Working from Home for Some Threatens Mass Transit for All | Hacker News Reader

Working from Home for Some Threatens Mass Transit for All

bloomberg.com

Or, crazy idea, we just don't require mass transit to produce a profit and continue to reshape our cities so that mass transit, cycling, and walking become more attractive.

> just don't require mass transit to produce a profit

Was it ever profitable in USA? Here in Poland, the income from tickets usually only cover below 50% of the costs, while the rest comes from subsidies.

No. However its an excuse used here to not invest in it sometimes.

How do you propose to evaluate success of a transit route? How do we evaluate trade off options.

In California, they are wasting billions on high speed rail, Hawaii cannot finish its elevated circulator because of incompetence. These are pushed as benefits for all, yet, if we took that money and bought the needy a Prius instead, with a ten year life cycle, are the people better off?

When we talk of just making transit free, there is no talk of what’s the alternative to the environment if we just enable people to drive by getting them a car. Rail is a waste, China even admits to it off the books. Look at how much expressway / freeway they have build and how they are slowing / stopping high speed rail projects.

Transit is great when it is constantly evaluated for getting people from point to point. However, because of political issues (I want a large bus to make it appear my neighborhood is respected, when there are only two riders per day on it or I want a train stop near my house not near where all the users are at) we end up with less than optimal effects.

The same way you evaluate the success of a road.

> In California, they are wasting billions on high speed rail, Hawaii cannot finish its elevated circulator because of incompetence. These are pushed as benefits for all, yet, if we took that money and bought the needy a Prius instead, with a ten year life cycle, are the people better off?

Hawaii and California already have massive traffic problems because cars are an insanely inefficient mode of transportation. Commuters in LA spend almost 13 full work days sitting in traffic per year [1]. 10 buses that are only a third full replaces 260 single commuter cars. A light rail running at 50% capacity carries more people per hour that 4 full lanes of highway [2]. Even if we build more and more roads, that just causes more traffic, not less [3]. Cars are a massive individual monetary sink compared to a transit pass and bike. However, when you decide to build another massive highway to “relieve” traffic instead of building safe biking infrastructure, dedicated lanes for busses, light rails that move throughout the city, trains that move people into and out of the city, or city centers that are friendly to foot traffic, then you aren’t really leaving people with a good option except a car.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-la-worst-traffic-2...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_rail

[3] https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

Light rail is for the rich. Done. Every time the rich want light rail it needs a transit oriented development, pushes out the poor, and saddles the new rich with a development tax.

Your statistics work in high density areas. Yes, I can load a bus full of people if they want to go to the same area. That requires a suburb to a centralized factory.

Now think of all the startups, do they all work in a centralized location, nope, because any centralized location is running a huge facility and is a huge company. Think Facebook.

How does Joe O‘Reilly get from her studio apartment on the outskirts of town to their job as a janitor for said small start up? She needs to ride a bus and arrive their on the buses schedule. Not hers. Bus headway’s in non large urban areas are thirty minutes to an hour. Our heroine needs to wait up to an hour of her time for a bus. She is still in the traffic, but traffic plus an hour. And then she needs to drive an half hour in the bus to get to her actual destination.

Car = 30 minute drive Bus = 30 minute wait for first bus + 30 minute drive to first stop + 30 minute headway waits + 30 minutes to destination = 120 minutes

Joe wastes 2.5 hours per day in the bus system. 2.5 hours x 262 working days = 27.29 days wasted. That’s 13 more than the car in LA, ask her which one she wants to pick. I am going to give her the car that allows her to pursue her opportunities in the city.

China is building roads. More and more roads. They get it. Traffic wanes once you build enough roads. All the traffic is pent up demand.

> Light rail is for the rich. Done. Every time the rich want light rail it needs a transit oriented development, pushes out the poor, and saddles the new rich with a development tax.

Wouldn't that indirectly decrease road congestion for those that need/choose to drive? If more people in a densely populated area are taken off the roads, that seems like a win for both the drivers and for the transit riders regardless of income. Lower income folks being displaced seems like another discussion.

> Now think of all the startups, do they all work in a centralized location, nope, because any centralized location is running a huge facility and is a huge company. Think Facebook.

I'm not sure I understand your point here. Is it that startups can't afford to work in a central location? I personally have worked at startups in downtown areas, and know many others that do as well. Being somewhere central helps their candidate pool since some people are unwilling to drive when transit is available to them. Also I'm not sure how being in a central location requires a huge facility.

Where I live only in the well-above median income population more than 50% have a car. Cars are for the rich.

If we don't require it to produce a profit, profits from it shouldn't go to executives or shareholders.

I'm okay with a free PUBLIC transit system. I'm okay with private transit. I'm not okay with the government-subsidized public/private monstrosities we have in many places.

Private for-profit corporations do well with competition, not with government-funded monopolies. I'd be okay with private corporations managing individual train routes, but not with them managing train systems.

Also sales of cars have strongly decreased during the pandemic. Transportation in general has decreased.

The article seems hell-bent on having people using mass-transportation. Mass transportation is a tool to an end. If we have a lot of hammers because we used to nail a lot of things, and now we don't, we shouldn't try to force people to use hammers just for the sake of using them.

Invest in mass transportation, as well as walkable communities and more people will use it. But, everything costs something.

There are externalities too.

Which is it?

Sell more cars, take those externalities, or live leaner, gamble on the economics working out differently and that being OK?

Someone is gonna lose. Could be a lot of us losing, or maybe not, depending.

Another option is transforming our communities to build workspaces closer to where people live instead of requiring long commutes to get to work.

The documentary "The End of Suburbia" talked about this possibility:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug

Yes, I agree. Part of walkable should include work where possible.

I have lived a scenario similar to the one we are sketching out here and it was great! Live, work, play... I also had the airport available. Could walk out my front door and end up on the other coast that same day.

If sales of cars decrease because using cars less there might be an uptick in use of mass transport, because it might not be cost effective to buy a car instead of taking a bus a couple times a month.

This is not true!!! Demand for cars is at all time highs and car prices are also at all time highs...

Car demand hasn't changed much, but there's fewer new cars being made right now. Less supply means higher prices.

Why do trains have to make a profit but roads don't?

Why should roads have to make a profit?

Other way round, they're a shared resource just like trains, but no one says roads should make a profit.

Sure they do, try to use motorways across several European countries, some with payment areas every couple of kilometres.

I live in Europe. Feels like we have fewer tolls.

I have a friend who can barely leave his house without hitting a toll road in Bryan, Ohio (not exactly the big city where it might be warranted for upkeep or as a bypass)

Portugal, France, Italy, Switzerland, Greece come to mind regarding tolls.

I should note that in Switzerland it is an yearly payment.

As Portuguese I can assert our government loves having them.

But they do. I pay enough in road tax and fuel duty to cover the upkeep for the roads in the UK. Drivers here pay more than the government spends on the roads so the excess goes elsewhere. Ego the roads are profitable.

How much tax money goes towards your roads vs your public transit system in the UK?

I pay enough in income tax to cover the upkeep for public transport in the UK. E(r)go everything is ok.

Also, my spending on public transport reduces congestion on the roads. Drivers therefore get cross-subsidised. When will drivers reimburse me for that?

Just a nitpick: road tax doesn’t go to roads. It’s just put into the pot for general things.

Your road tax is most likely paying for Pensions and the NHS. Primarily.

Normally council taxes are what cover roads, whatever can’t be covered by local council taxes is taken from the big pot, but only after civil servants at the local and national level bicker about it for a few years first.

Am I the only one who treats headlines like this as rentier fud?

I'm seeing an increase in these types of wfh is bad articles in the mainstream media.

Are tax dollars not enough for public services? If not, where are those dollars going? People giving away 40% of their earnings, and still are required to burden themselves with providing profits for public services.

It seems premature to be claiming that people won’t return to transit given that in many major cities life is decidedly not back to normal, and mass transit seems like it would be about the last thing to bounce back. Events and in-person work are some of the biggest drivers of transit use and are still majorly curtailed, at least here in Canada.

meanwhile, it's brought the UK rail system back from a near breaking point to something that might be a manageable level for the future.

Ferrying 5 million people into and back out of London was not a long term solution. People are commuting up to 50 miles to get to work in London, and the platforms and the system have all been at saturation for several years now. With the reduction in use we might get back to a sane level of utilisation, where I won't have to stand up, squished between 20 other people on my 2x45 minute journeys to and from London.

Great, the pandemic showed that relying on centralized mass transit is a mistake and we should rethink the way we're doing public transit.

Let's all move into reinforced bunkers underground, WW2 showed that building cities above ground was a mistake.

Well yes, we abandoned cities when they were being bombed, and would abandon them forever if the bombing was continuous and forever.

So why does a temporary and rare event like the pandemic require a total overhaul of transit?

Because it's very sensitive to any event, and if you were completely dependent on mass public transit you now understand exactly how bad this is.

The word “threatens” gives the impression of something dangerous going on with remote work. It may be motivated by click traffic, but seems hyperbolic.

The quantity of transport vehicles can be reduced to a point where it is in alignment with current needs. There are other ideas better than that.

This isn’t a scary outcome waiting to happen.

Public transit isnt a thing you do to profit your city directly. You do it so people can participate enough to grow your tax base.

There is no public transport system on earth which remains profitable for long. In fact, that would defeat the purpose!

Such profit would add too much transactional friction, discouraging riders. The goal is cleaner cities and less clogged roads. The goal is enlarging the tax base with increased access.

Paid parking at the metro? Pfft, guess Im driving, and adding to the parking-clog. We're too big to be an overgrown suburb like this, but I guess that's what we are.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com