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Category Archives: Transportation

Inflation Eats Infrastructure Bill

By | | Transportation
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In addition to restoring allegedly crumbling highways and transit lines, the 2021 infrastructure bill was supposed to provide tens of billions of dollars for building new infrastructure. Now it appears that inflation will eat away most of the new money provided by the bill, leaving highway and transit agencies with no real increase in funding.

A city in Massachusetts reports that the price of asphalt has increased by 37 percent.

According to Jim Tyman, CEO of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, inflation in construction costs is “wiping out that increase [in funding] from the federal government that [state officials] were so excited about earlier in the year.” As a result, the increased dollars from the bill “are essentially evaporating.” Continue reading →

Most Americans Don’t Believe Planners

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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A recent survey found that 93 percent of planning students oppose highway expansion because they believe that it won’t relieve congestion due to induced demand. However, the survey found, only 24 percent of the general public agrees. Similarly, 83 percent of planning students believe the government should try to reduce the amount of driving Americans do, but only 31 percent of the general public agrees.

When was the last time an urban planner lied to you? Photo from Seattle Municipal Archives.

It never occurs to planners that results like these might indicate that they are wrong. After all, they are the experts and the general public is not, so the public should let them do what they want. Continue reading →

April 2022 Driving 94.3% of April 2019

By | | Transportation
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Americans drove 263.1 billion miles in April 2022, according to data released last week by the Federal Highway Administration. This was a 5.7 percent decrease from the 279.1 billion they drove in April 2019.

See the June 8 post for discussion and sources of data for air travel, Amtrak, and transit.

I confess to being surprised that driving fell so far short of pre-pandemic levels, as driving had been more than 100 percent of March 2019-February 2020 numbers in all but one month since June 2021. The numbers released last week are considered preliminary, but the revisions made by the Federal Highway Administration are usually small. Continue reading →

April Transit Falls to 58.7% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Transit ridership in April 2022 was 58.7 percent of April 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is down from March, when ridership was 61.0 percent of March 2019. When I reported on March numbers, I predicted that April’s numbers would fall below 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels because April 2022 had one fewer business day than April 2019, while March had two more than in 2019.

While airline and Amtrak numbers grew in April (as a percent of 2019 levels), transit numbers fell.

For comparison, airline numbers exceeded 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels (which I also predicted) while Amtrak ridership grew to 73 percent (though that’s a drop from November, when ridership was more than 77 percent of November 2019). Driving numbers won’t be out for another week or so, but will probably be around 100 percent. Continue reading →

Brightline Demands $45 Million to Improve Safety

By | | Transportation
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Brightline celebrated its third year of operating passenger trains in south Florida this month by killing two people in two days and then a third person a few days later. This makes a total of 63 deaths due to Brightline, which has been rated the most dangerous railroad in the country.

Of course, as shown in the above video, Brightline blames all of the fatalities on the victims. The deaths have nothing to do with Brightline adding fast, frequent passenger trains to a corridor that previously was used only by slow, infrequent freight trains. Continue reading →

Hybrid Streetcar Begins Operations in Tempe

By | | Transportation
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Leave it to the transit industry to take a good idea and distort it beyond recognition or wisdom. That was my reaction when I learned that Tempe, Arizona began operating a hybrid streetcar last week. The three-mile streetcar line cost $200 million, or $67 million per mile.

For a mere $200 million, Tempe now has a streetcar that doesn’t work as well as a bus route that would have cost only about $3 million dollars. Photo courtesy of Valley Metro.

For rolling stock, Tempe elected to buy vehicles that cost $6.5 million apiece. At first glance, they look like other so-called modern streetcars, but have batteries that allow them to operate where there are no overhead wires. This makes them, according to their manufacturer, “the Prius of the modern streetcar market.” Continue reading →

How Much Does Amtrak Delay Freight Trains?

By | | Transportation
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At a time when almost everyone in the nation is affected by supply-chain problems but almost no one is riding Amtrak, the Federal Railroad Administration is frantic about how Amtrak trains are being delayed by freight trains. According to the agency’s latest report, Amtrak trains were delayed by a total of 1.3 million minutes (that’s 21,666 hours) in the first quarter of 2022, up 9 percent from the previous quarter.

Who is delaying whom? Photo by Patrick Dirden.

“The largest cause of delays was freight train interference at 299,252 minutes of delay — 22 percent of total delay minutes, an increase of 12 percent from the previous quarter,” says the report. However, the report makes no attempt to estimate the number of minutes of delays to freight trains caused by Amtrak. Passenger train delays, continues the report, caused a minuscule 2 percent of Amtrak riders — about 18,290 — who were connecting with a different train to miss their connections. Continue reading →

March Driving 2% More Than Before the Pandemic

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 2.1 percent more miles in March 2022 than in March 2019, thus returning to more than 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to data released late last week by the Federal Highway Administration. Driving first exceeded 100 percent of pre-pandemic in July 2021 and remained above 100 percent through the end of the year. It then dipped below 100 percent in January and February, but now is back above 100 percent.

See this post for sources of data for air, transit, and Amtrak.

As noted here before, air travel is approaching 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, while Amtrak is still below 70 percent and transit has just barely breeched 60 percent. I suspect transit will fall below 60 percent in April as March 2022 had two more work days than March 2019 while April 2022 had one fewer work day than April 2019. Continue reading →

New Trolleys for Philadelphia

By | | Transportation
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The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is buying new vehicles to replace 130 light-rail cars. Normally, my suggestion when rail systems wear out is to replace them with buses, but in this case it’s worth a close look.

One of SEPTA’s 40-year-old light-rail cars. Photo by jpmueller99.

The 130 cars are expected to cost $800 million, or a little over $6.1 million apiece. That’s a lot more than a bus, which typically costs under $500,000 if Diesel-powered and under $1 million if electric. But buses have an expected lifespan of only about 15 years, while SEPTA’s light-rail cars are 40 years old. The railcars are also a little larger than buses, having 50 seats compared with an average of 40 seats on SEPTA buses. Still, the railcars cost more than $3,000 per seat-year, while even million-dollar buses cost only $1,666 per seat-year. Continue reading →

DC Metro Hires New General Manager

By | | Transportation
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The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (Metro) next general manager and CEO, Randy Clarke, brings an interesting resume to the job. The troubled agency is suffering from serious safety issues, including frequent derailments and the failure of hundreds of train operators to renew their certification, not to mention transit ridership lagging behind the rest of the industry and serious financial woes. The problems are so bad that the agency’s current CEO, Paul Wiedefeld, just resigned early.

Washington Metro’s 7000-series of rail cars, which makes up 60 percent of its fleet, have all been taken out of service due to frequent derailments, a problem that won’t be fixed for at least several more months. Photo by Ben Schumin.

At first glance, Clarke is the perfect person to replace Wiedefeld. From 2010 to 2016, he worked on safety and operations at Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The American Public Transportation Association apparently thought he did such a good job that it hired him as its vice president in charge of safety, operations, and technical services, a post he held for two years. Then he became CEO of Capital Metro, Austin’s transit agency. Continue reading →