For years I've been reading about various plans to redevelop the Willets Point area, each worse than the last. Each time I wonder why everyone's so convinced that Something Must Be Done. It's not a slum where people live in close quarters and can die of diphtheria or something. On its own terms, it's a successful business district. Why do people care about this forlorn corner of the borough? And why the urgency?
There are some people whose goals are obvious: those who have a direct financial interest. The Related Companies and the Wilpon family are the main investors in the current scheme, and they stand to make a profit in rent and property sales. In addition, the Mets could get more business from residents and customers, who figure they might as well take in a game while they're in the area.
There may be some other business owners who see themselves as "on the way" to Willets Point, and hope to make some money that way. And then there are all the "economic hunters" (like the Queens Chamber of Commerce and Deputy Mayor Robert Steel) who see this as a way to bring jobs and tax revenue to the city.
I have a lot of trouble relating. First of all, I have no direct financial interest. Second, I'm much more of a fan of economic gardening than hunting. What that means, as Chuck Marohn describes, is finding a way to help ten small businesses add ten jobs, rather than a single business adding a hundred jobs.
For existing small businesses in Queens to benefit from this new development, they would have to be perceived as "on the way," and I just don't see that with the current plans. Maybe some drivers would think about getting off the highway to shop or dine, and maybe some would think about getting off the number 7 train, but most of the proximity boost comes from walking. The current setup actively discourages walking, and none of the plans would do much to improve that.
So why is Willets Point so urgent? It's not like it's the only industrial area in the city with crappy streets. After thinking and thinking, I believe I've finally figured it out: you can see it from Citifield. It's even closer and more visible than it was from Shea Stadium. It's right across the street, staring you in the face: junkyards! unpaved streets! grimy brown people in work clothes!
I'm guessing that someone has a box seat in Citifield with a grand view of the junkyards behind the field, and the Wilpons look out at the thing every day. They got ahold of the politicians and the Queens Chamber of Commerce, and there you go.
Of course, it's not your problem or my problem. To paraphrase the office proverb, lack of tolerance for muddy streets on their part does not constitute an emergency on our part. But it looks like they've got enough clout to make it an emergency for us.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Balaji Prabhakar and the mystery rewards
Last week, the Times ran a gee-whiz article about Stanford computer scientist Balaji Prabhakar and his pilot program to reduce the number of people driving to campus. With a three million dollar (!) grant from the US DOT, it implements a lottery where people who choose not to drive during peak hours get credits which can be used to "win random cash rewards from $2 to $50 over and over again."
Whenever I enter a random drawing - that I actually care about, as opposed to paying a dollar for a charity raffle - I always want to find out what the odds are that I'll win. Interestingly, the Stanford pilot gives no indication of the odds that a driver will actually win one of these payouts. It makes me wonder how many economists, investors and statisticians signed up for the thing.
This is a more recent version of a pilot that Prabhakar and his colleagues ran in Bangalore, where commuters from downtown to the suburban call centers received similar random cash rewards for shifting to a less congested time. Interestingly, in that earlier version they were all bus passengers, and got rewarded for taking the bus.
The Stanford team did publish a paper (PDF) describing the Bangalore pilot, in which they go into detail about the reward system on Page 4:
In figure 3, it is revealed that there were 8000 commuters registered in January 2005. With 66 rewards, the chance of winning any reward is one in 121, which is pretty good as far as lotteries go. With one lottery a week, it is likely that any given commuter will win the ₨500 reward within three years. If we assume that each commuter works with ten other commuters, any given commuter will know someone who has won within three months.
My guess is that these odds were high enough to get people to change their behavior on the basis of feeling alone. That's pretty impressive. I have serious problems with the framing of the issue and concerns about the application of this idea, which I'll raise in future posts.
Whenever I enter a random drawing - that I actually care about, as opposed to paying a dollar for a charity raffle - I always want to find out what the odds are that I'll win. Interestingly, the Stanford pilot gives no indication of the odds that a driver will actually win one of these payouts. It makes me wonder how many economists, investors and statisticians signed up for the thing.
This is a more recent version of a pilot that Prabhakar and his colleagues ran in Bangalore, where commuters from downtown to the suburban call centers received similar random cash rewards for shifting to a less congested time. Interestingly, in that earlier version they were all bus passengers, and got rewarded for taking the bus.
The Stanford team did publish a paper (PDF) describing the Bangalore pilot, in which they go into detail about the reward system on Page 4:
Reward pyramid: The scheme has a pyramidal reward structure with four levels, as shown in Figure 9. The reward amounts are Rs. 500, Rs. 2,000, Rs. 6,000 and Rs. 12,000 in levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. The total sum of money in the pyramid is Rs. 96,000, distributed equally among the four levels. (Note that this amount is roughly equal to the total cost of extra fuel per week which was estimated at Rs. 15,000 per day.) Thus, there are 48 prizes worth Rs. 500 each, 12 worth Rs. 2,000, 4 worth Rs. 6,000 and 2 worth Rs. 12,000. Each level has a minimum number of credits needed for qualifying at that level. This number is 3, 7, 12 and 20 for levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. A commuter who qualifies at one level automatically qualifies at all lower levels.In other words, the only way to know your chance of winning any given prize is to know which level you've achieved and how many other people are in each level. You could, of course, write a computer program to tell the commuter what the odds are for each level on a given day, but why bother if nobody cares?
In figure 3, it is revealed that there were 8000 commuters registered in January 2005. With 66 rewards, the chance of winning any reward is one in 121, which is pretty good as far as lotteries go. With one lottery a week, it is likely that any given commuter will win the ₨500 reward within three years. If we assume that each commuter works with ten other commuters, any given commuter will know someone who has won within three months.
My guess is that these odds were high enough to get people to change their behavior on the basis of feeling alone. That's pretty impressive. I have serious problems with the framing of the issue and concerns about the application of this idea, which I'll raise in future posts.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Community boards would stifle transit innovation
Recently I expressed doubt that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority could create an innovative bus service like the Koreana van between Flushing and Fort Lee. Commenter Three Station Square gave a couple of counterexamples: the M60, introduced in 1992, connected 125th Street in Manhattan with La Guardia Airport, and the S89, introduced in 2007, connects the West Shore of Staten Island with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. George K pointed out that the S89 followed part of the route of Joel Azumah's 144 bus, but that in turn had taken over the route from Red and Tan in Hudson County.
Most of the innovations listed by Three Station Square are tweaks, including the extension of the Q5 and Q85 across the city limits to the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream. And they're good tweaks; we like them, right? Well, you can expect even those to go away if one of "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's proposals is adopted.
Schwartz's "equitable transportation formula" includes this point: "No service reductions on local buses for three years without Community Board approval." Sounds great, right? We hate service cuts, and we like community. More power to the community! What could possibly go wrong?
Any transit expansion advocate who's ever been to a New York City community board meeting knows exactly what's wrong with that. Many of the people who are involved in community boards are nice people who really want to do what's best for their city and their neighborhood. But the boards themselves are undemocratic and tend to be dominated by drivers and obsessed with increasing the supply of free parking. Their proceedings are almost always reactive and usually reactionary. They tend to stifle and oppose growth and innovation.
Some of you may be familiar with London's borough councils (elected by district) or Paris's district councils (elected at large). The community boards are nothing like that. Prospective members must be nominated by either their City Council member or the Borough President, and then approved by the Borough President's office. Some councilmembers and borough presidents value inclusiveness and a diversity of opinion, and some don't. Community board members are all volunteers, and the significant time commitment makes it difficult for people with day jobs to attend.
As a result, the boards tend to be dominated by people who are older and wealthier than the average for the district. In 2012 that means that they tend to own cars and drive them, to see driving and parking as an inalienable right, and to identify more with drivers than with pedestrians, cyclists or transit riders. The top issues they care about seem to be: (1) getting developers to provide more parking, (2) preventing anyone from interfering with double parking, (3) preventing traffic changes that they fear would overwhelm the neighborhood with cars, and (4) doing something about those damn bikers that almost ran over poor Connie.
Older and wealthier people also tend to be more interested in protecting what they already have than in getting more that they might use in the future. As a result, transportation discussions at community boards tend to be about preserving existing rights and privileges. There is very little interest in innovation. When they do support innovation, it's usually ornamental initiatives that present no threat to the car-oriented status quo. Why risk what you've worked so hard to get?
I have a number of friends who put in a lot of time and energy on community boards around the city. This is not to denigrate their efforts; it's important for someone to show up and make it clear that these aren't the only people in "the community." But I think they'd all agree that giving more power to community boards is a bad idea.
Basically, if you want to kill an idea, the best way to do it is to require community board approval. Which is why I'd be fine with requiring community board approval to buy leaky headphones, or to walk up the down side of the staircase, or to split a line at the Duane Reade. But transit cuts are not like that.
So why wouldn't I want to kill transit cuts? Because you can't have transit expansion without transit cuts. As I wrote on Sunday, for an agency to try something new, it needs to be able to cut it if it isn't working out.
In the case of across-the board reductions like we saw in 2010, community boards can't prevent the State Assembly from cutting the transit budget. They can only tie the MTA's hands as they try to deal with those budget cuts. Schwartz's proposal would not make the cuts go away. It would either force the MTA to borrow more or raise fares, or it would hold back service reductions on routes that are popular with influential community members, usually the elderly. Other routes would have to be reduced even more to compensate.
As with the bogus fairness, the elevated busways and the dollar fare reductions in neighborhoods with no subways, this is an idea that may sound nice to people who don't know that much about transit. But under scrutiny, it falls apart.
Yes, we need tolls on the East River bridges, and I agree with the many people who have argued that it will happen sooner or later. It's not worth all these bad things to make it happen sooner. Almost all of the elements in Schwartz's plan would lead to a net increase in driving citywide, and that's not what we're in this for.
Most of the innovations listed by Three Station Square are tweaks, including the extension of the Q5 and Q85 across the city limits to the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream. And they're good tweaks; we like them, right? Well, you can expect even those to go away if one of "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's proposals is adopted.
Schwartz's "equitable transportation formula" includes this point: "No service reductions on local buses for three years without Community Board approval." Sounds great, right? We hate service cuts, and we like community. More power to the community! What could possibly go wrong?
Any transit expansion advocate who's ever been to a New York City community board meeting knows exactly what's wrong with that. Many of the people who are involved in community boards are nice people who really want to do what's best for their city and their neighborhood. But the boards themselves are undemocratic and tend to be dominated by drivers and obsessed with increasing the supply of free parking. Their proceedings are almost always reactive and usually reactionary. They tend to stifle and oppose growth and innovation.
Some of you may be familiar with London's borough councils (elected by district) or Paris's district councils (elected at large). The community boards are nothing like that. Prospective members must be nominated by either their City Council member or the Borough President, and then approved by the Borough President's office. Some councilmembers and borough presidents value inclusiveness and a diversity of opinion, and some don't. Community board members are all volunteers, and the significant time commitment makes it difficult for people with day jobs to attend.
As a result, the boards tend to be dominated by people who are older and wealthier than the average for the district. In 2012 that means that they tend to own cars and drive them, to see driving and parking as an inalienable right, and to identify more with drivers than with pedestrians, cyclists or transit riders. The top issues they care about seem to be: (1) getting developers to provide more parking, (2) preventing anyone from interfering with double parking, (3) preventing traffic changes that they fear would overwhelm the neighborhood with cars, and (4) doing something about those damn bikers that almost ran over poor Connie.
Older and wealthier people also tend to be more interested in protecting what they already have than in getting more that they might use in the future. As a result, transportation discussions at community boards tend to be about preserving existing rights and privileges. There is very little interest in innovation. When they do support innovation, it's usually ornamental initiatives that present no threat to the car-oriented status quo. Why risk what you've worked so hard to get?
I have a number of friends who put in a lot of time and energy on community boards around the city. This is not to denigrate their efforts; it's important for someone to show up and make it clear that these aren't the only people in "the community." But I think they'd all agree that giving more power to community boards is a bad idea.
Basically, if you want to kill an idea, the best way to do it is to require community board approval. Which is why I'd be fine with requiring community board approval to buy leaky headphones, or to walk up the down side of the staircase, or to split a line at the Duane Reade. But transit cuts are not like that.
So why wouldn't I want to kill transit cuts? Because you can't have transit expansion without transit cuts. As I wrote on Sunday, for an agency to try something new, it needs to be able to cut it if it isn't working out.
In the case of across-the board reductions like we saw in 2010, community boards can't prevent the State Assembly from cutting the transit budget. They can only tie the MTA's hands as they try to deal with those budget cuts. Schwartz's proposal would not make the cuts go away. It would either force the MTA to borrow more or raise fares, or it would hold back service reductions on routes that are popular with influential community members, usually the elderly. Other routes would have to be reduced even more to compensate.
As with the bogus fairness, the elevated busways and the dollar fare reductions in neighborhoods with no subways, this is an idea that may sound nice to people who don't know that much about transit. But under scrutiny, it falls apart.
Yes, we need tolls on the East River bridges, and I agree with the many people who have argued that it will happen sooner or later. It's not worth all these bad things to make it happen sooner. Almost all of the elements in Schwartz's plan would lead to a net increase in driving citywide, and that's not what we're in this for.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Hidden Downside of That Thing You Like
I've been unkind to Will Doig in the past; I think I called his frustrating police-our-own article about cycling "horseshit." It deserved a lot of criticism, but that was really not constructive. Despite that, Doig has been remarkably understanding and civil to me. He definitely deserves better, so I will do my best to be polite and constructive while tearing apart his latest piece about private transit.
Of all the problems with Doig's post, the worst is that it's a complete straw man. Personally, I don't really care if "libertarianism fails." It's kind of fun to see libertarianism fall on its face, but it's a hollow fun. LIbertarianism always gets back up and marches on, because its life force comes from a bizarre combination of Panglossianism, nature worship and abdication of social responsibility, so I've gotten kind of tired of cheering its failures. Plus, some of my friends are libertarians and when they're sad, I'm sad.
I'm upset when transit fails, because transit is one of our best tools to get people out of their cars. And I'm frustrated because Doig doesn't seem to realize that to the extent the Chinatown bus crackdown is a failure at all, it's one in a string of failures for transit. Taras Grescoe picked up on Doig's article and tweeted, "market romanticism is a dead-end." But as I wrote back to Grescoe, parochial state control is a dead-end as well. Doig says a lot about what the Chinatown buses have accomplished in the past several years, but he seems completely unconcerned at the idea that this could have come to an end, and that there's no hope for anything to replace them.
Of course the dangerous driving is a problem, and that's another part of the strawman: no libertarian I know would argue for private bus operators to be exempted from safety regulation, certainly not while regulatory restrictions remain on other forms of transportation. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration exists for a reason, and most people applaud when they do their jobs. I honestly don't think that this crackdown will destroy the Chinatown bus system, or private intercity bus service.
Last night I asked for others to chime in on the problems with Doig's article, and libertarian Stephen Smith (@marketurbanism) wrote, "First of all, all I'm seeing are anecdotes. Four people died recently in vans operated by Chinese people?? OMG!" Stephen is right. Doig is blowing the whole thing out of proportion. While the number of people killed and injured by negligent and incompetent private bus operators is significant and should not be ignored, it's still pretty small and not worth destroying a transit system for.
Doig also suffers from transportation myopia here. As I wrote last year, to the extent that those bus trips replace private car trips, or enable car-free lifestyles, they prevent injuries and deaths. Imagine the carnage if all the Chinatown bus passengers were out behind the wheel. Think about the overnight gamblers, driving four hours to Foxwoods and four hours back after twelve hours on their feet in a restaurant.
Stephen continued, "Secondly, there are very few marginally profitable public bus routes in the US – there're no profits to poach!" This is not entirely true; in the New York City Transit system there are 23 bus routes that do make an operating profit, which is then used to run the 167 unprofitable routes. But the total operating profit in 2010 for these routes was only $27 million, less than a tenth of the combined loss from the other routes and 0.38% of NYC Transit's total expenses for that year (including all the subways). If NYC Transit turned over all the profitable routes to private operators it wouldn't make a dent in the budget.
So my constructive criticism to Will Doig is this: please get a sense of perspective! One of Doig's favorite formulas - and he's far from alone in this - is "The Hidden Downside of That Thing You Like." In this article he gets digs in at food trucks and pop-up parks as well. Next time I would appreciate if he asked the following questions: Is this Thing really so bad, when we compare it with all the other things like it? Of all the possible alternative things, how many are any better? How likely is it that we could have one of these better things?
Of all the problems with Doig's post, the worst is that it's a complete straw man. Personally, I don't really care if "libertarianism fails." It's kind of fun to see libertarianism fall on its face, but it's a hollow fun. LIbertarianism always gets back up and marches on, because its life force comes from a bizarre combination of Panglossianism, nature worship and abdication of social responsibility, so I've gotten kind of tired of cheering its failures. Plus, some of my friends are libertarians and when they're sad, I'm sad.
I'm upset when transit fails, because transit is one of our best tools to get people out of their cars. And I'm frustrated because Doig doesn't seem to realize that to the extent the Chinatown bus crackdown is a failure at all, it's one in a string of failures for transit. Taras Grescoe picked up on Doig's article and tweeted, "market romanticism is a dead-end." But as I wrote back to Grescoe, parochial state control is a dead-end as well. Doig says a lot about what the Chinatown buses have accomplished in the past several years, but he seems completely unconcerned at the idea that this could have come to an end, and that there's no hope for anything to replace them.
Of course the dangerous driving is a problem, and that's another part of the strawman: no libertarian I know would argue for private bus operators to be exempted from safety regulation, certainly not while regulatory restrictions remain on other forms of transportation. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration exists for a reason, and most people applaud when they do their jobs. I honestly don't think that this crackdown will destroy the Chinatown bus system, or private intercity bus service.
Last night I asked for others to chime in on the problems with Doig's article, and libertarian Stephen Smith (@marketurbanism) wrote, "First of all, all I'm seeing are anecdotes. Four people died recently in vans operated by Chinese people?? OMG!" Stephen is right. Doig is blowing the whole thing out of proportion. While the number of people killed and injured by negligent and incompetent private bus operators is significant and should not be ignored, it's still pretty small and not worth destroying a transit system for.
Doig also suffers from transportation myopia here. As I wrote last year, to the extent that those bus trips replace private car trips, or enable car-free lifestyles, they prevent injuries and deaths. Imagine the carnage if all the Chinatown bus passengers were out behind the wheel. Think about the overnight gamblers, driving four hours to Foxwoods and four hours back after twelve hours on their feet in a restaurant.
Stephen continued, "Secondly, there are very few marginally profitable public bus routes in the US – there're no profits to poach!" This is not entirely true; in the New York City Transit system there are 23 bus routes that do make an operating profit, which is then used to run the 167 unprofitable routes. But the total operating profit in 2010 for these routes was only $27 million, less than a tenth of the combined loss from the other routes and 0.38% of NYC Transit's total expenses for that year (including all the subways). If NYC Transit turned over all the profitable routes to private operators it wouldn't make a dent in the budget.
So my constructive criticism to Will Doig is this: please get a sense of perspective! One of Doig's favorite formulas - and he's far from alone in this - is "The Hidden Downside of That Thing You Like." In this article he gets digs in at food trucks and pop-up parks as well. Next time I would appreciate if he asked the following questions: Is this Thing really so bad, when we compare it with all the other things like it? Of all the possible alternative things, how many are any better? How likely is it that we could have one of these better things?
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Could the MTA ever run the Koreana van?
Last night I wrote about a new van service running from Flushing, Queens to Fort Lee and Palisades Park, New Jersey. The service is privately owned and operated, and charges ten dollars each way (with a free trip every ten rides). Now let me ask: Can you imagine the Metropolitan Transit Authority starting such a service?
The wonkiest among you may reply, "No, because crossing the Hudson is the Port Authority's job." Fair enough; can you imagine the Port Authority starting such a service? As far as I know, the Port Authority has never initiated a new transit service at all. The only one they run is the PATH trains, which they took over when they bought the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad in 1962. They rely on New Jersey Transit and private companies to provide transit across the Hudson.
Starting a service like this - a service that crosses a state line and two rivers, and charges ten dollars! - is not something that the Port Authority, or the MTA, or any of our transit bureaucracies, would ever do under the current circumstances. Only a few people at either agency has enough power, and for them the risks are too great, and the rewards too small.
Back in January, MTA Chief of Operations Planning Peter Cafiero announced that the authority would be shutting down the number 7 line for eleven weekends from late January through mid-April, and again for five weekends in the fall. Regular reader Angus Grieve-Smith picked up on an idea that I floated a couple of years ago to run shuttle buses through the Midtown Tunnel, and convinced City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer to back it with city money.
The MTA refused, according to the Post: "MTA chiefs balked at his idea, Van Bramer said, because they worried that if they offered it to 7 riders, they’d have to do the same for other communities that deal with serial service outages, like those along the L line." One of their complaints is that even if the tunnel bus worked, it would be a lot more expensive than a shuttle to Queensboro Plaza. I'm not convinced of this in the first place; note that they studied shuttle routes to Grand Central, even though I argued for using the 34th Street busway instead.
In addition to the "then we'd have to give ice cream to everyone" argument, transit agencies are often also reluctant to increase service if they have any fear that they might have to cut it back again later. In part this is because service cuts require so many hearings and announcements, and offer opportunities for politicians to rail against "the MTA." Why would any self-respecting bureaucrat set themselves up for more public criticism than the minimum they can get away with? It's similar to the argument that severance pay and other measures that make it difficult to fire people also make employers reluctant to hire.
Can anyone remember the last time the MTA started a new bus route? It has acquired routes that were started by old streetcar and jitney companies. It has regularized and streamlined the system, combining some routes, splitting others and renaming some. But has it ever said, "You know, there are people here who want to go there. They're willing to pay for that. Let's make that happen!
The only possibility I can think of are the express bus routes that were started in the 1970s. The Select Bus routes are upgrades of existing routes, and they're being pushed by the Department of Transportation. There were a few other routes proposed as part of the congestion pricing debate (including a local route from down Northern Boulevard and 61st Street from Flushing to Woodside), but they never saw the light of day.
The MTA did not realize that there were lots of people in Sunset Park, Flushing and Elmhurst who wanted a quick, one-seat ride to Chinatown. If they ever did figure that out, they did not try to provide that service. If private operators had not stepped in to provide it, would we know that the market exists? What other potential routes are we missing out on?
The wonkiest among you may reply, "No, because crossing the Hudson is the Port Authority's job." Fair enough; can you imagine the Port Authority starting such a service? As far as I know, the Port Authority has never initiated a new transit service at all. The only one they run is the PATH trains, which they took over when they bought the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad in 1962. They rely on New Jersey Transit and private companies to provide transit across the Hudson.
Starting a service like this - a service that crosses a state line and two rivers, and charges ten dollars! - is not something that the Port Authority, or the MTA, or any of our transit bureaucracies, would ever do under the current circumstances. Only a few people at either agency has enough power, and for them the risks are too great, and the rewards too small.
Back in January, MTA Chief of Operations Planning Peter Cafiero announced that the authority would be shutting down the number 7 line for eleven weekends from late January through mid-April, and again for five weekends in the fall. Regular reader Angus Grieve-Smith picked up on an idea that I floated a couple of years ago to run shuttle buses through the Midtown Tunnel, and convinced City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer to back it with city money.
The MTA refused, according to the Post: "MTA chiefs balked at his idea, Van Bramer said, because they worried that if they offered it to 7 riders, they’d have to do the same for other communities that deal with serial service outages, like those along the L line." One of their complaints is that even if the tunnel bus worked, it would be a lot more expensive than a shuttle to Queensboro Plaza. I'm not convinced of this in the first place; note that they studied shuttle routes to Grand Central, even though I argued for using the 34th Street busway instead.
In addition to the "then we'd have to give ice cream to everyone" argument, transit agencies are often also reluctant to increase service if they have any fear that they might have to cut it back again later. In part this is because service cuts require so many hearings and announcements, and offer opportunities for politicians to rail against "the MTA." Why would any self-respecting bureaucrat set themselves up for more public criticism than the minimum they can get away with? It's similar to the argument that severance pay and other measures that make it difficult to fire people also make employers reluctant to hire.
Can anyone remember the last time the MTA started a new bus route? It has acquired routes that were started by old streetcar and jitney companies. It has regularized and streamlined the system, combining some routes, splitting others and renaming some. But has it ever said, "You know, there are people here who want to go there. They're willing to pay for that. Let's make that happen!
The only possibility I can think of are the express bus routes that were started in the 1970s. The Select Bus routes are upgrades of existing routes, and they're being pushed by the Department of Transportation. There were a few other routes proposed as part of the congestion pricing debate (including a local route from down Northern Boulevard and 61st Street from Flushing to Woodside), but they never saw the light of day.
The MTA did not realize that there were lots of people in Sunset Park, Flushing and Elmhurst who wanted a quick, one-seat ride to Chinatown. If they ever did figure that out, they did not try to provide that service. If private operators had not stepped in to provide it, would we know that the market exists? What other potential routes are we missing out on?
Friday, June 8, 2012
New van service connects Queens and New Jersey
You've all heard about the Brooklyn dollar vans, run primarily by Jamaican and Haitian immigrants connecting various Black neighborhoods to downtown. You may have heard about the vans connecting the subway and Long Island Railroad stations in Jamaica (the neighborhood in Queens, not the island) with other Black neighborhoods in Southeast Queens, also run by West Indians. If you're faithful readers of this blog, you've heard about the network of Chinatown vans, run by Chinese immigrants, connecting Chinatown, Flushing, Elmhurst and Sunset Park. You've also heard about the New Jersey vans, connecting the Port Authority bus terminals in Midtown and Washington Heights with various towns in Hudson, Bergen and Passaic counties, run by Dominicans, Peruvians and Egyptians, among others.
I have a new addition to this list: Korean vans from Queens to Bergen County, New Jersey. As far as I know, this is the only direct transit service connecting the west side of the Hudson with the east side of the East River, except for a few sports specials. It's definitely the only transit service I know of that connects the two without stopping in Manhattan at all.
Last month, I was walking in Flushing with Stephen Smith and saw a van with a web URL on the side. I looked it up and discovered that Koreana Tours, a travel agency, is running a regularly scheduled van service (scroll down for English) from Flushing to Fort Lee and Palisades Park. If you've ever been to those places, you know that along with Koreatown on 32nd Street in Manhattan, they're the biggest Korean communities in the area, so it makes perfect sense that a van would make that trip.
Today I showed up at the Koreana Tours office at the corner of Union Street and 39th Avenue, just a couple blocks from the Main Street subway station. I had time to grab a pastry at the cafe across the street, and then the van pulled in to the Municipal Parking Lot. At first the driver and the manager didn't believe that a white guy wanted to take a Korean bus, but when I said I wanted to go to Fort Lee they were happy to take my ten dollars. They even gave me one of these stamp cards, so if I take the van ten times I get a free ride, just like buying coffee.
The fifteen-passenger van had an extra high roof, and was almost brand new and spotless (at least until I dropped a couple pastry crumbs on the floor). The radio was tuned to some top 40 station - no Korean pop music the way that the Chinatown vans play Chinese music, the Jamaican vans play reggae and hip-hop, and the Dominican vans play merengue and reggaeton. The van pulled out at 1:30 on the nose, and about forty minutes later dropped me off at the Bridge Plaza bus stop in Fort Lee. It continued on to Main Street in Palisades Park, which probably didn't take very long. At Bridge Plaza I could have gotten vans to take me to Paterson or Jersey City, and a number of other buses, but I had other business. The back of the card has a copy of the schedule:
As you can see, this is not a jitney, it's a scheduled service with six runs a day in each direction. It took me a little while to figure it out, but it seems clear to me that the departure times for Fort Lee and Palisades Park are reversed. So for example, after the van dropped me off in Fort Lee at 2:10, it continued on and picked up more passengers in Palisades Park at 2:20, then came back to Fort Lee at 2:30 and arrived back in Flushing at 3:10. The 9:20AM and 8:20PM runs continue on to Kennedy Airport.
I have a new addition to this list: Korean vans from Queens to Bergen County, New Jersey. As far as I know, this is the only direct transit service connecting the west side of the Hudson with the east side of the East River, except for a few sports specials. It's definitely the only transit service I know of that connects the two without stopping in Manhattan at all.
Last month, I was walking in Flushing with Stephen Smith and saw a van with a web URL on the side. I looked it up and discovered that Koreana Tours, a travel agency, is running a regularly scheduled van service (scroll down for English) from Flushing to Fort Lee and Palisades Park. If you've ever been to those places, you know that along with Koreatown on 32nd Street in Manhattan, they're the biggest Korean communities in the area, so it makes perfect sense that a van would make that trip.
Today I showed up at the Koreana Tours office at the corner of Union Street and 39th Avenue, just a couple blocks from the Main Street subway station. I had time to grab a pastry at the cafe across the street, and then the van pulled in to the Municipal Parking Lot. At first the driver and the manager didn't believe that a white guy wanted to take a Korean bus, but when I said I wanted to go to Fort Lee they were happy to take my ten dollars. They even gave me one of these stamp cards, so if I take the van ten times I get a free ride, just like buying coffee.
The fifteen-passenger van had an extra high roof, and was almost brand new and spotless (at least until I dropped a couple pastry crumbs on the floor). The radio was tuned to some top 40 station - no Korean pop music the way that the Chinatown vans play Chinese music, the Jamaican vans play reggae and hip-hop, and the Dominican vans play merengue and reggaeton. The van pulled out at 1:30 on the nose, and about forty minutes later dropped me off at the Bridge Plaza bus stop in Fort Lee. It continued on to Main Street in Palisades Park, which probably didn't take very long. At Bridge Plaza I could have gotten vans to take me to Paterson or Jersey City, and a number of other buses, but I had other business. The back of the card has a copy of the schedule:
As you can see, this is not a jitney, it's a scheduled service with six runs a day in each direction. It took me a little while to figure it out, but it seems clear to me that the departure times for Fort Lee and Palisades Park are reversed. So for example, after the van dropped me off in Fort Lee at 2:10, it continued on and picked up more passengers in Palisades Park at 2:20, then came back to Fort Lee at 2:30 and arrived back in Flushing at 3:10. The 9:20AM and 8:20PM runs continue on to Kennedy Airport.
Friday, June 1, 2012
The empty promise of Gridlock Sam's dollar buses
As I wrote last week, the transit portions of "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's transportation proposal just feel kind of bizarre and divorced from reality. Sometimes it seems that the entire city's transportation advocacy discourse is dominated by drivers and cyclists. If occasionally a transit rider like Jay Walder may get a little bit of influence, they still don't get the support they need when the chips are down.
When drivers and cyclists make big plans that include transit, as in the current proposal from Gridlock Sam, the transit component runs the whole range of uninspiring, from mediocre (we'll consider restoring the 2010 cuts, but only on local bus routes) to other people's fads (elevated busways!) to WTF. The WTF in this case includes reducing the fares on buses "in neighborhoods with no subways" by a dollar, i.e. from $2.25 to $1.25.
Part of the problem here may be due to Powerpoint. It's possible that this is better thought out than it sounds, and it was edited into inanity to fit in one bullet point. But honestly, if your bus proposals don't get their own slides, what does that say about your priorities?
Anyway, so what's wrong with reducing bus fares to a dollar twenty-five in neighborhoods with no subways? In principle, nothing. But there are costs, and unforeseen consequences, and it's not clear what it will accomplish, if anything. The main cost is the opportunity cost: what else could we do with that money? Increase frequency on the buses; build bus bulbs or physically separated bus lanes; implement traffic signal priority or offboard fare payment. Or we could even use it to extend the E train to Valley Stream. With all these possibilities, why did Schwartz choose to spend the money lowering the fare?
Then there are the unforeseen consequences of lowering the bus fare. Many years ago I bought an "Apollo" inkjet printer for a hundred dollars; the sales people told me that it was made by Hewlett-Packard, and had the same technology as HP-branded printers. Why did HP go to the trouble of creating a separate company and brand for this printer? Because they didn't want anyone to see a brand new HP printer selling for a hundred dollars. They didn't want anyone to associate "HP" with "cheap" in their mind.
Buses already have a reputation in Staten Island, eastern Queens, southeastern Brooklyn and the eastern Bronx as cheap, crappy transportation for people who can't afford cars. A $1.25 bus fare will just reinforce that image. That's something that Schwartz seems to have no problem with - but it means giving up on the possibility that these areas will ever increase their transit mode share. I have a problem with that, and I hope you do too.
So reducing bus fares would spend money that we could instead use to expand the system and make it better, and it would probably reinforce the reputation of buses in the outer boroughs as cheap, crappy transportation. But is it worth that?
Well, is what worth that? Schwartz doesn't say what he expects to accomplish by reducing bus fares. On one level it seems obvious: save people $40 or more a week! But why save those people money, and not lower the fare for subway riders, and for people riding the buses in neighborhoods where there are subways? The answer can only be to encourage more people to ride buses in the outer boroughs. Presumably this is instead of driving, but it could be that Schwartz wants to encourage people to make bus trips that they wouldn't otherwise have made, or that they would have made by walking, but it's not clear to me what the value of that is. Mobility for mobility's sake?
It's not clear, anyway, that lowering the fare will do either of these things. To begin with, take a look at this chart from the most recent MTA Transit Committee meeting:
That's right, almost half the fares are paid with unlimited-ride Metrocards. There's no way to take a dollar off if you're not paying per ride!
Now, it's quite likely that the percentage of people paying with unlimited Metrocards is lower in the outer boroughs than in Manhattan, but I'll bet it's still pretty high. But beyond that, a lot of the people riding buses in "the two-fare zone" are transferring to subways, or even to buses that go to "neighborhoods with subways." A rush hour visit to Kew Gardens, Pelham Bay Park or Flatbush Avenue will give you a sense of how many. Presumably, when they make the transfer, and when they come back, they would spend that dollar anyway. Thus, the discount would only apply to trips that begin and end in neighborhoods without subways. How many is that, really?
For that tiny number of trips, the $2.25 fare is already lowered by the 7% pay-per-ride bonus if the passengers pay with Metrocards and not cash. Many of the people riding those trips would be disabled and senior citizens eligible for the 50% discount on top of that. Whether the fare is $1.10, or $2.05, how often is that really a deterrent? Keep in mind that many of these people already pay a market price of $2 for "dollar vans."
Finally, if we're talking about getting people out of their cars, we know how much people pay to own and insure a car, and drive and park it on the streets of New York City. How many of them are sensitive to a few dollars in bus fare?
As you can see, I've tried mightily to make sense of this. I probably spent a lot more time on it than it deserves. And I'm pretty damn sure that I put more time and thought into it than Sam Schwartz or anyone who's working for him on this plan. A dollar reduction in fares in "neighborhoods without subways" is hard to implement, would accomplish very little, would probably be counterproductive, and would take money from more worthy uses.
When drivers and cyclists make big plans that include transit, as in the current proposal from Gridlock Sam, the transit component runs the whole range of uninspiring, from mediocre (we'll consider restoring the 2010 cuts, but only on local bus routes) to other people's fads (elevated busways!) to WTF. The WTF in this case includes reducing the fares on buses "in neighborhoods with no subways" by a dollar, i.e. from $2.25 to $1.25.
Part of the problem here may be due to Powerpoint. It's possible that this is better thought out than it sounds, and it was edited into inanity to fit in one bullet point. But honestly, if your bus proposals don't get their own slides, what does that say about your priorities?
Anyway, so what's wrong with reducing bus fares to a dollar twenty-five in neighborhoods with no subways? In principle, nothing. But there are costs, and unforeseen consequences, and it's not clear what it will accomplish, if anything. The main cost is the opportunity cost: what else could we do with that money? Increase frequency on the buses; build bus bulbs or physically separated bus lanes; implement traffic signal priority or offboard fare payment. Or we could even use it to extend the E train to Valley Stream. With all these possibilities, why did Schwartz choose to spend the money lowering the fare?
Then there are the unforeseen consequences of lowering the bus fare. Many years ago I bought an "Apollo" inkjet printer for a hundred dollars; the sales people told me that it was made by Hewlett-Packard, and had the same technology as HP-branded printers. Why did HP go to the trouble of creating a separate company and brand for this printer? Because they didn't want anyone to see a brand new HP printer selling for a hundred dollars. They didn't want anyone to associate "HP" with "cheap" in their mind.
Buses already have a reputation in Staten Island, eastern Queens, southeastern Brooklyn and the eastern Bronx as cheap, crappy transportation for people who can't afford cars. A $1.25 bus fare will just reinforce that image. That's something that Schwartz seems to have no problem with - but it means giving up on the possibility that these areas will ever increase their transit mode share. I have a problem with that, and I hope you do too.
So reducing bus fares would spend money that we could instead use to expand the system and make it better, and it would probably reinforce the reputation of buses in the outer boroughs as cheap, crappy transportation. But is it worth that?
Well, is what worth that? Schwartz doesn't say what he expects to accomplish by reducing bus fares. On one level it seems obvious: save people $40 or more a week! But why save those people money, and not lower the fare for subway riders, and for people riding the buses in neighborhoods where there are subways? The answer can only be to encourage more people to ride buses in the outer boroughs. Presumably this is instead of driving, but it could be that Schwartz wants to encourage people to make bus trips that they wouldn't otherwise have made, or that they would have made by walking, but it's not clear to me what the value of that is. Mobility for mobility's sake?
It's not clear, anyway, that lowering the fare will do either of these things. To begin with, take a look at this chart from the most recent MTA Transit Committee meeting:
That's right, almost half the fares are paid with unlimited-ride Metrocards. There's no way to take a dollar off if you're not paying per ride!
Now, it's quite likely that the percentage of people paying with unlimited Metrocards is lower in the outer boroughs than in Manhattan, but I'll bet it's still pretty high. But beyond that, a lot of the people riding buses in "the two-fare zone" are transferring to subways, or even to buses that go to "neighborhoods with subways." A rush hour visit to Kew Gardens, Pelham Bay Park or Flatbush Avenue will give you a sense of how many. Presumably, when they make the transfer, and when they come back, they would spend that dollar anyway. Thus, the discount would only apply to trips that begin and end in neighborhoods without subways. How many is that, really?
For that tiny number of trips, the $2.25 fare is already lowered by the 7% pay-per-ride bonus if the passengers pay with Metrocards and not cash. Many of the people riding those trips would be disabled and senior citizens eligible for the 50% discount on top of that. Whether the fare is $1.10, or $2.05, how often is that really a deterrent? Keep in mind that many of these people already pay a market price of $2 for "dollar vans."
Finally, if we're talking about getting people out of their cars, we know how much people pay to own and insure a car, and drive and park it on the streets of New York City. How many of them are sensitive to a few dollars in bus fare?
As you can see, I've tried mightily to make sense of this. I probably spent a lot more time on it than it deserves. And I'm pretty damn sure that I put more time and thought into it than Sam Schwartz or anyone who's working for him on this plan. A dollar reduction in fares in "neighborhoods without subways" is hard to implement, would accomplish very little, would probably be counterproductive, and would take money from more worthy uses.
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