Yet if you look at McHenry County and not just City of Chicago which ignores all their suburbs (which covers many NW Illinois counties, not just Cook County). It also includes kids going to work after school, wives going to their local businesses like a resturant waitress or clerk. Those are not considered commuters although they are added into your survey.
A lot of people in the suburbs commute to the suburbs. Also the average time for commuters in the state is lower than for Chicago.
If you are like most, the questionaire is between 20 and 40% lower than the real times.
I can believe 20%, 40% sound unlikely. But even 40% increase would still leave the average very far below your example about two and and eight tenths hours.
The survey for Chicago by their planning board has better numbers more akin to what the primary bread winner faces. 14% of them in Chicago face over an hour.
1 - Why should we care less about non "primary bread winners".
2 - 14% over an hour is not inconsistent with a 33.2 minute average, or with my statement about 2.8 hours being an extreme outlier.
And you fail to take into account that by having the government pay for trackage and terminals like they do for highways and ports
The federal gasoline and diesel fuel taxes bring in more than is spent on the interstate system. Yes its government payments, but its government payments that are a cost to people who drive.
Cutting 25% from train shipping costs and the 8% annual growth rate in intermodal shipping would double easy. 42% of the nations freight (ton miles) is shipped by train now. To get that 90% of long distance trucking reduction, rail would need to get to 67% which is about 20 years at current rates or 10 years by the quicker rate.
Double? Maybe. I'm not sure I'd say easy. But assume a doubling of growth, there isn't a good reason to assume it would be maintained for a decade or longer. Also the current growth doesn't keep trucking from growing. If trains carried and additional amount of cargo equal to 90% of what is carried by trucks that doesn't mean that trucks would have a 90% reduction in miles.
Maybe 42% of the nations freight (in ton miles) is shipped by train, but that includes bulk goods like coal and steel.
Your counting growth in inter-modal shipping and applying it to the base of all train cargo ton miles. Then your doubling it, assuming that doubling last for at least a decade, and neglecting to consider the overall total growth in cargo ton miles.
If its 1% of Chicago commuters. Well 140,000 people isn't an insignificant total, but you don't base major changes in policy off of 1%.
BS! Terrorists are far less than 1% of all travelers, yet how many major policy changes were made to combat them?
If the 1% or 0.0000001% are going to try to kill people in massive numbers, obviously going to make a lot of effort to stop them.
If the 1% have an unusually inconvenient and difficult commute, that doesn't mean you are going to rearrange transportation to serve them.
"The most common commuting pattern today is suburb to suburb."
Which isn't even covered at all in your statistics you cited (above).
Those suburb to suburb commutes are often shorter than suburb to city center commutes.
What if they got rid of gas taxes and charged you a road damage fee based on the size (GVWR) of the vehicle and how far and fast you drove?
Well there are other arguments for a gas tax (reducing CO2 emissions for example)
More importantly in my opinion, I don't want the government monitoring how fast I drive on any sort of continual basis.
Other than that I suppose I could accept it. But to the extent it makes trucks transport more expensive, it will increase costs for business in this country. And the cost increase would have to be massive and sustained for a long time to make the type of shift to rail that you want. I think that such a cost increase would do more harm than good.
Longer trains means more cranes and forklifts can be used at the same time
Yes but in the real world, doubling the number of containers moved is going to increase processing time unless its done slowly, and very profitably and even than you would have temporary snags. |
