The Antiplanner »

Author Archives: The Antiplanner

About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

January Miles of Driving 99.5% of 2019

By | | Transportation
2 Comments

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

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

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 →

Silicon Valley Housing Plan

By | | Housing
14 Comments

In December, I pointed out that Silicon Valley’s transit system was designed for the 1910s and suggested a way to redesign it so that it would serve a 2020s urban area. Last month, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) announced that is attempting the exact opposite strategy: it wants to turn Silicon Valley into a 1910s urban area.

Planned high-density developments aim to turn San Jose into a Greenwich Village lookalike. Source: Republic Urban Properties.

Last week, a Silicon Valley group called Opportunity Now published my assessment of why this strategy is bound to fail. Instead, it will waste a lot of tax dollars and enrich a few property developers without making the region’s housing more affordable or helping regional mobility.

Transit Carries 74% of 2019 Riders in January

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
7 Comments

Driving and flying have been hovering around 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels for the last year and Amtrak has been around 100 percent for the last six months, but transit is still stuck at just below 75 percent, according to monthly data released by the Federal Transit Administration yesterday. Transit first reached 73 percent last March and 74 percent in September, and even exceeded 75 percent in November (a month that had more business days in 2023 than 2019), but it doesn’t look like it will get significantly above 75 percent for a long time.

When measured as a percent of pre-pandemic travel, transit continues to lag well behind all other modes of travel. Highway data for January 2024 should be available soon. For more on Amtrak and air travel, see yesterday’s post.

The results vary by urban area, of course. Above-average areas include New York (80.5%), Miami (90.5%), Washington (80.6%), San Diego (80.6%), Tampa-St. Petersburg (83.4%), Las Vegas (83.6%), Cincinnati (96.7%), Austin (82.8%), and Richmond (113.1%). Remaining well below average are Chicago (62.6%), Atlanta (53.0%), Boston (62.0%), Detroit (54.7%), Phoenix (50.4%), San Francisco-Oakland (59.0%), St. Louis (58.6%), Pittsburgh (54.5%), and Jacksonville (56.9%). Continue reading →

January Air Travel 109.6% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
9 Comments

The airlines carried nearly 10 percent more travelers in January 2024 than in the same month of 2019, according to checkpoint counts made by the Transportation Security Administration. Meanwhile, Amtrak carried 98.2 percent as many passenger-miles in January as in 2019, according to its monthly performance report released early this week.

Transit and highway data for January 2024 should be available soon.

Don’t let the closeness of the airline and Amtrak lines fool you. Airline passenger-miles are not yet available for December and January, but in the 12 months ending in November 2023, the airlines carried 128 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak. And that’s just counting domestic air travel; when international travel is counted, airlines carried 232 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak. Continue reading →

Transit Use Shrinks to Insignificance

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
6 Comments

Transit in 2022 carried less than 1 percent of passenger travel in 461 out of the nation’s 487 urban areas and less than half a percent of passenger travel in 426 of those urban areas. It carried more than 2 percent in only 7 urban areas and more than 3 percent in just two: New York and San Francisco-Oakland. These numbers are calculated from the 2022 National Transit Database released last October and the 2022 Highway Statistics released last month, specifically table HM-72, which has driving data by urban area.

Highways were a little less congested in 2022 than before the pandemic. Oregon Department of Transportation photo.

In 2019, transit carried 11.6 percent of motorized passenger travel in the New York urban area, a share that fell to 8.5 percent in 2022. Transit carried 6.8 percent in the San Francisco-Oakland area in 2019, which fell to 3.6 percent in 2022. Transit carried around 3.5 percent in Chicago, Honolulu, Seattle, and Washington urban areas, which fell to 2.5 percent in Honolulu, 2.1 percent in Seattle, and less than 1.8 percent in Chicago and Washington in 2022. Anchorage, Ithaca, and State College PA are the only other urban areas where transit carried more than 2 percent of travel in 2022. Continue reading →

Density and Fertility

By | | Follow up
12 Comments

Nearly three months ago, I suggested that trying to get people to live in high-density housing projects was a good way to “kill a country” by reducing fertility rates. Not everyone was persuaded; one comment stated that there is “Not a shred of evidence other than his bald assertion that people in Korea have no room for kids.”

A Twitter user calling itself “More Births” has reached the same conclusion as the Antiplanner. After noting that South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand all have very low fertility rates, More Births asked what these regions have in common. The number 1 factor listed: ultra-dense housing policies. Continue reading →

Kill-Switch Rule Under Consideration

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

Section 24220 of the 2021 infrastructure law directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to require that automakers include a device in new cars that will passively detect whether the driver is drunk and keep them from operating the car. NHTSA has until November of this year to write the rule and then new cars made beginning two years after that must comply. The law specifically states that if NHTSA can’t find a device that will accomplish this, then it doesn’t have to require one.

U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Nathanael T. Miller.

This law has led to fears that the government will require automobiles to have “kill switches” that the government can remotely control, thus shutting down people’s freedom of mobility at any time. Defenders of the policy argue that these fears are overblown. Last month, NHTSA issued its advance notice of proposed rule making on the subject and it’s worth looking at it before comments are due next Tuesday, March 5. Continue reading →

The Antiplanner’s Library
Transit’s Growth, Decline, and Pending Demise

By | | Transportation
10 Comments

Who said the following? “The basic objective of our Nation’s transportation system must be to assure the availability of the fast, safe, and economical transportation services needed in a growing and changing economy. . . . This basic objective can and must be achieved primarily by continued reliance on unsubsidized privately owned facilities, operating under the incentives of private profit and the checks of competition to the maximum extent practicable. . . . This means . . . equality of opportunity for all forms of transportation and their users and undue preference to none. It means greater reliance on the forces of competition and less reliance on the restraints of regulation. And it means that, to the extent possible, the users of transportation services should bear the full costs of the services they use, whether those services are provided privately or publicly.”

Click image to go to Bookfinder.com to find the lowest current price for this book.

  1. Ronald Reagan;
  2. Milton Friedman;
  3. Ayn Rand; or
  4. The Antiplanner?

In fact, the answer is 5. John F. Kennedy. Or at least this statement was contained in Kennedy’s April 2, 1962 message to Congress on having an “efficient transportation system.” This means it was probably written by staffers in the Department of Commerce, as the Department of Transportation did not yet exist. Whoever wrote it was at least willing to talk the talk of free markets and fiscal conservatism. Continue reading →

FRA Dreams Up Amtrak Schemes

By | | Transportation
13 Comments

Ever been in Billings, Montana and wanted to go to El Paso? Or have you been in New York and wanted to spend 36 hours traveling to Dallas? How about going from Minneapolis to Denver via Pierre, South Dakota? Or Detroit to New Orleans? These are just some of the 15 new long-distance trains that the Federal Railroad Administration has tentatively proposed to add to Amtrak’s network.

Click image for a larger view. Click here to download the full draft proposal that was released last week.

Some of the proposals would restore Amtrak routes that have been discontinued, including trains from Salt Lake City to Seattle, Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, Chicago to Florida, and Chicago to Seattle on the former Northern Pacific route through southern Montana. Other proposals would restore trains that were discontinued even before Amtrak, such as New York to New Orleans via Chattanooga and Montgomery, which would be in addition to Amtrak’s current New York-New Orleans route via Charlotte and Birmingham. Continue reading →