[citation][nom]JonnyDough[/nom] A well planned out and engineered computerized monorail system is superior in nearly ever way to the HTS, making automated cars an obselete idea already. It is my belief that we should simply skip this notion and move on to something much much better.[/citation]
Better in what way? always going where they want to go, on their schedule? will it stop every block? Not everyone can walk all over town you know. Is it going to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week? is it going to run to all the suburbs and rural areas? When a new housing development is build, or a new apartment building, will it have a new stop immediately, or the five to ten years that it usually takes for government-engineered projects?
Believe it or not, not everywhere is as densely populated as the downtown part of major urban areas. Mass transit becomes less effective the more it has to spread out. The main urbanized/suburbanized part of Los Angeles country, for example, is about 35 miles north-south by 48 miles east-west.
Such a system, in order to 'work' would need to be about 10% the density of the street system... including interchanges... which would cost more money than there *is*.
Every stop would need to be accessible. (We're already talking about having stops ten blocks apart in urban and suburban areas, and ten blocks is a LONG push in a chair and a long 'limp' with a cane.) It would still be dangerous, and would be maintenance hell- you think highways are expensive to maintain, look at trains. (And then there's that whole thing in L.A. of quakes)
And unless there are 'express routes' to get you across town you end up with the same problem I mentioned two posts ago- two and a half to three hours to get 34 miles. Spending five to six hours a day in transit, and eight at work, you'd have just enough time to fix dinner and eat before going to bed... even assuming that the average is half that (see next para)... sigh- lets put it this way- assume you're making $17/hr. (which btw, is the approximate average salary for working Americans.) So every day you're losing $51 worth of time. Each week, you're losing $255 in time. Each year, that's $12,600 in time (assuming two weeks vacation, plus holidays...) So much for mass transit 'saving money'. Then there's the non-work part, where that time spent on, waiting for, and building your schedule around mass transit is lost time that could be spent with friends and/or family- you know, trying to have a life outside work.
(by the by- another point about L.A.- going 70 miles round trip is a bit bad, but a significant part of the population of L.A. drives *at least* twenty miles each way to work. I think last time they did the survey, the average was like 14 miles each way...)
Of course, the funny part is, depending on the price of gas, it was often cheaper gas-wise to make that drive...
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