warren (12/03/82)
I have seen endless emotional debates on the merits of mass transit versus cars and highways. My state (Illinois) fights this one perpetually since it has 1 big city with mass transit and lots of miles of deteriorating roads in the rest of the state. I seem to recall someone at one point doing an economic analysis of what is truely the most economical form of transportation. I think that fuel economy was a minor to irrelevant factor. The ingrediants of the analysis included: Cost of vehicles Cost of fuel Cost of facilities (roads, rails, stations, etc.) maintenance for vehicles and facilities. cost of labor Cost of time of person being transported. Has anybody else seen something like this? As I recall, it was very hard for mass transit to win because of the extra high-cost labor needed to operate the system and the relatively high cost of mass transit technology (due to much lower production volumes). If the cost of the comuters time was included, that dominated everything else.
swatt (12/03/82)
DISCLAIMER: The views reported here are not necessarily my own. I remember hearing about a book that made such an anylsis, but I never read it. I think the author was Ivan Illych (sp?). The gist of the analysis is that cars require: gas, oil, maint. insurance companies expensive roads traffic laws police to write traffic tickets counts to process traffic tickets and so on. His point is that the TOTAL cost of operating a car is quite a bit larger than what any individual owner sees. He carried out this calculation for other forms of transportation as well. Now each form of transportation has a TRUE cost, and an effective speed. The greater the effective speed, the less time involved. If the $$ savings in less time are equal or greater than the true cost, you're ahead; otherwise you're behind. If I remember the reported conclusion right, he figured you were LOSING as soon as your effective speed got over what you could achieve on a bicycle. - Alan S. Watt