Talk:Light rail in North America

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[edit] Light rail in Mexico

There aren't as many as in the US or Canada, but we've got an article on Xochimilco Light Rail. What else can be said about Mexican systems? What others are there? Slambo (Speak) 19:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion moved here from main article

I moved these items from Light rail to the new Light rail in North America RockyMtnGuy 19:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems that need fixing - "Criticisms of light rail in the U.S. . . ."

What purpose does this section serve in an article which defines and describes light rail?

Why is there no similar information in this article for any country other than the U.S.??

Clearly, this section needs to be "spun off" as a separate article.

All this section manages to accomplish is to "showcase" an unfortunate American axiom: that technical and engineering issues can be critiqued from a social-science perspective - without even bothering to address the underlying technical and engineering issues.

(The fact that, for example, the laws of physics prevail over the principles of economics is not of concern to such authors.)

Another unfortunate American axiom, is that the success or failure of public transit is measured exclusively in terms of its impact on "traffic congestion." Ldemery 04:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems that need fixing - "Criticisms of light rail in the U.S. . . . Spacial mismatch"

According to this theory, if I attempt to compare the number of people who travel over each km (or mi) of rail line in a U.S. city to the same statistic from a city "elsewhere," the statistic for the U.S. city "should" be lower.

At 2002, the tramway network in Zürich, Switzerland had a system length of 68.9 km (42.7 mi). The Portland light rail system, at 2002, had a system length of 53.1 km (32.9 mi). (This figure does not include the Portland Streetcar and the new light rail Yellow Line, opened 1 May 2004).

At 2002, the Zürich tramway carried, on average, 5 million passengers over each km of line.

And so did the Portland light rail system.

In other words, each carried approximately 5 million passenger-km per km of route. The Zürich figure was just a bit greater than the Portland figure.

"Spacial mismatch"?

Now I'll admit the following:

--Opening of the Yellow Line caused the Portland figure to fall significantly, because the new segment has not yet reached its full traffic potential.

--Many more passengers boarded in Zürich (196 million) than in Portland (27 million). But - key fact - the "average" tram passenger in Zürich traveled for a much shorter distance – 1.8 km (1.1 mi) – than the average light railo passenger in Portland - 10 km (6 mi).

But once again: Why is there no perceptible effect of "spacial mismatch"?

(Reminds me of that old saw about ghosts: they exist, but reveal themselves only to "believers.")

Another comparison:

At 2003, the Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, U-Bahn (light rail) network had a system length of 58.7 km (36.4 mi). That same year, the Los Angeles light-rail network had a system length of 66.1 km (41.0 mi).

At 2003, the Frankfurt system carried 5.7 million passengers, on average, over each km of line.

The Los Angeles light rail network carried 5.5 million.

Where is the influence of "spacial mismatch" ?

Again, it's true that many more passengers boarded in Frankfurt (95.4 million) than in L.A. (31.9 million). But the "average" Frankfurt passenger traveled 3.5 km (2.2 mi). The "average" L.A. passenger traveled 11.4 km (7.1 mi).

This fact is typically ignored in the U.S. (except by transit professionals), but: the "same" number of passengers, traveling on average three times "as far," implies a need for routhly three times as many vehicle-km (or miles).

The relationship between total passenger-km and total vehicle-km is not "ironclad," but it suggests that L.A. and Frankfurt have to operate "equivalent" levels of service (annual vehicle-km) on their "light rail" systems.

(Frankfurt probably gets away with considerably less, because German "transit consumers" tolerate higher levels of peak-period crowding than their U.S. counterparts.)

The spacial mismatch theory is babble, as is much (most?) of the "information" contained in this section. This needs to be spun off as a separate article - and thoroughly rewritten. Ldemery 04:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

The original Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis (SMH) held that blacks in inner cities in the United States could not get jobs because the new jobs were mostly in the suburbs and they did not have adequate transportation to get those jobs. Somehow this article confused that with the fact that U.S. cities tend to sprawl, and tried to argue that light rail would not work because the jobs were scattered in the suburbs amongst the white middle-class surburbanites. They may have gotten that idea from a light rail opposition group. Some later contributors pointed out that many U.S. cities do not sprawl more than some European cities with successful light rail systems, so it's not really a valid point. However, if you get back to the original SMH, you would note that light rail could solve the Spatial Mismatch problem because inner city blacks could commute to jobs in the suburbs (reverse flow commuting). That point has been completely missed. RockyMtnGuy 14:44, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems that need fixing - "Criticisms of light rail in the U.S. . . . Travel time"

There are a lot of issues that "should" be discussed here, which the writer glossed over. As written, this section makes little sense.

In the "typical" suburb-to-downtown corridor in the U.S. and Canada, the "benchmark" ratio of "busiest hour, busier direction" traffic to "two-way, all-day" ridership is 13 percent.

In other words, 13 percent of the "all-day" ridership occurs during the busiest single "rush" hour, in the busier direction.

Lines that provide a great deal of peak-period capacity (i.e. heavy rail) tend to have higher ratios.

This would also be true of a line that is "auto-competitive" during peak hours, but not so during other times.

However, most "new" U.S. and Canadian LRT systems carry remarkably low shares of "total" weekday ridership during peak hours. In the case of the L.A. Blue Line, the ratio is so low that it's difficult to believe:

4,500 passengers per hour per direction / 70,000 passengers per weekday

= 6.4 percent.

A significant share of those 70,000 pass/weekday are "off-peak" and "reverse-peak" travelers - contrasting starkly with the predictions of the "travel time" theory. Ldemery 04:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the original point of the article was that LRT is on average no faster than automobiles. However, in your typical major urban area, rush-hour speeds average about 12 mph, so it's not hard for an LRT with its own right of way to beat that. One complicating factor is that an LRT system will unload adjacent freeways so that they will speed up and again be as fast as LRT. People will move back and forth to make their commuting choice on the basis of whichever system is faster, which means competitive pressures will make them run at the same speed. Ah, the joys of economic theory. RockyMtnGuy 15:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vancouver

Do you think it's worth noting that the Vancouver "Sky-Train" uses both an elevated track, and is "driverless"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fracture98 (talk • contribs) 01:01, August 27, 2006.

Yes, it is worth mentioning, and I think I did mention it when I added the section. However, someone appears to have deleted it. This light rail article seems to attract people who delete anything that doesn't fit into their personal world view. RockyMtnGuy 14:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV

The cost effectiveness vs. highway section seems a bit too pro-rail. No one can debate that, for lower capacities, highways are most cost-effective. The main light rail page does an excellent job of explaining the best regime for each system. I'd like a note on that before I'd consider this NPOV.--Loodog 04:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I changed my mind. The problem is that these bullets are transplanted, without regard for context, from the light rail page to here. Suggestion: I thought the main light rail page had covered costs and capacity concisely and impartially, including actual data. I have changed the section to make a quick note to that and suggest this article be arguments in the political climate. That's really what the bullets on the page are, not pros and cons. I'd like to redo the section with only the following bullets:

Community cohesion/hard-to-measure things
Vehicle purchase and maintenance of highway costs being hidden (I don't see how highway right-of-way costs are hidden)
Network effect which would give additional expansion more bang-for-buck than systems as are built now, hence reason to expand despite existing data.
Cars supplement LRT ridership, reduce critical density. (Bicycles have always aided in mass transit utility. This is nothing new.)
Increase in cost-effectiveness and usefulness of highways by reducing congestion

I don't think the corruption thing is even worth notice. Why would we expect LRTs to be more corruption prone than highways in the first place?

Again, these are all arguments, not cold hard facts. This means they can't be stated without either:

A scholar/expert
"Some" (weasel words)
Detrators/supporters (again, weasel words)

saying them. Acknowledge this and this section can become a useful tool in understanding the politics.--Loodog 05:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a lot of air space in this part of the article, so I moved it here from the main light rail article to get it out of the way of people who are not in the U.S. and for who it may not be relevant. At heart it is an apples versus oranges comparison that depends on the assumptions you make. In the final analysis the choice depends on what you assume about the costs of electric trains versus the costs of driving.

In the U.S. the discussion becomes more etherial than elsewhere because the U.S. has bet the farm on highways, so the highway costs are sunk costs, whereas other countries have spread their bets more. Based on some work I did on oil reserves, I noted that the U.S. has mostly exhausted its own oil reserves, and the countries which do have the big reserves (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela) are not all that reliable, so betting everything on highways may not be that good an idea. What is the cost of driving if you can't buy gasoline? RockyMtnGuy 05:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This could also be thrown into the section, rather, something like, "Total highway operation costs are heavily influenced by the cost of gasoline, a commodity having the potential to abruptly increase in price, while inputs into a mass transit system have fairly consistent costs," under its own bullet. It's another argument useful to understanding American politics on mass transit systems.--Loodog 12:33, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's a couple of useful sites: one is a cost of driving calculator from Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and the other is the Cost of driving from the AAA (an average of 52.2 cents per mile). In general, transit costs are an order of magnitude lower than driving costs, but in the US the cost of owning a car is viewed as a sunk cost because it's not feasible to live without one. However, I'm not in the US, I'm in Calgary, Canada, where it is possible to get around without a car, the transit system estimates its operating costs of light rail at 27 cents per trip, not per mile, gasoline taxes are higher, and downtown parking averages $275 per month. That really skews the numbers versus the US situation. RockyMtnGuy 14:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Another argument to be added to the page. Actually, there's a wonderful comprehensive report on automotive ownership and how it affects what fraction of total income transit costs take up, on a city-by-city basis mentioning the transit system in each city and correlating it to car ownership even:

[1]

As I've said, another bullet is right there: "Those who take mass transit in place of owning cars spend a far smaller fraction of their total income on transit costs(citation to report). Additionally, the money spent stays local, which is not true of gasoline costs nor automotive insurance payments to nonlocal companies. However, in places where most own cars regardless, out of necessity, residents do not have much economic incentive to utilize public transportation."

On a side note... this is really the core of the road/rail debate: people wanting a system that's convenient, and that they get to choose details of. It happens to be a less efficient system more devasting to the environment and the country's economic independence, but I think the main thing is that people would rather pay out of pocket for an item that reflects individuality, stands for status, and is (most of the time) faster than face higher taxes for less choice, even if the net cost to them is far lower. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I think it's a result of America being less socialist than Europe and Canada and so vehemently capitalist that it has taken the transportational path it has.--Loodog 23:43, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that it's a matter of America being less socialistic than Europe or Canada. I think it is a result of the fact that after WWII, Europe was largely devastated by war and had no money to build new freeways, so it improved its streetcar systems instead. In Canada the federal government contributes little money to highways (the Trans-Canada Highway is still a narrow, winding, two-lane road in many places) or to urban rapid transit, whereas the U.S. government heavily subsidizes both. RockyMtnGuy 05:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The Eisenhower Interstate system was modeled after the very impressive German autobahn. If anything, some European countries were far ahead of America in automotive infrastructure. As for the TCH, Canada is like Wyoming in places, completely lacking the traffic to need serious highwayage, not because the individual provinces don't want to pony up the money. The United States embraced the car as a cultural icon. The government responded appropriately.--Loodog 12:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Wyoming has three interstate highways, I25, I80, and I90, all of them four-lane, divided, grade-separated, limited access highways. This in a state with less than half a million people. If they had to do it on their own nickle, I don't think they could, but it was 90% federal money. By contrast, in Ontario (which has over 12 million people) the TCH has long stretches of winding, two-lane road, very little of it is limited access, and it goes nowhere near the country's largest city, Toronto. The main reason is that there is not much federal money invested in it. OTOH, the TCH and many other main highways in Canada (especially in the in West), are designed to carry much heavier trucks than the US interstate system, which probably shows where the provincial governments' interests lie. RockyMtnGuy 03:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've made a rather bold edit, and am satisfied with POV now. Let me if it's ok.--Loodog 00:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The section is still somewhat disorganized and lacking in cohesion. Some other things that could be researched:

According to Apta, light rail transit is the fasted growing transportation mode in the US (presumably because of gas price increases.)
According to CalTrans, California has built its last urban freeway. They have nowhere else to put one.
And, California now has a law against greenhouse gas emissions and is suing the automobile companies over it (does this means everybody is going to have to stop driving?) RockyMtnGuy 05:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

How many transportation modes can you think of, anyway?
They didn't have space to put highways into existing cities like Boston, New York, or Baltimore, yet they are there now. And California may be the most populated state, but they've still got lots of wide open spaces.
That's asinine.

But if you can find information on any of these things, feel free to add them to cost-effectiveness arguments in the article.--Loodog 12:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I've done so in the past, but in my experience people get upset if you start doing discounted cash flow and net present value analyses on freeways and rapid transit. For instance, if you plug the numbers into a spreadsheet for the $14 billion Big Dig in Boston (see "they didn't have space to put highways into existing cites like Boston", above), you arrive at per-trip cost of over $100. Now, nobody in their right mind would pay $100 to drive anywhere in Boston, so the conclusion is "In a rational economic system they wouldn't have built it." Similarily, if you do an analysis on wheelchair accessibility for transit systems, you get a cost of over $100 per trip. You could send a chauffeured limousine to their door to pick them up for considerably less than that, so in a rational world that is what you would do, rather than modifying the transit system. But people aren't used to thinking outside the box, so they make sub-optimal decisions based on irrational considerations. And when someone tells them they're not rational, they get upset. RockyMtnGuy 15:16, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The limousine example is a continuing cost while you only have to make your system wheelchair accessible once. How can a "per trip" cost be calculated for any system that continues to rack up trips with primary cost (construction) already paid for? --Loodog 04:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's quite easy - you apply a discount rate to the capital expenditure equal to the rate that you can borrow money for. For instance, if your capital expenditure is $100 million, and you can borrow money at 10%, your annual cost is $10 million. If you have 100,000 annual passengers in wheelchairs, your cost is $100 each. You might be able to negotiate a deal with a limo company to move them for $50 each. Even if you don't have to borrow the money (unlikely for a transit system), you should analyze it as if you do to ensure that the expenditure is economically rational. Governments usually don't because they can just raise taxes, but private companies go bankrupt if they get the economics wrong. By the way, one of the things I do is design software to do these kind of analyses for major companies. RockyMtnGuy 23:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other factors influencing the choice of light rail

I added a bunch of additional bullets to the article. I called them "Other factors" although they are mostly pro-LRT. I don't think the pro vs. anti format contributes much to the article. If you are writing an article on Chicken soup, you don't normally have a section for Pro chicken soup arguments and another for Anti chicken soup arguments. You either like chicken soup or you don't; and if you don't like chicken soup you probably wouldn't write about it (other than to vandalize someone else's chicken soup article). RockyMtnGuy 21:00, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

LRT is unarguably controversial in North America. People are writing books, writing articles, and comprehensive websites about whether it will improve liveability of cities or just waste money. That being said, I worry that this article may become pro-smart growth/LRT biased and violate NPOV.

My reasons for the current format:

It's far better than throwing all the reasons together in a mixed up order if nothing else than for readability and organization.
It helps us keep track of POV, that is, if the arguments are discussed more in length in one than the other (which is the case), if there are more arguments for one than the other (which is also the case), as well as keeping the amount of detail mentioned in each (i.e. exact statistics) consistent between both.

If anything, I think the arguments for and against cost-effectiveness are becoming so lengthy and possibly asymmetric that they warrant their own pages. Every light rail page wikipedia has had has become distended into the pro/anti rail debate. To keep this off the light rail page, we created a North America light rail page. Now it too is seeming to become subsumed by pro/anti rail arguments. The only solution to this problem may be just to give each set of arguments its own page.--Loodog 02:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

This peculiarly American fixation on automobiles makes it difficult to have a rational discussion on a topic like light rail. If you were writing an article about automobiles, you wouldn't give equal time to light rail, and in fact the article on automobiles says nothing at all about light rail. There are pros and cons to every transportation mode, and in other countries the parameters may be quite different, which is why I moved this part into its own article - so people in other countries wouldn't complain about the excessive amount of material only relevant to Americans.

One of the major sources of dissension in the U.S. seems to be that the economic parameters are changing - in 1950 the U.S. produced about half the world's oil, today it imports about 2/3 of the oil it consumes, and the price is rising as many other producers are at or near their production peaks. As fuel prices rise, it tilts the economics in favor of transportation modes which don't use gasoline and diesel fuel, and light rail is the least expensive of these alternatives. Hence, the ridership on U.S. light rail systems has been rising rapidly in the last few years as people notice that they are cheaper than driving. Apparently many people in the U.S. are actively resisting this trend and are fudging the facts. A lot of the arguments I have seen are specious, a lot of the data is incorrect or taken out of context.

My advice, is to get used to this trend to alternatives. Canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil, gasoline and diesel fuel to the U.S. and is one of the few countries that can actually ramp up its production, but there are limits to how fast. At the moment U.S. demand is far outrunning our ability to produce because the consumption levels are just too big. The other major suppliers are either in decline or politically unstable. I don't think Americans can count on having enough gasoline to keep their cars running in the long term, so it would be a good time for them to take an unbiased look at alternatives. Light rail is one of the more practical of those alternatives (there are lots of impractical ones), which is why I am trying to write material for this article. It's an uphill struggle under the circumstances. RockyMtnGuy 14:53, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More (or less) light rail

I moved this here from my talk page since the discussion is more relevant to this article. RockyMtnGuy 20:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

18 October 2006 RockyMtnGuy (Talk | contribs) (→Criticisms of light rail in the U.S. - You can design an LRV to go 160 km per hour. You can go 160 km/hr in your car, too, but some policeman will stop you (except in Germany).)
- Light rail's being too slow to compete with the automobile is based on 1) time to get to and from nearest light rail stations at each end and 2) travel times owing to many stops made. I know driving is far faster than my commute to work on Boston's Green line, but then again it has to wait for lights. Additional point, most light rail systems have max speeds of around 50-60mph since the small distance between stops limits the system from getting up to higher speeds.

18 October 2006 RockyMtnGuy (Talk | contribs) (→Criticisms of light rail in the U.S. - And why would the US, with 300 million people, 80% of whom are within 50 miles of the coast, be more spatially disadvantaged than Germany? Provide details.)
- This argument refers to the sprawling low-density layout of America cities. Or more specifically, its suburbs. No matter where you run a rail in suburbia, you won't be walking distance from a large population.

18 October 2006 RockyMtnGuy (Talk | contribs) (→Travel time - Three points. Is it the US second busiest LRT line, does it carry 70,000 passengers/day (sounds low), and in Hotel California you can check out but you can never leave?)
- For information on this, see: List of United States Light Rail systems by ridership

18 October 2006 RockyMtnGuy (Talk | contribs) (→Travel time - First sentence sounds dubuious. Cars in major U.S. cities average about 12 mph during rush hour. LRT running at half that rate sounds like a major design screwup.)
- LRT makes many stops, and if it runs in the street, still must wait in traffic, though, if on its own right of way, I'd expect better speeds during congested highway jams.--Loodog 22:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

--Loodog 04:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, some more commentary on these points:

I haven't been on Boston's Green Line. As I understand it, it largely pre-dates the modern LRT techniques. The more modern LRT systems I have ridden on do not mix with traffic and do not wait for stop lights (at least not often). Where there are stop lights, the trains preempt them. The stations in the suburbs are much farther apart than downtown. Outside of downtown, the drivers (on those systems that have drivers) push the little GO lever all the way forward and hold it there until the next stop.
The United States now has 300 million people. American cities in some areas, including Southern California and the Boston-Washington corridor where you are, reach European population densities. California, in particular, has more people than all of Canada in a space half the size of the average Canadian province, so I think many of its cities would be a good location for light rail systems. By contrast, Canada has only a few places where densities are high enough.
It is not efficient run LRT everywhere or to have everybody walk to LRT stations, so the ideal solution is to provide local bus service from the stations to their neighborhoods. In Calgary, which sprawls as much as the average US city (it looks like a half-size version of Denver), most LRT riders take a bus at one end of their trip.

RockyMtnGuy 20:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Point 1. Many modern LRT systems are, tragically, no more modern in terms of having to wait for lights. Take, for example, the Baltimore Light Rail built in 1992. When LA can have a bus that preempts lights, you'd think Baltimore or Boston could do it for their trains. I've actually written the MBTA about this.

Point 2. New York is the only very successful mass transit story in US history and they're up at 10,000/kn². For moderately successful systems, we have: Chicago (4900/km²), Boston (4500/km²), Philadelphia (4200/km²), and DC (3500/km²). However, density alone does not guarantee mass transit success. LA's subway/rail system, which is laughably unsuccessful (by ridership), is right near DC's density at 3200/km². The error lies in making extrapolations about large areas from small ones. California's density is 217/mi², New England's is about 200², which would lead one to believe Californians are at least as heavy users, if not heavier, of rail-based transit, but we know this to not be so. It seems very high densities for small areas are far more conducive to mass transit than moderate densities over large areas. It'd be interesting to model mass transit usage as a function of area and density. Hmm.. actually... I'll do this sometime.

Point 3. Having to take a bus to a system that's already slower than your car (most of the time) I figure would be a huge hindrance to ridership. Yes, you can make everyone walking distance from access to public transit, but if that means waking up a half hour earlier and getting home a half hour later (which is the case for me in Boston, and was the case for me in Baltimore), most people won't be willing.

--Loodog 22:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Point 1. Any rational LRT system does signal pre-emption. Baltimore (I read in the article) actually has the software installed in the traffic signal controllers to do light rail pre-emption, they just don't use it. Sounds like a case of traffic engineering pig-headedness to me. Some other things about the system sound equally dense.

Point 2. NYC wouldn't work without its subway system. There's no way to move that many people in and out of Manhattan using cars. Speaking of which, did you know that they had a subway in L.A. until 1955? (See http://www.westworld.com/~elson/larail/PE/tunnel.html). Did you know that Southern California once had the largest interurban electric railway system in the world? (See Pacific Electric Railway). But after WWII they abandoned everything in favor of freeways and diesel buses, because they're so cheap and efficient and you get used to the smog after a while. Unfortuately it will take another $140 billion dollars to keep the freeways working, and nobody's going to give it to them.

Point 3. Well, if you don't like buses, you can also have park-and-ride facilities at your convenient local station. There are any number of options. My choice is to walk to work using a handy pedestrian walkway built under the LRT bridge. But that's because I live really close to work and it's a really pleasant walk. The trains are so quiet.

RockyMtnGuy 00:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The LA subway article is interesting. It seems LA's subway got its starts in the same function as the Boston subway did: providing uncongested grade separations for trolleys. I wonder what turned LA to the dark side and why Boston kept with its rail ideas.--Loodog 02:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I may be dating myself here, but I remember how this all happened. Back in the 50's the United States produced about half the world's oil, and California was one of the major producing states. California was relatively unpopulated, with a fraction of its current population. You could drive anywhere in L.A. without encountering traffic congestion. Having won the war and seen the German Autohbahn system, the United States decided to build the Interstate highway system (what's good enough for Adolf Hitler is good enough for us.) So, the US in general and California in particular built freeways everywhere, and since people could drive everywhere, they stopped taking the trains. However, they glossed over a few niggling details: 1. the U.S. had only a certain amount of oil and it's mostly gone now, 2. the Arabs have a lock on most of what's left and they aren't all that friendly, 3. growth means that California's population is much, much greater than back then, and 4. Los Angeles has a thermal inversion problem that means there's only enough air for about 250,000 cars. OTOH, Boston is a very old city, and while it may have enough air for more cars than L.A., it has nowhere to put the freeways for them (except underground which is insane.) OTOH, neither does L.A. any more. RockyMtnGuy 04:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criminal Conspiracy

The loss of local rail service in Los Angeles is an interesting and still argued story. Some historians try to point to a conspiracy, but there's a video available through the Orange Empire Railway Museum that presents a few more details. Specifically, one factor mentioned is that PE was required to help pay for street maintenance on the streets where it had trackage while truckers, taxis and other commercial carriers didn't; as more and more cars used the streets, the maintenance became more and more expensive. Slambo (Speak) 11:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The conspiracy (and they were convicted in court of criminal conspiracy, which means it is legally speaking a "fact" rather than a story) was between General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now known as ChevronTexaco), Firestone Tire (now owned by Bridgestone of Japan) and Phillips Petroleum (now ConocoPhillips). They conspired to buy up and shut down 100 streetcar systems in 45 cities, including the aforementioned Pacific Electric Railway system in L.A. which was the largest interurban electric railway in the world. They replaced all the electric trains with GM buses running on Firestone tires, burning Chevron and Phillips diesel fuel. Of course, the electric railways didn't make a profit back then, but neither do the buses and freeways that replaced them (except for the aforementioned companies, of course.) RockyMtnGuy 04:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This is more significant than I thought, and probably should be in the article. Criminal conspiracy is a lot less nebulous than spatial mismatch in explaining why the US has so few surviving electric railways compared to other countries. I knew in a vague sort of way that GM and Chevron had conspired to shut down electric railroads in the US, but I didn't realize the scale of it. 100 streetcar systems is a lot of streetcar systems to buy, even for GM and Chevron. However, it doesn't really fit into the format of the article - does criminal conspiracy count as a pro-LRT or anti-LRT argument?. Somebody should be able to find the court documents for the inline citations, they're probably on the Web somewhere, like the tobacco company documents. This is kind of exciting in a "CSI-LA" sort of way. RockyMtnGuy 02:08, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Criminal conspiracy isn't so much a reason for expansion of light rail systems or a count against it. It's light rail history and an explanation of why light rail isn't more common. If we can pull some scholarly research into this (i.e. not "GM and Chevron are evil greedy corporations who wanted a monopoly"), it definitely warrants mention in an article about Light Rail in North America.--Loodog 01:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sites opposing light rail

Once you've got a good conspiracy theory going (see General Motors streetcar conspiracy it's interesting and fun to see how big a conspiracy it is. I have had serious doubts about the links to sites opposing light rail, so I decided to see how many of them might be shills for automobile and oil companies (see shill):

'Breech of Faith: Light Rail and Smart Growth' highlighting alleged wastefulness and ineffectiveness of light rail projects. This purports to be an Urban Transportation Fact Book about a light rail project proposed for Charlotte, NC. The facts are fairly good but the interpretation is pretty flakey. The site publicpurpose.com is a vehicle for Wendell Cox Consultancy. Who is Wendell Cox? Well, according to exxonsecrets.org, Wendell is Senior Fellow at Heartland Institute and Heartland Institute has received $561,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998. See their report Interestingly the Charlotte report, under Cost per New Passenger says the annual cost per passenger would be $5,575, and then "The same amount of money could lease each new commuter a Ford Taurus or similar car in perpetuity (Figure #11)." Figure 11 is a picture of a new Ford Taurus that you could lease for the same price. It then assumes that the cost will escalate to "$16,749 annually This is enough to lease each new commuter a Jaguar XJ8 and a Chevrolet Suburban in perpetuity." Then it shows a picture of a Chevrolet Suburban and a Jaguar XJ8. I kind of wonder if Ford, Chev and Jaguar slipped him a little money for those promos.
'Reason Foundation Policy Studies on Light Rail' The Reason Foundation presents a series of reports documenting the poor ridership and financial performance of light rail systems in the U.S. However, according to sourcewatch.org, the Reason Foundation has the Koch Family Foundation of Koch Industries fame as one of their major contributors. Others include General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil, and Shell Oil. A veritable who's who of automobile and oil companies.
'Rapid Transit, Light Rail & Monorail Index' The Public Purpose has a catalog of articles showing the problems of light rail. This is Wendell Cox Consulting, again. The first site was just a sub-site of this one.
'Jonathan Richmond's Professional Section' Jonathan Richmond has written many papers on the shortcomings of light rail. This is a self-promoting site about Jonathan Richmond. Jonathan seems to be doing the Wendell Cox thing, but without the car ads. You can read his resume, a biographical note, and his professional profile. Or you can read some of his material slagging rail transit.
LightRail POW! - A website documenting the safety hazards of light rail. This is a collection of links to stories about people killed by light rail systems. Not much about the 36,000 or so people killed annually by automobiles. The number killed by light rail ranks somewhere around the number killed by lightning.
The Monorail Society - A pro-monorail web site that promotes grade-separate rather than street-based transit. They appear to be a legitimate group obsessed with monorails.

So all and all, I think there are few legitimate sites here, and the ones that are legit are low quality. I'd be inclined to toast the whole section. DISCLAIMER: I have made a fair bit of money consulting to oil companies, but none of the ones above, and I own stocks in several oil companies, but none of the above. And I know more about them than I should, but if I told you the details, I'd have to kill you. RockyMtnGuy 01:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

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