Trump Administration Favors BRT

The Federal Transit Administration has announced that it is providing capital funding for twelve transit projects in 2020. Eight of the projects are bus-rapid transit and the other four are extensions of existing rail lines.

The Trump Administration’s proposed 2019 budget called for “winding down” the New Starts (capital grants) program “by limiting funding to projects with existing full funding grant agreements only” (p. 87). Congressional authorization for the New Starts program expires this year, and the budget called for “eliminating discretionary grants programs” including New Starts.

The administration’s proposed 2021 budget calls for renewing the BUILD program (formerly known as TIGER), which is a discretionary grants program, but says nothing about New Starts. This presumably means that the administration still wants to not renew it. Continue reading

CDC Recommends Single-Occupant Cars

For more than a month, transit agencies have been telling people not to ride transit unless they are “essential workers.” Now those same agencies are outraged that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is giving people the same advice as they go back to work.

In an advisory page for employers of office workers, CDC urges employers to “Offer employees incentives to use forms of transportation that minimize close contact with others, such as offering reimbursement for parking for commuting to work alone or single-occupancy rides.”

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Maybe 35 Percent Wasn’t Enough

When I let associates know that I was projecting that transit ridership after the pandemic would be 25 to 35 percent lower than before, some of them suggested I was overestimating. Now Reuters reports that in China, “transit ridership in large cities remains down about 35% two months after lockdown restrictions were lifted.” At the same time, auto sales there have sharply increased.

Reuters also frets that a shift from transit to cars will lead to more congestion. In fact, in most cities not enough people ride transit to make a different in traffic congestion. Where there is a difference, I suspect there will be less congestion, not more, because the real switch will not be from transit to driving but from transit and driving to working at home.
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Transit agencies, of course, want people to feel like they can safely ride the obsolete transportation they are offering. New York’s MTA alone says it will cost $500 million more a year to keep everything from ticket machines to transit seats disinfected. That’s just one more reason to rethink whether we really need transit all that much.

Not the Best Timing

A group called the High-Speed Rail Alliance was pleased to announce that Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton is proposing that the federal government spend $240 billion on high-speed rail lines. This is, says the Congressman, “a vision worthy of the moment.”

Is it worthy because ridership of Amtrak is down 95 percent? Or is it worthy because Americans are rethinking their use of mass transportation?

No, apparently it’s worthy because President Trump started a trade war with China that was exacerbated by accusations over COVID-19. China, says Representative Moulton, is expected to “invest” (meaning spend) $46 billion a year on high-speed rail between 2020 and 2030. So, since China is doing it, we have to do it too in order to stay “competitive.” Continue reading

NYers Say They’ll Use Transit Less or Not at All

As a result of the pandemic, 44 percent of New York City residents expect to “avoid public transit entirely” after stay-at-home orders end. Since, in 2018, 56 percent of New Yorkers rode transit to work, it may be that the 44 percent who weren’t riding transit are the ones who say they won’t ride it in the future.

However, another 31.5 percent say they expect to use transit less. Just 18.5 percent say they expect to use transit as much as they did before the pandemic. If people do what they say they are going to do, New York City transit is going to lose a lot of riders. The survey also found that 5.5 percent say they expect to work at home, which is just 1 percentage point more than the 4.5 percent of New Yorkers who worked at home in 2018.
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Surveys are, at best, a first approximation of future behavior. Tomorrow’s Antiplanner policy brief will present my projections of transportation in the first year or two after the pandemic. They will rely less on what people say they are going to do and more on what we have learned during the pandemic. I’ll be interested in your comments.

Democrats Propose $15.75B More for Transit

House Democrats have proposed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill that includes $15.75 billion for transit, $15.0 billion for highways, as well as more for Amtrak. Normally, Congress gives about $12.5 billion to transit agencies; this year, it has already tripled that and this bill would more than quadruple it.

I understand that some transit agencies are hurting because the local tax revenues they depend on have declined. But most of them have also cut service, which should have cut their costs. Everyone in the private sector is in financial pain; why should transit be exempt?
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Democrats say this bill is needed to deal with the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression. But, unlike in the Depression, all of this unemployment is self-inflicted and it’s not going to be fixed by handing out funny money. The Democrats’ real goals appear to be to reward the public employee unions that support them even as they punish the private sector by keeping the economy shut down long enough to make it completely dependent on the government.

Traffic Fatalities in 2019 and 2020

Traffic fatalities declined by 1.2 percent in 2019 despite a 0.9 percent increase in driving. Preliminary data released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that pedestrian deaths declined by 2 percent and cyclist deaths by 3 percent. The only increase was from accidents involving heavy trucks.

You might think that the great decrease in travel in 2020 would result in a parallel decrease in traffic fatalities. But Massachusetts reports that fatalities have slightly increased despite a 50 percent decrease in driving. The state had 28 fatalities in April 2020 compared with 27 in April 2019. Of course, that’s a small sample compared with the nation as a whole.

The state didn’t say why it thought fatalities hadn’t declined. But it appears that some drivers have responded to the reduction in congestion by driving well above speed limits. Nebraska has cited 64 percent more drivers for speeding above 100 mph since March 18 than the same period in 2019. Utah reports numerous people driving 30 mph above posted speed limits. More data will be needed to find out of Massachusett’s experience is the exception or the rule and whether speeding is the cause of increased fatality rates.

COVID-19 Reduces March Ridership by 41.5%

It will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that transit ridership in March 2020 was well below March 2019. April’s will be even lower, but for now we have just the data for March released earlier this week by the Federal Transit Administration.

Those data show that overall rail ridership declined by 46 percent while total bus ridership fell by 38 percent. Among the nation’s largest urban areas, the declines ranged from just 8 percent in Oklahoma City to 54 percent in Washington, DC. At the lower end of the range, Richmond — just a few miles from Washington — saw just a 12 percent drop; Raleigh was 18 percent; and San Antonio was 19 percent. At the upper end of the range, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco-Oakland, and Seattle all lost between 40 and 47 percent of their riders. Continue reading

Shut Down Public Transit Now!

An op-ed in InsideSources argues that public transit should be shut down as it is a major source of viral infections. No one reading this will be surprised that the Antiplanner wrote the op-ed, but the Antiplanner isn’t the only one who thinks so.

Writing in yesterday’s USA Today, University of Tennessee law professor Glen Harlan Reynolds points out that “mass transit kills.” I know some commenters on this blog point out that New York subways didn’t have to be as deadly as they were, but just two months ago people didn’t know enough about the virus to know how to protect themselves, with some experts (relying on misinformation from China) even arguing that masks could do more harm than good. Since each infectious disease is different, the safest course is to avoid public transportation.

New York City shut down its subways yesterday morning for the first time in its history. The goal is to give crews a chance to disinfect subway cars and stations and open them up again, but just overnight may not be enough as cars can quickly become reinfected every morning. Continue reading

What Happens After the Pandemic?

Everyone everywhere is asking how the pandemic will change their business, and transportation agencies are no exception. What do you think?

David Zipper, writing for CityLab, wonders if commuter-train ridership will return after the pandemic. It’s currently down as much as 97 percent in some cities.

Bus ridership hasn’t declined as much as rail — an indication that most rail riders are white-collar workers who can work at home but most bus riders are not — but it’s still down 60 to 70 percent. But transit agency officials everywhere wonder if they will get back the riders they have lost when the pandemic is over. Continue reading