[PRCo] Response to Calgary vs Pittsburgh ... and on to London (part 1)
Herb Brannon
hrbran at cavtel.net
Mon Nov 11 22:49:21 EST 2013
Fred, I'm really not interested.
On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 10:39 PM, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
> I don't have a problem with huge metro area cities. We've tried it in a
> few places but the last truly large city to merge with the surrounding
> county was Philadelphia City/County and that was about 100 years ago and it
> really needs to merge today with about eight more counties in three states
> to restore the balance. Other examples would be Louisville and Nashville
> which merged with their surrounding counties. But we do not do it enough
> because the suburbanites don't want to be part of helping anyone different.
>
> But then, Herb, if you wish to look at the entire regional picture...
>
> Well, then, that would make the Pittsburgh population about 1.2 million …
> about the same as Calgary so PAT, using the same logic should be hauling
> about 600,000 daily riders. Correct? They handle about 215,000 …. about
> 1/3rd of what the same size city in Canada would generate.
>
> I wish I had similar data for European or Chinese or Indian cities to
> share. Might be a real revelation.
>
> The scary thing to me is how much oil we use up using our cars and living
> 10 or 20 or even 100 miles from our jobs while the people in more sensible
> countries are willing to live much closer to work.
>
> Consider these factoids:
>
> If we are talking proven supply, we have about 1.57% of the world's
> oil. A friend of mine who kept close tabs on it
> claimed we had a pretty good idea of most of the world's supply
> except for Russia and they played their numbers
> close to the vest. Sometime early in the 21st century the supply
> curve should peak and begin to decline while the
> demand curve will continue to grow … good reason for another war.
> You have; we want.
>
> We are producing 9.97% of of the world's oil. (9.9 million barrels
> a day) That shows if we have less than 2% of the
> oil and we are producing 10% it, we are using up what we have at one
> hellish rate. Part of that is fracking, or as one
> person put it, "sweeping the dust out the corners of an empty room."
>
> Consumption? We use up 20.5% of the world's oil consumption (every
> day --- around 20 million barrels).
> Last time I researched it, the only major nation that used more oil
> per capita than us was Canada, and
> they need a lot more for heating because their average person lives a
> lot farther north than most of our people.
> So we pump 10 millions out of the ground and use 20 million every
> day. Duh. How long is this going last
> without another war?
>
> I remember, guys, when the army put me in Germany back in 1959-1961, the
> average German had no automobile. Only the very rich and those who needed
> one in business like a doctor or the plant supervisor or a salesman might
> have had access to a car. A buddy of mine from the local NRHS chapter …
> and this goes back to when I was in high school … described the train
> service in Britain in 1957 and 1958 as intensive as it was here in the
> 1930s. Why? Because Europe had two back-to-back world wars and the
> important thing was to rebuild the homes and infrastructure first, not
> worry about unimportant things like cars, radios, refrigerators,
> televisions. England had food rationing from World War II right up to
> 1954, then it hit them again in the Suez conflict in 1958. So automobiles
> were not important in the 1940s and 1950s … eating was. Those luxury
> things came in the 1960s and 1970s. But even so, the last time I checked,
> the average commuting to work in the US was about 1 percent by public
> transportation but in Germany it was still around 30% in the beginning of
> the 21st century.
>
> Now I am going to admit that sometimes when you try to prove a point, you
> can't do it. Or perhaps you cannot find what you want to make an issue
> or a statement or you can't bark quite as loudly as you want with the facts
> at hand. I started trying to prove how many people were hauled by public
> transport in a place like London, England by the subways compared to New
> York City. I thought I could prove that as wedded to public transport New
> York is, London is even more so. It turned into one of those o shit
> moments. It turned out that London is more so but not far far more like I
> thought. London and New York are both cities of about 8.3 million people.
> The populations are comparable. So I would have expected the transit in
> London to haul the same or more, especially because London has a congestion
> tax if you are dumb enough to drive a car there.
>
> Well I found 2.540 billion annual subway riders in New York and only 1.230
> billion annual riders on the Underground in London. What? Even if I add
> in the Docklands light rail (300,000 a day), I only kick it up to 1.300
> billion a year. Can that be right? Then the light dawned. I'm missing
> half the city of London. The tube services only the north side. If you
> want to go to the south side, that is the preserve of the commuter
> railroads.
>
> Then another light dawned … London's buses haul 6 million riders on a
> weekday compared to 2.6 million in New York …
>
> So even without the commuter rail on the south side of London, we are now
> up to 3.32 billion transit users in London and 3.1 billion in New York.
>
> Using another source to derive the commuter train passengers suggests we
> might have around 3.6 million public transport commuters in the inner
> sectors of London compared to 3.1 billion in New York …. in one year. The
> bus and rail riders coming into the capital outnumber the auto passengers
> by almost 2 to 1. The transit passengers are climbing and the auto riders
> are dropping.
> What the s**t are we doing wrong????
>
> BUT WITH ALL MODES, WE STILL HAVE AROUND 72% OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN
> LONDON USING MASS TRANSIT ON WEEKDAYS AND 62% IN NEW YORK CITY ASSUMING THE
> SAME SHARE OF THE RIDING IS ON WEEKDAYS. (I divided the annual total by
> 300 to get weekdays.) And for PAT's service area? It's less than less
> than 1 percent. So Herb, I am really less than impressed with Brownsville
> Road or Fifth or Brighton or Murray. We still have 99% of the public
> using their cars in Allegheny County. We're still trying desperately to
> use up the world's oil.
>
>
> http://londontransportdata.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/weekday-morning-peak-travel-into-central-london.png
>
>
> On Nov 9, 2013, at 5:56 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:
>
> > Canadian cities are just about all on a "metropolitan area" government.
> No
> > suburbs, just one big city, hence larger population figures. Something
> the
> > US missed the boat on...............oh dear, such "Thoughts of Socialism"
> > coming from my mouth.
> >
> > As far as "crowds boarding buses at every corner", you apparently haven't
> > been along Brownsville Road, Fifth Avenue, Brighton Road or Forbes and
> > Murray Avenues in Pittsburgh lately. Same thing every weekday/.
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Ah, but the Canadians live a much more compact live than the people
> south
> >> of you.
> >>
> >> Up north you don't have this same concept that I'm better than Jose so I
> >> must live in a 3,000 square foot house on a 3 acre lot in a gated
> >> community. Even in small towns you can have bus service which would be
> >> impossible in the USA because people still live in smaller homes lined
> up
> >> along streets. Maybe it comes from the idea that it costs money to
> heat
> >> a 3,000 square foot house so that a 1,000 square foot house using the
> >> neighbor's property as a wind break is a better deal.
> >>
> >> Example, the bus system in your provincial capital hauled 28 million
> >> riders last year. That's around 11,000 on a weekday. BARTA in
> Reading,
> >> PA had 3 million. Both cities have around 80,000 population. I
> remember
> >> standing downtown in Victoria BC in the evening rush hour in 2007 …
> crowds
> >> boarding buses at every corner. Unreal by US standards.
> >>
> >> And you guys want a real jolt? Calgary, Alberta has a population of
> >> about 1.1 million. Their total system ridership is about 548,000 fares
> >> (considering we need to ride in and out every day, that's one out of
> every
> >> four Calgarians rides mass transit). And 285,000 a day are on light
> rail
> >> trains!!!!!! That is the second highest light rail riding in North
> >> America. Yeah … go to Montana … middle of no where … turn right and
> go up
> >> the front range about 150 miles.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Nov 9, 2013, at 2:42 PM, TEP wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> On 09/11/2013 09:22, Herb Brannon wrote:
> >>>> ...........
> >>>> One the cloudy side, why doesn't PATransit try to get money to extend
> >> some
> >>>> of the Pittsburgh lines? The PAT management doesn't seem too
> interested
> >> in
> >>>> running a good transit system. Service levels are no where near what
> >> they
> >>>> were when I worked at PAT.......
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Because capital and operating subsidies come from different pockets.
> PAT
> >>> could build all it wants--but have no money to operate any new
> lines--or
> >>> the existing lines for that matter.
> >>>
> >>> I live in Vancouver. The Urban area is around the same population as
> >>> Greater Pittsburgh. Our three rail lines carry half a million
> passengers
> >>> a day. Peak headways down to four and six car trains every ninety
> >>> seconds. Service at least every five minutes until 1:15 am. Plus the 5
> >>> train peak only commuter rail. Use it or lose it.
> >>>
> >>> Tom Parkinson
> >>>
> >>> ADVISORY: The Telus spam filters may block legitimate email
> >>>
> >>> *Transport****Consulting**Limited *
> >>>
> >>> Tom Parkinson P.Eng, Vancouver BC Canada 604-733-5430, cell
> 604-733-5437
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Pittsburgh-railways mailing list
> >>> Pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
> >>> https://mailman.dementix.org/mailman/listinfo/pittsburgh-railways
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Pittsburgh-railways mailing list
> >> Pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
> >> https://mailman.dementix.org/mailman/listinfo/pittsburgh-railways
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Herb Brannon
> > *In Pittsburgh...*
> > *......the Greatest City In The U.S.*
> > Let's Go Pens
> > Let's Go Steelers
> >
> >
> >
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--
Herb Brannon
*In Pittsburgh...*
*......the Greatest City In The U.S.*
Let's Go Pens
Let's Go Steelers
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