[ExI] mass transit again

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 6:44 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> ... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
> ...
>
> On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 02:02:39AM -0800, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> >> The main problem with most mass transit is that it is less fuel
> efficient
> by far than even private cars with only one person in them...
>
> >Apart from higher street density (transport capacity) issues this strikes
> me as extremely inplausible. Do you have references for this?...-- Eugen*
> Leitl
>
> Samantha is one of the locals; she and I regularly witness a phenomenon
> which constantly reinforces this notion: buses and trains with exactly two
> people on board, with one of these at the controls.  We regularly see the
> electric trains that the voters just had to have (to save the planet)
> backing up traffic for 300 meters, with exactly two persons on board, one
> at
> the controls.


If you put electric trains where they are needed, they will be used. In my
city a light rail electric line opened some months ago, after an enormous
amount of debates and newspaper articles about its uselessness and how it
would always be empty. It has now about 1 million riders / month, which is
an average of 86 per journey, with a train every five minutes. I believe
that this number is understated, since when I have taken it, it was always
packed, no matter what time it was (here's an image:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Test_of_tramway_of_Florence_2.png )


We have a most wonderful fleet of fuel cell buses, belching pristine sparkly
> white clouds of steam as they motor about the bay, nearly devoid of actual
> passengers, saving the planet with each puff of non-carbon dioxide
> containing emissions.  Commonly known as zero emissions vehicles, we
> engineering types prefer to call them emissions-elsewhere traffic blockers.
> They are so very efficient at emitting emissions in Nevada somewhere, while
> devouring all those carbon-containing tax dollars.
>

Fuel cell? Sounds too expensive. Just use natural gas powered buses. The
tech is simple, and burning is much cleaner than diesel ones. Common opinion
is that a natural gas internal combustion engine is less powerful than an
equivalent gas or diesel, but the local bus company only converted the
largest buses to natural gas, leaving the rest as diesels. And they don't
seem to suffer from lack of pick-up, on the contrary...

Alfio
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