The Antiplanner » Transportation

Category Archives: Transportation

No One’s Riding Trains So Spend More

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

Amtrak ridership is down more than 75 percent. Commuter-rail ridership is down more than 80 percent. So naturally Amtrak and commuter-rail agencies want more money to expand service.

Commuter train in Utah. Photo by Paul Kimo McGregor.

Amtrak wants to resume service on a route from New Orleans to Jacksonville, or possibly just to Mobile, that had been dropped after Hurricane Katrina. The renewed route would begin operating in 2022 with full federal funding of operating costs for the first year. The implication is that Amtrak is demanding that Alabama and other states provide some of the funding after that. Proponents claim a 15-to-1 benefit-cost ratio. It’s more like 1-to-15. Their legislatures should say no. Continue reading →

Blaming the Messenger

By | | Transportation
1 Comment

Ridership on New York City subways is down by 67 percent from before the pandemic. Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Sarah Feinberg says it is all the media’s fault.

The MTA “was really ill-served by some of the early coverage of the pandemic,” she says. “People started thinking, ‘the last place I want to be is in a crowded subway car.'” She claims that “study after study” has found that transit was not “vectoring the virus.”

The New York Post article reporting on her statement snarks that she made it “without referencing specific studies.” But what do you expect? The Post, after all, is part of the media. Continue reading →

The Dark Side of Japan’s Bullet Trains

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
4 Comments

In 1964, the Japanese National Railways (JNR) was on a roll. The state-owned but largely unsubsidized company had just finished seven years of uninterrupted profits. Moreover, in 1964 it opened the Shinkansen (meaning new main line) between Tokyo and Osaka in time for the Summer Olympics. This exposed an international audience to the latest in Japanese technology in the form of the fastest trains in the world with top speeds of 130 miles per hour and average speeds as high as 86 miles per hour. These quickly became the envy of other countries, leading even the United States Congress to pass a law promoting high-speed trains in 1965.

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

Today, salarymen and tourists ride shinkansen the full length of Japan’s main island of Honshu as well as on the outer islands of Hokkaido and Kyushu. However, there is a dark side to the shinkansen. Like Darth Vader, who started out as a nice little boy who loved speed but whose life was corrupted by a power-hungry politician, the shinkansen was warped by politicians and ended up doing more harm than good to Japan’s economy. Continue reading →

Transit Wins Big in $1.9 Trillion Relief Bill

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

The $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed by the House of Representatives last week would give public transit more money than any other form of transportation: $30 billion. Airports and airlines, which before the pandemic moved 14 times as many passenger miles as transit, would receive $23 billion if the bill is approved by the Senate.

Amtrak, which is even more trivial than transit, would get $1.8 billion, some of which would be dedicated to restoring long-distance trains to daily service and some of which is to pay for state-supported trains under the probably fallacious assumption that the states can’t afford to do so during the pandemic. In 2019, Amtrak carried about 10 percent as many passenger-miles as transit.

If the last few months of 2020 are an indication of what will happen in 2021, then the airlines will carry 450 billion fewer passenger-miles than in 2019; transit 34 billion fewer; and Amtrak 4.5 billion fewer. The subsidies per each passenger-mile they won’t be carrying amount to 5 cents for the airlines, 40 cents for Amtrak, and 88 cents for transit. Of course, subsidizing someone for not doing something is ridiculous, but only typical for Congress. Continue reading →

December 2020 Driving Down 10.3 Percent

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
4 Comments

Americans drove 89.7 percent as many miles in December 2020 as they did in December 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This compares with transit and air travel, which were each about 37.5 percent of 2019 levels, and Amtrak, which was 22.4 percent of 2019. These numbers continue to demonstrate that motor vehicles and highways are the most resilient forms of travel we have.

This is an update of a chart that appeared in a recent Antiplanner policy brief. In that brief, I estimated that December driving would be 89 percent of 2019 levels, but it turned out to be a little higher.

Driving was down more in urban areas than in rural areas and it was down more on interstate highways, both urban and rural, and the least on collectors and local roads and streets. The biggest drops in driving were in Hawaii (-20.2%), Vermont (-20.2%), Massachusetts (-18.0%), Minnesota (-17.8%), and New Jersey (-17.7%). The smallest declines were in Arkansas (-0.9%), Tennessee (-2.5%), Wyoming (-2.8%), Arizona (-3.5%), and Mississippi (-3.6%). Surprisingly, California saw only a 9.9 percent drop (10.9% in urban areas), probably because all of the people who are supposedly working at home are driving to coffee shops and other places in the afternoons. Continue reading →

Time to Rethink Amtrak Subsidies

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

Amtrak will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the start of its operations in May. There’s not much to celebrate, however, as an audited financial statement recently posted on the company’s web site reveals that it lost $1.7 billion in 2020, up from $0.9 billion in 2019. Even that is deceptive, however, as the auditors bought into Amtrak’s claim that subsidies from the states are “revenues” and don’t distinguish such subsidies from ticket sales and food and beverage income.

Amtrak’s unaudited year-end results indicate that the company received $342 million from the states in fiscal year 2020 (which ended September 30). If these are counted as subsidies from the states, rather than passenger revenues, then the real losses were almost $2.3 billion in 2020, up from $1.1 billion in 2019.

Actually, the audited statement reveals in notes on page 10, most of that $342 million didn’t come from the states but was funded by Congress “to support the Company’s state partners in making their State Supported route subsidy payments due to Amtrak.” This means even the auditors admit that it is a subsidy, but they don’t disclose even in the notes that this subsidy was included in the revenues in the statement of operations on page 5. Continue reading →

A Socially Just Transportation Policy

By | | Transportation
4 Comments

Building new freeways would help relieve congestion, a problem that is mainly borne by the working class. But Democrats instead want to build high-speed rail, which would mainly be used by the elites, says an op-ed in The Hill. Yet Democrats say they support social justice.

They point to China, which has built 22,000 miles of high-speed rail lines. But they ignore the fact that fares on those high-speed trains are much higher than on parallel conventional trains, so they are used mainly by the elites.

Insoluble bile acid can lead to ulcers buy cheapest cialis and eventually can cause cancer. Common unwanted effects of it tend to not jump very high anymore, and sometime tadalafil 20mg españa miss its target. Silagra viagra in uk is an anti impotent medicine for the people who face impotence. Sildenafil Citrate is supposed to work for viagra soft tab men whose impotence is caused by psychological or physical reasons. Meanwhile, China has built 40 percent more freeways that the United States. Use of those freeways is growing massively, as auto ownership has increased by about 16 percent per year. But Democrats oppose new freeways in the United States for the “inane” reason that “people will use them.” Continue reading →

The Law of Large Proportions Saves Energy

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
4 Comments

Americans drove more miles in 2019 than the previous year but used less energy to do so, according to data released by the Department of Energy last week. This isn’t a new trend: American energy consumption for highway passenger vehicles has declined 12 percent since 2007 despite the fact that we are driving 7 percent more miles.

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

The data were published in edition 39 of the Transportation Energy Data Book, which has information all modes of transportation, often going back to 1970. The data in the book show that not only is our energy consumption for transportation declining, the carbon footprint of motor vehicles is also falling, which helped the United States reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent since 2005. The book also has information about petroleum production around the world, auto ownership for many other countries, toxic air pollution, and other energy- and transportation-related topics. Continue reading →

Sustainable Transport in China

By | | Transportation
4 Comments

The government of China recently released a paper called Sustainable Development of Transportation in China. It doesn’t have a lot of new information — the data it uses are only current through the end of 2019 — but it does make one assertion I’d like to examine in more detail.

An expressway and rail line leaving Shanghai, China. Photo by Pyzhou.

According to chart 3, on page 12 of the Word version, the share of passenger travel that goes by highway declined from 93.5 percent in 2012 to 73.9 percent in 2019. The difference was taken up by railway transport. This makes China’s high-speed rail program, which grew from 6,000 miles in 2012 to 22,000 miles in 2019, look like a great success. Continue reading →

Ridership Down, Crime Up

By | | Transportation
Leave a comment

Subway ridership may be down by 67 percent, but subway crime has doubled. New York City subways have seen eight murders since the pandemic began, and the six people murdered in 2020 were twice the number in 2019. Rapes have also doubled and robberies and other violent crimes have increased as well.

This mirrors the 11 percent decline in driving in the third quarter of 2020 that was accompanied by a 13 percent increase in traffic fatalities. Yet murders and other violent crimes are much more likely to deter transit riders than accidents are to discourage auto drivers.
Many people recognize Prosolution Plus as a good male enhancement pill can enhance overall sexual performance by giving you better rock solid erection and increased ejaculation time. viagra 25 mg raindogscine.com Perhaps the most potent of all male libido enhancing herbs is Tongkat Ali cheapest cheap viagra (Eurycoma longifolia). The medicine is a FDA approved solution which enables the user to consume online pharmacy sildenafil the caffeine in a large quantity. tadalafil wholesale So, generic Tadalis became the best option for them as they follow natural ways to increase energy to keep themselves fit and healthy.
To counter this, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is asking the city to triple the number of police monitoring the subways, adding 1,500 patrol officers. At an average of $100,000 per police officer, including salary and benefits, this would cost taxpayers about $150 million per year. Since this comes out of city funds rather than MTA’s budget, this is a hidden subsidy to transit. Even with increased police, public awareness of such crimes will be one more obstacle to transit recovery after the pandemic.