High Density and Mass Dependence on Public Transport

[Nate99]

Looking at the Sandy aftermath, and I can't help but remember how easy it was for me to drive on a wide freeway to Katy (that had power back in 3 or 4 days) to get gas and groceries and drive back to my house during Ike.

With so many people in the NY metro area, any such area would be immediately swamped and the roads to get there completely jammed because the density is enabled only by mass transit that is not yet functional. No one was dumpster diving that I heard of.

For whatever the upsides of mass transit and high density living, this is one major downside in a disaster, which we will have every 20 years or so.

As for me, I'm tempted to look for ways to live in rural northern New Mexico. Fewer people, fewer problems.

[ricco67]

Not really a fair comparison. the subway system hasn't been upgraded For years and never really ready for something like this but I'm sure that's going to change.

[Nate99]

Not really a fair comparison. the subway system hasn't been upgraded For years and never really ready for something like this but I'm sure that's going to change.

There would never be a perfect comparison. I think it's more than fair to consider what you give up when you gain the advantages of an infrastructure that enables high-density living.

You bring up a good point though. Even in one of the highest taxed and most publicly (federal and state) subsidized jurisdictions in the country they can't keep up with the maintenance and modernization of their system or cope well with unforseen externalities. To the extent that such a system is workable, it is only barely functional and very expensive.

[kylejack]

Bikes uber alles http://www.nytimes.c...ed-commute.html

Most of the trains were back up and running fairly quickly. Only a couple lines remain down still.

The lines for gas are 3 miles long, so good luck with that car plan in New York.

[Nate99]

Most of the trains were back up and running fairly quickly. Only a couple lines remain down still.

Better let the MTA know, they seem to believe otherwise.

The lines for gas are 3 miles long, so good luck with that car plan in New York.

I'm not saying a "car plan" would work in NY, but if for some reason it could, you would have more gas stations and more highways to use to stock them up like other cites do.

Their infrastructure to get gasoline to people that want it is clearly inferior to ours, and I posit that this is in part due to their dependence on public transportation.

[Nate99]

I realize that the superiority of high urban density and public transportation is a sacrosanct notion to many around here. I just thought I'd poke the bear a bit.

It's no panacea.

[kylejack]

Their infrastructure to get gasoline to people that want it is clearly inferior to ours, and I posit that this is in part due to their dependence on public transportation.

I evacuated for Rita and spent 14 hours getting from 59 and Buffalo Speedway to the Woodlands. Barely made it to a gas station that had gas, and I started with a full tank.

[Nate99]

I evacuated for Rita and spent 14 hours getting from 59 and Buffalo Speedway to the Woodlands. Barely made it to a gas station that had gas, and I started with a full tank.

Were you in line for gas that entire distance? Did you evacuate after the storm hit? If not you're making a dissimilar comparison. The Rita evacuation was a monumental CF which one would expect of one of the largest urban evacuation ever attempted with basically zero planning. Nothing could keep up with that, but I stayed put and was able to get gasoline uninterrupted.

Three or four days after Ike, I still had no power, but 35 miles away they did. I drove there, waited behind three cars and bought 50 gallons of gas. That's comparable to what is going on in the three mile lines you brought up.

But I'm apparently arguing with a public transport fanboy, which is folly on my part. It has some upsides, but you throw straw men out and think you're defending its drawbacks.

You can always move, presuming you do in fact live in Houston. I wish more people would.

[kylejack]

You can always move, presuming you do in fact live in Houston. I wish more people would.

I'm going to stay here and support transit and bike infrastructure, even with its supposed disaster weaknesses. You can go to New Mexico as you wish.

[Nate99]

I'm going to stay here and support transit and bike infrastructure, even with its supposed disaster weaknesses. You can go to New Mexico as you wish.

Portland, Oregon is waiting for you with open bike paths and regional mobility commissions that are unquestioned, though perhaps not gainful employment. You can rid your angst and free up that support time that you devote to changing a very effective city in to something it does not want to be.

[kylejack]

Portland, Oregon is waiting for you with open bike paths and regional mobility commissions that are unquestioned, though perhaps not gainful employment. You can rid your angst and free up that support time that you devote to changing a very effective city in to something it does not want to be.

Minneapolis is the current gold standard for bike path deployment. Anyway, I'm staying in Houston.

[TheNiche]

I'm no particular fanboy of anything, but I don't think that a few days worth of inconvenience that might occur once every ten or fifteen years should impact public decisions involving infrastructure of individuals' decisions regarding where they should live. Times like that, the whole city will be shut down anyway and just because you might be able to get to work doesn't mean that you can be productive.

I find this thread, and yall's contrived bickering to be absurd and pointless.

[samagon]

Better let the MTA know, they seem to believe otherwise.

I'm not saying a "car plan" would work in NY, but if for some reason it could, you would have more gas stations and more highways to use to stock them up like other cites do.

Their infrastructure to get gasoline to people that want it is clearly inferior to ours, and I posit that this is in part due to their dependence on public transportation.

Not sure if you remember Ike, and Rita before it, but gasoline wasn't available after Rita for about 5 days, and Ike there were scant few that had gas after 3-4 days and then most were back up after a week.

We have the infrastructure to support it even, and they planned after Rita to have gasoline ready, but it still took lots of time. Not to mention, if you were hoping to get gasoline the day before it was out too, cause everyone was filling their cars to the brim, plus whatever containers they could get. Remember they ran out of gas cans as well, and people were using milk jugs to fill up.

No, we weren't any better off than they are right now.

[Nate99]

I don't think that a few days worth of inconvenience that might occur once every ten or fifteen years should impact public decisions involving infrastructure of individuals' decisions regarding where they should live.

Agreed there, it is my impression that the density of the area hit is making the recovery more difficult, and that density only occurs where people are dependent on public transportation. But it's not just correlation, for one, once power is restored piecemeal, you have millions more in range of those more limited than they otherwise would be resources. Finding gas four days after Ike for me was as hard as driving to Katy, that seems a lot better than what they are dealing with up there today. Everyone in Katy drives a lot, so there are a lot of gas stations there. Everyone on Long Island rides a train in, so there are not as many relative to the number of people, but they still want gas every bit as badly as we did after Ike and Rita. I don't recall Rita being anywhere near as bad once the initial outflux cleared.

Perhaps I'm just stating the obvious, disasters on densly populated areas are worse, but the dependency on a system that can be completely knocked down as opposed to one that is more flexible seems a contributing factor to the problems that people are having. No one went dumpster diving for food in Meyerland.

The bickering may be contrived, I probably shouldn't have taken kyle's bait to argue the same old "denser is better" argument, but my point is that private transportation and the related infrastructure is more flexible and useful in a disaster situation. No, you don't plan a city or where to live around that narrow set of circumstances. My point may have been framed poorly by the diversion, but it is not absurd.

[RedScare]

But I'm apparently arguing with a public transport fanboy, which is folly on my part. It has some upsides, but you throw straw men out and think you're defending its drawbacks.

And apparently the other posters are arguing with someone who threw out a single statement and does not wish to acknowledge that he may be misinformed.

The fact is, after Ike, the gas stations in Houston were nearly all shut down due to power outages. I am quite sure that New Yorkers could drive 35 miles to find gas as well. There may have been people that underestimated the storm and did not top off their tanks ahead of time...JUST AS IN HOUSTON. The pictures I have seen show people with jerry cans, suggesting that it was gas for generators that they needed. This is also the same as in Houston.

While there are some striking pictures and video in New York, I have yet to see anything worse than we have experienced in Houston or along the Gulf Coast. We had flooded tunnels and storm surge damaged beaches, just as they have. The major difference I see is that when the damage occurs in the media capital of the world, you see more of it. As kylejack pointed out, in a dense environment, people are more easily able to walk or bike to their destination. But, they have other problems to deal with. Your unsupported opinion is not proof of anything. Neither situation is better or worse, only different.

[TheNiche]

No one went dumpster diving for food in Meyerland.

The bickering may be contrived, I probably shouldn't have taken kyle's bait to argue the same old "denser is better" argument, but my point is that private transportation and the related infrastructure is more flexible and useful in a disaster situation. No, you don't plan a city or where to live around that narrow set of circumstances. My point may have been framed poorly by the diversion, but it is not absurd.

If anybody has to go dumpster diving, then that's the fault of the state or local disaster response authorities, who should have automobiles capable of traveling through a disaster area and who should have stockpiles of MREs to give away.

As for electricity shortages, I lived in a dense area close to the Astrodome during Ike. My condo only ever lost power for a few seconds; apparently, electricity infrastructure is hardened in areas close to the Texas Medical Center. Makes sense. Centerpoint placed a priority on restoring power to hospitals and major business districts, then worked outwards from there. That makes sense, too. Some close-in neighborhoods (like Eastwood) got their power back within a day or so, but due to the low density, many individual blocks remained powerless for up to two weeks.

The lesson I took from it is that the more individual blocks there are, the greater the total distance of power lines per household are exposed to wind damage, and the more complex the task of restoring power. Of course, the northeastern megalopolis is many, many times larger than Houston. So I expect that any disaster that affects it is going to yield more aggregate damage and will be more difficult to recover from. It doesn't follow that density is necessarily disadvantageous to this set of circumstances, but living in the same disaster area as many tens of millions as other people might be.

[RedScare]

I will make this point, though. From time to time, we get people posting that overhead power lines are ugly, and that all lines should be underground. In New York, where the lines ARE underground, the salt water has caused big problems when it got into electrical equipment. Fresh water is not as corrosive as salt water, but is still problematic with electricity. Of course, overhead lines can be blown down or taken out by trees.

Again, not worse, only different.

[samagon]

I will make this point, though. From time to time, we get people posting that overhead power lines are ugly, and that all lines should be underground. In New York, where the lines ARE underground, the salt water has caused big problems when it got into electrical equipment. Fresh water is not as corrosive as salt water, but is still problematic with electricity. Of course, overhead lines can be blown down or taken out by trees.

Again, not worse, only different.

It's weird, I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking about this very subject, power lines underground, rather than above.

They pointed out that every year they deal with salt water on the lines (maybe not immersed in it), but they salt the roads every time it snows, when it melts, that water drains into the manholes where the power lines are accessible from, and the power lines get covered in salt water. makes sense that they would be more resistant.

They also have pumps running 24/7 to keep the subway tunnels empty of water, apparently, they would flood otherwise (even in normal conditions).

Anyway, to the point of above/below power lines, they said the damage would have been far worse had they been above ground, vs them being underground. I think mainly there is a much higher initial cost involved with putting power under ground, and also maintenance costs are higher under ground. Afaik, all our CBD and other high density areas have underground power lines.

As space becomes more and more restrictive, it warrants putting this stuff underground, just like parking lots become garages after a certain density is reached and costs become conducive to paying the expense.

[Nate99]

While there are some striking pictures and video in New York, I have yet to see anything worse than we have experienced in Houston or along the Gulf Coast. We had flooded tunnels and storm surge damaged beaches, just as they have. The major difference I see is that when the damage occurs in the media capital of the world, you see more of it. As kylejack pointed out, in a dense environment, people are more easily able to walk or bike to their destination. But, they have other problems to deal with. Your unsupported opinion is not proof of anything. Neither situation is better or worse, only different.

I only have what I perceive to go by, so the sensationalism may be coloring my opinion, but it's not unsupported. Staten Island feels ignored, there was looting in Brooklyn and apparently three mile long lines for gas. Perhaps it's not a completely fair comparison, but it made landfall on Monday and four days later, it looks worse than I remember Ike being. If Long Island and NYC proper can't get gas today (which they can't), even if the roadways were open you'd have to drive a lot longer than 35 miles to find the next open station and pass a few million more people that are thinking of doing the same thing that you would in Houston. That all sounds definitively worse than what we had here.

The "other problems to deal with" are precisely my point. One of them is density and a reliance on floodable tunnels for the transportation needs of millions. Ours are isolated and easily avoided.

Would you rather live on Long Island after a Cat 1 like this or in Sugar Land after a Cat 3 like Ike? If you can honestly answer this as an either/or proposition, then you can call it even. After seeing what I have seen, I'm taking the latter. To me that means their situation is worse, but that's just my opinion.

[RedScare]

Would you rather live on Long Island after a Cat 1 like this or in Sugar Land after a Cat 3 like Ike?

Would I rather live on an island after a hurricane or 50 miles inland? Wow, that's a hard question.

[Nate99]

Would I rather live on an island after a hurricane or 50 miles inland? Wow, that's a hard question.

If you're not familiar, Long Island is a bit different than the Bolivar Peninsula. Hempstead, NY has about the same elevation as Sugar Land (~100 ft.), though points on LI are up to 400 ft. above sea level. Unless they were directly on the coast, they received little storm damage at all. The distiguishing difference in this comparison is where you would like to be without power in the greater metropolitain area.

If I have to spell that out for you, Niche was right, this will be an absurd discussion.

[RedScare]

If you're not familiar, Long Island is a bit different than the Bolivar Peninsula. Hempstead, NY has about the same elevation as Sugar Land (~100 ft.), though points on LI are up to 400 ft. above sea level. Unless they were directly on the coast, they received little storm damage at all. The distiguishing difference in this comparison is where you would like to be without power in the greater metropolitain area.

If I have to spell that out for you, Niche was right, this will be an absurd discussion.

If you have to spell it out for me, it is because you don't have an obvious point...which you don't. I spent 17 days without power in a metro area of Houston after Ike. It was rather warm and humid, but otherwise tolerable. If I was without power on inland Long Island, with daytime highs in the 50s, and lows in the upper 30s to mid 40s, it would probably be more comfortable, since I could pile up the blankets, and build a fire in my fireplace. In other words, for the vast majority of New Yorkers, it is inconvenient, but tolerable, just like here. Coastal damage in New York and Houston are similar, with Houston/Galveston's being worse.

Again, not worse, different.

[Slick Vik]

This is just bait.

[Nate99]

This is just bait.

It kind of turned out that way, but I wasn't necessarily meaning for it to when I started the thread. I knew some folks see urban density as the be all/end all, but I didn't know the level of devotion they had to the idea would preclude the acknowledgement of a drawback to such a setup.

In the end, it was probably a bad idea of a thread.

Safe travels.

[samagon]

I think it's an interesting topic.

I mean, I don't think we can compare sugar land vs queens, or bolivar and NYC and that shouldn't be the point.

really dense urban brings different challenges during a storm than rural, suburban or less dense urban does.

hell, geographical differences really shake up the challenges that similar areas may face during this kind of event.

but then what different areas prepare for really makes a difference in how they are affected.

in the end, is it really different than any other comparative topic?

[zaphod]

What would a Japanese or Chinese person's perspective on this be? Also if it were some third world city with private minibuses, you know those guys would not hesitate to get back out ASAP.

It's kind of a flawed argument to only look at New York and compare it to Houston, and not take into consideration things like the government and public's level of preparedness for a disaster. From a rational standpoint, I think the solution is simple. A city creates a disaster plan where public transport operators determine the least vulnerable depot to move equipment and stockpiled fuel and then runs buses to strategic locations. Maybe temporarily loosen regulations for taxis?

Also in theory, a dense city should be able to repair utilities back to normal(if they are not left vulnerable, like NY's) because the damage should be less spread out. A suburb with overhead power lines is going to take a long time to restore electricity if downed trees on every block are the problem. In a city if a substation is blown out its a matter of fixing it and the power comes back on.

[samagon]

Yeah, they certainly have their own problems, that's for sure.

Go read some stories about gasoline, they're still facing shortages, over a week later. After Ike, it seemed like the government was more focused on getting transportation up and going for people than distributing water.

You would think cities and governments would work together, or at least compare notes. I wonder if leaders of Houston reached out to different communities that this storm was targeting before the storm and said "hey guys, call distributors now and have them lined up with tankers of gasoline, ready to come back in"

IIRC, this was one of the lessons learned by Houston government from Rita that worked really well after Ike, get gasoline back asap, and it was even mentioned on the news that the city was participating in ensuring gasoline was not in short supply.

[Nate99]

It's kind of a flawed argument to only look at New York and compare it to Houston.

True, my original idea was aimed more at the question of, what would recovery from a hurricane look like in a denser version of Houston where more people could not get around to obtain the means of recovery for themselves. I'm thinking it would be worse.

[TheNiche]

True, my original idea was aimed more at the question of, what would recovery from a hurricane look like in a denser version of Houston where more people could not get around to obtain the means of recovery for themselves. I'm thinking it would be worse.

If we scrunched the 6.2 million people on top of one another into a land area with the density of New York City (27,243 persons/sq.mi.), then that'd take up 227 square miles. This is equivalent to a 15-mile x 15-mile land area.

To put that in perspective, imagine if the entire population of the Houston metro area lived in the mainland part of Galveston County that is south of Dickinson Bayou, and everything else (the remaining ten counties) were totally-uninhabited wilderness.

If a storm struck that tiny little blip on the map, it'd be incredibly easy to restore accessibility, to distribute emergency supplies, and to restore essential services. After all, there'd be fewer miles of streets to remove debris from (fewer trees to generate debris), fewer and larger utility trunklines feeding the city, and most likely fewer feet of powerline, water line, sewer line, etc., per household. It'd only take a few hundred aid stations to ensure that every single person was within a mile of one, and on account of that there would only be a third or fewer the number of impacted persons as in the case of Sandy, there'd be plenty of supplies to go around whether we're talking water, food, or gasoline.

Increased density makes the logistics easier; aggregate size makes it harder, even as growth enables the existence of greater densities.

[Nate99]

If we scrunched the 6.2 million people on top of one another into a land area with the density of New York City (27,243 persons/sq.mi.), then that'd take up 227 square miles. This is equivalent to a 15-mile x 15-mile land area.

To put that in perspective, imagine if the entire population of the Houston metro area lived in the mainland part of Galveston County that is south of Dickinson Bayou, and everything else (the remaining ten counties) were totally-uninhabited wilderness.

If a storm struck that tiny little blip on the map, it'd be incredibly easy to restore accessibility, to distribute emergency supplies, and to restore essential services. After all, there'd be fewer miles of streets to remove debris from (fewer trees to generate debris), fewer and larger utility trunklines feeding the city, and most likely fewer feet of powerline, water line, sewer line, etc., per household. It'd only take a few hundred aid stations to ensure that every single person was within a mile of one, and on account of that there would only be a third or fewer the number of impacted persons as in the case of Sandy, there'd be plenty of supplies to go around whether we're talking water, food, or gasoline.

Increased density makes the logistics easier; aggregate size makes it harder, even as growth enables the existence of greater densities.

Interesting hypotheticals all around. Your scenario sounds plausibly better than reality has been from a recovery standpoint, presuming you didn't have Bolivar level damage on a significant portion of the concentrated area.

But suppose you keep everyone in the Houston metro area where they are now, but instead of an expanded freeway system, they ride hypothetical trains that take them to where they work and our roads look about like they did in 1985. I think that is a more reasonable analog to what Staten Island and Long Island are dealing with currently. Would people in Baytown be able to get gas and groceries in Cypress after five days? Maybe, but there would be fewer gas stations once they got there.

NY metro is so huge, they have the worst of all of these scenarios when it goes bad. They have heavily populated suburbs that depend on trains and a maxed out freeway system.

Interesting logistics exercise.