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Category Archives: Transportation

Brightline Still a Killer

By | | Transportation
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Two people died last week when their car was struck by a Brightline train in Aventura, Florida. That made a total of five fatalities to Brightline trains in December alone. Railroad officials were quick to blame the latest accident on the auto driver, who drove “around the gates, which were down, flashing and bells ringing, signaling an approaching train.”

Google street view at or near the location where two people were killed in their car last week while trying to cross Brightline tracks. Not only do the crossing gates not cover the entire width of the road, there are no fences to keep pedestrians off the rail right of way.

“Americans are morons,” a railroad conductor commented on a Jalopnik article about the accident. But who is the moron: the person who drove around the crossing gates or the person who decided to run 79-mph passenger trains on tracks whose crossing gates had been installed when the only trains running on those tracks were 40-mph freights? Continue reading →

Finding Sleep in Dense Cities

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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Here’s something Californians can look forward to as urban planners force higher densities on existing neighborhoods and urban areas: buses for sleeping. A company in Hong Kong, one of the densest cities in the world, is offering “bus sleeping tours” of the city, 51-mile trips aimed at allowing residents to get a little shut-eye.

Hong Kong, the city where it’s hard to sleep. Photo by Tomas Forac.

Hong Kong is one of the most sleep-deprived cities in the world, with 70 percent of residents saying they have trouble sleeping. Obstacles to sleep include light pollution, noise pollution, and the presence of so many attractive bars and restaurants within walking distance of everyone’s homes. That’s exactly what planners want for California cities, and anyone who objects is called a racist. Continue reading →

Transit Agencies Can’t Spend Money Fast Enough

By | | Transportation
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You have to feel sorry for transit agencies. Congress gave them $69 billion COVID relief funds and $40 billion in the infrastructure bill on top of a $14 billion annual federal subsidy. But, due to labor shortages, agencies can’t find enough workers to drive around their nearly empty buses and trains.

The Washington Metrorail 7000-series cars don’t look much different from earlier series of cars. But, in addition to falling off the tracks a lot, they also come with the “feature” that they can’t be operated in tandem with earlier cars, whereas all earlier cars were compatible with one another. Another great example of your tax dollars at work. Photo by Swagging.

This threatens “the recovery of city life,” warns the Washington Post. Give me a break. Most workers aren’t going back to work in the cities and most of those who are don’t want to take transit. For some reason, though, reporters think that transit, unlike any private business, should be exempt from having to cut back service just because few people use it. Continue reading →

The New York Subway Was Never Private

By | | Transportation
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My friend Scott Beyer, who calls himself a market urbanist, has his heart in the right place but often has his facts wrong. He thinks he believes in free markets, but he loves transit so much that he can’t accept that, in a true free market, most transit would disappear.

New York City subway construction, entirely paid for by taxpayers, in 1901.

His latest article asks if America will “get private subways (again)?” The article makes it clear that he believes the New York City subways were built with private money. Nothing could be further from the truth. Continue reading →

Transit’s Fiscal Cliff

By | | Transportation
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Transit officials in the San Francisco Bay Area say that transit there faces a “fiscal cliff” because ridership is so slow to recover from the pandemic. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District is in particular distress, say officials, because pre-pandemic fares covered a much higher percentage–the article says two-thirds but in 2019 it was actually 72 percent–of its operating costs than most transit agencies, so a loss of patronage means a greater loss of revenues as a share of its budget.

Some transit riders wear masks, but many more aren’t riding transit. Photo by OC Transpo.

Of course, those officials don’t mention that, unlike bus agencies, BART spends more money on capital replacement each year than it does on operations. Since capital replacement is essential to keep the trains running, fares actually covered only 36 percent of its costs. Continue reading →

U.S. Road Conditions and Performance in 2020

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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While Americans drove their cars only 84 percent as many miles in 2020 as in 2019, according to data recently published by the Federal Highway Administration, they drove semi-trucks 101 percent as many miles. These and other data are from the 2020 Highway Statistics, an annual compilation of data on the condition, use, and financial status of the nation’s highway network.

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

Unlike the annual National Transit Database, which the Federal Transit Administration releases as a group of two dozen or so tables together each fall, the Federal Highway Administration releases Highway Statistics incrementally. To date, it has released most of the 2020 tables relating to the extent and performance of highways, but very few financial tables. This policy brief will review some of the non-financial tables that have been released. Continue reading →

Illinois High-Speed Rail Goes 55.7 MPH!

By | | Transportation
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This week, a mere twelve years after getting $1.4 billion in high-speed rail funds from the federal government, to which was added $500 million of Illinois taxpayer dollars, Amtrak and Illinois have finally increased the speeds on trains between Chicago and St. Louis. Where previously trains were limited to 79 miles per hour, now they can go 90 miles per hour in some places.

Illinois hopes to eventually operated Chicago-St. Louis trains with cars and locomotives like the ones shown here, but after a mere twelve years not enough have been delivered to make that possible.

This will “make rail travel competitive with driving,” claims one journalist. Actually, it still won’t even come close to being competitive with driving. Continue reading →

October Driving 97.7% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Americans drove 277.5 billion vehicle-miles in October 2021, which was 7.1 percent more than in 2020 but 2.3 percent less than in 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Driving on rural interstate highways was 4.0 percent greater than in October 2019 and total rural driving was 0.3 percent greater, while urban driving was 3.5 percent less than in 2019.

Transit numbers are from the National Transit Database; Amtrak numbers are from Amtrak’s Monthly Performance Report; air travel numbers are from the Transportation Security Administration.

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Amtrak’s Revolving Door

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak announced last week that its current chief executive officer, William Flynn, will retire in January and be replaced by Stephen Gardner. Gardner thus will become the company’s fifth CEO in six years.

Amtrak’s new CEO will oversee the spending of $30 billion to improve the Northeast Corridor and another $30 billion or more to increase service in other parts of the country. Photo by Simon Brugel.

Six years ago, Joseph Boardman had been one of Amtrak’s longest-serving CEOs, having been hired in 2008. But there were reports that he suffered temper tantrums and profanity-laced tirades to subordinates. Many people were happy to see him go when the board of directors replaced him with Charles “Wick” Moorman in late 2016. Continue reading →

Begger-Thy-Neighbor Shinkansen to Open in 2022

By | | Transportation
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The West Kyushu Shinkansen or high-speed rail line is nearing completion and will open in 2022, a few years late. Construction of the 41-mile (66-kilometer) line began way back in 2012 and is expected to cost $5.44 billion, or more than $130 million per mile. The line isn’t connected to any other high-speed rail line and offers some insights into rail politics.

The West Kyushu route is the tiny dotted line on the far left of this map.

Kyushu is the third largest Japanese island and is located less than a mile from Honshu, the main island. The two islands were connected by a conventional railroad tunnel under the Kanmon Straits in 1942, by a highway tunnel in 1958, a highway bridge in 1973, and a high-speed rail tunnel in 1975. For what it’s worth, I’ve been through both the conventional and high-speed rail tunnels but can’t say much about them because it was too dark to see. Continue reading →