[PRCo] Re: Portland Green Line

[Joshua Dunfield]

2009/9/20 Phillip Clark Campbell <pcc_sr at yahoo.com>:
> Mr.Dunfield;  the following is addressed to you but it
> is not personal.  It is done to make a point.  Studies of
> human nature reveal that if someone very dear to you,
> or you yourself, are seriously injured from a side
> impact collision into a low vehicle you shall sing a
> vastly different tune from the one expressed here.

You don't need "studies of human nature" to reveal that.

Do you want more people to die, overall, or fewer?  If fewer, you have
to try to look at the whole picture dispassionately.  If a safety
improvement lowers ridership, it needs to save more lives directly
than are lost indirectly through the mode shift, or it is no safety
improvement at all.

If you want to move everyone back to high-floor LRVs, you have to
demonstrate that low-floor LRVs are less safe.  Then, even if you can
show that low-floor LRVs are less safe, you need to estimate the
additional deaths caused by people not riding the high-floor LRVs
because they're less convenient, and subtract that from the additional
side-impact deaths.

(Berating people who complain about steps, as you do in a later post,
doesn't change this calculation.)

> As an aside - you seem to ride the subway much Mr.Dunfield;
> you are underground for a very long time, surface to make
> a few comments, and then disappear again!  You seem to
> move considerably;  do you work in the transit field?

I comment when I have something to say.  And, no, I'm strictly amateur.

-j.