Make it fully automated, self driving, on controlled trackways with entry and exit on the opposite sides of cars.
Why? They do it with elevators don't they? I recall when all elevators had operators - yes a person in the car to push the floor button.
This evolved from old systems with a hand operated cable line with a window the operator put his hand into to pull up/down and to level the car. This led to elevator operator unions, and strikes - which led to fully automated push button elevators when the unions got whiney and greedy.
Operators were getting $50,000+ for riding and pushing buttons. .
So the were all left out in the cold and courts supported automated elevators.
Then there were the movie projector operators, relics of the carbon arc in the old days. Now fully automated digital projection rules this work place,
For working example, see Singapore. That being said automated systems still require maintenance and maintenance engineers could get unionized and still have similar impacts.
Singapore is also lucky in that the planners matched the routes with actual transit demand (not hard when it's a small island). I think the only realistic way that the US is going to have good public transit is when city operators allow privatized public transit. Singapore's lines, for example, until this year were privatized companies competing for contracts - one of the companies was nationalized, so who knows moving forward... But in any case, Singapore is the cleanest, fastest public transport system in the world, and is considerably cheaper than any in the US.
Mass transit is just like any other capital intensive fixed industry — they tend to go out of business a lot without implicit or explicit subsidy. Most of the New York City MTA system was built out of the ashes of defunct rail and bus companies that were devastated by inflation, bad business decisions, inability to handle maintenance costs or inability to raise capital.
Today most US mass transit is controlled by public authorities which are like a .gov/corporate hybrid.
Telecom has similar problems, but went a different route, where AT&T was able to secure a monopoly to build out the network in exchange for public utility status and some regulatory strings. Since privatization, telecom has gone back to that model to deliver long-term profit, gobbling up cable and media. Except this time they are dumping the public utility part.
I do deliveries to some buildings that still have freight elevator operators, in a USA city.
I don't know what they are paid, but it is worth every penny for them to manage the elevators. There is not enough "supply" of freight elevator in most tall buildings, so these operators distribute the capacity to the dozens / hundreds of people needing to use the elevator each day.
$50k per year is a bargain for all the time they save for the thousands of deliveries and other uses each year.
If you have experience in this area, then I should not say this: it's easy to criticize some work as useless when one is totally ignorant of the problem space. But buildings don't hire these operators as a charity.
And I'd like to add that I am really skeptical of replacing this job with software, considering that facilities management in these buildings always seems to be barely holding it together.
I think a $50k employee can be more responsive / adaptable than a computer program whose administrative credentials are misplaced 2 weeks after installation. And probably cheaper, too.
The BART system is designed to be fully automatic. However each train still has drivers. The reason is because of of other people. Here are a few instances where a human operator has been able to do things an automated system would struggle with.
Able bodied individuals weren't leaving the priority seating to make room for a disabled person. So the operator first reminded people to make room. After that failed he threatened to leave his cab and make someone leave their seat. A computer couldn't do that. At worst it could halt the train until the cops showed up, which would probably be a sub-optimal way to handle asshole passengers.
There was police activity causing a halt to all train service. As a result the operator manually connected their train with one that was already in the station so the passengers could leave.
Another situation involved a sick passenger. The paramedics forgot to alert the operator they had picked up the passenger, so the operator had to verify everything was taken care of before departing. In an emergency the paramedics may not have the time or ability to coordinate with central control or whoever oversees the system.
$10 billion of urban transit spending won’t fundamentally fix the problem in Nashville because so, so many people commute in from out of the county because of white flight. We need regional transit solutions but they won’t happen because
1.) The suburban counties currently reap all the economic benefits with none of the costs (transit)
2.) The wealthier suburban counties (Williamson) don’t want people (read: anyone that isn’t rich and white) from Davidson County coming into their county.
3.) The extremely republican dominated state government isn’t going to spend any money on infrastructure for the main democratic stronghold of the state.
Only thing that I would imagine would fix it would be 1.) An expansive light rail and BRT network going out to several of the suburban counties
2.) Congestion charges
3.) fixing the damn schools so people want to live in this county and don’t commute
4.) fix the horrible urban bus system so you don’t have to go downtown first before you can go anywhere else
And the way to get all that is amalgamation so that the suburban counties who benefit from an urban core without paying for it actually start paying for it...
For what it's worth, I think attributing it to white flight is a little misleading. Davidson County is certainly more diverse than the other counties in the metro region, but most of the people I know who live outside of Davidson County do so because of the schools. I'm close friends with a few Nashville Metro teachers, and I think that issues within Metro stem mostly from lack of funding.
As for the support from outside Nashville proper, I think that all of my friends and coworkers who live outside the city have much more to gain from a transit system that extends outside the county. My commute is pretty reasonable, a consistent 15-20 minutes. My coworkers in Williamson, Rutherford, or Cheatham Counties all have significantly longer commutes. I'm not saying support is a given, but for all the people who talk about Nashville turning into Atlanta, it's not those of us who live inside Davidson County that have the most to lose.
I'm rich and white living in Williamson county. I moved here when I wasn't rich (but still white) because Franklin (seat of Williamson County) is a great place to live.
I would welcome rail from here to Nashville, I don't get up there much primarily due to traffic. I've lived in many places, including Manhattan and San Francisco, and I sorely miss the convenience of the train.
Simply put, rapid transit would be great for commerce in Nashville and it would either alleviate in some way or at least mitigate traffic congestion that will be compounded by the rapid growth of Nashville's suburban communities. I think costs of extensions into these communities should be shared, but ultimately funding rapid transit through sales tax makes sense because commerce/tax base should increase.
Anyway - just came here to give some perspective - don't get the impression that Williamson County, Tennessee is full of racists. It is not as diverse as Davidson County, but nonetheless a wonderful place to live.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'm anxious to see how autonomous cars will affect situations like the one facing Nashville.
I have a hard time imagining the combination of self driving cars and VR not having a DRAMATIC affect on cities. As I’ve said many times before eye contact will be the killer app for VR. What happens to cities when you can look someone in the eye over the internet, or place them alongside you while you use your laptop? I don’t understand how that could be anything but transformative for the economics of cities.
I agree. My businesses now all have remote-able workers, though most of the time we want to work together. VR bridging that gap could make a huge difference (think whiteboard sessions). I think in general alleviating the requirement to be somewhere such as the majority of peoples 8-5 jobs will change traffic patterns dramatically.
This alone might make it appealing to take normal methods (car or autonomous car) into the city for leisure.
I have a hard time imagining the combination of self driving cars and VR not having a DRAMATIC affect on cities.
Ah but what will that effect be? There's nothing about a self-driving car that increases road capacities. And since a self-driving car doesn't get bored or frustrated, there's less of a disincentive for a self-driving car to drive during rush hour. So it seems like if all else remains equal, self-driving cars are going to make traffic worse, not better (sure, if you could combine them with ride-sharing, they might reduce things but lyft and Uber right now could be ride-sharing but they aren't. No reason to expect a self-driving taxi would better unless something impels it).
I'm with you, many folks seem to believe self driving cars will increase existing road capacity tenfold or something- I just don't see it. Once every car on the road is self driving they can maybe drive "too close" at speed, but overall there's still a limited amount of space on the pavement.
Now, if these self driving cars were high passenger capacity, that might have a great effect- but of course then we'd just call them a bus.
I don't think anyone really knows, but say we have cheap taxis, ride sharing, driving "too close", and far fewer accidents? There's still a limit but it should be quite a bit higher.
I'm moving to Nashville in mid December from SF and looking to meet fellow tech entrepreneurs. We should grab coffee or beers (my info in my HN profile).
I’m from Baltimore yet graduated from MTSU and indeed the traffic in Nashville is nuts! Also racism like different cafeteria sections for whites and blacks exist not by signs but by time/attitudes not changing as quickly as they have elsewhere.
Come on now "white flight" is your attribution to why people are moving to the suburbs? Maybe it's just they got married, had some kids, and want a home with a backyard and non-city living. The simplest answers tend to be the right ones.
"white flight" is invoked here often. I'm not sure exactly why, but maybe it allows a certain amount of feeling morally superior, and/or allows the author to feel like these people's predicament is entirely of their own design, and thus they are not real people deserving of solutions or sympathy.
$5.2 billion for around 25 miles of light rail? Honestly by American standards that’s pretty affordable. Denver spent a similar amount for much more rail but in the process got a commuter rail line where the grade crossings don’t work.
It really depends. St. Louis has built light rail along existing rail ROWs in rural areas, inside existing Downtown tunnels, and through new urban tunnels built specifically for light rail.
The costs vary wildly along each of those segments.
$5 billion to build new tunnels? That's a bargain. Along rural ROWs? That's a boondoggle.
Chicago’s rail system (“The L” elevated line + Metra hub and spoke to the suburbs) as well as the CTA bus system are very good.
My suggestions to improve would be better funding for light rail, dedicated lanes for buses that other vehicles can’t enter, priority access at intersections, and a congestion charge to enter the core (“The Loop”).
Too bad they rejected bus-rapid system. They seem to be cheap, effective and actually working really well. We have few lines here in Auckland and they are about 2-3x faster than taking a car at peak times.
There's one in our town- the one pitfall I've come to feel is placement of the crossings. Close but not part of existing intersections means another traffic light whose timing you can now bungle.
WMATA used to be a great system, at least from an infrastructure perspective. However the governance structure lead to a dysfunctional board, which has subsequently neglected the infrastructure. If they turn WMATA in to a voting district where the board is directly accountable to voters that could hopefully improve things.
While I'm less well versed in the governance issues of the MTA, it seems as though control should be passed back to local voters, as the NYC subway has been dealing with a fair amount of issues as of late also, and it appears the governor and mayor can't agree on who's fault it is and who should fix it.
I like the idea of a federal government that creates avenues for voters in multiple states to work together to pass measures that affect all affected states.
We see a gross form of state's forming supra-state policy in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but with NPVIC each state is working on it's own to pass the compact, each state it's own independent stakeholder, whereas if you want to get DC, MD, and VA and other local regionals voting to fix WMATA, I believe there needs to be some supra-democratic structure the states can form.
It's what "everyone" knows about, moves 5.7 million per week, almost a million per day on average; many who are just visiting NYC have used it.
It hasn't broken down too many times, and is reliable enough that many New Yorkers don't own a car (which IMHO is the gold standard for trust in a public transit system).
The only 24 hour system in the world. That's nothing to sneeze at. Almost no other metro system is even close to the hours NYC pulls. It's sort of unbelievable to me how early metros like Tokyo as just one example close.
This seems like a puff piece that does nothing to capture the debate around this proposal that is taking place in Nashville.
Yes, there are state-level politics involved, but there are a LOT of Nashville residents that are strongly against this plan on the grounds that it will be outdated and under-utilized before it is ever completed.
The Mayor's PR machine and the local Chamber are working hard to create support for this proposal, but it will be an uphill battle and will likely fail with the voters.
I don't know anything about Nashville, but one of the common complaints about a recent rail proposal in Austin was that it served the areas least likely to use mass transit. And, it traveled within the wealthy and slow-growing (in terms of population) west and northwest parts of central Austin, even though the east and southeast sides use mass transit more, once you remove the university population, which is already reasonably well-served by the bus system and wouldn't have been served directly by the proposed train, anyway.
One could make the argument that the proposal, in that case, was outdated because it didn't recognize that much of the growth in Austin is in the east and southeast of the city. It was based on assumptions about where people live and work that aren't current. And, many made the case that it was based on serving the wealthy, mostly white, population of Austin, especially a few real estate developers, while the poorer, mostly latinx, population would continue to be poorly served by Cap Metro buses and would likely see fare increases because of the new construction.
So, even if one believes a particular transit technology, whatever it is, is technically sound and will last decades (e.g. the NY subway, which has likely paid for itself many times over since its construction and continues to serve the city, despite being very old and in need of updates and new construction), it may not be forward-looking on logistical matters. If you build a train, bus, light rail, nuclear submarine, hyperloop, whatever, that nobody rides, you haven't solved any problems for the city, you've just incurred debt.
I'm in favor of mass transit, of course. The more, the better. But, I surprisingly found myself on the opposite side of the recent Austin rail measure because of the reasons mentioned among others.
Again, I have no idea what's going on with Nashville. I've only visited. Just sharing how one might oppose a transit initiative without believing self-driving cars will solve everything in five years.
Partly. The train will take 10 years to build (assuming it is on-time).
We also feel that ride-share will continue to expand. We don't have any pooling services (yet), but that is also inevitable.
The other big complaint is that this is one 25 mile train from one side of town. But we aren't a coastal city like Seattle (where public transit is doing well). We have 3 major interstates (i24, i40, and i65), so that means there are bedroom communities in 6 directions from town. And m at least one of those (i65 south of town) has a two-way rush hour due to so many people living in Nashville and working in the south suburb (Brentwood / Franklin). Of course, that is not where the train is going b/c that is the wealthiest suburb and they don't want a train.
So, shuttling in a few people from one side of town into an urban core with a lackluster hub/spoke bus system inside the city, isn't going to do much.
The strongest argument for Mayor Barry's proposal seems to be "We have to do SOMETNING, so let's do this."
It’s not like Nashville can make Brentwood and Franklin build rail to match the rail that Nashville would supposedly build. And given that those cities have shown very little interest in building rail, it makes a lot more sense to focus on what we can impact.
Is there a real reason to believe that highways can provide all the transit the city will ever need? Like, if only people would finally rideshare (which cities have been promoting since, what, the 60's) all the traffic would be gone?
Is there a train layout that would be much more attractive?
My comment about the highways is that people live/work in 6 directions (due to traditional access via interstates). A train on one of them won't do much, especially since it isn't even the busiest direction.
Not really. It comes to downtown from the north, and then goes west, but stops at I440. So that has zero benefit to the people who commute from the west on I40.
It won't do much, but it might do a little. If 1% of that 18% takes the train any amount of their commute, it can have a significant impact.
I'm in Atlanta. Only about ~5% of our metro population uses the train. But that's 200k people. If the alternative is most of those 200k people and they're each individually a car taking up about 50sq feet (10x5) -- you can bet our traffic would be much worse.
FWIW, I've changed my mind on public transit projects twice now.
I've always been very pro public transit, and always vote for anything related. Maybe 5 years ago, in the after math of our monorail project being sabotaged, with the rise of ride sharing and perhaps autonomous automobiles, I decided the era of Big Bang public transit projects was coming to a close.
Recently, our fledgling light rail, 20 years in the making, finally opened a station near the university, and now ridership along the whole system far exceeds all the projections. Woot!
So I get the "too little, too late" sentiment. But I think I was wrong for believing that.
I'm moving from San Francisco to Nashville in December for a plethora of reasons, but I can tell you that Nashville is growing and expanding like crazy. I believe it is in the top 10 fastest growing US cities and it is VERY business friendly (no state income tax) and has favorable small business conditions. While Nashville is certainly a music city, the business environment continues to improve. Even with a 1% increase in sale tax to support Let’s Move Nashville, I think this has a great chance of passing. I'm very bullish on the Nashville economy :-).
As a Tennessean who wouldn’t mind moving to San Francisco, I’m curious if you can share any of your reasons? I haven’t noticed many tech benefits in Tennessee over SF beyond lower cost of living.
Well, if I share my opinions of why I want to move out of downtown SF I'm sure I will just get downvoted here on HN, so instead I'm just looking for a change. Ready to settle and slow life down. I absolutely love music (played drums and piano) and really enjoy the amazing live music scene in Nashville. I also found that people are super friendly, charming, and ultra polite in Nashville.
What You don’t like the blight of the homeless smacking you in the face in San Fran? I guess it’s in Nashville (I never saw it while living there for 3 years from Baltimore) too but it’s not a lifestyle there or a city other cities dump their homeless problem on.
I loved San Fran on my first visit then I stayed at a hotel on Market st and visited Haight Ashbury..omg!
Presence or absence of a state income tax doesn't imply anything about the business climate. States without income tax typically have higher sales and/or property tax, which aren't necessarily better.
Sales tax is the highest of all US states in TN (9.45%), but honestly it's a rounding error compared to CA health insurance, bay area cost of living, CA state LLC taxes, and other costs being in California and SF (lots of little taxes in SF like bag tax and SF healthy). No state income tax in TN makes a big difference.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 66.7 ms ] threadWhy? They do it with elevators don't they? I recall when all elevators had operators - yes a person in the car to push the floor button.
This evolved from old systems with a hand operated cable line with a window the operator put his hand into to pull up/down and to level the car. This led to elevator operator unions, and strikes - which led to fully automated push button elevators when the unions got whiney and greedy. Operators were getting $50,000+ for riding and pushing buttons. .
So the were all left out in the cold and courts supported automated elevators.
Then there were the movie projector operators, relics of the carbon arc in the old days. Now fully automated digital projection rules this work place,
Today most US mass transit is controlled by public authorities which are like a .gov/corporate hybrid.
Telecom has similar problems, but went a different route, where AT&T was able to secure a monopoly to build out the network in exchange for public utility status and some regulatory strings. Since privatization, telecom has gone back to that model to deliver long-term profit, gobbling up cable and media. Except this time they are dumping the public utility part.
I don't know what they are paid, but it is worth every penny for them to manage the elevators. There is not enough "supply" of freight elevator in most tall buildings, so these operators distribute the capacity to the dozens / hundreds of people needing to use the elevator each day.
$50k per year is a bargain for all the time they save for the thousands of deliveries and other uses each year.
If you have experience in this area, then I should not say this: it's easy to criticize some work as useless when one is totally ignorant of the problem space. But buildings don't hire these operators as a charity.
I think a $50k employee can be more responsive / adaptable than a computer program whose administrative credentials are misplaced 2 weeks after installation. And probably cheaper, too.
We now have a new system where you go in and push what floor on an external pad and the system tells you what car to go to.
Able bodied individuals weren't leaving the priority seating to make room for a disabled person. So the operator first reminded people to make room. After that failed he threatened to leave his cab and make someone leave their seat. A computer couldn't do that. At worst it could halt the train until the cops showed up, which would probably be a sub-optimal way to handle asshole passengers.
There was police activity causing a halt to all train service. As a result the operator manually connected their train with one that was already in the station so the passengers could leave.
Another situation involved a sick passenger. The paramedics forgot to alert the operator they had picked up the passenger, so the operator had to verify everything was taken care of before departing. In an emergency the paramedics may not have the time or ability to coordinate with central control or whoever oversees the system.
As for the support from outside Nashville proper, I think that all of my friends and coworkers who live outside the city have much more to gain from a transit system that extends outside the county. My commute is pretty reasonable, a consistent 15-20 minutes. My coworkers in Williamson, Rutherford, or Cheatham Counties all have significantly longer commutes. I'm not saying support is a given, but for all the people who talk about Nashville turning into Atlanta, it's not those of us who live inside Davidson County that have the most to lose.
(I also live in Davidson county and even ran for school board).
I would welcome rail from here to Nashville, I don't get up there much primarily due to traffic. I've lived in many places, including Manhattan and San Francisco, and I sorely miss the convenience of the train.
Simply put, rapid transit would be great for commerce in Nashville and it would either alleviate in some way or at least mitigate traffic congestion that will be compounded by the rapid growth of Nashville's suburban communities. I think costs of extensions into these communities should be shared, but ultimately funding rapid transit through sales tax makes sense because commerce/tax base should increase.
Anyway - just came here to give some perspective - don't get the impression that Williamson County, Tennessee is full of racists. It is not as diverse as Davidson County, but nonetheless a wonderful place to live.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'm anxious to see how autonomous cars will affect situations like the one facing Nashville.
This alone might make it appealing to take normal methods (car or autonomous car) into the city for leisure.
Ah but what will that effect be? There's nothing about a self-driving car that increases road capacities. And since a self-driving car doesn't get bored or frustrated, there's less of a disincentive for a self-driving car to drive during rush hour. So it seems like if all else remains equal, self-driving cars are going to make traffic worse, not better (sure, if you could combine them with ride-sharing, they might reduce things but lyft and Uber right now could be ride-sharing but they aren't. No reason to expect a self-driving taxi would better unless something impels it).
Now, if these self driving cars were high passenger capacity, that might have a great effect- but of course then we'd just call them a bus.
I suspect there are more people in Nashville using ride-share than are using public transit.
The costs vary wildly along each of those segments.
$5 billion to build new tunnels? That's a bargain. Along rural ROWs? That's a boondoggle.
My suggestions to improve would be better funding for light rail, dedicated lanes for buses that other vehicles can’t enter, priority access at intersections, and a congestion charge to enter the core (“The Loop”).
EDIT: Dropped "light" from "light rail system".
While I'm less well versed in the governance issues of the MTA, it seems as though control should be passed back to local voters, as the NYC subway has been dealing with a fair amount of issues as of late also, and it appears the governor and mayor can't agree on who's fault it is and who should fix it.
We see a gross form of state's forming supra-state policy in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but with NPVIC each state is working on it's own to pass the compact, each state it's own independent stakeholder, whereas if you want to get DC, MD, and VA and other local regionals voting to fix WMATA, I believe there needs to be some supra-democratic structure the states can form.
It hasn't broken down too many times, and is reliable enough that many New Yorkers don't own a car (which IMHO is the gold standard for trust in a public transit system).
Yes, there are state-level politics involved, but there are a LOT of Nashville residents that are strongly against this plan on the grounds that it will be outdated and under-utilized before it is ever completed.
The Mayor's PR machine and the local Chamber are working hard to create support for this proposal, but it will be an uphill battle and will likely fail with the voters.
One could make the argument that the proposal, in that case, was outdated because it didn't recognize that much of the growth in Austin is in the east and southeast of the city. It was based on assumptions about where people live and work that aren't current. And, many made the case that it was based on serving the wealthy, mostly white, population of Austin, especially a few real estate developers, while the poorer, mostly latinx, population would continue to be poorly served by Cap Metro buses and would likely see fare increases because of the new construction.
So, even if one believes a particular transit technology, whatever it is, is technically sound and will last decades (e.g. the NY subway, which has likely paid for itself many times over since its construction and continues to serve the city, despite being very old and in need of updates and new construction), it may not be forward-looking on logistical matters. If you build a train, bus, light rail, nuclear submarine, hyperloop, whatever, that nobody rides, you haven't solved any problems for the city, you've just incurred debt.
I'm in favor of mass transit, of course. The more, the better. But, I surprisingly found myself on the opposite side of the recent Austin rail measure because of the reasons mentioned among others.
Again, I have no idea what's going on with Nashville. I've only visited. Just sharing how one might oppose a transit initiative without believing self-driving cars will solve everything in five years.
We also feel that ride-share will continue to expand. We don't have any pooling services (yet), but that is also inevitable.
The other big complaint is that this is one 25 mile train from one side of town. But we aren't a coastal city like Seattle (where public transit is doing well). We have 3 major interstates (i24, i40, and i65), so that means there are bedroom communities in 6 directions from town. And m at least one of those (i65 south of town) has a two-way rush hour due to so many people living in Nashville and working in the south suburb (Brentwood / Franklin). Of course, that is not where the train is going b/c that is the wealthiest suburb and they don't want a train.
So, shuttling in a few people from one side of town into an urban core with a lackluster hub/spoke bus system inside the city, isn't going to do much.
The strongest argument for Mayor Barry's proposal seems to be "We have to do SOMETNING, so let's do this."
Is there a train layout that would be much more attractive?
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/10/26/nashville-un...
It won't do much, but it might do a little. If 1% of that 18% takes the train any amount of their commute, it can have a significant impact.
I'm in Atlanta. Only about ~5% of our metro population uses the train. But that's 200k people. If the alternative is most of those 200k people and they're each individually a car taking up about 50sq feet (10x5) -- you can bet our traffic would be much worse.
I've always been very pro public transit, and always vote for anything related. Maybe 5 years ago, in the after math of our monorail project being sabotaged, with the rise of ride sharing and perhaps autonomous automobiles, I decided the era of Big Bang public transit projects was coming to a close.
Recently, our fledgling light rail, 20 years in the making, finally opened a station near the university, and now ridership along the whole system far exceeds all the projections. Woot!
So I get the "too little, too late" sentiment. But I think I was wrong for believing that.
As a Tennessean who wouldn’t mind moving to San Francisco, I’m curious if you can share any of your reasons? I haven’t noticed many tech benefits in Tennessee over SF beyond lower cost of living.
I loved San Fran on my first visit then I stayed at a hotel on Market st and visited Haight Ashbury..omg!
Washington also has no income tax, has a 6.5% sales tax, and King County (containing Seattle) has 3.6% sales tax.