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Category Archives: Transportation

Tesla = Tucker?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Shares of stock in Tesla Motors are selling for more than $160. Some people think it is overvalued by at least $100 a share. Others think such high prices are appropriate because Tesla is more a tech company than an auto manufacturer.


The Tesla Model S, available over the Internet for a mere $69,500.

The Antiplanner thinks both views are correct. Tesla’s shares are overpriced because they are priced like a tech company–one that is likely to go bankrupt soon, or at least unlikely to ever make any money.

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DOT’s Livability Plan Ignores Real Life

By | | Transportation
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The Antiplanner hasn’t yet read all of the Department of Transportation’s strategic plan yet, but I’ve read the livable communities chapter. Though heavily footnoted, it is based on numerous minor and two major fallacies.

Among the many minor fallacies, the plan blames obesity on the lack of sidewalks forcing parents to give their children rides to work instead of letting them walk. This unquestioned assumption is not supported by reality.

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It’s Not an Affair; It’s a Committed Relationship

By | | Transportation
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USA Today asks, “Is USA’s love affair with the automobile over?” The Antiplanner is always irked when someone calls people’s use of cars a “love affair,” because it implies that driving is irrational. In fact, people’s use of cars is entirely rational, as they are the fastest, most-convenient, least-expensive of getting between most places inside of an urban area as well as for journeys up to a few hundred miles.

Ironically, USA Today quotes a study from the Department of Transportation (previously cited here) that pretty much concluded that the very slight (2.4%) decline in driving since its 2007 peak was almost entirely due to the economy, and not a change in tastes. USA Today pretty much ignores that conclusion so they can underscore opinions by car-haters from US PIRG who want to divert even more highway user fees to transit and other modes of transportation.

If there is any reason for a decline in driving other than the economy, it is demographics. Baby boomers are retiring and retired people don’t drive as much, especially during rush hour. The ratio of workers to non-workers is declining, so rush-hour traffic might be a little better. That doesn’t mean there is no reason to try to fix congested roads; roads that are congested today are bound to remain congested in the future unless something is done such as implementing congestion pricing.

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Courts May Have Last Word on Trains

By | | Transportation
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A county judge says the California high-speed rail project violates the law approved by voters in 2008. But he won’t decide to issue an order halting the project until after another hearing, for which a date hasn’t yet been set.


The Reason Foundation’s Adrian Moore and Antiplanner friend Wendell Cox discuss California high-speed rail.

The Contra Costa Times lists many of the ways the project as planned today violates the 2008 ballot measure: the construction cost has doubled; the projected ticket prices have gone up; the speeds are slower; and the projected opening date is already nine years behind schedule. But the judge only rules that the project had failed to complete its environmental review and find funds to finance the entire project, not just a few miles in the Central Valley.

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Cars Provide Social Benefits Too

By | | Transportation
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When the Antiplanner travels around the country, I often meet people critical of their local transit systems. “The buses/trains are empty most of the time,” they say. “I saw a bus this morning with only one passenger on board.” “They put advertising over the windows so we can’t see in to see how empty they really are.”


Socially beneficial transit? Flickr photo by David Wilson.

People shouldn’t complain about empty transit vehicles, says transit expert Jarrett Walker. People “make it sound like because transit systems run empty buses that means they’re failing,” says Walker. In fact, those empty buses are serving a socially beneficial function: they “are valued for the lifeline access they provide for the isolated senior,” disabled person, or other people who lack access to an automobile.

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Alive Again?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The once-dead Columbia River Crossing, a $3.5-billion project to build a $1.0 billion bridge across the river between Portland and Vancouver, may be alive again. After the Washington legislature rejected the idea that Washington state taxpayers should contribute $400 million to the plan, Portland bridge supporters have come up with an idea: Just build the bridge, but nothing north of the bridge in Washington.

The plan basically called for a $1.2 billion bridge, a $1.0 billion low-capacity rail line, and $1.5 billion replacing all highway interchanges for miles north and south of the bridge. Although the new bridge would have more lanes than the current bridge, the highways leading to it from both directions would have no more lanes, so the total capacity would not be significantly increased.

The existing bridge is not in any danger of falling down, but Portland wants to cram low-capacity rail down Vancouver’s throat, and replacing the bridge is an excuse for doing so. To keep the plan alive, advocates suggest deleting all of the highway interchange reconstruction in Washington. If Washington decides to reconstruct those interchanges later, it can come up with the funds later. Of course, the plan still includes low-capacity rail.

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Hyperloop’s Real Problem

By | | Follow up, Transportation
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Most reviews of Elon Musk‘s hyperloop plan focus on technical questions. Will it cost as little as he estimates? Could it move as fast as he projects? Could the system work at all?

None of these are the real problem with the hyperloop. The real problem is how an infrastructure-heavy, point-to-point system can possibly compete with personal vehicles that can go just about anywhere–the United States has more than 4 million miles of public roads–or with an airline system that requires very little infrastructure and can serve far more destinations than the hyperloop.

Musk promises the hyperloop will be fast. But fast is meaningless if it doesn’t go where you want to go. Musk estimates that people travel about 6 million trips a year between the San Francisco and Los Angeles urban areas, where he wants to build his first hyperloop line. But these urban areas are not points: they are huge, each covering thousands of square miles of land.

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Hyperloop De-hyped

By | | Transportation
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OFP2003 pointed out yesterday that Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk has finally revealed what he means by a hyperloop, which he proposes should be built between Los Angeles and San Francisco. As described in detail in this paper, he proposes an elevated tube paralleling Interstate 5 through which capsules or pods move at near-supersonic speeds propelled by linear induction motors.


Claustrophobes need not apply: Hyperloop passengers would be stuck in a windowless seat with limited headroom for the hour or so it would take to get between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Musk estimates that a tube capable of carrying both people and freight would cost about $7.5 billion to build. Each capsule would have 28 seats, and could depart on two-minute headways. He says this would be enough to carry all six million people who today travel between the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas each year.

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But It Always Loses Money

By | | Transportation
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A new poll finds that three out of four Americans never or almost never ride transit. Just 6 percent use it daily; 7 percent once a week; 4 percent two or three times a month; and 7 percent once every few months.

The numbers seem a little high, as the 2010 census found that less than 5 percent of workers ride transit to work. Moreover, other data show that people who say they ride transit often drive instead, while people who say they drive almost always drive, so the census numbers overestimate transit commuting.

In any case, the poll goes on to say that Americans “still tend to believe the government should back mass transit projects as long as they don’t lose money.” But all transit loses money? How did the pollsters reach this conclusion?

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High Speed and Low Budgets

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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While it is possible that Spain’s train crash that killed some 80 people was due to a broken rail or other equipment failure, most experts looking at the video below think the problem was simply high speeds. The video shows a train going an estimated 125 mph around a corner designed for 50 mph.

Much attention has been focused on the train’s driver, who apparently has been known to post photos of train speedometers at high speeds (but not more than the speed limits), suggesting he might have been less than fully attentive. But where was the positive train control system, which should have warned the driver and automatically slowed the train if the driver failed to do so?

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