tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58624440087402503722024-03-14T02:15:13.413-04:00Cap'n Transit Rides AgainHere are some reasons to get people to shift from cars to transit:<ul><li>Reducing pollution</li><li>Increasing efficiency</li><li>Reducing carnage</li><li>Improving society</li><li>Access for all</li></ul>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comBlogger929125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-3319662092427894222024-03-03T23:28:00.001-05:002024-03-03T23:28:36.840-05:00Rules for my neighborhood discussion group<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7jaxo60dGfcTiYTUlXpvadPk4yTeguwPFzJB9qn4IK8dKN7GyQu6xIC9Cdu0FttHoST-eyeVK3y2U4LwHz_9LTMsWt9W3rVlBdLEgbVOU5GYi2FvzBcbpdP8ZS3_F4x7hWm5PpSc-zwpcIL48SYAk5QFNzcm8Ran8Jl4m6HB_0MGsmp6dEtTOzOuo-p4/s960/10629709_564078183726222_8250944662131168978_n.jpg" style="display: none;" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7jaxo60dGfcTiYTUlXpvadPk4yTeguwPFzJB9qn4IK8dKN7GyQu6xIC9Cdu0FttHoST-eyeVK3y2U4LwHz_9LTMsWt9W3rVlBdLEgbVOU5GYi2FvzBcbpdP8ZS3_F4x7hWm5PpSc-zwpcIL48SYAk5QFNzcm8Ran8Jl4m6HB_0MGsmp6dEtTOzOuo-p4/s960/10629709_564078183726222_8250944662131168978_n.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="In an old color photo, two buses, one teal and one green, travel west on 37th Avenue over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The first bus has the words 'Air Conditioned' and the number 3200 written on the front, and appears to be turning left onto 69th Street. There are full width sidewalks on both sides of the Avenue, and someone is walking westbound on the south sidewalk." border="0" width="550" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7jaxo60dGfcTiYTUlXpvadPk4yTeguwPFzJB9qn4IK8dKN7GyQu6xIC9Cdu0FttHoST-eyeVK3y2U4LwHz_9LTMsWt9W3rVlBdLEgbVOU5GYi2FvzBcbpdP8ZS3_F4x7hWm5PpSc-zwpcIL48SYAk5QFNzcm8Ran8Jl4m6HB_0MGsmp6dEtTOzOuo-p4/s550/10629709_564078183726222_8250944662131168978_n.jpg"/><br />A photo I downloaded from one of the neighborhood groups when I was a member.</a></div>
<p>I used to belong to neighborhood discussion groups - a Yahoo group and a few Facebook groups - but I've been clean for several years now. I still belong to a couple of livable streets groups, and every once in a while, someone tries to turn them into "community" discussion groups. Every once in a while, a friend or a fellow activist will share a screnshot from one of their local Facebook group, or maybe Nextdoor, which sounds ten times worse. Facebook knows that I like old pictures of trains and streets, so it shows me photos from some of these groups, and I'm tempted, but I always resist.</p>
<p>I would consider joining a neighborhood group if it adopted these rules:</p>
<ol>
<li><b>No former residents</b>. You decided you wanted to move upstate, or to North Carolina or Arizona? Have fun, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. No, you don't get to come back and tell us that Those People are why you left. I don't want to hear about how you used to walk by that street corner every other Tuesday with your Uncle Dave, fifty years ago when you were eight years old.</li>
<li><b>No NIMBY posts</b>. Neighborhoods change. People come and go. We're not in this group to "preserve neighborhood character" or whatever euphemism you want to use for keeping Those People out.</li>
<li><b>No scapegoating vulnerable people</b>. A kid just got hit with a car, and you're going to go off about how pedestrians need to pay more attention? A woman just got harassed, and you're going to talk about what she was wearing? Get some perspective and compassion, or get out.</li>
<li><b>No parking complaints</b>. You own a car, and that makes you wealthier than half the neighborhood. That means you have to move for the street sweeper, or for parades or movie shoots. It may mean you have to drive around before you find a place to park. Deal with it. No, a new parking garage would not solve this and we are not going to ask the city to build one.</li>
<li><b>No crime fearmongering</b>. We want to be safe, but we don't want to hear vague claims about rising this or that, or how some of Those People were seen congregating in the park.</li>
<li><b>No mind reading</b>. You have a link to the resuts of an opinion poll? Election results? No? Then you don't get to talk about What The Community Wants, or How People Around Here Feel. Speak for yourself, and let others speak for themselves.</li>
<li><b>No posts about broader issues unless they directly affect the neighborhood</b>. Yes, I've heard that you're going to the anti-war demonstration downtown, or maybe it's the pro-war demonstration. Yes, I know there are a lot of people here who are the same ethnicity as people at war thousands of miles away. But this neighborhood is not at war, and there are better places to post your political opinions.</li>
<li><b>No posts about other neighborhoods</b>. Why yes, I've heard about that dance group you go to every weekend, and it sure sounds like a lot of fun. It might be cool if we had one here. But that group is not here, it's three neighborhoods away, and they have their own neighborhood group. There are also citywide groups for dancing. Yes, I know that not everyone is a member of those groups. But you're not going to reach everyone, and you need to stop somewhere.</li>
</ol>
Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-69384543715219292322023-12-29T00:06:00.001-05:002023-12-29T00:07:55.813-05:00The 2022 farebox numbers<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19znqto0dYrF0_lqmHuCX9knanRctNe8TNrNoS93WCWU/edit#gid=1848048280" target="_blank" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Agency Fare Revenues per Total Operating Expense (Recovery Ratio)
Port Imperial Ferry Corporation, dba: NY Waterway 1.43
Hyannis Harbor Tours, Inc. 1.41
Bay State LLC, dba: Bay State Cruise Company 1.35
Trans-Bridge Lines, Inc. 1.33
Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority 1.31
Hampton Jitney, Inc. 1.2
Seldovia Village Tribe 1
Peter Pan Bus Lines 1
Golden Crescent Regional Planning Commission 1
Community Transit, Inc. 0.96
Chatham Area Transit Authority 0.93
Jalbert Leasing, Inc. , dba: C&J Bus Lines 0.92
A&C Bus Corporation & Montgomery & Westside Owners Association 0.83
Academy Lines, Inc. 0.78
SeaStreak, LLC 0.77
Chemehuevi Indian Tribe 0.75
Orange-Newark-Elizabeth, Inc. 0.71
University of California, Davis, dba: ASUCD-Unitrans 0.69
Chicago Water Taxi (Wendella) 0.67
Olympia Trails Bus Company, Inc. 0.66
Hudson Transit Lines, Inc. 0.63
Monsey New Square Trails Corporation 0.63" border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="547" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbuFIFtLPuO-hw0ikZx9yrsMQ7QRE408OZdTM_upo2ybJas82usAOFrmCZtiWj6IK6c4T1gLVMSoMYUhUiKoZf9nOe3p-PKWDrveOoObcJAUGEGAequq8ypV7fjnSuCMgtd-o9KmyWyux72nslILUpLSLpCyb9J1l45uW1bkMMrxntjObCU6QKTV83ls/s1600/NTD%20top%202023-12-28%20232728.png"/></a></div>
<p>I remembered <a href="https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/2022-metrics" target="_blank">the National Transit Database</a> a bit earlier this year, so here are the top hitters for 2022, and we can see the ridership recovery already. The four companies earning a profit from 2021 (Bay State, Trans-Bridge, Hampton Jitney and Hyannis Harbor) are joined by New York Waterway and the Chattanooga incline. Broadway Bus dropped from breaking even to earning just 23 cents on the dollar, and Peter Pan buses and the Seldovia Village Tribe ferries claimed to be breaking even. The Golden Crescent also claimed to be breaking even, but I think they're either lying or clueless or both.</p>
<p>It's not too surprising that the ferries did well in 2022: you can usually isolate from other riders on the upper deck. The New York Waterway ferries run every twenty minutes year round, charge $9 a ride and have gotten a lot of takers every time I've ridden them. They also load and unload passengers a lot more efficiently than the East River ferries operated by Hornblower.</p>
<p>Most of the Lincoln Tunnel buses are back over 50% farebox revenue, including Coachusa-owned Community Transit, Olympia Trails and ShortLine, so we'll see if they continue to improve. Red and Tan is only at 27%, which is probably why they still haven't brought back weekend service, but honestly I don't think they'll earn back those customers without losing money on the weekends for a few months.</p>
<p>Again, this just points to the foolishness of the Federal government and transit advocates. If the Feds had bailed out private transit companies the way they bailed out the airlines in 2020 and 2021, we'd be seeing a lot more people on the bus in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley.</p>
<p>The NTD now offers the ability to sort and filter in place, so you can sort and filter the data right in place, and even <a href="https://data.transportation.gov/Public-Transit/2022-NTD-Annual-Data-Metrics/ekg5-frzt/explore/query/SELECT%0A%20%20%60agency%60%2C%0A%20%20%60city%60%2C%0A%20%20%60state%60%2C%0A%20%20%60fare_revenues_per_total%60%2C%0A%20%20%60fare_revenues_per_total_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60ntd_id%60%2C%0A%20%20%60organization_type%60%2C%0A%20%20%60reporter_type%60%2C%0A%20%20%60uace_code%60%2C%0A%20%20%60uza_name%60%2C%0A%20%20%60primary_uza_population%60%2C%0A%20%20%60agency_voms%60%2C%0A%20%20%60mode%60%2C%0A%20%20%60type_of_service%60%2C%0A%20%20%60mode_voms%60%2C%0A%20%20%60fare_revenues_per_unlinked%60%2C%0A%20%20%60fare_revenues_per_unlinked_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60cost_per_hour%60%2C%0A%20%20%60cost_per_hour_questionable%60%2C%0A%20%20%60passengers_per_hour%60%2C%0A%20%20%60passengers_per_hour_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60cost_per_passenger%60%2C%0A%20%20%60cost_per_passenger_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60cost_per_passenger_mile%60%2C%0A%20%20%60cost_per_passenger_mile_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60fare_revenues_earned%60%2C%0A%20%20%60fare_revenues_earned_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60total_operating_expenses%60%2C%0A%20%20%60total_operating_expenses_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60unlinked_passenger_trips%60%2C%0A%20%20%60unlinked_passenger_trips_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60vehicle_revenue_hours%60%2C%0A%20%20%60vehicle_revenue_hours_1%60%2C%0A%20%20%60passenger_miles%60%2C%0A%20%20%60passenger_miles_questionable%60%2C%0A%20%20%60vehicle_revenue_miles%60%2C%0A%20%20%60vehicle_revenue_miles_1%60%0AWHERE%0A%20%20caseless_one_of%28%60type_of_service%60%2C%20%22%22%2C%20%22DO%22%29%0A%20%20AND%20caseless_not_one_of%28%60mode%60%2C%20%22%22%2C%20%22VP%22%2C%20%22DR%22%29%0AORDER%20BY%20%60fare_revenues_per_total%60%20DESC%20NULL%20LAST/page/filter" target="_blank">share a URL</a> with your sorted and filtered data!</p>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-1590345412376430342023-12-28T01:25:00.004-05:002023-12-29T00:06:59.810-05:00Ten things to remember about public and private transportation<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMGb7m_DwftGgx3SGmNxN6WHt6NYN66MF5LFMtqyi3EEyp74GhO6B5A_XtzgsEt02YWcwwUFD3d7hiV0R7o23w74KkIbqG6WchRTkU57-EBkwl24RO2m_nw6bafJsxiO_s4zE90OEdmmV66HNPsLlIlIHGlNOlUEDe7mhomHBtYFippP8DmhYLCpesojY/s1445/iconographyofman05stok_1189.jpg" style="display: none;" />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/iconographyofman05stok/page/n1102/mode/1up" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; " target="_blank"><img alt="MAYOR MCCLELLAN, THE RAPID TRANSIT COMMISSIONERS, AND OTHER GUESTS OF THE CHIEF CONTRACTOR, JOHN B. McDONALD, STARTING ON FIRST INSPECTION TOUR OF THE SUBWAY, JULY 19, 1904" border="0" width="550" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="1445" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMGb7m_DwftGgx3SGmNxN6WHt6NYN66MF5LFMtqyi3EEyp74GhO6B5A_XtzgsEt02YWcwwUFD3d7hiV0R7o23w74KkIbqG6WchRTkU57-EBkwl24RO2m_nw6bafJsxiO_s4zE90OEdmmV66HNPsLlIlIHGlNOlUEDe7mhomHBtYFippP8DmhYLCpesojY/s550/iconographyofman05stok_1189.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>With a bunch of articles in the news recently about private intercity bus service, it's important to keep in mind several points:</p>
<ol>
<li><b>No transportation is completely private</b>. Whether it's land, vehicles, fuel, air, research, wayfinding, public safety or search and rescue: you didn't build that.</li>
<li><b>No transportation is completely public</b>. Even in the strictest Communist states there have always been markets where people sell transportation without state control. In the United States, every government transportation agency buys goods and services from private vendors, and many contract their operations to private companies. Somebody, somewhere, is making a buck, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.</li>
<li><b>Greedy, lazy people are everywhere</b>. There's nothing about public ownership that guarantees good service.</li>
<li><b>Most public transit used to be profitable</b>. Most of the "public" transit systems around the world between 1850 and 1950 were built and operated by private companies, with large government subsidies. Some are still profitable today.</li>
<li><b>Most roads and parking lots in the United States are socialist</b>. And they're destroying the planet.</li>
<li><b>Automakers and airlines are regularly bailed out by the government</b>. Pundits and politicians only complain about bailouts and subsidies if they think they're going to the "wrong" people. Which ones they complain about usually tells you a lot about the pundits and politicians.</li>
<li><b>It's all one big system</b>. Whether publicly or privately owned or operated, public transit competes with publicly subsidized roads, airports, parking and personal cars.</li>
<li><b>Private operators can take payment through larger fare systems</b>. It takes a bit of planning, but it can be done.</li>
<li><b>Transportation policy can't solve race, sex or class prejudice by itself</b>. You may eradicate racism from buses, but as long as racism exists, racists will find a way to use transportation to oppress people.</li>
<li><b>Trip cost is just one factor</b>. For some people it's the biggest factor. For most, it comes after other criteria like trip time, safety, comfort and reliability.</li>
</ol>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-53196786920085833042023-08-09T23:28:00.000-04:002023-08-09T23:28:41.240-04:00Land trusts, co-ops and imperfect representation<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJzT7973FW8blq4acYLuTPAhrNJ1cVkHAO73TYZjz6eJKMSWDCbTwNfqRbLbfPA6AYDXzejCjZt9sYPI8ZAOAKieFgn-7NinmIOE0qtIsMWKCcDUmxIrFzxwF5SQk3JIFBOUTR1W-egJpsKN_KL721AdP6XHKQlM6yXcAE8VFKZb-g6dqpeUD94uig80/s4032/IMG_6362.JPG" style="display: none;" />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJzT7973FW8blq4acYLuTPAhrNJ1cVkHAO73TYZjz6eJKMSWDCbTwNfqRbLbfPA6AYDXzejCjZt9sYPI8ZAOAKieFgn-7NinmIOE0qtIsMWKCcDUmxIrFzxwF5SQk3JIFBOUTR1W-egJpsKN_KL721AdP6XHKQlM6yXcAE8VFKZb-g6dqpeUD94uig80/s4032/IMG_6362.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="The site of the Champlain Towers South partial collapse in Surfside, Florida." border="0" width="320" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJzT7973FW8blq4acYLuTPAhrNJ1cVkHAO73TYZjz6eJKMSWDCbTwNfqRbLbfPA6AYDXzejCjZt9sYPI8ZAOAKieFgn-7NinmIOE0qtIsMWKCcDUmxIrFzxwF5SQk3JIFBOUTR1W-egJpsKN_KL721AdP6XHKQlM6yXcAE8VFKZb-g6dqpeUD94uig80/s320/IMG_6362.JPG"/><br />
The site of the Champlain Towers South partial collapse in Surfside, Florida. Photo: National Institute of Standards and Technology.</a></div>
<p>Last month the New York Times ran <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/realestate/community-land-trusts-gentrification.html" target="_blank">an article by Claire Fahy</a> about community land trusts. I've been hearing more about them lately: there's a group calling itself the Western Queens Community Land Trust that shows up to events, and my City Council member regularly indicates support for them. Several of the people I follow on social media also express support for them.</p>
<p>I've already explained one reason community land trusts are a bad idea: <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2021/01/dont-make-land-proxy-for-people.html">they assign benefits to people based on where they are</a>. The intent is to grant people benefits as compensation for hardship, past (oppressive urban highways and drug laws, and yes I know that these things are not really in the past), or present/future (cheap roads, communication and energy in the country). Despite this intent, the benefits regularly go to people who don't need or deserve them, such as recent arrivals and wealthy vacationers. The benefits also fail to go to people who do need and deserve them, because they've left the area, because they are not part of the legally defined group, or because there aren't enough benefits to go around.</p>
<p>But even if you ignore the fact that it's not really fair to distribute benefits to people based on where they currently live, there's another problem: the trust part. Community land trusts don't have a mechanism to ensure that those benefits are reliably and evenly distributed to the people who live in their declared territory. The trusts are currently constituted as private nonprofit corporations, and I am not aware of any mechanism for governance, proposed or possible, that could make them genuinely representative. We're just supposed to trust them.</p>
<p>Fahy says "The concept of a community land trust began in 1969" and talks about a recent increase in the use of community land trusts in urban areas. That's probably true, but the concept of a nonprofit organization owning property and leasing it out to individuals and families is much older. And in fact, Fahy mentions that the concept was directly copied from the Moshavim model of settler colonialism in Israel, which is a dubious distinction.</p>
<p>Here in New York we have nonprofit housing developers like the Phipps Houses that have been renting at below-market prices for generations. We've also had housing cooperatives since the 1880s at least, and they don't live up to the lofty rhetoric of "community" we hear from some proponents.</p>
<p>I've lived in two different housing coops. One suffered from underinvestment stemming from an effort to keep rents affordable; another suffered from corruption by the officials who were responsible for running the property, and managed to get away with tens of thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>From what I've heard, these are relatively minor concerns in the grand scheme of what can go wrong with a housing coop. The condominium models used around the country and around the world are similar. Among the more extreme risks are the collapse of the Champlain Towers in Florida in 2021. Some have argued that the disinvestment we saw in Champlain Towers is a flaw in the condominium model.</p>
<p>Beyond the risk of corruption is a more general vagueness about governance. Who decides what the land trust should invest in? Which new properties should it buy? How much housing should it build, or allow to be built? What criteria should it use for who it sells/lends to? Should it develop and lease commercial properties, community facilities, parking? If it earns profits, what happens to those profits?</p>
<p>Who chooses the people that make those decisions? Are they appointed by elected officials? Are they elected at the bottom of the ballot, overshadowed by candidates for President, Mayor or Congress? Or in low-turnout off-year elections? Or are they elected by the membership of the Land Trust - and who gets to be a member? Are they even just a self-perpetuating board of directors? Where is the trust there?</p>
<p>Since they live in the midst of housing co-ops and nonprofit housing, you'd think the people who are promoting community land trusts here in New York City would acknowledge the existence of those models, compare the community land trust model to those models, and have some argument about why community land trusts are preferable, but I haven't seen anything like that. You might also think they'd acknowledge the problems of governance and function that have affected co-ops and nonprofits. Nope.</p>
<p>Community land trusts are also promoted as a way to combat the housing crisis. Fahy says, "The primary model in New York creates rental units," but they don't really create any units. They simply buy property and rent it out.</p>
<p>The trusts have the power to reduce displacement by keeping rents low and resisting pressure to sell, but I haven't seen a discussion of how that would address the core problem of housing: there isn't enough of it in places where people want to live. They're not any more capable of creating new housing than any other organization; in fact, they may impede it. This is no solution for the vast numbers of people who don't already own housing.</p>
<p>In sum, community land trusts are likely to serve the wrong people, and may not even successfully represent those people, or function competently at all. They are promoted as a solution to the housing crisis, but even if they function perfectly they're no better at creating new housing than any other organizational model, and likely worse.</p>
<p>Why are we still talking about them?</p>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-87979384062766707502023-01-22T00:59:00.000-05:002023-01-22T00:59:35.399-05:00The 2021 farebox numbers<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKzt9G59XAFSVyTh3WeX7KN72M8biTVXijdvEfZwhrYvWHSBOKbToSDx63GO2MPm3-8mJ38GkLXFpsUpXZSp53SxgUYc50UiMad2Jvk9J9LFrI2SEk7Sy4S9DNHl1JMiuBDUfW_EGHUwqxlKqkyW3lWVPh2KqJHo-9a2iwkDsxvd2aAWr-xrw9pAW/s1600/Screenshot%202023-01-21%20001614.png" style="display:none;" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKzt9G59XAFSVyTh3WeX7KN72M8biTVXijdvEfZwhrYvWHSBOKbToSDx63GO2MPm3-8mJ38GkLXFpsUpXZSp53SxgUYc50UiMad2Jvk9J9LFrI2SEk7Sy4S9DNHl1JMiuBDUfW_EGHUwqxlKqkyW3lWVPh2KqJHo-9a2iwkDsxvd2aAWr-xrw9pAW/s1600/Screenshot%202023-01-21%20001614.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="screenshot of the list of 24 organizations with the highest farebox recovery ratios in 2021" border="0" data-original-height="561" data-original-width="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKzt9G59XAFSVyTh3WeX7KN72M8biTVXijdvEfZwhrYvWHSBOKbToSDx63GO2MPm3-8mJ38GkLXFpsUpXZSp53SxgUYc50UiMad2Jvk9J9LFrI2SEk7Sy4S9DNHl1JMiuBDUfW_EGHUwqxlKqkyW3lWVPh2KqJHo-9a2iwkDsxvd2aAWr-xrw9pAW/s1600/Screenshot%202023-01-21%20001614.png"/></a></div>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/threestationsq/status/1616583767178596353">Alexander asked on Twitter</a> about <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/search/label/NTD">the series of posts I did</a> on farebox recovery ratios reported to the United States National Transit Database from 2007 through 2010. The Federal Transit Administration has continued to publish the NTD every year; I just got a little tired of compiling the data, and engagement kind of went down. But let's take a look and see how things are these days!</p>
<p>The Database for each year used to be published in December of the following year, so 2021 is now the most recent year available. The data used to be in Table 26, but the FTA staff is no longer numbering the tables, so now it's in <a href="https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/2021-metrics" target="_blank">the Metrics table</a>. I've imported the 2021 Metrics table <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CHrorAq07A05F3EAhMJiTP874-4KJkInkYfA1Q1pcvc/edit#gid=200267244" target="_blank">into Google Sheets</a> for your convenience.</p>
<p>Since we're looking at traditional transit providers, the first thing to do is filter out the contract providers (any TOS but DO) and the demand response and vanpool providers (Mode of DR and VP). That leaves us with 22 transit providers.</p>
<p>The first thing I noticed is how many more ferry operators are reporting. In 2010 we had New York Waterway and BillyBey, but in 2021 we have eight: Bay State (Boston to Provincetown), Hyannis Harbor (also Cape Cod), Seldovia Village (connects Homer, Alaska to a Native village with no competing roads), New York Waterway, Chicago Water Taxi, Chatham Area Transit (connecting downtown Savannah to the Convention Center), SeaStreak (connects New York with bedroom and resort towns in New Jersey and Massachusetts) and the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe (connects one end of London Bridge to a casino across Lake Havasu).</p>
<p>In 2010 we had the University of Georgia; in 2021 we have the University of Arkansas and the University of California at Davis. Those don't really count because they're paid for up front by student fees. The Chattanooga inclined plane also broke even in 2021.</p>
<p>A couple of items were flagged by the FTA staff as "Questionable," including the claim by the Golden Crescent Regional Planning Commission that its bus service brings in $9.26 per trip in fares, when their website says they only charge $1.50. They didn't flag the Developmental Services of Northwest Kansas's claim that they earn $16 per trip in fares while only charging $3, but I find that questionable myself. Similarly with Iredell County Area Transportation Services' report of $7.75 per trip contrasts with their website's $1-3 fare. I'm guessing both of those are clerical errors.</p>
<p>That leaves nine bus companies, all in the New York area, making more than a 50% farebox recovery ratio in 2021, which you may remember was a difficult year for transit agencies: Trans-Bridge, Hampton Jitney, Broadway Bus, Olympia Trails, Peter Pan, Orange-Newark-Elizabeth, Monsey New Square Trails, Community Transit, A&C Bus/Montgomery and Westside, and Adirondack Transit.</p>
<p>To answer Alexander's question: there are six bus companies on this list that use the Lincoln Tunnel Exclusive Bus Lane: Trans-Bridge, Olympia Trails (the CoachUSA subsidiary serving Newark Airport from Manhattan), Peter Pan, Monsey New Square Trails (a commuter service focused on Hasidic Jews), Community Transit (a CoachUSA subsidiary serving East and West Orange and Livingston, NJ from the Port Authority) and Adirondack Transit. Of the buses making more than 75% farebox recovery ratio in 2010, some had gone out of business before the adoption of work-from-home arrangements when doctors began discovering COVID-19 cases in March, like Frank Martz Trailways.</p>
<p>Most of the companies missing from the short list were just losing a lot of money. Suburban Transit, the CoachUSA subsidiary serving New Brunswick area, made a 22% farebox recovery ratio in 2021. DeCamp made 21%, and Rockland Coaches, the CoachUSA subsidiary formerly doing business as Red and Tan Lines, made 19%. This is a useful lesson, because the management of these companies took a very conservative approach, canceling all service for months and leading restoration with peak-direction rush-hour service. Rockland has still not restored full-day or weekend service. In contrast, Trans-Bridge, Olympia Trails, Peter Pan, Monsey and Adirondack all run service middays, reverse-peak and weekends.</p>
<p>It wasn't flagged as "Questionable," but I find it questionable that Broadway Bus was able to run eight buses for $13.97 an hour total. If I'm not mistaken, Broadway Bus and A&C may have gone out of business since 2021. With <a href="https://www.coachusa.com/one-bus/schedules" target="_blank">three routes in Newark</a> I don't quite understand how Orange-Newark-Elizabeth (a CoachUSA subsidiary) makes an 81% farebox recovery ratio.</p>
<p>The big success story in this list, of course, is Hampton Jitney, which made a 13% profit in 2021. The Hamptons were infamous as the destination for a number of wealthy people who (<a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-people-who-had-no-reason-to-leave.html">with no good reason</a>) "fled the city." They did, of course, have to come back at least temporarily, and while they may be willing to drive out there, spending hours on the Long Island Expressway is a different story. So those who can't afford helicopters take the train or the bus.</p>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-48959447938470624612021-09-11T23:12:00.001-04:002021-09-11T23:12:42.444-04:00People bought COVID cars for access to recreation<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxIlXWG2C_xWjz016zO-Mvjh-oBy7dmIWkt72loPFVN5dwMiCORDSk1JZqIIsXNFKP4fZhTSpqVlfMniFmksZKhe5CIk5o_jAqno1JrKd7xwDj_vFjkDKeb574UonQw340LM9YYuBqK7k/s2048/20200815_103548.jpg" style="display:none;" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxIlXWG2C_xWjz016zO-Mvjh-oBy7dmIWkt72loPFVN5dwMiCORDSk1JZqIIsXNFKP4fZhTSpqVlfMniFmksZKhe5CIk5o_jAqno1JrKd7xwDj_vFjkDKeb574UonQw340LM9YYuBqK7k/s2048/20200815_103548.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="550" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxIlXWG2C_xWjz016zO-Mvjh-oBy7dmIWkt72loPFVN5dwMiCORDSk1JZqIIsXNFKP4fZhTSpqVlfMniFmksZKhe5CIk5o_jAqno1JrKd7xwDj_vFjkDKeb574UonQw340LM9YYuBqK7k/s550/20200815_103548.jpg"/></a></div><p>Recently I wrote about the people who claimed to be "fleeing" the disease-ridden cities, but in actuality <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-people-who-had-no-reason-to-leave.html">were in no more danger from COVID-19</a> in their urban apartments than in the exurban houses they moved to. I noted that there are probably less people "fleeing" the cities than there seem to be, as they tend to be well-connected and overrepresented in the media. They have added a lot to our greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis, but the damage they've done to our climate is probably more in having disrupted the return to walkable urban living that's been going on for the past twenty years or so.</p>
<p>Another group that has done damage is the people who stayed in the city (most of the time) but bought cars. This includes influential journalists like Baltimore resident and Earther staff writer Dharna Noor and New York Times City Hall bureau chief and <a href="https://twitter.com/emmagf/status/1252241224184016898" target="_blank">former transit reporter Emma Fitzsimmons</a>.</p>
<p>As with the people who "fled," there are probably nowhere near as many of these car buyers as you would think from the stories in the media. There was a surge of car purchases in the late spring of 2020, but this may simply be purchases that people would have made earlier but couldn't because of lockdown.</p>
<p>Those of us who care about the climate, or carnage, or energy waste, or inequality, should regard every vehicle purchase as a policy failure. In particular, those purchases that have happened in response to the COVID-19 pandemic point to a vulnerability in our strategy to reduce car travel. It is worth our time to examine what motivated people to buy cars and drive.</p>
<p>I would love to see a rigorous market survey, and if you know of any, please pass them on to me. In the absence of anything like that I'm going by what I've read in the news and on Twitter. Yes, Twitter isn't real life, and neither is the news, but this is to a large extent about the way we think about cars and transit, and how that affects our plans for the future.</p>
<p>Let's start with what these people didn't buy cars for: daily activities. I'm sure there are people - health care and food service workers - who bought cars to shorten their commutes, but I don't hear a lot about them. Everyone had access to basic daily shopping - as much as any of us. There were lines at some stores, but nobody went hungry because their local supermarket was closed.</p>
<p>When people give reasons for buying cars, what do you hear? <a href="https://gizmodo.com/buying-a-car-improved-my-life-it-shouldnt-have-1847106068" target="_blank">Noor wrote eloquently</a> about her experience, and what she says echoes what I heard from other people - those who bought cars during the pandemic, and those who already had them. Yes, her partner's work needs was what it took to outweigh everything she knew about the downside of cars, but here's what the car did for her:</p>
<blockquote><p>I was no longer comfortable with my regular regional train rides to see my family members living outside the city. And during quarantine, living near the spots I frequented like the public library and my favorite local punk bar no longer seemed like a plus. I longed instead to be able to easily head to the H Mart about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west to mask up and buy bok choy or visit the big parks outside the city for hikes, but it was proving difficult to figure out how to do so.</p></blockquote>
<p>What do you hear over and over again from drivers? What do you see on Facebook and Instagram? Recreation and shopping. People driving to parks and beaches. Driving to specialty stores, bulk clubs, ethnic restaurants. Driving to meet friends and visit relatives. Driving to hotels and AirBnbs.</p>
<p>As case counts dropped and capitalists started talking about "reopening" as early as the summer of 2020, people started using their cars for more daily tasks like commuting to work and bringing kids to camp and school. But to the extent the car boom of 2020 was a real thing, it wasn't driven by work and school trips.</p>
<p>In 2020, people bought cars for recreation. They may not have bought that many, but it was and is a public relations disaster for transit. And it was completely avoidable, both in the short term and the long term. We need to learn the lessons from that and avoid it in the future.</p>
Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-85682852589710726822021-08-22T22:41:00.001-04:002021-08-22T22:41:30.486-04:00The people who had no reason to leave the city<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEKIgOJAhvavmZc6gsg1rseCKr4SPGc3vB3Qs9TW2zaKeh-vXXAatOmeK7jS1iTHFCJW60oaPtXxrdrlN7AzclzjJrQ1H4szdFG8GdAQ2R4RcI9yCewv-Ya5UAiPR_oRjR8VlyVd8OXsM/s400/cy-govmnt1.jpg" style="display:none;" /><p>If you read some accounts of the COVID-19 pandemic, you'll come across the idea that people "fled the cities" en masse - that the cities were seething pits of disease and death, that everyone who could leave did, and that they were justified in doing so. I'm really sick of hearing this, because it's largely false, and it's interfered with our ability to respond effectively to climate change, resource depletion, carnage and social injustice.</p>
<p>When I discussed this on Twitter, a few people raised important caveats. <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/ShabazzStuart/status/1382742445360812035" target="_blank">Shabazz Stuart noted</a> that anyone who was living in an unsafe situation was justified in getting away from it. In particular, low income Black, Latinx and Asian people tend to live in crowded apartments and houses where they can't distance from people who might carry the disease.</p>
<p><a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/Jake_Saltzman/status/1382719607543316483" target="_blank">Jake Saltzman pointed out</a> that some people who might be white and relatively privileged still had an economic-related health incentive to leave the city. Many people who could work remotely but didn't have housemates they could trust were better off moving in with family outside the city, or finding a cheaper place where they could have room to themselves.</p>
<p>The people I'm focusing on here are the people in situations like mine or better. Every member of my family has a room to work remotely, and every family member or couple has their own bedroom. The working adults have steady, remote work. Our neighbors are generally conscientious and cooperative.</p>
<p>The crazy thing about this past year is that I live in one of the hardest-hit zip codes in the country, but I only knew a couple of people who died of COVID-19, and they were relatively low-income acquaintances who weren't white. Several of my friends had the disease, but fortunately they all survived. At this point I have seen no data that suggests that people with the privilege to work remotely and live in a place where everyone has their own room were in any greater danger in the city than in the country or the suburbs. We need to put that myth to bed.</p>
<p>Last Spring we were swimming in a sea of misinformation. President Trump was flailing around for anything that would minimize the effect of the pandemic on his wealth and power, from denial to misdirection to scapegoating. Epidemiologists, nationalists and economic elitists were stuck in ideological traps that to this day make them downplay the need for masks, quarantines and ventilation.</p>
<p>All this misinformation created a knowledge vacuum, which was filled with the simplistic reasoning and prejudices that people have used throughout history when confronted with plagues: attack the people who already have the disease, attack the weak, run away from the places where people have the disease, run away from crowds and poor people.</p>
<p>Some of us pointed this out at the time. We noted that none of the science supported the idea that there was any safety to be gained for well-off white people with their own apartments and bedrooms by relocating to the suburbs or the country. That just disappeared into the sea of misinformation.</p>
<p>At this point we don't really know the impact of this migration, but I can make some guesses. Let's imagine a family with two adults and two kids living in an apartment in Manhattan. And for comparison's sake let's say they own a car. Now let's say this family rents a house in the hills outside of Stone Ridge, NY.</p>
<p>Let's imagine that this family is the most obnoxious car-driving Manhattanites possible. They insist that the only way to get their kids to their private schools is by driving, so it only makes sense that one parent drive to work after dropping the kids off. They spend every weekend driving to Costco, to the Alley Pond Environmental Center, to day and overnight trips in the Poconos and the Hamptons.</p>
<p>Even this family would at least double their driving if they moved to Stone Ridge. All the little trips that they did on foot in Manhattan - to the corner deli, to the cafe, to the park for daily walks, runs and playground fun - would require a car.</p>
<p>They might replace the playground trips with recreation in the backyard and the woods, but to replicate the social interaction that kids get in a neighborhood playground requires coordinating with other parents to drive kids to the same backyard. Even with town Facebook groups this is not easy, especially for newcomers.</p>
<p>Similarly, our hypothetical family might find a house that's walking distance from one restaurant or shop, or a small cluster of shops at best, but it wouldn't be walking distance from any others. It probably wouldn't be walking distance from a bus or train to the city.</p>
<p>If they're lucky (and willing to spend a lot), they might get a house with places to walk in the woods, on the property attached to the house or on adjacent public or private land, or maybe on nice quiet roads. If they're unlucky they'll be stuck on a small plot off a busy road with no shoulders and have to drive somewhere just to take a walk.</p>
<p>All these things add up to a dramatic increase in driving, even for our family that was already driving much more than the average Manhattan household. They had one car, they might buy or lease another car so that both adults could drive to different places, even if they're working from home.</p>
<p>Now imagine a family that previously had no car. They went from a lifestyle that was exclusively transit and walking, with maybe the occasional taxi trip, to one that requires driving everywhere.</p>
<p>Some people have gone for a more moderate increase in car use, moving to towns like New Paltz or Beacon where they can get to some shops and restaurants and the city without driving, but use a car for other shopping and socializing. But even though that's less of an increase it's not tiny.</p>
<p>This is an explosion in the vehicle miles traveled by our hypothetical families, and it's bad for all the reasons why cars are bad: pollution, especially global warming; waste of land, fuel and other resources; carnage. But in the aggregate how much of an increase are we talking about? If we're only going by anecdote it would be huge. Last year the papers and blogs were full of stories of people "fleeing" the city, and this year there's a bunch of stories about how the housing markets upstate have gone crazy.</p>
<p>It's important not to read too much into these stories. Just as it only takes a small number of cars to tip Manhattan's crowded streets into gridlock, it only takes a small number of wealthy buyers and renters to overwhelm the heavily-zoned housing stock of Ulster County. And it only takes a small number of influential people doing something to give the impression that "everybody's" doing it.</p>
<p>As I've written before, there are also limits to how much damage people can do to the region and the climate in a short timeframe. We're already seeing stories about people who tried "fleeing" and discovered that driving sucks and the country can be boring.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEKIgOJAhvavmZc6gsg1rseCKr4SPGc3vB3Qs9TW2zaKeh-vXXAatOmeK7jS1iTHFCJW60oaPtXxrdrlN7AzclzjJrQ1H4szdFG8GdAQ2R4RcI9yCewv-Ya5UAiPR_oRjR8VlyVd8OXsM/s400/cy-govmnt1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEKIgOJAhvavmZc6gsg1rseCKr4SPGc3vB3Qs9TW2zaKeh-vXXAatOmeK7jS1iTHFCJW60oaPtXxrdrlN7AzclzjJrQ1H4szdFG8GdAQ2R4RcI9yCewv-Ya5UAiPR_oRjR8VlyVd8OXsM/s400/cy-govmnt1.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>The real damage may be to the Cycle. This is where we really make a difference in transportation. The vicious cycle in transportation over the twentieth century involved people moving housing, jobs and shopping further apart, buying cars to drive between them, then lobbying for roads and parking to make driving easier. The easier it is to drive, the more people will buy cars and lobby to make driving easier.</p>
<p>For the past few decades, at least here in New York City, the Cycle has been running the opposite way, in the virtuous direction. People have been selling their cars, moving to the city and demanding better transit and sidewalks, and telling everyone how great it is. The movement to the suburbs has slowed.</p>
<p>My biggest concern about these "flight to the country" stories (in combination with the "contaminated city" stories) is the extent to which they've shifted the narrative and pushed the Cycle more in the vicious direction. Already we've heard our incoming Governor point to the "flight to the country" as a reason to "reexamine" implementing the congestion pricing law that was passed a few years ago.</p>
<p>I don't think this will last. I think rural living is unsustainable for people who aren't actively involved in rural activities, and people will eventually move back to the city. My fear is that the "flight to the country" narrative will cost us precious years or even decades where we exacerbate global warming and make the planet less habitable for our grandchildren.</p>
<p>So everybody, please stop repeating myths about the city being safer. And please stop acting like the wealthy, influential people who left the city are representative of the general population, or of any trend. And do what you can to stop subsidizing wasteful sprawl.</p>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-43420782120770520292021-07-04T00:06:00.001-04:002021-07-04T00:08:49.080-04:00Cities don't think<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifVL_Yv192MwvFuUdZBZkWhZvDIgiMPUpDuP1tUEXawGwT8zK0SZpGapuP3AagMVwazWS26F67_LYtdCfn5B0O_nkQqAqbgyKuF04d3kTTb-az9-w12DEUR4S5Cnsq_PQv-lZTt7S8xA4/s2048/20180510_203020a.jpg" style="display:none;" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifVL_Yv192MwvFuUdZBZkWhZvDIgiMPUpDuP1tUEXawGwT8zK0SZpGapuP3AagMVwazWS26F67_LYtdCfn5B0O_nkQqAqbgyKuF04d3kTTb-az9-w12DEUR4S5Cnsq_PQv-lZTt7S8xA4/s2048/20180510_203020a.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="550" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifVL_Yv192MwvFuUdZBZkWhZvDIgiMPUpDuP1tUEXawGwT8zK0SZpGapuP3AagMVwazWS26F67_LYtdCfn5B0O_nkQqAqbgyKuF04d3kTTb-az9-w12DEUR4S5Cnsq_PQv-lZTt7S8xA4/s550/20180510_203020a.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>I listen to a few podcasts that cover issues of land use and transportation, and they tend to be heavy with urban planners. I also follow some urban planners on Twitter. I've recommended them regularly and I wouldn't follow them or listen to them if I didn't find their views valuable on the whole, but occasionally there are indications that the worldview shared by urban planners has some shortcomings. One thing I've picked up on lately is the omnipresent anthropomorphizing of cities.</p>
<p>I say urban planners here, but they're not the only ones who do it. I've noticed it to some degree from historians, political scientists, economists, as well as journalists and laypeople.</p>
<p>On these podcasts and in these tweets, cities aren't just places where people live, or organizations governing those people. Cities want things, or maybe they don't want them. In the words of the hosts and guests, cities can be happy about things, or dislike them. Most of all, cities think.</p>
<p>Now, there actually are theories that the complex systems of cities are not just similar to the complex systems underlying human thoughts and emotions, but functionally equivalent to them. Some people believe that cities actually do want and dislike and understand.</p>
<p>In general I don't think the people I listen to in these podcasts actually believe that cities can think or feel. I think sometimes they mean that the inhabitants of a city undertake a collective decision-making process and come to a consensus about a course of action. Sometimes they're referring to a scientific opinion poll. Sometimes they mean that the elected mayor or city council believes or feels a certain way.</p>
<p>Sometimes they just mean that a city transportation commissioner believes something, or a transit authority CEO feels something. Sometimes it's lower-level planners or bureaucrats. Sometimes it's a single politician, or just a particularly influential pundit or celebrity, or a group that holds a rally or sends its members to speak at a public meeting.</p>
<p>This is a very common kind of ambiguity, and normally it's not a problem. But problems can arise, particularly when it comes to collective decision making, collective responsibility and finality.</p>
<p>Urban planners - and historians, political scientists, economists, journalists and most laypeople - all know, at least on some level, that collective decision making is a messy process. The same people who will tweet "City X doesn't want a train," are the same ones who will tweet a screenshot of a mixed opinion poll from City Y on zoning height limits the next day. People who say "City Z chose mixed use" will also cover a referendum from City W on bus funding.</p>
<p>So why do people on these podcasts and blogs keep saying things like "City V doesn't want to fund transit?" Well, it's easier than remembering which person from City V said something negative about transit funding, whether that person was a citywide elected official, a civil servant, a local representative, a representative of a membership organization, a self-appointed "community leader" or just some random crank.</p>
<p>It's also easier than remembering how the speaker heard about how City X supposedly feels. Referendum? City Council vote? Press release? Public testimony? Facebook comment? Some taxi driver's rant?</p>
<p>There's also a universal tendency for people to anthropomorphize collectivities, substances and even abstract entities: water finds its level, nature abhors a vacuum, information wants to be free.</p>
<p>But this shorthand of attributing thoughts and feelings to cities runs a lot of risks. It can paper over all kinds of failures in collective decision making. It can misrepresent the thoughts and feelings of powerful elites as the desires of all residents. It can enable loud, privileged voices to pre-empt debate by proclaiming a consensus that does not exist, or by declaring a matter settled when it should be re-examined. It can even prompt a backlash against people in a given city, including people who were excluded from any kind of say in what their city was supposed to have felt or thought or believed.</p>
<p>For the past several years I've been trying to avoid claiming that cities (or states or countries or peoples) want or think anything. Instead, I've taken the time to examine why I am tempted to make such a claim, whether there has been any collective decision made, who has actually made the decision and how democratic the process has been. And I talk about that.</p>
<p>This takes more time, but for me it's been invaluable to spend that time thinking about these issues. And I really can't think of anything better to spend my time on, as someone who cares about where public money goes and what government employees do, than contemplating how people come together (or not) to respond to challenges and set priorities for their governments.</p>
<p>I hope you'll join me! Next time you're tempted to say something like "City Y doesn't want new housing," please stop, take a minute and think about what you mean by that.</p>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-27546090935535364362021-01-21T18:49:00.002-05:002021-01-21T18:52:58.477-05:00Don't make land a proxy for people<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1gB4sXKzDIclO76x2xCqHuk4hQLHjUJ_fzyETZKnm7-istLcgGro0j5i87zModJ0k_XTUxo1T1p-qU7Ig82I8RCrfmkKHgBabgc2AZ8o8YmU6xhmHxDPShSO1evDjgCeRDUCa0DbUB0A/s2048/Starrett-Lehigh_Building-_II._601_West_26th_Street%252C_from_Eleventh_Avenue_and_23rd_street_looking_northeast_past_the_West_Side_Express_Highway%252C_Manhattan_%2528NYPL_b13668355-482726%2529.jpg" style="display: none;" />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a target="_blank" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starrett-Lehigh_Building-_II._601_West_26th_Street,_from_Eleventh_Avenue_and_23rd_street_looking_northeast_past_the_West_Side_Express_Highway,_Manhattan_(NYPL_b13668355-482726).jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Starrett-Lehigh Building- II. 601 West 26th Street, from Eleventh Avenue and 23rd street looking northeast past the West Side Express Highway, Manhattan (NYPL b13668355-482726)" border="0" width="550" data-original-height="1651" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1gB4sXKzDIclO76x2xCqHuk4hQLHjUJ_fzyETZKnm7-istLcgGro0j5i87zModJ0k_XTUxo1T1p-qU7Ig82I8RCrfmkKHgBabgc2AZ8o8YmU6xhmHxDPShSO1evDjgCeRDUCa0DbUB0A/s550/Starrett-Lehigh_Building-_II._601_West_26th_Street%252C_from_Eleventh_Avenue_and_23rd_street_looking_northeast_past_the_West_Side_Express_Highway%252C_Manhattan_%2528NYPL_b13668355-482726%2529.jpg"/><br />Starrett-Lehigh Building: II. 601 West 26th Street, from Eleventh Avenue and 23rd street looking northeast past the West Side Express Highway, Manhattan. Berenice Abbot, 1938.</a></div>
<p>A couple of years ago I read <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-mining-energy-prices-smalltown-feature-217230" target="_blank">a Politico article about bitcoin mining</a> in eastern Washington with this quote: "Most of the surplus is exported, at high prices, to markets like Seattle or Los Angeles, which allows the utilities to sell power locally at well below its cost of production." This is not an isolated occurrence - I read a similar story from Inner Mongolia.</p>
<p>Why would the people running a power company sell the power below cost? They could simply be doing it as a bribe, to buy off a constituency with a lot of political sympathy. They could be doing it because rural incomes are low relative to those in big coastal cities, and the regulators wanted to be nice to people with lower incomes, or to subsidize rural living. Or they could be doing it as a form of compensation to people who might have added risk living downstream from a large dam, or other environmental costs related to the project.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason, they didn't count on bitcoin miners free riding on the cheap power - a form of "jurisdictional arbitrage" over the artificial cost difference. I bet there's a couple other things they didn't count on, and if you've also taken Econ 101, you're probably thinking of the same things, like that they're not providing the same discounts to low-income people in cities, and that these subsidies for rural living are encouraging rural overpopulation, which can have disastrous costs.</p>
<p>The reason is that land is an imperfect proxy for people. Sometimes it works great, and sometimes it fails. And when it fails bad, the consequences can be really disastrous.</p>
<p>Lately <a href="https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/01/statement-gov-cuomo-including-marijuana-legalization-fy2022-budget" target="_blank">I've been hearing calls</a> for an arrangement like the cheap rural power in connection with New York State's proposed legalization of recreational marijuana use. There's a very good reason for this: the drug laws passed by Nelson Rockefeller and others targeted drugs largely used by low-income Black and Latinx people, and they were enforced more harshly on dealers and users from those populations.</p>
<p>These discriminatory practices had an effect not just on the individual drug dealers and users and their families, but on their communities - and I use this word to mean their friends, neighbors and customers, people who owned businesses and charities where they might have spent money if they weren't in prison, and people who might have benefited from other, non-drug-related, work that they might have done.</p>
<p>When the drug enforcement authorities removed people and their productive power from their communities, they reduced the political and economic power of those communities, resulting in neglected housing stock and infrastructure.</p>
<p>So basically, the white elites of New York and their elected representatives screwed low-income Black and Latinx people over for decades. What do we do about it? At a minimum, any of the dealers convicted under these laws who are still willing and able to work should be guaranteed jobs in the field. I'm frankly baffled that I would have to say this: if your business is selling pot, why the fuck wouldn't you hire people who have a documented track record of success selling pot under really difficult conditions?</p>
<p>Okay, so what about the people who can't work, or don't want to sell drugs any more, or who were just convicted of possession? If they're dead, what about their heirs? They should be refunded all the fines and prison fees they've paid over the years, paid a regular minimum wage for any prison employment, and paid damages for unjust imprisonment.</p>
<p>Now here's the tricky part: what about their communities? Their friends, neighbors, customers, the businesses and charities where they might have spent money? The groups whose political and economic power was reduced? The housing stock and infrastructure of the places they called home?</p>
<p>Well, how many of those friends, neighbors and customers are still there? How many of the businesses and charities are still operating? How big was the Black and Latinx population in those areas when they were arrested, and how big is it today? Who lives in those houses now? Who walks the sidewalks and takes the train? To take a stark example, think about almost any block in North or East Williamsburg.</p>
<p>Let's avoid the temptation to blame migrants. Migration is a normal part of human existence. If these pot dealers and users hadn't been unjustly imprisoned they might be retired to Miami or Mayagüez right now. Many of them might be anyway. If they hadn't been economically oppressed, they and their kids might be "gentrifying" somewhere else right now. In any case, can we agree that there's no reason to send our tax dollars to some wealthy white family living in a row house in Williamsburg with no connection to a convicted pot dealer who lived there in the sixties?</p>
<p>Now, here's a slightly more difficult problem. What if it's one of these neighborhoods, like Harlem or Bedford-Stuyvesant, where a lot of the people moving in are middle-class or wealthy Black and Latinx people? They still face discrimination for the way they look and maybe their accents or names, but they haven't been held back by the drug laws. Are they entitled to any of this money?</p>
<p>We could probably continue thinking up different categories of people and the degree to which they should be entitled to any reparations for the Rockefeller drug laws, but the point is that land is an imperfect proxy for people. And when I keep hearing about sending money to affected "communities" and hardly anything about support for affected people and their heirs, I start to smell a bait-and-switch.</p>
<p>This brings me, finally to a transportation issue. Lately, you might have seen some posts about <a href="https://www.thirdway.org/memo/community-replenishment-undoing-the-damage-of-urban-renewal" target="_blank">proposals to mitigate some side effects of highway teardowns</a>. Alexander Laska of Third Way Energy and Beth Osborne of Transportation for America wrote:</p>
<p>"To ensure that neighborhoods around the highway receive the benefits of its removal or modification, the project sponsor for any award under this program should be required to establish a land trust or land bank that would receive initial ownership of any property that becomes developable through activities supported by a grant under this program. The land trust would help locals buy the property, preserve and build affordable housing, support the opening of locally-owned small businesses, and preserve greenspace and parks."</p>
<p>As with the case of mitigating marijuana legalization, the goals of this proposal are ones that I support. Having been priced out of three of the New York neighborhoods I've called home, I don't want to see anyone forced to move because rents rise beyond their ability to pay. But I think the proposal, and others like it, are misguided and will ultimately be damaging to the very populations they aim to protect.</p>
<p>This is just one of many proposals that avoid placing the blame for rising rents where it belongs: on the people responsible for restricting the supply of housing, which channels every increase in the quality of life of a neighborhood into a bidding war with wealthy people attracted by that increase, driving up rents.</p>
<p>Osborne is no dummy, and she does acknowledge, in <a href="https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/12/10/why-highway-teardowns-make-great-infrastructure-and-equity-investments/" target="_blank">an interview with Streetsblog's Kea Wilson</a>, that the real culprits are the local elites and the intolerant zoning they've established: “But of course, when the supply [of highway-free, walkable neighborhoods] is artificially constrained and demand is extremely high, that creates a really valuable product." But she professes no hope of ever overcoming that intolerance. "You have to actively protect land to make sure that people can afford to stay.”</p>
<p>But as with marijuana legalization and cheap hydroelectricity, protecting land doesn't do much to protect the people affected. This is personal for me: as a child I lived in a neighborhood that benefited from the cancellation of plans for one expressway and the tearing down of another. Now I can't afford to live in that neighborhood. I'm a prime victim of rising rents, unable to live in my childhood home.</p>
<p>Here's the thing, though: a land trust wouldn't have done diddly shit for me, because I wasn't living in that neighborhood when the highway was torn down. I wanted to stay; my parents moved away while the highway was still up, and took me with them. I couldn't even stay in the next neighborhood because I wanted to move out of my parent's apartment and rents were too high for my income. I left the third neighborhood to go to school, and couldn't move back because I'd given up my rent-stabilized apartment.</p>
<p>The neighborhoods I lived in when I was a bit older never even benefited from a highway teardown (although both of them could have). Rents just went up because people in my generation realized that the suburbs suck. A community land trust wouldn't have done much for me in the third neighborhood because once I left I was no longer a "long-time resident." Even if I'd qualified for one in my second neighborhood, it would probably have been oversubscribed, with a gigantic wait list.</p>
<p>Who would benefit from the community land trusts proposed by Laska and Osborne? A subset of residents: those who don't move. Those who never leave the area to go to school, or spend time in another country. Those who never try out another city for a year or two, to realize what they were missing in New York. Maybe those who leave, but who master the practice of subletting, of property management, of gaming the system. And it would probably wind up benefiting wealthier people who move in after the land trust is established.</p>
<p>Basically, the people who benefit from the community land trusts are the same people who benefit from intolerant zoning, from rent control, from community benefits agreements, from community boards: the local elites. Yup, this is just another bribe to local elites to get them to agree to something that they already know would be good for everyone who lives in the area.</p>
<p>Here's the bottom line: If you want to help the people, help the people. You want to help poor people? Send money to people who don't have a lot of money. You want to compensate people for racist policies that sent them and/or their family members to prison? Find those people and give them money. You want to counteract the effects of intolerant land use policies? Fight the intolerant land use policies. You want to compensate people who are victims of intolerant land use policies? Give those people an opportunity to register and send them a cut of rising property values.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, don't make poor people live in poor places to get cheap electricity. Don't give money to people who were never affected by racist policies, and just happened to move to a place where lots of people were. Don't make people stay in the same place in order to benefit from rising property values.</p>
<p>The bottom line is: don't make land a proxy for people.</p>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-70666188287855489712020-02-15T22:30:00.002-05:002020-06-28T10:52:28.883-04:00When to go negative<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMq8Z1VqhdtXyBXS6FCHRzH0_SCJrozcEFpdsACyW4Tfkapbkgk7xjCaQvtB-L5Lt-LVZzA5dq1jFUamWicD7m4fFGnxiJVpWjOBuQ4kPkZGtW8mMT9CfupQBai_YsDnm4rHm4epux5gY/s1600/20170103_125715.jpg" style="display: none;"></img><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMq8Z1VqhdtXyBXS6FCHRzH0_SCJrozcEFpdsACyW4Tfkapbkgk7xjCaQvtB-L5Lt-LVZzA5dq1jFUamWicD7m4fFGnxiJVpWjOBuQ4kPkZGtW8mMT9CfupQBai_YsDnm4rHm4epux5gY/s1600/20170103_125715.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMq8Z1VqhdtXyBXS6FCHRzH0_SCJrozcEFpdsACyW4Tfkapbkgk7xjCaQvtB-L5Lt-LVZzA5dq1jFUamWicD7m4fFGnxiJVpWjOBuQ4kPkZGtW8mMT9CfupQBai_YsDnm4rHm4epux5gY/s550/20170103_125715.jpg" width="550" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a></div><a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-we-got-hope-back.html">Recently I wrote</a> about how, in the nineties and early 2000s, discussions about transit advocacy were short on hope and full of negativity. Any positive online post was immediately greeted by three pronouncements: our transit system is too wasteful to finish anything, the opposition is too strong, and every project needs to get on line behind the other projects waiting for resources. This was profoundly discouraging to transit advocates.<br />
<br />
Transit expansion proposals are like brainstorming sessions. The concept of brainstorming recognizes that negativity can squelch creativity and dampen enthusiasm. It's hard to get excited about anything when your proposals are constantly being critiqued and shot down.<br />
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Things have changed a lot in the past fifteen years. Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway was completed, demonstrating that we are capable of finishing things. The City instituted pedestrian safety improvements on Queens Boulevard, demonstrating that the NIMBYs don't always have the final word. And the City financed an extension of the 7 train, demonstrating that the order of transit projects can be changed.<br />
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For a while it seemed like things had changed. People were making more fantasy maps, proposing new tunnels, track extensions, electrifications and service increases. But lately it seems that things have gone backwards a bit. I've perceived an increase in negative responses to expansion proposals.<br />
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I don't often hear the response that the opposition is too strong, although I did just get someone yesterday trying to tell me that "maybe people in eastern Queens don't want a subway." I also rarely hear that we can't talk about anything that isn't in the 1967 Subway Action Plan until we've finished the Second Avenue Subway.<br />
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I do still hear a variant of the wastefraudandabuse complaints that were rife in the past. After multiple posts by Alon Levy I've been persuaded that this is actually a thing, and we could potentially build subways a lot quicker if we could bring construction costs in line with Europe or China. But even when I feel that waste arguments are germane I've often pushed back on them.<br />
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There is a cost to the way we build subways in this country. But It's not at all obvious that this cost is being driven by the imagination of railfans on Twitter, or that there is value in demanding that every proposal bring in "enough riders to support it" based not on any agreed-on ridership model but on a critic's hunch.<br />
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In fact, I would argue that these critiques are the same old naysaying as we had back in the nineties, dressed up in new words. It's a way for one poster to assert dominance over another: your proposal isn't good enough, I know better than you.<br />
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Are there times when it's appropriate to criticize a proposal based on its cost, or any other reason? Of course. So when are those times? How do you know?<br />
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Think about brainstorming. The brainstorming session is over when it's time to allocate resources. Which project is going to get the money? Are we going to use the land for rail or bus? How much of our advocacy time are we going to spend on each project?<br />
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That's the time to think about what's bad about each project - and what's good. Not what's good or bad in absolute terms, but what's the best use of our money, land and time right now. And not someone else's money, land or energy, but the resources that we share.<br />
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This is the key issue: no project is wasteful until resources are dedicated to it. And other people's waste is none of our business, unless they ask us for our opinion, or maybe if we want to use their example as one to follow - or not.<br />
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Okay, I hear you saying, but I see all these bad habits! People are proposing lines that won't attract enough riders. What if some state legislator sees that tweet and sticks their proposal in the budget? They need to have these bad habits beaten out of them now!<br />
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All I can say to that is that you should maybe take a look at the negative posts from before 2005. Those people were convinced they knew better: that we can't finish anything, that the NIMBYs always win, and that every project needs to get on line. They were wrong on all three counts, but their insistance that everyone else was wrong poisoned the discourse for decades.<br />
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Is that who you want to be? The person who makes advocates hesitant to write up their hopes, out of fear that they're going to be held up for ridicule? The person who inspires half a dozen others to spend their time tearing down other people's ideas instead of developing their own?Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-10038122684561798402020-01-09T19:25:00.000-05:002020-01-09T19:25:50.593-05:00Stop romanticizing the country<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYPYy48k7F6M58Pp1vbzOyT5u2z2l6izAzB67L5RbzOPNZmpuL_JSTJ8m7BVfTrzyW9iSZxc2HK8LByO9_VaeHY_h1zNphQ1JVcfyQ7k_RMeUgpZdz_sEJxBIyoKSa6gBU-4x0ILpsN4/s1600/20180821_104352.jpg" style="display: none;"></img><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYPYy48k7F6M58Pp1vbzOyT5u2z2l6izAzB67L5RbzOPNZmpuL_JSTJ8m7BVfTrzyW9iSZxc2HK8LByO9_VaeHY_h1zNphQ1JVcfyQ7k_RMeUgpZdz_sEJxBIyoKSa6gBU-4x0ILpsN4/s1600/20180821_104352.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYPYy48k7F6M58Pp1vbzOyT5u2z2l6izAzB67L5RbzOPNZmpuL_JSTJ8m7BVfTrzyW9iSZxc2HK8LByO9_VaeHY_h1zNphQ1JVcfyQ7k_RMeUgpZdz_sEJxBIyoKSa6gBU-4x0ILpsN4/s550/20180821_104352.jpg" width="550" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a></div>Recently on Twitter I attacked the practice of transferring resources from city dwellers to country dwellers. One of my followers tried to defend it on the grounds of "equitable growth" because some people need to live in rural areas for farming, mining and other natural resources management purposes. My response was "fuck 'em" - not the people who actually do farm or mine or maintain parks and reservoirs, or who provide the goods and services for them, but the people who just want a big house in a picturesque area with lots of land, and feel entitled to government subsidies for that.<br />
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The specific example we were discussing was the building of new government facilities in remote areas, particularly facilities like universities and administrative offices that have no direct connection to rural activities, but there are many other examples of this kind of transfer of resources. Elected officials can keep taxes low in the country while raising them in cities. They can subsidize credit, transportation, utilities or other expenses of living and working in the country more than they do in the city. They can impose restrictions on cities that impair their efficiency but don't have the same effect on the country, like minimum parking requirements and restrictions on density.<br />
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There may be good reasons to encourage people to live in the country. Farming, mining, and other rural activities can be difficult in themselves, and the isolation of the country can make them even less attractive. Financial incentives, improved transportation and resources like broadband and cheap electricity can increase the labor pool and the number of people willing to invest in farms and other rural businesses.<br />
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When these incentives are targeted to a real public need, everything is great. But often they're simply targeted at people living in a specific place, or at "rural areas" in general. This can happen when people don't take the time to target initiatives well, or when there's a general hostility towards city life - or city dwellers - or when politicians exploit country dwellers for power. There is also a strong tendency for people to romanticize rural life.<br />
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Every mistargeted incentive is an opportunity for free riding, and incentives for rural living attract a lot of free riders. For all the disadvantages of country life that I mentioned above there are many incidental advantages like access to outdoor recreation, pleasant views, cheaper land and lower levels of certain types of pollution.<br />
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Many people prefer to live in the country and do something other than farming or mining or resource management, or providing services to farmers or miners or resource managers or tourists. There's a long tradition of artists, writers and philosophers moving to the country for inspiration or contemplation. There's another long tradition of wealthy people buying country houses for recreation and to escape poor people in the cities.<br />
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I want to point out here that this practice is largely restricted to white wealthy and middle-class people. In most cities there are creative and scholarly communities that are open to poor and nonwhite people. Rural communities where artists and writers live can be racist and exclusionary. They can also be remote and difficult to access without cars, which can constitute a barrier for people with low incomes. Poor and nonwhite people frequently move to the country for farming or mining, but less frequently to retreat for creative pursuits.<br />
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It's also important to note that the incomes of most of these country dwellers are dependent on cities. The farmers and miners are producing food and materials that will mostly be consumed by city dwellers. The artists, writers and philosophers are also producing art, writing and philosophy mostly for consumption by city dwellers. The tourists who rent hotel rooms and buy things in the country come mostly from cities. The wealthy people who buy summer, weekend and retirement houses in the country do it mostly with money they've made selling things in cities.<br />
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This pattern of earning money in cities and spending it in the country, and often paying taxes in the country, can be a legitimate exchange for real rural value, particularly when it comes to agricultural produce or mined resources or accommodation in pleasant or interesting places. When it's a country home it represents another transfer of wealth from the city to the country.<br />
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When an artist or writer or philosopher produces something in the country that they could have just as easily produced in the city, and receives subsidies intended for farmers or miners, that represents a transfer of wealth with nothing in return. When a worker could earn a living in the city but can't find work in the country, and chooses to live in the country and not work, any public assistance they receive constitutes a one-way transfer of wealth.<br />
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A transportation improvement that helps farmers and miners get their goods to market provides value to the producers and the buyers, so it's good for people in the city and the country. A transportation improvement that helps tourists and vacationers is probably valuable too. A transportation improvement that just helps people to make money in the city and live in the country is not a great value for taxpayers in general, and actively bad for city residents,<br />
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The absolute worst is when politicians spend tax money to "create jobs" in rural areas. I'm talking about factory, office, academic or entertainment jobs, jobs that are not specifically rural, and could be located anywhere. Jobs that would be much more efficiently located in or near cities.<br />
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First of all, this kind of economic development spending is a zero-sum game. It's possible to not spend it at all, and that's often the wisest course, but any jobs created in the country are jobs that are not going to city dwellers. That means that they are more likely to go to white people and people from higher-income backgrounds.<br />
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Second, putting office, academic and industrial jobs in the country is inherently less efficient, so we're wasting taxpayer money providing the infrastructure to support these activities beyond what they would cost us in the city.<br />
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Third, creating jobs in the country encourages more people to move to the country. They often leave efficient, walkable apartments and move to remote, car-dependent houses. They frequently buy cars, and those with cars typically drive more. They then add to the constituency of rural drivers demanding more and wider roads.<br />
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Subsidizing jobs in the country also creates a constituency for more jobs. We see it all over rural New York State: a politician can't get a factory in Plattsburgh without another politician wanting one in Elmira. Nelson Rockefeller built a SUNY campus in every State Senate district, regardless of how little housing there was for faculty and staff nearby, or how much a remote location added to the cost to transport students and supplies.<br />
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When farms or mines or rural factories close because the land is exhausted, or because other areas have more subsidies or less worker protection, or because we've subsidized transportation or water or energy, there are often jobs in the city. People used to move to the city for jobs, and they are again, more and more. But sometimes they don't want to leave the country. I get that. It can be hard to leave the place you know, and family.<br />
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I'm not blaming the people who don't want to leave the country, I'm blaming the politicians who pander to them by locating and subsidizing office, industrial and academic jobs in the country. Migration is a normal state for humanity. People have been doing it throughout our history.<br />
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That brings me to another element that has been underlying this whole dynamic: a romantic view of the country shared by many in power, and pandered to by many more. It is an old view, at least as old as the angels' visit to Sodom in the book of Genesis. In this view, cities are dirty places full of violence and evil people, while the country is clean, quiet and full of honest people.<br />
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The view of the country as inherently good helps explain a lot of the counterproductive subsidies I've discussed. Why wouldn't politicians want to subsidize writers and artists and teachers and factory and office workers living in the country, if the country is inherently good? Why wouldn't they want to make it easy for city people to get to the clean country as quickly as possible, so they can become virtuous country folk, or at least benefit from the country's virtues? Why wouldn't they want to help country people get in and out of the dirty city as quickly as possible, to minimize the harm and contamination?<br />
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Of course the city is not inherently dirty and sinful and violent, and the country is not inherently safe and friendly and clean. The country is a great place to grow food and collect water and quarry gravel. It's also a great place for city dwellers to experience natural beauty and to get some quiet and solitude and exercise. It's not a great place for factories or offices or bedroom communities. It's not a good place for a school, unless the school is essentially a city in itself. And it's really not a good place to shop, especially if we take into account the cost of transporting goods from where they're made to the shop, and from the shop to the home or business where they'll be consumed.<br />
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The city is a shitty place to mine copper. It's also a shitty place to grow food, despite what urban farming advocates may tell you. It's not a great place to get quiet and solitude. But as managers have discovered over and over throughout the centuries, despite everything they may want to believe, cities are great for offices and schools. They're not too bad for factories and bedroom communities, contrary to all the twentieth century rhetoric about light and air and noxious uses. And they're ideal for buying and selling things.<br />
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The romantic view we have of the country is doing real damage to both the city and the country. It's making them both less efficient, less safe, less healthy, less inclusive and less fair. We need to use the city for what it's good for, and we need to use the country for what it's good for.<br />
Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-44801441212273624552019-11-07T22:46:00.003-05:002023-07-10T17:55:48.265-04:00How we got hope back<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9jB7BJ7BMERfrT0LtkWFXBg-pxhk6nuzApVeJEc1U-flZDvtL6RpM6dhcIXEkFRoMw0LSS8itcuLh7woXrQzXZR_emGcl0ss7by81GFtaPTg7ABKuzbM5RdJUGGuSJPE_HVGvQuf-s5o/s1600/20190707_115353.jpg" style="display: none;"></img><br />
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When I first got into transit advocacy it was a lonely place. The dominant narrative here in New York was that the city was a money pit, a dirty hole of crime and corruption where funding went to die. The safe thing to do, for people and dollars, was to leave the city for the calm, quiet fields of the Hudson Valley and the rustic forests of the Catskills, where the Thruway, the Taconic and other scenic friendly roads would whisk you swiftly to your modern house surrounded by healthy Nature.<br />
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This narrative was bolstered by constant stories of wastefraudandabuse at the MTA and the fact that the Mayor and the Governor had promised to build the Second Avenue Subway decades ago, and nothing had opened. Even the 63rd Street Tunnel went nowhere in particular. Nothing else happened.<br />
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It was understood that the people of the East Side and the Bronx had been waiting for their subway since 1929. After that were the various proposals to extend the E and F trains in southeast Queens, and then maybe the 7 train. Any newer ideas had to get on line behind those.<br />
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The residents of various neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn met every proposal to expand service with dramatic complaints. Crime! Noise! Shadows! Nonwhite people! They were well-connected, with their champions including then-City Council Speaker Peter Vallone.<br />
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Transit advocates internalized this response. Transit discussion boards were focused on documenting existing conditions - and critiquing them, and reminiscing about past expansions. If someone proposed a new expansion, or advocated for an existing proposal, another poster would often remind them how long it had been since the last real expansion, the difficulties faced by recent proposals, and all the other proposals currently waiting in the queue.<br />
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A poster didn't even need to know actual details about how deep neighborhood opposition ran or why the city was in a budget crisis. Regurgitating the same handful of anecdotes was an easy way to win know-it-all points.<br />
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In this century the situation began to change. The F train was connected to the 63rd Street Tunnel and work began again on the Second Avenue Subway. Then the MTA began work on an extension to Hudson Yards that hadn't even been on any advocate's list of proposals before. But Mayor Bloomberg and his staff arranged for city financing, and all of a sudden the Hudson Yards line was being dug, ahead of the E and F extensions, ahead of Second Avenue Subway Phase II, and even ahead of Second Avenue Subway Phases III through XXIIII.<br />
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Bloomberg also began overruling NIMBYs. In 2004 he rolled out the first round of safety improvements on Queens Boulevard, the beginning of the end for the "Boulevard of Death," over the objections of business owners who claimed that every sidewalk extension would mean another empty storefront. He then appointed Janette Sadik-Khan as Transportation Commissioner, and backed her up when NIMBYs objected to the Prospect Park West bike lane.<br />
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In a few short years we learned that NIMBYs are not all-powerful, the order of subway expansions is not set in stone, and we are capable of finishing projects. In other words, we have reason to hope. A lot of the negativity was in our own heads.<br />
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Does that mean that the NIMBYs are now toothless, the state budget is bottomless, and we can build all the things? Of course not. But it does mean that we can hope, and plan, and propose new things.<br />
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If you follow my twitter feed, recently you may have noticed me getting angry at people for negativity. It's not that I think we should never criticize anyone else's proposals, or even just flat-out say no. There is a time and place for negativity, and the negative comments I was responding to were not made at the right time or place.<br />
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I didn't intend this to be a paean to Mayor Bloomberg, but for a number of reasons he was able to escape the cowardice and windshield perspective that limits New York City's political class so much. The man has lots of flaws, but his terms as mayor were a time of real progress for transit.<br />
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The reason I get so angry is because I remember the bad old days. I remember when transit nerds used to smack each other down for daring to suggest running passenger trains on the Bay Ridge Branch. I remember when we had no hope. I don't want to go back to that time.<br />
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What is the right time and place for negativity? That's <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2020/02/when-to-go-negative.html">a whole other post</a>.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-18738911934483171642019-09-13T08:56:00.000-04:002019-09-13T08:56:08.079-04:00Attack of the Vertical Suburb<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcGng_ZsdAQDqdKVfLBwpsjvUUFU7bIlNHfdtTTk2tRkKju8sdLD4pq_yGKAcYybY1p2A50aU72Of4pAkPkcK_maMRdRtK_ahePQ2UuHw_IWDeac-pXNt198sHhUgf3dI7iy3xwHqI-g/s1600/20190720_145520.jpg" style="display: none;"></img><br />
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Recently we've seen a rash of articles that talk about "suburbs in the city," or "suburbanizing the city." Some articles refer to certain tall buildings as "vertical suburbs." The claim is either that faceless greedy developers are building buildings with suburban features, or that <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2014/06/five-migrations-in-gentrification.html">new migrants from the suburbs</a> just don't appreciate the city and are intent on imposing their suburban values. Sometimes the allegation is that the developers are responding to demand from suburban migrants, sometimes that they are creating it.<br />
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I've written before about how <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2012/08/know-your-suburbs.html">people mean different things</a> when they say "suburb." So what do these authors mean when they talk about "suburbs in the city"? Why do they care? Should we care?<br />
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We can dispense with some of the critiques pretty quickly. Some of these articles observe that the new apartment buildings and shops have gates, doormen and security systems, as though these things don't already exist in cities. As though they haven't existed for as long as cities have existed.<br />
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They observe that some of the new shops are in malls on private property, as though cities haven't had malls on private property for as long as suburbs. That many of these shops and restaurants are chains, as though every neighborhood in the city isn't full of chains, As though people from every social class and ethnicity don't flock to malls and chains, no matter how long they've lived in the city.<br />
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A much more legitimate concern involves different standards for peace, quiet and respect for the law. In many suburbs, the law is an instrument of racist discrimination and segregation, often a brutal and violent one. The simple presence of people who aren't white, or who look poor, or who are simply walking by themselves, can be enough to prompt a call to 911 and a police response. Some people bring racist attitudes with them from the suburbs.<br />
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The police have a history of protecting wealthy white people and harassing poor nonwhite people, which means that a stereotypical suburban definition of safety includes a police presence that would make a lot of city dwellers feel less safe. I've heard of suburbanites migrating to more urban areas and then reporting technically illegal but victimless violations like sidewalk drinking, with no concern for or awareness of the potential impact on their neighbors.<br />
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People who grow up in suburbs and more urban neighborhoods can also have different standards for what counts as "quiet." Some of this is simply a consequence of the built environment: in denser settings it's easier to hear your neighbors. On the one hand, people in more urban neighborhoods tend to be more tolerant of noises coming from other homes, businesses and public areas. On the other hand, people coming from less dense areas are not always aware of how much they can disturb their neighbors.<br />
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I've sometimes seen noise tolerance framed as a matter of pure cultural heritage. I think this is total horseshit. Sure, there are particular communities that outlaw dancing on religious grounds, but otherwise, every culture has noisy parties, every culture stays up late sometimes, and every culture has some people who have to get up early the next morning.<br />
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These conflicts over "quiet" and "safety" are legitimate matters for concern. We should be on the lookout for potential instances where they may unfairly affect existing residents, or compound unfair effects of race, class and ethnicity. Preventing migration from suburbs to cities is grossly out of proportion to any risks posed by these conflicts alone.<br />
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So yes, there are legitimate concerns about people moving from the suburbs to the city, and a lot of illegitimate fearmongering. Would these migrations affect our goals of reducing carnage and pollution, and increasing efficiency and fairness?<br />
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The two features of suburbia that affect our <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2008/02/getting-our-goals-straight.html">goal</a>s the most are density and car-orientation. New migrants can make a city less dense or more car-oriented by buying larger apartments or by bringing cars with them from the suburbs. Some of these articles claim that the practice of buying pied-á-terre apartments is a major factor in "turning the city into a ghost town," but pieds-á-terre are a tiny fraction of any city's housing stock.<br />
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In practice, when they move to the city ex-suburbanites typically get small apartments and ditch their cars - if the city government doesn't encourage them to do differently. If apartments are cheap they'll get a big one. If there's free parking available, they may keep their cars. But lifelong city dwellers will get big apartments and cars too, if they're affordable. So these are also largely myths.<br />
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As far as access for all, there is a concern that when people (typically characterized as wealthy white people) move from the suburbs to the city, they will necessarily displace previous residents of the city (typically characterized as poor nonwhite people). These former urbanites will have nowhere to go but the suburbs vacated by the people who displaced them, but will have less ability to afford the resources (particularly cars) that make the suburbs bearable. The grim game of musical chairs will improve access for the wealthy ex-suburbanites, but make it worse for the displaced urbanites.<br />
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It is in fact not clear how much the increased demand from ex-suburbanites actually contributes to rising rents, and even whether urban residents are being displaced, as opposed to moving out at the same rates they have historically, and simply not being replaced by people with similar ethnic and class backgrounds. But as I and many others have written, the way to address displacement concerns is simply to build enough urban housing that there is room in the city for the urban dwellers to stay and the ex-suburbanites to join them. This includes upzoning suburban areas and selling off public parking lots and garages, to create the kind of walkable, lively places that can satisfy at least some of the people who want to leave the suburbs.<br />
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I have my suspicions that at least some of the authors of these articles are not really concerned with segregation, malls, neighborhood conflict, rising rents or displacement. Maybe they've simplistically decided that everything suburban is automatically bad. Maybe they've decided that the populations that lived in the city when they were in their twenties are the true indigenous population, eternal and unchanging. Maybe they think the way they moved from the suburbs in 1992 is the only way to do it, and they resent everyone else for Doing It Wrong.<br />
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Actually, I don't really care why they're writing these articles. I just want them to stop. Whatever their goals, these authors clearly don't care about the economically and physically oppressive situation that is driving people to leave the suburbs, and they don't care that dense living with less car use is the only thing that will save our grandchildren from global warming.<br />
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The stereotypical suburbs are not bad because they have malls, or because some rich white people live there, or because they're relatively quiet. They're bad because they're racist, exclusionary and car-oriented. White people, and malls, and quiet, are not inherently anti-urban. We can call out racism, exclusion and car orientation in urban settings without getting irrelevant issues caught up in the mix.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-65020324868365540552019-08-28T22:30:00.001-04:002019-08-29T23:15:24.742-04:00There is no neutral transportation budget arbiter<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBYmADCUvZv-aJvTaUziJjaJ6IeBN6jQNfEPUsURbWM-f3PlcjSE7lMNzuV2vfXc_DIO-FQRKNFJglvlOdsixU1mIFY2jwKzDyCGUxLTfIASqc0dAP-1BAIwYDFlg4p9EWp39m_2frkoE/s550/20190619_091744.jpg" style="display: none;"></img><br />
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Recently I had another Twitter argument with a transit budget hawk. You know, about how slow and expensive the MTA has been at delivering new subway infrastructure, and how some fantasy busway would not be slow or expensive to build at all, and would magically deliver results comparable to a train line.<br />
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(Some other advocates, like Alon Levy, have brought up high construction costs not as an argument for busways, but to argue that we can build more trains if we can build them cheaper. I disagree with this argument in part, but it's a different argument, and deserves a separate post.)<br />
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Over the years I've given different counterarguments to this. The biggest is that it's not about how much total transit capacity we can roll out. Our goals depend on <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-long-game-in-transit-advocacy.html">rolling out transit infrastructure</a> that can be sustained and used equitably for long <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2009/11/rob-hopkinss-urban-challenge.html">after we run out of cheap fossil fuel</a>, and <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2008/02/getting-our-goals-straight.html">on getting people out of cars</a>, and both of those in turn depend on the Cycle. <br />
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Busways are never as cheap or quick to roll out as their advocates claim, and they can drain budget dollars and political energy away from trains. In this recent argument, as usual, a busway was raised as an explicit alternative to a rail proposal. Busways can also interfere with rail by occupying valuable corridors, as we see with the Orange Line in Los Angeles.<br />
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I finally figured out another big thing that's wrong with these arguments: they're not aimed at convincing me that a busway is better than a train. They're entirely based on political feasibility. I know the political system, says the busway advocate. They will never approve this expensive rail project. But they will approve this cheaper busway. You should abandon your quixotic campaign for rail and throw your lot in with my busway.<br />
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The problem is that these busway advocates do not necessarily know the political system, not any better than you or I do. They're typically either repeating something they heard from someone else, or they're responding unthinkingly to a high cost figure. They have no special knowledge as to whether the politicians will fund the rail project, and they have no special knowledge as to whether the politicians would fund the busway, or allocate road space for it.<br />
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Instead, their appeal is based on an idea of legislatures and political executives as neutral budget arbiters, dispassionately weighing the relative costs and benefits of proposals. Their only concern is the return on investment for each project, as expressed by its ability to <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2013/04/enough-riders-for-what.html">support ridership numbers</a>.<br />
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This vision is laughable if you've read even one day of my Twitter feed. Every day I get examples of politicians deciding whether or not to support transportation projects, and costs and ROI are the bottom criteria. The top predictor of whether a politician supports a project is the prospect of a glamorous ribbon cutting. The next is whether it would ease a frustration in a trip they regularly take, or that of someone who they listen to. The third is probably whether it would get them a lot of angry calls from powerful people who have some idea, however loony, that the project might bring, crime, gentrification, congestion or historical desecration. Then some of them might be interested in the possibility of getting credit for Bringing Down Spending.<br />
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The typical American politician drives and doesn't know or care about any transit riders. This is something we're trying to change, and we're making headway here in New York, but we've still got a long way to go. They will be biased against any transit project, and they will be further biased against any project that would take road space from drivers.<br />
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The politicians are also making their decisions based on biased information provided by bureaucrats, who drive at a higher rate than the general public. Allocation of funding and land is dominated by transportation and planning departments, which tend to be focused on building roads and parking, and swayed by fads like diverging diamonds, rail trails and "BRT." Many of them will have a vested interest in the money and land going to roads.<br />
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All of this is to say that there is no guarantee that anyone in the process will be neutral, honest or focused on moving the largest number of people for the lowest amount of money. They're focused on ribbon cuttings, or their friends' commutes, or avoiding angering the Community Leaders, or getting their road project funded.<br />
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My top two strategies to get transit built are to focus on the potential for glamorous ribbon cuttings, and to get people elected who commute by transit, and who care about transit commutes. Decision makers are not interested in cost figures for their own sake, and neither am I.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-9525906816253525862019-06-08T21:39:00.002-04:002019-06-08T21:39:56.362-04:00Transit should be controlled by transit riders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-rMEUKrmP7d1A7yzER0cuo_NZxsZiPlUyrevcb7gvnjSp46aflnJi3HTO9ycE_RAcPYxvHwoXNtadLnvq9mUffmWWoaA9MoiAPodB6sYyO1jJvkzdJL5xvx-WgyvzbhNMzuW6fjHZ6U/s1600/MTA+board+2019-06-08+212102.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-rMEUKrmP7d1A7yzER0cuo_NZxsZiPlUyrevcb7gvnjSp46aflnJi3HTO9ycE_RAcPYxvHwoXNtadLnvq9mUffmWWoaA9MoiAPodB6sYyO1jJvkzdJL5xvx-WgyvzbhNMzuW6fjHZ6U/s550/MTA+board+2019-06-08+212102.png" data-original-width="1416" data-original-height="701" /></a></div><br />
I was listening to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson <a href="http://secondavenuesagas.com/2019/03/21/the-second-ave-sagas-podcast-ep-1-corey-johnson/" target="_blank">on Ben Kabak's new podcast</a>, promoting his proposal to transfer control of the New York City subways from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is controlled by the Governor, to a new board controlled by the Mayor (a post that Johnson plans to run for in 2021). Johnson's thoughtfulness and his desire for real solutions were refreshing in our political scene, and I appreciated his request for feedback on his proposal. And I have some!<br />
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In particular I was struck by Johnson's claim that a board that represents the diversity of the transit riding public would do a better job of serving that public. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm definitely not going to repeat the bullshit that a board needs people with technical or business expertise; that's what staff is for. The subways and buses should be managed in a way that benefits their riders, and riders deserve a say in how they're managed.<br />
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The thing is that the system doesn't just serve riders; it serves everyone who lives and works anywhere in the whole metro area. A bank executive who is driven to work isn't going to perform well if their employees can't get in on the train. An antiques merchant in Great Barrington is going to sell less if the weekend visitors from the city have less disposable income. Taxpayers need to know that our money is being spent well. Bondholders won't lend the MTA money unless they can make sure it won't default.<br />
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I wouldn't want the Kosciuszko or Tappan Zee bridge replacement projects to be managed by and for the exclusive benefit of drivers. In fact, the problem with these projects is that they actually <b>are</b> being managed by and for drivers. And you know, the problem with the MTA is that it is also being managed largely for drivers.<br />
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Johnson is right that the MTA is controlled by a group of people who don't ride transit, but he fingered the wrong group. The Governor clearly doesn't ride transit, but a lot of transit policy is not set by him, but by the State Legislature. As I've written in numerous posts, the State Assembly and Senate are almost completely dominated by drivers and people who are driven everywhere.<br />
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Under Johnson's proposal the State Legislature would have almost as much control as they do now, because under our constitution they are the only entity in the state with the power to tax. State laws also have the power to overrule city laws. Even if Johnson can persuade them to implement his plan, they can change it at any time.<br />
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To the extent the city government would have control, the City Council would have more power than this "BAT Board," because they have to pass the budget, and can pass certain laws constraining what the Mayor can do. The Council has gotten much better over just the past twelve years, thanks in part to Johnson's leadership, but as Streetsblog documented recently, they still cannot be counted on to reliably prioritize transit riders.<br />
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Today the MTA Board today is at worst a fig leaf covering the Governor's management and the Legislature's budget priorities, and at best an advisory panel. On top of that we have another panel, the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, which is appointed by elected officials based on patronage, and elects representatives to the MTA Board who have no voting rights. Johnson's proposal does not give this "BAT Board" the power to tax, so the real power would remain with the power brokers in the State Legislature.<br />
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Having the State Legislature or the City Council control the transit system would not actually be a problem if we had a truly representative system. Even the State Legislature is dominated by representatives of districts with heavy transit ridership. Unfortunately, the system is corrupt and favors elite homeowners who drive. They also subscribe to an ideology of driving as emancipation, and make deals to favor "upstate" that ignore the sizable population of current and potential transit riders outside of New York City.<br />
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The focus some advocates place on the non-representativeness of the MTA Board, in particular on the predominance of white men, winds up distracting us from the non-representativeness of the State Legislature, where some of the loudest opposition to transit funding and fair pricing for road use comes from nonwhite and female legislators like Charles Barron, Kevin Parker, Toby Stavisky and Deborah Glick. Last week when first term Senator Jessica Ramos said not only that she doesn't have a driver's license but that "car culture is something that we need to start rethinking as a society as a whole," that statement was notable for how unusual and brave it was.<br />
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So yes, we should transfer control of New York City Transit's subways and buses back to the City government. But no, we should not create a whole new authority to run them, or a "mobility czar" to oversee buses, trains, ferries, bridges and streets. We should just make them all part of the Department of Transportation. If we need to borrow money for them, we should use the City's bonding ability.<br />
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And no, we should not create a whole new board with no real power. If people want to transfer the New York City Transit Riders Council from the MTA to the city, fine. We don't need another one.<br />
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Similarly, if for some reason the City can't borrow enough money using its own bonds, I could see us setting up a temporary authority to issue bonds. Those of you who have read The Power Broker know that the authorities that issued bonds to build projects like the Manhattan Bridge were set up to dissolve once they paid off the bonds. The genius idea that allowed Bob Moses to wield power for decades without ever winning an election was to insert a clause in the law that created the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority allowing it to issue new bonds. Removing that unjustified power from the Transit Authority is an essential step in restoring democratic control to our subway system.<br />
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The bottom line: municipal control is a good idea, but a new authority is not the way to do it. It should be done by direct executive power. Representation is a good idea, but an unelected board is not the way to do it. It should be done through our elected representatives to the City Council and State Legislature.<br />
Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-56214715821816798012018-09-29T23:10:00.000-04:002018-09-29T23:10:43.680-04:00Did the Atlantic Ticket accomplish anything?In June <a href="http://www.mta.info/news/2018/06/15/lirr-debuts-atlantic-ticket-brooklyn-and-queens-officials" target="_blank">the Long Island Railroad instituted</a> an "Atlantic Ticket" for people traveling on weekdays between southeast Queens and stops along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. This fits with the RER, S-Bahn and Overground strategies that have been used in European cities like London, Paris and Berlin going back to the late nineteenth century. Instead of treating suburban trains like a completely separate system from the subways (and buses) they are run through the city center, at comparable frequencies to the subway, with the same fares and free transfers. So how does the Atlantic Ticket do in getting us to this goal of using our trains more efficiently?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDW1KG74BD85G5OgT0YHdj_Xk8Ymu6u1fIQPFpaUXX_JzhUaqmaAjDuAg5Nmb8eTMRp8vuCiVFmVX9T6oCsXPPkJ-j7zLLFHZ4QS6Kjkiy9Insx73gwdN9rcJJNJWUa8CwtvCF5S-F6NY/s1600/20180429_172207.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDW1KG74BD85G5OgT0YHdj_Xk8Ymu6u1fIQPFpaUXX_JzhUaqmaAjDuAg5Nmb8eTMRp8vuCiVFmVX9T6oCsXPPkJ-j7zLLFHZ4QS6Kjkiy9Insx73gwdN9rcJJNJWUa8CwtvCF5S-F6NY/s550/20180429_172207.jpg" width="550" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a></div><br />
Of the four differences between subways and commuter trains, the Atlantic Ticket addresses the fare difference and the lack of free transfers. They are the easiest to see: a rush hour commuter who takes the LIRR and the subway pays $13 one way or $346 monthly for a 55-minute trip from Rosedale to Grand Central, compared to $2.75 or $121 for 30 days for a much more crowded ride on a local bus to a subway. Many people take dollar vans to the subway, which brings the cost up to $4.75 one-way or $241 for 30 days. Riding the x63 express bus takes an hour and a half, but you get a seat and it's less than the railroad: $5.50 one way or $238 for 28 days.<br />
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The Atlantic Ticket offers a fare close to the express bus: $7.75 for a single one-way from Rosedale to Grand Central and $240 for 28 days. However, it is only good for travel to (or through) Flatbush Avenue, which takes about an hour and ten minutes from Rosedale to Grand Central. This is still quicker than the express bus, but about twenty minutes longer than LIRR trips through Penn Station. Surprisingly to me, it's also longer than taking a bus to the subway.<br />
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Why would someone pay extra for a longer ride? Comfort is one reason: LIRR trains are rarely packed, so even if they don't get a seat on the train they would expect some elbow room. But there's still a packed subway ride from Flatbush Avenue to Manhattan. Is riding a less crowded train for half an hour worth paying $3-5 more, but not worth $10.25 more? Maybe.<br />
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Another potential advantage is reliability. The subways and LIRR trains run on dedicated, grade-separated tracks controlled by the MTA. The buses and vans all run on busy avenues filled with other commuters. One insensitive driver can hold up bus riders for several minutes.<br />
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There's no word yet on how many people have been buying these Atlantic Tickets, but given the mixed benefits I suspect the number is relatively small. <a href="http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/pdf/180924_0930_LIRR.pdf" target="_blank">The LIRR Board Book</a> this month credited the US Open golf tournament and the Belmont Stakes for increases in ridership (roughly 2% over last year), but did not mention the Atlantic Ticket at all. In a future post I'll talk about the two other factors, a direct ride (or at least a ride that is comfortable end to end), and frequency.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-82237147839760220312018-08-26T23:54:00.001-04:002018-08-26T23:54:12.392-04:00No, the subway is not in a death spiralRecently I've appreciated Aaron Gordon's transit reporting in the Village Voice and elsewhere. I like his drive and his passion for justice, and I agree with him about almost everything. But there's one big thing he said recently that I just don't agree with. In fact, I'm concerned about it because I think it could demoralize other transit advocates and direct their energy away from where it's most needed.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dpirmann/37965275304/" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj43HFeBHqwiGo9f3ovp11mKsEkfYgkGKR101xCMgI81ZvfiuHrOL_JCMQOuIXP24D5QE0ToDbAMZg_a_rxVhfpi8sE-UItS1NfDqyqcApxRBrVdceXibmSSZP3RD06sDKnuJpwfkyd-Q/s550/37965275304_79d8585c7e_o.jpg" width="550" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1067" /><br />Queensborough Bridge Railway 603 at Queensborough Plaza 2-21-1957. Photo: C.G. Parsons</a></div><br />
Gordon thinks our transit system - specifically the New York City Subway - <a href="https://signalproblems.substack.com/p/august-3-2018-inside-the-death-spiral" target="_blank">has entered the dreaded Transit Death Spiral</a>. This is a familiar story from the mid to late twentieth century, if you've read any transit history. He describes it this way: <br />
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<blockquote>people, for whatever reason—but usually austerity measures, poor service, and/or service cuts—start opting for non-public modes of transit, lower transit ridership leads to less revenue and service cuts, service cuts lead to lower transit ridership and less revenue, etc. etc.</blockquote><br />
Gordon neglects another factor that has traditionally been blamed for lower ridership: fare increases. Otherwise it's a decent summary of the story as it's usually told. But is that the whole story? Actually, no, there's a lot missing. If we add that missing information we get a much more encouraging picture. There are still problems - lots - but it's easier to know what to do about them.<br />
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The first missing piece is our goals. We do not exist to support a healthy subway system. Transit is a tool: it moves us around so we can function in our economy. The subway is one of the safest, cleanest, most efficient ways to accomplish that, and it helps us to live close enough together to support healthy social relationships.<br />
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The second piece is that a transit system is always in competition with some other way to get around. People still need to get to work, to shopping, to visit friends, etc. Some of these, like the subway, are better for our goals; others, like private cars, are much worse. This is why we care which one people use.<br />
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If we go back and look at the historical examples that led people to coin the term "transit death spiral," they all involved overwhelming competition from alternatives with more funding, more capacity, more staying power and the ability to deliver a premium product. The only competition Gordon mentions is from for-hire vehicles like Uber, Lyft and taxis. These may have more funding and premium products, but their capacity and staying power are severely limited.<br />
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Uber, Lyft, Via, Chariot - they're all backed by truckloads of venture capital money. That's what allowed them to finance so many car and SUV purchases over the past decade. But the Penn Central and the Erie-Lackawanna were competing with thousands of lane-miles of roads and thousands of acres of parking just here in the New York area, plus billions of barrels of artificially cheap gas. The scales are not comparable in any way.<br />
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A large amount of this competition was funded directly by the federal and state governments, and indirectly by them through eminent domain takings. These subsidies brought the cost to the driver of a private car trip well below the actual cost, and to a point not much higher than the cost of a transit trip, especially after the cost of the car, garage driveway etc. were paid for. The subsidies provided tons of capacity, so that the highway and parking system could absorb large numbers of new drivers.<br />
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New York and other transit-rich cities have given way too much to drivers (like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the FDR Drive), but we did have our "freeway revolts" - preventing the Lower Manhattan Expressway, the Golden Gate Freeway, he Mount Hood Freeway and others from being built through our neighborhoods. Other cities spent hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy their downtowns and scatter their jobs across the land. That too contributed to "transit death spirals" as Northern urbanites bought cars and fled to the glamour of California and the New South.<br />
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This subsidized capacity was also maintained by the government until a majority of travellers had invested in cars, car-dependent housing and car-dependent jobs, to the point where when they approached the capacity of the new system they didn't abandon it, they just demanded more subsidies. That in itself required a huge amount of money and political will.<br />
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The electronic hailing system has never had anything approaching the capacity dumped into the region's highways and parking lots in the mid-to-late twentieth century. It sits on top of that system, of course. But that system was almost at capacity when the first Uber started accepting rides, and there is not much new capacity. The widened Kosciuszko, Tappan Zee and Goethals bridges are not near the regional core, and they are destructive primarily because they will maintain existing capacity at enormous taxpayer cost. Southern and Western suburbs are collapsing under the cost of maintaining their humongous highway systems. Uber and Lyft can't dump any more cars onto the streets of Manhattan, because they won't fit.<br />
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Subsidized capacity can work both ways, another point that Gordon ignores. A big factor in the death spiral of the privately owned subway companies was the gargantuan city-operated Independent System built under Mayor Red Mike Hylan, a former BMT operator, with the explicit intention of driving the private companies to bankruptcy. More recently, when US auto manufacturing companies and sprawl financiers were in a death spiral, the federal government stepped in with billions of dollars.<br />
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A massive influx of federal dollars could help the MTA too. <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/08/12/the-mtas-latest-woe-is-a-bad-omen-for-its-repair-plans/" target="_blank">Nicole Gelinas recently reported</a> that Standard and Poor's cut the authority's credit rating. This means that the share of the operating budget devoted to interest payments on the bonds they've issued will increase, leaving less available to run the subways. But what if the Fed bought the MTA debt? That would free up a ton of money to fix the signals and the tracks. Hell, if Andrew Cuomo kicked in as much in bank settlement cash for the MTA as he did for the Thruway Authority, we wouldn't be talking about any of this now.<br />
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Because the available capacity and funding for ride-hailing services were relatively limited, we're already reaching those limits. The cost of all ride-hailing services has gone up since UberX was introduced, in many cases by two or three times, and customers respond. When fares were artificially low (remember flat $5 Uber and Via trips in Manhattan?) and there were lots of promotions, I took them a lot more than I do now.<br />
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One thing I like about app hailing, in fact, is that it requires so little investment. If you already have a smartphone and a credit or debit card, you don't need to buy anything or move anywhere to use Lyft. You just open the app, find a car and pay. An app ride can pretty much be dropped in to replace a transit, bike or walking trip - and vice versa.<br />
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The lack of investment means that as soon as a transit provider gets its act together (for example, let's say New York City Transit removes all the unnecessary signal timers from the subways), people will come back. If it's fast, reliable and not too crowded you can't beat a ride across town for $2.75.<br />
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Actually, you can't beat a ride like this even if it costs five dollars, maybe seven. This is part of the classic story of the Transit Death Spiral. Gordon only talked about "austerity," but the fare is a factor. The typical cautionary tale is of the transit operator that raises fares too high, driving passengers away. But if raising prices were all it took to bankrupt a seller, we'd have no businesses left.<br />
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Often the problem has been that the fares are too low. A major factor in the demise of New York's two private subway operators was that for over 45 years they were prevented by law from raising their fares to cover rising costs, and the city government refused to raise the fare past a nickel until after both companies had gone bankrupt. This is not a concern for the MTA as long as the government is willing to make up the amount needed to cover costs. It was only after the IRT and BMT had been running massive operating deficits for years that they entered the spiral.<br />
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The MTA should raise fares, and this is one of the best times to do it. Anyone who uses a ride-hailing app can see how much cheaper the subway is, and we know how much faster it is than any other option - as long as it's not disrupted or the middle of the night. Again, it's a bargain at five dollars.<br />
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The big objection to raising the fares was that it placed an undue burden on poor people. That argument was addressed when the City Council passed the Fair Fares plan, which will offer Metrocards at half the current rates to New Yorkers with incomes below the poverty line. The MTA can now raise everyone else's fares while keeping Fair Fares at this level, and thus not hurt poor people!<br />
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Over and over again while writing this post, I've found myself tapping out words like "overwhelming, gargantuan, massive, huge, enormous, humongous, truckloads, tons, billions." I'm using these words to describe the government investment in private cars (and the Independent Subway) that threw competing transit providers into a death spiral. Even today's car infrastructure subsidies, like the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement, are not on the same scale. The venture capital investment in Uber, Lyft, Via and Chariot is definitely not on that scale.<br />
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That's not to say that the government and venture capitalists couldn't do some damage to transit ridership. As I wrote years ago, the new Kosciuszko span will make it quicker to travel by car (and Uber) between Brooklyn and Queens. It could poach riders from the G train, and even the Queens Boulevard trains to Manhattan.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/1028797910920704000" target="_blank">Ben Kabak has also expressed</a> that to him, "With the transit crisis, the congestion and the high cost of housing, along with opposition to development, the city feels on the verge of a breaking point." I understand why he feels that way. I'm also frustrated with the slow pace of transit expansion and the constant, know-nothing opposition to building transit or housing.<br />
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But we need to keep some perspective. This is frustrating and destructive, but it's really nothing compared to the massive, huge, enormous system of driving and parking constructed in the twentieth century to compete with transit. The government can do more damage, and probably will. But its ability to build something that overwhelming, gargantuan, humongous - twice in a hundred years - is limited.<br />
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I won't say for sure that it'll never happen. But I have hope. Oil and natural gas are still getting harder and harder to extract from the ground. Young people have realized that suburbs and small towns are stifling, even when they're run by hippies and punks. I think we'll get out of this.<br />
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I still like Aaron Gordon's writing. I'm going to take his historical insights with a grain of salt from now on. Bit I'm going to keep reading it and following him on Twitter, and I encourage you all to do the same.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-2428195056609917482018-08-06T22:36:00.001-04:002018-08-06T22:40:03.602-04:00Can we make the Central Park "drives" two way again now?They say Central Park is now car-free. The other day I passed five construction trucks, three random cars and four golf carts, one of which was completely empty, with a guy in shirtsleeves standing next to it looking at his phone. Of course it's all relative, and this is a definite improvement over the line of cars pushing their way through the East Drive just a couple months ago.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-2ed3-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89PssY2c0gNT_TD8NLSNdLKgTsJjBJdVc1tlTjO-rn56TLKQQvVnkPYjSmrO2Q7kkxkdHgzrX4s1_yEMWxdb3c1AAjaAXxNcEEseXk93ikIHPLXlHcyI9otfV_v7BMt2eb2dHMeWPscE/s550/south+drive.png" width="550" data-original-width="1001" data-original-height="634" /><br />
Photo: The Drive. Percy Loomis Sperr, May 25, 1928.</a></div><br />
I also passed several people going the other way - riding bikes, running, walking, even on scooters. They didn't really bother me, because they're narrow and lightweight, and traveling at relatively low speeds. If anything concerned me at all, it was that they sometimes passed me on the right - their left. I could see this potentially causing problems in really crowded situations.<br />
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That got me thinking about something I've written about before: a hundred years ago New York's streets <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2012/12/tweaking-congestion.html">were almost all two-way</a>, even narrow ones. One-way traffic was at first almost entirely a response to the explosion of curbside parking. Later it was extended to avenues without parking, and curbside parking was banned in some areas, in response to a massive surge in car commuting and truck freight.<br />
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I looked up some old photos of Central Park, and the drives are two-way as late as 1928. According to the New York Times, the drives were made one way on November 29, 1929. There were two stories: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1929/11/23/archives/oneway-traffic-ordered-for-central-park-new-zone-created-to-relieve.html" target="_blank">a front page story on November 23</a> quoting Police Commissioner Grover Whalen, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1929/11/27/archives/park-safety-is-aim-of-oneway-rules-no-intention-to-make-express.html" target="_blank">a November 27 story</a> quoting Deputy Police Commissioner Philip D. Hoyt.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-2ed3-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWgtXLzKYW-lmhc__4fQfuiBK1Bv1xBklp0p4PlzzAmsN4nuOM70r2q9wOlsLxuSVVpBSogk7Ms9rgdHW0Tj9C0qQJOWvdeeYNCKku5LzaVLMR5J3ZywwAHN7lVlPa6Ds-7ZIOZ1s3pk/s5500/west+drive+1892.png" width="550" data-original-width="746" data-original-height="587" /><br />
Photo: The West Drive, near 90th Street. Ewing Galloway, around 1892.</a></div><br />
Interestingly, the earlier story quoting Whalen doesn't mention safety at all, focusing entirely on the need to "relieve congestion" - without providing any specifics on how bad the congestion was. This must have gotten a reaction from the public, because in the November 27 story Hoyt made it clear there was "No Intention to Make Express Motor Highways of the Drives." Well, that's reassuring!<br />
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There's the usual assertion that "those who visit Central Park on foot will find it safer to cross the drives than in the past with two-way traffic," with no explanation of how this would improve safety. Hoyt then supplies the Times reporter with a series of truly horrific stats about car crashes in the park. There were <b>eight people killed</b> in the park during just the first ten months of 1929, and 249 people injured! <br />
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It's abundantly clear that the primary source of danger on the Central Park loop roads, in 1929 as in 2017, was people driving cars. It's not that people never die in the Park without a car present, but the danger is not from two-way traffic flow. In fact, the one-way rules probably encourage cyclists to speed, as they did with drivers.<br />
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People already use the drives safely in both directions on foot, bike and skate. Let's make it legal!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-2ee7-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2yq0DqbIm0IO_Vm4YCB7gbTksCvszT-CIA2vi9Y4CQDCR4vK-Y1Pe8SzYKUqenmH26sbQbVVSQ7PbWCQN-ISXkZvbwAoirWODG8eFWjWAxY26FZwiH79rUf3p9ecsKQ7k9DnZV9bKKr8/s320/columbus+circle.png" width="550" data-original-width="995" data-original-height="666" /></a><br />
Photo: Columbus Circle. Ewing Galloway, 1928.</div><br />
Oh yeah, and now that the cars are truly gone, let's reopen Columbus Circle to bicycles!Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-12049325148967322022018-07-15T22:48:00.000-04:002018-07-15T22:48:20.510-04:00A better express bus map<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJqfzdQmvzSJ8gM-9OPh6fZLGQnL5rLQQj1qDSCHspoVDsB4kG-w9oJnCaS0dKBXXMJMKX40iDyEKpUaHn7zcR2uKi-kI8zHJne6VU9a4mgH-8opCOPFMLZ-UOMDcpODz-LgMmfbcd14/s1600/express+bus+sunday+full1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJqfzdQmvzSJ8gM-9OPh6fZLGQnL5rLQQj1qDSCHspoVDsB4kG-w9oJnCaS0dKBXXMJMKX40iDyEKpUaHn7zcR2uKi-kI8zHJne6VU9a4mgH-8opCOPFMLZ-UOMDcpODz-LgMmfbcd14/s1600/express+bus+sunday+full1.png" data-original-width="570" data-original-height="752" /></a></div><br />
Express buses are easy in New York City. Just walk over to your express bus stop at the usual time and wait. Eventually the bus will arrive, you get on board, pay, find a seat and relax. When you're getting close to your stop, push the button, the bus stops, and you walk to work. Now they even have BusTime and MetroCard!<br />
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Express buses are easy if you're a regular passenger, that is. If you're not, how do you know which bus to take? You look at the complicated bus map for your borough, not posted in any subway station or bus shelter. Except if your borough is Manhattan. All the express buses are designed for trips to and from Manhattan, but the MTA doesn't show any express buses on the Manhattan bus map.<br />
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So you look at the bus map for the borough that's not Manhattan in your trip and figure out which bus is passing closest to the stop in that borough. Find the schedule for that bus. It may be posted on the stop, it may not, but the schedule is critical.<br />
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The schedule has tables telling you whether there is a bus scheduled to leave when you want to leave, and when it is scheduled to arrive in Manhattan. Everything besides the original departure time is approximate, and the buses almost always get stuck in traffic, so be prepared to board up to half an hour late depending on how close you are to the origin, and to get to your destination up to an hour late. Be sure to check BusTime so you know whether the bus is even coming.<br />
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The schedule does tell you where the buses stop in Manhattan. There used to be buses with suffixes after the route number (or not) indicating whether they stopped on Third Avenue or Downtown instead of Sixth Avenue, or maybe other routings, but the MTA has been gradually reorganizing them into separate numbers.<br />
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One key bit of information that's in the schedules but not the borough bus maps is where the buses stop and where they go express. It may seem obvious because most of the buses go on expressways, but some of them stop on the service roads of those expressways, and some don't. A few stop on Queens Boulevard or Woodhaven Boulevard, but most don't.<br />
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As you're probably saying to yourself right now, it doesn't have to be this way. Do the express buses really need to be on the same map as the local buses? Probably not. Is there a way to indicate on the map where the buses go in Manhattan? Probably. Is there a way to indicate on the map where the buses go express? Yeah.<br />
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The biggest thing that would make these maps easier to read is not showing extra information. Outside of Staten Island, where a bus network redesign is being implemented this summer, there are fifty express bus routes in the city. Almost half of them run only on rush hours, in the peak direction. Only sixteen of them run seven days a week. So if you're looking for an express bus on a Sunday you don't need to see the QM44, the X63 and the BM5. The resulting map is much cleaner.<br />
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That said, as I've written before, it's crazy not to offer Sunday service everywhere. When the Department of Transportation first started subsidizing private companies like Green Lines, they should have made funding contingent on seven day service. When the MTA took over their operations it should have immediately instituted Sunday service wherever there was Saturday service. Running buses on Saturdays and not Sundays is religious discrimination, and it has no place in New York City.<br />
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I'll have more to say about this map in the future.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-42071746384778871192018-06-22T23:14:00.002-04:002018-06-22T23:27:24.008-04:00What's the real story behind those photos of abandoned dockless bikeshare bikes?<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3s8hHZ4GqMlngqfYc56hYKAfLeGJH-0dQuplsiON7mFd963fQQJDpsYCaHimuAytIm6Xf5Rt1BVKLmcl30IS5hlRfnQub7ac0CV53kUwNMhCfmkYkBIxSnhBkCNLaZd4c5ogcz_H8FuQ/s1600/dockless+bikes.png" style="display:none;" /><br />
At this point you've probably seen at least one, maybe several: pictures of "abandoned" or "discarded" dockless bikeshare bikes in China. I'm talking about the ones with hundreds, if not thousands, of bikes in the same picture. They're either very tightly stacked side by side, or more frequently jumbled on top of each other in a humongous heap, in a field or an empty lot. There's usually at least two different colors of bikes, representing different bikeshare companies.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3s8hHZ4GqMlngqfYc56hYKAfLeGJH-0dQuplsiON7mFd963fQQJDpsYCaHimuAytIm6Xf5Rt1BVKLmcl30IS5hlRfnQub7ac0CV53kUwNMhCfmkYkBIxSnhBkCNLaZd4c5ogcz_H8FuQ/s1600/dockless+bikes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3s8hHZ4GqMlngqfYc56hYKAfLeGJH-0dQuplsiON7mFd963fQQJDpsYCaHimuAytIm6Xf5Rt1BVKLmcl30IS5hlRfnQub7ac0CV53kUwNMhCfmkYkBIxSnhBkCNLaZd4c5ogcz_H8FuQ/s1600/dockless+bikes.png" data-original-width="355" data-original-height="386" /></a></div><br />
There's almost never any explanation beyond a short caption. When I read "abandoned" I had this vision of some guy riding along on a bikeshare bike. All of a sudden the bike has a flat next to a field, so he casually tosses the bike into the field and walks on. A little while later a woman comes along. She gets tired of riding and stops next to the field, and sees the previous bike lying there. She tosses her bike on top of that one and walks away. Then some ill-behaved youths come running up carrying a bike that they found on a sidewalk, and throw it on top of that. It becomes the thing to do in this obscure Chinese city (Fuzhou? Chongqing? Qingdao?). For some reason, the bike companies have no interest in recuperating these hundreds of bikes, which have cost them tens of thousands of dollars. The bikes sit in the field and rust.<br />
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These photos are designed to scare, and they have been effective. Since they've appeared I have read several tweets, blog posts and articles where various people express their fear of "what happened in China." Ofo comes to town and next thing you know the hayfield behind the old Lowe's is full of bikes and there's nowhere to go smoke a joint. Those arrogant tech companies. We can't let that happen here!<br />
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You know what I haven't read? An explanation of how the bikes actually got in the field. Because the story I told is completely implausible. Yeah, I've heard about how wacky! and exotic! those Chinese people are. Then I got to know some, and it turns out they're just people. Sure, they'll do things in large numbers for money (like moving to cities) or social interaction (like the annual Lunar New Year travels) - just like Americans. They don't just do random stuff like throw bikes by the hundreds in some field.<br />
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What is the real story of what happened to those bikes in China? I'd be interested to know, but for now here's my guess: those bikes were thrown in that field - or stacked in that lot - by some organized group of people, led by a particular person or a small group. And the most likely organized group is the government. I strongly suspect that in every one of those pictures, the bikes were put there by government employees, on orders from some petty bureaucrat. Why? Maaaybe because they were broken. Maybe because the company had no permit to operate in that area. Maybe because that bureaucrat hates bikes. Maybe that bureaucrat is just an asshole.<br />
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When I think about it that way, it's no longer a story about arrogant tech companies or unsustainable bike share. It's not even about Those Wacky Chinese. It's about arrogant bureaucrats, supported by reactionary old people who drive, intent on maintaining control and preserving the hierarchy that puts them on top. And they're all boosted and broadcast by reactionary media people who love to get a rise out of us with scary photos.<br />
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That's a story as old as time, and it should scare us all that it's happening with bikeshare.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-55212384316220962322018-04-15T14:05:00.000-04:002018-04-15T14:23:22.201-04:00Transmillennial NYC?A while back I was arguing with someone about "Bus Rapid Transit," and they suggested that New York should emulate the system used in Bogotá. I was skeptical; I've read about the Transmilenio and <a href="http://www.streetfilms.org/bus-rapid-transit-bogota/" target="_blank">seen the Streetfilm</a>, It didn't seem a good fit, but I felt like I didn't know enough.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TransMilenio_-_Buses_en_la_Avenida_Caracas.jpg" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGFaR7nCozAQ0KVl5k3zG9N6wn0HhQ3qj02VZU1cdpQ8h4ZPBJukYxYtXguvYKaU-M2ZEhnhn_89fMkusyCmQIEqCOICAuISeSjNAnnWdjZdnsXPJe-ZBFfoJJtZoXeE_9WrBD6SS-WYI/s550/TransMilenio_-_Buses_en_la_Avenida_Caracas.jpg" width="549" height="309" data-original-width="549" data-original-height="309" /><br />
The Avenida Caracas is 120 feet wide. Photo: Peter Angritt / Wikimedia.</a></div><br />
I haven't been to the Colombian capital, but I've now looked at the network in more detail, and its applicability to New York area is extremely limited. Implementing anything resembling a Transmilenio corridor without converting general driving lanes to busways would require taking large amounts of land that is currently used for housing, retail or industry. I just don't see that happening on, say, Northern Boulevard or Church Avenue, and I don't want to see it happen.<br />
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The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TransMilenio_Bogota_Map.png" target="_blank">twelve Transmilenio corridors</a> (not including the Carrera 7 stub) range from four to eight miles long, and are either at-grade or depressed, rarely elevated. They are all anchored by either the downtown or by a connection to another Transmilenio corridor. They fall into three types, as follows:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bogot%C3%A1_Calle_13_con_carrera_5_Eje_Ambiental_barrio_La_Catedral_de_La_Candelaria.JPG" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGxs7Jl3fjKxxDW9C_XWyd9TSKNCLFJ05D6Rsk_LvPXe7zMoi0yxcApSKDuRWl2QIpdakUrzZB0i-refOaOJiaQBhHQB7m4uyOIBlMNwELiUEtce27q2QTeBN5uiVpaggaCjLHdIJ4HWk/s550/Bogot%25C3%25A1_Calle_13_con_carrera_5_Eje_Ambiental_barrio_La_Catedral_de_La_Candelaria.JPG" width="550" height="413" data-original-width="550" data-original-height="413" /><br />
Photo: Felipe Restrepo Acosta / Wikimedia.</a></div><br />
There is one corridor, the Eje Ambiental, that is roughly sixty feet wide. It could be emulated on any street of that width, like Fulton Street or Bergenline Avenue. I'm not going to consider those here, because they're everywhere.<br />
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Four corridors have sidewalks and at-grade crossings, like the Avenida de Caracas (see above); I call them Arterials. They have four to six lanes of car traffic and sometimes a bike path, and range from 120 to 150 feet wide.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Calle_85_(estaci%C3%B3n)_Transmilenio.JPG" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDPNvA0BtunpNhgK3Hleq6OWP2c4Dyz7Kh46GGd71IkBDBOGaIN472hSdUarNIJ8f6Z8zKTXtcA-btrqtWEaILtenqbPtQXznwEOsbKRLaq8HqMHfaXF8R9w6p1KMLgKJnQlMVMW1mxow/s550/Calle_85_%2528estaci%25C3%25B3n%2529_Transmilenio.JPG" width="550" height="413" data-original-width="550" data-original-height="413" /><br />
The Autopista Norte is about 350 feet wide here. Photo: Felipe Restrepo Acosta / Wikimedia.</a></div><br />
The other seven corridors have grade-separated crossings, and at least some of the car lanes are limited access, like the Calle 26; I call these Highway corridors. The corridors can be up to 450 feet wide and include six to twelve car lanes and sometimes a bike path or even two. There are planted medians and sometimes even parks in the medians.<br />
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With this in mind, here are the basic criteria for Transmilenio-style corridors:<ol><li>At least 120 feet wide, so no Route 17 corridor in Bergen County</li>
<li>At least four moving car lanes after the busway is installed, so no Grant Highway corridor in the Bronx</li>
<li>At least four miles long, so no Whitestone Expressway corridor in Queens</li>
<li>At or below grade, not primarily elevated, so no Bruckner Expressway corridor in the Bronx</li>
<li>At least one good anchor, so no Route 18 corridor in Monmouth County</li>
</ol>I will add the following for this exploration of New York, in keeping with our principles (see above):<ol start="6"><li><b>No parallel trains</b>. Some trains are overcrowded, but for this let's focus on corridors with no rapid transit service at all, so no Seventh Avenue corridor.</li>
<li><b>No adding lanes</b>. If a corridor has functioning, accessible parkland, let's leave it, so no Mosholu Parkway corridor.</li>
<li><b>At least 140 feet wide</b> if the avenue already allows curbside parking. On-street parking beats off-street parking, and it's really hard to get the city to install bollards, so no 164th Street corridor.</li>
</ol>I am not making any attempt to forecast demand in this post, aside from restricting my exploration to New York City and the counties closest to it. If you do try to think about demand, keep in mind that demand is not static, and it responds to the availability of alternatives.<br />
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One thing that surprised me looking at the Transmilenio system was how many of the lines (seven out of twelve) are the "highway" type, with separated local and express carriageways and any retail or housing set back from the sidewalks (almost all of them have sidewalks, which is a lot more civilized than most of our highways here). But when people (like the person I was arguing with) talk about adopting Transmilenio designs in New York, they're almost always talking about arterial corridors within the city limits, so that's what I'm going to focus on for this post.<br />
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So, are you ready? Here they are, all five of them!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PnQPqFoAG5qmxNfl2MnaUEAOMZtHRZM8l7ZOr1jSNq98_3Q2hFQawMoYhVZPhlF6nE3gDVbtgSeZQMbzKOlRl2Bybawjphre-2s-C6b5U4avkJGaxMgMANr9KQWC4kD746_41S5vBpU/s1600/nyc+open+street+map+201803.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7PnQPqFoAG5qmxNfl2MnaUEAOMZtHRZM8l7ZOr1jSNq98_3Q2hFQawMoYhVZPhlF6nE3gDVbtgSeZQMbzKOlRl2Bybawjphre-2s-C6b5U4avkJGaxMgMANr9KQWC4kD746_41S5vBpU/s550/nyc+open+street+map+201803.png" width="550" data-original-width="806" data-original-height="792" /></a></div><br />
The thing about arterial corridors in New York City is that we don't actually have very many that fit the Transmilenio model. We have a lot of big, wide avenues that feel dangerous, but when we actually measure them it turns out most of them are only <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-safe-is-your-hundred-foot-avenue.html">a hundred feet wide</a>, like Church Avenue in Brooklyn or Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. Even Astoria Boulevard in East Elmhurst is only 120 feet.<br />
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The remaining Arterial corridors do not form a coherent network at all in the five boroughs. They don't even extend the subway network, because stroads like Kings Highway and Linden Boulevard only widen to Transmilenio widths half a mile or more from the subway. The best you can say is that some of them would provide new routes parallel to crowded lines, like West Street.<br />
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The most promising corridor is Woodhaven Boulevard. The City has finally succeeded in upgrading it to Select Bus service, but they never proposed Transmilenio-style high island platforms. They tried to get separated center lanes, but after a long, hard fight with motorists and bean counters they settled for converting some of the inner express roadway to dedicated lanes with median boarding.<br />
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Woodhaven is also paralleled by the dormant Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Railroad, which would have much more capacity and be somewhat better located. If the Rockaway Branch is ever reactivated, a Transmilenio-style busway <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2013/06/buses-and-trains-in-woodhaven.html">would just add capacity</a> to that, the way an Ocean Parkway busway would add capacity to the F and G trains a few blocks away on McDonald Avenue. Not a bad idea, but not the transformative change promised by some people.<br />
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Does that mean there's no application for Transmilenio-style busways in New York? Not quite; things actually look a lot more promising in the suburbs. Stay tuned for that!Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-58324903612644236362018-04-03T00:46:00.000-04:002018-04-03T08:05:02.460-04:00Who's your Suburb Buddy?Adam Hengels had <a href="http://marketurbanism.com/2015/01/28/2-ways-fight-gentrification/" target="_blank">a good post</a> about fighting rising rents back in 2015. He points out that while "gentrification" battles are almost always fought on the neighborhood level, the problem is actually regional:<br />
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<blockquote>The battlefield is not in the gentrifying neighborhoods. It is in the more wealthy neighborhoods where empowered residents fight to keep new people out.</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_seligman_cardiff/34225072346/" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo6b3IiFFk-G2q8FzNP46OtrkOyMy4u10YFl6KEIV4B9gB23jT1zoaAobIuEWGUCASN-3hxhJMi5I9qNtIFp38NDUTLbURMwuhy5-o4iwN_vLYYK3x2DJanjRZXaAXWdhbFbyaICS6k6Q/s550/34225072346_ab0e690a40_z.jpg" width="550" height="181" data-original-width="640" data-original-height="362" /><br />
Hewlett Bay Park. Photo: Paul Seligman / Flickr.</a></div><br />
There are tons of pretty suburban towns, and even small cities, that could be cozy, hip, dense alternatives to Manhattan or Brooklyn, but they've got zoning that keeps apartment buildings out and stifles nightlife, giant parking lots surrounding the commuter rail stations, infrequent train service and parking requirements that drive foot traffic away. If they got their act together, a lot of people would be moving there instead of here.<br />
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Here's an example: I live in Woodside, Queens. Per capita $24,399, population density 44,500 per square mile. We've got a decent commute to Manhattan (30 minutes to Grand Central), and a nice mix of shops and restaurants (a Walk Score of 94). I'd be happy to have more people here, but if they went someplace else that'd be okay too.<br />
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If I walk down to the Long Island Railroad station, I can get a train to Hewlett and take a short walk to the village of Hewlett Bay Park, which Wikipedia lists as the wealthiest per capita place (city, town, village) in the New York metro area at $113,320. Hewlett Bay Park has a population density of just 1,382 people per square mile, and a Walk Score of 42. It's an hour and thirteen minutes to Grand Central: a beautiful walk to the LIRR Far Rockaway Branch station, then change at Penn for the 3 train to the Shuttle.<br />
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The population of Hewlett Bay Park is estimated at 437 people, which is about a third the population of my co-op. <a href="https://ecode360.com/13657262" target="_blank">Their zoning requires</a> that every building be built on a minimum lot size of one acre, which is about a third the size of the lot my co-op is on. If the whole village were the same density as Woodside, it could hold about 17,800 people. Think how rents would go down across the metro area!<br />
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Last year <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2017/10/local-knowledge-global-bullshit.html">we had a huge fight</a> over a ten story building that would have added about 200 units to the neighborhood. That building would have fit on a single one of Hewlett Bay Park's 256 acres. Or if Hewlett Bay Park allowed townhouses near the train station, those 200 units could be spread across ten or twenty acres. My neighbors and I couldn't agree on whether we wanted it here, but I'll bet none of them would have been energetically opposed to putting it in Hewlett Bay Park.<br />
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Of course it's unfair to put all the burden on Hewlett Bay Park for accommodating the million or so people who want to live in New York. Right next door is Hewlett Neck, per capita income $88,049, population density 766.2 per square mile. There are a bunch of other wealthy villages and towns that are keeping people out with exclusionary zoning.<br />
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So why, even since Adam's post appeared three years ago, do people keep fighting at the neighborhood level? I think there are two reasons: first, the spatial segregation strategy of moving to the suburbs does effectively put a lot of distance between the wealthy and the crowds, not just in terms of raw travel time, or even in terms of social networks, but in terms of migration pressure. My wife and I did look at apartments in Scarsdale, but we're the exception in our class and income bracket. Most of the people moving into our neighborhood have been priced out of Inwood or Ridgewood. The people moving into Ridgewood got priced out of Williamsburg. The people moving into Williamsburg got priced out of Greenwich Village. The people in the Village got priced out of the Upper East Side, and the people there got priced out of Scarsdale. So even if we yell at the people in Ridgewood and Williamsburg it's not going to help much. <br />
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The second reason people don't fight Scarsdale is fragmentation. There are lots of wealthy, exclusive suburbs that are keeping people out who then chain-bid my mom's rent up. Why blame Scarsdale for my troubles and not Bronxville? How do I pick one?<br />
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It might be possible to do some kind of multilayered market research and find out exactly which set of racist NIMBYs to blame for the migration into your neighborhood, but that's probably not worth the trouble. We can do this quasi-randomly, keeping to a set of basic principles:<br />
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<ol><li>It should have a <b>good transit commute</b>. I do not want to take decent car-free Manhattanites and ship them out to Yorktown Heights where they'll all buy Volvos. There are in fact many New York suburbs where you can walk to shopping, walk to the train, walk to everything. If you can't walk to shopping, we'll have to zone for shopping when we zone for apartments.</li>
<li>This should be a place that can <b>sustainably</b> absorb lots more people. That means probably not low-lying areas like Deal or Centre Island. Hewlett Bay Park is on the bay, but it's mostly out of the flood zone and didn't do too bad during Sandy.</li>
<li>Everybody pile on the <b>favored quarter</b>. New York has some suburbs that are not wealthy. Some of them are already changing, like Newark and Rutherford. Others are too poor to be attractive to people who already live in Brooklyn Heights, like Freeport. Let's focus on the top of the food chain.</li>
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With that in mind, here are the ten places in the New York area with the highest per capita income where Google Maps gives a transit commute time to Grand Central, with their densities and their walk scores. Next time your local NIMBYs come out in force against a building, pick a town from this list. I've already claimed Hewlett Bay Park for the people of Woodside, so spread things out by picking a different town. If you've already heard someone else using a town, pick a different one. If they're all taken, pull up the next twenty. Make a bunch of buttons saying WHY ISN'T THIS BEING BUILT IN DARIEN? and hand them out. Let's see what happens!<br />
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<table class="table"><thead>
<tr><th>Place</th><th>State</th><th>County</th><th>Per capita income</th><th>Density</th><th>Walk Score</th><th>Transit line</th><th>Transit commute to Grand Central</th></tr>
</thead> <tbody>
<tr><td>Hewlett Bay Park</td><td>NY</td><td>Nassau</td><td>$113,320</td><td>1,382</td><td>42</td><td>Far Rockaway</td><td>1:13</td></tr>
<tr><td>New Canaan</td><td>CT</td><td>Fairfield</td><td>$105,846</td><td>322.7</td><td>86</td><td>New Canaan</td><td>1:09</td></tr>
<tr><td>Darien</td><td>CT</td><td>Fairfield</td><td>$105,846</td><td>203.9</td><td>27</td><td>New Haven</td><td>0:59</td></tr>
<tr><td>North Hills</td><td>NY</td><td>Nassau</td><td>$100,093</td><td>1,543</td><td>27</td><td>Port Washington</td><td>1:01</td></tr>
<tr><td>Westport</td><td>CT</td><td>Fairfield</td><td>$97,395</td><td>503</td><td>23</td><td>New Haven</td><td>1:08</td></tr>
<tr><td>Sands Point</td><td>NY</td><td>Nassau</td><td>$95,647</td><td>222.4</td><td>23</td><td>Port Washington</td><td>1:26</td></tr>
<tr><td>Plandome</td><td>NY</td><td>Nassau</td><td>$95,102</td><td>857.6</td><td>15</td><td>Port Washington</td><td>0:58</td></tr>
<tr><td>Matinecock</td><td>NY</td><td>Nassau</td><td>$93,559</td><td>118.1</td><td>5</td><td>Oyster Bay</td><td>1:25</td></tr>
<tr><td>Greenwich</td><td>CT</td><td>Fairfield</td><td>$90,087</td><td>1,278</td><td>94</td><td>New Haven</td><td>0:44</td></tr>
<tr><td>Scarsdale</td><td>NY</td><td>Westchester</td><td>$89,907</td><td>873.2</td><td>36</td><td>Harlem</td><td>0:32</td></tr>
</tbody> </table>Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-898792698851303162018-01-28T20:36:00.000-05:002018-01-28T20:36:02.205-05:00Stroller bloat on the subwaysIf you follow transportation politics you’ve heard of induced demand, a principle that activists have been invoking for decades to oppose road widening: Adding more capacity without market pricing simply invites more people to use a valuable resource. We see induced demand in roads and parking, as well as oil.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBF9lQfo2JnFklmMcOIEVllZDnwPW2p3b-mfyiDVEDOmByXHzCg7DkiqeaPQjPGx_rXKFRDz9LntDuPwBKfz0OwbQ9CTVYLtitgyqwN7MYrtDfoPpNE6lOVT6-p6XHJVKEX7gxODCRsY/s1600/acd8b5db-2965-40ac-9e4a-bf02a18b3c24_3.b930d788d782497dc53478778caf5f66.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifBF9lQfo2JnFklmMcOIEVllZDnwPW2p3b-mfyiDVEDOmByXHzCg7DkiqeaPQjPGx_rXKFRDz9LntDuPwBKfz0OwbQ9CTVYLtitgyqwN7MYrtDfoPpNE6lOVT6-p6XHJVKEX7gxODCRsY/s1600/acd8b5db-2965-40ac-9e4a-bf02a18b3c24_3.b930d788d782497dc53478778caf5f66.jpeg" data-original-width="450" data-original-height="450" /></a></div><br />
People have invoked induced demand in opposition to things that are much less destructive than driving. Transit managers have removed benches, lockers and trash cans from stations in the belief that this will reduce the demand for sitting, storing things and eating.<br />
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So what’s the difference between good induced demand and bad? It’s all about what it is that’s in demand. What are its real costs and benefits? Do the benefits justify the costs in the long term, and how long is long term? Can we handle the demand in the short term, and what happens if we can’t?<br />
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In terms of trash cans, given the staggering amount of money the MTA wastes on other things it wouldn’t be a huge expense for them to buy enough trash cans so that there’s one within twenty steps in all their stations, and to hire enough people to keep them from filling up and keep the platforms and tracks clean. The same is true for lockers and benches Somebody decided that the benefit wasn’t worth the cost, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that person drove to work and never found themselves on a subway platform holding an empty sandwich wrapper, or waiting for a train with tired feet.<br />
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In terms of roads and parking, we know that it costs an obscene amount of money to build a single structured parking space. Elevated roads and tunnels are similarly exorbitant. At-grade roads and parking are cheaper, but still cost a lot. They also encourage driving, with its pollution and carnage and waste of energy. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost.<br />
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I brought all this up to give you an idea of what goes through my mind when I hear people talking about how accommodations for disabled people help everyone. The usual example people give is how curb cuts for wheelchairs make life easier for parents with strollers. Sometimes people go on to talk about how elevators also help people to use strollers. And that’s where I start giving these people the side-eye.<br />
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I’m very much in favor of making our buses and trains wheelchair-accessible. I know several people with mobility impairments, including my own parents, I’ve talked with people who use wheelchairs and crutches about the difficulties of navigating the subway, and I’ve been temporarily disabled in the past. If we induce more demand for travel by people in wheelchairs and those with canes and walkers, I’m all for that, because up to now they’ve been forced to rely on Access-a-Ride, which is slow and inefficient, and limits their participation in society.<br />
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I have no objections if we build elevators for people in wheelchairs, and they happen to be useful for people with strollers, or even with “granny carts” for shopping. There is an added cost, though: the elevators are designed with a particular capacity of disabled users in mind, and induced demand from stroller and shopping cart users means kore crowds and longer waits. More demand also means more wear and tear on the machinery, more frequent outages (especially if the MTA doesn’t adjust its maintenance budget), and more money for repairs.<br />
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It doesn’t stop just at elevators making life easier for people with strollers, though. It starts getting presented as a moral obligation for us to fund elevators for parents. And since most parents who travel with their kids are women, it gets presented as an anti-sexist obligation to fund elevators. Then you get petitions for the MTA to allow parents to take strollers on buses without folding them. And that’s when I get pissed.<br />
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Last year I was on a bus in Great Britain, where people are allowed to bring strollers on buses. The bus filled up and people were having difficulty finding places to stand, because all the floor space was taken by strollers. The women traveling with the strollers made no move to take the kids out and fold them, so everyone else had to squeeze around them, including one woman who delayed the bus because she was not expecting to have to fold her own stroller.<br />
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It’s one thing to bring an unfolded stroller on an empty bus in Lebanon, New Hampshire. It’s a very different thing to bring one on a crowded bus or subway in New York City. We don’t have the capacity for it, so insisting on that space is taking away capacity from everyone else, including parents who carry their kids and fold their strollers. If you think there’s a significant value to society in giving that public space to unfolded strollers, get off your high horse and let’s talk about why it’s valuable and how we’re going to pay for it.<br />
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The weirdest thing about this debate is that it's not like people don't take small children on subways and buses. They do, and they always have. It’s not always easy, but traveling with kids by car isn’t always easy either. So why are people talking about taking kids in elevators now? I think it's the size of strollers.<br />
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When my wife was pregnant we went shopping for a stroller. The “normal” strollers were all large, heavy and difficult to fold. They were also fantastically expensive, with models costing hundreds of dollars. We settled for a “city” model that cost under a hundred and was lighter weight and could be folded with one hand, but it was still pretty heavy and bulky. I think we took it on the train maybe three or four times, and yes, it was a pain in the ass.<br />
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We wound up using a sling and a Baby Bjorn to carry the kid for the first year or so. Once he was old enough to hold his own head up we got an umbrella stroller for twelve dollars at Toys R Us. It made a huge difference. Either one of us could push it to the subway stairs, unbuckle the kid, pick him up with one hand, fold the stroller with the other hand, pick that up and head into the subway. With a little practice we could get it done in two seconds. Once we were on the subway (or bus) the stroller slid neatly under the seat.<br />
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Even when it was unfolded the umbrella stroller took up relatively little floor space and sidewalk width. It was light enough that either of us could pick the kid up in it and carry them for short distances. It wore out within a year, but I just went back and got another one. By the time we were ready for a third stroller, the kid was ready to walk.<br />
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I can understand why people hesitate to fold “city” strollers and drag them up stairs, and I sure as hell understand why nobody wants to carry a full size Graco anywhere, with or without a kid in the other arm. What I don’t quite understand is why people don’t use umbrella strollers.<br />
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I mean, people do use umbrella strollers. I just saw one a few minutes ago. What I don’t understand is why so many people assume that you only need one stroller, and the standard suburban models are fine for the city. Why aren’t there periodic articles in Queens Parent and Time Out Kids about the Best Subway Strollers? Why don’t people get schooled in umbrella strollers in the cafés of Park Slope and Sunnyside the way they get schooled in bike seats and breast pumps? When someone complains about being asked to fold their stroller on the subway, why isn’t the first response simply, “Have you tried an umbrella stroller?”<br />
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I can think of three reasons. Time Out isn’t running any stories about umbrella strollers because they’re cheap and they’ve been around for years. They’re not writing any stories about plain old bibs and sippy cups either. For similar reasons, umbrella strollers are no good for yuppie prosperity signaling, and because they’re complex aluminum structures they aren’t good for hipster artisanal credit.<br />
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The main reason people avoid umbrella strollers is that they can’t hold anything but the kid. Modern strollers have huge compartments that can hold diaper bags, breast pumps and groceries, plus cup holders, bag hooks and even running boards for older kids to stand on. Even the “city” models have at least one basket. When people have one they fill those compartments with everything they might possibly need, which can weigh as much as the stroller, or even a toddler.<br />
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This is exactly like “sport-utility vehicles ” which get filled up with all kinds of stuff that the passengers never use, but the driver carries around just in case. Or the large house with rooms full of belongings that the inhabitants haven’t touched in years. And the reason is the same: induced demand. When land and buildings are cheap, people hold on to their stuff. When gas, roads and parking are cheap, people shove their stuff in the SUV and use the gas, roads and parking to cart it all over town. And when train, bus, sidewalk, stair and elevator space is cheap, people shove their stuff in giant strollers and push it all over town.<br />
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I wouldn’t have a problem with this if the space really were cheap, but buses and elevators are expensive. I would even be willing to subsidize bus and elevator space for unfolded strollers if we had a real discussion and concluded that this subsidy would bring a real benefit to society. I think there’s a real case for it for groups with more small children than adults, or where the caregiver has a disability that makes it hard for them to carry a child, an umbrella stroller and a diaper bag.<br />
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Unfortunately, that is not the discussion we’re having. The discussion we are having is polluted by induced demand, by the assumptions that all small children are carried in giant, unfoldable strollers by physically and politically weak women who are incapable of selfishness, bad judgment, ignorance or any other failings. Can we change that, please?Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-84157245416750938542017-11-17T23:18:00.000-05:002017-11-17T23:32:02.989-05:00The problem with offset bus lanesIn recent posts I’ve talked about <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2017/05/better-transit-on-hundred-foot-avenues.html">how transit needs dedicated lanes</a>, and how on a hundred foot avenue you don’t want to <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-challenge-of-curbside-transit-lanes.html">take a lane away from parking</a>. The Department of Transportation seems to have figured this out, but there are serious problems with the approach they’ve been taking lately: offset lanes.<br />
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Last winter, Joby Jacob and I took the B46 Select Bus Service down Utica Avenue. I was struck by how slowly the bus moved, even in the sections that supposedly had dedicated bus lanes. It was pretty clear why: on many blocks there was a car or truck in the bus lane, sometimes more than one.<br />
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Sometimes all the curbside parking spaces were taken by parked cars, and the blocking car was double parked. It takes some spectacular chutzpah to think that your personal need to pick up an egg sandwich is pressing enough to keep a hundred people waiting. But as Donald Shoup has shown us, the underlying problem is that the City doesn’t price parking properly. If it cost more to park on these blocks people would park elsewhere, or for shorter periods of time, or even take transit. That would free up space for these short-term stops.<br />
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Sometimes there is space at the curb, but the drivers don’t pull all the way in to the space. This is occasionally understandable if the space is narrow enough that it would take a lot of time to parallel park. A lot of the time, however, there is plenty of room to pull in to the curb. The only explanation I can see for this behavior is that the driver is trying to signal to the police that they understand they’ve pulled into a no-parking zone (bus stop, fire hydrant) and will be leaving as soon as possible. It’s still a hugely selfish move, because it forces an entire bus full of people to wait for a gap in the next lane over to go around.<br />
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It doesn’t help that the DOT has debased the value of red paint by using it for part-time bus lanes, letting people get in the habit of unloading trucks and parking cars in red lanes, teaching them that the paint doesn’t really mean “don’t put your private vehicle here!” And the NYPD doesn't seem to be all that effective in keeping the lanes free.<br />
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So if we can’t put the transit lane at the curb, and we can’t offset it one lane, what should we do? Stay tuned...Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-67541259373696833242017-10-21T23:16:00.000-04:002017-10-21T23:16:01.811-04:00Local knowledge, global bullshitIn my neighborhood, on a narrow block zoned M-1 next to the Long Island Railroad main line, is a parking lot. A few years ago, the owners of the building across the street put forward a plan: the City would rezone the block for residential, and they would build a ten-story apartment building. The City Council member for this district said he had concerns but wanted to hear more.<br />
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After a few contentious meetings, stories emerged in the news and on Facebook, and were eventually published in a change.org petition and a website: the rents would be sky-high, the new building would be massive and out of context, and it would dump hundreds of new riders on the already overcrowded elevated train and neighborhood schools. The street was not adequate to handle the traffic. The entire community was against it. Eventually the City Council member declared that he was against the project, and it was dropped.<br />
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Last week I heard someone on a podcast talking about the value of local knowledge in city planning, crediting Jane Jacobs for it. Certainly, Jacobs catalogs a number of clear cases where planners came into an area with little or no knowledge of it, and royally messed it up. She might have declared the defeat of this project to be a triumph of local knowledge.<br />
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The problem is that all the stories I listed above were false. The existing building is run by a nonprofit specifically dedicated to providing affordable housing, and their plans for the site specified that the vast majority of the rents would be below market. The existing building, built in 1931, is a superblock with 472 units. Less than a block away are two more complexes with over 400 units each. Two blocks away is a row of four twelve-story towers-in-a-parking lot on top of a hill. This building would fit in completely with the existing context.<br />
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The impacts on transit are similarly overstated. First of all, some people won’t be commuting to Manhattan anyway. They could be retired, or telecommuting, or working elsewhere. And unfortunately, some won’t be commuting by train. In 2008, Rachel Weinberger wrote a great report called “<a href="https://www.transalt.org/sites/default/files/news/reports/2008/Guaranteed_Parking.pdf" target="_blank">Guaranteed Parking, Guaranteed Driving</a>,” demonstrating that if you include parking with housing, people are much more likely to drive. The plans called for 220 units in the new building, and about as many parking spaces, which sounds dreadful. Based on Weinberger’s research we can predict that those 220 spaces would induce a lot of driving.<br />
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Of course some people will take the train no matter what happens, and that number will probably increase as more people realize that driving is a pain in the ass. So let’s imagine that these 220 apartments produce a really high number of transit commuters to Manhattan, say 330, or an average of 1.5 commuters per apartment, including two-bedrooms, one-bedrooms and studios. According to the MTA, on the average weekday in 2016 there were 6795 Metrocard swipes at the closest station, less than five percent of the daily total. Even if all 330 commuted to Manhattan between 7:30 and 8:30 AM, that would add an average of three people per 167-person subway car.<br />
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Schools were overcrowded ten years ago, no doubt. But the city has recently opened two new schools and two new additions to existing schools, and plans to continue building more. The claim that the street was inadequate for the traffic is similarly false. It handles all the cars and trucks for the existing lot, and the proposal includes plans to build the missing sidewalk on the south side of the street.<br />
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A common theme was that “the entire community” was against this project. I was not opposed. I was slightly in favor, despite the oversupply of parking, because I found all the reasons for opposition incredibly thin, and I figured it would modestly increase the housing supply and thus help to bring down rents. I never heard any enthusiastic support, but there were plenty of people who were not opposed. I occasionally disputed some of the more outrageous stories with my neighbors on Facebook, in a respectful and neighborly way, and they got very upset. Some of them unfriended me.<br />
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So basically, the rents were going to be relatively affordable. The building was not going to be particularly large or tall for the area. It wasn’t going to increase overcrowding on the subway to any noticeable degree, and the neighborhood was not united in opposition. All the "local knowledge" was completely false.<br />
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I was originally going to write a post about how local people lie, similar to <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2012/12/listening-skeptically-to-nimbys.html">one I wrote back in 2012</a>. I don’t think these neighbors of mine are lying, exactly. It’s more what’s been called “bullshit”: a propaganda soup mixed up without regard for truth. But I realized something else about this particular bullshit: it isn’t local.<br />
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There is one specific piece of local information: many tenants of the existing complex are not happy with the way the nonprofit has managed their buildings. Everything else is generic boilerplate about a “large real estate developer” looking to build a “massive apartment building.” These are the same things we read in stories from Morristown to Minneapolis.<br />
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My neighbors are almost certainly not in the pay of a large multinational corporation dedicated to opposing new housing construction. But they don’t just live in a local world. They read Jeremiah Moss and maybe Jane Jacobs too. They’ve seen at least half a dozen movies where the villain is a large real estate developer looking to build a massive apartment building. They’ve seen people protest new construction on TV, heard it on the radio and read about it in the <i>New York Times</i>. Many of them have friends in other neighborhoods and other cities who are engaged in similar struggles.<br />
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Some of them are afraid of <a href="https://capntransit.blogspot.com/2015/01/crossing-yards_11.html">the City's plans for Sunnyside Yards</a>, which do sound like the kind of crazy, destructive thing Robert Moses used to do. Never mind all the differences, never mind that they've quietly acquiesced to the much more wasteful and destructive Kosciuszko Bridge replacement; they see this 200+ unit apartment building as the thin end of the wedge<br />
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They need no coaching; they know the script. Out of context, massive traffic jams, casting shadows, destroying the character of the neighborhood. The transit angle is something you don’t get everywhere, but these days you hear it wherever there’s a train. The rest of it is just a re-enactment of the same story they’ve heard dozens of times, with them in the role of the Local Heroes who Band Together. That’s why they unfriended me: I was saying the wrong lines.<br />
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These residents appear to display local knowledge (“we have a parking shortage”) but it is fake local knowledge disconnected from local reality, a prop to brandish during their performance. Similarly, “the community” is a prop, a fake community with fake unity, standing in for the real communities that inhabit the neighborhood, barely aware of each other, each with its own corrupt decision-making process and its multitudes of alienated minorities.<br />
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This is actually the opposite of the often-repeated fable of the Wise Locals against the Clueless Planner. The planner might not live in the neighborhood (though some of my neighbors are planners), but with some careful observation they could come up with more reliable local knowledge than anything produced by the opponents of this project.<br />
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The real lesson to take from the failures of central planning is not the value of local knowledge, but the value of humility. And the lesson we should take from the failure of this project is that local residents can be just as bereft of humility as anyone else, with consequences that are just as dire in the aggregate as the consequences of Robert Moses's hubris.Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com0