• uncouple9831@lemmy.zipEnglish
    214·
    10 days ago

    You’re comparing a high density downtown with very little activity to suburban rush hour. You don’t want a tram, you want more commuter rail.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      lol no, that’s how it works in canada and it’s shit.
      This is precisely the place where light rail makes sense: it’s most of the benefits of heavy rail but way cheaper, so you can build more of it and run more vehicles, and operate like a metro in the suburbs but as a tram in the downtown.

      Basically what you want is Portland but with 10x as many lines.

      • uncouple9831@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I didn’t realize Portland had added so many light rail lines, that’s cool for them. However the longest one is like 10 miles. The next city down the coast has highways that look like the picture for about 60 miles. Ironically they do actually have a train but system-to-system links in the sf bay area are terrible and nobody seems to use the train. It obviously will vary person to person but every time I personally checked it’s still faster and cheaper to drive through miserable traffic than take the train.

        All that being said it looks like the light rail system is super slow (14 mph on direct routes) – and I really don’t know why urban planners insist on a hub and spoke model when they’ve already destroyed their downtowns.

      • uncouple9831@lemmy.zipEnglish
        41·
        16 days ago

        Sure but that’s not the picture. If you’re gonna pick two unrelated concepts to illustrate the point you want to make, I get to take it apart.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    15·
    16 days ago

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  • TDCN@feddit.dkEnglish
    121·
    16 days ago

    That tram can probably single handedly carry as many people as that highway in rush hour where the cars are driving at snail pace anyway. Can someone do the math?

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      well you’d need some more parameters, like a single tram isn’t going to carry as many people as the entire freeway, simply because the freeway is extremely absurdly disgustingly long.

      But one tram fitting all the people in this photo? maybe, i’d say probably 2 trams, with the average number of people in a car being 1.5 and i think the tram pictured is a Melbourne class E which fits ~200 people. But bear in mind i’m dogshit at visual measurement so maybe i’m completely wrong and that’s actually only 50 cars or it’s 5 billion cars.

  • LordKitsuna@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    16 days ago

    You’re never going to convince most people to give up the comfort of their own personal box. I say that as someone that has spent 7 years as a bus driver in seattle. I’d love to see more public transit use but even I prefer taking my car to work and I ride for free as an employee lol.

    I even have access to a route that is basically a straight shot to work but it’s still over double the time of driving myself because it has to make stops along the way , and you have to deal with the people that even though they ride the bus every single day and they know that they’re going to need their money and they see the bus coming from like a block away will not try to dig their money out of their pockets until they are standing in front of the driver so it takes forever.

    And then you have to deal with other people’s possible smells, you can’t just like blast your music and sing along with it, you don’t get to control what the temperature is so if you have a driver that likes the bus to be 75 and that makes you uncomfortable well that’s just too bad for you. Etcetc

    And that’s the part that people forget when they are complaining about cars is they only address the traffic and other problems that are genuine but they basically just tell people suck it up princess about the genuine Comfort differences same with people that tell you to bike everywhere I don’t want to bike in the rain or the snow. I am fully aware that rain gear exists that doesn’t make it comfortable for me i love my bike but only in like fall weather where it’s cool out so I don’t overheat but not raining or snowy or anything like that lol