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Category Archives: Transportation

July Transit Ridership 71.1% of 2019

By | | Transportation
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I’m back from Japan and mostly recovered from jet lag. I may write about my Japan experiences next week but first it’s time to look closely at the July transit data posted by the Federal Transit Administration the day I left the states.

Based on a quickie analysis on my iPhone I previously reported that transit carried only about 64 percent as many riders in July of 2024 as the same month of 2019. However, I warned that I wasn’t certain about this as I was having trouble analyzing a 15 megabyte spreadsheet on the phone. In fact, the number is 71.1 percent, which is better than 64 percent but worse than any month since July 2023. Continue reading →

$336,000 to Go Back to School

By | | Transportation
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The Honolulu Rail Authority just gave its CEO a 22% pay raise on the condition that she goes back to school to learn about how to be a CEO. In her three years as CEO she has harassed employees, offended board members, and overseen escalating costs, yet the board decided she is worth $336,000 a year.

Honestly there is no point in me making any jokes about this because the whole thing is a joke. Such as the fact that she has no prior CEO experience but instead previously worked for HDR and other rail contractors that helped cause some of the cost overruns. Or the fact that the board will pay for her to spend much of two years at UC Berkeley learning how to do her job. Or the fact that the board will also pay for her to receive executive “coaching,” which is a scam in itself.

And finally there is the fact that the board excused her whopping pay raise simply because it is her first raise since they hired her in 2021. Has your pay gone up 22% in the last three years?

July Driving 99.2% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 99.2 percent as many miles in July 2024 as the same month in 2019, according to data published by the Federal Highway Administration yesterday. This is one of the few times that monthly highway traffic data have been released before transit ridership data.

July transit data are not yet available.

Except in April 2024, when driving dipped below 94 percent of pre-pandemic levels, miles of driving have been 99 percent to 103 percent every month for the last year. As usual, rural driving was more: 3.5 percent above 2019, while urban driving was 2.8 percent less than in 2019. However, driving on urban interstates grew 1.4 percent.

Amtrak Ridership Nosedives in July

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Airlines carried 4.5 percent more passengers in July 2024 than the same month in 2019, according to TSA passenger counts. But Amtrak numbers dramatically dropped, carrying nearly 15 percent fewer passenger-miles than July of 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report.

July transit and highway data are not yet available.

The report shows that Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor carried 11 percent more riders in July than in 2019, but state-subsidized trains carried 8 percent fewer riders and long-distance trains carried 15 percent fewer. State-subsidized train ridership fell despite the fact that Amtrak added two new routes and extended a third one. Continue reading →

Transit Trouble in Kansas City

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Kansas City is one of the few urban areas to see ridership recover from the pandemic. Recent transit data shows that the region’s transit carried 99 percent as many riders in the first half of 2024 as the same months in 2019, albeit mainly because it has reduced fares to zero. However, all is not well with transit in the self-described Paris of the Plains.

The Kansas City streetcar is a great success if you ignore the fact that it has never earned a single penny in fare revenues. Similarly, KC’s bus system’s recovery from the pandemic is less impressive considering it isn’t earning any fares either. Photo by Jazz Guy.

Earlier this week, the Blue Springs city council voted to end support to the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA). The suburb of about 58,000 residents had paid the transit agency $73,000 for transit services in 2022-2023, but the agency had increased its requirement to nearly $123,000 for 2024-2025 “without much justification for the increase,” the city said. Continue reading →

Feedback on 14 Years & $2 Billion

By | | Transportation
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Earlier this week, I commented on a Trains magazine article about Illinois spending $2 billion and 14 years to increase average passenger train speeds between Chicago and St. Louis by 5 miles per hour. This was done by increasing top speeds to 110 mph, but one of things I wrote was that “trains reach that speed only for a few short segments.”

Greg Richardson, the author of the Trains article, wrote to correct me on this point, saying that trains are able to travel at 110 mph for 148 miles or 52 percent of the 284 miles in that corridor. That’s less than the 92 percent that was promised but certainly more than “a few short segments.” I apologize for the exaggeration. Continue reading →

$553 Million a Mile for Elevated Rail

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The Honolulu Authority for High-Cost, Low-Capacity Transit (HART) has signed a contract with Tutor Perini to spend $1.66 billion to build 3 miles of elevated rail line. The company will also build six stations on that rail line. This is the biggest contract for the Honolulu rail project let to date, but as expensive as it is, this doesn’t include all of the costs of planning, engineering, and design of the line.

As recently as a year ago, this segment of the project was expected to cost around $1.1 billion, and at least some people believed that the transit agency would have to reject all bids if they came in much higher than that as it simply doesn’t have the funds to complete the project. A previous bid of $2.0 billion by the same company was rejected in 2020, but HART apparently decided it could afford $340 million less than that amount even though it was about $400 million more than expected. Continue reading →

June Driving 1.2 Percent Above 2019

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Americans drove 1.2 percent more miles in June of 2024 than the same month before the pandemic, according to traffic data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Rural driving was up 7.4 percent while urban driving was 1.8 percent short of 2019 levels. Urban driving may be slow to catch up to pre-pandemic levels due to people working at home but in all probability is mostly due to the migration of the most mobile people away from certain urban areas.

See the August 8 post for a discussion of transit and flying and last Tuesday’s post for a discussion of Amtrak.

Even with those changes, June urban driving in Colorado was 16.5 percent greater in 2024 than 2019. It was also greater in Nevada (15%), Utah (15%), Arkansas (12%), New Mexico (12%), and Texas (11%). Michigan, Missouri, and Nebraska saw 8 percent more urban driving and a total of 23 states all saw more urban driving in 2024 than 2019. Continue reading →

14 Years & $2 Billion to Increase Speeds by 5 mph

By | | Transportation
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“A Slow Path to Higher Speeds” fills ten pages of the September issue of Trains magazine to tell why it took Illinois 14 years to speed up passenger trains on the Chicago-St. Louis route. Originally funded by the Obama administration in 2009, the project was supposed to increase top speeds from 79 to 110 miles per hour. But top speeds aren’t average speeds, which increased only 5 miles per hour from 50 to 55. The fastest train on the timetable ended up just shy of 60 mph, a 6-mph boost over the fastest train in 2009.

Part of the cost of the Illinois project was buying new locomotives and cars. Photo by Amy Lohrke.

When Illinois received $1.14 billion in high-speed rail funds from the Obama administration in 2009, it predicted that by 2015 it would shave an hour off of Chicago-St. Louis trip times and increase frequencies from five to eight trains per day, which in turn would stimulate a 130 percent increase in ridership. But speeds and frequencies remained unchanged through early 2023. Finally, after spending $1.95 billion, speeds increased on June 26, 2023, but average trip times declined by only about a half an hour, while the number of trains per day remained unchanged at five. Continue reading →