BIKE: mass transit safety

[Patrick Goetz]

alan_drake wrote:
> 
> a dozen times, the new KL monorail has a perfect safety record after a 
> year of operation.
> 
> I believe that a heavy piece of metal fell on a reporter's head and caused severe brain damage there.

It was actually a safety wheel, this happened while the system was being 
tested (i.e. before it went into production), and was ruled to be the
result of sabotage rather than an accident.  Nevertheless, MTrans made 
several design changes to improve safety before the system went into 
production and continues to work on the design for future trains. Unless 
you're talking about something I don't know about (it was indeed a 
reporter that it hit on the head in this instance), my statement stands 
as originally made.

> Grade seperation can cause it's own safety issues.  The system that I think best for emulation (WHEN a city has the $) is Copenhagen.

Of course; but surely you're not going to compare 3 instances of falling 
objects on new and experimental systems with an accident every 4 days 
for just one US street rail system (Houston)?  This is like the people 
who say bicycling is unsafe while conveniently ignoring the 42,000
people who are killed in motor vehicle accidents each year in the US alone.

Curious:  what is it about the Copenhagen system which you find so 
appealing?  Aside from being fully automated, it seems very similar to 
other metro systems in comparable European cities (Vienna comes to mind, 
as I was just there), switching from underground to elevated service 
outside the urban core.  I'm not a supporter of fully automated systems 
(at least not for our first Metro line), as people won't feel 
comfortable without some kind of security person on board, so it it 
might as well be the driver, allowing for the elimination of a lot of 
very complicated and expensive electronics.  The thing for us to note is 
that there are only 1.7 million people living in the greater Copenhagen 
area, less than 6 million in all of Denmark.  If they can afford to 
build a snazzy Metro system with comprehensive service across the entire 
metropolitan area, why can't we?  Answer: we can and we must. 
LRT/commuter rail whiners and road warriors sniveling be damned.

Out of curiousity, I did a little investigation, and according to the 
information I was able to find, they're building 21km of underground and 
elevated tracks for 2.94 billion DKK, which comes out to slightly less 
than $38M/mile.  How on earth are they able to build a subway / elevated 
train with 22 stations for only $38M/mile in a country with high 
European wages, strict environmental regulations, and considerably more 
regulatory bureaucracy than we have?  If this is correct, then something 
is rotten HERE rather than in Denmark.

 > Street Cars

The problem with street cars is that they don't solve any transportation 
problems that a bus isn't already handling and require ugly overhead
power lines and are constrained to fixed routes as a drawback.  The only 
advantage of a streetcar is that its narrower than a bus and
consequently takes up less space on the street.  There are plenty of 
streets with streetcars in, for example, Prague, that simply wouldn't
accomodate buses because they're too narrow.  Otherwise, if you take the 
cost of track deployment and maintenance into consideration, I very 
seriously doubt that streetcars are cheaper to maintain than buses, 
particulary the (allegedly) low maintenance new hybrid buses Cap Metro 
has started using.