Solutions for Phoenix transportation issues for everyone? (Tempe, Black Canyon City: insurance, how much)

[cjseliga]

Originally Posted by yukon

WTH do you think they're getting all the jobs?

Texas has a pro-business tax climate that very few states can even compete with including Arizona, all that oil and gas money over the last 100 years helped make it what it is today and allowed it to give large and small business huge tax breaks, which in turn caused the state to become what it is today.

[kent_moore]

- Vertical development (put the supermarket, restaurants, health clinics, coffee shop, salons in one building)
- Expanded light rail / bus rapid service
- Covered walkway with mist during summer (people has to walk, no matter what the weather is, we have to burn these fats!)

Problem solved!

[hikernut]

IMO the objective should be getting people to live closer to the places they frequent, especially work and schools. Instead, the emphasis seems to be on enabling people to travel farther and farther. As a society we’ve apparently decided that heavily subsidized travel is a good thing. Of course, if we make travel artificially cheap we will see more of it than if consumers had to pay full price.

[wase4711]

alot of this depends upon how a city initially sets up its public transit system; new york, chicago, cities like that set up their transit systems early on, so it was easier for it to expand, and serve lots of people from lots of areas of the metro; plus, traditionally older cities were set up with all the business and commerce focusing on the "downtown" area; thats not how the valley was and is, so I dont know how you could start to set up a cost effective and desirable system now, with everything so spread out all over the valley...

[Ponderosa]

Originally Posted by exit2lef

Automated operation works only in situations in which the train is always in its own dedicated path with no intersecting traffic. The PHX Sky Train, like most airport people movers, is automated because it travels on an elevated guideway completely separated from any other sort of vehicles. Among North American rail transit systems in cities (as opposed to airports), the Vancouver Sky Train is the only one I can think of that is automated. Even so, it's a rarity. Most cities with subways rely on human operators.

Some of it may have to do with union contracts, but a lot has to do with unpredictable situations that require human decision making. For light rail systems that travel in the street and interact with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, the technology to automate operations does not exist yet and is probably decades away under the best possible scenario. Keep in mind that after a decade of hype, we're still far away from self-driving cars that can operate in all conditions, so automating trains will take a while.

You can order up a ride on a self-driving van in Phoenix on Lyft. They don't go everywhere in town, of course, but it's here now. It is not going to take a decade for the technology, but it might take that long for public acceptance and much longer for conversion of our fleet. Trains are easy by comparison.

New tech moves exponentially. In a couple decades, AI and robotics will have eliminated so many jobs that the need for highways and public transit will be greatly diminished. You will end up with not only driverless trains but riderless ones as well.

[Sno0909]

Originally Posted by ajonesaz

Automate the light rail! Why do those trains need drivers?

Speed it up a little and change it so it doesn't have to stop at red lights.

If the light rail didn't chug along at 30mph and stop at every light in town maybe I would take it downtown for the dbacks games. Honestly, driving in congested traffic on the freeway gets me there faster than the light rail.

Agreed, when I rode it, it actually took me longer to get to my destination in rush hour than it did when I drive. Only by a few minutes, but still longer.

[exit2lef]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

You can order up a ride on a self-driving van in Phoenix on Lyft. They don't go everywhere in town, of course, but it's here now. It is not going to take a decade for the technology, but it might take that long for public acceptance and much longer for conversion of our fleet. Trains are easy by comparison.

New tech moves exponentially. In a couple decades, AI and robotics will have eliminated so many jobs that the need for highways and public transit will be greatly diminished. You will end up with not only driverless trains but riderless ones as well.

You can't order them in Phoenix -- only in a small, geofenced portion of Chandler. It's limited to a fleet of 10 vans, all with a human safety driver:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/waym...ft-riders.html

It's an interesting experiment, but just that, an experiment. Meanwhile, many companies are retreating from their earlier hype about autonomous vehicles:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/driverl...pe-11547737205

Sometimes, new tech moves exponentially. Other times, it proves to be vaporware and fades away after too many unfulfilled promises. I'm not willing to disinvest in proven high-capacity modes of transit based on speculation about what might (or might not) happen in the decades to come. I do agree, however, that we might see driverless trains before driverless cars. If that happens, it'll make an efficient mode of travel even more so. The one driverless system I've been on, the Vancouver Sky Train, works very well in my experience.

[Sno0909]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

Build a cross town freeway and an I-10 reliever.

I wish this was discussed more. I understand the difficulty of adding a new freeway in the middle of a city, but man, that would do some wonderful things. The west 101 to the east 101 is approximately 30 miles across. Just looking at a map of Phoenix shows a real lack of horizontal freeway infrastructure north of the 10. When you look at other cities, they don't seem to have such a problem. This surprises me given how "new" of a metro we have compared to the rest of the country. Poor planning?

[exit2lef]

Originally Posted by Sno0909

I wish this was discussed more. I understand the difficulty of adding a new freeway in the middle of a city, but man, that would do some wonderful things. The west 101 to the east 101 is approximately 30 miles across. Just looking at a map of Phoenix shows a real lack of horizontal freeway infrastructure north of the 10. When you look at other cities, they don't seem to have such a problem. This surprises me given how "new" of a metro we have compared to the rest of the country. Poor planning?

The original freeway plan approved by voters in 1985 included an east-west freeway known as the Paradise Parkway. It proved controversial because it would have resulted in the destruction of numerous established neighborhoods. Also, it would have gone only as far east as SR 51 rather than continuing to Scottsdale. It was eventually cancelled.

https://www.aaroads.com/guides/az-050/

http://www.arizonahistoricalsociety....se-Parkway.pdf

There is a proposal for a reliever south of I-10:

https://origin.azdot.gov/planning/tr...state-route-30

[Sno0909]

Originally Posted by hikernut

IMO the objective should be getting people to live closer to the places they frequent, especially work and schools. Instead, the emphasis seems to be on enabling people to travel farther and farther. As a society we’ve apparently decided that heavily subsidized travel is a good thing. Of course, if we make travel artificially cheap we will see more of it than if consumers had to pay full price.

Of course that would be ideal! I work in Tempe by the lake and frequent mid-town and uptown a lot for entertainment. Unfortunetly, I can in no way afford to live in either area anymore. As prices continue to go up, it forces people out more. It doesn't work for my family of 5 to live in a 1,400 sq ft house along 7th Street for $600,000. To get what we need, we are forced to areas like Norterra or Gilbert or Queen Creek, etc.