Difference between rail and roadway expansion

[thelakelander]

What happens when usage grows to the point that expansion is desired?  In the case of highway construction, you end up spending tens of millions for expansion, only to see more cars from new development suck up that capacity.

With rail, things don't have to be as expensive.  When your corridors become well used, simply invest in larger cars or couple a few together to increase the length of the train and call it a day.

[Jason]

Blasphemy!!!! 

[dougskiles]

Sounds like an Agenda 21 Conspiracy to me.

[Lunican]

As transit ridership increases, the experience gets better. The opposite is true with highways.

[Adam W]

As transit ridership increases, the experience gets better. The opposite is true with highways.

Within reason. There comes a point where the experience begins to decrease without a significant investment.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/37bn-rail-investment-plan-unveiled-064552261.html#eAWsIV2

[thelakelander]

^By comparison, when it comes to needing to make the type of investment shown in the London, England link how many trillions would have been spent of roads (new, resurfacing, and rebuilding existing ones multiple times) to get to the same point?

[Adam W]

^By comparison, when it comes to needing to make the type of investment shown in the London, England link how many trillions would have been spent of roads (new, resurfacing, and rebuilding existing ones multiple times) to get to the same point?

Well, yes, of course. I linked that as an afterthought because I happened to see that article today (it was just announced). But my main point was that as ridership increases, the experience gets better - to a point. Then the trains start getting crowded and you start being wedged in without a seat and find yourself sweating profusely, standing for long periods of time next to someone with really bad body odor.

The key, I guess, is to get ridership into that 'Goldilocks zone' or whatever.

[thelakelander]

^Another capacity option that could be utilized between now and the "after we've had successful rail for a century solution" would be to increase frequencies of trains.  So you could run two longer trains every 10 minutes instead of a short one every 15. 

Then there is the land use component.  As the corridors along rail spines infill with added density, walking and cycling become stronger options.  Thus over time, you end up with a multimodal transportation network where trips are dispersed and there is less of an over reliance on any particular mode.

[Adam W]

True. I'm not arguing any of your points, Lake.

I just don't necessarily see that an increase in ridership as being something that makes the "experience" better.  And after a point, the experience is negatively impacted by the number of people.

I would much rather travel in train carriages that are close to empty. That's all I meant.

[urbanlibertarian]

How many trains do you have to run on a rail line to get the same cost per passenger mile as a highway?

[thelakelander]

True. I'm not arguing any of your points, Lake.

I just don't necessarily see that an increase in ridership as being something that makes the "experience" better.  And after a point, the experience is negatively impacted by the number of people.

I would much rather travel in train carriages that are close to empty. That's all I meant.

I figured he was talking more about the built environment that develops around a system as the result moreso than being stuck on over crowded trains.

[Ocklawaha]

That depends on how many cars per direction/per hour your highway carries. The road industry and the Libertarian 'think tanks' that spend so much ink on attacking rail, don't like talking about the 3/4 of all road mileage that sees only a few vehicles a day.

That the experience gets better is because to accommodate more riders, more schedules are added, better connections, seamless transfers etc. None of these require knocking down one entire side of a city block to widen a roadway.

[Adam W]

True. I'm not arguing any of your points, Lake.

I just don't necessarily see that an increase in ridership as being something that makes the "experience" better.  And after a point, the experience is negatively impacted by the number of people.

I would much rather travel in train carriages that are close to empty. That's all I meant.

I figured he was talking more about the built environment that develops around a system as the result moreso than being stuck on over crowded trains.

That's makes sense. I didn't read it that way (obviously), but now that you point that out, it makes a lot more sense than what occurred to me.

My apologies to Lunican 

[tufsu1]

Generally it works as Lake says...but the DC Metro has been facing a capacity problem for years.

Basically, they have one major tunnel system through the center of town which the Blue and Orange lines share....check this out...

1. they already run trains every 3-4 minutes (6-8 minute headways for each line) and they can't get any tighter for safety reasons
2. they can't make longer trains as they are already maxing out the station length
3. they charge significant prices for people to park at the suburban stations
4. they even charge more for riders in the peak period than off-peak period (only system in the country I know of that does this)

Now, they are left with re-engineering the stations, adding additional tracks for bypass/express trains (which also means new platforms at stations) or building a whole new tunnel system in town to separate the Blue and Orange lines....and this is all before the extension of the Orange line out to Tyson's Corner and Dulles opens!

[thelakelander]

How old is the DC Metro system and how many riders does it move today?  Assuming it was never built, how would you visualize DC's built environment today and the roadway network's ability to move the amount of people using the Metro?  Something tells me, even retrofitting what they have would be much cheaper than forcing the roadway network within that city to also be able to move the amount of people using the Metro.