WHOA, lets look at these concepts closer - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

leathermang · #1 10-02-2004, 09:57 AM

Richard Eldridge, Spanish Professor, posted the following in a thread about the cost of diesel fuel :

1)"The Europeans pay so much for fuel because of taxes, but the taxes subsidize public transportation, which is far superior to the US method of having everyone drive his car everywhere.

2)For example, in Madrid, Spain, a ticket on the subway costs the non senior, non child about 60 cents. For this, he can go on the subway to within ten blocks to darn near anywhere in the entire Madrid Community, and wll not have to park. His trip will almost always take less than 45 minutes.

3)As a result of this, there are far fewer cars in Madrid, and therefore space is not wasted on parking them, so centuries old architectural teasures are not torn down to build parking garages and new apartment blocks with paking built in the the yuppies. Real estate costs less, because it is not rebuilt every 40 years or so, as it tends to be in the US.

4)The GDP in Spain is about a third of what it is in the US, but after riding around all over Madrid for two weeks, I never saw any slums even half as bad as what we have here in Miami, FL. There are a few camps of gypsies and immigrants living in old German trailers around the outskirts of town, but there are not legions of beer-sipping hostile young men hanging out in the streets. The streets are mostly clean and I had an impression that I was safe everywhere--more so than in Miami or Mexico City.

5)The relatively low price of gasoline raises all sorts of other problems: the much higher number of traffic fatalities, the spread of shoping from the city center to way out in the sticks and to unnecessary strip malls all over the place. Who needs car insurance if they have no car? Many, if not most of us Americans pay more for the insurance than for the fuel and even for the car, if we have older used vehicles.

6)I am pretty sure that if I lives in Madrid or Barcelona, I would have only one car and it would not get driven except for special occasions and recreation.

7)I spent a week in Barcelona, two in Madrid and did not see it necessary tro take a cab even once. There was a convenient train from the airport right into downtown in both cities.

8)Last winter, I was in Paris, and although the tickets were about 90 cents US, we did not need to take a cab even once, and took a bus only twice.

9)The fact is that Americans need their cars in US cities only because the cities have been designed to be convenient for cars more than for people.

10)If the French or the Spanish lowered the price on fuel, the result would be more far-out suburbs, increased expenses for insurance and more traffic accidents, as well as the destruction of fine old buildings that cannot be duplicated today."--Richard Eldridge
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I reserve the right to Delete, restart and accumulate answers in this thread in order to have a good discussion about this.....
First I hope people will list the variables which Richard has not taken into account when formulating his views....
For instance :
How many people live in the towns he mentioned ?
How much land area do those towns involve ?
Does culture play a role in how people choose where they live ?
Do geographic features affect population density ?

What is the relationship of the size of area served by a public transportation to the cost of providing a system which keeps the max travel time constant ?

By this I mean , if you try to make it where a commuter could get from any place in Houston to any other place in 45 minutes... how many buses, trains, taxis, would be needed... and how fast would they have to be traveling ? And how much would it cost to ride once you had made those capital investments ?

I suggest that doubling the diameter of a town increases the public transportation needs (to maintain same travel time) by many many times that.... take 20 miles across to 40 miles across as the example...

Does FREEDOM have any role in this discussion ?
Does EFFICIENCY have any role in this discussion ?

Rather than repeat his thread... please use the paragraph numbers I have inserted unless you trim the quote to exactly what you are speaking to....
thanks, have at it ....

leathermang · #2 10-02-2004, 10:06 AM

"the US method of having everyone drive his car everywhere."

This makes it sound like we looked at their system and then chose to be different....

How old is Spain ?

How big is Spain ?

Lewis and Clarke Expedition only happened 200 years ago... the Transcontental Railroad only 150 years ago....

How much depends on the age of the culture in a country BEFORE the Industrial Revolution happens to it ?

Native Americans were using DOGs to pull travois around before Europeans arrived... at what point in a civilization does the question change from " where do you want to go" to " how are we as a group going to provide transportation for all our individuals paid for by the tribe? " and available 24/7 to anywhere ?

Mayans..... with a calendar more accurate than European's.... DID NOT INVENT THE WHEEL......

Gurkha · #3 10-02-2004, 10:07 AM

Very nicely written Leathermang, sadly though even with all the logical points you raise, it will generally land on deaf ears.

One of the biggest and most damaging things we do in the US and I did that quite often too is to go for grocery shopping, short starts in cold and then abrupt shut downs, considering all these, it is a miracle that engines last over 100,000 miles, but aside that point, how about the fuel wastage, oil wastage and general release of un-necessary emission.

leathermang · #4 10-02-2004, 10:15 AM

Perhaps as renewable fuels provide more and more of our power people will start keeping their block heaters on all the time... which I have suggested for longer engine life in other threads.... as time goes by our parts cars/parts will get harder and harder to find....

KCampbell · #5 10-02-2004, 10:42 AM

It is really impossible, and somewhat pointless, to attempt to compare the US with Europe in this regard.

If you look at the areas of the US that were developed first by colonists, such as Boston, New York, etc, you will find a public transport infrastructure and housing density not radically different from that in a major European city. This shouldn't be a surprise, there was little private transportation and people had to live close to their place of work.

The further West one travels, the more recent is the development of land for housing. The affordable automobile enabled the suburbs. The 50's were a time of expansion and optimism and one of the visible signs was the ownership of a car and a house on a larger lot. Cities were crowded and dirty and now everyone could escape to comparatively rural areas yet still get to work easily. The pace of expansion was rapid and no one saw any need to include train service in the plans, since everyone could have a car!

Step forward 50 years and we've painted ourselves into a corner. The more affordable housing is further from the urban centers, and so private transportation is a must. Suburban sprawl spreads houses out to such an extent that a bus service struggles to have sufficient passenger density on a route, leading to more transfers and less frequent service. No one is willing to tolerate a train service in their back yard, and the costs of land acquisition make it impractical in any event.

Different solutions will work for different places, what works in Madrid probably won't work in the Greater Puget Sound Metro area (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, Everett, Kent etc). My personal solution is to leave for work at 5:35am to miss the worst of traffic, but even returning home at 3pm the I405 freeway is stop and go. Public transport could get me to work for a reasonable price (about $1 each way) but it would take 90 minutes compared to the 25 it takes me to drive, and I'd still have to travel 3 miles to the bus stop.

If we paid more for fuel our streets might be filled with the small, efficient, clean, diesel cars that Europe has. We might have ultra low sulfur "city diesel". On our last trip to Scotland we rented a Ford Galaxy, essentially the same thing as a VW Sharan. It sat 7 people in comfort and was great to drive, I got 36 miles per US gallon. Replace an SUV with one of these and you'll be using a third of the fuel each year that you do now. I almost don't care what they do with the incremental tax revenue, it would be worth it to bring some sanity to our vehicle purchasing here in the US.

Everyone has the freedom to choose to drive whatever they want, but that doesn't mean dumb choices shouldn't be expensive :p

Kevin

leathermang · #6 10-02-2004, 10:53 AM

Good post.....

R Leo · #7 10-02-2004, 11:20 AM

I'm a HUGE fan of public transportation but I gotta say, this is dangerously close to a serious topic

psfred · #8 10-02-2004, 11:21 AM

It's actually simpler than that. In the 1950s, GM in particular, but Ford and Chrylser too, conspired with the tire manufacturers and the major oil companies to buy up and eliminate public transit systems in order to sell more cars. GM, Goodyear, and Standard Oil of Indiana (IFRC) were convicted of this, paid a $5000 fine.

They were also the main backers of the Interstate Highway system, which I have come to consider cancer in it's most malignant form. Give me a decent train system, I'll gladly forgo driving on trips!

LA used to have the best public transit system in the world, sold to GM in 1958, gone by 1962.

Local zoning laws were changed (by intensive lobbying by real estate interests and the automotive companies) to "modernize" them to favor urban sprawl over intellegent planning, and temporary construction over permanent (I do not consider sheetmetal building permanent construction). This has resulted in horrible traffic congestion, smog (not all that much better than 30 years ago), tremendous waste of fuel and other resources, and real estate inflation beyond belief. In most places it's now illegal to have "mixed" communities -- that means, of course, you HAVE to drive enormous distances to get to the grocery, doctor, work, or school as such things are not allowed in residential areas, nor are apartments near single family homes. Compare this to the older (pre 1950) suburbs near major cities, where the main street would have officies, apartments, stores, etc AND a tram or subway line to the city, with single family homes on either side. Schools were centrally located, kids walked there without crossing major streets, everyone walked to the buss or tram or subway to get to work in the city, works VERY well.

Now we have to drive a dozen miles four times a day to do ANYTHING -- no one drives just a half mile anymore! 100 mile a day commutes are nothing.

We will pay for this, as Europe will not have to cough up the vast sums of tax money to install intellegent energy efficient transportation, they already have it. We, instead, have squandered mind boggling sums of money on highways, all of which will be completely useless in a few years (except as very good foundations for railroads).

Freedom has nothing to do with it, it's all marketing. We spend so much more to have personal automobiles it staggers the mind.

Peter

leathermang · #9 10-02-2004, 11:27 AM

RLeo, Richard's post was in a ' cost of diesel ' rant thread....
I am trying to point out the factors which were not included in the price of diesel which apply to our situation....
You live in one of the worst Road Planning ( or lack of ) Cities in the US...

leathermang · #10 10-02-2004, 11:33 AM

Freedom and Efficiency do have something to do with this...
If I needed to go to Austin and go to four places for parts.... I could not do that with public transportation.. not enough time in the day....
With my manual 240 I can do it in half a day...