I agree with the premise but we need to advance the infrastructure concepts to the 21st century.

Rail as it was designed in 1850 is really obsolete.

What we need is a new infrastructure that supports both public and private vehicles and that uses the energy efficiency of rails metal on metal and reduced frontal profile for lower drag and that allows completely automatic driving so we save tens of thousands of lives each year. We also need to reduce the mass that needs to be accelerated and decelerated by reducing the size of the cars themselves. Think PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) adapted for both short and long-haul use.

There is no reason we shouldn't be able to go vertical as well to carry the equivalent of a 10 lane highway in the footprint of a single lane.

Further, we should have constant speed highways to completely avoid all congestion. The technology is  relatively easy for this.

The technology to do this has been around for 20 years or more.

- Curtis

...to commute from fairfax to DC if everyone had 20mph electric cars, drive to a parking structure a few miles away from home, get on some kind of rail into DC, with easy transfer to the metro, as it is currently?

If you think highways are expensive, millions a mile and about 7 million an overpass, try rail of any kind. Good comment about laying metal-on-metal rail systems, which cost many millions more a mile. Hey let's really blow our wad and get Mag-Lev everywhere for tens of billions for just a starter kit?

I've written and blogged about this many times.  Dallas and LA tried rail transit and the congestion got worse. The issue with old city mass rail transit is simply to keep them from falling apart!

And that's the rub. Our country went on a building spree and we forgot to invest in the old bridges, rail lines, and stuff mysteriously called "infrastructure." A bridge in Minnesota fell into the water not too long ago. About 70 percent of our bridges are beyond their useful life or have structural problems. Folks, we have to maintain what we have today before we have these Jetson visions of the future.
-sam

Onward through the fog

Obviously, any new transit system is going to be considerably more advanced than what we had in 1850.   Under the umbrella of rail, different cities have deployed a wide variety of light, heavy, and intercity technologies, which will only continue to improve as investments in rail grow worldwide.

Jon, I'm not sure quite what you're getting at. There are plenty of different configurations imaginable, but I have to say it's more likely we'll see significant expansions of mass transit and intercity rail within the next ten years then market penetration by personal electric vehicles. Another related point: transit oriented development--dense growth around rail nodes--can make a lot of trips walkable. That's one of the chief benefits.

And Sam, you've trotted out two tired old transit fallacies. Yes, a mile of transit costs more than a mile of highway. So what? One lane of rail carries at least six times the capacity of a lane of highway, at a fraction of the energy and emissions cost. And if you wonder why transit doesn't eliminate congestion where it's built, you have to look at the funding disparity between highways and transit, and you have to look at the economics of driving. Roads get billions more than transit, and drivers are heavily subsidized. We should be surprised that the pittance given to transit didn't solve all our problems?

Dense cities are the principle transportation problem in the network.   Land use laws, such as those in Washington, prevent the natural dispersement of low density housing and commercial districts...i.e., small towns.

jabailo, that's the last thing we should do.  Where do ya think the bulk of America's traffic comes from?  It's from suburbanites who commute to the city for work everyday.  If they lived close enough that their work was within walking distance, or they could take city transit systems, then they wouldn't haveta drive as much.

Suburban development causes traffic jams by squeezing the vast bulk of traffic onto a few main arteries that enter/exit the city all at concentrated times/capacities during the rush hours.

In centralizied cities, the trafiic is actually more spread out, since the bulk of the people aren't tryin' to get on a relatively small number of roads all at the same time in an attempt to enter/leave the city.

What we should do is encourage development (or rather re-development), that uses high-density and mixed uses so people can have living, work, shopping, entertainment, and recreation all within a relatively short distance of each other.

...(sp?) about electric vehicles.  I remember living in Montclair NJ, where I took the commuter train that did not run on the weekends, and ran about once an hour -- and they need new yards at Penn Station.  So what went up?  A huge concrete parking structure at the train station.  So unfortunately, rail into suburbs will require lots of big parking lots to accomodate the cars -- but I guess that's the price that needs to be paid.  If everybody had very small cars, it wouldn't be as big of a problem, but c'est la vie.

rail into suburbs will require lots of big parking lots to accomodate the cars

Not if the rail stations are within walking/biking distance, or are connected to a suburban bus system.

Even if they aren't, those cars would take up just as much space at their final destinations anyway, and this way, at least they wouldn't haveta drive as far/much to get there.

...and he even mentions parking lot structures, which I seem to have stumbled into, wanting to restrict Federal funding of those to 40%, with 90% funding of bicycle rail and ride structures.  

By the way Tasermons (and may I complement you on your use of apostrophes?), the bicycleness of the paths to the train would have to be radically upgraded in most towns, it seems to me -- to get back to my Montclair example, there's a pretty heavily trafficked road in the middle of town that is difficult for pedestrians to cross, I never even tried to bike there.  

...but the bicycle-friendliness of most communities is another (though tied-in) issue entirely.

Really waht's needed is a combination of mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian friendly development (and re-development) all linked together, as you stated.

Where a lot of people live, public transportation is very under used. And so not very efficient. Another possibility is ride sharing. Of course that demands a lot of willing and motivated people. Today we have websites which could greatly facilitate that. Gasoline prices should supply the motivation, double that or more in wear and tear on the vehicles. If you drive on fifth your car lasts up to five times longer.

Another problem is that people are not allowed to make a living of giving rides. Reduced problems with licensing would be a great help. Also the ability of people to sign a waiver so as not to bankrupt the driver if something happens.