BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by hyperbovine on Sunday July 28, 2019 @09:08AM (#20547329)

It’s not really a fair comparison. In terms of where people actually live (the upper two thirds of Sweden is almost empty) its roughly comparable to Ohio: about ten million people clustered in 4 or 5 major cities within a few hours drive distance from each other. Of course it will be easier to provide superior rail service there. This is not so say that Ohio has its act together as far as public transit is concerned (ha), but getting that level of service to the US as a whole would be a totally different beast.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by mktmkr on Sunday July 28, 2019 @04:15PM (#20549605)

Can we just start with Ohio? Ohio has the population density of Spain and twice the GDP per capita, but it lacks passenger rail service almost entirely.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by closeparen on Sunday July 28, 2019 @04:53PM (#20549793)

Columbus has an average commute time of 21.8 minutes [0], among the best in America. Would public transit do better? Is it a good use of funds to replace what’s working well?

https://storage.googleapis.com/titlemax-media/2018/03/averag...

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by mktmkr on Sunday July 28, 2019 @05:37PM (#20549959)

I thought we were talking about inter-city rather than commuter service. Columbus to Cincinnati for example.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by mhb on Sunday July 28, 2019 @09:25AM (#20547414)

Is there any Ohio-sized area in the US that has a system comparable to the Swedish one?

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by 0xB31B1B on Sunday July 28, 2019 @12:57PM (#20548517)

The Acela corridor in the north east US connects DC, Philly, NYC, and Boston. Many trains run per day and most of them are full capacity. The Acela corridor revenues support the entire other ~Amtrak routes. Most cities along the Acela have sufficient public transit and density to not require car rentals on arrival.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by bobthepanda on Sunday July 28, 2019 @01:00PM (#20548538)

Funnily enough, the Midwest is pretty much a spoke and hub of medium sized metro areas focused around Chicago.

There’s the Northeast corridor (and its cousin the Southeast corridor going down to Atlanta).

The PNW cities also are clustered like this but have difficult geography.

California and the Central Valley with the Bay and LA also meet this criteria, but CAHSR is run by a mix of incompetents and constrained by the wording of the ballot initiative that got it approved.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by craftyguy on Sunday July 28, 2019 @04:01PM (#20549520)

> The PNW cities also are clustered like this but have difficult geography.

Not really. It's pretty flat here in the Willamette valley, where the majority of Oregon's population lives, and relatively flat going north into Washington to Seattle... But the best we've got for long distance trains is Amtrak which shares the tracks with commercial traffic, where Amtrak gets basically the lowest priority on the tracks.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by craftyguy on Sunday July 28, 2019 @04:03PM (#20549529)

I think their point is that one city (SF, not the entire US) took 20 years to get trains that Sweden had throughout their country 20 years ago. Their comparison is actually worse for the US than comparing the entire US train system (ha) to Sweden. That's really sad.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by BurningFrog on Sunday July 28, 2019 @05:11PM (#20549859)

My impression is that OP is comparing the Stockholm subway to Bart.

Comparing long distance train service to Bart would be weird.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by wbl on Sunday July 28, 2019 @10:14AM (#20547638)

We're talking about one of the richest parts of the US.

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by BurningFrog on Sunday July 28, 2019 @01:08PM (#20548586)

We're also talking about Ground Zero of the BANANA movement.

BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone

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Re:BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more... by khuey on Sunday July 28, 2019 @11:11AM (#20547938)

The Bay Area is one of the richest parts of the US on paper sure but much of that wealth comes from absurdly inflated land valuations that are taxed at very low rates.

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