Yesterday I discussed how conservatives in this country have failed to support transit, despite having excellent reasons why it fits with their own ideology. Today it's the left's turn.
There are lots of liberal, radical, socialist and communist people who support transit, for good reasons. Properly-funded transit can provide access for all, while private car use discriminates against anyone who can't afford a car, gasoline, repairs and insurance. It brings people of different ethnic and class backgrounds together. It pollutes less and uses less energy, and it encourages dense living which is more efficient and less polluting.
There are plenty of conservatives, like this idiot, who see transit as a commie plot. Certainly, if you ask leftists whether they support public transit, you'll almost always get a yes answer. Campaign mailings from Greens and liberal Democrats regularly tout "support for transit."
Unfortunately, that support for transit is often very thin, and when it comes time to go beyond rhetoric and make hard choices, the left often fails. Here are some reasons why your lefty friend totally supports transit, but this case is different, man:
- Distracted by other issues. If a bookstore has an "Environment" or "Green living" section, good luck finding any books about transit there. It's all How You Can Build a Mountaintop Commune out of Old Twist-Ties and Barter Your Organic Gooseberry Jam for Biodiesel at the Contra Dance. Green politicians tend to either be wide-eyed technophiles (if Lovins is wrong, they don't want to be right) or back-to-the-land Luddites, or both at once.
- Conflicting priorities. Subaru wagon liberals may pay lip service to transit, but they still see cars as a tool to liberate and uplift the poor. Thus, they are easily swayed by Richard Brodsky's nonsensical claim that congestion pricing is a regressive tax. When the transit unions demand a wage increase to cover their car payments and their houses in Nassau County despite zero inflation, these liberals support it. They support the Los Angeles Bus Riders' Union when it insists on spending all the transit money on upfront operations instead of capital investments that will bring operating costs down over the long term, because in the long term all these poor people will have cars, right?
- Unrealistic plans and sloppy execution. Rather than focus on the immediate problems and support existing reform efforts, they come up with simplistic ideas like the "People's MTA" and "OurMTA," and then when things turn out to be more difficult than they thought, they give up and go on to some other project.
In the governor's race, we have City Council member Charles Barron, who could have been a real asset to the congestion pricing campaign, but in his best Subaru-wagon fashion he chose to see it as a tax on poor New Yorkers. In fact, the easily distracted Barron rarely says anything about transit or roads, apparently feeling that they have nothing to do with poverty or racial inequality. In September, George Haikalis convinced him to put free transit in his campaign platform. When I pointed out that Barron had opposed congestion pricing, Andrea Bernstein asked him about it, and he quickly distanced himself from the cornerstone of Haikalis's plan, saying that free transit could be funded by "a stock transfer tax or a personal income tax surcharge." So there we have conflicting priorities, distraction and unrealistic plans all rolled into one.
The Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, is much better than Barron. He supports congestion pricing, as well as a number of other measures to restore full funding to transit. But would he follow through, if elected? He also mentions personal rapid transit and direct elections to the MTA board, which are both bad ideas. A campaign letter I got the other day spends five paragraphs talking about the military (at best a minor issue for state government), and only mentions his support for "public transit" twice, each time as one item in a list.
The Left should be transit's strongest support, but people on the left get so distracted by the myriad of green agenda items, try to put every poor person in a car with subsidized gas and roads, and come up with grandiose plans that they abandon almost immediately. Even if they manage to win an election, there's no guarantee that transit will be the better for it. As with the right, it largely depends on the individual candidate, but the various left-wing groups are a huge disappointment.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The failure of the right
The current craziness that has come out of Chris Christie's office recently, and the future craziness promised by New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, have shown that the American right is not a reliable source support for transit. It doesn't have to be this way, but it is.
I'm not a conservative, but I think there's a coherent ideological argument for transit on conservative and libertarian principles, and I appreciate this argument. It goes something like this:
In the past, private companies ran the trains, interurbans, trolleys and buses. They were usually able to make a profit providing freedom and personal mobility to people of all ages and income levels. Then the government interfered in the market, forcing operators to charge fares that were too low, and subsidizing roads, garages and oil so that private cars had an unfair advantage. The private operators went out of business, and since then a skeleton transit system has been operated by the government at great public expense.
Government subsidy of driving has also destroyed our traditional small towns and cities, leaving hard-working families with a difficult choice between long drives and a gentrified urban lifestyle surrounded by intellectuals and criminals.
A conservative solution would gradually phase out driving subsidies and allow entrepreneurs to start new bus and train services. As publicly-owned transit routes become more profitable, they could be sold off to the highest bidder.
Some routes will have great difficulty becoming profitable, but they could eventually be run by charity nonprofits, for those conservatives who are completely opposed to public transit. Some will suffer, but the usual libertarian-conservative arguments apply.
There are many libertarians and conservatives who think along those lines. They tend to have difficulty finding conservative politicians who share these leanings, though. Most conservatives tend to defend their big-government agendas with one of the following lies:
1. The Wendell Cox Closed System. Roads are all paid for by drivers, in the form of "user fees" like gas taxes and tolls. Not many people will actually discover the number of local and state roads that are paid for with general property, sales or income taxes.
2. The Joel Kotkin Real Americans. It's okay for government to spend money on things Real Americans want, and they want roads, cars and sprawl. This conveniently ignores the fact that "Real Americans" often change what they want depending on what they think will bring them the most happiness. It also ignores the frequent adjustment of the category of "Real Americans" to exclude those who decide they don't want roads, cars or sprawl. This is a special case of the more general Real Americans argument beloved by conservatives, notably Sarah Palin.
3. The Randal O'Toole Transit Socialism. Transit involves people getting close to each other, which is against American rugged individualism, and therefore it is an appropriate use of government funds to defend us against the commies. Somehow this is not a problem when people get close to each other on airplanes, in spectator sports arenas, or in shopping malls. Getting around on foot or by bicycle also somehow doesn't make you a rugged individualist, just a weirdo.
These patently false excuses for not supporting transit make it clear that these conservatives are more interested in defending their unsustainable transportation and living habits than in doing the best to ensure that their descendants will live in health and comfort.
I'm not a conservative, but I think there's a coherent ideological argument for transit on conservative and libertarian principles, and I appreciate this argument. It goes something like this:
In the past, private companies ran the trains, interurbans, trolleys and buses. They were usually able to make a profit providing freedom and personal mobility to people of all ages and income levels. Then the government interfered in the market, forcing operators to charge fares that were too low, and subsidizing roads, garages and oil so that private cars had an unfair advantage. The private operators went out of business, and since then a skeleton transit system has been operated by the government at great public expense.
Government subsidy of driving has also destroyed our traditional small towns and cities, leaving hard-working families with a difficult choice between long drives and a gentrified urban lifestyle surrounded by intellectuals and criminals.
A conservative solution would gradually phase out driving subsidies and allow entrepreneurs to start new bus and train services. As publicly-owned transit routes become more profitable, they could be sold off to the highest bidder.
Some routes will have great difficulty becoming profitable, but they could eventually be run by charity nonprofits, for those conservatives who are completely opposed to public transit. Some will suffer, but the usual libertarian-conservative arguments apply.
There are many libertarians and conservatives who think along those lines. They tend to have difficulty finding conservative politicians who share these leanings, though. Most conservatives tend to defend their big-government agendas with one of the following lies:
1. The Wendell Cox Closed System. Roads are all paid for by drivers, in the form of "user fees" like gas taxes and tolls. Not many people will actually discover the number of local and state roads that are paid for with general property, sales or income taxes.
2. The Joel Kotkin Real Americans. It's okay for government to spend money on things Real Americans want, and they want roads, cars and sprawl. This conveniently ignores the fact that "Real Americans" often change what they want depending on what they think will bring them the most happiness. It also ignores the frequent adjustment of the category of "Real Americans" to exclude those who decide they don't want roads, cars or sprawl. This is a special case of the more general Real Americans argument beloved by conservatives, notably Sarah Palin.
3. The Randal O'Toole Transit Socialism. Transit involves people getting close to each other, which is against American rugged individualism, and therefore it is an appropriate use of government funds to defend us against the commies. Somehow this is not a problem when people get close to each other on airplanes, in spectator sports arenas, or in shopping malls. Getting around on foot or by bicycle also somehow doesn't make you a rugged individualist, just a weirdo.
These patently false excuses for not supporting transit make it clear that these conservatives are more interested in defending their unsustainable transportation and living habits than in doing the best to ensure that their descendants will live in health and comfort.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Van operators know how to sell
Yesterday afternoon I was walking down Sutphin Boulevard when I heard a man shout "Six!" Other men nearby were saying the same thing, chanting "Six! Six! Six!" I didn't ask, and I could be completely wrong, but I'm guessing they were referring to the Q6 bus route. They seemed to be loading people into gypsy cabs (a share taxi route?), and nearby was a sign nearby saying "Authorized Commuter Van Pickup."
First, a clarification: A week ago I wrote, "The operators are mostly Jamaicans and Haitians who have their experience running the dollar vans in Flatbush and Jamaica." Jarrett pointed out that many non-New Yorkers might be unaware that the Jamaica I'm referring to is a neighborhood in Queens that is a major transit transfer point, with two subway termini, a massive Long Island Railroad station, a station on the AirTrain to Kennedy Airport, and two bus terminals. It is also a popular shopping district, and the home of York College, a large hospital and several courthouses. Confusingly, many of the people who live in this Jamaica, work in Jamaica, or "change at Jamaica" are immigrants from the Caribbean island of Jamaica. Apparently the names come from different words, pronounced in very different ways, in two distantly-related aboriginal languages, one Algonquian and the other Arawakan.
When I was in college, one of my classmates was a Jewish woman from Queens who had just gotten a new hairstyle, braided in African-style cornrows. She mentioned that when she told people she had gotten her hair done "in Jamaica," she had to clarify that she had not just come back from a Caribbean vacation.
In any case, Jamaica, Queens is also a major terminus for "dollar vans." People transfer primarily from the subways to the vans, but also from commuter trains, buses and other van lines. As on Flatbush Avenue, most of the people involved in running these vans are immigrants from Jamaica or Haiti. The usual explanation is that they were familiar with the concept, because jitneys are common in those countries.
On the streets between Jamaica and Archer Avenues you can see this business in action. In addition to the guys yelling "Six!" you can find several loading areas for vans. Some just have the "Commuter Van Pickup" sign installed by the City, but others have more elaborate signs. Some just have drivers, and others have people selling the van service, but all of them have at least one van waiting.
Information for the newbie is scarce: most of the vans have no markings at all indicating what route they travel on. If they have markings, they give the MTA bus line that anchors their route, but if you don't know where the Q5 goes, that number doesn't help you much. Some of the drivers are quite fluent in Jamaican patois, but less so in New York English. Still, they are quite good at letting people know that they are available to take you somewhere.
Contrast that to the Q74 and B39 situations, where you have the DOT sign, but no other signs and no vans. They left it to the Taxi and Limousine Commission to provide someone on the sidewalk to get people into the vans, but there were no vans to get into. Somewhere in the middle is the Q79 experience reported by our tipster, where after fifteen minutes' wait the van company owner came out to tell him that a van would be along soon.
Clearly, this is not about not knowing how to sell. It's about wanting to sell. If the van operators thought there was any money in the Q74 service, they would be out there waiting at the stop, and they would have five guys standing on the sidewalk chanting "Van to Queens College!" at everyone who walks past. They clearly don't. This pilot project is floundering, and the only way to save it is with some kind of anchor program. Will anyone step up to create one? Ricketts? Yassky? Sadik-Khan? Goldsmith? Bloomberg? Walder? Bueller?
First, a clarification: A week ago I wrote, "The operators are mostly Jamaicans and Haitians who have their experience running the dollar vans in Flatbush and Jamaica." Jarrett pointed out that many non-New Yorkers might be unaware that the Jamaica I'm referring to is a neighborhood in Queens that is a major transit transfer point, with two subway termini, a massive Long Island Railroad station, a station on the AirTrain to Kennedy Airport, and two bus terminals. It is also a popular shopping district, and the home of York College, a large hospital and several courthouses. Confusingly, many of the people who live in this Jamaica, work in Jamaica, or "change at Jamaica" are immigrants from the Caribbean island of Jamaica. Apparently the names come from different words, pronounced in very different ways, in two distantly-related aboriginal languages, one Algonquian and the other Arawakan.
When I was in college, one of my classmates was a Jewish woman from Queens who had just gotten a new hairstyle, braided in African-style cornrows. She mentioned that when she told people she had gotten her hair done "in Jamaica," she had to clarify that she had not just come back from a Caribbean vacation.
In any case, Jamaica, Queens is also a major terminus for "dollar vans." People transfer primarily from the subways to the vans, but also from commuter trains, buses and other van lines. As on Flatbush Avenue, most of the people involved in running these vans are immigrants from Jamaica or Haiti. The usual explanation is that they were familiar with the concept, because jitneys are common in those countries.
On the streets between Jamaica and Archer Avenues you can see this business in action. In addition to the guys yelling "Six!" you can find several loading areas for vans. Some just have the "Commuter Van Pickup" sign installed by the City, but others have more elaborate signs. Some just have drivers, and others have people selling the van service, but all of them have at least one van waiting.
Information for the newbie is scarce: most of the vans have no markings at all indicating what route they travel on. If they have markings, they give the MTA bus line that anchors their route, but if you don't know where the Q5 goes, that number doesn't help you much. Some of the drivers are quite fluent in Jamaican patois, but less so in New York English. Still, they are quite good at letting people know that they are available to take you somewhere.
Contrast that to the Q74 and B39 situations, where you have the DOT sign, but no other signs and no vans. They left it to the Taxi and Limousine Commission to provide someone on the sidewalk to get people into the vans, but there were no vans to get into. Somewhere in the middle is the Q79 experience reported by our tipster, where after fifteen minutes' wait the van company owner came out to tell him that a van would be along soon.
Clearly, this is not about not knowing how to sell. It's about wanting to sell. If the van operators thought there was any money in the Q74 service, they would be out there waiting at the stop, and they would have five guys standing on the sidewalk chanting "Van to Queens College!" at everyone who walks past. They clearly don't. This pilot project is floundering, and the only way to save it is with some kind of anchor program. Will anyone step up to create one? Ricketts? Yassky? Sadik-Khan? Goldsmith? Bloomberg? Walder? Bueller?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
What you get when you make hasty generalizations
On Monday I pointed you to a Times op-ed by Elliott Sclar and Robert Paaswell, and observed that they chose to focus on the private transit systems of third world cities like Calcutta (which in that particular spelling is practically shorthand for crowds and squalor to most Times readers) and ignore the reasonably clean and safe vans in New Jersey and Chinatown. Last night I showed how this guilt-by-association game leads to a number of erroneous conclusions.
First, I want to discuss one bizarre point in the op-ed, the parenthetical aside in this paragraph:
Sure, it's worth asking. There are no dumb questions. But an answer comes to my mind pretty quickly: one TLC enforcement agent can monitor several routes. One agent is a lot cheaper than the number of bus drivers needed to run all those routes. So it's worth asking why, if I answered this question right away, the guys who run two prestigious academic institutes couldn't come up with the answer before their op-ed went to press. My guess is they didn't want to know, and they thought it would make them sound clever. Not exactly.
Here are a few more of their erroneous conclusions, which happen to result from applying their selective methods to perfectly accurate observations. Sclar and Paaswell are correct that appropriate regulation is necessary for transit to be an effective tool for achieving our goals. But they make a mistake in conflating public ownership and regulation. In reality these are not the same thing. You can have poorly regulated government enterprises; the MTA is often said to be one. You can also have well-regulated industries that are privately owned, like restaurants. If the authors are Communists who believe that everything should be run by the State, they don't say that upfront, and if they're not Communists they don't make a good case for transit being treated differently from food preparation.
Once established, Sclar and Paaswell argue, transit providers can become organized and entrenched, protecting their interests at the expense of the public. They are correct here: I can think of one city in particular where a "cartel" of transit operators has jealously guarded their monopoly even though the public winds up paying more money for less service. Unfortunately for their argument, it happens to be our city, and the cartel is the Transit Workers' Union. They may not engage in the kind of violence that the authors breathlessly related, but they are certainly succeeding in stifling innovation and impeding efficiency measures.
In this op-ed, the argument I'm probably the most sympathetic to is the one about employee wages and hours. I strongly believe that everyone deserves a job with decent pay for a reasonable workday. But it doesn't make sense to fight this battle in every workplace. Transit cannot shoulder the burden of social justice by itself. There are other social goals that I consider more important than maintaining the wage levels of unionized public-sector transit workers. What does it matter how much you're earning if you spend most of it on Metrocards, or if you're obese, your wife gets run over, your kid has asthma, or your house gets flooded.
I am also troubled by the hours worked by van drivers, but I'm equally troubled by the amount of overtime racked up by MTA workers. I don't want to see anybody overworked, no matter how much they get paid for it.
In contrast, Sclaar and Paaswell don't seem concerned at all about the amount of overtime that MTA operators are working. That makes me think that they don't really care about the hours anyone works. They just know that other people might care, so it's a handy thing to throw at the vans.
And I think that's the bottom line. This op-ed isn't science, and it's not journalism. It's a couple of cranky old guys who've been doing things a particular way their whole lives: publicly owned, unionized transit. That way is running into some difficulties, so someone tries a different approach: private jitneys. This also happens to hurt their friends in the union.
Do Sclar and Paaswell actually go try the vans? Do they ask around to find out how vans can be successful? No, they start from some prejudices they formed on a cramped bus ride in Rio, and brainstorm all the bad things they can think of about jitney service. They edit it (sort of) into an op-ed, and presto! Top of the Times opinion page. Yay.
First, I want to discuss one bizarre point in the op-ed, the parenthetical aside in this paragraph:
Indeed, even though the van companies are already operating on the former bus routes, the Taxi and Limousine Commission has not added enough personnel to cover its new regulatory responsibilities. (It’s worth asking why, if such funds were available, the city shouldn’t reinstate some of the bus routes instead).
Sure, it's worth asking. There are no dumb questions. But an answer comes to my mind pretty quickly: one TLC enforcement agent can monitor several routes. One agent is a lot cheaper than the number of bus drivers needed to run all those routes. So it's worth asking why, if I answered this question right away, the guys who run two prestigious academic institutes couldn't come up with the answer before their op-ed went to press. My guess is they didn't want to know, and they thought it would make them sound clever. Not exactly.
Here are a few more of their erroneous conclusions, which happen to result from applying their selective methods to perfectly accurate observations. Sclar and Paaswell are correct that appropriate regulation is necessary for transit to be an effective tool for achieving our goals. But they make a mistake in conflating public ownership and regulation. In reality these are not the same thing. You can have poorly regulated government enterprises; the MTA is often said to be one. You can also have well-regulated industries that are privately owned, like restaurants. If the authors are Communists who believe that everything should be run by the State, they don't say that upfront, and if they're not Communists they don't make a good case for transit being treated differently from food preparation.
Once established, Sclar and Paaswell argue, transit providers can become organized and entrenched, protecting their interests at the expense of the public. They are correct here: I can think of one city in particular where a "cartel" of transit operators has jealously guarded their monopoly even though the public winds up paying more money for less service. Unfortunately for their argument, it happens to be our city, and the cartel is the Transit Workers' Union. They may not engage in the kind of violence that the authors breathlessly related, but they are certainly succeeding in stifling innovation and impeding efficiency measures.
In this op-ed, the argument I'm probably the most sympathetic to is the one about employee wages and hours. I strongly believe that everyone deserves a job with decent pay for a reasonable workday. But it doesn't make sense to fight this battle in every workplace. Transit cannot shoulder the burden of social justice by itself. There are other social goals that I consider more important than maintaining the wage levels of unionized public-sector transit workers. What does it matter how much you're earning if you spend most of it on Metrocards, or if you're obese, your wife gets run over, your kid has asthma, or your house gets flooded.
I am also troubled by the hours worked by van drivers, but I'm equally troubled by the amount of overtime racked up by MTA workers. I don't want to see anybody overworked, no matter how much they get paid for it.
In contrast, Sclaar and Paaswell don't seem concerned at all about the amount of overtime that MTA operators are working. That makes me think that they don't really care about the hours anyone works. They just know that other people might care, so it's a handy thing to throw at the vans.
And I think that's the bottom line. This op-ed isn't science, and it's not journalism. It's a couple of cranky old guys who've been doing things a particular way their whole lives: publicly owned, unionized transit. That way is running into some difficulties, so someone tries a different approach: private jitneys. This also happens to hurt their friends in the union.
Do Sclar and Paaswell actually go try the vans? Do they ask around to find out how vans can be successful? No, they start from some prejudices they formed on a cramped bus ride in Rio, and brainstorm all the bad things they can think of about jitney service. They edit it (sort of) into an op-ed, and presto! Top of the Times opinion page. Yay.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
More ivory tower nonsense
Yesterday I told you about a very sloppy Times op-ed by Elliott Sclar and Robert Paaswell. The authors link private jitney service to third-world cities, suggesting that they're necessarily dirty, dangerous and foreign. They ignore the jitneys that ran on New York streets in the early part of the twentieth century, which were emphatically not foreign, the Brooklyn and Chinatown "dollar vans" that may sometimes be dirty and dangerous, and the New Jersey vans that are fairly clean and well-regulated, but are not particularly foreign.
You can see how silly Sclar and Paaswell's guilt-by-association game is if you think about other things that exist in third-world cities. For example, Bamako has open-air food markets that stink to high heaven, so if we have open-air food markets they'll stink to high heaven. If we had followed that logic twenty years ago we wouldn't have any greenmarkets.
As I wrote back in January, there is nothing inherent in the concept of private transit, or the jitney service model, that makes jitneys dirty, crowded or dangerous. They are that way because lots of people in those cities are desperate enough for transportation that they'll put up with danger, crowds and filth. Most New Yorkers are not desperate, and we won't put up with that level of danger or discomfort. Go to West New York and you'll find private vans (and buses) that are clean, well-maintained and pretty safe. They need to be in order to attract customers. They're also fairly well-regulated by New Jersey authorities.
Another area where Sclar and Paaswell ignore well-known facts is their assertion that the vans are bad because they don't take Metrocards. I agree that this should be changed, but it wouldn't be that difficult. Metrocards are currently used by the Airtrain, the PATH train, Bee-Line buses, and the Roosevelt Island Tram (currently out of service). From 1996 through 2006 they were accepted by the seven private companies that offered bus service under franchise agreements with the Department of Transportation.
Metrocards - or whatever technology replaces them in the future - could even be used to regulate private van operators. Want to accept Metrocards? You have to show a recent inspection certificate. Too many moving violations? We'll deactivate your Metrocard account. But Sclar and Paaswell aren't trying to find solutions, they're trying to find reasons to reject the vans.
Stay tuned, there's more to come.
You can see how silly Sclar and Paaswell's guilt-by-association game is if you think about other things that exist in third-world cities. For example, Bamako has open-air food markets that stink to high heaven, so if we have open-air food markets they'll stink to high heaven. If we had followed that logic twenty years ago we wouldn't have any greenmarkets.
As I wrote back in January, there is nothing inherent in the concept of private transit, or the jitney service model, that makes jitneys dirty, crowded or dangerous. They are that way because lots of people in those cities are desperate enough for transportation that they'll put up with danger, crowds and filth. Most New Yorkers are not desperate, and we won't put up with that level of danger or discomfort. Go to West New York and you'll find private vans (and buses) that are clean, well-maintained and pretty safe. They need to be in order to attract customers. They're also fairly well-regulated by New Jersey authorities.
Another area where Sclar and Paaswell ignore well-known facts is their assertion that the vans are bad because they don't take Metrocards. I agree that this should be changed, but it wouldn't be that difficult. Metrocards are currently used by the Airtrain, the PATH train, Bee-Line buses, and the Roosevelt Island Tram (currently out of service). From 1996 through 2006 they were accepted by the seven private companies that offered bus service under franchise agreements with the Department of Transportation.
Metrocards - or whatever technology replaces them in the future - could even be used to regulate private van operators. Want to accept Metrocards? You have to show a recent inspection certificate. Too many moving violations? We'll deactivate your Metrocard account. But Sclar and Paaswell aren't trying to find solutions, they're trying to find reasons to reject the vans.
Stay tuned, there's more to come.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Under Sclar and Paaswell's noses
On Friday the Times ran an op-ed piece by Elliott Sclar and Robert Paaswell against the City's pilot private van project. or at least the headline and cartoon were against the vans; the actual article pulled its punches at the end.
There are so many things messed up with this article, it's hard to know where to start. The best place, I guess, is with the skimpy data. This is an opinion piece, not a peer-reviewed paper, but the level of scholarship is shockingly low compared with academic Times writers like Paul Krugman and even Eric Morris. I honestly don't get it, because Sclar and Paaswell seem to write fairly well-researched and thoughtful articles for academic journals. Apparently they feel that different standards apply for a politically-oriented opinion piece, so they popped out this turd.
Sclar and Paaswell talk about private transit "in the developing world," specifically referencing Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg, but they don't seem to be aware that we've had private van services operating in the New York area for at least fifteen years. Are there "higher levels of pollution and more accidents and traffic fatalities" in Flatbush, in Jamaica, in West New York? If there are, it's not particularly the fault of the vans.
Space in op-ed columns is limited, but this is an important piece of information that deserves to be mentioned. I can think of two reasons why they could have left it out. Maybe they really are clueless and don't know about the three massive local private transportation operations taking place a short subway ride from their offices, or maybe they know but are leaving it out because it spoils the picture they want to paint of Bloomberg turning New York into Calcutta. Either way, it's something they and the Times should be ashamed of.
The op-ed is a little bizarre in another way: Sclar and Paaswell assert that "the Bloomberg administration considers private transit services a temporary solution, to end as soon as the money to restart the affected routes is found." I've heard allegations to that effect, but nothing official. If it's true, it would be big news, because running one of these lines requires a major investment of time and money. If the city is asking the van owners to make that investment while all the while planning to yank their licenses when the routes start to show a profit, well that would screw them over in a major way, and Sclar and Paaswell show a serious lack of empathy for van operators by framing it this way: "informal services like commuter vans, controlled by powerful operators, can become difficult to dislodge, thanks to the political influence they wield." Well yeah, if the city encourages someone to make an investment and then arbitrarily takes it away without adequate compensation, they should be prepared for the investor to get upset.
Still, the authors don't seem quite sure whether Bloomberg wants the vans to run permanently or not, so at the end they give suggestions for both possibilities - fairly reasonable suggestions that are pretty incongruous given the ominous tone of the rest of the article.
I've got a bunch more to say about this op-ed, but this is a good place to stop for the night. Feel free to join in!
There are so many things messed up with this article, it's hard to know where to start. The best place, I guess, is with the skimpy data. This is an opinion piece, not a peer-reviewed paper, but the level of scholarship is shockingly low compared with academic Times writers like Paul Krugman and even Eric Morris. I honestly don't get it, because Sclar and Paaswell seem to write fairly well-researched and thoughtful articles for academic journals. Apparently they feel that different standards apply for a politically-oriented opinion piece, so they popped out this turd.
Sclar and Paaswell talk about private transit "in the developing world," specifically referencing Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg, but they don't seem to be aware that we've had private van services operating in the New York area for at least fifteen years. Are there "higher levels of pollution and more accidents and traffic fatalities" in Flatbush, in Jamaica, in West New York? If there are, it's not particularly the fault of the vans.
Space in op-ed columns is limited, but this is an important piece of information that deserves to be mentioned. I can think of two reasons why they could have left it out. Maybe they really are clueless and don't know about the three massive local private transportation operations taking place a short subway ride from their offices, or maybe they know but are leaving it out because it spoils the picture they want to paint of Bloomberg turning New York into Calcutta. Either way, it's something they and the Times should be ashamed of.
The op-ed is a little bizarre in another way: Sclar and Paaswell assert that "the Bloomberg administration considers private transit services a temporary solution, to end as soon as the money to restart the affected routes is found." I've heard allegations to that effect, but nothing official. If it's true, it would be big news, because running one of these lines requires a major investment of time and money. If the city is asking the van owners to make that investment while all the while planning to yank their licenses when the routes start to show a profit, well that would screw them over in a major way, and Sclar and Paaswell show a serious lack of empathy for van operators by framing it this way: "informal services like commuter vans, controlled by powerful operators, can become difficult to dislodge, thanks to the political influence they wield." Well yeah, if the city encourages someone to make an investment and then arbitrarily takes it away without adequate compensation, they should be prepared for the investor to get upset.
Still, the authors don't seem quite sure whether Bloomberg wants the vans to run permanently or not, so at the end they give suggestions for both possibilities - fairly reasonable suggestions that are pretty incongruous given the ominous tone of the rest of the article.
I've got a bunch more to say about this op-ed, but this is a good place to stop for the night. Feel free to join in!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The vans do exist!
I got an email yesterday from an anonymous reader:
Today I decided to take the Q79 up to Panera Bread in Douglaston and do a little work on my laptop. I started at the "Group Ride Vehicle Stop" at the corner of Little Neck Parkway and Jericho Turnpike.
After I'd been waiting there for about fifteen minutes, a man walked up and introduced himself as the owner of the van company! He said that there would be a van along within five minutes, and called the driver on his cell phone to make sure. In a few minutes the van pulled up and off I went. That's what I call personal service!
We didn't pick up any other passengers along the way, but the driver was friendly and professional, and the van was reasonably comfortable. The driver was frustrated that the city had let so much time pass between the cancellation of Q79 service and the beginning of the van pilot. He pointed out that there was a fair at the Farm Museum today, and said he had brought people there earlier, but nobody wanted a ride on this run.
Before, while we were waiting for the van, the owner said that business had been slow, but that he was committed to making it work. He's currently running two vans on the line, and since it takes 15-20 minutes to go from one end to the next, that means that the headway is about 15-20 minutes. He said that as business picks up, he hopes to increase that to four vans.
I gave him the address of your blog, and your email address, as well. I would have taken a van home, but it was after 6PM so I had to walk part of the way!
Thanks for the report, and thanks to the owner of Alpha Van Lines for sharing that info with our tipster! If anyone has more news about the vans, feel free to drop me a line.
Today I decided to take the Q79 up to Panera Bread in Douglaston and do a little work on my laptop. I started at the "Group Ride Vehicle Stop" at the corner of Little Neck Parkway and Jericho Turnpike.
After I'd been waiting there for about fifteen minutes, a man walked up and introduced himself as the owner of the van company! He said that there would be a van along within five minutes, and called the driver on his cell phone to make sure. In a few minutes the van pulled up and off I went. That's what I call personal service!
We didn't pick up any other passengers along the way, but the driver was friendly and professional, and the van was reasonably comfortable. The driver was frustrated that the city had let so much time pass between the cancellation of Q79 service and the beginning of the van pilot. He pointed out that there was a fair at the Farm Museum today, and said he had brought people there earlier, but nobody wanted a ride on this run.
Before, while we were waiting for the van, the owner said that business had been slow, but that he was committed to making it work. He's currently running two vans on the line, and since it takes 15-20 minutes to go from one end to the next, that means that the headway is about 15-20 minutes. He said that as business picks up, he hopes to increase that to four vans.
I gave him the address of your blog, and your email address, as well. I would have taken a van home, but it was after 6PM so I had to walk part of the way!
Thanks for the report, and thanks to the owner of Alpha Van Lines for sharing that info with our tipster! If anyone has more news about the vans, feel free to drop me a line.
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