Water or Transit?

San Antonio politician Nelson Wolff has proposed to take a sales tax that currently supports the region’s water supply and give it to VIA, San Antonio’s transit agency, instead. He apparently believes it’s more important to subsidize a transit system that carries less than 2.6 percent of city commuters to work than the aquifer that supplies 70 percent of the water for the region.

An op-ed in response points out that VIA is already so generously funded that it was able to increase service by 17 percent since 2012. Despite that increase in service, ridership dropped 24 percent. In 2017, VIA spent $205 million on operations and collected less than $24 million in fares.
Through the principal of balancing our discount viagra levitra whole system, Ayurveda involves the use of various software applications and professional management tools. This practice is likewise helpful for both of free samples cialis the persons feeling disappointed. Several factors come into play while mating and the penis size is one such vital factor. soft viagra tabs That’s why doctor prescribe muscle relaxants such as Baclofen that significantly improve the recovery process and builds strong immune system- Prevents Diabetes- Build stamina and improve energy levels- Maintenance of cholesterol levels- Fights cancer causing cells- Improves sexual performance Even though these drugs have cheapest tadalafil online been available in the market for treating erectile dysfunction.
Wolff was long the strongest voice of building a light-rail or streetcar line in San Antonio. He wants to subsidize transit, he claims, because “there will be less pollution.” Hardly: VIA buses emit twice as much greenhouse gases per passenger mile as the average car and 80 percent more than the average SUV. None of this matters to Wolff, who seems to believe that taxpayers exist to support transit, not that transit exists to support mobility.

The Future of San Antonio Transit

Someone asked the Antiplanner to briefly review the prospects for public transit in San Antonio. Much of my answer would apply to many other urban areas as well.

1. Transit Is About Downtown

A century ago, most urban jobs were downtown and people walked or rode transit to those jobs from dense residential areas. Today, only about 7.5 percent of urban jobs are located downtown; in San Antonio it’s about 6.2 percent.

Source: Wendell Cox, United States Central Business Districts for downtown jobs; 2010 American Community Survey table B08301 for percent of transit commuters. Continue reading

What Does San Antonio Deserve?

Another famous H.L. Mencken quote is, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” The Antiplanner was reminded of this by a headline on the San Antonio Express-News editorial page declaring that San Antonio needs “a transit plan the city deserves.” According to the editorial writer, that plan involves a “rapid transit” system that will “entice people out of their vehicles,” “connect all parts of San Antonio,” and “truly free people from traffic.”

The editorial board must not think very highly of San Antonio. It apparently believes that San Antonio residents deserve to pay billions of dollars in taxes to build an expensive transit system that will be regularly used by less than 5 percent of the people. It also believes they deserve the huge traffic congestion that will accompany construction as well as the lies, cost overruns, and ridership shortfalls that are almost invariably associated with transit megaprojects.

It is also possible that the editorial board simply doesn’t know what it is writing about. For one thing, it seems to think that “rapid transit” means fast transportation. According to the American Public Transportation Association’s Transit Fact Book, rapid rail transit (also known as heavy rail) averages just 20 mph while rapid bus averages less than 11 mph. The average speed of auto driving in San Antonio is 33 mph, so rapid transit is not likely to persuade many to stop driving. Continue reading

Resisting Rail

San Antonio, notes Texas Public Radio, is “the largest city in the country without a rail system to move” its residents. As a result, the article implies, people are “stuck behind the wheel,” and the article’s headline asks, “Should San Antonio Reconsider Rail?”

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, of course, suggests that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” But more important, the article is guilty of the Politician’s Fallacy, which is: “1. We have to do something [in this case, about congestion]. 2. This [rail] is something. 3. We have to do this [build rail].”

Before jumping to any conclusions, San Antonians should ask how well rail is moving people in other cities. The first point to note is that, when TPR says that San Antonio is the largest city not to have rail, there are only six larger cities to consider. We don’t think of San Antonio is being the nation’s seventh-largest city, but it is true because Texas cities have strong annexations powers, so tend to be much larger than cities elsewhere. Houston, Dallas, and Austin are also among the nation’s eleven largest cities.

Continue reading

Forward into the Past Via VIA

The San Antonio urban area has about 1.9 million people today and, if it keeps growing at recent rates, will add 1.6 million more by 2040. VIA, the region’s transit agency, gets most of its money from a one-half-cent sales tax, so by 2040 it will get about 80 percent more tax revenues.


Click image to download this 40-MB PDF.

The agency is hungry for more, however, so it has written a long-range plan called Vision 2040. Actually, to call this a plan is generous; it is actually more of a sales brochure, as it doesn’t consider any alternatives, any impacts of the proposal, or any real information about costs. Instead, it merely says that it wants increased taxes to provide bus-rapid transit on exclusive bus lanes and possibly light rail–in other words, transit infrastructure that might have been useful a few decades ago, but certainly won’t be useful a few decades from now.

Continue reading

Austin-San Antonio Rail Insanity

Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin is congested, so obviously (to some people, at least) the solution is to run passenger trains between the two cities. Existing tracks are crowded with freight trains, so the Lone Star Rail District proposes to build a brand-new line for the freight trains and run passenger trains on the existing tracks. The total capital cost would be about $3 billion, up from just $0.6 billion in 2004 (which probably didn’t include the freight re-route).


Click image to download a PDF version of this map.

By coincidence, that was the projected capital cost for the proposed high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando (cancelled by Florida Governor Rick Scott), which are about the same 80-miles apart as Austin and San Antonio. But, despite the cost, Lone Star wouldn’t be a high-speed rail line. According to a 2004 feasibility study, trains would take about 90 minutes between the two cities, with two stops in between. While express trains with no stops would be a bit faster, cars driving at Texas speeds could still be faster.

Continue reading

Paying for Rail Transit

Last week, San Antonio voters overwhelming approved of a measure forbidding the city’s transit agency from building any rail transit lines without voter approval. While that seems like a no brainer, opponents contended that it was unfair to single out rail transit for such a measure just because rail cost 50 to 100 times as much as bus transit.

Meanwhile, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is still trying to decide whether to cancel the $2.5 billion Purple Line (not to mention Baltimore’s $3 billion Red Line). Rail supporters were disappointed that he cut tolls on bridges and toll roads, since they figured that any surplus tolls should have gone to their pet project.

Rail supporters are claiming that the evil Cato Institute is leading a major campaign to undermine their plans. In fact, with the exception of the Antiplanner and maybe one other person, no one at Cato has put much thought into the Purple Line, as they are working on such relatively trivial things as reducing conflict in the Mideast, improving health care, and keeping government from watching everything we do.

Continue reading

No Streetcar for San Antonio

After being in office just one week, San Antonio’s new mayor, Ivy Taylor, proposed Monday that the city withdraw the $32 million it had promised to build a new $280 million, 5.9-mile streetcar line. Moreover, she persuaded Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the region’s leading streetcar proponent, to join her in declaring the streetcar plan dead. Wolff has previously said that he is too busy waging a re-election campaign against a streetcar opponent to campaign in favor of the streetcar plan.


A planner’s fantasy of what a streetcar would look like near the Alamo in San Antonio.

The announcements come amid controversy over an initiative petition submitted by streetcar opponents asking that voters be allowed to approve or reject the plan in November. The city has tentatively rejected most of the signatures, saying they were improperly collected. The petitioners have a legal opinion saying the city is reading the law incorrectly. The new mayor may be hoping that, in announcing the plan is dead, the demand for a vote will go away. If the city rejects the petitions now and opponents go to court, the measure may have to go to voters in a later election.

Continue reading

San Antonio Petition May Stop Streetcar

San Antonio streetcar opponents submitted a petition today to allow voters to decide whether the region’s transit agency, VIA, should spend $280 million on a 5.9-mile streetcar. They needed about 20,000 signatures, and submitted well over 26,000 of which they personally pre-verified nearly 24,000.

SApetition
So, be adventurous and take a journey through what feels good and what doesn’t. order levitra online However, this creates displeasure for http://pharma-bi.com/2011/03/mixed-metaphor-line-graph-bar-chart/ levitra samples their females. In fact, the medication simply allows the body to release a chemical called nitric oxide. shop for viagra cheap Erectile dysfunction, known as Impotence affects younger and older men prefer taking kamagra 100mg tablets due to its availability, quality, viagra super store effectiveness and cost factor as well. Streetcar skeptics hold a press conference on the steps of San Antonio’s city hall as they present signatures for a ballot measure requiring that voters approve any streetcars built in city streets or rights of way. Photo by Michael Dennis.

Unfortunately, this petition still has several hurdles to leap. First, the city is claiming that signature gatherers didn’t follow proper procedures; the petitioners claim they did, and that the procedures the city wants them to follow only apply to recall petitions. Second, even if the measure makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters, VIA argues that it won’t be bound by the results.

Castro Nomination Threatens Streetcar

A few weeks ago, President Obama nominated San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While some suggest that this may be bad for Castro’s future political career, he wouldn’t be the first mayor to be tapped for a cabinet position and then return home to be elected to higher office.

What seems more certain is that Castro’s departure from San Antonio weakens political support for the city’s misbegotten streetcar plan. A couple of years ago, when the Antiplanner wrote a critique of a proposed San Antonio steetcar, proponents believed they had everything wired to build the line.

Opponents, however, hammered away at the proposal, arguing, among other things, that when voters rejected any funding for light rail in 2000, they were also rejecting streetcars. At that time, and until just a couple of years ago, the Federal Transit Administration classified streetcars and light rail as the same thing.

Continue reading