response 50 of 158:

Apr 21 18:57 UTC 2002

You are allowed to take bikes on the DC Metro. You just arent allowed 
to take the bikes on the escalators at the stations.

response 54 of 158:

Apr 22 04:46 UTC 2002

BART stations have both stairs and escallators.  Bikes aren't supposed to be
allowed on the escallators, but are on the stairs.  I think some stations
enforce the escallator ban more than others.  I don't take my bike on BART
while commuting, since the walk from home to the BART station isn't very long,
and there's a BART station right in front of my office building, but when
going elsewhere in San Francisco, particularly when there's a big event that
has everything jammed, taking the bike on BART is amazingly useful.  I've also
been taking the bike on BART to get to group rides I would probably otherwise
end up driving to the starts of.

Due to the dot com crash, parking in downtown San Francisco has gotten
somewhat cheaper, and driving in during my usually off-peak commute times
would probably now be faster than BART on some days, but the ability to sit
on BART and read makes the BART ride well worth doing.  Hopefully, commuter
rail in Michigan would find enough riders who would want to ride it for the
same reason.

During my Michigan car commute days, I certainly spent a lot of time sitting
in traffic jams, so it does seem there's a traffic congestion problem there.
I"m skeptical that two train rides in each direction per rush hour would do
much to alleviate it, but it sounds like a step in the right direction.

I was trying to figure out at one point how many lanes of traffic would be
needed to replace BART.  If each BART car has 64 seats, and a lot of people
ride BART standing up in peak times, I'm assuming the capacity of a BART car
is about 100 people.  At 10 cars per train, that's 1,000 people per train.
If each of those people were driving a car, that means 1,000 additional cars
would be being driven for each train.  Assuming in real world conditions a
traffic lane can have a car pass every two seconds (my drivers' ed teacher
said to always leave at least three or four seconds between cars, I think),
it would take at least 2,000 seconds (33 minutes) for all those people to get
through a lane of traffic if they were driving.  Since trains cross the bay
in each direction every three minutes or so in peak times, BART presumably
keeps CalTrans from having to build 10 additional lanes in each direction (so
20 additional lanes total) on the Bay Bridge.  Even on the lines (after it
branches out in Oakland) where BART only runs every 15 minutes, that would
be two lanes of traffic in each direction.  When put in those terms, rail
transit suddenly seems a lot less expensive.

response 56 of 158:

Apr 22 18:46 UTC 2002

I don't know where the German hydrogen comes from.  Probably lots of different
sources as this is still experimental.  Gasoline was one, coal I think
another.

Bikes are allowed on Ann Arbor commuter buses.  In the Netherlands there is
sheltered free bike parking at the train stations so you can leave one bike
at each end of your trip.

When is the ANn Arbor/Lansing service likely to start?

response 60 of 158:

Apr 23 05:28 UTC 2002

Sindi, I wouldn't schedule any trips on the commuter train to Lansing
just yet.  Here's a story from the Detroit News:
 
http://detnews.com/2002/livingston/0203/13/d05l-434484.htm
 
$80 million in startup costs, 60% paid by the Federal government;
$9 million annual running costs, and only **2.6%** of that would 
be covered by fares.   Projected Lansing->Detroit one way fare is $12.
 
A web site promoting the service is at  http://www.ontrack21.org
says the plan is to start the service in 2005.

response 62 of 158:

Apr 24 00:48 UTC 2002

Re #60:  The costs are on the order of *$500 per ride*?!?!!

Who in their right mind proposed that?  It's got to be cheaper to
re-build I-96 to 8 lanes than to pay for train service at that rate.

response 64 of 158:

Apr 24 02:35 UTC 2002

The article states that fares are only going to cover 2.6% of the 
operating expenses. $12/ride/.026 = $461.54/ride. I can't believe that 
anyone in his or her right mind would propose something like this.

These things all sound good, but rarely do they work as well as people 
think. For example, the website touts that 91% think the commuter rail 
line is a good idea, but none of the respondents were told how much it 
was going to cost or how it was going to be financed. Is that a stupid 
survey or what?

People also have a way too optimistic view of the service. In the 
article, a guy in Howell is quoted as saying, "It would be good to have 
a station in Howell. I would probably use it to save on gas and parts 
on my vehicle. I could use it to go to a sports event at Joe Louis 
Arena, or to a mall in Lansing." He may be able to go to a mall in 
Lansing, but he's never going to be able to take it to an evening event 
at Joe Louis. It's not going to run that late at night.

response 66 of 158:

Apr 24 03:38 UTC 2002

Either the information we're getting is inaccurate, or the proposal is insane.

At $12/ride, it's priced out of the range of the only people in SE Michigan
who actually need it (except for keesan, who's special).

response 68 of 158:

Apr 24 06:13 UTC 2002

I would hope that once they've shown it can be done, they'd start running
trains often and late enough for them to be useful.  Every other commuter rail
line I'm familiar with does so.  Then again, this one would be in Michigan...

response 70 of 158:

Apr 24 16:42 UTC 2002

Someone calculated recently that it would have been cheaper to pay for a
taxi ride for everyone who used the People Mover last year than to actually
pay to run it.

response 72 of 158:

Apr 24 21:09 UTC 2002

Yes, but I think that $0.37/mile the IRS figures includes things that you'd
have to pay for even if you *didn't* drive to Lansing, like insurance, and
the depreciation of the car.  Both of those are things you'd have to pay for
even if you took the train, since it's impractical to go completely carless.

A more honest figure for the marginal cost of driving to Lansing would be to
include only milage-based maintenance items (oil, brakes, tune-ups, timing
belt) and fuel.  The per-mile cost of almost all of those except fuel is
vanishingly small.  (Oil, ~$20 for a change every 3,000 miles is $0.007 per
mile; timing belt change, ~$500 every 100,000 miles is $0.005/mile.)

response 74 of 158:

Apr 24 21:31 UTC 2002

Re: 62, 64, 70 - that's the Lionel Lobby at work.  Whenever you see millions
of dollars of government money being bandied about, it's a fair guess to pin
it on them.  Think of all the construction and maintenance jobs that will be
created, though!!