1.
The ability to take a taxi or uber home also prevents drunk driving. Responsible drinking or having a designated driver also prevents drunk driving.
Even if you were to insist the government subsidizes "get home late from a bar without driving", Empty night trains are probably one of the least cost effective ways of doing that.
Personally, I just walk home from a bar. That prevents drunk driving since I don't need cars, taxis or trains just to get a beer.
2. Density indeed helps increase walk-ability. But it's also about mixed used development. Jane Jacobs talks a lot about this in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". If zoning laws divide the city into a "business area", a "living area" and "an entertainment area", Density isn't going to save you from having to drive between those areas.
Not everybody gets drunk within walking distance of their house and many (most?) cities have laws against public intoxication (eg walking drunk). Public transportation is one of those things that people shouldn't have to think about, it should just be available all the time (with varying service intervals).
Mixed-use amazing and the US is incredibly backwards in that sense. I think we have a stigma against mixed-use because apartments used to have shitty sound insulation. That's not really a problem anymore...
Is anyone cited for public intoxication merely drunk while in public, or are they instead drunk while causing a problem in public? I ask because in various cities I've had a fair amount of police contact while intoxicated, and never been cited. Typical exchange:
"What are you doing?!"
"Goin' 'ome, off'cer!"
"You're too drunk to ride your bike. Get off and walk."
"Ooookaaayyy..."
If being drunk makes one an asshole, then one is in fact an asshole, and one should drink at home.
Besides, train stations and bus stops are also public places. How is that supposed to work?
I remember Austin, Texas making headlines several years ago when cops started going into bars specifically to find drunk people to arrest, even if they were calm and were staying overnight in the same building.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find clear substantiation of specific cases other than this article, which only talked about the danger of how the law made it possible to do what you're describing:
>>Arrested for drinking in a bar? Sounds like the ultimate catch-22. Since 2006 ... cops ... have used a 1993 law as a pretext to enter any bar and arrest its patrons on the spot. The public intoxication standard, backed by the Texas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer's hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation...
Oy, I forgot about Texas. Things work differently there. It's clear, though, that my original statement was one of privilege: I'm not part of any of the more targeted communities. Still, can we expect intoxication to be more tolerated at the bus stop than it is anywhere else on the block? Perhaps the problem isn't so much giving LEOs discretion in writing citations, but rather it's having entirely too many LEOs in the first place. When they're busy with actual public safety work they won't have time for commemorative Stonewall Inn reenactments.
This also happens with drunk passengers in cars. Police will order drunk passengers to get out of a car, to then immediately charge them with public intoxication.
> Police will order drunk passengers to get out of a car, to then immediately charge them with public intoxication.
In some states (e.g., Texas) a car counts as "public place" when it comes to intoxication. The passenger wasn't charged because he left the car, but he already violated the law by being intoxicated inside the car.
Which is a catch 22 on anyone drinking. You go to the bar, get drunk, and then cannot legally leave the bar to go home by any means, because where in every other state the correct action is to have a sober friend drive you home, in states like Texas you are still "public" despite being in someones private motor vehicle.
It's far more expensive to take a taxi/uber or to leave near bars than it is to take public transit home. Those are not realistic options for everyone.
That's because you're comparing only the cost paid directly by the passenger. Not the total cost of operating a train line that gets heavily subsidized by tax payers.
Mass transit makes a lot of sense. It can even be profitable when you have a lot of people going in the same direction at the same time.
But whenever you're on a really empty bus or train - someone else is footing the bill for your very expensive ride home.
You might not need the road anyways. If a major fraction of the population doesn't need to drive, you can make human-sized (instead of car-sized) roads and have higher density and lower upkeep.
And you can have trains that come much less often (like, say, once an hour) to collect the stragglers. Less wagons in the trains.
Hello, Tokyo has no trains from 1-5AM. So you can simply plan around it (either going home before 1 or knowing you'll be out til 5).
Human sized roads can still have cars, just not as many as a 4-lane road
Plus if you can shrink parking lots to 1/2 of what they are you'll reclaim so much space downtown
Actually (and surprisingly, at least for me), this is not the case... The Vice article mentions a US PRIG study that showed that "user revenue only covered 48 percent of the costs of roads". [1]
Sorry I'm late coming back to this, but there's a reason I said "freeway network" and not "roads". For a variety of political and economic factors, local roads are maintained out of localities' general revenue. But they could easily be covered by an expanded gas tax, particularly if 1/6 of gas tax revenue wasn't redirected to transit.
> Not the total cost of operating a train line that gets heavily subsidized by tax payers.
A few extra late-night runs don't particularly move the budget. It's a bit like manufacturing - once you've designed your product and set up the production line, doing a run of 4000 items isn't much different to doing a run of 5000 items.
Not profitable by fares charged, sure. Definitely profitable if they were credited with the gain in property taxes/values that their presence facilitates.
1. Yes, that was just an example of potential beneficial effects of public transit. My point was that some things in the "public good" just cost money, and should not be expected to monetize themselves.
2. True. Upvote for Jane Jacobs. Properly diverse density.
Even if you were to insist the government subsidizes "get home late from a bar without driving", Empty night trains are probably one of the least cost effective ways of doing that.
Personally, I just walk home from a bar. That prevents drunk driving since I don't need cars, taxis or trains just to get a beer.
2. Density indeed helps increase walk-ability. But it's also about mixed used development. Jane Jacobs talks a lot about this in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". If zoning laws divide the city into a "business area", a "living area" and "an entertainment area", Density isn't going to save you from having to drive between those areas.