Transportation in 2010 and Beyond – Part Twain?

Today in America a very large number of us live in big cities. These cities are located in some pretty annoying places but that’s because those places seemed logical when the cities were founded.


Seattle occupies a large section of the Salish Sea Waterfront. When I say “Seattle” I’m talking the Greater Newcastle Area. It stretches from way up north around the Tulalip Casino and way down south to the McNeil Island Penitentiary. It includes the populated parts of five counties. Population is around 3.5 million give or take.

That waterfront could be put to better purposes. But that’s not the subject of this post.

The challenge is that we have very little land to build new cart paths on. But everyone has a several cars. Most of us are not capable of driving more than one car at a time. I can do it, but you already knew I have super powers didn’t you?

The problem is every car has what we in the mainstream media like to call a “footprint.” A parked car takes about 100 square feet. I can park 12 cars in my garage but I have to stack them. Not easy.

What that means is kind of an intellectual pole vault: multiply the number of people by the average number of cars per person and then times 100 square feet and you have the amount of parking capacity required in the Greater Newcastle Area.

Many people understand this even if they never did the math. These people are called “Parking Lot Owners.” They tend to congregate around city centers where people want to park all day long. Many city governments are also in this business.

OK, parking is an issue but when these cars are moving along a highway the footprint is much bigger. At least it should be. If it’s not the footprints sometimes overlap which causes a lot of people to spend time parked on the highway. And that’s free as long as it wasn’t your footprint that was overlapped.

In any case highway designers and parking lot owners are pretty much concerned with footprint capacity. Add in trucks and other large vehicles and you see the problem – we don’t have any room to add more capacity here.

And that’s why we really need rapid transit. Opponents claim the cost per mile is too high compared to building more roads. They do math but they don’t do logic. Here’s my point: You can carry a lot more people on transit than individually one-each in cars over the same time frame.

In New York and a few others many people don’t own a car or use the DMV. They never get a ticket for expired Driver’s License. They take the subway or other transit. Many people who work in New York City actually live in other states. I know one who lives in Iowa. Whoa! There’s a whole nother subject – telecommuting.

Back to the math; building roads and adding lanes is not really cost effective. Running a 16 lane freeway from Canada to Mexico via Seattle would be beyond the talents of most DOT prestupnics.

In my last post I mentioned the shuttle system. Once the transit systems reach the place where people can begin to ignore the “Toyotathon” commercials and reduce the number of household cars the benefits will multiply.

Today a person can take the Link Light Rail from downtown Seattle to the airport and fly out of town. That’s usually good no matter how you got to the airport. Flying is fun and there are hundreds of interesting places to see and people to visit. It’s the stuff in between arriving at the airport and taking off that are insufferable.

Did I get off track? Maybe, I’m not reading this so I don’t really know.

One of the main things transit opponents whine about is the cost of building the systems. And it’s pretty big. They really need to design and build them well. That costs money. We have earthquakes. The infrastructure needs to survive earthquakes.

Building highway lanes is cheaper per mile. But it ignores all the other costs. A car can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $103,000 and maybe more. I usually don’t spend over $3,000 so I don’t know how far up it goes. In Washington and many other states we have to carry insurance. We have to pay an annual registration fee. We have to feed it gas, oil, and wiper fluid (in Seattle that’s a big issue). Then there are the hidden costs of providing footprint space at home and interest on the car loan. Cost of owning each car is 17% of a household budget.

Or, if you have a car like mine it’s more like 30% because I have to have it fixed once a month. About time to consider that $6,000 model. Transit costs include the vehicles and maintenance. The only thing riders have to pay directly is the fare. The tax costs of transit are shared by everyone so it’s reasonable. That’s probably where most people will want to argue. I won’t argue. I think transit benefits us all, even those who don’t ride it so the cost should be shared. Period. Thus the cost of building road is not directly analogous to the cost of building transit.

Wrapping it all up; the cost of driving a car in a major metropolis is substantial when you combine the cost of the car with the cost of the road capacity. Riding the transit system eliminates the gas, parking fees, and toll costs. Staying at home eliminates more costs. Reducing the number of cars you own can be an enormous saving.

So my New Year’s Resolution is this: Get rid of 6 or 7 cars. What do I need with all those cars anyway? What was I thinking? Did I really need to buy all the cars in that one showroom? They were nice and shiny, sure, but it took two days to get them all home and stacked in my garage. And don’t ask about the insurance cost! Do you know how much State Farm charges when the cars are already bent up? It’s outrageous! Should have called that lizard.

Al