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Category Archives: Transportation

Water or Transit?

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San Antonio politician Nelson Wolff has proposed to take a sales tax that currently supports the region’s water supply and give it to VIA, San Antonio’s transit agency, instead. He apparently believes it’s more important to subsidize a transit system that carries less than 2.6 percent of city commuters to work than the aquifer that supplies 70 percent of the water for the region.

An op-ed in response points out that VIA is already so generously funded that it was able to increase service by 17 percent since 2012. Despite that increase in service, ridership dropped 24 percent. In 2017, VIA spent $205 million on operations and collected less than $24 million in fares.
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Wolff was long the strongest voice of building a light-rail or streetcar line in San Antonio. He wants to subsidize transit, he claims, because “there will be less pollution.” Hardly: VIA buses emit twice as much greenhouse gases per passenger mile as the average car and 80 percent more than the average SUV. None of this matters to Wolff, who seems to believe that taxpayers exist to support transit, not that transit exists to support mobility.

Transit Ridership Up in September

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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America’s transit systems carried 2.9 percent more riders in September 2019 than September 2018, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration yesterday. After deducting New York, ridership still grew by half a percent. Moreover, ridership grew in 27 of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, though one of those was Dallas-Ft. Worth, where the apparent ridership growth is really just due to a change in the method of counting bus riders.

September 2019 had one more work day than September 2018, which accounts for some of the increase. A recovery from some of the maintenance delays experienced in New York and Washington explains some of the rest of it. Every major mode of transit saw an increase in riders except light rail, which experienced a 5.4 percent decline.

Year-to-date ridership is not so positive, as it fell by 0.1 percent nationwide, 1.4 percent outside of New York, 4.0 percent for light rail, and 0.8 percent for buses. Continue reading →

Traffic Safety Data for 2018, First Half 2019

By | | Follow up, Transportation
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I should have waited a few days before posting my policy brief on pedestrian and cyclist safety. The day after I posted it, the Department of Transportation released its 2018 data as well as data for the first half of 2019.

As I expected, fatalities declined in 2018, and from the first half report it appears they will decline again in 2019. What I didn’t expect was that, despite the overall decline in traffic fatalities, pedestrian fatalities would increase by 3.4 percent and bicycle fatalities would increase by 6.3 percent.
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My previous analysis of the data found that a disproportionate number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities took place at night and many involved pedestrians and cyclists who were impaired by alcohol. The 2018 report shows that most of the increase in fatalities took place at night and that cyclist fatalities involving alcohol (on the part of the cyclist) grew faster than the total. I’ll take a more detailed look at the data and post my findings soon.

Amtrak Inspector General Clueless

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak’s inspector general issued a report last week that reveals an utter cluelessness about Amtrak and how it works. The report argues that late trains are costing Amtrak revenues and that, instead of trying to run the trains on time, Amtrak should spend some of its precious resources building a computer model to estimate how many riders it loses for each late train.

The report, titled Better Estimates Needed of the Financial Impacts of Poor On-Time Performance, devotes many of its pages to building such a model itself and concludes that improving on-time performance by 5 percent could increase revenues by $12 million. Since Amtrak’s 2018 operating losses are $171 million, says the report, such an improvement could significantly reduce those losses. Continue reading →

A Little Victory

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According to both the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Survey, automobiles in the United States carry an average of 1.67 people (see page 58). Yet for table VM-1 of the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Statistics annual reports, the Obama administration arbitrarily reduced this number to 1.38.

When this first appeared in the 2009 Highway Statistics report, I contacted the Federal Highway Administration to find out why they made the change. I was told that the lower number was based on then-latest 2009 National Household Travel Survey. When I pointed out that the survey found 1.67 people per vehicle, they said this number was “miles-weighted,” and if it were weighted by trips, it would be lower. When I expressed doubts that the difference would be that great, the person who I was communicating with insisted that he had a spreadsheet proving that the lower number was correct. When I asked him for a copy of that spreadsheet, he refused to give it to me, saying it was proprietary.

Since I used this number to calculate passenger miles, the mile-weighted method made more sense anyway. This meant that, whenever I wanted to quote passenger miles data, I would have to recalculate the numbers instead of relying on table VM-1, and then provide a justification for my recalculation. Continue reading →

August Ridership Drops in 40 of Top 50 Regions

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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August 2019 transit ridership in the New York urban area grew a massive 5.1 percent above the same month in 2018, according to National Transit data released last Thursday by the Federal Transit Administration. That was enough to push nationwide transit ridership up, but only by 0.3 percent. Not counting New York, transit ridership fell by 3.2 percent.

August ridership fell in Phoenix by 16.2 percent, which may have been due to the weather: temperatures rose about 105 degrees for 21 days in August 2019, vs. just nine days in August 2018. Ridership also fell by 16.6 percent in Louisville, 14.1 percent in New Orleans, and 11.2 percent in Virginia Beach-Norfolk.

While these were the extremes, few major urban areas were exempt from the decline. Ridership dropped in Seattle (-2.6%) and Houston (-1.1%), both regions that had been once claimed to be exempt from the malaise that is affecting the nation’s transit industry. Ridership grew in only 10 of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, and one of those — Dallas-Ft. Worth — is suspect as nearly all of the growth is in Dallas buses, which installed a new way of counting riders last fall that reports much higher numbers than before. Continue reading →

And the Winner Is . . .

By | | Transportation
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Asking what American city has the best transit is like asking which one has the best lutefisk. It may sound like an interesting question, but unless you are in the one urban area where it really matters (New York in the case of transit, Minneapolis-St. Paul in the case of lutefisk), or are a real die-hard fan, the answer is pretty much irrelevant to most Americans.

Nevertheless, WalletHub.com took the time to consider which of the nation’s top 100 cities has the best and worst transit systems. To answer the question, they used 17 different criteria, including such things as airport accessibility, the presence of dedicated bus or rail lines, and fatalities per passenger mile.

They concluded that Seattle has the best transit system, with a score of 77.97 out of a possible 100, followed closely by Boston, which scored 77.84. New York, which scored a measly 68.87, was only the seventh-best. The worst was Indianapolis, with only 21.13 points, slightly bettered by Tampa and St. Petersburg, which each scored about 24 points. Continue reading →

July Transit Ridership Up 1.9 Percent

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Transit ridership in July 2019 was 1.9 percent greater than the same month in 2018, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration last Friday. The increase was partly due to the fact that July had one more work day in 2019 than in 2018.

In addition, the New York City subway had partly recovered from serious delays and other problems experienced in July 2018, which led to a 5.5 percent increase in New York urban area ridership. Subtract New York and ridership in the rest of the country declined by 1.0 percent. The difference between New York and the rest of the country was underscored by modal numbers: July ridership fell for commuter rail, light rail, hybrid rail, and streetcars, but grew for heavy rail and bus.

Ridership grew in exactly half of the top 50 urban areas. However, ridership for January through July 2019 grew over the same months in 2018 in just 15 of the top 50 urban areas. Continue reading →

Screwy Transit Logic

By | | Transportation
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Bus ridership in Los Angeles is plummeting, says the Wall Street Journal, but LA Metro CEO Phil Washington thinks he has the solution.

“It’s too easy to drive in this city,” says Washington. To get people back on the buses, the city needs to “actually making driving harder.”

The main way he wants to do that is to turn existing street lanes into exclusive bus lanes. The increased congestion, he says, would help “change behavior in a city whose culture is largely built around driving.” Continue reading →

June Transit Ridership Drops 2.9 Percent

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Transit ridership in June, 2019, was 2.9 percent than the same month in 2018, according to data posted earlier this week by the Federal Transit Administration. June had one fewer work day in 2019 than in 2018, which may account for part of the drop.

Ridership fell for all major modes of travel, including commuter rail, which in previous months had been holding steady. Ridership also fell in all but nine of the nation’s fifty largest urban areas. In particular, ridership fell in Houston and Seattle, two regions that had bucked the downward trend of so many other urban areas.
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A full analysis of recent transit ridership data will be the focus of next week’s Policy Brief, which will appear on Tuesday.