What light rail will do for Detroit

[Stosh]

Absolutely








Nothing. Seriously.

[professorscott]

That first bit is silly, Hermod, though your second point is correct. Mass transit is very "green" compared to the most common mode of transportation in metro Detroit - the private automobile with 1 to 2 occupants. The crucial question is not how much energy is expended in moving a vehicle [[or where the energy comes from), since nobody is driving the car in order to move the car. The crucial question is how much energy is expended in moving each person, since it is the people we are trying to move.

By the way, if any of you are engineers or engineering-minded, there are massive gains yet to be realized in automobile efficiency, since just about 1% of the gasoline your car uses is expended in transporting you.

But public transportation is very efficient in terms of how much energy is used to move the people, compared to a car. Now, some of you living near the remote ends of a SMART bus line might think the bus is running empty, since near the remote ends they do. But overall SMART and DDOT's average passenger loads represent much less energy use than if all those people were riding in one or two person cars, and rail transit typically does even better [[much better) than that.

Now as to your other point, yes. Metro Detroit funds transit at about 1/3 the level [[per capita) of regions of similar size, density and population. If we want decent transit, we will have to pay for it, and we means we.

Cheers,
Prof. Scott

[Hermod]

That first bit is silly, Hermod, though your second point is correct. Mass transit is very "green" compared to the most common mode of transportation in metro Detroit - the private automobile with 1 to 2 occupants. The crucial question is not how much energy is expended in moving a vehicle [[or where the energy comes from), since nobody is driving the car in order to move the car. The crucial question is how much energy is expended in moving each person, since it is the people we are trying to move.

But, Professor, the same thing operates for freight and that is possible right now without any massive infusion of taxpayer dollars. All it would take is a government ukase to discourage the use of the single driver and prime mover moving the single container [[semitrailer).

We have the freight rail net in place already. Just require that highway demons can only operate from point of origin to the nearest intermodal yard. The container then uses the rails with two or three diesel engines to move a couple of hundred containers rather than one diesel engine [[and driver) to a container. The highway demon then picks the container up from the intermodal and delivers it a few miles to the destination.

Plus, the intercity highways would last much, much longer without the constant pounding of the big trucks.

[killthebeer]

street cars. I'd support the sort of slapped together stuff you see in Cuba and other places, too. In fact, encourage it. Heck of a lot cheaper to pull and old bus back end with a truck, for a few thousand dollars, than spend billions on light rail that is never going to get paid for.

we all need to slow our roll, or all these reasons for going green won't matter, because GHGs will have messed things up too badly.