LA struggling to change its DNA

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Wezil


We keep talking about a Quebec City - Windsor line (longer than 190 miles) and costs under $10 Billion are tossed about.

France found a way. Maybe others could too.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by DanS
Indeed, Manhattan's commuting times are better than the boroughs. On the other hand, Manhattan's commute times are higher than LA's, as just one example.

The point here is that high density is not a cure for high commute times. It is easy to imagine why this is so -- you have to walk to the train, you have to wait for your train, the train doesn't take you precisely where you need to go, etc.

NYC's transportation infrastructure is bad, but it's better than all other US systems in moving people around. And the 2nd avenue subway line is costing over a billion dollars a mile.

All further demonstration that urban living is fundamentally much more expensive than suburban and rural living.

One of the reasons that commuting times are longer in US cities is that public transportation there is worse than those in other parts of the world. When I was staying in the DC area for a bit dealing with the subways there was much more annoying and time-consuming than in the Seoul area, and DC has one of the better rail systems in America that I've been to. Seoul's is also clearly better than NY's and Seoul is significantly poorer than NY.

Also I save a stack of money but not having to own a car.

But the big thing for me is that I can read a book on the subway and I can't read a book while driving a car. I like reading books and it's hard to put a dollar sign on that

Also right on the outskirts of Seoul you get forested hills and farms, so its very easy to do a nice weekend outing to somewhere green if you go pretty much any direction from Seoul. Less sprawl is good for that too and its hard to put a dollar sign on that either.

[DanS]

How long's your commute, door-to-door?

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by DanS


You think my stats had problems? So tell me, what's the difference between a principal city and a micropolitan statistical area.

Like I said, just look at the counties. It's easier and more useful that way. New York is a great example that everybody knows well.

Yeah, but it's also an outlier. It's by far the most extreme case of urbanization. It's also not clear to me that it's the best planned city. (Though I wonder what the congestion charge would do to that commute time.)

Exactly, like how San Francisco county's is less than Fulton county, Georgia (Atlanta), even though it has more than 10x the population density.

People live in Fulton (Ok... technically I lived in Fulton for 4.5 years.) Fulton is a very wierdly shaped county, which includes some suburbs on both the north and south side. Fulton actually annexed a small bankrupt county some decades ago, leading to the odd shape.

Further example (Indiana):
Marion County 22.1 +/-0.5

Hamilton County 25.1 +/-1.0

Marion is Indianapolis's county (also squarish), Hamilton is the county immediately to the north, and home of some of the richer suburbs. (Basically, Carmelites are suckers.)

There are lots of parameters; not only those. Suffice it to say that as the density increases, the cost per mile increases.

But the number of miles decreases, and quite possibly the product of the two decreases.

[Victor Galis]

Further numbers from within a single metro area:

Fulton County 28.0 +/-0.8 (Atlanta)

Northern suburbs:

Cobb County 29.7 +/-0.6
DeKalb County 30.2 +/-0.8
Gwinnett County 31.5 +/-0.7

Though... if you really want to poke holes in my argument, DeKalb is actually over 50% more densely populated than Fulton, Cobb is something like 25% more.

Ok... now I'm just having fun with statistics.

For the record Marion County, IN is more densely populated than Cobb and Fulton (though slightly less than Dekalb) and has way lower commute times.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by DanS
How long's your commute, door-to-door?

Just north of half an hour door to door.

Of course all of my company's clients are filthy rich so the housing by my job is stupidly expensive. Right now I live near the center of the city but I can't afford to live in the area by the business district where the filthy rich people are.

I used to live out in a satellite city but there weren't enough rich people there for there to be good jobs, so I had an hour commute to the city.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Oerdin


France found a way. Maybe others could too.

We won't actually build it. We talk about this but there is a much more solid plan for $20B worth of new highways and upgrades.

I was just stunned that a certain poster didn't think you could build a high speed line with $3 trillion.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Wezil
I was just stunned that a certain poster didn't think you could build a high speed line with $3 trillion.

No, that's not what I said. He didn't/doesn't have any idea what it would cost, even on an order of magnitude basis. So I called him on it.

[pchang]

Census Commute Times

must also be combined with local knowledge of commute patterns. In the Los Angeles area, people from Ventura county do not often commute to Los Angeles. However, people from Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange counties often commute to Los Angeles.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by DanS


No, that's not what I said. He didn't/doesn't have any idea what it would cost, even on an order of magnitude basis. So I called him on it.

Well sure, I saw that but come on, surely $3T could build a rather lengthy and nice high speed line. I know the studies aren't done but even if the studies cost $3T it is arguably money better spent than on the Iraq fiasco.

[Colon™]

The lame attempt to insert Iraq in a discussion over urban development should actually have been ignored from the start.

[Zkribbler]

Re: Census Commute Times

Originally posted by pchang
must also be combined with local knowledge of commute patterns. In the Los Angeles area, people from Ventura county do not often commute to Los Angeles. However, people from Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange counties often commute to Los Angeles.

There's a commuter train that starts in Ventura and runs to downtown L.A. The 126 and the Simi Valley Fwy are lousy with Venturites* commuting to L.A.

____________
*I made this word up.