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Category Archives: Transportation

Driving Is Growing But Growth Is Slowing

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Late last month, the Federal Highway Administration reported that Americans drove a record number of miles in 2018: 3.225 trillion miles in all. While the Department of Transportation heralded this as a sign of a “robust economy,” detailed data show that driving grew by only 0.38 percent over 2017. This is slower than the previous year’s growth of 1.21 percent, and slower than the nation’s population growth of 0.62 percent, which means per capita driving declined by 0.24 percent.

While any growth at all is better than the transit industry is doing, this slow growth may be more of a sign of an on-coming recession than a robust economy. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal incomes declined by 0.1 percent in January, 2019, though they grew by 0.2 percent in February. Bloomberg says that some indicators suggest that we are facing the highest chance of a recession since 2008.

Of course, some people are using the growth in driving as one more argument for a big infrastructure spending bill. In fact, the need for a new federal spending program is becoming more questionable every day. Continue reading →

Shakeout in the Intercity Bus Industry

By | | Transportation
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As an apparent result of low fuel prices, the intercity bus industry is going through some turmoil, with major carriers cancelling some routes and other routes popping up. Perhaps the biggest shock is that Stagecoach, which revolutionized the bus industry with the introduction of Megabus in 2006, sold Megabus to a California investment firm after reporting a 3.2 percent decline in revenues.

Luxury carrier Vonlane offers Texas Triangle passengers a choice between legrest seats. . .

Yet the industry isn’t fading away. New carriers are introducing new models, with more dynamic schedules and more first-class services. All of these changes are reported in the Chaddick Institute’s 2019 Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry. Co-author Joseph Schwieterman has been watching the industry more closely than anyone else since Megabus began shaking it up in 2006, and the more recent shake ups are just about as revolutionary as the first Megabus routes. Continue reading →

Lowest Transit Ridership Evah

By | | Transportation
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A recent news story reported that DC Metro ridership had fallen to its lowest level since 2000. Another story reported the Philadelphia bus ridership had fallen to its lowest level since 2002. While the Antiplanner has been tracking the decline in transit ridership for several years, I never thought of expressing it in this particular way.

So I decided to look at major urban areas and transit agencies to see how many years it has been since their ridership has been as low as it was in 2018. If nothing else, this would give me the ability to casually say at cocktail parties, “Did you know that Los Angeles transit ridership is the lowest it has been since 1997?” Unfortunately, for some reason, the Antiplanner doesn’t get invited to too many cocktail parties.

In any case, I decided to compare calendar year 2018 ridership data with the Federal Transit Administration’s historic time series. One slight problem is that the historic time series is based on the fiscal years of the individual agencies, so the 2018 data, when it is published, won’t be exactly the same as the calendar year 2018 numbers. But the historic time series goes back to 1991, while the monthly time series that is the source of the calendar year data only goes back to 2002. Continue reading →

Death of a Megafolly

By | | Transportation
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Duke University’s basketball teams inspire hostility nationwide, but now the school has earned the scorn of of nearby community leaders due to its rejection of the $3-billion Durham-Orange counties light-rail project. In refusing to donate land for the rail right of way, Duke cited concerns about electromagnetic interference, vibration, and other threats to Duke research and medical programs.

$151 million a mile to take 0.08 percent of vehicles off the road.

Some argued that Duke’s decision left the project only “99 percent dead” because the GoTriangle transit agency could use eminent domain to take the land from Duke. But, nearly three weeks after Duke made its decision, the GoTriangle board “unanimously but reluctantly” voted to kill the project. Continue reading →

Fantasy vs. Reality

By | | Transportation
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Last week, the Antiplanner participated in a conference on the future of transportation in southern California. The conference consisted of four panels: high-speed rail, congestion, finance, and experiences in other countries. Since they invited me, I assumed the conference would offer a balance of pros and cons on the various issues. It turned out I was the only skeptic of passenger rail and giant subsidies to transit.

The high-speed rail panel opened with a statement by the moderator that the state has to build high-speed rail because there is no way that the airlines could handle the projected growth in travel between the Bay Area and southern California. Really? Most of the planes in that corridor today are 737s or smaller; a switch to 757s or similar-sized planes would instantly increase capacity by 50 percent or more.

The first formal presentation was by Dan Richard, who chaired California’s High-Speed Rail Authority from 2012 until being replaced by Governor Gavin Newsom last month. Richard noted that, as of 2008, the year California voters approved selling $9 billion worth of bonds for high-speed rail, China only had one high-speed rail line that was about 250 miles long. Since then, in the time it has taken California to complete no lines, China has opened nearly 18,000 miles of lines. Continue reading →

Learning the Right Lessons

By | | Transportation
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For the third time, Gwinnett County voters rejected a plan to raise their taxes in order to expand the metropolitan Atlanta rail system into their county. Only three of the five main counties in the Atlanta urban area are part of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), and transit advocates have long blamed any MARTA failures on the reluctance of the other counties to join.

Thou shall not pass into Gwinnett County. Photo by RTABus.

Some implied that anyone who voted against MARTA expansion into Gwinnett County was racist. But it’s not racist to object to spending billions of dollars on an obsolete technology to serve a dying industry. Continue reading →

NY-NJ Should Put Up or Shut Up

By | | Transportation
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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is upset that the Trump administration doesn’t want to fund new tunnels under the Hudson River. Cuomo sent an angry letter to Trump earlier this week accusing the president of being prejudiced against New York and New Jersey because they didn’t vote for him. Cuomo claims the tunnels should be federally funded because “the Northeast is home to 17 percent of the entire population and contributes 20 percent to the national domestic product.”

But population and regional populations aren’t among the criteria Congress established for federal funding of transit infrastructure. Instead, one of the most important criteria that the Department of Transportation is required to use is whether the project is “supported by an acceptable degree of local financial commitment.” Based on the lack of local support, the Federal Transit Administration’s 2020 New Starts funding recommendations gave the project a “medium-low” rating, and under federal law, that makes it ineligible for funding. Not counting some small starts (such as the downtown Los Angeles streetcar), the only other project to get a medium-low rating was the Portal North Bridge, which is also part of the Hudson Gateway megaproject.

Cuomo argues that Trump has ignored “the financial commitments made by New York and New Jersey.” The FTA’s profile of the project reveals just what those commitments are. Continue reading →

Is This Infrastructure Really Necessary?

By | | Transportation
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The United States has “at least $232 billion in critical public transportation” needs, claims the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Among the “critically needed” infrastructure on APTA’s list are a streetcar in downtown Los Angeles, another one in downtown Sacramento (which local voters have rejected), one in Tempe, and streetcar extensions in Tampa and Kansas City.

Get real: even ardent transit advocates admit that streetcars are stupid. The economic development benefits that supposedly come from streetcars are purely imaginary, and even if they weren’t, it would be hard to describe streetcars — whose average speed, APTA admits, is less than 7.5 miles per hour — as “critically needed.”

Much of the nation’s transit infrastructure is falling apart, and the Department of Transportation has identified $100 billion of infrastructure backlog needs. (Page l — that is, Roman numeral 50 — of the report indicates a backlog of $89.9 billion in 2012 dollars. Converting to 2019 dollars brings this up to $100 billion.) Yet APTA’s “critical needs” list includes only $24 billion worth of “state of good repair” projects. Just about all of the other “needs” listed — $142 billion worth — are new projects or extensions of existing projects. Continue reading →

Another Streetcar SNAFU

By | | Transportation
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El Paso’s transit agency, Sun Metro, opened 4.8 miles of streetcar lines last November, attracting 37,000 riders in November and 32,000 in December. Then it started charging fares, and ridership fell to 14,000 in January and 9,000 in February.

El Paso’s streetcar rust in the desert, tempting nostalgia buffs to seek government subsidies for restoration. Flickr photo from Visit El Paso.

In 1974, El Paso became the last city in the United States to replace its streetcar lines with buses. Its last line connected the city with Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, and it only kept running streetcars on the route because the Customs Service said it was easier to deal with border crossings on streetcars than on buses. Continue reading →

Transit’s Declining Importance

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The steady decline in transit ridership, combined with the growth of driving, is revealed in passenger-mile data published by the Department of Transportation. The table below shows changes in transit’s share of motorized travel for the nation’s 25 largest urban areas. Outside of these areas, transit’s share declined by more than 10 percent in Sacramento, San Jose, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, among many others.

Urbanized Area20162017Change
New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT11.6%11.5%-1.0%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA1.9%1.8%-4.7%
Chicago, IL-IN3.6%3.4%-5.5%
Miami, FL1.1%1.1%-2.5%
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD2.8%2.4%-11.2%
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX0.6%0.5%-4.9%
Houston, TX0.7%0.7%-2.0%
Washington, DC-VA-MD3.5%3.2%-9.3%
Atlanta, GA0.9%0.9%-6.7%
Boston, MA-NH-RI2.9%2.7%-6.5%
Detroit, MI0.4%0.4%-0.7%
Phoenix-Mesa, AZ0.6%0.7%14.3%
San Francisco-Oakland, CA7.1%6.6%-7.0%
Seattle, WA3.4%3.4%1.2%
San Diego, CA1.4%1.3%-7.1%
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI1.1%1.1%-1.7%
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL0.4%0.3%-12.9%
Denver-Aurora, CO1.7%1.6%-1.4%
Baltimore, MD2.3%2.3%-2.0%
St. Louis, MO-IL0.7%0.6%-10.3%
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA0.5%0.4%-8.2%
Las Vegas-Henderson, NV1.0%0.9%-3.0%
Portland, OR-WA2.3%2.3%-0.1%
Cleveland, OH0.8%0.7%-11.7%
San Antonio, TX0.7%0.6%-3.7%

Continue reading →