In February Emma Fitzsimmons reported on a recent rise in crimes against women on the subways. On Wednesday, in a thoughtful guest post for Second Avenue Sagas, Sarah Kaufman summarized an important point in Fitzsimmons's article: "Women are also the predominant victims of subway-based crimes, specifically robbery, forcible touching (340 cases reported in 2015), public lewdness (223 cases) and sexual abuse (130 cases)."
Kaufman continues, "When possible, women prefer another, safer mode, rather than waiting in desolate subway stations or at dimly-lit bus stops. Depending on their economic well-being, women may opt for dollar vans, taxis, livery cabs, Citi Bikes, Lyfts, Vias or Ubers. Women outnumber men in the relatively inexpensive dollar vans (ridership is 63% female, according to Eric Goldwyn), but use taxis less frequently than men do (34% female) and are vastly underrepresented on the comparatively costly Citi Bike (24% of rides are taken by women)."
This may be increasing, but it is not particularly new. In 2013 Kimberly Matus talked about her experience being groped on the subway. In 2009 I remarked that many of the riders on express buses are women, particularly older women who are probably commuting to clerical or managerial jobs. Years ago a middle-aged female friend of mine said that she even preferred the local buses of Manhattan to the subway.
The connection that Kaufman draws between transit and Citibike is insightful. People have criticized the gender imbalance in urban cycling generally, and in particular in the "vehicular cycling" movement, which in its majestic equality, encourages men as well as women to mix with speeding traffic protected only by a light helmet. Citibike is a bit safer, being rolled out only after the installation of protected bike lanes on some Midtown avenues, but the numbers suggest that women feel much less safe.
As with vehicular cycling, there is a movement within transit advocacy that disdains all comfort, and quite a bit of safety, in pursuit of a sort of Spartan equality. They have no power to increase transit funding, but they insist on low fares, resulting in crowded, unreliable subways and buses. All conditions on transit must be completely equal; as the reactions to San Francisco's Leap bus showed, any difference in comfort or convenience is worse than offensive, it is ridiculous. And yet private cars, and the public infrastructure we built to serve them, can be as comfortable or convenient as possible because it is completely off the radar for this movement.
These transit advocates, in their majestic equality, encourage men as well as women to pack into subway cars with thieves and sexual predators, shout down any other options, and somehow seem puzzled when these women buy cars at the first opportunity. Hm.
Showing posts with label myopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label myopia. Show all posts
Friday, April 15, 2016
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Our stratified transportation system
A lot of people are nervous about the possibility that privately-run electronic taxi-hailing systems like Uber and Lyft could take over functions that have recently been filled by government-run transit services. Others are disturbed by the sight of privately-run companies like Leap and Bridj marketing local bus services as luxury products. I share some of these concerns, and I've addressed them in previous posts.
What I don't share is the idea that any of these services will create a "two tier" or "stratified" system with one service for the rich and one for the poor. There's a simple reason for this: we already have one.
If you go to a small city like, say, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, you'll see our stratified system in action: the people on the buses are mostly poor and nonwhite, and everyone else is driving. Ride the bus in a city like Kingston, New York, where the received wisdom is that "everyone drives because you need a car to get around," and you'll see that there are still people who don't drive: the extremely poor and the mentally and physically disabled. Here in New York the majority rides the subways, but there is a stratum that drives everywhere, and pretty much runs the city.
The bus and rail strata are largely run by the government and paid with tax money, but some of the money comes from fares paid by passengers. In the strata where people drive, passengers often contribute the labor of driving themselves, and pay a lot of money for the vehicles, fuel, insurance and other costs, and also contribute to the construction and maintenance of road, bridge and parking infrastructure through taxes. But as has been shown time and again, they do not pay the entire cost of the system; a much larger share of general tax revenue goes to driving than to transit.
This stratified system can be very cruel to those in the bottom strata, and it generally gets worse the smaller the share of the population that takes transit. The poorer the average transit user is, the slower, dirtier, more crowded, less frequent and less reliable the transit.
Even here in New York, the driving classes are constantly blocking improvements to transit, whether it's another commuter rail track, extension of an el train, allowing bus pickups or dedicating a bus lane. So yes, I know firsthand how bad it is to have a stratified system with minimal investment in the lowest strata. And I can't see how Uber, Lyft, Chariot and Bridj could possibly make things any worse.
In fact, I see it the opposite way: that people who take these taxi and premium bus services are less likely to identify as drivers and more likely to take transit and support transit expansion. If they don't have cars to park, they're much less likely to go crazy over reallocating street space from parking to transit.
As I've written before, I'm not a libertarian, and I'm not even much of a capitalist. One of my goals is access for all to jobs, housing, shopping and services. I would be open to a state solution, a government monopoly on transportation with a single level of service. But to impose a government monopoly on transportation would require drastic state action. Use your transit quota well, comrade! The government would most definitely be coming for your cars. Who would be first up against the wall - Rory Lancman?
In any case, I'm trying to think of an area where our government provides a monopoly with a single level of service, and coming up blank. Housing, food, energy, school - there is usually some government service, but it always has substantial competition from the private sector. Even services that are nominally single-tier like identification, permitting and licensing have inequalities. If you can afford to pay a rush fee or an expediter, or if you just live in a wealthier area, your interactions with the government will be quicker and smoother.
It's not just our government, either. The most revolutionary, egalitarian governments ever have failed pathetically at imposing transportation equality, when they've even tried it. Even the Soviet Union had its Ladas for the Party officials.
Sadly, these people who bleat about "stratification" don't even have the vision to realize the amount of stratification between cars and transit or the guts to mention it, much less address it. They would never think about taking away cars or parking, or defunding roads. They'd rather make a big show of opposing inequality that doesn't exist than address inequality that exists.
What I don't share is the idea that any of these services will create a "two tier" or "stratified" system with one service for the rich and one for the poor. There's a simple reason for this: we already have one.
If you go to a small city like, say, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, you'll see our stratified system in action: the people on the buses are mostly poor and nonwhite, and everyone else is driving. Ride the bus in a city like Kingston, New York, where the received wisdom is that "everyone drives because you need a car to get around," and you'll see that there are still people who don't drive: the extremely poor and the mentally and physically disabled. Here in New York the majority rides the subways, but there is a stratum that drives everywhere, and pretty much runs the city.
The bus and rail strata are largely run by the government and paid with tax money, but some of the money comes from fares paid by passengers. In the strata where people drive, passengers often contribute the labor of driving themselves, and pay a lot of money for the vehicles, fuel, insurance and other costs, and also contribute to the construction and maintenance of road, bridge and parking infrastructure through taxes. But as has been shown time and again, they do not pay the entire cost of the system; a much larger share of general tax revenue goes to driving than to transit.
This stratified system can be very cruel to those in the bottom strata, and it generally gets worse the smaller the share of the population that takes transit. The poorer the average transit user is, the slower, dirtier, more crowded, less frequent and less reliable the transit.
Even here in New York, the driving classes are constantly blocking improvements to transit, whether it's another commuter rail track, extension of an el train, allowing bus pickups or dedicating a bus lane. So yes, I know firsthand how bad it is to have a stratified system with minimal investment in the lowest strata. And I can't see how Uber, Lyft, Chariot and Bridj could possibly make things any worse.
In fact, I see it the opposite way: that people who take these taxi and premium bus services are less likely to identify as drivers and more likely to take transit and support transit expansion. If they don't have cars to park, they're much less likely to go crazy over reallocating street space from parking to transit.
As I've written before, I'm not a libertarian, and I'm not even much of a capitalist. One of my goals is access for all to jobs, housing, shopping and services. I would be open to a state solution, a government monopoly on transportation with a single level of service. But to impose a government monopoly on transportation would require drastic state action. Use your transit quota well, comrade! The government would most definitely be coming for your cars. Who would be first up against the wall - Rory Lancman?
In any case, I'm trying to think of an area where our government provides a monopoly with a single level of service, and coming up blank. Housing, food, energy, school - there is usually some government service, but it always has substantial competition from the private sector. Even services that are nominally single-tier like identification, permitting and licensing have inequalities. If you can afford to pay a rush fee or an expediter, or if you just live in a wealthier area, your interactions with the government will be quicker and smoother.
It's not just our government, either. The most revolutionary, egalitarian governments ever have failed pathetically at imposing transportation equality, when they've even tried it. Even the Soviet Union had its Ladas for the Party officials.
Sadly, these people who bleat about "stratification" don't even have the vision to realize the amount of stratification between cars and transit or the guts to mention it, much less address it. They would never think about taking away cars or parking, or defunding roads. They'd rather make a big show of opposing inequality that doesn't exist than address inequality that exists.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Transportation myopia of the week: 7- make that 6 ways transit can be financially sustainable
Alex Block has a summary of a discussion between David Levinson and Lisa Schweitzer on making transit sustainable from last June and July. I was quite dismayed to see three otherwise intelligent people wasting their brainpower on problems that were pretty much irrelevant. They were all three suffering from transportation myopia: the condition of seeing transit as a self-contained system rather than as an option in competition with private cars and other modes, and of seeing transit as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.
Levinson's initial piece did actually mention a couple of times that transit is competing with publicly subsidized roads and parking. In particular, he observes that, "An independent transit utility can raise fares, with the approval of a public utilities commission, so that average farebox recovery approaches and eventually exceeds 100 percent. This should be accompanied by full cost pricing for competing transportation modes — in other words, higher gas taxes or road fares."
Schweitzer devotes an entire blog post to every one of Levinson's seven "ways transit utilities could reverse the long decline the current governance model has provided" - except for Way #2, "raise fares," which I quoted above. I think this is actually an honest mistake on Schweitzer's part: she gave her commentary on Levinson's Way #1 a title beginning with "Part 2," so when she started "Part 3," she went on to Way #3. And yes, this can happen to self-described nerds, even ones with PhDs.
Unfortunately, in overlooking Way #2 Schweitzer skipped over one of the few really meaningful parts of Levinson's post. Here's the other main one:
Levinson himself acknowledges that transit was "hugely profitable" until competition from publicly funded roads and parking took away their ridership. And he acknowledges in his Way #2 that this could be reversed by charging the full cost for those roads and parking facilities. This is essentially the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership described by Michael Kemp back in 1973. And that's really all you need. No need for Way 1 or Ways 3 through 7.
What we need to talk about is how to get full cost pricing for roads, including potential challenges and ways to overcome them. But for some reason Levinson doesn't talk about any of that, he just goes on to talk about smart cards and land value capture and bond markets.
This is like reading an article about How to Keep Cool in Hot Situations that observes, "The causes for your house being on fire are many…" and goes on to list "seven ways burn victims could reverse the dramatic rise in heat-related discomfort." Way #2 is "put out the fire," and the rest are things like wearing an asbestos suit or putting a fan in front of a bowl of ice cubes. And then Dr. S writes a long post about the known dangers of asbestos suits, while forgetting to mention that you could just call the fire department except that the fire department is run by the arsonist's brother.
And this is the problem not just with Levinson and Schweitzer, but with other transportation experts like Jarrett Walker and Yonah Freemark when they talk about transit funding and profitability. Ultimately it's not a transportation problem at all, it's a political problem, and the transportation experts don't really have anything useful to say about it. But we insist that they say something so they come out with this kind of bullshit, which is not really wrong, it's just beside the point.
Levinson's initial piece did actually mention a couple of times that transit is competing with publicly subsidized roads and parking. In particular, he observes that, "An independent transit utility can raise fares, with the approval of a public utilities commission, so that average farebox recovery approaches and eventually exceeds 100 percent. This should be accompanied by full cost pricing for competing transportation modes — in other words, higher gas taxes or road fares."
Schweitzer devotes an entire blog post to every one of Levinson's seven "ways transit utilities could reverse the long decline the current governance model has provided" - except for Way #2, "raise fares," which I quoted above. I think this is actually an honest mistake on Schweitzer's part: she gave her commentary on Levinson's Way #1 a title beginning with "Part 2," so when she started "Part 3," she went on to Way #3. And yes, this can happen to self-described nerds, even ones with PhDs.
Unfortunately, in overlooking Way #2 Schweitzer skipped over one of the few really meaningful parts of Levinson's post. Here's the other main one:
From the mid-19th century through the mid-20th, transit was privately operated, usually running on public rights-of-way (which companies often were obligated to maintain), charging a government-regulated fare. This model was hugely profitable for decades, until it wasn't.
The causes for transit's decline are many, but rising incomes, suburbanization, and of course a much faster competitor in the automobile and highway system are among them. At that point, which ran from the 1930s to the 1960s depending on where you were in the United States, the private sector abandoned transit and the public sector took over.
Levinson himself acknowledges that transit was "hugely profitable" until competition from publicly funded roads and parking took away their ridership. And he acknowledges in his Way #2 that this could be reversed by charging the full cost for those roads and parking facilities. This is essentially the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership described by Michael Kemp back in 1973. And that's really all you need. No need for Way 1 or Ways 3 through 7.
What we need to talk about is how to get full cost pricing for roads, including potential challenges and ways to overcome them. But for some reason Levinson doesn't talk about any of that, he just goes on to talk about smart cards and land value capture and bond markets.
This is like reading an article about How to Keep Cool in Hot Situations that observes, "The causes for your house being on fire are many…" and goes on to list "seven ways burn victims could reverse the dramatic rise in heat-related discomfort." Way #2 is "put out the fire," and the rest are things like wearing an asbestos suit or putting a fan in front of a bowl of ice cubes. And then Dr. S writes a long post about the known dangers of asbestos suits, while forgetting to mention that you could just call the fire department except that the fire department is run by the arsonist's brother.
And this is the problem not just with Levinson and Schweitzer, but with other transportation experts like Jarrett Walker and Yonah Freemark when they talk about transit funding and profitability. Ultimately it's not a transportation problem at all, it's a political problem, and the transportation experts don't really have anything useful to say about it. But we insist that they say something so they come out with this kind of bullshit, which is not really wrong, it's just beside the point.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Cities with and without transit
I was not at the Congress for the New Urbanism last month, so I was unable to take part in the debate, "Can a city be successful without transit?" I understand it was all in fun, and I honestly can't say that I could have done much better than the debaters, with the amount of time available for preparation, but there was a problem with the historical perspective. Several of the debaters stipulated that for millennia there have been cities that have been successful, but that in the words of Andrew Burleson, "there was no transit before the 1890s". This last part is actually wrong, but there's a larger issue with transportation myopia.
First, there was indeed transit before the 1890s. Burleson and Edward Erfurt are probably thinking of the first trolleys, autobuses and underground railways, which were implemented around that time. But before then there were other ways of getting around. On the StrongTowns podcast page, Steve commented that waterways - rivers and canals - provided a transit function.
Beyond the waterways, there were horsecars. These were large, horse-drawn vehicles that ran on rails, and could carry twenty or more people at a time. These began to appear in the early nineteenth century. The London Underground ran on steam from 1863.
Mike Lydon was the only one who didn't suffer from persistent transportation myopia. Burleson said, "Imagine a European-scale city that had no transit, but also had no cars." Transit and cars - along with taxis, hansom cabs and personal horse-drawn carriages - are different ways of enabling long-distance commutes. Transit is a long-distance commuting option that is accessible to lower classes.
Cities did exist for millennia, but it's worth noting that until the nineteenth century, they were small enough that you could walk from any part of them to almost any other part within an hour. So as Erfurt observed, transit allowed cities to expand beyond that size, but so did personal vehicles. Ian Rasmussen pointed out that transit opened the city to all.
An interesting example that proves the rule is Versailles. By moving the court a long distance from Paris, Louis XIV essentially split the capital over a distance of twelve miles. To compensate for that distance, a public transit system - the "carabas" - was implemented. It covered that distance in six and a half hours at first, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century it took only two hours, and there were twenty-six round trips per day. It was not the first transit system in the Paris region - Bibliophile Jacob tells us that in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a whole network of public coach routes linking the various suburban palaces, with the frequency adjusted to the whereabouts of the King - but it was the best developed.
On one level, Erfurt and Burleson are right and you don't need transit to have a successful walking city. But you do need vehicle commuting to have a successful large city, and you need transit to do that equitably. I commend the debaters for what they were able to do within the constraints they had, and I thank them and the debate organizers for raising a number of interesting questions, and for recording the debate for posterity.
First, there was indeed transit before the 1890s. Burleson and Edward Erfurt are probably thinking of the first trolleys, autobuses and underground railways, which were implemented around that time. But before then there were other ways of getting around. On the StrongTowns podcast page, Steve commented that waterways - rivers and canals - provided a transit function.
Beyond the waterways, there were horsecars. These were large, horse-drawn vehicles that ran on rails, and could carry twenty or more people at a time. These began to appear in the early nineteenth century. The London Underground ran on steam from 1863.
Mike Lydon was the only one who didn't suffer from persistent transportation myopia. Burleson said, "Imagine a European-scale city that had no transit, but also had no cars." Transit and cars - along with taxis, hansom cabs and personal horse-drawn carriages - are different ways of enabling long-distance commutes. Transit is a long-distance commuting option that is accessible to lower classes.
Cities did exist for millennia, but it's worth noting that until the nineteenth century, they were small enough that you could walk from any part of them to almost any other part within an hour. So as Erfurt observed, transit allowed cities to expand beyond that size, but so did personal vehicles. Ian Rasmussen pointed out that transit opened the city to all.
An interesting example that proves the rule is Versailles. By moving the court a long distance from Paris, Louis XIV essentially split the capital over a distance of twelve miles. To compensate for that distance, a public transit system - the "carabas" - was implemented. It covered that distance in six and a half hours at first, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century it took only two hours, and there were twenty-six round trips per day. It was not the first transit system in the Paris region - Bibliophile Jacob tells us that in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a whole network of public coach routes linking the various suburban palaces, with the frequency adjusted to the whereabouts of the King - but it was the best developed.
On one level, Erfurt and Burleson are right and you don't need transit to have a successful walking city. But you do need vehicle commuting to have a successful large city, and you need transit to do that equitably. I commend the debaters for what they were able to do within the constraints they had, and I thank them and the debate organizers for raising a number of interesting questions, and for recording the debate for posterity.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
If you care about the Northeast Corridor...
Last week I mentioned that the Northeast Corridor between Washington, DC and New York City has a wealth of transit options, all of them generating operational profits for the transit provider. Credit for this success is in part due to the citizens of New York and New Jersey, who have resisted pressure from road builders to destroy town and country for planned highways like the Somerset Expressway and the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and in part due to the managers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who implemented high tolls with congestion pricing.
When our governments did not simply continue to build roads and keep the tolls low, people needed alternatives. As car traffic has increased on the New Jersey Turnpike and parallel highways and the price of gas has risen, people have steadily switched to trains and buses. The result is that Northeast Corridor passengers now subsidize the rest of the Amtrak network, and a whole range of bus operators from Eastern up to Vamoose Gold make enough money to not just pay for gas, wages and maintenance, but for new buses, and even generate a profit.
Those options are under threat now from unchecked government spending to interfere in the market, and the person directing this interference is none other than that darling of the right and famed budget-cutter, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. You may remember, specifically, that Christie cancelled the ARC Tunnel project because he thought it would place too great a burden on future generations of New Jersey taxpayers.
It turns out that Christie didn't just lie about New Jersey's share of the cost and redirect three billion dollars to road projects. Tri-State has the news (from the Star-Ledger) that even three billion dollars isn't enough to finish those projects, and the Turnpike Authority will borrow an additional $1.4 billion to complete them - putting that burden on future generations of New Jersey drivers and taxpayers.
One of those projects in particular is a really bad idea and could seriously undermine transit in the Northeast Corridor. There is a bottleneck on the New Jersey Turnpike between Mansfield and New Brunswick where the highway is "only" six lanes wide. A lot of that $4.4 billion is being spent to widen the Turnpike to twelve lanes in that section.
Eventually, as with most road expansions, those twelve lanes will probably be just as congested as the six lanes are today,. Or maybe not. If other driving costs like gas and insurance continue to rise, driving may drop there just as it is all over the country. But for a while it will be smooth sailing, and that could spell trouble for Northeast Corridor transit.
It's no coincidence that the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley railroads started to lose money after the Turnpike was opened, or that the Erie and New York Central lost money after the New York State Thruway was built, or the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western went downhill after Routes 78 and 80 opened. The Northeast Corridor, which is the successor to the Pennsylvania Railroad, is just beginning to recover.
Just as those highways drew passengers from the parallel railroads, the time savings on this newly widened Turnpike will draw passengers from the trains and buses of the Northeast Corridor. This is massive government-sponsored, debt-financed sabotage of a profitable market, done by a Republican with a reputation as a budget-cutter. Combined with the way the Democrats gummed up curbside bus pickup here in New York City, we may well see a drop in Northeast Corridor bus and train ridership over the next several years. I hope I'm wrong.
After the Port Authority raised tolls in 2010 there was a huge stink. After Christie cancelled the ARC Tunnel there was outrage from transit advocates. So far this massive highway widening hasn't gotten much more than a few angry Tri-State blog posts, and nothing from budget hawks. Will anything change?
When our governments did not simply continue to build roads and keep the tolls low, people needed alternatives. As car traffic has increased on the New Jersey Turnpike and parallel highways and the price of gas has risen, people have steadily switched to trains and buses. The result is that Northeast Corridor passengers now subsidize the rest of the Amtrak network, and a whole range of bus operators from Eastern up to Vamoose Gold make enough money to not just pay for gas, wages and maintenance, but for new buses, and even generate a profit.
Those options are under threat now from unchecked government spending to interfere in the market, and the person directing this interference is none other than that darling of the right and famed budget-cutter, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. You may remember, specifically, that Christie cancelled the ARC Tunnel project because he thought it would place too great a burden on future generations of New Jersey taxpayers.
It turns out that Christie didn't just lie about New Jersey's share of the cost and redirect three billion dollars to road projects. Tri-State has the news (from the Star-Ledger) that even three billion dollars isn't enough to finish those projects, and the Turnpike Authority will borrow an additional $1.4 billion to complete them - putting that burden on future generations of New Jersey drivers and taxpayers.
One of those projects in particular is a really bad idea and could seriously undermine transit in the Northeast Corridor. There is a bottleneck on the New Jersey Turnpike between Mansfield and New Brunswick where the highway is "only" six lanes wide. A lot of that $4.4 billion is being spent to widen the Turnpike to twelve lanes in that section.
Eventually, as with most road expansions, those twelve lanes will probably be just as congested as the six lanes are today,. Or maybe not. If other driving costs like gas and insurance continue to rise, driving may drop there just as it is all over the country. But for a while it will be smooth sailing, and that could spell trouble for Northeast Corridor transit.
It's no coincidence that the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley railroads started to lose money after the Turnpike was opened, or that the Erie and New York Central lost money after the New York State Thruway was built, or the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western went downhill after Routes 78 and 80 opened. The Northeast Corridor, which is the successor to the Pennsylvania Railroad, is just beginning to recover.
Just as those highways drew passengers from the parallel railroads, the time savings on this newly widened Turnpike will draw passengers from the trains and buses of the Northeast Corridor. This is massive government-sponsored, debt-financed sabotage of a profitable market, done by a Republican with a reputation as a budget-cutter. Combined with the way the Democrats gummed up curbside bus pickup here in New York City, we may well see a drop in Northeast Corridor bus and train ridership over the next several years. I hope I'm wrong.
After the Port Authority raised tolls in 2010 there was a huge stink. After Christie cancelled the ARC Tunnel there was outrage from transit advocates. So far this massive highway widening hasn't gotten much more than a few angry Tri-State blog posts, and nothing from budget hawks. Will anything change?
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Winning by default, or losing by a landslide
There's a point I've been trying to make. Maybe I haven't been really clear about it. It has to do with transit being in competition with cars, so much so that the real reason most of us care about transit is because it will hopefully get people out of their cars.
There's a thing about competition. When I was a kid I was on a kid baseball team. We sucked, partly because my catching wasn't very good and my batting was worse. But we won some games. Why did we win if we sucked so much? Because sometimes the other team sucked worse.
In competition, it doesn't matter how bad you are, if the other team is worse. It doesn't matter how good you are, if the other team is better. When I posted about the competition facing the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, lots of people wanted to tell me how horrible the VTA is.
Cap'n: The VTA is in competition with roads and parking.
Commenters: But they suck!
Cap'n: Yes, but they're building these roads and parking lots...
Commenters: The shitty routes and they go really slow and curves and...
Cap'n: Yes, and highway widenings and interchange upgrades...
Commenters: and bad zoning and they don't go where you want to go! Sucky trolleys! They suck!
Cap'n: Sigh.
Yes, I believe you. I've never ridden the VTA, but if you say it sucks, I'm prepared to concede that point. But have you been to Santo Domingo, or any of those Third World cities that have humungous transit market share? In most of those places, the transit sucks and they don't even have rail. But people ride it, because the roads and parking lots suck worse. Conversely, I'm sure there's some place where they did all the transit "right" and still lost mode share because the government was building lots of highways at the same time. Certainly that's what happened all over the country in the sixties and seventies.
This is not a defense of sucky transit. I'm all in favor of transit that doesn't suck, and in general I believe that not sucking helps to get people out of their cars. But when there's competition you can't just talk about one side of it. Sometimes you can really suck, but win by default. Other times you can be really good but just get outgunned.
There's a thing about competition. When I was a kid I was on a kid baseball team. We sucked, partly because my catching wasn't very good and my batting was worse. But we won some games. Why did we win if we sucked so much? Because sometimes the other team sucked worse.
In competition, it doesn't matter how bad you are, if the other team is worse. It doesn't matter how good you are, if the other team is better. When I posted about the competition facing the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, lots of people wanted to tell me how horrible the VTA is.
Cap'n: The VTA is in competition with roads and parking.
Commenters: But they suck!
Cap'n: Yes, but they're building these roads and parking lots...
Commenters: The shitty routes and they go really slow and curves and...
Cap'n: Yes, and highway widenings and interchange upgrades...
Commenters: and bad zoning and they don't go where you want to go! Sucky trolleys! They suck!
Cap'n: Sigh.
Yes, I believe you. I've never ridden the VTA, but if you say it sucks, I'm prepared to concede that point. But have you been to Santo Domingo, or any of those Third World cities that have humungous transit market share? In most of those places, the transit sucks and they don't even have rail. But people ride it, because the roads and parking lots suck worse. Conversely, I'm sure there's some place where they did all the transit "right" and still lost mode share because the government was building lots of highways at the same time. Certainly that's what happened all over the country in the sixties and seventies.
This is not a defense of sucky transit. I'm all in favor of transit that doesn't suck, and in general I believe that not sucking helps to get people out of their cars. But when there's competition you can't just talk about one side of it. Sometimes you can really suck, but win by default. Other times you can be really good but just get outgunned.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Does your transit line need more riders?
JPEG here. See also: the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership. Notice two things that are not on here: humongous expensive park-and-rides, and "the density to support transit."
Friday, December 28, 2012
Valley Transportation Myopia
The San Jose Mercury News has an article about the 25th anniversary of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's light rail system, quoting a few supporters and one critic. The supporters are VTA transportation planning manager Kevin Connolly, "the train's godfather" Rod Diridon, and a few riders, all of whom have Spanish last names and say that they ride the trolley because they don't own cars. The single critic quoted is Tom Rubin, an accountant who gets paid as a "transportation consultant" who mostly gets paid to attack transit. Sometimes Rubin will make arguments that seem "pro bus" in order to attack rail, but when there's no rail involved he's happy to attack buses.
On Twitter, some transit advocates did criticize the VTA. They're probably right. I've never been to Silicon Valley, but it sounds like it was relatively badly planned. It also sounds like there's a zoning issue behind the fact that many of the farms bordering on the lines haven't been built up with dense, walkable neighborhoods. That said, there's a bigger factor at play, one that I've touched on many times in the past: transportation myopia.
In the twenty-five years since the first VTA trolley ran, the federal, state and county governments and the VTA have widened four competing highways and built numerous interchanges and other "improvements." Here are a few that I could find details on:
As you can see, just about every branch of the VTA light rail system has seen millions of dollars invested in competing roads. Add to that the cost of constructing the 101, 280, 680 and 880 to begin with, which only happened within the previous twenty-five years. Those wouldn't have affected the design of the system, and thus the "Cost to run a light rail vehicle for an hour," but they have definitely sapped ridership, which affects all the other indicators mentioned.
Rubin is actually half right when he says "I think the original concept was very seriously flawed." Whatever the flaws of the original trolley concept and zoning, they pale in comparison to the flaw in the concept of building a trolley system at the same time as you expand the competing road network.
On Twitter, some transit advocates did criticize the VTA. They're probably right. I've never been to Silicon Valley, but it sounds like it was relatively badly planned. It also sounds like there's a zoning issue behind the fact that many of the farms bordering on the lines haven't been built up with dense, walkable neighborhoods. That said, there's a bigger factor at play, one that I've touched on many times in the past: transportation myopia.
In the twenty-five years since the first VTA trolley ran, the federal, state and county governments and the VTA have widened four competing highways and built numerous interchanges and other "improvements." Here are a few that I could find details on:
| CA 237 | Convert to "freeway standards" | 1997 | |
| I 880 | Widen from US 101 to Montague Expressway | 2004 | $76.3m |
| CA 17 | Add auxiliary lanes | 2007 | $28.2m |
| CA 87 | HOV lanes south and north | 2007 | $121.9m |
| I-280 | Ramp Metering and Widening | 2010 | $5.5m |
As you can see, just about every branch of the VTA light rail system has seen millions of dollars invested in competing roads. Add to that the cost of constructing the 101, 280, 680 and 880 to begin with, which only happened within the previous twenty-five years. Those wouldn't have affected the design of the system, and thus the "Cost to run a light rail vehicle for an hour," but they have definitely sapped ridership, which affects all the other indicators mentioned.
Rubin is actually half right when he says "I think the original concept was very seriously flawed." Whatever the flaws of the original trolley concept and zoning, they pale in comparison to the flaw in the concept of building a trolley system at the same time as you expand the competing road network.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Why I hate Eric Morris's latest post
Eric Morris is only the most recent wannabe transit expert to discover that empty buses aren't very efficient. His analysis is strikingly reminiscent of Tom Rubin's, but he brings to the topic a splash of condescending Freakonomics overconfidence, and that special ignorance of real-world transit that only someone who's driven to Brian Taylor seminars can pull off.
Back in 2009, Kevin Libin used Rubin's numbers (with proper credit) for a National Post transit hit job. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now.
Of course, Morris and Rubin are right that it's dishonest to compare the efficiency of a single-occupant car with that of a full capacity bus. But the report that they criticize (PDF, page 4) is careful to give figures for buses with one, five, eleven, forty and seventy passengers, and in the Reason "debate" the authors insist that they were not making such a comparison.
Morris and Rubin quote figures from the National Transit Database that the average bus in the United States has ten people on it (about forty people can sit on a bus, and seventy can fit on if some people stand), for 25% occupancy, and light rail has 24%. Morris acknowledges that heavy rail (metro) systems have 46% occupancy, but he doesn't mention that rail systems are much more energy-efficient than buses.
25% occupancy is also not normal for a bus outside of this country. In places where transit is more widely used, there are more than ten people on average. For example, in Zurich and other Swiss cities (PDF) there are 14 on average (35%). Trams carry 53 people on average, and if you assume that each tram can seat 100 people, that's 53% occupancy. In the Czech Republic and in major African cities (PDF, bus occupancy ranges from 63-80%.
There are actually quite a few systems right here in the US that have higher average occupancy rates than 25%. In fact, there are twenty with rates over 40%, including Morris's own LA County MTA and Brownsville, Texas. Here's a graph of the occupancy from 2007 (given in passengers, not percentages, so you have to divide by 40) with the farebox recovery ratio:
So Morris has three straw men here: the report that compares a single-occupant car to a fully loaded bus, picking on the inefficient bus, and using US bus occupancy figures. But he actually admits that 25% occupancy is not destiny, even in the US, in the second half of his post: "Given its current low load factors, transit generally has plenty of capacity to absorb new customers with practically zero additional energy expenditure."
There's a lot more to say about this post. The funniest thing is that Morris's general thrust is actually the main point that I've been hammering at for years: you can accomplish more of your transit goals by restricting or pricing car use than you can by building more transit. He's right: I hate his post. Not because I disagree with his point, but because he does such a sloppy, condescending job arguing it.
Back in 2009, Kevin Libin used Rubin's numbers (with proper credit) for a National Post transit hit job. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now.
Of course, Morris and Rubin are right that it's dishonest to compare the efficiency of a single-occupant car with that of a full capacity bus. But the report that they criticize (PDF, page 4) is careful to give figures for buses with one, five, eleven, forty and seventy passengers, and in the Reason "debate" the authors insist that they were not making such a comparison.
Morris and Rubin quote figures from the National Transit Database that the average bus in the United States has ten people on it (about forty people can sit on a bus, and seventy can fit on if some people stand), for 25% occupancy, and light rail has 24%. Morris acknowledges that heavy rail (metro) systems have 46% occupancy, but he doesn't mention that rail systems are much more energy-efficient than buses.
25% occupancy is also not normal for a bus outside of this country. In places where transit is more widely used, there are more than ten people on average. For example, in Zurich and other Swiss cities (PDF) there are 14 on average (35%). Trams carry 53 people on average, and if you assume that each tram can seat 100 people, that's 53% occupancy. In the Czech Republic and in major African cities (PDF, bus occupancy ranges from 63-80%.
There are actually quite a few systems right here in the US that have higher average occupancy rates than 25%. In fact, there are twenty with rates over 40%, including Morris's own LA County MTA and Brownsville, Texas. Here's a graph of the occupancy from 2007 (given in passengers, not percentages, so you have to divide by 40) with the farebox recovery ratio:
So Morris has three straw men here: the report that compares a single-occupant car to a fully loaded bus, picking on the inefficient bus, and using US bus occupancy figures. But he actually admits that 25% occupancy is not destiny, even in the US, in the second half of his post: "Given its current low load factors, transit generally has plenty of capacity to absorb new customers with practically zero additional energy expenditure."
There's a lot more to say about this post. The funniest thing is that Morris's general thrust is actually the main point that I've been hammering at for years: you can accomplish more of your transit goals by restricting or pricing car use than you can by building more transit. He's right: I hate his post. Not because I disagree with his point, but because he does such a sloppy, condescending job arguing it.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
What's so great about low farebox recovery?
I just want to take a minute to talk about the ... strange statement that came out of the Straphangers Campaign last week, in response to the MTA's fare hike proposal. I'm trying to be polite here, but it's, um, puzzling and frustrating. Here's part of the quote that Ben Kabak ran:
Forget big cities; let's look at cities with really low farebox recovery. These are the top agencies in the country, right?
This is a really weird way to think about farebox recovery. There are a lot of transit systems in other parts of the world, and even in this country. that have a much higher farebox recovery ratio. If you don't want to go to Hong Kong, just head up to the Port Authority for a bus to the exotic land of Hudson County, New Jersey, where all the most frequent routes are privately owned and operated. Sure, the Port Authority runs the PATH trains and the state of New Jersey runs a slew of coverage and anchor routes. But if you added up all the routes, I'm guessing the farebox recovery would be way above 53%.
Does Hudson County have an inferior transit system? Well, yes. They only have two subway lines and one light rail line, and everything else is buses that can get stuck in traffic or ferries that don't go very close to people's homes. Some of the buses are crowded or noisy, or have saggy seats. But that's not because they have a high farebox recovery ratio. It's because the zoning is crazy, and encourages people to drive instead of taking transit. With all the parking that's been built, it's a wonder that anyone takes the bus.
People do take the bus in Hudson County, because it's frequent and convenient. That's a lot more than you can say for the buses run by the Southeast Tennessee Human Resource Agency, even if they are a bit newer and cleaner.
If anything, we should be shooting for a higher farebox recovery ratio. That would insulate transit users from the predatory demands of people like Lee Zeldin and Scott Vanderhoef. If we pay for all our transit, what would they be able to take?
The fact is that farebox recovery doesn't have anything to do with pubic support for transit, and it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of transit. It's a reflection of the efficiency of the transit system (supply) and the lack of competition from cars (demand). That's the bottom line. Hearing Gene Russianoff kvetching about high farebox recovery is discouraging, and hearing Joe Lhota repeating that is depressing.
New York City Transit already has the highest fare box operating ratio in the nation at 53%. That is the share of operating costs covered by fares. MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said in September that “when you compare the public support given to mass transit agencies nationwide on a per customer basis, New York ranks at the very bottom.
In comparison to New York City Transit’s 53% ratio, the average for large systems nation-wide that operate both buses and subways was 38% in 2011. That’s according to the Federal Transit Administration in 2011, its most recent figures. Looking at big cities that run both subways and buses, the farebox operating ratio in Boston was 38%, Chicago 44%, Los Angeles 27%, Philadelphia 37%, and Washington, D.C. 42%.
Forget big cities; let's look at cities with really low farebox recovery. These are the top agencies in the country, right?
| Agency | Farebox Recovery Ratio |
|---|---|
| The Greater New Haven Transit District (does not include CT Transit buses) | 0.5 % |
| SunLine Transit Agency (Riverside, CA) | 1.5 % |
| Southeast Tennessee Human Resource Agency (SETHRA) | 2.7 % |
| Crescent City Connection Division (New Orleans Ferries) | 2.7 % |
| City of Glendale Transit (AZ) | 3.1 % |
| Twin Cities Area Transportation Authority (Benton Harbor and Saint Joseph, MI) | 3.2 % |
| Broward County Community Bus Service (FL) | 3.4 % |
| Muncie Indiana Transit System (MITS) | 3.6 % |
| Clarkstown Mini-Trans (NY) | 3.8 % |
| Cleveland Area Rapid Transit (OK) | 3.9 % |
This is a really weird way to think about farebox recovery. There are a lot of transit systems in other parts of the world, and even in this country. that have a much higher farebox recovery ratio. If you don't want to go to Hong Kong, just head up to the Port Authority for a bus to the exotic land of Hudson County, New Jersey, where all the most frequent routes are privately owned and operated. Sure, the Port Authority runs the PATH trains and the state of New Jersey runs a slew of coverage and anchor routes. But if you added up all the routes, I'm guessing the farebox recovery would be way above 53%.
Does Hudson County have an inferior transit system? Well, yes. They only have two subway lines and one light rail line, and everything else is buses that can get stuck in traffic or ferries that don't go very close to people's homes. Some of the buses are crowded or noisy, or have saggy seats. But that's not because they have a high farebox recovery ratio. It's because the zoning is crazy, and encourages people to drive instead of taking transit. With all the parking that's been built, it's a wonder that anyone takes the bus.
People do take the bus in Hudson County, because it's frequent and convenient. That's a lot more than you can say for the buses run by the Southeast Tennessee Human Resource Agency, even if they are a bit newer and cleaner.
If anything, we should be shooting for a higher farebox recovery ratio. That would insulate transit users from the predatory demands of people like Lee Zeldin and Scott Vanderhoef. If we pay for all our transit, what would they be able to take?
The fact is that farebox recovery doesn't have anything to do with pubic support for transit, and it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of transit. It's a reflection of the efficiency of the transit system (supply) and the lack of competition from cars (demand). That's the bottom line. Hearing Gene Russianoff kvetching about high farebox recovery is discouraging, and hearing Joe Lhota repeating that is depressing.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Selling transit with Glamour or Value, or both
Ever since April of 2009, when Human Transit blogger Jarrett Walker posted a review of Darrin Nordahl's book My Kind of Transit, the transit world has been divided between the pragmatic Walkerists and the hedonistic Nordahlists. Or something like that. From what I can tell, Jarrett (who I've had a fair amount of email and blog contact with over the years) and Nordahl (who I've never been in contact with) are both nice guys. They like each other, and get along well despite their differences of opinion. They've each got new books out, and treat each other with the same respect in those books. The bottom line is that they both want to see more transit in the world. If only all disputes could be so civilized.
I'm not the first blogger to try and reconcile these two. Lloyd Alter goes and name-checks Vitruvius, summarizing the differences between Walker and Nordahl's philosophies as expressing the contrast between "commodity" and "delight." Tom Vanderbilt can't beat that, but he cites Charles Leadbeater on the difference between "system" and "empathy." I'll go one further: Jarrett and Nordahl are both right, and both wrong. And I'll bring in two experts to back me up: Michael Kemp and Virginia Postrel.
First, Kemp. In 1973 he pointed out that "given the initial decision to travel, transit riding will be higher when the relative prices of substitute modes are at their highest." What are those "substitute modes"? Walking, cycling, taxis and of course, private cars. The success of transit is dependent on the failure or cars. In fact, as I pointed out in 2008, of all the benefits advertised for transit, all but one come from getting people out of their cars. Jarrett and Nordahl both ignore that (possibly out of a desire to be taken seriously), but the result is a difficulty in maintaining perspective in transit discussions.
Now, Postrel. When people choose transit (as opposed to one of the substitute modes like cars), they don't just make the choice once. A person who has any transit available, and any car available, is faced with a choice between transit and driving over and over again. But there is not even one kind of choice between transit and car (or bike or walking). There are four kinds: Single Trips, Habits, Investments and Subsidies.
It is a very different kind of decision to take the bus, or the train, or the tram, or the cable car, or a private car, for one Single Trip than it is to choose to take one mode on a regular basis. If we take the bus once and it gets stuck in traffic, then we can take something else on the next Single Trip. But if we've made a habit of taking the bus, then it's harder to change. Investments are even harder: if someone buys a house in some desolate part of Lattingtown with no transit, that constrains their options. Subsidies are also different: because Andrew Cuomo decided to build a jumbo-sized Tappan Zee Bridge, and because Kate Slevin decided not to challenge him on the size of that bridge, a lot more people will find it easier to make Habits out of driving than if a jumbo-sized bridge is not built.
There are four factors that affect our mode decisions: Availability, Value, Amenities and Glamour. This is where Postrel comes in, because Glamour is her specialty. Glamour is when someone makes a decision based on a fantasy, usually some kind of escape fantasy. One great example she gave was a book called Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House. Of course life will not be perfect no matter what house you live in. But we all have these yearnings, some of us more than others.
It is essential to note that these factors affect the different kinds of decisions to differing degrees. Availability is of course the baseline, because you can't chose a mode at all if it's not Available. Glamour and Amenities count much more for Single Trips, while Value counts for Habits. Glamour also counts for Investments and Subsidies, like the magical house that just might be out in Lattingtown somewhere, or the bridge that will somehow make commuting by car to an office park in Purchase bearable.
That's why Jarrett and Nordahl are both right. Jarrett is talking about Habits, and of course the most important thing for Habits is Value. Nordahl is talking about Investments and Subsidies, and getting people to take that first Single Trip, and Glamour and Amenities are hugely important for those choices. They both agree on Availability, of course.
So if you're trying to get people to ride transit (which means getting them to choose transit over driving a car), who should you believe, Jarrett Walker or Darrin Nordahl? That entirely depends on what kind of decision you're trying to get people to make. If it's a Single Trip, go with Nordahl. If it's a Habit, go with Jarrett.
If it's an Investment or a Subsidy, it's more complicated. You need both, because Glamour will sell the apartment, but Value will keep them in it. Glamour will sell the subway line, but Value will keep people riding. Glamour without Value leads to abandonment as soon as the next glamorous project comes along. Value without Glamour will never sell, because there are tons of shallow people out there that are incapable of making an Investment or Subsidy decision on the basis of Value alone.
For transit in general, and specifically for the Investment and Subsidy decisions, we need a balance of Glamour and Value, of empathy and system, of delight and commodity, of Nordahl and Walker. And for God's sake, we need to keep in mind that transit doesn't exist in a vacuum, and at the end of the day the main reason we want more transit is to get people out of their cars.
I'm not the first blogger to try and reconcile these two. Lloyd Alter goes and name-checks Vitruvius, summarizing the differences between Walker and Nordahl's philosophies as expressing the contrast between "commodity" and "delight." Tom Vanderbilt can't beat that, but he cites Charles Leadbeater on the difference between "system" and "empathy." I'll go one further: Jarrett and Nordahl are both right, and both wrong. And I'll bring in two experts to back me up: Michael Kemp and Virginia Postrel.
First, Kemp. In 1973 he pointed out that "given the initial decision to travel, transit riding will be higher when the relative prices of substitute modes are at their highest." What are those "substitute modes"? Walking, cycling, taxis and of course, private cars. The success of transit is dependent on the failure or cars. In fact, as I pointed out in 2008, of all the benefits advertised for transit, all but one come from getting people out of their cars. Jarrett and Nordahl both ignore that (possibly out of a desire to be taken seriously), but the result is a difficulty in maintaining perspective in transit discussions.
Now, Postrel. When people choose transit (as opposed to one of the substitute modes like cars), they don't just make the choice once. A person who has any transit available, and any car available, is faced with a choice between transit and driving over and over again. But there is not even one kind of choice between transit and car (or bike or walking). There are four kinds: Single Trips, Habits, Investments and Subsidies.
It is a very different kind of decision to take the bus, or the train, or the tram, or the cable car, or a private car, for one Single Trip than it is to choose to take one mode on a regular basis. If we take the bus once and it gets stuck in traffic, then we can take something else on the next Single Trip. But if we've made a habit of taking the bus, then it's harder to change. Investments are even harder: if someone buys a house in some desolate part of Lattingtown with no transit, that constrains their options. Subsidies are also different: because Andrew Cuomo decided to build a jumbo-sized Tappan Zee Bridge, and because Kate Slevin decided not to challenge him on the size of that bridge, a lot more people will find it easier to make Habits out of driving than if a jumbo-sized bridge is not built.
There are four factors that affect our mode decisions: Availability, Value, Amenities and Glamour. This is where Postrel comes in, because Glamour is her specialty. Glamour is when someone makes a decision based on a fantasy, usually some kind of escape fantasy. One great example she gave was a book called Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House. Of course life will not be perfect no matter what house you live in. But we all have these yearnings, some of us more than others.
It is essential to note that these factors affect the different kinds of decisions to differing degrees. Availability is of course the baseline, because you can't chose a mode at all if it's not Available. Glamour and Amenities count much more for Single Trips, while Value counts for Habits. Glamour also counts for Investments and Subsidies, like the magical house that just might be out in Lattingtown somewhere, or the bridge that will somehow make commuting by car to an office park in Purchase bearable.
That's why Jarrett and Nordahl are both right. Jarrett is talking about Habits, and of course the most important thing for Habits is Value. Nordahl is talking about Investments and Subsidies, and getting people to take that first Single Trip, and Glamour and Amenities are hugely important for those choices. They both agree on Availability, of course.
So if you're trying to get people to ride transit (which means getting them to choose transit over driving a car), who should you believe, Jarrett Walker or Darrin Nordahl? That entirely depends on what kind of decision you're trying to get people to make. If it's a Single Trip, go with Nordahl. If it's a Habit, go with Jarrett.
If it's an Investment or a Subsidy, it's more complicated. You need both, because Glamour will sell the apartment, but Value will keep them in it. Glamour will sell the subway line, but Value will keep people riding. Glamour without Value leads to abandonment as soon as the next glamorous project comes along. Value without Glamour will never sell, because there are tons of shallow people out there that are incapable of making an Investment or Subsidy decision on the basis of Value alone.
For transit in general, and specifically for the Investment and Subsidy decisions, we need a balance of Glamour and Value, of empathy and system, of delight and commodity, of Nordahl and Walker. And for God's sake, we need to keep in mind that transit doesn't exist in a vacuum, and at the end of the day the main reason we want more transit is to get people out of their cars.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Gridlock Sam's plan is not fair or equitable
I've got objections to "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's plan to toll the East River Bridges and use some of the money to reduce tolls on the MTA bridges that don't go to Manhattan. I've talked about how Schwartz goes out of his way to provide "something for the drivers," but fails to give them what they really want: validation of the status that they sought by becoming drivers in the first place. I've talked about how this "something for the drivers" is not about compensating the current drivers, but sinking money into durable infrastructure for anyone who will drive in New York City in the next thirty to fifty years. This is not a vision of a sustainable future.
Now let's move on to the next big one: it's not fair. Schwartz actually calls his plan "the Fair Plan." This is reiterated by Charlie Komanoff and Brian Lehrer who call it "fair" and "equitable." The problem is that it's only fair if you take a very limited view of the system.
You've probably all heard the story about the two women who went to King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of a single baby. Solomon, in his wisdom, offered to split the baby and give each woman half. One of the women, realizing that half a baby was worse than none, told Solomon to give the baby to the other woman. Solomon replied that she must be the real mother because she was willing to part with the baby rather than see it killed.
Schwartz and his friends spent time talking to people who had opposed the Mayor's congestion pricing plan and came up with something that at least some of them felt would be fair. To me it seems like a classic case of splitting the baby. It will not satisfy the drivers and will prevent transit from successfully expanding into the outer boroughs and suburbs. We have enough money to maintain one transportation system for the area, but we can't afford to properly maintain two - or at least, there are very few New Yorkers who want to pay high enough taxes, gas prices and transit fares to maintain both.
Worst of all, it's an example of a special crazy kind of "fairness" that completely ignores history. It was apparently football coach Barry Switzer who said, "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." That's the mindset of New York drivers, who benefit from the billions of dollars poured into the region's highway system over the past fifty years, and zoning codes that require every builder to supply parking, outside of Manhattan and Long Island City. They can't even wrap their minds around the idea that New Jersey drivers already pay tolls to enter Manhattan.
This kind of bizarro "fairness" that ignores history and splits babies is not too surprising coming from Shelly Silver and Peter Vallone, Jr. It's sad to see it coming from Melissa Mark-Viverito and David Yassky. It's downright depressing to see it coming from people like Sam Schwartz, Charlie Komanoff and Brian Lehrer, all of whom really ought to know better.
Now let's move on to the next big one: it's not fair. Schwartz actually calls his plan "the Fair Plan." This is reiterated by Charlie Komanoff and Brian Lehrer who call it "fair" and "equitable." The problem is that it's only fair if you take a very limited view of the system.
You've probably all heard the story about the two women who went to King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of a single baby. Solomon, in his wisdom, offered to split the baby and give each woman half. One of the women, realizing that half a baby was worse than none, told Solomon to give the baby to the other woman. Solomon replied that she must be the real mother because she was willing to part with the baby rather than see it killed.
Schwartz and his friends spent time talking to people who had opposed the Mayor's congestion pricing plan and came up with something that at least some of them felt would be fair. To me it seems like a classic case of splitting the baby. It will not satisfy the drivers and will prevent transit from successfully expanding into the outer boroughs and suburbs. We have enough money to maintain one transportation system for the area, but we can't afford to properly maintain two - or at least, there are very few New Yorkers who want to pay high enough taxes, gas prices and transit fares to maintain both.
Worst of all, it's an example of a special crazy kind of "fairness" that completely ignores history. It was apparently football coach Barry Switzer who said, "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." That's the mindset of New York drivers, who benefit from the billions of dollars poured into the region's highway system over the past fifty years, and zoning codes that require every builder to supply parking, outside of Manhattan and Long Island City. They can't even wrap their minds around the idea that New Jersey drivers already pay tolls to enter Manhattan.
This kind of bizarro "fairness" that ignores history and splits babies is not too surprising coming from Shelly Silver and Peter Vallone, Jr. It's sad to see it coming from Melissa Mark-Viverito and David Yassky. It's downright depressing to see it coming from people like Sam Schwartz, Charlie Komanoff and Brian Lehrer, all of whom really ought to know better.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Three factors in density
I concede defeat on one aspect of the density thought experiment: the commenters convinced me that there are places that don't have "the density to support transit" even if everyone who wants to go anywhere takes the transit. Phelan, California and Fort McMurray, Alberta may be examples of this. However, there are three aspects of the story that I'm sticking to:
1. If these places can't support transit, most of them probably can't support roads either. That's "support" either in the sense of inducing enough tax revenue to pay for their construction and maintenance, or providing a public service that would be considered worth the investment.
2. Most of the places that are generally claimed to "not have the density to support transit" are of the kind that would have the density to support transit if it had a 100% mode share.
3. As Jonathan said, if you make driving expensive or unpleasant enough (or if you just don't bother to make it cheap and comfortable), people will move to places where they can access things easily through walking and transit. That's the transportation-land use cycle that I identified in 2008 (here seen in a cleaned-up version by Pantagraph Trolleypole).
So the next time you're tempted to say something about "the density to support transit," ask yourself these three questions:
1. Would transit work if it had a better mode share?
2. Does the area have the density to support roads either?
3. Would people live or work more densely if the car infrastructure was less subsidized?
1. If these places can't support transit, most of them probably can't support roads either. That's "support" either in the sense of inducing enough tax revenue to pay for their construction and maintenance, or providing a public service that would be considered worth the investment.
2. Most of the places that are generally claimed to "not have the density to support transit" are of the kind that would have the density to support transit if it had a 100% mode share.
3. As Jonathan said, if you make driving expensive or unpleasant enough (or if you just don't bother to make it cheap and comfortable), people will move to places where they can access things easily through walking and transit. That's the transportation-land use cycle that I identified in 2008 (here seen in a cleaned-up version by Pantagraph Trolleypole).
So the next time you're tempted to say something about "the density to support transit," ask yourself these three questions:
1. Would transit work if it had a better mode share?
2. Does the area have the density to support roads either?
3. Would people live or work more densely if the car infrastructure was less subsidized?
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Density thought experiments
In recent posts, I've discussed how density isn't all that important in transit demand, how the idea of "supporting transit" is problematic, and how different people have different goals for transit, and density affects these goals differently. Because my own goals (see the top of this page) are wrapped up in a feedback loop based on mode share, my most intermediate goal is getting people out of their cars.
Transit mode share, in fact, is where density is least relevant. This may seem surprising, but only if you believe that density is the only way to control the relative value that people get from various modes. The transit boosters who worry about density actually believe that it's possible in the short term to increase the value of transit by throwing more money at it, but that that's unsustainable in the long run. Their big blind spot is that we actually have quite a bit of control over the value of driving, if we can find the political will.
This brings us back to the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership:
1. Give transit its own right-of-way and good terminals
2. Make it hard to use cars
3. Make it expensive to use cars
4. Profit!
Many transit advocates have enough exposure to the concept of (3) in the form of congestion pricing and gasoline prices, but they seem very resistant to considering step (2), probably because they don't want to be accused of wanting to take anyone's car away. The Very Serious People are all afraid to talk about decreasing the size of the road network.
But what if, while Spain was building all those high-speed rail lines, they didn't also pump billions into a truly gigantic highway network? If drivers faced constant congestion on old highways, wouldn't we expect higher ridership on the trains? Wouldn't we also expect that if the highway network was old and small enough, but the train network was the size it is today, eventually there would be enough demand for the trains that they would be completely profitable - operations and capital?
You can do the same thought experiment with any place. No matter how sparsely populated it is, just subtract some roads while keeping the rail and/or bus network constant, and eventually the place "supports transit." Take Wyoming. Now imagine it without interstate highways. Would that be enough to support restored passenger service on the train lines? How about if we turn all the roads to gravel?
Back in 2010, I had a similar discussion on Human Transit about the supposed convenience of cars. A lot of people had problems with the idea that convenience was dependent on the quality of the infrastructure, but I think I showed that if you throw enough money at any transportation system you can make it feel convenient to its users.
Similarly, if you make the car infrastructure shitty enough and expensive enough, you can make transit feel like a bargain. Density may make it politically easier to support transit expansion or harder to support road expansion, but that's not a matter of "the density to support transit," it's "the density to make it likely enough that transit will receive more political support than roads," which is not the same thing at all.
If you're really not convinced, I challenge you to come up with a place, or a route, where you can't increase transit ridership by taking away roads or increasing prices. If you want data, I have density and mode share figures for all of the municipalities and census-designated places in the New York Combined Statistical Area. Go for it.
Transit mode share, in fact, is where density is least relevant. This may seem surprising, but only if you believe that density is the only way to control the relative value that people get from various modes. The transit boosters who worry about density actually believe that it's possible in the short term to increase the value of transit by throwing more money at it, but that that's unsustainable in the long run. Their big blind spot is that we actually have quite a bit of control over the value of driving, if we can find the political will.
This brings us back to the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership:
1. Give transit its own right-of-way and good terminals
2. Make it hard to use cars
3. Make it expensive to use cars
4. Profit!
Many transit advocates have enough exposure to the concept of (3) in the form of congestion pricing and gasoline prices, but they seem very resistant to considering step (2), probably because they don't want to be accused of wanting to take anyone's car away. The Very Serious People are all afraid to talk about decreasing the size of the road network.
But what if, while Spain was building all those high-speed rail lines, they didn't also pump billions into a truly gigantic highway network? If drivers faced constant congestion on old highways, wouldn't we expect higher ridership on the trains? Wouldn't we also expect that if the highway network was old and small enough, but the train network was the size it is today, eventually there would be enough demand for the trains that they would be completely profitable - operations and capital?
You can do the same thought experiment with any place. No matter how sparsely populated it is, just subtract some roads while keeping the rail and/or bus network constant, and eventually the place "supports transit." Take Wyoming. Now imagine it without interstate highways. Would that be enough to support restored passenger service on the train lines? How about if we turn all the roads to gravel?
Back in 2010, I had a similar discussion on Human Transit about the supposed convenience of cars. A lot of people had problems with the idea that convenience was dependent on the quality of the infrastructure, but I think I showed that if you throw enough money at any transportation system you can make it feel convenient to its users.
Similarly, if you make the car infrastructure shitty enough and expensive enough, you can make transit feel like a bargain. Density may make it politically easier to support transit expansion or harder to support road expansion, but that's not a matter of "the density to support transit," it's "the density to make it likely enough that transit will receive more political support than roads," which is not the same thing at all.
If you're really not convinced, I challenge you to come up with a place, or a route, where you can't increase transit ridership by taking away roads or increasing prices. If you want data, I have density and mode share figures for all of the municipalities and census-designated places in the New York Combined Statistical Area. Go for it.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
What does it mean to "support transit"?
Last week I singled out Richard Layman for repeating the chestnut "Spain doesn't have the population density to support economically many of the lines, based on ridership." Again, let me make clear that Richard is far from alone in assuming that density is required to support transit, and that his blog is informative, insightful and well worth reading for urban issues. He was also a good sport in leaving a comment on my post; unfortunately all the comments made it clear to me how deep the idea is ingrained in our understandings of transit.
A number of people have addressed this issue before. Richard mentions Steve Belmont and linked us to a scan from his book (see also David Alpert's take). Alon mentions Gary Barnes and his concept of "perceived density" (PDF); the Austin Contrarian has his own idea of perceived density.
I had a great idea for a phrase, "density is not destiny," but like most ideas it turns out that someone's thought of it before you; in this case it was Paul Mees, and Jarrett has an interesting discussion. But all these discussions are frustratingly myopic, assuming that the competing road network is a constant force of nature beyond political influence.
Instead of looking at the concept of "density," let's look at "support." What does it mean to support a transit line? Is it complete financial self-sufficiency, as Germà Bel demands for the Spanish high-speed network? If that's the case, then very few transportation projects anywhere would qualify. Is it the simple existence of the transit line? Then Newburgh's three-line transit system would qualify, since it exists, but that's not a very enlightening criterion. Is it a certain threshold of mode share, as the discussion at Greater Greater Washington would suggest? That's more promising, but it's not all.
Let's bring in some Strong Towns thinking. Chuck Marohn looks at any transportation project and asks, what is the return on investment? And it turns out the answer is connected to density. The ROI for a street, bus line, train line or ferry dock, it turns out, is dependent on the benefits derived from that investment. If it's a government investment, it has a "public ROI" indicating the benefits accrued to the public, whether in the form of tax revenue or any other goal.
ROI is the benefits divided by the costs. In transportation, sewers, utilities and other public projects, the costs are spread out geographically, so the ROI depends on the density of the benefits. That is where density comes in.
A number of people have addressed this issue before. Richard mentions Steve Belmont and linked us to a scan from his book (see also David Alpert's take). Alon mentions Gary Barnes and his concept of "perceived density" (PDF); the Austin Contrarian has his own idea of perceived density.
I had a great idea for a phrase, "density is not destiny," but like most ideas it turns out that someone's thought of it before you; in this case it was Paul Mees, and Jarrett has an interesting discussion. But all these discussions are frustratingly myopic, assuming that the competing road network is a constant force of nature beyond political influence.
Instead of looking at the concept of "density," let's look at "support." What does it mean to support a transit line? Is it complete financial self-sufficiency, as Germà Bel demands for the Spanish high-speed network? If that's the case, then very few transportation projects anywhere would qualify. Is it the simple existence of the transit line? Then Newburgh's three-line transit system would qualify, since it exists, but that's not a very enlightening criterion. Is it a certain threshold of mode share, as the discussion at Greater Greater Washington would suggest? That's more promising, but it's not all.
Let's bring in some Strong Towns thinking. Chuck Marohn looks at any transportation project and asks, what is the return on investment? And it turns out the answer is connected to density. The ROI for a street, bus line, train line or ferry dock, it turns out, is dependent on the benefits derived from that investment. If it's a government investment, it has a "public ROI" indicating the benefits accrued to the public, whether in the form of tax revenue or any other goal.
ROI is the benefits divided by the costs. In transportation, sewers, utilities and other public projects, the costs are spread out geographically, so the ROI depends on the density of the benefits. That is where density comes in.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The population density to support my ass
I swear if I read one more time that such-and-such a place "doesn't have the population density to support" transit, or sidewalks, or high speed rail, or multifamily housing, or mixed-use development, or sushi restaurants, or anything other than Joel Kotkin's suburban American fantasy, I'm gonna spit. At this point all you urbanists, livable streets advocates and transit supporters really ought to know better. Yes, you, Richard Layman, but you're not alone so don't feel bad; you're just the most recent person to say it, who happened to set me off.
Layman is summarizing the myopic "lessons learned" in an article about Spain's high-speed rail system (don't miss the "next page" buttons!) by mainstream reporter Tim Sheehan of the Fresno Bee, based in part on an interview with political economist Germà Bel. Sheehan writes:
Note that Bel doesn't say anything about population density; I think that's something that Layman is reading into it. What he and the other analysts tell Sheehan is that the system doesn't have high enough ridership, which is not the same thing. In fact, Bel's own research fails to show that population density is a significant factor in urban transit ridership.
In 2010, Bel and his colleague Daniel Albalate did an amazing factor analysis (PDF of the 45 cities in the Mobility in Cities Database (yours for only $1,608 plus shipping!) and found that the factors that loaded most heavily on service demand were as follows:
Here's a quick note on how to read a factor analysis. A positive value means a positive correlation, so the higher the GDP, the higher the demand for transit. A negative value means a negative correlation, so the more private vehicles per thousand residents, the lower the demand for transit.
The key here is the absolute value of the loadings. The greater that value, the stronger the relationship between the factor and the dependent variable. In this case, the effect of GDP is more than ten times as much as the effect of transit speed. Note in particular that population density and transit vehicle speed have the loadings with the lowest absolute value.
Finally, remember that this shows correlation, not causation. It may well be that high transit demand causes large numbers of transit vehicles to be available (funny how that works!) and high population density, not the other way around.
Again, this article by Albalate and Bel refers to urban transit, not intercity rail, but the dynamics involved in intercity mode choice are similar to urban mode choice. The time difference (3.5 hours for AVE vs. 6 hours by private car), number of vehicles per capita, tolls and gas would all make a difference. Those are some lessons that California can learn from Spain, but as Cruickshank argues, Sheehan was predisposed to find problems with high-speed rail. Maybe Bel tried to tell him, but he wasn't listening for it?
Layman is summarizing the myopic "lessons learned" in an article about Spain's high-speed rail system (don't miss the "next page" buttons!) by mainstream reporter Tim Sheehan of the Fresno Bee, based in part on an interview with political economist Germà Bel. Sheehan writes:
"There is no question whether (Spain's system) can cover its costs. It cannot," Bel said. "It actually has not recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment. The government claims they are recovering the operating costs, but the numbers are not clear."Robert Cruickshank took issue with Bel's argument and Sheehan's portrayal of it. He also faults Sheehan for holding highways to a double standard. What about Spain's highways? Are they half empty too? Do they pay for themselves, since many of them are tolled?
The busiest high-speed lines in the world are capable of making money, Bel said, including between Paris and Lyon, where about 25 million people ride the French TGV trains each year, and the Japanese Shinkansen trains between Tokyo and Osaka, which draw about 130 million riders a year.
"But this is not the case with any single line in Spain," Bel said. "The most crowded operation is Madrid-Barcelona, and it has not even had 6 million people in a year."
Note that Bel doesn't say anything about population density; I think that's something that Layman is reading into it. What he and the other analysts tell Sheehan is that the system doesn't have high enough ridership, which is not the same thing. In fact, Bel's own research fails to show that population density is a significant factor in urban transit ridership.
In 2010, Bel and his colleague Daniel Albalate did an amazing factor analysis (PDF of the 45 cities in the Mobility in Cities Database (yours for only $1,608 plus shipping!) and found that the factors that loaded most heavily on service demand were as follows:
| Factor | Loading |
|---|---|
| GDP | 0.797 |
| PRIVATE_TIME (average time spent by private vehicle trip) | 0.747 |
| FLEET (fleet of vehicles available for public transport purposes) | 0.553 |
| MOTOR (number of private vehicles per capita) | -0.524 |
| PRICE (average price charged to urban transport users) | -0.466 |
| PARKING (number of parking spaces per thousand jobs in the CBD) | -0.221 |
| DENS (urban population density) | -0.190 |
| PUBSPEED (average speed of public transport vehicles in operation) | 0.0722 |
The key here is the absolute value of the loadings. The greater that value, the stronger the relationship between the factor and the dependent variable. In this case, the effect of GDP is more than ten times as much as the effect of transit speed. Note in particular that population density and transit vehicle speed have the loadings with the lowest absolute value.
Finally, remember that this shows correlation, not causation. It may well be that high transit demand causes large numbers of transit vehicles to be available (funny how that works!) and high population density, not the other way around.
Again, this article by Albalate and Bel refers to urban transit, not intercity rail, but the dynamics involved in intercity mode choice are similar to urban mode choice. The time difference (3.5 hours for AVE vs. 6 hours by private car), number of vehicles per capita, tolls and gas would all make a difference. Those are some lessons that California can learn from Spain, but as Cruickshank argues, Sheehan was predisposed to find problems with high-speed rail. Maybe Bel tried to tell him, but he wasn't listening for it?
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Our transit system could be profitable like Hong Kong's
Last week I discussed Alex Marshall's take on the profitability of the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway. As Alon Levy pointed out, the MTR does make an operating profit, so what I said was a little inaccurate. I said "Marshall responded that the Hong Kong MTR makes money on real estate and uses that money to subsidize its transit facilities." What Marshall actually said was that the Hong Kong MTR makes money on real estate and uses that money to supplement the income from its transit facilities. Here's the relevant paragraph from Marshall's blog post:
Here I want to disagree with Marshall. I think the urban layout of Hong Kong is not unique for our purposes, and very relevant to the issue. In fact, people thinking only of the United States would say that "running trains on an intense few strips of land filled with development" is a great description of what the New York MTA and Port Authority do.
The development density, though, is only part of the story. It is one source of the MTR's operating profit, but only because it is Step 2 of the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership:
1. Give transit its own right-of-way and good terminals
2. Make it hard to use cars
3. Make it expensive to use cars
4. Profit!
The Mass Transit Railway has its own right-of-way. Hong Kong is one of the fifteen most expensive places to buy gas. And it is hard to drive there. But the density is only part of the reason it's hard to drive. The highways in Hong Kong are relatively few, and relatively narrow. If you're coming from the mainland there are at most fifteen lanes of traffic leading into the city.
New York may not make it quite as hard to use cars, but driving here is notoriously unpleasant and difficult. It is pretty expensive, except for the free bridges and highways, and the free or cheap parking.
What Marshall is neglecting, what too many transit advocates neglect, is the fact that transit is in competition with private cars driving on government-subsidized roads. If the roads are expanded or driving is made cheaper, transit ridership falls; I think we'll see a small drop in the Hong Kong MTR's profitability when the Central-Wan Chai Bypass is opened. If the roads are repurposed or driving is made more expensive, transit ridership rises and transit agencies become profitable.
This is why Marshall's interview and post are so frustrating. If we want the New York MTA to become profitable, we don't need it to buy a bunch of land and build high-rises on it. (In most of the city, the zoning would require them to build parking anyway.) Here are four steps that should do it:
1. Give buses at least one dedicated lane on every major bridge and tunnel.
2. Don't spend billions replacing the Goethals and Kosciuszko Bridges or the Pulaski Skyway. Tear down the Sheridan Expressway and any other highway that is "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete."
3. Institute market pricing to cross the East and Harlem River Bridges, and for parking.
4. Profit!
I know that Marshall is in favor of congestion pricing. He's probably in favor of market-rate parking pricing as well. He might even be in favor of some highway teardowns. Why didn't he say any of that to Andrea Bernstein?
Hong Kong’s MTR is unusual in also actually making money from its fares as well. How it can do this relates in part the uniqueness of running trains on an intense few strips of land filled with development. But for our purposes it’s worth looking at its actions as a developer, and that as a model for transportation agencies and departments in this country.Here Marshall acknowledges that the MTR makes an operating profit, but dismisses that as a consequence of "the uniqueness of running trains on an intense few strips of land filled with development," and thus not relevant "for our purposes."
Here I want to disagree with Marshall. I think the urban layout of Hong Kong is not unique for our purposes, and very relevant to the issue. In fact, people thinking only of the United States would say that "running trains on an intense few strips of land filled with development" is a great description of what the New York MTA and Port Authority do.
The development density, though, is only part of the story. It is one source of the MTR's operating profit, but only because it is Step 2 of the Magic Formula for Transit Ridership:
1. Give transit its own right-of-way and good terminals
2. Make it hard to use cars
3. Make it expensive to use cars
4. Profit!
The Mass Transit Railway has its own right-of-way. Hong Kong is one of the fifteen most expensive places to buy gas. And it is hard to drive there. But the density is only part of the reason it's hard to drive. The highways in Hong Kong are relatively few, and relatively narrow. If you're coming from the mainland there are at most fifteen lanes of traffic leading into the city.
New York may not make it quite as hard to use cars, but driving here is notoriously unpleasant and difficult. It is pretty expensive, except for the free bridges and highways, and the free or cheap parking.
What Marshall is neglecting, what too many transit advocates neglect, is the fact that transit is in competition with private cars driving on government-subsidized roads. If the roads are expanded or driving is made cheaper, transit ridership falls; I think we'll see a small drop in the Hong Kong MTR's profitability when the Central-Wan Chai Bypass is opened. If the roads are repurposed or driving is made more expensive, transit ridership rises and transit agencies become profitable.
This is why Marshall's interview and post are so frustrating. If we want the New York MTA to become profitable, we don't need it to buy a bunch of land and build high-rises on it. (In most of the city, the zoning would require them to build parking anyway.) Here are four steps that should do it:
1. Give buses at least one dedicated lane on every major bridge and tunnel.
2. Don't spend billions replacing the Goethals and Kosciuszko Bridges or the Pulaski Skyway. Tear down the Sheridan Expressway and any other highway that is "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete."
3. Institute market pricing to cross the East and Harlem River Bridges, and for parking.
4. Profit!
I know that Marshall is in favor of congestion pricing. He's probably in favor of market-rate parking pricing as well. He might even be in favor of some highway teardowns. Why didn't he say any of that to Andrea Bernstein?
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Transportation myopia for commuter rail
Jeff "Pantograph Trolleypole" Wood has a post questioning the value of building new commuter rail lines, as contrasted with light rail or streetcars. He points to several new lines where ridership is well below expectations, and argues that such tiny numbers do little to further our goals.
It has always been acknowledged that these new commuter rail lines are oriented towards relatively affluent park-and-ride commuters, so they won't increase access for underserved communities. The claim was that they would get people out of their cars for at least a portion of the trip, leading to greater efficiency and less pollution and carnage. In addition, some people claimed (or at least hoped) that they would attract relatively well-connected passengers, who in turn would have an interest in lobbying for the maintenance and expansion of the transit system. Jeff argues that such small numbers do very little to help us reach any of those goals.
Everyone seems to agree that these commuter lines are a miserable failure, but there is disagreement over why exactly they failed, and how to avoid failures like this in the future. Jeff takes a technical approach, saying that the problem is that the lines tend to be located in old freight rights-of-way far from residential, job and shopping centers and served by large park-and-ride lots. Significantly, these lines all tend to be relatively low frequency, sometimes only a few trains a day. He recommends that agencies pursue light rail through urban areas instead, and contrasts the ridership numbers on these commuter rail lines with numbers from new light rail lines.
Yonah Freemark expands on Jeff's post, but argues instead that the problem is a political failure, due to a futile attempt to distribute funding across metropolitan regions, hamstrung by bad zoning.
I think they're both confusing correlation with causation. Both of their explanations are probably true to some degree, but in fact only one could, or none; we don't know. There's another factor at work that I think plays a role. I don't have any proof, only a similar causation, but that is enough to require more support for Jeff and Yonah's claims. Both bloggers are suffering from transportation myopia, because for every one of the commuter rail lines that Jeff lists, there was a major road project that improved car travel and took riders away from the commuter rail lines.
Now I know some of the readers are going to jump in and say, "but that highway project outside of Portland is only one lane in one direction for a few blocks!" Yes, but there are numerous other highway expansion projects going on in the area. You can quibble with the details, but I think you'll agree that the overall picture is sound.
If you regularly commute from Maple Grove to downtown Minneapolis and keep getting stuck in traffic jams on I-94, you might consider switching to the Northstar trains. But then if MnDOT adds a lane to I-94 and traffic moves smoother, you might stay in your car. This is partly a failure of commuter rail, partly a failure of regionalism, but mostly a failure of transit advocates to realize how much of a threat competing road projects can be to the train lines they so desperately want to see.
It has always been acknowledged that these new commuter rail lines are oriented towards relatively affluent park-and-ride commuters, so they won't increase access for underserved communities. The claim was that they would get people out of their cars for at least a portion of the trip, leading to greater efficiency and less pollution and carnage. In addition, some people claimed (or at least hoped) that they would attract relatively well-connected passengers, who in turn would have an interest in lobbying for the maintenance and expansion of the transit system. Jeff argues that such small numbers do very little to help us reach any of those goals.
Everyone seems to agree that these commuter lines are a miserable failure, but there is disagreement over why exactly they failed, and how to avoid failures like this in the future. Jeff takes a technical approach, saying that the problem is that the lines tend to be located in old freight rights-of-way far from residential, job and shopping centers and served by large park-and-ride lots. Significantly, these lines all tend to be relatively low frequency, sometimes only a few trains a day. He recommends that agencies pursue light rail through urban areas instead, and contrasts the ridership numbers on these commuter rail lines with numbers from new light rail lines.
Yonah Freemark expands on Jeff's post, but argues instead that the problem is a political failure, due to a futile attempt to distribute funding across metropolitan regions, hamstrung by bad zoning.
I think they're both confusing correlation with causation. Both of their explanations are probably true to some degree, but in fact only one could, or none; we don't know. There's another factor at work that I think plays a role. I don't have any proof, only a similar causation, but that is enough to require more support for Jeff and Yonah's claims. Both bloggers are suffering from transportation myopia, because for every one of the commuter rail lines that Jeff lists, there was a major road project that improved car travel and took riders away from the commuter rail lines.
Now I know some of the readers are going to jump in and say, "but that highway project outside of Portland is only one lane in one direction for a few blocks!" Yes, but there are numerous other highway expansion projects going on in the area. You can quibble with the details, but I think you'll agree that the overall picture is sound.
If you regularly commute from Maple Grove to downtown Minneapolis and keep getting stuck in traffic jams on I-94, you might consider switching to the Northstar trains. But then if MnDOT adds a lane to I-94 and traffic moves smoother, you might stay in your car. This is partly a failure of commuter rail, partly a failure of regionalism, but mostly a failure of transit advocates to realize how much of a threat competing road projects can be to the train lines they so desperately want to see.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Yes, we do need to build more....
Last week, the Urbanophile posted an article called "Yes, we Do Need to Build More Roads." He expected that a lot of people wouldn't like it, and that he would come under a hail of criticism. I didn't really see this hail materialize, but hey, I didn't like the piece, and I'm ready to add my criticism.
I criticize a lot of people on this blog. Some of them, like Joel Kotkin and Chris Christie, are dishonest trolls who are not likely to be swayed by any argument here, and the best thing to do is to discredit them and hope they go away. Some, like Roger K. Lewis and Walter Hook, seem to share my goals, but are clueless as to how to accomplish them and too arrogant to realize how clueless they are; I try to point out what's wrong with their arguments, but don't have much hope that they'll change them. Others, like Yonah Freemark and Steven Higashide, I regard as allies who share most of my goals and are generally pretty sharp; I try to be pretty gentle with them and hope they'll see my side of things.
The Urbanophile is definitely in the third group: he clearly cares about cities and the environment, and is always looking to learn more and revise his thinking, so let's all hope that he reads this, doesn't get defensive, and is persuaded that no, we don't actually need to build very many roads at all.
Basically, the Urbanophile argues that the population of the U.S. is growing, and in the last decade the country added more people than were living in the top twelve cities in the country. Future populations will need a way to get to work, but a lot of the jobs are in the suburbs, and building new transit is hard. Therefore, we should build highways to avoid "decades of commuting misery." Let me take each of these one by one.
The population of the U.S. may have grown quite a bit over the last decade, but as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future return. As a specialist in Rust Belt cities, the Urbanophile knows that populations can go down.
Migration is the primary source of population growth in the United States, and it is not some mysterious force of nature. It is a phenomenon whose causes are pretty well-understood: if life sucks in one place, move to another where you think it won't suck as much. When the U.S. economy tanked, a lot of Mexicans decided not to come here.
But let's assume that we will see a significant increase in the population over the next fifty years. Why does that mean we need more roads?
Do we need more roads because there's no room in the walkable, transit-oriented old urban areas? No, because we can just build more walkable, transit-oriented new urban areas. Do we need more roads because the jobs are in the suburbs? No. If more people come, it's because they expect there to be jobs for them, and these new jobs can be located in walkable urban areas. Alternatively, we could transform the sprawl where the existing jobs are into walkable urban areas and build residential developments within easy walking or transit access.
And now the weakest point in the Urbanophile's argument:
There is nothing that says that a major expansion of infrastructure will require any of it to be highway infrastructure. You might just as well say that since we have a canal system originally designed for an 1820 population of ten million, we have to dig more canals. There may be good reasons to build roads, but the fact that our roads were originally designed for a smaller population is not one of them.
Finally, let's look at the way the Urbanophile frames the whole piece:
Sure, it's possible to fail to build adequate infrastructure to deal with a growing population; this has happened in Lagos, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. But the assumption that all infrastructure must include a minimum proportion of auto infrastructure guarantees an incentive for people to drive, and is essentially a recipe for decades of commuting misery.
There's a larger point about the relative efficiency of various transportation infrastructure, but I'll leave that for another post. I'm going to close with this request: that the Urbanophile take seriously the principle of induced demand, learn about it, and put the same amount of thought and energy into any critique of it that I put into this critique of his ideas. Dismissing it out of hand as "conventional wisdom" is arrogant, thoughtless and disrespectful. It's the kind of thing I'd expect from Joel Kotkin or Roger K. Lewis, but I generally think that Aaron M. Renn is above that.
I criticize a lot of people on this blog. Some of them, like Joel Kotkin and Chris Christie, are dishonest trolls who are not likely to be swayed by any argument here, and the best thing to do is to discredit them and hope they go away. Some, like Roger K. Lewis and Walter Hook, seem to share my goals, but are clueless as to how to accomplish them and too arrogant to realize how clueless they are; I try to point out what's wrong with their arguments, but don't have much hope that they'll change them. Others, like Yonah Freemark and Steven Higashide, I regard as allies who share most of my goals and are generally pretty sharp; I try to be pretty gentle with them and hope they'll see my side of things.
The Urbanophile is definitely in the third group: he clearly cares about cities and the environment, and is always looking to learn more and revise his thinking, so let's all hope that he reads this, doesn't get defensive, and is persuaded that no, we don't actually need to build very many roads at all.
Basically, the Urbanophile argues that the population of the U.S. is growing, and in the last decade the country added more people than were living in the top twelve cities in the country. Future populations will need a way to get to work, but a lot of the jobs are in the suburbs, and building new transit is hard. Therefore, we should build highways to avoid "decades of commuting misery." Let me take each of these one by one.
The population of the U.S. may have grown quite a bit over the last decade, but as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future return. As a specialist in Rust Belt cities, the Urbanophile knows that populations can go down.
Migration is the primary source of population growth in the United States, and it is not some mysterious force of nature. It is a phenomenon whose causes are pretty well-understood: if life sucks in one place, move to another where you think it won't suck as much. When the U.S. economy tanked, a lot of Mexicans decided not to come here.
But let's assume that we will see a significant increase in the population over the next fifty years. Why does that mean we need more roads?
Do we need more roads because there's no room in the walkable, transit-oriented old urban areas? No, because we can just build more walkable, transit-oriented new urban areas. Do we need more roads because the jobs are in the suburbs? No. If more people come, it's because they expect there to be jobs for them, and these new jobs can be located in walkable urban areas. Alternatively, we could transform the sprawl where the existing jobs are into walkable urban areas and build residential developments within easy walking or transit access.
And now the weakest point in the Urbanophile's argument:
But even if we achieve our potential in transit, America still needs to build more roads. We've got an interstate system originally designed for a 1960 population of 180 million and we are now well over 300 million and going up. By 2050 we'll have more than double the 1960 population. This will require a major expansion of infrastructure, and that includes highway infrastructure.
There is nothing that says that a major expansion of infrastructure will require any of it to be highway infrastructure. You might just as well say that since we have a canal system originally designed for an 1820 population of ten million, we have to dig more canals. There may be good reasons to build roads, but the fact that our roads were originally designed for a smaller population is not one of them.
Finally, let's look at the way the Urbanophile frames the whole piece:
Road are clearly out of fashion in urban planning circles. Conventional wisdom now decries roads in favor of public transit, walking or biking in developments designed to mimic traditional 19th century urbanism. Common refrains are “we can't build our way out of congestion” or “widening roads to cure congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.” Also frequently noted is the vehicle miles traveled has – at least until recently – outpaced population growth.The principle that we can't build our way out of congestion is not "conventional wisdom." It's an established generalization built on observations of multiple events over the course of the twentieth century. It has provided the basis for past predictions that have proven true. It does not obscure the idea that we need to expand infrastructure to keep pace with a growing country. On the contrary, it shows how unwise it is to apply that idea unthinkingly and simplistically.
But this piece of conventional wisdom is also deeply flawed. It obscures the bigger point that in a growing country we need to expand infrastructure to keep pace.
[...]
Thanks to a fortuitous lease of the Indiana Toll Road however, over 50 miles of freeway in the region are now being widened. Without this, the region would have faced decades of commuting misery.
Sure, it's possible to fail to build adequate infrastructure to deal with a growing population; this has happened in Lagos, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. But the assumption that all infrastructure must include a minimum proportion of auto infrastructure guarantees an incentive for people to drive, and is essentially a recipe for decades of commuting misery.
There's a larger point about the relative efficiency of various transportation infrastructure, but I'll leave that for another post. I'm going to close with this request: that the Urbanophile take seriously the principle of induced demand, learn about it, and put the same amount of thought and energy into any critique of it that I put into this critique of his ideas. Dismissing it out of hand as "conventional wisdom" is arrogant, thoughtless and disrespectful. It's the kind of thing I'd expect from Joel Kotkin or Roger K. Lewis, but I generally think that Aaron M. Renn is above that.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Market distortions at 4PM
We've fairly well established that New York Times transportation reporter Michael Grynbaum is short-sighted about traffic calming, bus improvements and commuting costs. Now Stephen Smith at Market Urbanism shows that Grynbaum is pretty clueless about market forces too.
Most of Grynbaum's article is a fairly straightforward explanation of large numbers of New York City taxi drivers take a break between 4:00 and 5:00 PM. Some people have long suspected that, but were unable to prove it. Recently, though, the city forced all medallion drivers to install GPS tracking devices in their cabs, so now they have proof that hundreds of cabs go off-duty during this time.
Stephen is most upset about this quote:
The city's control of supply and prices are just two of the ways that its interference in the market have caused this. Grynbaum mentions two more, but he doesn't seem to recognize them:
The other big market distortion is the "free" toll on the Queensboro and Williamsburg Bridges. We're paying hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to rebuild those bridges, and the taxi drivers get to use them for free. This subsidy is an added incentive for them to locate in Long Island City and Sunnyside instead of paying Manhattan rents.
This finally explains why it takes twice as long as I expect for the Q32 bus to go across the bridge at 4:00 PM, inbound or outbound. It's not that a ton of office workers have left early, or are coming in for second shift late. It's that the bridge and the surrounding streets are clogged with hundreds of taxis that would have otherwise stayed in Manhattan. Gee, thanks, Mike Gianaris!
(Of course, there's Grynbaum's windshield perspective at work. He could have said, "Ever wonder why your bus takes twice as long to cross the Queensboro Bridge between 4 and 5 PM?" Instead, he aimed it at taxi passengers. To be sure, the average Times reader is probably more likely to have tried to hail a cab at 4:30 PM than to have taken a bus across the Queensboro Bridge, but it's still annoying.)
Most of Grynbaum's article is a fairly straightforward explanation of large numbers of New York City taxi drivers take a break between 4:00 and 5:00 PM. Some people have long suspected that, but were unable to prove it. Recently, though, the city forced all medallion drivers to install GPS tracking devices in their cabs, so now they have proof that hundreds of cabs go off-duty during this time.
Stephen is most upset about this quote:
The hour from 4 to 5 p.m. has long been considered a low tide of taxi service, the maddening moment when, in apparent violation of the laws of supply and demand, entire fleets of empty yellow cabs flip on their off-duty lights and proceed past the outstretched hands of office workers seeking a way home.I honestly don't have as big a problem with it as he does. He claims that "for supply and demand to work, you need drivers to be able to charge their own prices and enter markets at will." But this is not quite true. Regulation doesn't do away with the laws of supply and demand, it just distorts them, and in this case it decouples the price from the demand level, giving drivers the incentive to walk away from that demand. To be fair to Grynbaum, he uses the word "apparent" to indicate that while a potential passenger might expect the demand of his raised hand to be satisfied by the market, that's not what's happening, and he lays out the market distortions.
The city's control of supply and prices are just two of the ways that its interference in the market have caused this. Grynbaum mentions two more, but he doesn't seem to recognize them:
When the changeover became standard, its timing did not pose a big problem for passengers. Many taxi garages were situated on the far West Side of Manhattan, requiring cabs to make only a short trip to 11th Avenue before heading back to Midtown with a fresh driver.Bob Fitch's the Assassination of New York is a bit dated, but it's still a great counterpoint to Bob Caro's the Power Broker, bringing us up to date through the nineties about various development shenanigans. If you've read it, you know that the Hudson Yards and the extension of the #7 subway are just the most recent of a long line of market manipulations by the City, the State, the Port Authority and even the Regional Plan Association, aiming to bring up property values on the West Side, in part to prop up the failed real estate investments of David Rockefeller and William Zeckendorf.
But in the 1980s, as commercial rents rose, taxi fleets began migrating across the East River, particularly to Long Island City, Queens. The 5 p.m. shift change now included a journey over the often-packed Queensboro Bridge, not to mention the return slog to the city. Drivers started going off duty between 4 and 4:30 p.m., to ensure that they had enough time to make it to the garage; even today, tardy cabbies can be hit with a $30 fine.
The other big market distortion is the "free" toll on the Queensboro and Williamsburg Bridges. We're paying hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to rebuild those bridges, and the taxi drivers get to use them for free. This subsidy is an added incentive for them to locate in Long Island City and Sunnyside instead of paying Manhattan rents.
This finally explains why it takes twice as long as I expect for the Q32 bus to go across the bridge at 4:00 PM, inbound or outbound. It's not that a ton of office workers have left early, or are coming in for second shift late. It's that the bridge and the surrounding streets are clogged with hundreds of taxis that would have otherwise stayed in Manhattan. Gee, thanks, Mike Gianaris!
(Of course, there's Grynbaum's windshield perspective at work. He could have said, "Ever wonder why your bus takes twice as long to cross the Queensboro Bridge between 4 and 5 PM?" Instead, he aimed it at taxi passengers. To be sure, the average Times reader is probably more likely to have tried to hail a cab at 4:30 PM than to have taken a bus across the Queensboro Bridge, but it's still annoying.)
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