .
That in a nutshell is why I believe the thought that in the Northeast people will abandon their automobiles to become a slave to someone else's schedule in the foreseeable future is a pie in the sky unrealistic outlook. Time is money and quality of life. Most people would gladly spend 1 hour in their car over 1-2 hours crammed in a train with a bunch of people staring at their iphones like they hold the secret to the universe.
I believe as long as their is an efficient automobile available in the US people will prefer cars unless they are in an immediate urban area. For example if I were to swallow a bitter pill and purchase a Prius, gas would have to be about $16/gallon to match my fuel expense currently. That means that even with today's technology there are plenty of options before I hand myself over to wasting my time on train platforms and bus terminals.
850,000 rode Amtrak during the Week of Thanksgiving , and another 3 million more extra rode it up by 70% from last year....this trend has been going on since 2005 with no signs of stopping. People hate sitting in traffic its stressful and they hate flying which is even more stressful.... 20.1 Million people use transit a day in the Northeast that's up by 10 million from 2000....and only 5.5 million in 1990.... If the current explosion keeps happening it should reach 30-40 million by 2025.... Theres also more people walking or biking to work , currently its 3,1 Million....there are no stats for 2000....but 3.1 million people walking or biking to work is a huge amount , not all of that is in NYC , alot of it is the smaller cities like New Haven , Manchester , Portland , Reading , Lancaster... Whats wrong with walking to a stop or station , society has become disturbing lazy....walking 15 mins to a stop isn't going to kill you , alot of people walk to school or college without a problem each day if its in a walkable area.... Everytime the Fuel jumps , Ridership jumps... With Amtrak the Airline prices and the way they treat people has started cause them to loose Ridership...to Amtrak even if its slower and now that the Network is being Expanded Ridership will only grow....
If you think statistics tell the whole story about everything without applying real world experience you are going to get only half the picture. And that is coming from someone who crunches numbers for a living. While I respect your enthusiasm, some of your conclusions and predictions are overly optimistic.
Nothing is wrong with walking to a bus stop, until you actually do it for a few years in the weather while trying to keep your work clothes from looking like a bad day at a hipster convention. Until you have to have flexibility in your schedule, and until you have children to deal with and the inevitable "stuff" that comes with them.
There is a difference between making a mature decision to avoid walking to a bus stop when there are no sidewalks and where it makes a 40 min trip a 2-3 hour excursion etc. and being lazy. I assume the lazy comment was another broad brush stroke and not intended necessarily to my situation. However if you think I'm lazy becase I choose not to walk 15mins to a bus stop to begin a 2 hour waste of my time, feel free to meet me every morning at 4:30am, bring your mountain bike, it will be fun.
We can all google all the statistics we want but sometimes life is not purely an academic exericise. It just isn't. There are no statistics to prove otherwise.
One major piece that is entirely missing in this discussion is the fact that a goodly number of people would be strongly opposed to providing arguably easier access to Northern New England in the first place.
A bus , like they do the Portland Region or rent a car...or have someone pick you up which is common outside the Transit hubs of the large Northeast cities... Its not a hard thing to do....nor is it going to kill you , you drive to the Airport you can drive to a train station. These lines will service the Large towns , which where the ridership is , thats not say everyone else is cut off you run connecting bus services to the smaller towns to the larger towns with a station you can see this in Maine or the Lower Hudson Valley and these are popular services used by locals and tourists.
People will still require cars, taxi cabs or buses to get to the small towns...which is most of VT. Suffolk County buses serve a population larger than VT in an area much smaller. The service is mediocre. Passengers can wait for hours between connections. They don't run after a certain time...and this is in the shadows of a major metropolitan area.
Call me a sceptic, but I can't see this post rail transport working well. I would love to be proven wrong.
I don't think you are looking at Northern New England. You talk about New England which is really not the same. CT, Mass and RI are possibly booming as well as the southern corridor of NH, but Northern New England is not booming. The entire state of Vermont has had a population growth of just over 60,000 people in the past 20 years. Far from a boom. In fact we are almost the oldest state in the country with one of the slowest population growth rates in the country. A few other things about Vermont, people move here and live here because they don't want to be like the rest of the east coast. I don't think this means they don't want rail expansion, but they don't want growth which can and will effect rail expansion. Another thing is everything is spread out. It's not dense enough for rail or as we are seeing, public transportation to be much of a factor. Burlington is as dense as it gets and that's only about 40,000 people. A good example would be CCTA. They ha the link service to Montpelier, Middlebury and St Albans. They claim about 120,000 boardings annually and 57% of those boardings are for work, Monday through Friday. Just doing simple math for 50% of riders for work would come out to 6000 people using the service for work. Then if the 60000 rides were ride the bus only once per year that would mean only 66,000 people used the link service/yr. A decent size, but in the grand scheme of things, not overly impressive. The greater Burlington area has a population of about 155,000 people. The bus service would grow fast than train service. It is much faster and more convenient. It is also much cheaper. My daughter is in school in RI. It is about half the price for her to take the bus than to use Amtrak. It's also more convenient. She can be dropped off right near where we work instead of my wife or I having to drive to Essex to pick her up at the train station.
My point is there are more variables than what you may be aware of. As a resident of this area, I see every day what happens. Everyone has a car or two. It is a necessity. If I took public transportation, it would cost me (I'm just talking about myself and the locations I have to drive each day) more money than driving my own car. I fill my gas once every two weeks and insurance is dirt cheap in Vermont. There is relatively little traffic, even in Burlington and most people have schedules and lives that don't mesh well with public transportation.
I hadn't been aware of the controversy across the lake until today. It seems there are two camps, one that wants the rail ripped up and made into a recreational trail and the other that says no way! $$$
New York State DOT and The Federal Railroad Administration will not allow the rails in question to be ripped up. Even if Iowa Pacific Holdings fails in its attempt to run Pullman service, the tracks will not be torn up. Too many rails have been torn up in the past and it turned out they could have been put to good use in later years. Amtrak tore up a second track between New Haven Conn. and Springfield Mass. back in the 80's and are now in the unenviable position of restoring that same rail for high speed service. Rest assured the feds will not make that mistake twice. New York can position itself very well by having infrastructure in place for future use, if and when the time comes. I think the time is here. One or two trains a day disturbs no ones sleep. Do you think the ATV and snowmobile operators will stay on that trail alone. I think not. They will be all over the place driving everyone crazy. Who will pay to police that mess? You?
Last edited by Chadd1014; 01-12-2013 at 08:17 PM..
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