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Railroad Land Grants: Boon or Boondoggle?

By | | Transportation
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I wrote several posts for my other blog, Streamliner Memories, that are relevant here as well. Recent news stories have asked why projects like the California high-speed rail and Honolulu rail line are so expensive. The answer is that the politicians who support these projects don’t care about the cost because someone else will have to pay it. Or rather they do care but for them the cost is the benefit — the more they spend, the more might be turned into contributions to their future political campaigns from grateful contractors.

This 1939 report from the Department of the Interior lists 105 railroad, wagon road, canal, and river improvement land grants made by Congress in the 19th century and how many acres various transportation companies ended up receiving for those grants. A few of the grants, including the massive Northern Pacific grant, were still open with the grantees hoping to get several million more acres. Click image to download a 4.7-MB PDF of the report.

We saw an early example of this in the First Transcontinental Railroad and later railroads supported by large federal land grants. Railroads weren’t the only transportation projects supported by federal land grants: there were also canals, wagon roads, and river improvements. As it happens, I live near one of the wagon road projects that turned out to be a giant scam in which a few people got more than 860,000 acres of federal land for doing little more than driving a wagon across the state of Oregon. Continue reading →

September Driving 4.9% More Than in 2019

By | | Transportation
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Americans drove 4.9 percent more miles in September 2022 than the did before the pandemic in September 2019, according to data that the Federal Highway Administration has finally posted on its web site. That’s the greatest amount, relative to pre-pandemic levels, of any month since the pandemic began.

Miles of driving in both urban and rural areas were greater than in September 2019 and driving was greater in 35 states. Of the states where driving still has not reached pre-pandemic levels, the biggest shortfalls were Hawaii (-23%), DC (-22%), Rhode Island (-22%), Delaware (-18%), and Pennsylvania (-11%). Driving grew the most in Arizona (33%), Alaska (19%), South Dakota (18%), Florida (14%), North Dakota (14%), Maine (13%), Louisiana (13%), Arkansas (12%), and California (11%). None of these are surprising except California, which was minus 3 percent in August. Continue reading →

Transit Carries 66.6% of 2019 Riders in September

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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September 2022 was a booming month for the American transit industry, which carried 66.6 percent as many riders as in September 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is the highest ridership recorded, as percentage of pre-pandemic levels, since the pandemic began.

Amtrak finally posted its August performance report along with the September report yesterday as well, revealing that its ridership climbed to almost 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels in August before falling to just over 80 percent in September. Air travel reached 94 percent and, as usual, driving data won’t be posted for a week or so. Continue reading →

2021 Transit Data

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Transit agencies carried 45 percent as many riders in 2021 as in 2019. To do so, they operated vehicles 81 percent as many miles as in 2019. However, they managed to spend 98.5 percent as much money on operating costs, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration.

Nearly empty transit buses and trains don’t save energy or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Photo by Jim Fischer.

The annual National Transit Database reports are based on the fiscal years of the transit agencies, which can end anywhere from March 31 to December 31. This means the 2021 data are the first full year since the pandemic began. By mid-2022, transit ridership had recovered to about 60 percent of pre-pandemic numbers, but it is likely that transit agencies are still spending as if they were getting 100 percent of riders. Continue reading →

Is Amtrak Looking for More Ways to Lie?

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak still hasn’t published its August performance report. But I noticed a paragraph on its “Reports and Documents” page under “Monthly Performance Reports.”

“Going forward,” the page says, “Amtrak will report Adjusted Operating Earnings as the key financial measure to evaluate results, Net Income/(Loss) will continue to be reported for reference. Adjusted Operating earnings represents Amtrak’s cash funding needs and is a reasonable proxy for Federal Operating Support needed in line with the appropriation.”

This isn’t really new; according to archive.org, it has been there since 2018 but wasn’t on the Reports and Documents page in 2017. What the statement means is that, instead of following generally accepted accounting principles, Amtrak will claim its net income is equal to the amount of operating subsidies it needs from the federal government, not including capital subsidies or state subsidies. Continue reading →

Will Amtrak Benefit from Telecommuting?

By | | Transportation
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Airlines carried 94 percent as many passengers in September 2022 as they did in September 2019, according to passenger counts published by the Transportation Security Administration. That’s up from 91 percent in August and 88 percent in September.

Photo by N509FZ.

According to United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, the industry is thriving due to changes in leisure travel habits following the pandemic. People who work at home at least some days a week are taking more frequent short pleasure trips for long weekends. Continue reading →

August 2022 Driving 101% of August 2019

By | | Transportation
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Americans drove 101.0 percent as many miles in August of 2022 as they did in the same month before the pandemic, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This is in spite of the fact that fuel prices in 2022 were at least a dollar more per gallon than in 2019 (more than $3.70 per gallon of regular in August 2022 vs. under $2.70 in August 2019).

Amtrak is unusually late in issuing data for August.

Driving surpassed 2019 levels in 26 states and fell short in 24. Arizona saw a huge gain of 39 percent while Alaska driving grew by 15 percent, Connecticut by 11 percent, and Idaho and Florida by 10 percent. Driving dropped 21 percent in Delaware, 13 percent in Hawaii, and 10 percent in New York and Pennsylvania. Driving grew in both urban and rural areas, but urban driving grew slightly more than rural. Continue reading →

August Transit 63.4% of 2019 Numbers

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Transit in August 2022 carried 63.4 percent as many riders as in August 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is the second-highest since the pandemic began (the highest being in June) and only the third time in the last two years that transit has carried more than 60 percent of pre-pandemic numbers. One reason for the increase may be that August 2022 had one more business day than August 2019.

Amtrak and the Federal Highway Administration have not yet published August data, but airlines carried more than 91 percent as many passengers in August 2022 and August 2019, according to Transportation Security Administration counts. I’ll post the Amtrak and highway data when they are made available.

When compared with July 2022, the biggest gains among major urban areas have been in Phoenix (24%), Denver (22%), Cincinnati (21%), and Riverside-San Bernardino (16%). Urban areas that are still lagging include Chicago (55% of 2019 numbers), Washington (56%), Atlanta (53%), Detroit (24%), and Minneapolis-St. Paul (49%). DC and the Twin Cities are doing poorly because their downtown are among the slowest to recover and I presume the same is true for the others. In addition, the Twin Cities light-rail system has the most transit crime, per passenger-mile carried, of any in the nation, which is discouraging both ridership and downtown recovery. Continue reading →

Cars Still More Energy Efficient Than Transit

By | | Transportation
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The average car used less than 2,800 British thermal units (BTUs) of energy per passenger-mile in 2019, according to the latest edition of the Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Data Book. This is nearly a 25 percent improvement since 1999. It also made cars more energy efficient than transit in every urban area in the country except New York and San Francisco.

Click image to download a 16.4-MB PDF of this report. Click here to download Excel spreadsheets for the 361 tables in the report (11 MB).

The Department of Energy releases its annual update to the data book every February, but I wasn’t paying attention when the last one came out. In fact, it doesn’t say a lot that’s new since the previous one was issued in 2021, but it shows that both autos and airplanes continue to improve their energy efficiencies, the latter by 42 percent since 1999. Continue reading →

The Vice of Making Losses

By | | Transportation
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A recent staff presentation to the Washington Metro board’s finance committee revealed that the agency is expecting to run out of federal COVID relief funds in 2024 and anticipates a $187.5 million shortfall in funding that year. From then on, it anticipates funding shortfalls of more than $500 million a year, rising to more than $700 million by 2030.

With half of DC employees working at home, Washington Metro trains have been running nearly empty since the pandemic began. Photo by Elvert Barnes.

That’s if ridership recovers to 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels. If only 75 percent of riders return, shortfalls will range from more than $700 million in 2025 to more than $900 million in 2030. In fact, as of July, ridership was still less than 50 percent of pre-pandemic numbers. Continue reading →