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Vegas: Monorails v. Gridlock
TimeTrip writes "Vegas seems to be taking a little cue from Disney. 'Las Vegas, which never stops thinking big, has just embarked on its most ambitious, costly attempt to solve a problem that once seemed impossible to have in this sprawling desert valley: gridlock. It is building the nation's largest monorail system.'"
Or maybe they'll be taking their cue from Lyle Lanly. Frankly this sounds more
like a Shelbyville idea.
The problem with expanding the Seattle monorail is that it was designed more as a novelty than anything: it took people from downtown to Seattle Center (the site of the World's Fair). As such, it was never designed to be expanded; the planners never really thought beyond the end of the fair (although it was pitched as a marvelous solution to all sorts of transit problems, it was built almost entirely for the "Wow, neat!" factor). If Vegas builds a monorail network as part of a serious public transit program, it will probably be built with expandability in mind.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
A bunch of posters here have wondered "why build such a thing?" Having just had the misfortune of visiting Vegas, let me say why the city is uniquely suited to benefit from a monorail.
Like no other city, Las Vegas is made up a tremendously high percentage of people who visit just for a the weekend. Tens of thousands of people fly into Vegas every week, all of whom go directly to the casinos, where they sleep in the upstairs hotel rooms. Right now, they essentially have two viable choices: cab or rental car.
Nobody wants to go through the hassle of figuring out a bus system just after flying into town. And walking that mile or so to the casinos, with luggage, in the dessert heat won't work either. A monorail dedicated to connect the airport with the strip is an incredible idea, as much as I may personally detest gambling.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Meanwhile, Portland Oregon, to the south, with our "repressive" intensive city planning, urban boundary, land-use planning measures and all that, manages to build light-rail segment after segment more or less on budget, more or less on time, and with ridership above estimates.
Clearly we're a bunch of gawddamned Godless commies compared to the good, honest, business-uber-alles people of Seattle, aren't we?
The main reasons that putting in mass transit in US cities is harder is (1) that the population density is much smaller and (2) traffic patterns aren't nearly as uniform.
(1) is because everyone has a car, and their "active range" is much bigger. I was pretty happy going by bike and mass transit in Stockholm. But if my average trip there was 5 km it's perhaps 15km here. I get there equally fast. It seems everyone likes to live 30-60 minutes from their work, that means that Americans in general live much more spread out.
Anyway, regardless of why, the population density difference is a fact. And this is a problem for mass transit since with 1/3 the population density, you'd need 9 times as much mass transit, at 9 times the cost to serve the same population. That's a lot of empty busses and trains.
(2) US cities don't have much of a center, especially the younger ones. LA, Dallas & Phoenix are mostly huge spread out built areas with little distinction. Trips people make tend to be from fairly random points A to equally random points B.
In short, mass transit is hard in these cities because there is little mass movement. All travel is individual. There are no huge streams of movements that a mass transit system could serve really well.
European cities have grown and developed over centuries together with their transportation systems. Those systems serve their needs, and the habits of their population have been formed by the available services.
Older US cities like New York, Boston and Chicago have evolved in a more European way, and do have pretty respectable and well used mass transit systems.
I'm sure you're right about transportation in London. But consider why that is so. And it sure doesn't make me want to move to London!
Mass transit always has it's problems. But mass transit is the only transportation available for some portions of the population: The elderly, the young, the handicapped, the poor. (And this patron base is some of it's problems.)
... unhappy. Which eventually has repercussions (they find an alternate form of transportation. But eventually is delayed long enough that it's quite hard to determine the connection between the action and the result.
... it might be possible to design a monorail that would suit their needs quite well. Stops inside the top floors of hotels? And at the airport, the bus station, and the railroad station. Special provision for baggage transfer? Commuters may not be their target market.
Probably the biggest of mass transit's problems is that there is already so much invested in infrastructure that's optimised for cars, that it's nearly impossible to compete. This even extends to on-going maintenance, as maintenance for the car/truck infrastructure is generally not considered as part of the cost, where in transit it gets included at the time of ticket purchase.
Both sides always have heavy hidden subsidies, and supporters of each side always point out that the other side is subsidized. But the only part of the payment that is counted for the car is the part included in the cost of the gas, where for transit you are reminded each time you ride.
Add to this that mass transit inherently takes longer. With a car, you can assume that it is immediately available at need, and that you will go to your destination directly via the most direct route. With transit you must get to the stop before the scheduled time. Wait. Get on. Pay. Travel an indirect route (which translates into more time delay). Walk from the destination stop to the true destination.
This assumes that the car will be able to park. But even counting that, the car is almost guaranteed to be faster. Also, during the trip the driver has his attention engaged, so is less likely to be bored. And doesn't need to associate with strangers of unknown disposition.
It's not really surprising that people prefer cars. At all. But the social costs of cars are much higher than those of mass transit. And the energy efficiency is much lower. So people keep trying to come up with some way that will work. Areas that have strong transportation corridors have more success than those that don't, for the reasons that you indicated. Thus in San Francisco, the Bay, and the congestion that the bridges causes during the commute have combined to make BART (and before that AC Transit and the Key System) reasonably successful. But the real thing that makes it successful is that San Francisco has essentially no parking. There are literally more cars in San Francisco than there are parking spaces. And that's at night.
And even with those advantages, BART has troubles. The basic problem is that which one should expect from a monopoly: It's relatively unresponsive to the patrons. Escalators are frequently down for months while being repaired, e.g. It's not that the people don't try to do their job. It's just that when they evaluate the relative costs and rewards for any particular action, the costs of upsetting patrons are considered less important than something else (e.g., finishing that report that the head office wants to send to the federal government). In their position, it's a quite reasonable assessment. But it does lead to patrons that are
E.g.: AC Transit looses money when it runs busses late at night, as there are few patrons. So it cuts late service. This means that people who need to depend on transportation in the late hours find some other way to travel. Usually this means that they get a car, pay insurance, etc. Now that all of these costs are sunk, they frequently decide that they don't need AC during the day either. So these riders are lost. But this doesn't happen immediately. Now the next time a bond for transit vote comes up, will these peopel vote for it? Not likely! They will likely be quite angry. So the budget shrinks. And shrinks more, since the local funds can no longer be used to meet "matching funds" programs from the feds. So the service gets worse. To improve things, they reorganize the routes. This means that for some people, lines that had been marginally acceptable are now unacceptable. So they switch away.
Do people ever switch back? Well, if their car is in the shop, they may try the bus. But it is (as mentioned above) almost guaranteed to be more inconvenient than their car. So they don't stay.
Who uses transit? People who don't have cars, for one reason or another (I don't drive). People who can't afford to own a car. People who are headed for an area where you really can't park. Any others? Probably, as this is just off the top of my head. Some commuters find transit as convenient as sitting parked on the freeway. It depends on where they live, where the transit lines are, and where they are headed. (But these are people who can easily be lost if transit lines shift -- as they do.)
I don't see a general answer. But in the special case of Los Vegas
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.