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Category Archives: Useful Data

The 2008 Transit Data Are Here!

By | | Mission, Transportation, Useful Data
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The Antiplanner is a data junkie. When the Federal Transit Administration publishes each year’s National Transit Database, I feel like running down the street like Steve Martin in The Jerk: “The 2008 Transit Database is here! And I’m in it!” (I did, after all, ride the Washington Metro more than a few times in 2008.)

As in previous years, the 2008 database comes in two very different formats: the database and the data tables. Both are self-extracting exe files (if, like the Antiplanner, you have a Macintosh, you may need a special program such as File Juicer to extract the data). Each has more-or-less the same data, but the data tables are easier to read while the database is easier to manipulate in an Excel spreadsheet.

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Transportation Energy Data

By | | Book reviews, Transportation, Useful Data
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The Department of Energy has just published the 28th edition of the Transportation Energy Data Book, including data for 2007. Since this was the source of some of the Antiplanner’s data used to compare energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of cars vs. rail transit, it is worth taking a look to see what has changed.

Two of the most important pages contain tables 2.13 and 2.14, physical pages 64 and 65. These list the energy consumption per passenger mile of various forms of transportation between 1970 and 2007.

The tables indicate that, between 2006 and 2007, energy consumption per passenger mile of cars increased by 0.1 percent. For light trucks, it decreased by 0.9 percent, but for transit buses it increased by 1.3 percent. Airlines reduced energy consumption per passenger mile by 3.0 percent; Amtrak by 5.1 percent; and light/heavy rail transit by 4.8 percent. However, commuter rail energy consumption per passenger mile increased by 4.4 percent.

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Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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During my last trip to DC, I happened to listen to a debate over a proposal to build a streetcar line in Baltimore. “People won’t ride a bus,” argued one of the streetcar advocates. “To attract tourists, we need to have a streetcar.”

Meanwhile, within a two-block walk of the Cato Institute offices, I could find dozens of buses: charter buses in front of hotels, open-top tour buses filled with tourists, Bolt buses, two-story-high Megabuses, and many more. Most of them filled well over half their seats, except for the city buses which ran nearly empty.

Rail advocates are fond of claiming that Margaret Thatcher said, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure” — as if support from a fiscal conservative lends credence to their cause. In fact, there is no evidence Thatcher ever said this “or indeed shared the sentiment.”

The truth is that intercity buses are staging a revival, attracting riders of all ages from all walks of life. They are doing so by offering services you can’t get from Amtrak at much lower prices. But because they are unsubsidized, they are ignored by would-be policy makers such as the Surface Transportation Policy Commission. Moreover, accurate data on bus ridership are very hard to come by.

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Europe vs. the U.S.

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Here are some numbers to think about. The European numbers are from Panorama of Transport, published by the European Union. The U.S. numbers are from the National Transit Database and National Transportation Statistics.

As of 2004, page 23 of Panorama says that 137 cities in the EU-25 had light rail or streetcars (trams), compared with just 27 in the U.S. (including vintage trolleys). Thirty EU-25 cities had what the Europeans call “metros,” including what we would call subways, elevateds, and commuter rail, compared with 14 in the U.S.

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Happy New Year

By | | Mission, Useful Data
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Today is the Antiplanner’s second anniversary, and to express my appreciation to everyone who reads and comments, I am offering another gift. A few weeks ago, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight posted the third quarter home price indices for states and metropolitan areas.

These data are, in my opinion, much better than the more-frequently cited Case-Schiller index, which covers a much more limited set of cities and states. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight uses the Case-Schiller method of comparing same-home resales, but applies it to every state and metro area in the country.

I’ve enhanced these files by adding a few basic calculations and charts. The original data are still in columns A through E of the spreadsheets. In column F (in every 134th and 135th row), I’ve calculated the percentage by which housing prices increased after the first quarter of 2000 to their peak and the percentage by which prices declined after their peak.

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Merry Christmas

By | | Housekeeping, Useful Data
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Click for a larger picture.

Best wishes from Chip, his niece Buffy, the Antiplanner, and the Antiplanner’s friend, Vickie. Plus, I have a little holiday present for you.

The Federal Highway Administration has started to publish its 2007 Highway Statistics. These include a couple of tables that contain lots of useful data about urban areas, but the tables are annoyingly difficult to work with.

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I have two problems with the FHwA’s Excel files. First, it puts the 458 urban areas on nine different sheets, or about 50 urban areas per sheet. So I make a new file that puts them all on one sheet. Second, for those urban areas that are in multiple states, it breaks down the data by state. This can be useful, but if you are trying to get totals, averages, or do other calculations, you effectively double-count those areas. So I delete the state-by-state breakdowns.

The result are modified tables HM-71 and HM-72. If you find these modified tables useful, they are my Christmas gift to you. Perhaps not as big a gift as my Thanksgiving gift, but that’s the way the holiday cookie crumbles.

Happy Thanksgiving

By | | Housekeeping, Useful Data
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As a Thanksgiving gift to all my faithful allies and loyal opponents, the Antiplanner has summarized the recently posted National Transit Data for 2007 into one file. The original data are contained in about 21 different files, many of which are hard to read because you have to cross-reference to other files.

The 1.6 MB spreadsheet I’ve posted is in three parts. The first 1438 rows include data for every mode (light rail, bus, etc.) offered by every transit agency in the country (or at least every one that reports to the FTA). The data are also sorted into “DO,” meaning directly operated by the transit agency, and “PT,” meaning contracted out to private companies.

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What about Highway Subsidies?

By | | Follow up, Useful Data
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Last week, in a comment on this blog, the highwayman stated, “road users only cover about 20% their costs directly and the rest of the funding comes mostly from income & property taxes.” I don’t know where he gets this information, but it is not credible.

The National Association of Railway Passengers (NARP) claims that “41% of the $133 billion spent on highways came from payments other than the gas tax, tolls, and vehicle taxes and fees.” In particular, NARP counts the proceeds of bond sales and interest on savings as money that comes from sources other than user fees. But how do the bonds get paid back? Mostly out of user fees. Where does the interest come from? Mostly from savings of unspent user fees.

What is the truth about highway subsidies? And what ought to be done about them? The Antiplanner has addressed this topic before, but (judging from the comments) it may have escaped the attention of some readers and I confess that I may not have rigorously covered this subject.

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What Popped the Housing Bubble?

By | | Regional planning, Useful Data
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High gas prices burst the housing bubble, says an economist from Oregon. The economist’s detailed report goes much further than this, saying that high gas prices have led to “a tectonic shift in housing demand,” namely that suburban homes are now worth less while central city homes are worth more.

Based on this claim, the economist concludes that cities that promote more compact development will be more “successful than places that continue to follow sprawling development.” He urges cities to “promote land use patterns that enable mixed-use development and provide more bikeable, walkable neighborhoods served by transit”

This is, of course, a repeat of James Kunstler’s “the suburbs are doomed” argument. “Vehicle miles traveled—a key driver of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions—are
down,” says the report breathlessly, “reversing a 20-year upward trend.”

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