"Although here most buses, planes and trains compete with each other which IMHO is just plain stupid. Buses should feed trains and trains feed planes, they are complimentary not competing forms of transport."

In an ideal world that might be valid but in the real world I welcome more competition. Competition for the passenger's dollar. The give and take of day to day competition proves to be a far more efficient system over time. If a profit can be made to 'feed' a train with a busload of passengers or a plane-load then that market will be filled.

It is far from your 'stupid' to expect any mandated integrated sytem to become a bureaucracy in itself and not able to adapt to the very real world of the customer. Where do these buses travel? Where do these trains go? Where do the planes fly? There's a thousand variables governing these decisions and supply and demand is the most efficient sytem. Otherwise empty buses will join up with empty trains feeding empty planes that end up flying where nobody wants to go. Transportation doesn't exist for the sake of transportation but for the passenger.

Except when fuel gets expensive and half loaded buses, trains and planes making loses really do seem silly, especially when they require more subsidies. There's no such thing as true competition in transport in any case, in the real world the market will be too short term to handle fuel shortage. There is already a trade war going on between airlines between the US highly subsidised airlines and Europe’s less subsidised airlines - although Airbus throws a futher spanner into the works. If the market really did work then the US wouldn't subsidise its airlines at all – the net result would be an immediate loss to commerce of important networks.

Competition in the future might be a luxury we can't afford, even during plentiful fuel periods planners need to take into account which mode of transport does which best.

It may be the price of oil will rise overnight to such an extent it will cause serious material disruption and someone, somewhere will have to step in and plan an integrated system and policy network to enable the economy to carry on working.

I'm sorry I'm not sure the market is set up to ensure Peak Oil is dealt with in an efficient, seamless manner. Nevertheless there is a good deal of advantages for customers having well planned integrated transport system, rather than a hotch potch of cherry picking services which are not good to anyone. As for competing for this passenger's dollar, I agree, the customer is important. Transport exists to move freight and passengers. However, you can still have competing bus, train and airline companies using the same routes and fit into a wider policy. Also, buses can pick up people from small intermediate towns, rail from medium and large and airlines large towns on the same route. Rail and airlines cannot go door to door like buses, buses cannot match rail and airlines for speed and comfort, rail cannot cross oceans and so on.

Looks like the rail companies are now filling unfilled seats, Fares from £1.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4394068.stm

http://www.megatrain.com/

I was thinking about a possible techno-fix for the "empty bus" problem. In San Francisco, the buses don't really run on a schedule anyway so it might be applicable here. Basically, you structure the transit system around a hub and spoke model. However, the "spoke" portion of the system does not follow predetermined routes. Instead, the system uses some combination of RFID, GPS, and mobile phones to determine how many people are waiting at a given stop at a given time. The bus runs in pickup/dropoff mode for, say, 20 minutes. However, it doesn't follow a pre-determined route. Rather, the route is determined by who is waiting where. If nobody wants to get off or get on at a stop, the bus doesn't bother passing or stopping there. Once the bus has run in pickup/dropoff mode for long enough, it takes the shortest route to a transit hub, where passengers can get on high volume lines.

When you're going home, you tell your phone where you're going. You can do this before you board and your phone will make sure you're getting on the right one. When the bus goes back into pickup/dropoff mode, it takes that info into account when it determines its route.

It's also probably a good idea to vary bus size/frequency of runs according to time. At any rate, this type of bus would actually run more like an airport shuttle, except that you don't have to call in advance.

Yep I plan to write a bit about hub-and-spoke models of transportation on POD and how things have changed and future models using IT, which would include things like that.

It's funny how you, as a car hugger Soviet, have answered your own question of the first paragraph with your second paragraph.

If it were not for the massive subsidies and privilages that cars get from our governments, then yes, privitized mass transit would be competitive with cars. Consequently, our auto based systems would be more energy efficient as well. Why do we have gridlock? Because of the massive subsidies and privilages that cars get. If adequate market pricing for driving were in place then traffic congestion would be non-existant.

The Soviet Union and the American government partnership with the auto intrests both prove that socialism is inefficient and wasteful.

Socialism that reflects the decadence of TPTB is problematic. However, you'd be hard pressed to consider the Deutsche Bahn a form of 'bad' socialism. Responsible socialism, yes.

Found this article describing how Atlanta is pushing to turn disused railroads into a network of light rail and park space. Atlanta was founded as a rail hub -- it's near no natural geographical features conducive to city building. From what I hear about Atlanta sprawl, it may be too little too late.
Yahoo News

Link Ok I can see an unused railway directly next to the new lightrail system. Also there is a very wide walkway, but no road for cars. Is this realistic, or is it designed to relax people to make them think were are making sustanable progress?

In this picture, a key element is a little more to the right.

Some developer has figured out that the value of all of those buildings, which are currently sleazy run down warehouses, will multiply by 10X if they can be subdivided into lofts and condos. This will work if there is a light rail line next door.

So they lean on the government to build them a rail line which will make them rich.

I'd rather that get built than another government freeway designed to make Big Auto, Big Oil and Big Retail even richer. At least it's a tad bit more sustainable.
Do you disagree?

Read this article.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/ ... mason.html

About Wayne Mason, behind Atlanta's proposed "Beltline" development. Example of the inevitable sprawl fill-in that will characterize ciites like Atlanta once they have completed their explosive growth phase. Wayne Mason is an iconic sprawl-demon. See http://www.kunstler.com/excerpt_atlanta.htm

Those buildings are newly built. I live in the area and they started building those condos about 3 years ago. Since then it puzzled me who would want to live in $300+K condo next to loud NS railroad when less then a mile to the side one still could get a house on 1/4 acre for $200K.

That he is, without a doubt.
At least he's finding more respectable avenues to turn a profit these days. There's only so many Exxons that a guy can build.