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Why America should not build Light Rail – Saumik Narayanan (saumikn.com)

submitted 5 months ago by nix@midwest.social to c/stlouis@midwest.social

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[-] BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I got about a paragraph in before this joker said the whole reason they don’t support it is cost.

Cars are also wildly expensive, it’s just the government isn’t paying for those, it’s an externalized cost that we each pay which, if redirected toward public transit, could be substantially reduced. But they say there’s no value in this expense over running buses.. except capacity, speed due to dedicated lines, and fuel consumption, you know.

I bet this person owns stock in automaker or gas companies.

Bad take.

[+] nix@midwest.social -6 points 5 months ago

I suggest you read a little farther. They're arguing in favor of spending the money on buses instead. It's a train vs bus article.

[-] BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net 8 points 5 months ago

If you read my comment you’ll see I did read the whole thing.

Busses are less efficient than trains no matter how you slice it. They sit in traffic just like cars, typically use gas or will need to sit and charge forever between uses, and can only hold x small number of people. With light rail, it can be electric much more easily, carry a ton more passengers, and uses dedicated tracks to avoid the congestion of traffic.

Still a bad take.

[-] nix@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago

Oh I see. I took your first sentence as meaning you stopped a paragraph in.

I agree that buses are less efficient, I think it's the best argument for rail.

I will point out, all of St. Louis' new buses are electric.

[-] BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 months ago

Even being electric, if the point is for public transit to replace personal transport, a bus will never be more desirable for most people in most places. They are slower than cars because they stop places but obey the same laws as a car going from a-b.

But I got to ride a subway when I went to Boston (I’m from a rural bus area that would greatly benefit from a local daily rail system since the rails are already run for industry) and it was so fucking amazing to just have a set of destinations I could get off and do stuff, and then get back on if it sucked and keep going.

Busses take forever to go the same distance. They will never come close, and are only good in small areas that don’t plan to expand. Cities would do better to plan for the future with light rail, even if it is a bigger upfront expense, because the long term maintenance and environmental savings (including externalized; other people in traffic etc) are worth it.

[-] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

If they start using buses in mass transit I suspect they'll have a method for quickly swapping batteries as needed.

this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024

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