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Category Archives: Transportation

First World, Second World, Third World

By | | Transportation
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Someone should teach The Hill‘s headline writers a little history. A recent article about why we should give more subsidies to Amtrak and high-speed rail was headed, “The US is a first-world nation with a third-world rail system.”

Actually, the United States is a first-world nation with a first-world rail system which is probably the best rail system in the world. The only other contender for the title would be Canada.

Few people seem to remember that “first-world” terminology grew out of the Cold War. At that time, the First World consisted of capitalist countries such as the United States and Canada while the Second World was socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and China. The Third World included developing countries that hadn’t really decided whether they were going to follow the capitalist or socialist model (with those that failed to choose capitalism remaining poor today). Continue reading →

House Passes Spending Bill

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The House of Representatives passed a transportation reauthorization bill called the INVEST Act, but it really should be called the SPEND Act. Spending money is only an investment if the spender expects to get something in return for the cost, and much of the money in the INVEST Act will produce no real returns.

The bill, which has yet to be approved by the Senate, represents the normal reauthorization of the Highway Trust Fund, meaning federal spending on highways and transit, which happens about every six years. Normally this mainly deals with how the gas taxes and other federal highway user fees are spent. But this year, the House has gone overboard, agreeing to spend $715 billion over five years, which more than twice as much money as the Highway Trust Fund is likely to collect.

Admittedly, part of that $715 billion includes $168 billion for water infrastructure, which has never previously been a part of a transportation reauthorization bill. It also includes $95 billion for Amtrak, which is also not from the Highway Trust Fund. Spending on highways and transit would total to $452 billion, which is still more than twice as much as is likely to be collected in highway user fees. The federal government collected less than $45 billion in user fees in 2019 and, since collections in 2020 and 2021 will be smaller, total revenues are likely to be less than $220 billion over the five years of the bill. Continue reading →

2021 Urban Mobility Report

By | | Transportation
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In what may be one of the most obvious reports ever, the Texas Transportation Institute has announced that congestion in 2020 was only about half as bad as congestion had been in 2019. The institute used to publish its congestion reports each year, but the 2021 Urban Mobility Report is the first in several years. The last report had data only through 2017, but this one goes through 2020.

Click image to download a copy of this report.

The report estimates that congestion cost commuters $190 billion in 2019, declining to $101 billion in 2020. Congestion also cost shippers $172 billion in 2019, falling to $95 billion in 2020. While these are interesting, if somewhat incomprehensible, numbers, the report doesn’t provide a lot of guidance about what to expect in the future. Continue reading →

Push-Back Against Working at Home?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The share of “knowledge workers” who will continue to work at home after the pandemic is likely to double from before the pandemic, according to a new study from the Gartner management-consulting firm. If that can be scaled up to all workers, that means the share of people working at home is likely to go from about 6 percent in 2019 to 12 percent in 2022.

Home office photo by Jeremy Levine.

I suspect it will be even more. So-called knowledge workers were already more likely to work at home than people in other professions, and I suspect the telecommute shares of some of those other professions are likely to grow more. Another recent survey, for example, found that a full 25 percent of New Jersey workers are likely to continue working at home after 2021. Continue reading →

Oregon’s Mileage-Based Fee Program

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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CBS News reports on Oregon’s mileage-based user fee program, noting there is both support and opposition to the program. However, reporter Brook Silva-Braga notes that, not only that gas taxes aren’t working anymore, but that mileage-based fees can help relieve congestion.

Silva-Braka found someone who argued that charging user fees would hurt low-income people. But it would be better for low-income people to pay for what they use than to pay regressive taxes that often end up supporting programs used mainly by higher-income people. Continue reading →

Infrastructure Arithmetic

By | | Transportation
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The White House and Senate Republicans have compromised on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Meanwhile, President Biden and Republican leaders have agreed to a $579 billion infrastructure bill.

Since $579 billion is less than half of $1.2 trillion, both of these statements can’t be true — and yet they are. The difference is that the $1.2 trillion includes “baseline spending,” or the amount that would have been spent on infrastructure even if no bill were passed. The actual infrastructure bill would only include $579 billion of new spending. That’s quite a concession on the part of the White House, which had originally proposed $2.3 trillion in new spending, or nearly four times as much as the bipartisan agreement. On the other hand, $579 billion is exactly $579 billion more than Republicans had proposed to spend before Biden released his original proposal on March 31.

At the same time, the so-called baseline appears to represent the amount that would be spent on surface transportation by the bill proposed by House Democrats, or about $78 billion a year. This is a large increase from the amount that has been spent in the past few years, which has been about $55 billion a year. In order to get the total above $1 trillion, allowing the president to save some face, the $78 billion a year is extended for eight years, even though the House bill would authorize only five years of spending. Continue reading →

Restoring Transit Ridership

By | | Transportation
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As the economy begins to open up, are any bars offering free beer to get you back as a customer? How about restaurants offering free food? Is the NFL giving away tickets to the next Super Bowl to insure it will have a live audience?

The answers to all of these questions are probably “no” because demand for these things actually exists. But transit agencies across the nation are offering discounted or even free fares to try to get riders back.

Unlike bars and restaurants, which were economically devastated by the lock-downs associated with the pandemic, transit is flush with cash thanks to a Congress that has been generous with other peoples’ money. That means it can afford to give such discounts, which translates to even greater subsidies to a transportation system that, before the pandemic, covered 78 percent of its expenses with taxpayer funds. Continue reading →

Japan Maglev Controversy

By | | Transportation
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Plans to build a maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya may be threatened by local opposition. The proposed route would go through the Shizuoka prefecture, where people fear that a long South Alps Tunnel required for the train will affect their water supplies.

This famous scene of the Shinkansen in front of Mount Fuji is in Shizuoka prefecture. Photo by MaedaAkihiko.

Leading the opposition is Shizuoka Governor Heita Kawakatsu, who won re-election this week in a campaign where the rail line was a major issue. Kawakatsu represents a minority party while his opponent was endorsed by the Liberal Democratic party, which has been the majority party in Japan for many years. Continue reading →

TransitCenter Says Transit Is Racist

By | | Transportation
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The pro-transit TransitCenter has discovered something that the Antiplanner has been saying for years: transit policies are effectively racist. Many urban areas have “two-tiered transit systems,” says the TransitCenter’s Mary Buchanan, where an expensive form of transit, such as light or heavy rail, whisks high-income people, who are often white, to work while a cheaper, slower form of transit, such as local buses, trundles low-income people, who are often minorities, to their jobs.

Black households have significantly lower auto ownership rates than whites. Source: American Community Survey table B25044. When broken down by race, the Census Bureau only has five-year data for 2011-2015; some auto ownership rates have probably improved since then. Census Bureau data also don’t breakdown Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic ownership rates; most Hispanics are included with whites.

Buchanan and her colleagues evaluated transit in major urban areas such as New York and Chicago and found that low-income people would be much better off owning a car than relying on transit to get to work, which is another thing the Antiplanner has been saying for years. Of course, the TransitCenter sees this as one more reason to increase transit subsidies, while I see it as a reason to encourage more car ownership. Continue reading →

April Driving 92% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 256.5 billion vehicle-miles in April, 2021, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. That’s a 55 percent increase over April 2020 and just 8 percent short of April 2019. As a share of pre-pandemic driving, however, it fell short of March, which saw 262.6 billion vehicle-miles or 97 percent of pre-pandemic driving.

March 2021 had 23 business days while March 2019 had only 21, which probably accounts for some of the increase in driving. April 2021 and 2019 each had 22 business days. Transit also had a slight bump in March vs. April, though nowhere near as large as the 5 percent increase (when compared with April) for driving. Continue reading →