Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Not sure what your quote has to do with anything.
Do you want me to outline the myriad ways that place matters when it comes to transit ridership? This isn't difficult stuff, folks.
1. LA has a greater population than Paris but like 1/30 the regional rail ridership. How about that for a start?
2. France has extremely expensive gas and extremely expensive toll roads everywhere; California has cheap gas and free roads.
3. France has the highest tax burden in the Eurozone, which pays for deeply subsidized transit; the U.S. has very low income taxes.
4. California has basically twice the household income as France. A huge proportion of French take transit because they have no other choice.
5. California is extremely sprawled and decentralized, France is hypercentralized in comparison, making rail service logical.
This will fail. It might get built, but it will never have strong ridership.
|
My household income is multiples of California’s, and I would never choose a 7 hour drive over a 2 hour (and 10 minutes, to be precise) train. Not even if tolls were eliminated and gas was free.
And anyway, leisure and business travellers are not a representative sample of the general population. Aside from students, there are few people taking a TGV (let alone the Eurostar) who couldn’t afford a car.
In fact, I would (and often do) pay a premium to take the train over flying. When you factor in travel time (and cost) to the airport, additional security procedures, checked baggage (not alone, but try getting a woman to travel for more than 3 days with carry-on), and potential delays, high speed rail is faster than flying up to at least 400 (and probably 500). It’s also more comfortable, and when was the last time you were on a plane with a bar car?
As for the “centralization” argument... of course, this has no bearing on the convenience of the train vs. flying. In fact when I get to Bordeaux, I’m picking up a rental car at the train station just as one would at the airport. All of the big train stations in Europe have locations for the major rental car companies.
When it comes to the train vs driving argument, I once might have agreed with you. But beyond the MASSIVE time savings involved (again, it’s a 2h10m train or a 7 hour drive), the need to have a car at your destination is quickly being eliminated by Uber. Self-driving cars are only going to make private cars more superfluous for leisure and business travellers alike.
You also picked a fairly bad example to argue... an Angeleno visiting SF isn’t going to want to pay for parking in the City, and a San Franciscan visiting LA probably doesn’t own a car and would have to rent one.
Prev
Linear Mode
