Instead of making those hard changes like using public transit or living locally, I guess everyone is waiting for Elon Musk to save the world with his magic-mobiles.
Go ahead, downvote me for telling the truth. I got karma to spare.
Buses are OK, about as good of a system as you would expect buses to be, but if you are looking to go from where I live to salt lake you are probably looking at an hour to an hour and a half, which seems pretty good when you consider that it takes 45 minutes - 60 minutes on Front Runner (30 miles).
All the pollution from the entire area just aggregates into a massive inversion.
Aerial Map: https://www.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0...
The valley really needs to build up some density to make transit really work, but its difficult with all that land available + a conservative Republican state government (along with the people who vote for that government).
SLC mayor Ralph Becker says, "by the end of 2013, we will have witnessed the largest expansion of an urban rail system in the nation." [1]
"70 miles in 7 years" seems pretty ambitious to me. [2]
[1] - http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55680450-78/salt-lake-beck...
[2] - http://www.rideuta.com/mc/?page=Projects-Frontlines2015
If you are commuting to/from downtown SLC, public transit is actually somewhat reasonable - I live in the southwest end of the valley and it is only maybe 50 minutes vs 35 to drive in ideal conditions. The bigger problems are:
1) The trains don't run nearly often enough. If you happen to miss one or need to go at a non-peak time, it is going to be really inconvenient.
2) Not only does much of our population live in suburbs, a large amount of jobs are located outside of downtown, too. In that case, a 20 minute commute by car can easily be a 1.5 - 2 hour public transit commute - I can drive to work in about 25 minutes, but according to UTA, the most optimal route by bus/Trax would take 1:30.
The way we've situated things here is pretty hostile to mass transit, but I'm glad we're at least making slow progress.
Here's another interesting fact. When I looked into Front Runner's costs (which relative to other faster trains is relatively inexpensive) and did the math to spread it over the population for whom it was moving their commute off the road and found that the costs equated to over 50,000 dollars per rider. That's to say that we could have bought everyone a nice hybrid and we would have done likely a better job for the environment, for less money, and not have had to extend a rather limited and fragile infrastructure.
Trains make no sense, not even in Japan nor Europe. Look at the actual numbers, whether it's the fiscal costs or the total environmental costs of the system and it's support systems compared to their equivalents in a trainless world.
Don't believe me? The Calgary CTrain has costs not much different than TRAX. Operating costs, including depreciation, are $0.30 per rider...making the system profitable enough to subsidize the more suburban bus system. Why? Because they have 5x the ridership.
Don't be obtuse.
Just because Utah doesn't know how to run public transit doesn't mean no one else can and do so with decent financials.
Actually diesel buses make more soot than cars. For this problem, public transit is not the solution. (Unless you use LNG buses.)
But LNG buses are just not common enough, they apparently cost more than diesel ones so municipalities don't buy them.
Yes, new buses are good. But there are still plenty of old ones. (And this one didn't look old.)
Diesel is very polluting compared to gasoline and I hate it. And stop/start diesel is the worst. So despite its great reputation public buses are not the automatic win they are made out to be.
Buses help with traffic and CO2, they do not help with soot. And the city in this article is having trouble with soot.
It would be wonderful if all buses were LNG, then there'd be little drawbacks. But right now they aren't, and because LNG is more expensive cities are buying diesel instead.
PS. In general cursing means you acknowledge your position is incorrect but you wish to use bluster to defend it anyway. It makes little difference if you don't intend this meaning - this is the meaning that is transmitted.