Imagine a freeway without on- or offramps …
Imagine this:
- Freeways would not have any on- or offramps. They would be a completely separate road networks.
- Instead of on- and offramps, there would be huge parking lots (”freeway interchange”) every 10 miles or so, with a fence down the middle.
- If you wanted to do a long distance trip by car, you would drive on your local roads to the next “freeway interchange” and park your car there. Then you would walk across the fence and rent a “freeway car” to drive on the freeway. Sometimes, a “freeway car” might not immediately available for rent, so you would have to wait for a while. With this “freeway car” you can drive on the freeway to the “freeway interchange” closest to your destination. There, you would park your “freeway car”, walk across the fence and rent another car for the local trip (”local car”). With this “local car”, you drive to your destination on the local roads.
- When you want to travel back, do the same in reverse order.
Now that would be awfully inconvenient, wouldn’t it? But that’s exactly how the public transportation network seems to be set up around here (mostly anyway): every operator only cares about its own system and nobody ensures that you can connect smoothly and easily from one network to the other - things like take the bus to the local train station, then the commuter train to the next bigger city, then a long distance train, etc. - making all these connections is almost impossible here, plus fares and schedules are not coordinated and you need to get a separate ticket for each leg…
If the road system worked like this, nobody would bother driving a car. If you think about it, it’s surprising that people use public transportation at all! This needs to change, otherwise people will never switch …
Posted in: Uncategorized | July 18, 2006 10:57 am
5 Comments »
Ian Bicking, on July 19, 2006 @ 10:58 am
What you describe sounds a lot like PRT, an interconnected rail system that can do point-to-point travel much more like cars than traditional trains.
Marcel Marchon, on July 19, 2006 @ 11:13 am
Well, I think having point-to-point travel by public transportation isn’t necessary - that would go a bit too far - what I’m looking for is just better connections and coordination between the various modes (bus, light rail, commuter rail, intercity rail) and operators. That would already help a lot …
Ian Bicking, on July 20, 2006 @ 11:13 am
Well, going back to the original metaphor, coordinated mass transit is still like parking your car and getting a freeway car, then getting another street car on the other end. When you have a coordinated payment system and coordinated scheduling and good interconnections you’ve only approached what that freeway/parking system offers, you haven’t even achieved that much. The current situation is actually much worse than a freeway/parking system.
It’s not just point-to-point that cars offer — though that’s important — but single-vehicle. If you are shopping (especially bulky stuff like grocery shopping), then changing vehicles is hard. If you have kids, changing vehicles is hard. Or if you are disabled. Or if the weather is bad. Or if it is crowded.
And the scaling issues of transfers are numerous. If you have good geographic coverage, you may not have good scheduling coverage — infrequent but ubiquitous travel. If you have good scheduling, you may have to walk further. Arteries may reflect out of date aspects of the city; for instance, Chicago has all the trains going downtown, which maybe made sense 50 years ago, but going from a non-downtown location to another non-downtown location is only well served by buses as a result.
Getting the transit we have done right would help, of course, but I think the issues are bigger than just high-level coordination.
adron_bh, on August 19, 2006 @ 5:29 pm
Portland has similar issues.
The growing areas of Hillsboro, Gresham, and other lower cost areas are underserved in comparison with downtown. The focus remains on downtown even though it is stagnant in real job growth compared to the outlying areas. Thus the real transit growth need isn’t so much transit from outlying areas to downtown but from outlying area to outlying area.
Portland area will really see how this comes into play when we get our first DMU powered commuter trains running from one burb (Wilsonville) to another burb (Beaverton). There a transfer (a good one, unlike down in those cali areas!:) will be available to the light rail to downtown.
On the other end we have light rail being built from an existing hub point down to Clackamas, another burb.
Both of these, are estimated, to have at least 70% (give or take) local only trips with none going downtown.
…nfortunately though, that’s it.
bartje, on September 2, 2006 @ 11:49 am
Getting from one train into another train or bus is not so stressing. At least, if the waiting conditions are good (covered and heated/with airco), waiting time is reasonable, and stepping on and off is made easy by changes at the same platform, high platforms at the same level of the floor in the bus/train…
That’s how it should work. But only in some stations in Belgium, it does…
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