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You seem to have misinterpreted the objective of the Thesis. More simply putIt was to provide a series of 4 paths for light rail between Downtown and the Northwest Transit center to be refined later by planners, engineers, and surveyors. The method used builds upon prior least-cost path (LCP) research by incorporating domain specific engineering standards, lessons learned from the prior failed proposal, and viable path corridors (VPC) [Geospatial analysis].
Those items you listed are motivation or abackground behind why I chose to do the project.
To put it most simply This project goal was to use real world light rail design specs, GIS techniques, and lessons learned from the prior failed study to offer geospatial route options to SMEs. Not to solve every issue brought up in my Intro/motivation section.
Then you have no business drawing Conclusions, specifically that you found four "feasible" routes because you did not in any remote way demonstrate the feasibility of any route. You did not quantify anything. You didn't state quantitatively the projected capital costs, operating costs, ridership, environmental impact, economic impact, health impact, congestion impact, or effect on commute times. It was just a bunch of vague and dubious claims.
Interesting that you don't want to argue politics since about the only thing your thesis did do was suggest how to route the lines to avoid political opposition by staying out of certain congressional districts.
It was to provide a series of 4 paths for light rail between Downtown and the Northwest Transit center
And what are the four paths? One has to dig deep into the thesis, Fig. 16 on pg 39, before the paths are shown. And nowhere do you back up the conclusions for each path, showing quantitatively why one path is better than another for a given factor.
And how are these four paths, which are 90% identical, an alternative to the previous failed route when it doesn't even serve the same endpoints?
Oceangaia I'm going to start with your first comments, and move this here so to not get buried on an earlier page.
Thanks for you time and comments!
You seem to have misinterpreted the objective of the Thesis. It was to provide a series of 4 paths for light rail between Downtown and the Northwest Transit center to be refined later by planners, engineers, and surveyors. The method used builds upon prior least-cost path (LCP) research by incorporating domain specific engineering standards, lessons learned from the prior failed proposal, and viable path corridors (VPC) [Geospatial analysis].
Those items you listed are motivation or a background behind why I chose to do the project not the projects goal or objective. But still I will try to answer those critiques either way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
You blame the previous failed route on "gerrymandering" by Culberson. Most congressional districts - nationwide - are gerrymandered, including Sheila Jackson Lee's 18th. Talk about gerrymandering, your proposal is for a route that deftly dodges districts that might oppose a rail line. (Note: it's Sheila, not Shelia. See pg 7)
I mention gerrymandering many places and it's affects.
See sections: 4.2.2 Model Routes and U.S. Congressional Districts and 1.3 Prior Failed Route
"Culberson’s political opposition was also strengthened due to gerrymandering as seen in Figure 2. This gerrymandering is illustrated by Culberson’s snaking district encompassing a majority of suburban and exurban areas and voters, who in some cases are located as many as twenty miles away from the initial failed proposed light rail route and have historically voted against light rail expansion. "
"As seen in Figure 21, it is important to recognize that all four of the runs completely miss the district of U.S. representative John Culberson, whose opposition was the primary factor along with the secondary factor of building adjacent to residential roads NIMBYism in the failure of the previous route failure (Culberson 2014, DOT AND METRO 2010, 3:107, 4:83). Even the simple, shortest route between the two destination points never needed to traverse Culberson’s district."
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
You really stretch for justification with health benefits, saying more time in the car leads to more obesity. By that argument, it's healthier to drive to work than take public transit since commute times for transit are almost always longer than driving yourself. And you're far more likely to catch a cold or the flu sitting in a railcar with 50 other strangers than sitting alone in your car. You really make some goofy claims here.
Unless you can cite a better source than: the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, they disagrees not me: Obesity Relationships with Community Design, Physical Activity, and Time Spent in Cars." American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27, no. 2: 87-96.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
1. Cost. We pay for projects in dollars not rasters, and you failed to provide dollar cost estimates for anything. The people cannot afford to issue a blank check to utopian dreamers. Without cost, you cannot even begin to assess the feasibility.
"It is important to note that this study intentionally does not include monetary cost or funding criteria in any cost rasters. "
And in GIS you do pay for Cost in rasters as "cost" can have more than one meaning
And see section 2.4 Algorithms
"The Cost Path calculates the least-cost path from a source to a destination using the aforementioned Dijkstra's Shortest Path Algorithm"
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
2. Ridership. While you noted the importance of ridership and talked about where riders might come from you failed to provide any projected ridership. Without cost and ridership, you cannot even begin to assess the feasibility. I think we can all agree that we can't afford to spend a billion dollars on a line that only gets 1000 riders, and we can' afford to NOT spend a billion dollars on a line that gets 1,000,000 riders. The ridership will be somewhere in there - closer to the lower number - but without the number we cannot assess the feasibility.
Again: "It is important to note that this study intentionally does not include monetary cost or funding criteria in any cost rasters." Would have loved to, in fact that is listed in opportunists for future work. SMEs would need to assist with that, as I am no expert in those costs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
3. Congestion. You say that increased congestion is a reason to build rail and that a new line will relieve congestion but you provide no data at all on current or predicted congestion. I challenge you to show one example in the USA where building a rail line reduced traffic congestion. With the outlier exception of NYC, and possibly Boston, transit is such a small market share that it has no significant impact on congestion or commute time.
Again it seems you did not fully read my paper, I provide a few sources: Look at the game tape!
Turner, M., and Duranton, G. 2009. The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US cities. Working Paper, Cambridge: NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.
HGAC 2011, 24; DOT and METRO 2010, 1:31
Ewing and Tian 2014
"Building bigger highways does not properly address traffic congestion because increased road building has been shown to increase traffic in some cases (Turner and Duranton 2014). Other studies show the direct link between light rail development and decreases in cars on the road (Ewing and Tian 2014). An additional rail line would reduce traffic congestion (HGAC 2011, 24; DOT and METRO 2010, 1:31). Building alternative commuting options is vital for a city that continues to experience incredible growth. "
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
4. Opportunity Costs. You fail to consider the opportunity costs of building a rail line, and whether the couple billion dollars it will cost could be spent on other things that would have greater positive impact.
Not my goal, but this is an interest point! Worth studying!
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
5. Immediate impact. You say a new line will have positive impact on congestion, health, environment, and economic activity but do not consider the very negative impact it will have on all those things during the couple of years of construction.
I touch on that here:
4.3 Lessons Learned
The following lessons were learned from this four-way comparison. First, each path has positives and negatives associated with it.... [read on]
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
6. Environment. You talk about toxic pollutants from cars being a motivator but car emissions today are a tiny fraction of what they used to be, and as we transition to electric cars this will become a non-factor.
Yes I love me some electric cars myself, but saying they will become a non-factor anytime in my lifetime [31] is very unlikely [I hope so!].
So to summarize:
To put it most simply This project goal was to use real world light rail design specs, GIS techniques, and lessons learned from the prior failed study to offer geospatial route options to SMEs. Not to solve every issue brought up in my Intro/motivation section or provide total project costs, ridership forecasts etc...
And what are the four paths? One has to dig deep into the thesis, Fig. 16 on pg 39, before the paths are shown. And nowhere do you back up the conclusions for each path, showing quantitatively why one path is better than another for a given factor.
And how are these four paths, which are 90% identical, an alternative to the previous failed route when it doesn't even serve the same endpoints?
See section 4.1 Model Iterations of LCPs and after: 4.2, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3 and 4.3.
Quote:
"As a prologue it is important to note that numerous iterations of routes were run and created based on various factors. Eventually, four specific models were chosen to present results of the modeling based on prior light rail literature and engineering design specifications. The four model iterations were chosen using the VPC raster as a base. The first run is an LCP using the VPC only, meaning that the shortest distance was calculated along the VPC. The second run was created using the population cost raster only. The third run was created using the residential roads cost raster only. The final run was created using all cost factors weighted equally. Further details of the path name, source data, reclassification method, and path characteristics are shown in Table 2."
Thanks for reading my Introduction and some of my figures [seems like more than others so far!] but my thesis addresses most of your comments throughout and are cited, with the reference to look into if you disbelieve or would like to argue further. And by all means keep up the critiques and comments!
Criticizing Culberson for having a district that spans 20 miles when Lee's 18th spans 30 miles is hypocritical.
I'm not going to a library to research your references, provide links. Or at least provide the relevant charts and figures you're pulling from previous studies rather than just pulling their conclusion. Show a chart that correlates commute times with obesity levels for major cities. Houston does not have the longest average commute time, by the way. I doubt you actually have a clue where it stands relative to other cities.
Without monetary costs, you might as well wrote a thesis on four possible locations for a colony on the moon. All you appeared to have done is google search for conclusions, copied the reference citation, and pieced them together to make vague and dubious claims. You use a lot of big words but I don't think you know the real world statistics for the top ten largest cities regarding commute times, congestion index, or transit ridership.
Criticizing Culberson for having a district that spans 20 miles when Lee's 18th spans 30 miles is hypocritical.
I think you're implying that this is political in the sense that I'm going after Republican Culberson while sparing Democratic Lee, which couldn't be further from the truth as I'm sure to include Ted Poe R and Lee D and how it wasn't because of a letter R or D in my thesis. I actually had to remind my Californian advisers this many times because Poe R supports light rail!
In fact I went easy on Culberson, he recently agreed to "take another look" at the project on the prerequisite that monies are allocated to him first to get a commuter rail out to his suburban constituents first.
Quote:
I'm not going to a library to research your references, provide links. Or at least provide the relevant charts and figures you're pulling from previous studies rather than just pulling their conclusion. Show a chart that correlates commute times with obesity levels for major cities. Houston does not have the longest average commute time, by the way. I doubt you actually have a clue where it stands relative to other cities.
I'm not asking you to, but if you disagree with the facts or sources I cite you can't just dismiss them and overrule them with your gut feelings. You need to back them up to be a credible critique or as my professors would say "Opinion?? what's the source here!?"
Quote:
Without monetary costs, you might as well wrote a thesis on four possible locations for a colony on the moon. All you appeared to have done is google search for conclusions, copied the reference citation, and pieced them together to make vague and dubious claims.
This is absurd. My research is based on Geo-spatial analysis and data were the accuracy and precision are cited along with the engineering design specifications from the DOT, METRO, The National Research Council Transportation Board, and Siemens corporation.
Quote:
You use a lot of big words
Another absurd assertion, yes they are GIS domain specific but they are not intentionally used to be flashy! I'm sure I'd have trouble with the verbiage of a Thesis on fiance, or electrical engineering myself though.
Quote:
but I don't think you know the real world statistics for the top ten largest cities regarding commute times, congestion index, or transit ridership.
I never claimed to! But they do sound interesting. I know nationally Houston has one of the larger commute times, and public transit ridership levels too. Which are real opportunities for such a light rail line from Downtown to the Northwest Transit Center!!!
I think you're implying that this is political in the sense that I'm going after Republican Culberson while sparing Democratic Lee, which couldn't be further from the truth as I'm sure to include Ted Poe R and Lee D and how it wasn't because of a letter R or D in my thesis. I actually had to remind my Californian advisers this many times because Poe R supports light rail!
In fact I went easy on Culberson, he recently agreed to "take another look" at the project on the prerequisite that monies are allocated to him first to get a commuter rail out to his suburban constituents first.
You shouldn't have been getting into names at all. Your thesis is too focused on the politics and all you did was identify four routes that can get past John Culberson and his congressional district. I'd flunk you for the transparent attempt to pass off a political approach as an economic analysis. At best, those routes might be called "politically feasible".
I'd also flunk for claiming the routes are "feasible" as a conclusion. Either you're being disengenuous or you don't know what the word means. It isn't just about Can We Do It but also Should We Do It. And you cannot address the latter part without specific and detailed data such as costs, ridership, and alternatives.
Reads sorta like a list of cities that focused on rail.
The article has nothing todo with light rail.
From your own source:
"Where you have a high concentration of jobs located in a central area, no matter where you live ... you are going to be commuting some distance,"
Houston definitely benefits from lack of zoning, multiple business districts, lack of prohibitive natural boundaries.
And it appears while Houston is not quite the worst, the trend line is going in the 'not good' direction.
Last edited by montiff; 09-09-2016 at 11:41 PM..
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