Speaking of trains, the horrific train wreck in L.A. last Friday came as ridership on the region's rail network was on the rise, The New York Times reports.
Los Angeles has long been known for its car-choked freeways. But after gas prices in California rose to more than $4.50 a gallon over the last several months, more people here have begun to use public transportation. People who commute between Los Angeles and the suburbs of Ventura, Long Beach and three inland counties have traded $60 or more in monthly gas bills for $17 monthly Metrolink passes and climbed aboard. In late June, Metrolink reported a record number of train riders in a single day, 50,232.
Rational or not, some of those new train riders may now be frightened back into their cars.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to reassure a potentially jittery public: "I think it is very important for people to know that even though we've had this tragedy, this way of traveling, metro trains and all of those, is the best and safest way to travel." (Of course, Schwarzenegger himself commutes by private jet.)
For public transportation to survive, we all need to ... drive more?
Does Schwarzenegger care more about tea partiers or the planet?
Comments
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:49 am
17 Sep 2008
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wreckenhavoc Posted 11:26 am
17 Sep 2008
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KenG Posted 12:09 pm
17 Sep 2008
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Delay And Deny Posted 12:15 pm
17 Sep 2008
Yes, but think of the much fewer people who ride trains. Wonder what the relative odds are...
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wreckenhavoc Posted 12:22 pm
17 Sep 2008
Jabailo- those relative odds are probably very scary man! Good point.
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:47 pm
17 Sep 2008
Therefore, whether or not the vehicle crashes is completely out of your hands.
This uncertainty creates doubt.
Doubt creates fear.
_
It's kinda similar to terrorism.
It's not really a mortal threat at all.
HOWEVER because you have no control over it, and it could theoretically happen at any moment. That seemingly everpresent anxiety scares people.
-David Ahlport
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Michael Hoexter Posted 4:59 pm
17 Sep 2008
Barring the expense of building a dedicated passenger rail system, improved signaling would go a long way to preventing this type of accident.
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vakibs Posted 6:47 pm
17 Sep 2008
Yes, but think of the much fewer people who ride trains. Wonder what the relative odds are...
Jabiolo.. I was about to kick myself.. how come you make such a sound and solid argument !
But then I realized.. 100 people die "every single day" on auto collisions on the road. As you know, train crashes like the LA train crash won't happen every single day. More like one every year or every couple of years.
Now calculate the relative odds, my friend.
Public transit in general, rapidly reduces accidents. Not just trains, even buses reduce accidents a lot when they use dedicated lanes. This is commonsense. And this is the reason why in Bogota Colombia they preferred buses in the first place, to reduce accidents.
Gotcha ?
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:49 am
18 Sep 2008
OK, here is a nice readable table of fatalities by mode for 2006:
Commuter rail: 85
Heavy rail: 23 (I think this is just subways, not passenger rail, but I'm not sure)
Light rail: 17
Buses: 94
Total: 227 (there were a few deaths from some miscellaneous modes)
So I know you're gonna ask, "What about passenger miles?", which is from here:
Commuter rail: 9,102,553,926
Heavy rail: 4,681,146,806
Light rail: 1,806,248,516
Buses: 17,654,709,436
Apparently fatality rates are measured by fatalities per 100,000,000 miles, so cars are around 1.5. So buses are about .5, commuter rail a little less than 1, light rail a little less than 1, heavy rail about .5
However, I guess I would argue that 1) even if these rates scaled up, you'd still be saving tens of thousands of lives per year, 2) Maybe if you looked at European stats, where you have more miles, you would see that the rates fall as miles increase, and 3) realistically, a transportation system that used mostly public transit would need radically less passenger miles, thus saving lives.
By the way, cars have about 3,000 billion passenger miles.
I'm not even sure where the fatalities for rail come from, much of it may be from people improperly crossing tracks. A couple of other points:
The Japanese Shinkansen "bullet train" system, after billions of passenger miles, has never had a single fatality. The Metrolink accident was completely and totally preventable, as noted above.
The infrastructure in this country is in pathetic shape, and the lack of safety features in the US rail system is one example
As Michael explained, there is no way passenger and freight systems should share the same tracks
Metrolink is a separate from Amtrak.
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mihan Posted 3:45 am
18 Sep 2008
The vast majority of car accidents are caused by factors that are not in control of the driver. It's weather, or an animal, or another driver... the illusion of control is just an illusion.
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Russ Posted 3:59 am
18 Sep 2008
I bet whatever the proximate factor is, in most cases the crash is made worse by speeding, voluntary distractions, etc., or could've been prevented altogether if it wasn't for these things. So it's still mostly within your control.
Regarding animals - there's a factoid somewhere in Stephen King where he has a cop saying that there's always a certain number of one-car driver-only fatal crashes where no cause can be found (and the victim obviously can't tell you anything), and that they theorize that it's sometimes caused by a wasp in the car or something like that.
I wonder if that's true.
(There's lots of stuff like that in King, where unless you're knowledgeable you can't tell if it's true or if he just made it up.)
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:09 am
18 Sep 2008
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