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Category Archives: Policy brief

Americans Are on the Move

By | | Housing, Policy brief
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When the pandemic hit, I thought it would slow down sales of existing homes. Instead, home sales in 2020 reached their highest level since the peak of the housing bubble in 2006. I also thought that the pandemic would slow new home construction. Instead, by the end of the year, new home starts also reached their highest level since 2006. When people began moving out of Manhattan, San Francisco, and other big cities, I assumed most of them would consider the moves temporary and would be renting at their new locations. Instead, homeownership took its biggest year-over-year leap since at least 1960 and probably in U.S. history, reaching levels not seen since, you guessed it, the 2006 bubble.

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Information about moving trends isn’t always clear. In September, Bloomberg writer Marie Patino questioned the conventional wisdom that people were moving out of big cities or indeed that more people were moving than in previous years. However, her data were based on how many people were hiring companies like United Van Lines, when in fact most moves don’t use professional movers. We won’t really know the truth until the dust settles a year or two from now, but we can get a glimmer of that truth by digging into what data are available. Continue reading →

How Much Is a Trillion Dollars?

By | | Policy brief
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In 1939, the federal budget was $9 billion, the most in peacetime history. The year before, when looking at the proposed budget, a young congressman named Everett Dirksen was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “a billion here, a billion there, and by and by it begins to mount up into money.” (Later, someone amended the quote to “real money,” which has a greater effect in print, but probably wasn’t necessary when spoken in Dirksen’s baritone voice.)

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

In today’s dollars, the 1939 federal budget would be about $140 billion. But Congress spent much more than that in 2020. After adding the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, total federal spending was nearly $6.6 trillion, more than 700 times the 1939 budget and around 50 times the inflation-adjusted 1939 budget. Since revenues don’t come close to these expenses, the federal deficit soared to $3.1 trillion and the federal debt today is nearly $28 trillion. Continue reading →

Transit: Browner Than Ever

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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With ridership stuck at around 37 percent of 2019 levels, transit advocates have stopped claiming that transit is energy-efficient and climate-friendly. Even in 2019, transit wasn’t particularly green, but the fall-off in ridership associated with the pandemic has completely destroyed any claim that transit agencies may have that they save energy by providing an alternative to the automobile.

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In 2019, the transit industry as a whole used more energy per passenger-mile than the average light truck and emitted about the same amount of greenhouse gases per passenger mile as the average car. In October 2020, based on agencies for which data are available, transit used about twice as much energy per passenger mile as the average light truck and emitted twice as much carbon dioxide per passenger mile as the average car. Continue reading →

Supercommuting and Marchetti’s Constant

By | | Policy brief
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The number of supercommuters–people who commute more than 90 minutes each way to and from work–has grown much faster than the total number of workers in the United States. In 2010, 2.4 percent of commuters spent more than 90 minutes en route; by 2019, it was 3.1 percent.

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These supercommuters are not evenly distributed across the country. Instead, both the number and the rapid growth of supercommuters are concentrated in a few states, mainly California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington. In particular, the Boston, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington metropolitan areas all have large numbers and higher than average growth of supercommuters. These states and urban areas are all known for using some form of growth management to minimize sprawl. Continue reading →

Closing the China-US Freeway Gap

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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With growing recognition that China has become the United States’ main economic and political competitor in the world, many people point to China’s high-speed rail system as evidence that the United States is “falling behind.” But the real transportation gap between China and the United States is not high-speed rail, but freeways. China has about the same number of motor vehicles as the United States. But where the U.S. has about 67,000 miles of freeways and is adding fewer than 800 miles per year, China has 93,000 miles of freeways and is growing its system by more than 5,000 miles a year.

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China began building freeways before it began building high-speed rail and it has built more miles each year and spent more money on new freeway construction (though less per mile) than on high-speed rail. Highway travel has grown faster than rail travel, and the highway system has become particularly important for freight, as it moves about 2.5 times as many ton-miles as rail lines. Continue reading →

Ten Reasons Why Transit Parity Is a Bad Idea

By | | Policy brief
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From the Department of Bad Ideas for Transportation (DOBIT) comes a new one: transit parity, which means the federal government should spend as much money on transit as it spends on highways. This compares to the current system where about three times as many federal dollars are spent on highways as on transit. While transit parity is right up there with free transit when measured on the idiocy scale, at least 33 members of Congress have signed onto a transit parity resolution.

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Since this issue is likely to be raised in a Biden-led Democratic Congress, here are ten reasons why it is a bad idea. Some of these reasons are obvious, but this policy brief will provide details most people might not have. Other reasons have been mentioned in past policy briefs, yet they are worth repeating just to counter the nonsense that is so often repeated by transit advocates. Continue reading →

What Infrastructure Crisis?
Bridges & Roads Are In Great Shape

By | | Policy brief
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America’s bridges and highways are in very good to excellent condition, according to data recently released by the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA). Moreover, to the extent that their condition is changing over time, it tends to be improving as highway agencies replace outdated infrastructure and conduct regular maintenance on existing infrastructure.

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These conclusions are completely contrary to the story told by interest groups such as the American Society of Civil Engineers, whose latest infrastructure report card gave highways a “D” grade and bridges a “C+.” These groups want Congress to pass a giant infrastructure bill, spending money the nation doesn’t have building infrastructure the nation doesn’t need, all to the benefit of engineers and other groups supporting such a bill. Continue reading →

How Transit Subsidies Harm Poor People

By | | Policy brief
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The nation’s transit agencies received nearly $56 billion in subsidies from taxpayers in 2019. One frequently used justification for these subsidies is that transit provides mobility to low-income people. Yet in reality transit subsidies do far more harm than good for low-income people.

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Most of the taxes used to support transit are regressive, which means low-income people pay disproportionate shares of their incomes to keep transit going. Yet the goal of most transit capital spending has been to attract upper-income people to ride transit, a goal which apparently has been met as transit commuters have significantly higher median incomes than other workers. Meanwhile, the mobility that transit provides to people who don’t have cars is pathetic, as the typical urban resident can reach 30 times as many jobs in a 30-minute auto drive as a 30-minute transit ride and can actually reach more jobs on a bicycle ride of 40 minutes or less than a transit trip of similar length. Continue reading →

The Obscure Origins of the Deep State

By | | Policy brief
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The idea that there is a “deep state” is strongly associated with Trump-loving conservatives. Many other people view this as a nonsensical conspiracy theory. But the United States does have a deep state. Another term for it is government bureaucracy.

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The nation’s founders envisioned three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. These branches had different powers and were designed to act as checks and balances against one another. It worked, more or less, for many years. Continue reading →

Transit’s 93-Year-Old Technology

By | | Policy brief
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In an era when transit industry buzz is all about light rail, streetcars, bus-rapid transit, and similar exotic (and expensive) services, it is often forgotten that the workhorse of the industry is the conventional bus (which Federal Transit Administration jargon calls the motor bus). Plodding along at average speeds of about 12 miles per hour, stopping as often as six times every mile, conventional bus services carry more daily riders than any other kind of transit and almost as many as all other modes combined. They aren’t sexy, yet close examination reveals a lot of problems within the transit industry.

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The first modern bus was developed in 1927 by the Twin Coach company. That in itself is a problem because it one of the newest technologies used by today’s transit agencies: streetcars, heavy rail, and commuter trains are all much older. Light rail is newer only as a slight variation of streetcars. The only technology that is really newer than buses is automated guideway systems such as peoplemovers in Detroit and Miami, but they are almost universally regarded as failures. Continue reading →