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The original point of this thread, as I understood it, was to point out how most of us have grown dependent on the car to live our lives. There are only a handful of places in this whole country where a person can comfortably live without a car. Why did we let that happen?
Exactly! And most people in this country nowadays are moronic zombies programmed to accept and comply. There is people here that don't even believe that the car companies conspired to eliminate public transportation in most cities in the USA- this is not a conspiracy theory, it is actually a fact but anyways, let them live in their eternal bliss.
This is from wikipedia. It doesnt cost 100 million dollars per mile to build a rail line. How much a highway of 100 miles cost to build and maintain? How much an extra lane in a highway cost to build and maintain? cost of fuel saved in 10 years, 20 years if we removed hundreds of cars away from highway???this is investment for the future.
The cost of light rail construction varies widely, largely depending on the amount of tunneling and elevated structures required. A survey of North American light rail projects shows that costs of most LRT systems range from $15 million per mile to over $100 million per mile. Seattle's new light rail system is by far the most expensive in the U.S. at $179 million per mile, since it includes extensive tunneling in poor soil conditions, elevated sections, and stations as deep as 180 feet (55 m) below ground level.These result in costs more typical of subways or rapid transit systems than light rail. At the other end of the scale, four systems (Baltimore, MD; Camden, NJ; Sacramento, CA; and Salt Lake City, UT) incurred costs of less than $20 million per mile. Over the U.S. as a whole, excluding Seattle, new light rail construction costs average about $35 million per mile.
By comparison, a freeway lane expansion typically costs $1.0 million to $8.5 million with an average of $2.3 million per lane mile (a lane mile is a mile-long lane) for two directions. Since a light rail track can carry up to 20,000 people per hour as compared with 2,000–2,200 vehicles per hour for one freeway lane, light rail is comparable in construction cost to freeways on a per passenger-mile basis. For example, in Boston and San Francisco, light rail lines carry 9,600 and 13,100 passengers per hour, respectively, in the peak direction during rush hour.
Combining highway expansion with LRT construction can save costs by doing both highway improvements and rail construction at the same time. As an example, Denver's T-REX (Transportation Expansion) project rebuilt interstate highways 25 and 225 and added a light-rail expansion for a total cost of $1.67 billion over five years.The cost of 17 miles (27 km) of highway improvements and 19 miles (31 km) of double-track light rail worked out to $19.3 million per highway lane-mile and $27.6 million per LRT track-mile. The project came in under budget and 22 months ahead of schedule.
LRT cost efficiency improves dramatically as ridership increases, as can be seen from the numbers above: the same rail line, with similar capital and operating costs, is far more efficient if it is carrying 20,000 people per hour than if it is carrying 2400. The Calgary, Alberta C-Train used many common light rail techniques to keep costs low, including minimizing underground and elevated trackage, sharing transit malls with buses, leasing rights-of-way from freight railroads, and combining LRT construction with freeway expansion. As a result, Calgary ranks toward the less expensive end of the scale with capital costs of around $24 million per mile
This just shows that you can twist the numbers to make any point you wish. For example, your numbers above assume all cars have one person. They don't. And if you ran buses on that highway, the capacity would by multiples of your numbers. A huge percent of the people who ride light rail are former bus riders, so all they do is switch to another, more expensive, form of mass transit. And buses are much much more convenient and flexible than rail.
Also, show me any light rail that even comes close to carrying 20,000 passengers per hour on a stretch of rail. Most of them don't carry that many passengers in a day. But the light rail advocates continue to use these pie in the sky numbers because they must brainwash the public to get funds for these taxpayer funded boondoggles.
And cost per mile is astronomical. Even in Dallas with no hills, mountains or rivers to cross, the cost is $100 million per mile. That investment will NEVER be recovered.
A Portland observation:
"One proposed eleven-mile long line would parallel the existing Southern Pacific Railroad line for almost its entire route. Planners expect the line to cost $1.5 billion. ......
Why is the new line costing nearly ten times as much per mile as the first line? The answer seems to be that planners don't care about the cost, while the construction lobby wants the cost to be as high as possible. So a high-cost system is the political choice.
For example, the proposed line could cross the Willamette River on an existing bridge, which was built in 1910 to handle streetcars. But the bridge opens occasionally for river traffic (though rarely at rush hour), so planners decided to build a whole new bridge, just for light rail, high enough to avoid having to open it. Cost: roughly $100 million.
Planners estimate that the last five miles of the proposed line will cost $455 million and carry just 600 riders per weekday. Amortized over 50 years at 10 percent, that represents a cost of nearly $300 per ride. Planners never blinked at this price. In short, if the physical problem of light rail's inflexibility isn't enough to make it infeasible, the political problem of light rail as pork is. That problem might be reduced if the federal government stops funding mass transit, but it will never be eliminated so long as transit is funded out of somebody's tax dollars."
Maybe my viewpoint and the OP's viewpoint have diverged a bit. His later posts have gotten silly, and I don't want to force anyone to do anything. (reread the original post, the OP wasn't telling anyone to do anything, either)
The original point of this thread, as I understood it, was to point out how most of us have grown dependent on the car to live our lives. There are only a handful of places in this whole country where a person can comfortably live without a car. Why did we let that happen?
HUH? before cars we had horses, and not very many cities I might add untill in the mid 1800's. At that time it was walk, maybe ride a primitive form of pedal bike, and maybe a ride a train IF it went any where far and so making it nearer. other than that and into well past 1850 you took a tea packet Clipper Ship and went around one of the capes!
I would have to DRIVE more than 100 miles one way to just get to a train and one that goes nowhere i want to go. I don't think i can take a tall ship anyplace i want to go but I would if i could. It seems to me modern ships ALL Burn Diesel fuel too!
I have had horses but in this day and age the cost of hay is over 6 bucks for each 70 pound bail of hay and GUESS why that is? Bingo you nailed it the cost of a mans time equipment and Diesel fuel! That much hay will feed one small saddle horse for 1 day. The price might well be wrong because i haven't owned any horses for more than a decade.
The title alone is insulting "The idiotic American car-centric culture" Sorry but if you want to go withb his poor arguments I will be asking you what you cook, and heat with what if anything your company does and what it makes with no fuel and why you use a pc, and wear clothing made of plastic too, and maybe even get one single answer as the OP sure can't so he won't.
I will also be asking you if you live in your moms basement?
The op has ID 10 T complex which has fooled him into thinking he is smarter than you, me and anyone else when that just isn't the case.
He is a silly city boy that has no clue where anything comes from and while he may not like man and man's oil he is one just the same.
I have had some pedal bikes, one weighed under 12 pounds and had 21 speeds.... Another had pretty nice front suspension, and both of these were nothing but toys. When i was a kid,I went all over the place on pedal bikes, but once I learned how to buy used cars and motorcycles and FIXED them myself i never looked back using a pedal bike to get somewhere i really didn't want to go or to try and go shopping to feed a family and neither can HE!
What's he gonna do go to the store 30 times in the same evening, and get Ring Dings? Any idea how much oil goes into a packet of Ring Dings?
HUH? before cars we had horses, and not very many cities I might add untill in the mid 1800's. At that time it was walk, maybe ride a primitive form of pedal bike, and maybe a ride a train IF it went any where far and so making it nearer. other than that and into well past 1850 you took a tea packet Clipper Ship and went around one of the capes!
I would have to DRIVE more than 100 miles one way to just get to a train and one that goes nowhere i want to go. I don't think i can take a tall ship anyplace i want to go but I would if i could. It seems to me modern ships ALL Burn Diesel fuel too!
I have had horses but in this day and age the cost of hay is over 6 bucks for each 70 pound bail of hay and GUESS why that is? Bingo you nailed it the cost of a mans time equipment and Diesel fuel! That much hay will feed one small saddle horse for 1 day. The price might well be wrong because i haven't owned any horses for more than a decade.
The title alone is insulting "The idiotic American car-centric culture" Sorry but if you want to go withb his poor arguments I will be asking you what you cook, and heat with what if anything your company does and what it makes with no fuel and why you use a pc, and wear clothing made of plastic too, and maybe even get one single answer as the OP sure can't so he won't.
I will also be asking you if you live in your moms basement?
The op has ID 10 T complex which has fooled him into thinking he is smarter than you, me and anyone else when that just isn't the case.
He is a silly city boy that has no clue where anything comes from and while he may not like man and man's oil he is one just the same.
I have had some pedal bikes, one weighed under 12 pounds and had 21 speeds.... Another had pretty nice front suspension, and both of these were nothing but toys. When i was a kid,I went all over the place on pedal bikes, but once I learned how to buy used cars and motorcycles and FIXED them myself i never looked back using a pedal bike to get somewhere i really didn't want to go or to try and go shopping to feed a family and neither can HE!
What's he gonna do go to the store 30 times in the same evening, and get Ring Dings? Any idea how much oil goes into a packet of Ring Dings?
That is true. You forgot to mention that before cars all world cities were drowning in horse manure, horses were a primary form of transportation in the cities, which was a great environmental and health hazard. Cars were welcomed as environmentally friendly as they solved the manure disposal problem...
As an aside, I collect railroad Employee Timetables and similar manuals and other operating paperwork. One from the Pennsylvania back in the 1920's lists an active spur line for the "N. Y. H. M" (or New York Horse Manure) Company near Princeton, NJ. Presumably, the freight in question was moved across the harbor on car floats rather than sharing the North River Tunnels with the Broadway Limited.
Now you know what made the Garden State grow!
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-08-2012 at 12:05 AM..
HUH? before cars we had horses, and not very many cities I might add untill in the mid 1800's. At that time it was walk, maybe ride a primitive form of pedal bike, and maybe a ride a train IF it went any where far and so making it nearer. other than that and into well past 1850 you took a tea packet Clipper Ship and went around one of the capes!
No, before cars we had rail. In town, we had trolleys, and between towns, (towns with more than 10k-15k people, anyway) we had interurbans. Not that I'm a rail fanatic, either; buses are almost as good.
Quote:
I would have to DRIVE more than 100 miles one way to just get to a train and one that goes nowhere i want to go. I don't think i can take a tall ship anyplace i want to go but I would if i could. It seems to me modern ships ALL Burn Diesel fueltoo!
You still seem to be under the impression that I want to eliminate the use of all fossil fuels, or that my concern about our overdependence on cars is based on environmental concerns.
No, before cars we had rail. In town, we had trolleys
And what was pulling these trolleys? Steam locomotives? LOL.
No. Horses. Before cars horse cariages where the main means of transportation. Trains were just for long distance travel.
And what was pulling these trolleys? Steam locomotives? LOL.
No. Horses. Before cars horse cariages where the main means of transportation. Trains were just for long distance travel.
Electricity. In Youngstown, they stopped using horses in 1891.
Until the early 1970's, there was a commuter train between Youngstown and Cleveland. (and the many points in between)
If there is one thing about this country that makes absolutely no sense is this stupid, lazy, car-centric culture.
After having spent sometime in Europe, it is really hard to become one of the sheep- so I ride my bicycle to work everyday and there is nothing better!
I was comparing obesity rates in countries like Germany and the Netherlands-where walking and riding a bicycle is widespread and they are about 10%. The United States will have obesity rate of 75% by the year 2020.
If there is one thing about this country that makes absolutely no sense is this stupid, lazy, car-centric culture.
After having spent sometime in Europe, it is really hard to become one of the sheep- so I ride my bicycle to work everyday and there is nothing better!
I was comparing obesity rates in countries like Germany and the Netherlands-where walking and riding a bicycle is widespread and they are about 10%. The United States will have obesity rate of 75% by the year 2020.
Something has definitely gone wrong here!
Isn't it wonderful that you have a choice. The people in Europe who jam the streets with bicycles are sheep too, same with all the folks on scooters in Asia. Baa baa baa
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