Europe More “Auto-Dependent” Than U.S.

Before the pandemic, Europeans relied on automobiles for 70 percent of their travel, compared with 77 percent for U.S. residents. But after the pandemic, in 2021, the European share of passenger travel that used automobiles climbed to 80 percent, while the U.S. share increased only to 78 percent (and dropped to 74 percent in 2022), according to a recently released report from the European Union. That means that Europe is more auto-dependent than the U.S.

Click image to download a 12.4-MB PDF of this report.

Although the report is labeled “2023,” it actually was released in late January 2024 and includes data through 2021. The title of the report is “key figures,” which is literally true: it consists almost solely of figures as in charts, with little or no actual data. However, the charts are clear and can be read to the nearest percent or so. Meanwhile, National Transportation Statistics table 1-40 shows the share of passenger travel in the United States that relies on autos, airplanes, rail, and other modes. Continue reading

2022 Highway Subsidies Were 1¢/Passenger-Mile

U.S. highways, roads, and streets received a little over $65 billion worth of subsidies in 2022, according to data recently released by the Federal Highway Administration. Apportioning these subsidies to passengers and freight, they work out to about 1.0¢ per passenger-mile and 0.7¢ per ton-mile. For comparison, subsidies to transit averaged $2.39 per passenger-mile while subsidies to Amtrak averaged about 40¢ per passenger-mile.

The Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed yesterday due to being struck by a ship. If this had happened before 2021, it is likely that some lobby groups would have blamed the collapse on poor maintenance. Such claims led Congress to give the Federal Highway Administration an additional $90 billion, to be spent over six years, in the 2021 infrastructure law.

I calculated the highway subsidy numbers from the Federal Highway Administration’s latest edition of Highway Statistics. The agency once published this report as a book but now issues it as a series of spreadsheets. Earlier this month, I reported on spreadsheets showing the volume of traffic carried on the highways, but the financial spreadsheets were not yet available. Now they are. Continue reading

A New View of Congestion

The GPS company TomTom recently published its rankings of urban areas by the amount of congestion people face. Like many other congestion studies, the rankings estimate the amount of time the average motorist wastes during rush hour. But that may not be the best measure of mobility.

Is Vancouver the most congested urban area in the U.S. or Canada?

TomTom also listed the average speed of traffic in each city center and metro area, both during rush hours and over the course of a day (calculated using the number of minutes required to go six miles). The time wasted was calculated by measuring how much slower traffic was during rush hour compared with the rest of the day. Urban areas could reduce the hours of delay by increasing traffic speeds during rush hour. But they could also reduce the calculated hours of delay by reducing traffic speeds during non-rush-hour periods. Continue reading

The Best State to Live in Is . . .

Louisiana is the worst state to live in, according to self-storage company Pink Storage. The company has rated the 50 states using sixteen different criteria including income, congestion, housing, education, crime, and life expectancy. California is the fifth-worst, thanks to its low housing affordability, followed by South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, and the afore-mentioned Louisiana.

Any state that has scenery such as this doesn’t look too unlivable to me. Photo by glynn424.

Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee score poorly on income while Arizona is mediocre to poor in several categories including high school graduation rates, number of police per capita (though its crime rates aren’t particularly high), and utility bills (to pay for air conditioning no doubt). Other states at the low end of the scale include Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Hawaii, and Alabama. Continue reading

A Legal Challenge to Austin’s Light-Rail Plans

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking a state court to cancel Austin’s light-rail plans. Capital Metro, Austin’s transit agency, persuaded voters to raise taxes to build light rail in 2020. Soon after the vote, however, the agency admitted that rail would cost a lot more than it had claimed and so less would be built than promised. Paxton says that in doing so it has breached its contract with the voters and its plans should be rejected.

Imagining light rail in Austin. Smiling happy people, no cars, and no crime make this scene a complete fantasy. Source: Project Connect.

Paxton has gotten in trouble over securities fraud and has taken positions on abortion and immigration that I disagree with. I am sure there are rail transit advocates who are gnashing their teeth over the idea that a lawsuit could overturn the “will of the people” to build light rail in Austin. But, while I am obviously biased, I think that defining the election as a “contract” and ruling it invalid if Capital Metro can’t keep its part of the contract is a great idea. Continue reading

A Mere $100 Billion More

The California High-Speed Rail Authority recently released a new draft business plan saying that it needs only $100 billion more to finish the project. The plan admits that the agency expects to spend more on the 171 miles between Merced and Bakersfield than the $33 billion it had projected the entire 463-mile project would cost when voters approved it in 2008. Even with a recent federal grant, the agency only has about $25 billion for the project, most of which it has already spent.

Click image to download a 17.8-MB PDF of this plan.

As shown on page 65 of the plan, the current projection is that the final cost of the project will be between $89 billion and $128 billion, with $106 billion supposedly being most likely. It pairs this with a projected cost of $211 billion “that would be necessary to construct the equivalent highway and air passenger capacity.” However, this is entirely bogus. It assumes, for example, that the only way to increase airline capacities is by building new airports; increasing the size of planes flying between LA and San Francisco is somehow impossible. It also assumes that new freeway lanes would have to be constructed the entire distance between LA and the Bay Area, even in places that aren’t expected to be congested in the future. Continue reading

San Jose Transit Insanity

Someone recently asked me what I thought were the nation’s worst-managed transit projects. I suggested the Honolulu rail was number 1, the Maryland Purple Line was number 2, and BART to San Jose was number 3. But maybe I underestimated the insanity of the BART-to-San Jose line.

It’s even worse than Mr. Arnold suggests. In 2001, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) did its initial alternatives analysis comparing BART with a wide range of alternatives including buses, bus rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, and “Diesel light rail,” which is what the FTA now calls “hybrid rail.” BART was picked because they thought it would get the most riders even though it was also by far the most expensive. Continue reading

Why Do Democrats Support Transit?

“What drives Republican opposition to transit?” asks Governing magazine. I’ve often wondered the reverse of this question: Why do Democrats support transit?

Every rider gained by new light-rail lines in Los Angeles correspond to five or more lost bus riders. Photo by SounderBruce.

Governing‘s implicit assumption is that transit is a good thing and anyone opposed must have some warped reason to question it. The magazine’s answer is that opposition to transit reflects an urban-rural divide and since Republicans are more likely to represent rural areas that get less or no transit service than urban areas, they have little reason to support it. This belief may be why the Federal Transit Administration is so eager to support rural transit as it is a way to co-opt more political support for transit in general. Continue reading

January Miles of Driving 99.5% of 2019

In January 2024, Americans drove 99.5 percent as many miles as they did in the same month of 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This compares with 103.1 percent in December.

See this post for a discussion of Amtrak and air travel and this post for a review of transit data for January 2024.

January had the same number of business days in 2024 as in 2019, so that doesn’t account for the drop below 100 percent. Instead, this drop is more likely due to the mid-January snowstorm that blanketed much of the United States. Continue reading

Reforming Canadian Transit

As in the U.S., many Canadian transit agencies are fixated on building 19th-century transit systems that make no sense today, says a new report from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Instead of focusing on downtowns, as these transit agencies are doing, the report urges cities to develop polycentric transit systems that serve other economic centers as well as they now serve downtowns.

Click image to download a copy of this report.

The report scrutinizes transit systems in eight urban areas that have built or are planning to build rail transit lines. After adjusting for inflation, the costs of these lines has dramatically increased in recent years: Calgary light-rail construction costs quintupled from $53 million to $275 million per kilometer; Toronto subway costs have grown from $76 million to more than $1 billion per kilometer; and Edmonton, Vancouver, and other cities have seen similar increases. Continue reading