[ExI] mass transit again

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 9:53 PM, MB <mbb386 at main.nc.us> wrote:

>
> >
> > 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)
> >
>
> That is very nice!  It runs smoothly and does not shake the cathedral and
> other
> lovely old buildings?
>

It actually causes much less vibrations than the buses it replaces, and the
ride inside is very smooth. But it stops at the railway station, and does
not get to the cathedral. That's the job for line #2, assuming the original
design survives the umpteenth wave of criticism.


Running every 5 minutes sounds useful. Question: if one is coming in from
> the
> countryside, where can one safely park an automobile in order to use the
> train *in*
> town?  Years ago I took the train to work, parking near the station in the
> small
> town and walking from the station in the city to the office.
>

The car parking at the tramway terminal is still under construction. It will
be integrated with the A1 exit of Scandicci. I have no idea of how long it
will take to complete it, in Italy these things can drag on for a long time.
Apart from that, the tramway was designed for use by the commuters living in
the south-west part of Florence, and does not have good car parkings along
the route, except at the terminal in front of the main railway station. The
route does intersect the in-town part of Fi-Pi-Li (see the map:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mappa_tram_Firenze.png ), but then you are
already too close to the center to have hope of finding a decent parking
spot. Taking the train, if possible, is still the best option.

 Alfio
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110120/1e9a2ccb/attachment.html>