Saturday, March 7, 2009

Is a rail network a social structure?

figures: RER map of Paris; E. J. Marey's graphical representation of Paris-Lyon train schedules, 1885

What role does a rail network play within an adequate ontology of society? Is a rail system primarily a set of physical assets, a set of administrative procedures, or a set of embodied opportunities and constraints for other members of society? The answer is, a transportation system has elements of all of these.

A rail system provides convenient transportation among a number of places, while providing no service at all between other pairs of locations. You can get from Porchefontaine to Sevran Livry with only a change of trains at St. Michel - N Dame in about 30 minutes -- whereas from Point X to Point Y there is no convenient transportation connection by Metro or RER. This means, among other things, that some parts of Paris are much more tightly integrated than others. It is possible for residents of arrondissement X to shop and work in arrondissement Y very conveniently, whereas this would not be true for arrondissement Z.

So a rail system certainly has direct effects on social behavior; it structures the activities of the two million or more Parisians by making some places of residence, work, shopping, and entertainment substantially more accessible than other places. And there are a number of other social characteristics that are structured by the commuter rail system as a consequence: for example, patterns of class stratification of neighborhoods, patterns of diffusion of infectious disease, patterns of ethnic habitation around the city, patterns of diffusion of social styles and dialect, ... In brief, a rail system has definite social effects. It creates opportunities and constraints that affect the ways in which individuals arrange their lives and plan their daily activities. And other forms of social behavior and activity are conveyed through the conduits established by the transport system.

Moreover, a rail system is a physical network that has an embodied geometry and spatiality on the ground. Through social investments over decades or more, tracks, stations, power lines, people movers, and fuel depots have been created as physical infrastructure for the transportation network. Lines cross at junctions, creating the topology of a network of travel; and the characteristics of travel are themselves elements of the workings of the network -- for example, the rate of speed feasible on various lines determines the volume of throughput of passengers through the system. And neighborhoods and hotels agglomerate around important hubs within the system.

In addition to this physical infrastructure, there is a personnel and management infrastructure associated with a rail system as well: a small army of skilled workers who maintain trains, sell tickets, schedule trains, repair tracks, and myriad other complex tasks that must be accomplished in order for the rail system to carry out its function of efficiently and promptly providing transportation. This human organization is surely a "social structure," with some level of internal corrective mechanisms that maintain the quality of human effort, react to emergencies, and accomplish the business functions of the rail system. This structure exists in the form of training procedures, operating manuals, and processes of supervision that maintain the coordination needed among ticket agents in stations, repairmen in the field, track inspectors, engineers, and countless other railroad workers. And this structure is fairly resilient in the face of change of personnel; it is a bureaucratized structure that makes provision for the replacement of individuals in all locations within the organization over time.

So a rail network has structural characteristics at multiple levels. The physical network itself has structural characteristics (nodes, rates of travel, volume of flow of passengers and freight). This can be represented statically by the network of tracks and intersections that exist (like the stylized map of the RER above); dynamically, we can imagine a "live" map of the system representing the coordinated surging of multiple trains throughout the system, throughout the course of the day. The railroad organization has a bureaucratic structure -- represented abstractly by the organizational chart of the company, but embodied in the internal processes of training, supervision, and recruitment that manage the activities of thousands of employees. And the social and technical ensemble that these constitute in turn creates an important structure within the social landscape, in that these physical and human structures determine the opportunities and constraints that exist for individuals to pursue their goals and purposes.

A general problem that confronts assertions about "social structures" is the question, what factors give the hypothesized structure a degree of permanence over time? Why should we not expect that social structures will morph quickly in response to changing uses and demands by opportunistic actors within them? A rail system provides a somewhat more definite answer to this question than is possible for most putative social structures: the physicality of the system is itself a barrier to rapid, radical structural change. The locations of the great rail terminus stations in Paris have not changed in the past century. And this is at least in part a consequence of the vast "sunk costs" that are associated with the embodied structure of track, intersection, and station that had developed over the course of the first fifty years of French railroad expansion. So the need for a passenger from Dijon to Strasbourg to convey himself/herself from the Gare de Lyon (1900) to the Gare de l'Est (1849) is exactly the same today as it was in 1900.

6 comments:

willie timmi said...

Queensland once had a steam rail system that was quite a lot more extensive than what it is today. From Roma Street you could commute to outback remote cattle stations inland from Rockhampton and relatives would often use the rail more frequently. Today Queensland Roads take the bulk of this and the old rail lines have been deregulated, in preference to cattle trucks e.t.c

Luz said...

The rail network is undoubtedly a physical and social structure. As a social structure, besides and above what the article says, should benefit the environment. We are constantly reminded of climate change and we are seeing the effects of over contamination. Therefore, politicians and those in power should attempt to improve the rail network system in such a way that becomes a viable alternative for the majority of people.

Marion said...

In the rural area I used to live in,, the trains used for freight and passengers were replaced by buses and trucks as they were considered cheaper to run and maintain....except then the country roads, unused to such usage by heavy vehicles, began to develop huge pot holes which caused damage to the buses and trucks, and passenger vehicles (as well as much fury and rude letters to the local newspapers) and then the local council eventually got rolled as they were so pathetic in doing anything about it i.e. not advocacting to the State Government to get the roads fixed, but rather saying 'not our problem'. Being car dependent, (no local public transport and living alone) I would only take my car to be serviced at the service station that provided me with a loan car. Older people were particularly affected once they could no longer drive though there was a Red Cross scheme of volunteer drivers - though trying to co-ordinate them was a nightmare! Then the taxi service (used by older people to get to the doctor) stopped so the doctor's had to do more home visits - so they couldn't see as many patients....so they closed their books on seeing any new patients outside the local geographic area. The real issue though is not perhaps transport but the small population and the large rural area and the cost benefit analysis to provide sufficient transport at a realistic cost.

I now however live in the city where parking is so dreadful I use the frequent trams and trains or taxis - or just walk as there are so many more services which are close by.

Anonymous said...

In the rural area I used to live in,, the trains used for freight and passengers were replaced by buses and trucks as they were considered cheaper to run and maintain....except then the country roads, unused to such usage by heavy vehicles, began to develop huge pot holes which caused damage to the buses and trucks, and passenger vehicles (as well as much fury and rude letters to the local newspapers) and then the local council eventually got rolled as they were so pathetic in doing anything about it i.e. not advocacting to the State Government to get the roads fixed, but rather saying 'not our problem'. Being car dependent, (no local public transport and living alone) I would only take my car to be serviced at the service station that provided me with a loan car. Older people were particularly affected once they could no longer drive though there was a Red Cross scheme of volunteer drivers - though trying to co-ordinate them was a nightmare! Then the taxi service (used by older people to get to the doctor) stopped so the doctor's had to do more home visits - so they couldn't see as many patients....so they closed their books on seeing any new patients outside the local geographic area. The real issue though is not perhaps transport but the small population and the large rural area and the cost benefit analysis to provide sufficient transport at a realistic cost.

I now however live in the city where parking is so dreadful I use the frequent trams and trains or taxis - or just walk as there are so many more services which are close by.

Dave said...

Where I live there is not local rail system like subways or trolly cars. The local government initiated public funds support for a bus system. It was supposed to provide reasonably cost effective transportation for worker that can't afford cars and to allow people to get to shopping malls that didn't have other transportation. The busses have extremely low ridership and the main positive effect is that having public transportation is a check off for businesses comparing places to locate businesses. The physical structure, routes and stop, is the best the professionals who are responsible for the design can come up with. At the personal level very few people use the facilities to get to their jobs and even fewer use it for access to shopping. Is the check off worth the cost to the taxpayers? For the companies that benefit by allowing a few minimum wage works to get to work maybe they are the ones that should subsidize the transportation or pay workers enough for them to afford a car. The infrastructure here is based on people having cars.

Vivian said...

In the area where I live the rail system is not the most used mod of transportation. Once we had a rail system that provided transportation of goods and services from farm to farm. The rail would stop in rural areas and Hub in the capital. Farmers depended on the rail system for most of there transporting. As years past those farming areas were replaced with factories and large companies. Rezoning for the larger companies that would not need the rail system for the transport of the products. Even though the larger companies hired more employees than the farmers. When rezoning the state the rail system discontinued the multiple stops in these areas. Most employees no longer could ride the trains to work. Bus companies rezoned there route to assist the commuters however they failed to include a majority of the rail riders areas that would need the transportation the most. Years have past and our local downtown areas is revamping and expanding. People that once were able to live close to hubs or bus lines and the rail system now have to rely on owning a car for most of there transportation.