Comment by car | Hacker News Reader

Comment by car | Hacker News Reader

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It was not the county that voted against a BART system that would go around the Bay, it were the interests of a real estate devloper and Caltrain that fucked this up for the rest of us. It never even got to be voted on.

Seeing the pathetic state of public transit in the Bay Area, and thinking how much better it could have been, it incenses me to see how darwinistic capitalism rides roughshot over the common interest.

Here the story from our local paper, lest we don't forget history:

Electric trains could have been here long ago. In the late 1950s, San Mateo County was one of five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area Transit District. The district could assess taxes and issue bonds and had a round-the-Bay light-rail system planned, according to a history at the website of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).

The plan derailed, according to the BART account, because San Mateo County supervisors were "cool to the plan." They chose to exit the district in December 1961, citing the proposed system's "high costs" and the "adequate service" from Southern Pacific commuter trains, now Caltrain.

George Mader, who retired in 2010 after 45 years as Portola Valley's town planner, has another angle. The "cool to the plan" characters were two men of influence, he said in a March 11 letter to Portola Valley Mayor Ted Driscoll.

The "major problems," Mr. Mader said, were T. Louis Chess, who chaired the county Board of Supervisors and worked for Southern Pacific Railway, and David D. Bohannon, a "major player" in the county and the developer of the then-new Hillsdale Shopping Center.

Mr. Bohannon claimed that BART would take shoppers away from Hillsdale and into San Francisco, Mr. Mader said, adding that "shopping was rather good (in San Francisco) at the time." For his part, Mr. Chess was protecting Southern Pacific, Mr. Mader said. And the county voters would have had to decide on whether to join BART.

"These short-sighted and selfish people did not let the residents vote," Mr. Mader said. "A travesty!"

EDIT: cited from http://www.almanacnews.com/story.php?story_id=10935

EDIT: clarification

> it incenses me to see how darwinistic capitalism rides roughshot over the common interest.

Under actual "darwinistic capitalism" anybody who wanted to would be able to start a competing transit service, even if it stole all the customers of a current one. At a minimum, you'd see a thriving private jitney industry - private bus services outcompeting the public ones and private part-time cabs underpricing the metered ones. No, to get mass transit this bad requires active interference with the workings of "darwinistic capitalism". In particular, laws making it illegal to compete with the established quasi-monopoly firms. The government at various levels doesn't just do a bad job of providing transit, they also make it illegal to compete with the crappy transit they provide. Fix either half of that equation and things are a lot better.

>>>even if it stole all the customers of a current one

Many taxi companies are required to serve anyone at any time(24/7/365) for fixed prices, regardless of the cost of the trip. It is unlikely that the new transit service will steal all the unprofitable customers.

Many of the regulations around transportation are very utilitarian. There are people who can not drive and are unserved by public transportation, but will die if they do not have access to transportation. We the people(you too) have decided to contract out their transportation to cab companies. In exchange for this incredibly unprofitable mandate, cab companies get price fixing which is essentially a monopoly on many routes.

Regulators want to make sure, above all, that the drivers are paying taxes and paying for the use of their vastly (and artificially) expensive taxi medallions. So the regulations tend to require the use of an expensive and finicky and limiting piece of equipment - a taxi meter. Private jitneys don't need a meter, so they're immediately less expensive. The private alternative to a meter that works as well or better for a nearly zero cost is a "zone card". Draw a stylized map of the area divided into "zones"; there's a fare for within-zone travel or a higher fare to cross some number of zones to get to another area. The zone map and price schedule can be printed on a card handed to the passenger or (where jitneys are legal) put on a sticker on the door of the car, so the passenger knows the charges before they get in.

Now the cab driver has no incentive to avoid passengers who want to cross a bridge to a less profitable area (ever try to get a cab to Brooklyn from downtown manhattan?) and no incentive to take the long way around to bump up the meter charge in slow periods - the driver's interests and the passenger's are aligned. Better yet, drivers have the flexibility that they can negotiate other fares when that's appropriate - for instance, charging more in a hurricane.

Rigidly fixed prices are NOT a good thing for customers if you want there to be service at any time to/from any region. Fixed prices mean many areas get little or no service - the cabs stick to the more popular routes and people who live in poor neighborhoods get shafted.

The regulations on cabs are not at all utilitarian - they are pure rent-seeking. Concentrated benefits accrue to the few who own medallions; distributed costs are paid by drivers and passengers everwhere.

Taxi laws are different in different places. Many places you have the option of calling a taxi company, and they are legally required to send you a cab. Obviously not NY.

Your "zone" idea is logical. So logical that it is the law in some places, like the Bay Area which is the subject of the comment you replied to.

(2) Out-of-Town Trips. Drivers are authorized to collect 150 percent of the metered rate for out-of-town trips exceeding 15 miles beyond City limits. http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/transporta...

>>>Rigidly fixed prices are NOT a good thing for customers if you want there to be service at any time to/from any region.

This holds true for NY, where you can't call a cab with a phone. Other places you can call, and the cab is legally required to come and pick you up.

>>>The regulations on cabs are not at all utilitarian - they are pure rent-seeking

I agree that some are, but I think that I have listed some laws do service the public good. Am I wrong? NY tip: you can implement the zone system yourself on an ad-hoc basis - give them enough money and they will take you to Brooklyn. I hope you have a lot of money though :) .

Irony of ironies, the son (grandson?) of the developer is now complaining about too much traffic in his hometown.

"I think developers represent change, and change is difficult," he says. "A lot of people in Menlo Park don't want change, so they don't want development. ... But now here we are — a very wealthy community that has turned its back on development for many, many years."

He recognizes that a lot of the anti-development sentiment comes down to a key issue: the fear that developing the city will lead to more traffic.

"Like it or not, Menlo Park, like every other city on the Peninsula, is growing," he says. "What was going on here in the 1950s is not going on now — this is a major urban center. ... I don't like the traffic either — every time I go home in the afternoon, I can't stand driving by Hillview School."

EDIT: cited from http://www.almanacnews.com/story.php?story_id=3655

How San Mateo supervisors burying the government plan qualifies as "darwinistic capitalism"? The only other entity mentioned is Southern Pacific which is now Caltrain which seems also to be not a private entity at all. Where capitalism even starts in this whole story?

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