chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius) (11/18/86)
_ Has anyone seen a good study on relative costs of various rapid/suburban transit systems, with details on costs of implementing, maintaining, and operating the systems (includes energy use and paying employees specific to that system), and on the quality of the systems? (This would have to take some account of the area covered by the systems -- I don't know how many times bigger the Washington, D. C. metro area is than the Boston metro area, but I would suspect it is a large factor, which would affect all sorts of things.) By quality of service I mean such things as connectivity (both between different routes and express/nonexpress service on the same route, etc.), time required to go a certain distance, reliability, and cost to the user. (Such things as cleanliness of the system are technically part of the quality of service, but are dependant more on how well the transit authorities run what they implement and on how much the users mess things up than on inherent features of the system -- although such things as the apparent deliberate pricing-out of poor people from the Washington Metro do have an effect on this kind of thing.) I am new to this newsgroup, and haven't seen any other on related topics, so I don't know if rapid/suburban transit systems (by no means all railroads, or even counted railroads at all by some) is an appropiate topic for it. If it is not, please feel free to tell me. -- -- Lucius Chiaraviglio chiaraviglio@husc4.harvard.edu seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio Please do not mail replies to me on husc2 (disk quota problems, and mail out of this system is unreliable). Please send only to the address given above, until tardis.harvard.edu is revived.
speter@mit-trillian.UUCP (11/18/86)
In article <1031@husc2.UUCP> chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius) writes: >[deletions] I don't know how many times >bigger the Washington, D. C. metro area is than the Boston metro area, but I >would suspect it is a large factor, which would affect all sorts of things.) In reality the Boston SMSA is slightly larger than the Washington SMSA (Boston 3,971,000 Washington 3,250,000) The Washington SMSA does not include Baltimore of course as the Boston SMSA does not include Providence. >By quality of service I mean such things as connectivity (both between >different routes and express/nonexpress service on the same route, etc.), time >required to go a certain distance, reliability, and cost to the user. >(Such things as cleanliness of the system are technically part of the quality >of service, but are dependant more on how well the transit authorities run >what they implement and on how much the users mess things up than on inherent >features of the system -- although such things as the apparent deliberate >pricing-out of poor people from the Washington Metro do have an effect on this >kind of thing.) > The Boston Metro area is much more extensively developed transit-wise as Washington's growth is very recent, Va. and Md. suburbs, whereas the Boston Metro area peak somewhere around the 1920's when there was still transit building of any scale going on. So the Boston physical plant has been in place much longer. This means that corridors of traffic in Boston have been defined for close to 100 years now whereas in the Washington/Baltimore area this is not true. Finally since Washington never really had much commuter rail, and, since it tore down its rapid transit of the streetcar variety it must now completely build new lines, this is expensive, and as was told to me by a consultant to the Massachusetts Sec. of Trans., it is too low visibly for politicians. Hope this helps. ---peter osgood---
mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (11/19/86)
I can't provide raw numbers, but I can explain some of the rationale behind the Washington Metro. Metro construction is entirely at the mercy of federal funding, local routing disputes, and delivery of new cars by Breda. It is true that the poorest areas are not well-served by Metro. This is largely a result of Prince Georges County's refusal to settle down and decide where the Green line will go, holding up construction for years. On top of that, there is absolutely no way that fares can pay for construction. My experience suggests that travel time tends to be comparable to that of a car, provided you already have a place to park when you get there. The Metro loses completely when the destination can be reached by circling the city, however. This is the one thing that really shows how dated the design is. Bus service is subject to the whims of traffic and is therefore at least as slow as taking the car. From a cost point of view, the Metro wins completely if you can walk to the station; if you have to park your car, things get more complicated. Right now there is more demand for parking spaces at most metro stations than there is parking; rates do tend to be lower out of town, though. Unfortunately the system is quite subject to choke points. We don't have too many problems with equipment failures, but people falling on the tracks (or jumping) really ties things up. Fares are somewhat steep, but so is parking, and they were always steep on the busses too. As for the pricing out of the poor, I don't see it happening; a far more important factor in keeping the system clean is that you can't live on the metro; it closes every night. And there are lots of metro cops. Even at the current fares there is enough traffic to saturate the system during peak rush hour. (YOU should see what it looks like on the 4th of July!!!!) Someone apparently thinks it worth the money. C. Wingate
chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (11/21/86)
In article <1444@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU>, speter@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU (Peter Osgood) writes: > In article <1031@husc2.UUCP> chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius) writes: > >[deletions] I don't know how many times > >bigger the Washington, D. C. metro area is than the Boston metro area, but I > >would suspect it is a large factor, which would affect all sorts of things.) > > In reality the Boston SMSA is slightly larger than the Washington SMSA > (Boston 3,971,000 Washington 3,250,000) The Washington SMSA does not > include Baltimore of course as the Boston SMSA does not include Providence. I'm sorry I didn't make it clear what I meant by larger. Population is a significant factor in planning a system, but so is surface area, in which I think Washington has the greater area if you don't count Boston's Commuter Rail, and Boston has the greater area if you do (some of the Commuter Rail lines go pretty far out -- used to go even to Concord, New Hampshire, but unfortunately don't any more). By the way, one line of Boston's Commuter Rail reaches at least *almost* to Providence (to Attleboro, which is on the Massachusetts side of the border from Providence, and right up against it) (my map is more than just slightly out of date (it's 1982, the latest map you can get from the MBTA), and says the commuter trains run only to Attleboro, but somebody who lives down there says they do go into Providence, but I don't know if they are counting Attleboro as a part of Providence). -- -- Lucius Chiaraviglio chiaraviglio@husc4.harvard.edu seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio Please do not mail replies to me on husc2 (disk quota problems, and mail out of this system is unreliable). Please send only to the address given above, until tardis.harvard.edu is revived.