So it is an effective method of sucking up “transit” money and miraculously changing it into more freeways, highways and lanes for cars!

All the state Dept. of Transportation are doing it with the collusion of local public works and road authorities. It is a wonderful
way to do the same old s…

Without looking up the statistics, there are well over 100 million cars in this country doing something. This sounds pretty massive to me. Luckily, they can’t all fit in New York City.

Since the Paris Velib system averages about 10 to 12 rides per bike daily, a PUMA-based transit system based on 100,000 vehicles would provide over 1 million rides daily.

1) Electric rail is highly sustainable. It does not require maintenance of pavements, and can be powered by anything that can be converted into electricity.

Urban rail transit is generally, though not always, more energy-efficient per passenger-mile than passenger cars in terms of operating energy. But constructing urban rail systems uses vast amounts of energy and is hugely expensive. The Second Avenue subway line in New York is now expected to cost over $2 billion per mile. The recently-opened light rail line in Phoenix cost about $70 million per mile. Railtrack, stations, vehicles, power distribution equipment (e.g., overhead wires), signalling equipment, etc. all incur continuing maintenance and repair costs. Railtrack has a useful lifespan of about 30 years before it needs hugely expensive “rehabilitation.” The Washington Metro, the Chicago CTA, and San Francisco’s BART each expect to spend about $10 billion over the next decade on rehabilitation expenses.

Because rail is so expensive, there are very few urban travel routes where it is economically competitive with buses. Subways are competitive only in very dense urban cores and travel corridors. Subway travel in the United States is dominated by just a single system – the New York subway. Light rail is competitive in only a few more places than subways. That is why light rail provides only about 4% of total passenger-miles of transit in the United States. For the vast majority of routes where transit could be a viable alternative to cars at all, the only viable form of transit is buses.

I don’t believe a single mode of transport should be forced on everyone. I also don’t believe that people who don’t use mass transit should be forced to massively subsidize the cost of providing mass transit for people who do use it. If you want to use mass transit instead of driving or biking or whatever else it may be, fine. But don’t try to force me to pay for it.

Incidentally, I lived in Kunstler’s neighborhood for years; unless I have the spot actually wrong, that walk score is totally worthless. Saratoga Springs is perhaps the only Upstate NY communities in which you truly don’t need a car.

Response:
It must be a miniscule number of people who are “forced” to use cell phones.

As said before: If we designed cell phones the way we design transit we’d have to carry them around in backpacks.

Current transit systems are local monologies because they are extremely difficult to build, modify, complex engineering, etc. Proposed hybrid human-electric agile monorails will be a lot easier to build and likely suitable for commodification eliminating much of the monopolistic nature of current transit systems. It is projected that neighborhoods will have a much larger say in designing their own local systems and it is likely that some will build them themselves once a transferable replicable model has been created most likely the outcome of a major industrial product design effort.

Response:
I am not trying to undermine anyone’s rights. My goal is help show how people can to take control of their own lives instead of waiting for someone out there take care of things for them. Mobility is a crucial part of this. What is being proposed is very accessible technology. It’s the stuff of elementary school. Practical employable skills can be taught in vocational trade schools.

I am not are arguing for the destruction of the transit system. I am arguing for much better transit systems which will much better serve the millions of people that currently depend on transit in this city; and potentially, the billions of people globally that require good transportation and currently do not have it.

Response:
Again, this will provide great transportation for the broadest spectrum of the population including the weak.

You are challenged to provide better more practical, convenient, easy-to-use transportation than the folding recumbent tricycle — with an electric motor assist — on the “Ideal Vehicles” wiki; especially, those that can run automatically mechanically and electronically on monorail systems designed to be the new mass transit systems. Current transit systems do not even come close to the potential accessibility (for the disabled, elderly, mothers with young children) of these new systems.

http://www.livablestreets.com/streetswiki/zero-vmt

Response:
Proposed hybrid human-electric agile monorail systems address exactly what you are talking about. This will likely start out essentially as an advanced public bicycle system using hybrid human-electric recumbent vehicles with real seats suitable for the broadest spectrum of the population including those who require wheelchairs.

Response:
We are in total agreement on this. (Though, I think you did not write what you meant: “. . . please consider the possibility that what’s unsustainable is hypermobility.”) Electronic communication is extremely sustainable technology as described by Ivan Illich in his book “Tools of Conviviality”.

The really interesting part is that electronic communications and transportation often go hand-in-hand — the telegraph replaced the pony express overnight — and, are starting to play a pivotal role in public bicycle systems and likely even more so in advanced public bicycle systems. The cost structures and business model are similar and may have synergies as mentioned in the Streetsblog.org “Ideal Vehicles” wiki and there are certain advantages for providers like Verizon and technology companies like IBM to get into the act by justifying the potential for increased revenue from selling additional services, applications, and electronic technology.

http://www.livablestreets.com/streetswiki/zero-vmt

In many ways, the cell phone is the closest thing we currently have to the “Star Trek” tricorder.

Response:
Cyclists normally sit so, this saves energy. Also the dynamics of cycling transfers more energy for travel in the forward direction rather the up and down motion of walking and running and other energy expenditures not directly related to travel. Recumbent bikes with fairing are more efficient than conventional bikes.

“The data show that for the same breathing rate, the bicyclist’s speed is about four times that of a walker.” Bicycling Science 3rd Edition, David Gordon Wilson, Page 162

Reference:

Bicycling Science 3rd Edition, David Gordon Wilson, Page 162
Publisher: MIT Press
Pub. Date: April 2004
ISBN-13: 9780262731546
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780262731546&itm=1#TABS

David Gordon Wilson
http://meche.mit.edu/people/emeritus/index.html?id=98