I have long preached on the need for our city's transit systems to have high utility. By that I mean that people who use transit can get where they want to go (or at least nearby) easily and quickly. Low utility is what we have now for the majority, not just in Atlanta but in most of the world.
Here are some of David Henry's ideas on how the new Atlanta Streetcar project can be better. The first one, especially, is absolutely correct - the higher the frequency; that is, the less time a person has to wait for a car -- the more useful the streetcar will be.
Atlanta will have four streetcars, but right now only plans to run two at a time. This likely means headways of up to 20 minutes. In 20 minutes a potential customer could very likely walk to his or her destination. Most certainly they could drive that distance. Of course the obstacle is not a lack of streetcars, but rather the high cost of people to operate the cars. I'm not against paying a fair wage people to drive our buses and our trains, but this is why we can't have nice things. We simply cannot afford enough people to give our bus lines high utility, and we barley afford to keep headways on our heavy rail within decent intervals.
And therein lies the rub. If we cannot run enough buses on enough routes to feed the rail and then distribute from the rail, then we have low utility. Low utility put fewer buts in the seats, which reduces farebox income and increases dependency on the public purse.
As it's said, it takes money to make money. If we are not willing to raise the utility of the streetcar, much less all of our transit systems in and around Atlanta, then we are left with a system that costs the taxpayers more because we are not willing to make the needed investment on the front end.
I'm not sure what can be done about this. Education isn't working, as touted as that solution to everything is -- we are still electing people to office who ought to know better to and yet do not. Perhaps when gas gets up to $5 a gallon, we might...perhaps...start to see a change in our public policies. But I'm not going to hold my breath for that either.
