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LaHood Looks Forward to “Wonderful Opportunities”

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood announced recently that he plans to step down from his post at the end of President Obama’s first term and that he is looking forward to some “wonderful opportunities” in the private sector. This naturally raises the question of what kind of opportunities await a bumbling has-been who betrayed his party’s principles in order to unconditionally support a president of the opposite party.

For example, the former Republican congressman from Illinois recently charged that Republicans in Congress today oppose Obama’s transportation policies because they “don’t want Obama to be successful.” Since Obama’s policies call for spending hundreds of billions of dollars the nation doesn’t have on transportation projects the nation doesn’t need, it is more likely that fiscal conservatives don’t think those policies can be successful at accomplishing anything other than wasting money on a grander scale than any other domestic project in history.

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The office of Secretary of Transportation has somehow become a “throwaway” position that recent administrations have used to make their cabinets appear more diverse. Bush kept a Democrat, Norman Mineta, in the office while Obama appointed a Republican, LaHood. We’ll see what the next administration does. As someone commented on the Washington Post web site, after Obama’s first term, “The other members of the cabinet will be leaving as well.” Maybe, if Republicans can find a credible alternative.

Getting Priorities Straight

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Facing a $12 million to $17 million budget shortfall next year, Portland’s TriMet transit agency is cutting bus service for lack of funds. But it has enough funds to spend $250,000 on a giant sculpture of a deer with a baby face.

The agency has already cut bus service by 13 percent and light-rail service by 10 percent in the last two years. Yet it is spending at least $3 million on “art” as part of its $200-million-per-mile light-rail line to Milwaukie, one of the most wasteful rail projects ever. As a matter of policy, TriMet spends 1.5 percent of its capital expenditures on art, even though it is not required to do so.
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After all, the most important thing is to keep Portland weird, not to actually provide transportation to people who need it. In furtherance of that goal, TriMet recently hired a multicultural manager and a transit equity manager, no doubt paying both more than $100,000 a year.

TriMet asked the public for ideas to help it close its budget gap. Most of the ideas involved taxing someone else such as auto drivers or out-of-town visitors. How about ending capital-intensive projects and focusing on providing efficient transit service on routes and schedules that fill up the buses so that losses are minimized? I bet they never thought of that one.

California Bus Association

By | | Housekeeping, Transportation
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The Antiplanner spent the last couple of days at the annual meeting of the California Bus Association, which left me unable to post as I was too cheap to pay the hotel $9.95 per day for Internet access even though the nice people at the Bus Association would probably have covered the cost. In any case, I learned a lot at the meeting that I’ll probably comment on in future posts.

I’ve never been to a bus association convention before, but my impression was of a thriving, growing industry. Hundreds of different companies offer scheduled and charter bus services; there are quite a few different manufacturers; and new buses feature intriguing technologies including adaptive cruise control, vehicle stability control, and on-board fire detection and suppression. Moreover, the market is rapidly shifting in an endless series of buy-outs and mergers. It felt more like Silicon Valley than a nearly-100-year-old industry that had been in decline from before 1980 to some time in the last decade.

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2010 Census Data

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Despite huge efforts to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles, nearly 8 million more people drove alone to work in 2010 than in 2000, according to data released by the Census Bureau. Wendell Cox’s review of the data show that the other big gainer was “worked at home,” which grew by nearly 2 million over the decade.

Transit gained less than a million, but transit numbers were so small in 2000 that its share grew from 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent of total workers. While drive alone grew from 75.6 percent to 76.5 percent, the big loser was carpooling, which declined by more than 2 million workers. As a result, driving’s share as a whole declined from 87.9 percent to 86.2 percent.

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Donor States? Recipient States?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation uses 2009 data to show that more than half the states send more gas taxes to the Treasury than they get back in federal transportation dollars. But the GAO uses 2005 through 2009 data to argue that, in fact, all the states have gotten back more than their residents paid in gas taxes.

It is likely that both are correct. Particularly in 2007 and 2008, the federal government spent more on surface transportation than it took in. If you spend more than you receive, then all everybody wins–except whoever has to eventually make up the difference.

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Jerry Brown Scores Again

By | | Transportation
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The Antiplanner applauds California Governor Jerry Brown–who proposed and ultimately persuaded the legislature to kill urban redevelopment agencies–for vetoing a bicycle bill last week. The bill would have required motorists to slow down to 15 mph if they were passing a bicycle and unable to give the cyclist at least three feet of room.

Proponents argued that this was for cycling safety, but as the Antiplanner has previously pointed out, most car-bicycle accidents take place at intersections, while only a tiny number consist of the car hitting the cyclist while overtaking it from the rear. Thus, this bill would have imposed a huge cost on auto drivers–and, as Brown pointed out, could lead to more auto-to-auto accidents–while doing little for bicycle safety.

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Inside the Consulting World

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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Last Saturday the Antiplanner participated in a conference about the Columbia River Crossing, a government-planning effort aimed at replacing a bridge that doesn’t need to be replaced so Portland can sneak its light-rail system (and associated land-use planning) into Vancouver, Washington. One of the more fascinating presentations at the conference came from Tiffany Couch, a forensic accountant who has been studying the budget of the planning team called the Columbia River Crossing.

It is public knowledge that this team has already spent $130 million doing nothing but pushing paper around. Since the bridge itself could be built for less than a billion dollars, that’s a healthy share of the cost. Of course, the planners’ goal is to spend well over $3 billion on the bridge, which would include money for light rail and other bells and whistles that are probably just as unnecessary.

What the public didn’t know, until Ms. Couch’s presentation (4 MB PPTX file), was that almost all of this $130 million was paid to one consulting firm. In 2005, Couch revealed, ODOT and WSDOT issued a “notice to consultants” that they wanted to hire someone to write the environmental impact statement for the project (page 17 of Couch’s presentation). “The project team anticipates the total cost of the environmental phase to be in excess of $20 million.” It asked consultants to submit and proposal with a list of their qualifications.

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Then Why Did They Vote for It in the First Place?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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A new poll finds that, if high-speed rail were on the ballot today, 62 percent of California voters would vote against it. The complete poll report also indicates that 63 percent of Californians say they would never ride it if it were built.

The poll asked people about their state funding priorities. The top priorities were education (76 percent), public safety (69 percent), and social services (65 percent). Water and irrigation (29 percent) and clean energy (18 percent) scored much lower. At 11 percent, high-speed rail was last.

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Partly based on this poll, transportation expert Ken Orski argues that “it looks like the end of the line for high-speed rail.” However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority still has several billion dollars of spending authority and the mandate to begin construction in the Central Valley by September 30, 2012 (or it will lose federal dollars). Unless the state legislature stops them, I would be more surprised if they voluntarily stopped than if they began building a train to nowhere.

Music City Star Continues to Bilk Taxpayers

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Nashville’s commuter train, the Music City Star, is “really taking off,” at least according to an op ed in the Tennessean written by the transit agency CEO, Paul Ballard. Actually, the best that can be said for the train is that Ballard hasn’t been fired over it yet.

The Music City Ripoff.

Starting the commuter train cost taxpayers $41 million and operating it cost $3.3 million in 2009. But Ballard points to a 24 percent increase in ridership in the last twelve months so that the train is now carrying an average of 1,225 trips per weekday.

The problem is that 124 percent of nearly nothing is still nearly nothing. Ballard’s agency had predicted that, by 2012, the train would be carrying 1,900 trips per weekday. Unless it gets a 55 percent increase in ridership next year, it’s not going to make it. Apparently, Ballard defines “success” as “we’re still losing more money than we predicted we were going to lose, but not as much as we used to lose.”
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Blame the Insurance Company

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Here’s a tip for transit agencies: Buy insurance guaranteeing ridership revenue so that, when you screw up and ridership declines, you can sue the insurance company to cover the revenue losses. That’s what Washington MetroRail has done in response to ridershop losses that it claims resulted from the 2009 accident that killed 9 people.

According to Metro, delays in repairs led to systemwide losses of 6 million trips, which would have produced about $13 million in revenue. So it wants its insurer to cover those revenue losses. The Washington Examiner article about the lawsuit strongly hints that at least some of those ridership losses might have been due to the shrinking economy instead.
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What the article doesn’t say is that the accident was caused by Metro’s own failure to adequately maintain its signaling system. Why bother to maintain your rail lines when your insurance company is obligated to cover your losses when the system fails?