Service alert!

Just got this in my inbox: "BKLYN-bound 7 trains are running with delays. Due to signal problems at Queensboro Plz. Visit www.mta.info for details."

Do you know how long I've been waiting for a Brooklyn-bound 7 train?

Incidentally, I couldn't find any details - or even this alert - at www.mta.info.

Why do we care about mobility?

Jarrett Walker has provided a lot of insightful commentary and thought-provoking questions since he established his Human Transit blog a few months ago. His most recent series questioning the value of streetcars is in this vein: we should question every mode, because modes are just tools for accomplishing our goals.

In his most recent post and the previous one, Jarrett observes that streetcars don't improve mobility relative to buses. For him, mobility means "How many places can you get to in a fixed amount of time?"

Interestingly, Jarrett uses Walk Score to count the places, meaning that his mobility takes density into account. That makes it more valuable than simply measuring how many route-miles you have available to you. There was some back-and-forth in the comments about whether streetcars could increase mobility by increasing density relative to a similar investment in buses, but I don't think there was a solid conclusion.

My main response to Jarrett's post, though, is simply "Why?". He writes, "I'm just suggesting that the mobility offered by a transit service is an independently assessable feature that some people might want to decide if they care about." But do they care, and if they don't, why would they start? And why do we care whether they care? Because they'll start a campaign against this service? Because they'll stop using it and starve it of fares?

What I'm missing from these posts is a sense of overall goals. I've got them right up at the top of the page: "Reducing pollution, Increasing efficiency. Reducing carnage, Improving society, Transportation for all." I suppose that mobility would come under the headings of increasing efficiency and improving society. The five principles that I extracted from Transportation for America's torturous PDF were "Safety, Sustainability, Fairness, Independence, Prosperity," and I'd put mobility under Prosperity. For me, these are lower on the priority totem pole.

Of course, mobility can be used to sell a service, potentially drawing people out of their cars, and thereby contribute to more goals. But as with the anti-streetcar campaign and the loss of fare revenue, these are hypotheticals for a hypothetical streetcar. Why not cross those bridges when we come to them?

I think in order for us, Jarrett's audience, to value the goal of mobility, he needs to explain it in terms of our own goals - and not hypothetical ones. Otherwise it's a tool without an application. A provocative discussion, but not quite as productive as it could be.

Capturing the consumer surplus for transit

I remember when the MTA raised fares from $1.25 to $1.50 in 1995. That was a big deal for me, just out of college with student loans to repay. Still, I was middle class and I made it through; there were a lot of people who were hit harder.

Now I'm doing better; the price goes up the same amount (although not the same percentage) and I hardly notice it. Streetsblog commenter Niccolo Machiavelli (not his real name) has pointed out that between the unlimited-ride Metrocard, the pay-per-ride discount and the free transfers, the real average price of a NYC Transit trip has actually gone down considerably since 1995. Ben over at Second Avenue Sagas has observed many times that the subway is a pretty good deal for a lot of New Yorkers. When he speculated about doubling fares, and now raising them by 36%, many commented that they would be happy to pay that if it meant the MTA would go for several years without having to beg from the general fund.

Of course, people are still graduating from college with massive student loans - in many cases much bigger than what I had. And there are still lots of poor people who live or work in the city and have been seriously hurt by these increases. Under Ben's proposed fare increases, many people would have to pay for these increases with money from their budgets for food or health care. Some of them would not be able to afford to commute by subway, and would take jobs closer to home or ride bikes.

This situation brought me back to my undergraduate economics class. A number of concepts stuck with me, and one of the major ones was price discrimination. My professor used the example of golf balls, where he claimed that identical balls from the same factory were labeled as "budget" and "premium" balls, and given different prices. People who wanted the best price bought the budget balls, and people who wanted the best quality bought the premium balls (they were misled by the word, even though there was no difference in quality).

I was of course upset by the golf ball company's dishonesty in implying a difference in quality, but let's put that aside for now. The company would have gotten more money per ball if they had charged only the "premium" price, but they would have sold less balls. They would have sold more balls if they had charged only the "budget" price, but they would have gotten less money per ball. By charging both prices, they get more money from the people who are willing to pay it, and they still sell balls to the people who won't pay the premium price. A while ago I realized that haggling takes an even finer-grained approach: people who are unwilling or unable to pay a high price can usually get it for cheaper, but people who can afford the good, but just want to get the thing and take it home will pay more.

Clearly we have a similar situation in the subway, with one group of people who can afford to pay more and would, and another group who can't afford to pay. People who have a goal similar to transportation for all are unwilling to price people away from transit - and that of course includes me.

But with a funding crisis in transit, the consumer surplus - the aggregate difference between the fare and the amount that some people are willing to pay - is a source of funding that we should not ignore. Now if the MTA decided to simply label every other train as a "premium train" and price it higher, even though it was just as crowded (yes, I know) as the "budget trains," that would be dishonest and unethical. But there are honest, ethical ways of exercising price discrimination. For example, the MTA currently charges a reduced fare to the elderly and disabled, on the theory that they're less able to afford the full fare.

Economists reading this may scoff at the simplicity of my ideas, and they will be gratified to know I got a C in that class. If you're one of them, please answer me this: lots of transit advocates throw around terms like "elasticity," but we hardly ever hear about consumer surplus or price discrimination, even though they're very common in markets?

Someone's being proactive...

From the comments at Greater Greater Washington, MARC's expansion plan (PDF) from 2007.

Indicators

In the comments to my recent post comparing bus networks on each side of the Hudson, the always-informative Alon Levy suggested that the east-of-Hudson buses aren't as good because they don't need to be: "Long Island and the eastern Hudson Valley have rail service with 80% share of the commuters to Manhattan market."

Alon has a very good point, and it's one that I'll take up in a later post. But my main reaction on reading his comment was, "Why the hell aren't I notified about these things?" I mean, I knew it had to be high, but I didn't think it was that high.

I asked Alon where the data came from, and he gave some sources in the comments. Turns out it was even on an earlier version of the Metro-North homepage. He also gives some suggestions as to how it could be calculated by independent analysts like your Cap'n.

My question is, why isn't this reported on a monthly, or at least annual, basis? For every transit agency? Many of us want to get people out of their cars. It affects many of our goals. Wouldn't we want to know how many of them were already out of their cars before we started, and how well we're succeeding (or not)?

You'd think that something like the National Transit Database would have that data handy. Sadly, I couldn't find it. Their "Transit Profiles" tell you all about how many people each agency moves, how far, at what cost and with what kind of equipment, but not how well they're competing with private auto travel (or anyone else, for that matter).

(The National Transit Database does have lots of interesting information, including the fact that the Red and Tan Lines, a subsidiary of Coachusa, made an $8.4 million profit in 2007 (PDF), just over two dollars per trip. Yowza! I wonder how much that went down after the Pascack Valley improvements were implemented. By contrast, Transport of Rockland received over $12 million in subsidies, which is about $3.70 per trip. Guess which one uses the Lincoln Tunnel XBL?)

Of course, transportation bureaucrats and the elected officials who fund them don't care that much about market share. The bureaucrats care about staying employed, and the electeds care about getting re-elected (with maybe a few kickbacks along the way). At best they see transit as a government charity, and at worst as some meaningless government program. Run it well enough to keep people who matter from complaining, and they're happy. Most of the statistics in the National Transit Database are aimed at demonstrating that. If they ever cared about getting people out of their cars, they've given up on doing it through transit quality.

The bottom line is that anyone who does care about pollution, efficiency, carnage or sprawl, all of which require getting people out of their cars, should be working to get market share numbers for all transit services. And maybe finding a way to get the electeds to care about it. Otherwise we're all fumbling in the dark.

Many segments of the population are too old for this shit

When your Cap'n was a young whippersnapper, I traveled all over Europe and North America on the cheap. I stayed in youth hostels and friends' couches. I rode overnight from Chicago to Montreal on a Greyhound bus and on another trip from Paris to Venice in a non-sleeping compartment (with the return trip spent slouched against my bag in the corridor, surrounded by Italians who didn't care about "non fumare").

I gradually came to the conclusion that some things are more important than saving a few bucks. Stumbling around Northern Italy I realized that a good night's sleep is one of them. This was confirmed a few years later when Priceline saved me $20 by booking an "off-peak" flight with a two-hour layover in Phoenix at 1AM. Suffice it to say that I've never had anything to do with Priceline again.

Now I try to arrange things so that I always have a seat, and somewhere that I can get some rest. I'm still willing to put up with a lot, but it's less than I used to put up with. I'm not rich by any means, but at this point I can afford to pay $20-30 more for a flight that will get me home before my bedtime, and to take the train even when the bus is cheaper. I imagine that this will continue to change as I get older. And I don't think I'm the only one.

Now I have a strong aversion to cars. Been there, done that, but it's the transit life for me - for all the reasons listed at the top of this page. But supposing I had different priorities, and comfort was more important than avoiding any chance of losing control of a vehicle, or of minimizing my contribution to global warming. Confronted with the choice of relatively cheap and convenient but uncomfortable transit versus paying for a car, I would at least be tempted by the car.

The less convenient transit is, the more people opt for driving. I happen to think that cars have their own peculiar set of discomforts, but at least you don't have nuts preaching at you unless you specifically tune them in. You never have somebody's elbow in your ribs unless you drive a pickup with a bench seat. If you want a more comfortable seat, all you have to do is pay more.

That's the frustrating thing about the New York subway: there's no way to upgrade. No matter how much money you put into the Metrocard machine, the seat is still the same old molded plastic (possibly still sticky from some kid's Mountain Dew). There's no cupholder, no makeup mirror. The most you can do is buy a better Ipod.

Well, almost. James commented on my previous post:

Cap'N, depending on where you live in the city, there is another option re: a higher cost but higher quality option - it's called Metro North and the LIRR. When I find myself experiencing periodic subway burnout, I cough up the extra $2 for a Metro North ticket and enjoy a quiet, fast and immaculately clean trip home.

I have, in fact, had that experience. I live walking distance from the Woodside LIRR station, and there are times when I will spring for the $5.75 or whatever it is and be home in 25 minutes (if I'm near Penn Station to begin with). Of course, the commuter rail lines don't stop in very many places and they don't all have convenient schedules, but when it works out it's great.

There's a third option, even: express buses. As I understand it, many routes were specifically designed to capture some of the market that was leaving the transit system. There was one time when I needed to read books and articles and take notes. The subway was impossible: even if I got a seat, there was nowhere to put the book while I was writing the notes. I tried taking commuter rail, but it was actually too fast to get anything done. What worked pretty well, though, were the express buses. For at least part of every trip I had two seats to myself, and was able to spread out. Even when I didn't, the seats were wide enough that I could manage. And it was quiet: cell phone conversations were kept to a minimum, nobody was rowdy or intrusive. On the way home in the evenings, I think half the bus was snoring.

The commuter trains, of course, are full of people who feel like they're well off enough that they don't want to put up with the noise and dirt of the city. Some of them were born to it, others strove for it. The particular express bus route I rode, I noticed, was full of older Black and Puerto Rican women. I never had much of a conversation with them, but I got the feeling that they had taken the subway when they were younger, but after twenty or thirty years in whatever office or bank branch they worked at, they were too old for that. They had earned the $4 price of the bus ride, and the extra time it took to get to Midtown, and they needed it to keep their sanity.

Without the express bus system, these women would be driving cars. Without the commuter trains, the suburbanites would be driving into Manhattan too. These modes are helping transit to work for the middle class. They work. Let's use them more.

NYC-area bus networks - east vs. west

The greater New York area has one of the best train networks in the country. However, there are some major gaps in this network. West of the Hudson, these gaps are filled by an extensive bus network. It's not as convenient as the train, but most towns from Point Pleasant Beach to Albany have daily bus service, with routes stretching deep into the Poconos and Catskills. These are relatively new, clean, comfortable buses, and most of northern New Jersey has hourly service or better. Much of it is provided by private operators at a profit.

Now let's look east of the Hudson. There are three major private companies, which stick to established routes: Bonanza up the Hudson and Housatonic valleys; Bonanza, Peter Pan and Greyhound along the shore and up the Connecticut River valley.

The State of Connecticut and the New York counties of Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess run subsidized bus systems, much of which is the infrequent, indirect "charity bus" service familiar to transit advocates from other parts of the country. Of these public systems, only one, the Westchester Bee-Line, brings passengers to the city, and only one Bee-Line route, the BxM4C, goes to Manhattan. (Judging by the name, I'm guessing that this route is a relic of the express bus routes formerly operated by Liberty Lines, which runs the Bee-Line system under contract to the county. The BxM4A and B, which did not go into Westchester, are now operated by the MTA Bus Company.)

On Long Island, there's one major private bus company, Hampton Jitney, which offers near-hourly service from Manhattan to and from the South Fork, and less-frequent service to the North Fork and Westhampton. Intercity carriers New York Trailways and Coachusa each offer three runs a day from their core areas in the Catskills and Adirondacks through Nanuet, White Plains and Queens Village to Hempstead and other major towns on Long Island. I'm pretty sure that Greyhound offers at least one run a day, but I don't have more details.

Local bus service in Nassau County is provided by Long Island Bus, which is under the MTA umbrella. There is very frequent service on some lines (for example, Hempstead Turnpike sees buses every few minutes at some times), and others not so much. The Town of Huntington is served by Huntington Area Rapid Transit, and the rest of Suffolk County by Suffolk Transit, and both of those are charity bus services.

Coming up, I'll talk about how this dichotomy affects commuting patterns, and what it means for future transit development.