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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

> "No city in the world will ever manage to end congestion because when traffic flows, people are drawn to their cars.

Tokyo is proof that this is not true. There are many, many people who own cars but only drive them on the weekends because the public transportation system is so great.

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Yeah, what a ridiculous quote. I'd give it maybe ten years before a number of world-class cities have ended congestion issues. The shortsightedness of people is incredible to me: "this is a problem in my city, therefore it will be a problem in every city on the planet for the rest of time".

Uh, okay. Ridiculous pessimism.

I think the 10 year estimate is a bit optimistic. Public transportation construction projects can easily take 10+ years from planning to construction to completion.

The California High Speed Rail project, for example, is estimated to take 18 years just for construction, not including all the planning time it took just to get to this point.

My personal opinion is that in areas with high traffic, car registration fees (or gas taxes) should be increased dramatically and the fees should be used to provide public transportation. Public transit should only charge fees as a means of controlling the number of people using the system (in other words, as low as possible to maximize usage but high enough to reduce overcrowding).

In other words, make people that want to drive subsidize public transit. This would encourage fewer people to own or drive cars and push them to the less expensive public transit.

It's all a matter of incentives.

I agree that 10 years is much too optimistic for most places, but I think it's possible. I wasn't looking towards public transportation directly, actually, in my assumption of how this is going to be solved. Rather, I think a much bigger event will be large networks of self-driving cars. Maybe Sao Paulo will "never" see them, but plenty of cities will, and those cars will do wonders in solving congestion issues.

Combine self-driving cars with increased and improved public transport, and I'd bet a few large cities have it all solved on the 10-ish year timeframe. As far as the California High Speed Rail project...well, that's not how to solve the problem. At least not in my opinion.

I still think 10 years is optimistic. We are still years away from production, self-driving cars, and the majority of people will have to upgrade to them, which, alone, will take 10 years from the point self-driving cars become affordable.

As much as I want it, I don't think it will have much of an impact on my commuting life. I'll likely be about to retire before the impact is really felt.

Public construction in the US is about an order of magnitude slower and more expensive than in the rest of the world.

Citation please.

US transit construction costs about ten times as much and takes about five to ten times as long as construction in Spain and Korea. Everyplace else falls somewhere in between, but most are much closer to the Spanish and Korean levels than ours.

http://streetsblog.net/2012/08/29/why-are-american-infrastru...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-26/u-s-taxpayers-are-g...

http://www.humantransit.org/2010/12/quote-of-the-week-transi...

I like this link: http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-ra...

NYC costs are very high, they should be more in line with London at least.

Which pushes people to mass transit, lowers overall consumption of gasoline, decreases revenue from car registration and gas taxes and bankrupts the transit system.

Edit #1: I'm being intentionally glib, but the point is that it's not as simple as "raise taxes" or "take the bus."

Edit #2: I'd love to hear a counterpoint instead of just downvotes. Please explain to me how the spirit of what I said is incorrect.

The downvotes confuse me too. During the recent great recession, areas around Seattle saw a large increase in bus riders and a big drop in gas tax revenues. So agencies and politicians began raising bus fees and gas taxes to make up for the lost income.

Your statement makes the assumption that this will happen quickly, which it will not. It will likely take decades to incentivize people to move from cars to mass transit and other systems. As they do, taxes and budgets will be modified to reflect the current state of affairs.

For example, I suggested to use gas and vehicle taxes to subsidize public transport to push people toward using mass transit options. Obviously as that transition occurs, prices on mass transit tickets will increase to stabilize demand, and the revenue burden will shift for a subsidy by car owners to mass transit riders paying for their tickets.

Since the transition will take a long time, laws and budgets will change to reflect the new norm.

To stephengillie's point (since I can't reply), fees for mass transit should not be viewed as revenue generators but as means to restrict demand for a limited supply. In other words, the price on mass transit should be as low as possible (even free) to attract as much usage as possible, only using the price to restrict demand when too many people are trying to use the system. I truely believe that this type of pricing model would push a LOT of people toward mass transit.

As an example, here in Denver, CO we have a light rail. It costs (for me) $4.50 each way to downtown Denver. I can find parking in downtown for as cheap as $5 (if I want to walk a bit) to $10. It literally takes long as costs just as much to ride light rail as to just drive. Where's the incentive? If the light rail were $1-$2 per ride, then hell yes I'd use it.

For the most part, rail travel is private industry in the US - that means it has to make a profit. Obviously if you make something very cheap or free you're going to have a lot more people willing to use it. It will also cease to exist as a private enterprise very quickly.

I don't want to make this solely a political point, but it's a hard sell to convince me that it's inherently good to incentivize mass transit in the first place, let alone that it should be nationalized by default and offered below cost or for free.

The biggest argument for incentivizing mass traffic is that private car usage is heavily incentives in the United States. Gasoline taxes don't even come close to paying for the primary cost of roads, let alone the secondary external costs. Subsidies for mass transit would be much more palatable to the voting public than $20/gallon gasoline and toll roads everywhere.

Public transit fees should not be a means of restricting usage. Crowded public transit isn't a sign that the fees are too low, but that the capacity needs to be increase. Granted it's not always possible to increase capacity overnight, but it's the best way to scale transportation. Higher fees just means poorer people can move around less, while for richer people the car just got relatively cheaper compared to public transit.

He didn't say that public transit fees should be raised to restrict usage, just the opposite, in fact. He said that public transport should be subsidized by car registration fees. This means cars get more expensive for rich people and poor people can move around more.

He did say all that, which I agree with entirely, but he also said public transit fees should be "high enough to reduce overcrowding".

The point I was trying to get across is that currently public/mass transit is priced to generate REVENUE. In cases where a light rail system is in the red, they try to "solve" this issue by INCREASING the price to generate revenue, which is the wrong thing to do.

They should start with free, then go up from there to the point in which the system's capacity and ridership are equal. So a busy system like the BART in S.F. may still be $8/round trip (what I used to pay), while light rail in Denver would be free or close it because almost no one uses the system.

The quote probably got mistranslated, reading the two last paragraphs I'm pretty sure he's referring to "the fundamental law of road congestion" or a similar theory.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2011/10/only-hope-r...

The sidebar identifies Mexico City as the worst commuting city in the world in an IBM survey.

I commuted recently for a year, eight miles each way, through the center of Mexico City. I went near or in rush hour each day. It was a pleasure every day.

I rode the Metro. I rode the dedicated-lane bus rapid transit. I rode my bicycle. I never drove a car because I'm not stupid; I can see how the traffic is.

People complain about four hour daily commutes just like in São Paulo, but in Mexico they're usually insisting on driving their cars when there's a perfectly good light rail, underground rail, dedicated lane bus rapid transit route, or commuter train route available. The city is laced with shorter van and minibus routes to help everyone connect to the transit backbones.

Unfortunately it's more socially prestigious to drive two hours than relax forty minutes on the Metro with a book. It's probably a sign of incipient "neurodiversity" that I insisted on using the faster and more comfortable trains and bicycles even though I was a well-off foreigner who could afford to suffer in a car.

I like the comment here that an underdeveloped country is one where the poor dream of owning a car and a developed country is one where the rich dream of living near a metro station.

What São Paulo needs isn't less traffic. It's a lot more metro lines.

I rode my bicycle

I've always heard that the smog in Mexico City was so bad that bicycle trips could be measured in equivalent packs of cigarettes. Did you not find that to be the case?

Mexico City smog reached a peak in 1985. Energetic action by the local government has steadily improved the air quality since then. (There was a devastating earthquake in '85 that drove a citizen cooperative activist movement in the recovery and brought in a whole new political structure.)

Today you can see the mountains ringing the city from the center even right after rush hour most days. It's still soupier than I'd prefer but it's like L.A., not like China or India. Bicycling has been rapidly increasing in recent years.

I recommend riding in Mexico City if you're a strong cyclist. The traffic and pollution are not bad if you stay off the busiest through streets and the pleasure of taking in a prosperous and creative city of twenty-something million at ground level is a special treat.

Good public transportation by itself is not enough. Driving a car is still a "high status" marker in most of the world, especially in developing countries. People need to show off, the world is not all populated by Japanese.

For example, Moscow has a decent public transportation system, but is also famous for its traffic jams. There are people who prefer 1.5 hour one way commute in a car to 40 minute commute by metro. There are lots of complaints about public transportation, but I don't believe it is the main reason. Trains are also crowded in Tokyo (there is a popular video on YouTube where station workers push commuters onto the train).

> Trains are also crowded in Tokyo (there is a popular video on YouTube where station workers push commuters onto the train).

This is mostly just a case of making the exceptional seem commonplace. Having actually spent time in Tokyo, I've never seen workers pushing commuters onto the train, even at the busiest station in the city during the morning rush hour.

I believe the trains are still very crowded at rush hour. People get used to that because driving is not an option and it is socially acceptable for everyone to take the subway.

Of course the trains are crowded at rush hour - that's why it's called rush hour. However, it is nowhere near unbearable, and certainly not any worse, in my experience, than NYC. But there's one huge advantage over NYC - you don't have to worry about pickpockets, so you can relax while riding the train and take a nap, read a book, or play some games on your phone (which is what most of the commuters do).

I am sure most people in New York do it too (read a book, play games, not worry about pickpockets). Most New York trains are not really crowded at rush hour, with the exception of Lexington avenue line.

> I am sure most people in New York do it too (read a book, play games, not worry about pickpockets).

So you would sleep on an MTA train during rush hour with your bag just sitting on your lap? Most people I know wouldn't.

> Most New York trains are not really crowded at rush hour, with the exception of Lexington avenue line.

And neither are most lines in Tokyo. There are 2 or 3 trunk lines that are really crowded. The rest have only moderate occupancy. Each month, I was probably on a train where I didn't have room to move only once or twice a month.

London is absolutely fine having a perfect public transport system. You can get anywhere by tube which is never getting stuck, it is fast and convenient, probably better than a car even without traffic.

Prague is absolutely fine too for the same reason, combination of metro and a great train service.

Moscow is a nightmare and most of other 'emerging economies' cities too.

Lots of cities in the world are free of traffic problems. It is a great example of how a culture of selfishness and ultra-invidualism (totally preferring own cars) brings everyone into trouble.

Moscow has a good public transportation system though. Lol @ tube never getting stuck.

It does, but due to broken mentality people try as hard as possible not to use them. That is, public perception is that mass transit is for losers who can't afford cars (while in fact standing in traffic wastes a lot of expensive time of middle class, but they still rather suffer it then admit that taking the metro is better).

I can imagine this is a common problem of emerging economies, where most of middle class come from families of destitute peasants - and try to underscore their rise (real or imaginary) on the social ladder as hard as possible. In rich countries, where everyone had a car for at least a couple generations now, nobody thinks taking a tube is a shame, especially when it's faster.

No city in the world will ever manage to end congestion because when traffic flows, people are drawn to their cars.

As this article tells us, people flock to their cars even when traffic doesn't flow. Why?

Limited choice. It's either brave the traffic jam or rent an air taxi.

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