Prague Metro Plans Extension To Airport + New Line

"Jack May" wrote in message
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"tim....." wrote in message
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"Jack May" wrote in message
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In article , "Jack May"
wrote:

I am just going by the research done by the Nobel Prize winner.

On a very narrow market, which IMHO is not expandable to
other countries.

You make this assessment based on apparently absolutely nothing.

I've already told you. I am making this assessment on the
empirical results of builds in Europe.

Airport connections in Europe are usually extremely
well used and attract significantly more customers than
the buses that they replaced, by a very very large number.

If you have a theoretical result that says that the above is
not going to happen (which IS what you said) then either
the theory is wrong, or it is inapplicable to the situation
in Europe. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt in
selecting the second.


The Nobel prize he was given was for major breakthroughs in economics used
by many other people.

As usual typical transit fetish ignorance to protect your view of life
from being totally destroyed by reality.

I don't see what this has to do with any transport fetish that
I may or may not have. None of what I have written is in
any way supporting rail. All it is trying to do is show that
rail connecions to airports attract more customers than
buses to the airport (which is the point that you initially
refuted)

tim

"Jack May" wrote in message
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"Jack May" wrote in message
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In article ,
(David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*)) wrote:

Paul Dwerryhouse wrote:

Jack Campin - bogus address writes:


I very much doubt that he received his Nobel prize
for a survey on transit usage. Being good at one
thing does not automatically make everything you
do turn to gold.

His Nobel Prize is for developing the field of economics that finds out
how people decide what they will do in the real world. It is a broad
area of research, but he has also used his techniques apparently a lot in
transportation since he is at UC Berkley.

UC Berkley has a very strong transportation group with access to a lot a
data and a strong understanding of their field.

Which, if they are using it in the way you say, they don't seem to be
using very well IMHO.

tim

"Jack May" wrote in message
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"tim....." wrote in message
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This would be a reasonable argument if your numbers
where 20% of hourly rate, but it is 100%.

Its 100% for walking or waiting. Everybody has the experience where it
seems like forever when you are waiting for some body or some vehicle to
pick you up.

Depends if you have something to pass the time. That's one of the reasons
people don't seem to mind being stuck in a parking lot (aka freeway) for
hours per day -- they have a radio or CDs. I've even seen people reading
the paper or even novels in their cars. Lots of women don't put their
makeup on at home anymore because they can do it in the car. I often shave
in the car, something I'm not quite comfortable doing on a train. I carry
something to read either way.

Walking also seems to make the time go more slowly, at least in my
experience.

IMHO, that should count at the 50% rate you cited for travel, because one is
actually making progress towards their destination.

As it seems certain to me that some people are valuing
their journey time at 0%, to get an average of 100%,
either these people were excluded from the survey or
many people value their journey time at 200% of
their wage.

I know which I think that it is.

Well the research measured people acting as though they valued travel at
half there pay rate because a lot of uncertainty goes away once you are in
the vehicle.

For a POV, that's somewhat true. Once you're in, you're at least making
progress towards the destination, but the speed you'll travel is still
uncertain. It makes no sense, though, since you'll often save a lot of time
by leaving later. (I had one job where I could leave home at 7:30 and not
get there until 8:45 on most days, or leave at 8:30 and get there by 9:00
for sure.)

You see that in airplanes where people try to get on the plane as soon as
possible even though they are going to leave at exactly the same time if
they are first or last on. Being first on removes a lot of uncertainty
for example if you are going to have room to store your stuff in the
overhead compartment.

That's the _only_ reason people rush to get on a plane: overhead bin space.
It's not like getting on is any guarantee the plane is actually going
anywhere soon. Consider the hundreds of flights that "depart" only to sit
on the apron -- or even at the gate -- for hours on end before going. I had
one flight that sat at the gate (with the door closed, everyone required to
be belted in, and no cell phones) for over eight hours only to be cancelled
(and the passengers kicked out of the airport overnight, many with nowhere
to stay until morning). Even taking off is no assurance; I was on a flight
a few years ago that got all the way to the destination city, circled for an
hour, then went back to the origin (low fuel) and was cancelled when we
pulled back up to our departure gate.

This isn't a theoretical result. It is an empirical result
mirrored at many locations where trains have been
built to an airport

I have seen no such research. Most people drive to the airport. I
hardly see any busses or trains at airports.

It's definitely a minority of travelers at most US airports. The other
thing to keep in mind is that a single bus or train carries the equivalent
of dozens to hundreds of cars, so even in places where they're well-used,
you won't "see" many.

The only problem with trains, IMHO is that they cost too
much to build to test out the academic theory that no-one
will use them. On almost every occasion that the build
has gone ahead that theory has been shown to be broken.

The reality is well known that only a small percent (1%) of people outside
NYC use transit.

The census data disagrees with you.

So the data clearly says people do not like to use trains and busses.

No, that is your conclusion. Obviously people cannot use trains and buses
if they're not available, like in the vast majority of the country, or if
they don't go where the person needs to go, like in many newer transit
systems that are just getting started (and trying to compete with 100+ year
old road systems).

Where good transit is built, people use it. Unfortunately, most transit
agencies seem to be even less competent than road agencies -- and that's
saying a lot. That doesn't mean transit is a failure as an idea, just that
the typical flawed implementation of that idea is a failure.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking


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"Jack May" wrote in message
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"Stephen Sprunk" wrote in message
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"Jack May" wrote in message
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"tim....." wrote in message
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"Jack May" wrote in message
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That's compared to time wasted stuck in traffic, time wasted parking your
car, and time wasted walking from the parking lot to your actual
destination. There are places where the actual end-to-end travel time
for rail is _less_ than for a POV, and that's why rail is successful in
those places.

Certainly in NYC, rail can be faster than using a car for many people.
Outside of NYC, in the US, the car is typically much faster as shown by
the Census data.

That is not what the census data shows; it merely shows that the average
transit trip is longer than the average POV trip. People who face POV trips
significantly longer than average may take transit and have a net travel
time savings.

Many areas -- often those with the lowest commute times -- have very low POV
commute times and pull down the average. Transit is also nonexistent or
particularly slow in those areas. OTOH, other areas have very slow POV
commute speeds, and those tend to be the areas with the fastest transit.
Obviously one can't compare the choices people will make in SF, LA, Chicago,
NY, DC, etc. with those made in Podunk, Iowa, and claim there is any uniform
preference. People prefer the fastest end-to-end route (perhaps using the
formula you've cited); that doesn't do much to predict any individual's
behavior unless you know where they live, how far they're going, what times,
etc.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking


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"Jack May" wrote in message
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"Stephen Sprunk" wrote in message
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"Jack May" wrote in message
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"Peter Schleifer" wrote in message

A horrific waste of money, to be sure. They should have been able to do
it for a tenth that cost -- and without the fare penalty for using the
SFO station, which discourages use.

BART is heavy rail, not light rail and very expensive at around $250M per
mile.

It doesn't need to be that expensive; that's just gov't incompetence, pork
spending, etc.

I note that you haven't specified how many people actually use the
service, though, nor the projections for expected use.

"Prior to construction, BART projected there would be 17,800 average daily
boardings to and from the airport by the year 2010. During the first year
of operation that began in 2003, there were 5,864 daily boardings, the
second year 6,675, and the third year 7,116. While there has been
ridership growth -- 14 percent after the first year and 7 percent after
the second -- it's unlikely the 2010 projection will be met."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...07/08/BART.TMP

The BART people use a $1.5B figure but I think that is only local money
and deletes the Federal funds they received.

Thanks for the cite.

For comparison, DART studied a rail link to DAL, and the found it'd add less
than $100M to the Green Line. While that's LRT, it was to be a full twin
tunnel with a station underneath the terminal building, which means it'd be
more like a typical HRT project.

As opposed to leaving it unprotected to be vandalized at home or in an
airport parking lot?

What vandalism at the cheaper private parking off the airport grounds?
The private lots are fenced and monitored.

Most aren't here, either on- or off-airport parking. Most only have short
barriers and monitoring that prevent you from doing a little off-road
driving to prevent paying. Not surprisingly, the same exists in cities with
P&R lots where you have to pay to park. Our P&R lots are free, but they're
patrolled by real cops (not "security", i.e. convicted felons, like at
private lots) and vandalism is nonexistent.

I live in an upper middle class city with almost no crime. Car vandalism
is
very rare.

Good for you. That means a P&R lot near your home would be safe as well.
Airports tend to be in bad neighborhoods because of all the noise and
traffic.

I also drive to the parking lot near the airport and of course they drop
me off
at the door of the airline security check in.

Ditto for a good rail link or a bus.

Given you have an obsessive hatred of transit, your position isn't
surprising. It's not common, though, as evidenced by the need to ban
overnight parking at P&R lots here on the line that connects to the
airport in order to keep the lots free for commuters.

I fly in and out of DFW at times as a stop over since my brother and
sister live in Garland. It looks to me like mainly cars at DFW, very
little transit

That's because the present link is horrific, requiring two buses and up to
40 mins -- and still some people use it, though it's mostly employees.

They're building a new LRT link to DFW that'll be done in 2013 or so, which
will zip you from the terminals to downtown in ~35 mins, which may be faster
or slower than driving depending on the time of day. From there, you can
connect to the Blue Line out to Garland -- the fastest LRT line in the US.
And, before Conky goes off on the futility of going through downtown, the
route will at least as direct as the two logical freeway routings.

My hatred of transit is its very high cost from limited funds resulting in
increased congestion while carrying only a small percent. I want
transportation to work. You apparently just want to feed your live in the
past mental problems which seem to be getting worse.

I want transportation to work too. I'm as disgusted by the profligate waste
of money that the FTA encourages as you are -- but unlike you, I've seen
that transit _can_ work and I think it's a net benefit to society to have
multiple modes available so that people can choose, as opposed to forcing
everyone into POVs -- and into paying for the roads they use.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking


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Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

There are places where the actual end-to-end travel time for rail
is _less_ than for a POV, and that's why rail is successful in
those places.
Certainly in NYC, rail can be faster than using a car for many people.
Outside of NYC, in the US, the car is typically much faster as shown by
the Census data.
That is not what the census data shows; it merely shows that the average
transit trip is longer than the average POV trip. People who face POV
trips significantly longer than average may take transit and have a net
travel time savings.

Car users virtually never figure in the time they spend working to pay
for the car. That usually makes car use *far* more time-consumimg.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

On Sep 25, 3:24 pm, Jack Campin - bogus address
wrote:
There are places where the actual end-to-end travel time for rail
is _less_ than for a POV, and that's why rail is successful in
those places.
Certainly in NYC, rail can be faster than using a car for many people.
Outside of NYC, in the US, the car is typically much faster as shown by
the Census data.


That's because the mass transit is terrible in most US cities (Boston,
New York, DC and Chicago are the exceptions).

Most US cities are designed with the assumption that every adult will
have a car and a family will have at least two cars, and virtually
ignore the possibilities of transport without private cars. Maybe
there are one or two light rail lines, and a bus network only used by
people too poor to afford cars, but that's it.

It doesn't have to be that way. It's much more environmentally
friendly and energy efficient to have a city built around mass transit
and to have neighborhoods on pedestrian scale, instead of far-flung
suburbs where the places people live, work, shop, and play are far
away from each other.

Iceman wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:24 pm, Jack Campin - bogus address
wrote:
There are places where the actual end-to-end travel time for rail
is _less_ than for a POV, and that's why rail is successful in
those places.
Certainly in NYC, rail can be faster than using a car for many people.
Outside of NYC, in the US, the car is typically much faster as shown by
the Census data.


That's because the mass transit is terrible in most US cities (Boston,
New York, DC and Chicago are the exceptions).

Philadelphia's is pretty good too.

--
(*) ... of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
http://www.davidhorne.net - real address on website
"He can't be as stupid as he looks, but nevertheless he probably
is quite a stupid man." Richard Dawkins on Pres. Bush"

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:05:15 -0700, Iceman
wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:24 pm, Jack Campin - bogus address
wrote:
There are places where the actual end-to-end travel time for rail
is _less_ than for a POV, and that's why rail is successful in
those places.
Certainly in NYC, rail can be faster than using a car for many people.
Outside of NYC, in the US, the car is typically much faster as shown by
the Census data.


That's because the mass transit is terrible in most US cities (Boston,
New York, DC and Chicago are the exceptions).

Most US cities are designed with the assumption that every adult will
have a car and a family will have at least two cars, and virtually
ignore the possibilities of transport without private cars.

Most US cities aren't designed at all.

Maybe
there are one or two light rail lines, and a bus network only used by
people too poor to afford cars, but that's it.

It doesn't have to be that way. It's much more environmentally
friendly and energy efficient to have a city built around mass transit
and to have neighborhoods on pedestrian scale, instead of far-flung
suburbs where the places people live, work, shop, and play are far
away from each other.

How do you propose to build a city around mass transit? What
political authority would be needed?

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

How do you propose to build a city around mass transit? What
political authority would be needed?

You don't need authority, you just need the transit. London's
"Metroland" is the obvious example of development following the
availability of public transport. Near me, the upmarket Eskbank
suburb of Dalkeith is a smaller one - the place only came into
existence after the railway got there in the late 19th century.
Nobody forced all those doctors and lawyers to build mansions
there, it was suddenly a very appealing place to live if you
worked in Edinburgh. There are similar places on the outskirts
of Glasgow.

In London, deprivation tends to correlate with distance from
the nearest tube or rail station - areas like Dalston have
never really caught up with being left off the network. In
Glasgow the divide is even more extreme (look at places like
Carntyne). Rail transport is not something only poor people
do, as Americans often seem to think.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557