this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Mass transit has also burned quite a few people with reliability. The train not showing up on time was regular enough I had to stop using it to go to work. There is only so many times you can be late to work before it becomes your fault for not fixing the issue; in my case, by no longer taking the train and driving instead.
That's not an argument against trains, it's an argument for running them well.
How does the quote go?
"At least the trains ran on time"?
I don't think being a Nazi is strictly a requirement for having good train service. We should aim for non-Nazi good trains.
That quote was as often a quote of Weimar Germany, which the Nazis succeeded.
Nazi Germany tended to appoint all kinds of idiots to everything and all the most competent people had all their time wasted in "loyalty parties". Eventually even the trains stopped running on time by the end.
For long distance trains, check out the fact that the rules give mega-long cargo trains priority over passenger trains on Amtrak. This results in negative impacts to present rail.
The metro in DC is a perfect example lol
People still used the hell out of it up until the pandemic, despite having a terrible two track design, despite having delayed maintenance for essentially 30 years, and despite having three jurisdictions arguing over how to fund what is truthfully only a commuter rail, not a proper full system.
I'd love to see more investment in Metro, but there needs to be a seismic shift in how we think about it, because commuting is only going to continue to decline in the long term, even if it will bounce a bit in the short term. I'm hoping DC can find a way to incentivize development around metro stops to make metro better for locals rather than M-Fers that the Post keeps insisting are responsible for subsidizing the city through lunches and happy hours. That includes repurposing half empty office buildings, and maybe looking at relaxing the height restriction as you get further out of the city center.