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Monthly Archives: November 2010

Transit Unions: Victims or Bullies?

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
15 Comments

A Portland transit union leader says his members have been “victimized” by a free-market group that posted their salaries on line. But who is the real victim here: the people collecting the salaries or the people whose taxes pay the salaries even if they never ride transit?

Back in June, a free-market group in New York posted salaries for all government workers in that state, leading the New York Times to calculate that more than 8,000 New York City transit workers earn more than $100,000 a year. Portland’s TriMet has only about 100 employees who are paid more than $100,000. Most are administrators, but at least one is a bus driver and several work in maintenance.

Of course, New York’s MTA has 70,000 employees compared with about 2,600 who work for TriMet. The list of TriMet salaries also lists $18,540 in benefits for most employees, but this does not count unfunded pension liabilities that the agency has incurred for each employee.

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Debate Post-Mortem

By | | Transportation
19 Comments

The Antiplanner’s debate with American Public Transportation Association President Bill Millar focused on transit privatization. The Antiplanner argued that private operators would provide excellent, low-cost service where the demand for such service existed, such as in dense cities and low-income neighborhoods, while still providing adequate demand-responsive transit (like SuperShuttle) in low-density neighborhoods where demand was low. Millar expressed skepticism that this would happen.

But rather than debate this in detail, Millar spent much of his time claiming that I “cherry picked the data” to support my preconceived notions. He claimed that transit was not a business, but a “public service” and that everyone benefitted when taxpayers subsidized 80 percent of the cost of carrying a few riders. He pointed out that 26 percent of Americans rode transit at least once last year, which doesn’t exactly provide much justification for the other 74 percent to subsidize it.

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The Case for Privatizing Transit

By | | Transportation
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The Antiplanner will be presenting a new paper tomorrow at the Cato Institute titled “Fixing Transit: The Case for Privatization.” The paper was not yet posted on the Cato web site, but you can download an advance copy.

Most transit systems in America were private and profitable, if declining, as late as the 1960s. Since being taken over by the government, transit productivity has greatly declined. The number of passenger trips carried per transit employee has fallen by around 50 percent and the inflation-adjusted cost of carrying one rider or one passenger mile has grown by about 150 percent.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
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Today the Antiplanner is flying to Boston and MIT, where I will be one of a series of “distinguished speakers” on transportation issues. My presentation will be at 12:30 pm in the Stratton Student Center, W20-307.

On Wednesday, the Cato Institute will present two events, both of which will compare the Antiplanner’s free-market views with the pro-government transit views of William Millar, the president of the American Public Transportation Association. The first event will be at noon and will be available via web feed and video after the event. The second will take place on Capital Hill and will be at 3:00 pm. Although the events will be structured slightly differently, both will cover similar ground.
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On Friday, the Antiplanner will be in Dallas speaking to a seminar sponsored by the National Center for Policy Analysis. I’ll try to make additional posts during the week.

More Election Results

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
43 Comments

Progressive Railroading lists a few more election results, oriented of course to pro-rail transit. That article in turn links to the Center for Transportation Excellence, a group focused on government “investment” in infrastructure, which claims that the vast majority of transportation measures passed this year (including elections prior to November).

Many of the measures on CTE’s list were road measures (which, if they were funded by sales taxes, the Antiplanner would have opposed). CTE somehow managed to not count the Dane and Kenosha county rail measures that lost. Two of the rail measures that passed were bond measures in Arlington and Fairfax County, Virginia, to support capital improvements (really maintenance) on the DC MetroRail system. Other cities that accept federal funds for rail transit should take note: they will ultimately be responsible for rebuilding the system when it wears out.

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Interpreting the Election Results

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
34 Comments

Tea party supporters do not agree on a lot of issues, but are firm on two things: cutting government spending and protecting property rights. What do the election results mean for the future of land-use and transportation planning?

On one hand, many of the results look promising for supporters of property rights and efficient (user-fee-driven) transportation policies.

  • Wisconsin rail skeptic Scott Walker, who promised to cancel the state’s moderate-speed rail project, soundly trounced the pro-rail incumbent governor.
  • Ohio elected fiscal conservative John Kasich, who is also a rail skeptic, as governor, probably dooming that state’s moderate-speed rail plans.
  • Florida appears to have elected fiscal conservative Rick Scott as governor. He will probably take a hard look at that state’s high-speed rail programs.
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Arithmetic-Challenged Favor High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
45 Comments

On Monday, the Washington Post published a devastating critique of high-speed rail written by journalist Robert Samuelson. In fewer than 800 words, Samuelson blows up just about all the arguments put forth in favor of rail. An 8-word summary: costs are too high and benefits too low.

One person who remains unconvinced is the popular innumerate, Matthew Yglesias. Normally I would not personalize an issue by calling attention to someone’s disability, in this case Yglesias’ inability to deal with simple arithmetic. But by describing me as a “car-subsidy shill,” Yglesias shows he is math challenged.

Apparently, if you believe, as I do, that all modes of transportation should be paid for by users, and not by tax subsidies, then you, too, are a “car-subsidy shill.” Here is a simple lesson in arithmetic: if users pay for all of something, then subsidies are zero. That makes me a “zero-subsidy shill.”

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Phoenix Transit Cuts: Caused by Light Rail?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
10 Comments

Phoenix’s transit agency, Valley Metro, claims that its new light-rail line is a great success, but the Antiplanner is reserving judgment until we have actual data. In the meantime, news reports indicate that Valley Metro is failing to improve bus service as promised when voters agreed to increase the sales tax to support “roads and rail” in 2004.

Of course, the agency blames the problem on the economy. But, as the Coyote blog points out, this is disingenuous. Nearly half of transit’s share of the sales tax increase goes for light rail, and most of that goes to pay back the loans incurred to build the light rail.

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Podcars or Robocars?

By | | Transportation
13 Comments

San Jose held a conference last week on podcars, the new name for personal rapid transit (PRT). Exhibitors included a variety of planning and consulting firms as well as at least three companies–2getthere, Ultra (which built the Heathrow line), and Vectus–that would like your tax dollars so they can build a podcar system for your city.

One of the members of the audience was Brad Templeton, a software engineer and advocate of robocars–which the Antiplanner calls driverless cars. Templeton notes that Sebastian Thrune, the Stanford researcher who led the Google driverless car program (as well as the Volkswagen program) made a presentation that was politely received–but none of the podcar developers admitted to knowing much about driverless cars.

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