The Antiplanner » Transportation

Category Archives: Transportation

October Transit 53.5% of 2019 Ridership

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
Leave a comment

Transit ridership in October 2021 was 53.5 percent of October 2019, a slight drop from September’s 53.6 percent, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. Air travel increased from 76.3 percent to 79.7 percent and Amtrak increased from 67.1 percent to 72.2 percent, so transit continues to lag behind other modes.

Amtrak numbers are from Amtrak’s Monthly Performance Report; air travel numbers are from the Transportation Security Administration. Driving numbers should be available in about a week.

Transit agencies offered 80 percent as much service (measured in vehicle-revenue hours) in October 2021 as they did in the same month of 2019. Though this is down from 86 percent in September, this was mainly because October 2019 saw a large increase in service: October 2021 saw 99.6 percent as many vehicle hours as September 2021. Continue reading →

2020 Transit Commuting Fell to 3.2% of Workers

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
3 Comments

The share of American workers who took transit to work fell from 5.0 percent in 2019 to 3.2 percent in 2020, according to survey data just released by the Census Bureau. The share of people working at home grew from 5.7 percent to 15.8 percent. These numbers are the average for the year, while the pandemic was only during the last three quarters of the year, so pandemic work-at-home numbers may have been higher.

Due to the difficulty in collecting data during the pandemic, the Census Bureau didn’t do as detailed a survey as it had in previous years. Previous American Community Surveys had produced more than 1,500 tables of data including such information as how people commuted to work by age, income, race, and number of vehicles in the household, all available for all states and most counties, cities, and urban areas. For 2020, the Census Bureau produced only 54 tables, and so far they are available only for the nation and states.

Still, there are some useful data. Transit didn’t even do well among people who didn’t work at home. Of people who commuted to work, 81.9 percent drove alone (up from 80.5 percent in 2019), 9.4 percent carpooled (unchanged from 2019), and 3.8 percent used public transport (down from 5.3 percent in 2019). Continue reading →

St. Louis MetroWaste

By | | Transportation
2 Comments

The infrastructure bill was supposed to repair worn out and crumbling infrastructure, but now that it has passed local officials all over the country are eagerly looking forward to spending that money on new projects they won’t be able to afford to maintain. Case in point: St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, who thinks some of those federal dollars should go to building a new light-rail line in the Gateway City.

Light rail in St. Louis operates mostly in an exclusive right of way, which makes it more costly to build but doesn’t add many new riders: MetroLink carried 11 percent fewer riders in 2019 than before it opened its first light-rail line. Photo by Loco Steve.

While admittedly I would be hard pressed to find any light-rail lines that have been successful, St. Louis’ transit system, known as MetroLink, is one of the more unsuccessful. Bus and light-rail ridership had dropped by 25 percent between 2014 and 2019. As of September, it was barely carrying 50 percent of 2019 levels, and given the large numbers of people who plan to keep working at home, it doesn’t look like it will ever fully recover. Continue reading →

Access and Equity

By | | Book reviews, Transportation
10 Comments

When David Levinson was at the University of California, Berkeley, he calculated that it would cost more to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco on high-speed rail than either flying or driving even if the high-speed rail line cost only $10 billion to build. When he directed the University of Minnesota’s Accessibility Observatory, he pioneered research showing that automobiles provide access to far more jobs than transit.

So when I learned that he has co-edited a new book, Applications of Access, that is available for on line for free, I immediately downloaded it to learn about the latest research about access. It turns out you get what you pay for, as I found the book to be a big disappointment. Continue reading →

The Washington Post Has a Sensible Opinion

By | | Transportation
7 Comments

The Maryland Department of Transportation is planning to build express toll lanes along Interstate 270 and the capital beltway. These lanes will cost taxpayers nothing because they will be built by a private company that will be allowed to toll them to recover its costs.

Express toll lanes already exist on Virginia’s portion of the Capital Beltway. Photo by FAMartin.

These will be the first dynamically tolled lanes in Maryland, meaning the tolls will vary with demand anywhere from 17¢ to $3.76 per mile. The lanes will be an alternative to the free lanes they will parallel and that are frequently jammed with traffic. Continue reading →

Midwest Rail Plan: A Disaster in the Making

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
5 Comments

In 2009 and 2010, the Federal Railroad Administration gave the state of Illinois $1.39 billion to improve tracks between Chicago and St. Louis to allow passenger trains to go up to 110 miles per hour, saving one hour of travel time. The agency also gave the state $370 million to buy 88 passenger cars and 21 locomotives to operate more frequent trains in this and other Midwest corridors such as Chicago-Detroit.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Pretty much all of that money, along with about $500 million in state funds, has been spent. Yet, more than a decade later, Chicago-St. Louis passenger rains are no faster and no more frequent than they were in 2009. The same happened in other Midwest corridors, including Chicago-Detroit, Chicago-Twin Cities, Chicago-Omaha, and St. Louis-Kansas City, where collectively $1.6 billion was spent yet speeds and frequencies remain the same. So far, of the equipment ordered to serve these corridors, only four passenger cars and one locomotive have been delivered. Continue reading →

White House Reveals How It Will Waste Money

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

The White House has issued a series of updated fact sheets bragging about how much money the infrastructure bill will spend in each state (see table below). The fact sheets are based on formulas in the bill that account for a little more than three-fourths of the “new” spending in the bill, with the other 22 percent coming from grant programs. The “new” spending, in turn, accounts for $550 billion, while the other $650 billion is a reauthorization of existing spending programs.

It’s hard to look at these numbers without getting the impression that most of the money will be wasted. For example, every state gets a minimum of $100 million to expand broadband access to its residents. Residents of the District of Columbia currently have access to 38 different broadband providers, with 11 of them providing service to residences. Yet DC, like the states, will get the $100 million minimum. What’s the point? (For that matter, everyone in the country has access to at least two satellite providers, but the bill pretends that anything short of a land-line provider is inadequate.)

The excuse for the infrastructure bill is that America’s infrastructure is crumbling, and that may be true for city streets and city- and county-owned bridges. But the tens of billions of dollars going for highways will almost all go to the states, whose infrastructure is in good shape and improving every year. Continue reading →

September 2021 Driving 98.2% of September 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
1 Comment

Driving on rural interstates surged in September, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Americans drove 9.3 percent more miles on rural interstates in September 2021 than September 2020, and 4.7 percent more than in September 2019. Overall driving was 7.9 percent more than September 2020 and 1.8 percent less than September 2019.

Motor vehicles and highways have come closer to recovering from the pandemic than any mode of mass transportation.

Driving reached 100.5 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June, but since then has hovered around 98 percent. There were two more workdays in June 2021 than 2019, which helps explains why driving was so much greater in June 2021. July 2021 had one fewer work day than 2019, August was the same as 2019, and September was one more than in 2019. Continue reading →

Mobility Principles for a Prosperous World

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
3 Comments

Four years ago, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase wrote, or led the effort to write, ten principles of shared mobility for livable cities. Despite a patina of social justice and green values, these principles were a transparent effort to give her company and companies like hers a huge economic advantage by limiting and eventually forbidding the use of privately owned vehicles in cities.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Recently, someone asked me for my response to these principles. While my reply is on page 5 of the PDF, my main response is to offer my own mobility principles. These principles apply to urban and rural areas, to the United States and other countries, and to all forms of transportation. I’ve previously stated most of these principles in various Antiplanner posts, but this one brings them together. Continue reading →

We Dodged This Bullet Train

By | | Transportation
4 Comments

The United States truly dodged a bullet when it elected not to build any high-speed rail other than the ill-fated California route. As described in recent Youtube videos, high-speed trains are doing more harm than good to China’s economy. The two videos below present similar information but each has some unique data that justify watching both.

China’s nearly 24,000 miles of high-speed rail lines are more than twice as much as the rest of the world combined. Two of the lines — Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Guangzhou — are at least covering their operating costs, but the rest are real money sinks, with at least one line not even earning enough in ticket revenues to pay for the electricity required to power the trains. Continue reading →