Singer Britney Spears is legendary for being a spendthrift even by Hollywood standards. Her personal clothing budget was once reported as being $16,000 per month.
After reading this recent study from WPC about the costs of various types of public transit, I thought of Britney. Hat tip to the David Boze show on KTTH 770, where I first learned of the study, and kudos to WPC's Michael Ennis for some great work.
The study extols van pools as far more cost effective than trains and buses. Some of the numbers are .mind boggling. See the link for the complete story, but the most striking to me was the graph on page 5, which lists 'total expenditure per passenger mile' for various types of transit:
Van pool..........$0.20 per passenger mile
bus.................$0.85
light rail...........$1.15
ST bus.............$1.70
Sounder rail......$5.39
So Sounder commuter rail costs 27 times more than a van pool! Given that, it seems crazy that we are even talking about expansion of rail. Naturally with the costs being less, the van pools require much less taxpayer subsidies, which the study also details.
Moreover, with GPS and mobile computing, it seems just a matter of time until 'on demand' van pooling is developed. You text your from/to addresses, and desired departure time to the system, and a computer finds the van in your area that would most efficiently handle it. The van stops at your door, and takes you along with several other passengers headed roughly the same direction, continually picking up and letting off passengers.
That would be the best of all worlds--nearly the same convenience as a personal car, and the efficiency/economy of scale of mass transit. If we could start to transition now towards van pools, we would be ready when on-demand van pools become available.
Note that my link is to part three of a four part study. WPC also has a video on youtube that talks about existing van pools and interviews a few users.
Posted by 6p01053690976c970c at November 20, 2009 06:36 PM | Email ThisSorry... already invented. Look at DART, out in the suburbs.
Posted by: demo kid on November 21, 2009 06:28 AMif you are going to compare apples to apples, the occupant numbers have to at least be be consistent. per the report, average of 8.14 passengers in a vanpool. to be equivelant to the bus, you would need 19 vans. a new flyer d60 is 60' long. 19 vans would be 380' long, so you have severely increased the amount of gas needed to move the same number of people, as well as the road space inhabited.
a true apples to apples passenger mile costs would then be:
van - $3.80
bus - $0.85
also, you posted the operating expense per mile, which includes capital expenditures.
but you (conveniently) failed to note that the report also states, "Comparing capital expenditures among different transit modes is
sometimes unreliable."
yeah. sometimes. especially when it's a hack report written by anti-transit morons.
the report also doesn't include the capital costs of road building into the van pool or bus segment - a major flaw in determining true operating expenses (mostly because this would have shown the results to be a wash)
Regional vanpools are not only more cost effective than other inter-city
transit modes, they require much less public tax support, because users cover two
thirds of operational expenses. - whoops, only when you conveniently fail to include the public tax support of roads. or show an actual comparison between occupants. clowns.
this report also assumed the cost of gas will stay at less than $3.00 per gallon. so if that changes, then only vanpool and some bus costs come up, the others would remain static.
Posted by: mike on November 21, 2009 10:53 AMDo the VP's have an 'unfair' advantage of being able to use existing infrastructure? Yes, that is one of their advantages. Why discount it? I wouldn't mind including some pct. of HOV construction costs, on which the appeal of VP's partly depends. But with a 27x cost advantage, there is a lot of room to play with.
if you are going to compare apples to apples, the occupant numbers have to at least be be consistent. per the report, average of 8.14 passengers in a vanpool. to be equivelant to the bus, you would need 19 vans. a new flyer d60 is 60' long
[i]"
I did not know what a 'flyer d60' was, s I googled it--the first hit was something called 'Lemon Law Center.' Anyway, I learned that it's an articulated bus. In the first place the vans carry up to 15, so you would need 10, not 19.
In the second place, if we comparing apples to apples, we cannot assume, as your argument does, that they are always going to be 100% full. Occasionally they are near full, but often they are near-empby.
Posted by: travis t on November 21, 2009 04:57 PMif you are going to compare apples to apples, the occupant numbers have to at least be be consistent. per the report, average of 8.14 passengers in a vanpool. to be equivelant to the bus, you would need 19 vans.
And you can stagger the transit times, which generally increases transit ridership. Offering more flexibility with more frequent vans and buses. You could lower the peak of the rush hour as well, by spreading out the load.
And of course, you still have a lower per-passenger-mile cost with the vans.
this report also assumed the cost of gas will stay at less than $3.00 per gallon. so if that changes, then only vanpool and some bus costs come up, the others would remain static.
Funny, I thought it was diesel (refined with gasoline) that powered the Sounder train. I guess it runs on those rainbows and ponies that you rail-fanatics love to promise!
The biggest advantage of van pools and buses over rail: flexibility. How many times is the Sounder shut down for mudslides over the track? What happens when we have rail washouts? Or an earthquake that damages the rail line? Buses and vans can be re-routed around the damage; rail you have to fix before you can use it.
And let's not talk about the cost required to drill those deep stations for light rail, under Capital Hill. After all, rail can't deal with the grades we have in this region, but buses and vans can...
No, we'll keep with the rainbow and pony powered dream cars that cost more and are inflexible, because gosh darn it, we're now a World Class City with those!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on November 21, 2009 10:08 PMright, only the numbers you posted aren't an apples-apples comparison.
not all the passenger vans are 15, there are 12 and 8. per the report, the average ridership is 8.14.
if you want to say that it's only 10 vans, then we can analyze that: you'd only have 120' of highway used compared to the new flyer D60's 60'.
you also have a total cost of $2.00 per passenger mile on the vans, compared to $0.85 on the bus.
there is no 27x cost advantage - this has been heavily manipulated to show this, as i previously discussed.
shanghai'd anne:
thanks for reminding me the sounder isn't link. after living in germany for so long, it's easy to forget not all regional rail is electric.
buses and vans can't deal with the grade when it's icy out.
speaking of rainbow and pony powered dreams how's it feel watching the conservative party in the 'last throes' of relevancy?
michelle:
not only did seattle vote for it, but so did those overwhelming liberal pinko commies in king, pierce and snohomish counties. those clowns willingly said, 'tax us - we want to live in a modern region, and not an 19th century abortion.'
i didn't know tukwila was nowhere. in just under a month, Link will stretch from downtown (also nowhere? who knew!) to the airport, which will be great for residents and tourists. who knew that 32,000,000 passengers a year flew to 'nowhere' - surely you agree that tourism is a net benefit for the region...
in a few years, it will expand to the UW - surely a prestigious institution like UW must qualify as 'somewhere' - oh wait, i forgot you abhor education, facts and science. yep, i can see why you think UW is 'nowhere'...
and then a few years after that, expanding all the way to lynnwood, bellevue and the south sound. wow. i had no idea there were so many 'nowheres' in WA.
who knew you were so good at geography? i mean, after your epic science fails, i can see why you'd be so good at geography...
Posted by: mike on November 23, 2009 09:49 PMGreat, no answers... Good for you!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on November 24, 2009 07:18 AMMike how do you come up with that number? The cost is twenty cents, not $2.00. If you're talking about 10 vans, when you multiply costs by 10, you have to also multiply the denomintor (number of passengers) by 10.
Remember, we're talking cost per passenger mile here.
Posted by: travis t on November 24, 2009 03:51 PM