The Antiplanner »

Monthly Archives: July 2018

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

By | | Housing
Leave a comment

Urban planners predicted that Millennials would prefer renting apartments in dense cities over owning homes in low-density suburbs. So they told regional governments to restrict low-density development and promote high-density housing instead. Now, Millennials are 18 percent less likely to own homes than their parents did when their parents were young: in 1990, 45 percent of 25-34-year-olds owned their own homes; by 2015, it was just 37 percent.

Were urban planners correct? No, says a report from the Urban Land Institute. Instead, Millennials just prefer to live in expensive cities, and that has depressed their homeownership rates.

I don’t think the report is quite right. According to the American Community Survey’s table S0101, which breaks down population by age groups, Millennials a little more attracted to large urban areas than others, but the difference isn’t enough to account for an 18 percent decline in homeownership rates. The data show that 13.7 percent of Americans are Millennials (which the Urban Institute defined as ages 25 to 34 in 2015), while Millennials make up 15.1 percent of urban areas of 1 million people or more. That’s a significant difference, but certainly not enough to reduce homeownership by 18 percent by itself. Continue reading →

Can New York City Afford Its Subways?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
6 Comments

This is a question the Antiplanner asked almost exactly one year ago, but it comes up again because New York governor Andrew Cuomo and mayor Bill de Blasio are still arguing who should pay to repair the subways. Those subways are contained entirely within New York City. They were built by New York City. They are owned by New York City. Yet New York City mayor Bill de Blasio argues that all of the projected $37 billion cost of restoring the subways to a state of good repair should be paid by the state, not the city.

de Blasio’s reasoning apparently is that, although the city owns the subways, it has leased them to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency that also manages commuter trains and other transit lines that connect New York City with suburbs in Connecticut and New York. de Blasio claims to fear that, if the city gives any money at all to the MTA, it will spend some of that money on transit outside of the city.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo is willing to meet de Blasio halfway, agreeing that the state will pay for half the cost if the city picks up the other half. “We’ve lost a year because the city wouldn’t pay” its share, he says. Comments on the Gothamist article reporting Cuomo’s statement show that New York City residents don’t think much of this argument. Continue reading →

Transit Death Watch
May Transit Ridership Down 3.3 Percent

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
4 Comments

Nationwide transit ridership in May 2018 was 3.3 percent less than in the same month of 2017. May transit ridership fell in 36 of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas. Ridership in the first five months of 2018 was lower than the same months of 2017 in 41 of the 50 largest urban areas. Buses, light rail, heavy rail, and streetcars all lost riders. Commuter rail lost riders in most regions, but gains in New York and Philadelphia outnumbered losses in other urban areas.

These numbers are from the Federal Transit Administration’s monthly data report. As usual, the Antiplanner has posted an enhanced spreadsheet that has annual totals in columns GY through HO, mode totals for major modes in rows 2123 through 2129, agency totals in rows 2120 through 3129, and urban area totals for the nation’s 200 largest urban areas in rows 3131 through 3330.

Of the urban areas that saw ridership increase, ridership grew by 1.2 percent in Houston, 2.2 percent in Seattle, 2.4 percent in Denver, 1.2 percent in Portland, 5.0 percent in Indianapolis, 7.8 percent in Providence, 7.2 percent in Nashville, and an incredible 63.1 percent in Raleigh. Most of the growth in Raleigh was students carried by North Carolina State University’s bus system. Continue reading →

Greyhound Departs Western Canada

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

If you’ve ever desired to take a bus trip across Canada, this summer may be your last chance. Greyhound announced Monday that, due to a 41 percent decline in ridership since 2010, after October 31 it will terminating all bus service in western Canada except buses between Vancouver and Seattle. Service in Quebec and Ontario will remain unchanged, for now, except for the routes west of Sudbury.

Some local companies offer bus services in western Canada, mostly within individual provinces. Unless some of these companies step in to fill the gap left by Greyhound, it won’t be possible to go from, say, Vancouver to Calgary or Calgary to Winnipeg by bus.

Where passenger train service is offered by the government-subsidized Via Rail, prices are roughly twice Greyhound’s fares. Currently, a Greyhound bus trip from Vancouver to Toronto is about US$217, compared with US$564 by train. Vancouver to Edmonton is around US$89 by Greyhound and US$230 by train. Continue reading →

When Congress Decides, Money Gets Wasted

By | | Transportation
1 Comment

Nashville’s Music City Star is a ridiculously wasteful transit project that never should have happened. Now, Democrats in Congress are insisting that it waste even more money.

In 2016, the Star attracted an average of 1,055 daily riders, far less than the 1,900 that was projected when it opened in 2009. Fares of $877,500 covered less than 15 percent of the $6-million cost of operating and maintaining the train.

Congress has directed all passenger-carrying rail lines (and many freight lines) to use positive train control, a technology that is expensive to install and expensive to maintain. The Tennessee Regional Transportation Authority, which operates the Star, applied for and received an exemption from this requirement. Now, House Democrats have challenged that exemption, noting that, “Although the Music City Star is one of the smallest commuter rail operations in the United States, the size of a railroad does not negate the potential for an accident.” Continue reading →

Redesigned Bus Routes Won’t Save Transit

By | | Transportation
2 Comments

Ever since Houston was recognized as one of the few urban areas whose transit ridership is still growing, thanks to a redesign of the region’s bus system, transit agencies around the country have been considering their own route reforms. Richmond implemented “the Great Richmond Reroute” a couple of weeks ago. New York City transit began planning a reroute in April. Washington Metro announced last week that it would spend $2.2 million studying its own rerouting.

A lot of the ideas behind rerouting bus systems come from Portland transit consultant Jarrett Walker. Walker’s basic ideas are sound: change from a hub-and-spoke to a grid system; increase frequencies; and reduce the number of stops. The goal is to create a system where people can get from any point in the city or region to any other point by a fairly direct route with minimal wait times and at most one transfer.

Bus routes in many cities today aren’t much different than they were when public agencies took over private transit service some 50 years ago, and they weren’t that much different then than the streetcar routes that buses had replaced, usually several decades before that. Agencies have been afraid to change their route structures because they know that any new reroute is going to make some people upset (as Walker says, “Beautiful people will come to you with their elderly parents and their babies and say the redesign will ruin their lives”) with no guarantee that it will attract enough new riders to offset those who quit riding because the old routes served their needs the best. Continue reading →

Miami Having Wrong Debate over Bus vs. Rail

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

On July 19, Miami-Dade’s transportation planning organization will decide whether to spend $300 million on bus-rapid transit or $1.5 billion on rail. As noted by the Antiplanner a year ago, this continues a debate that has been going on for years.

It’s a stupid debate because buses can move far more people for far less money. It’s even stupider because the $300 million bus-rapid transit plan is also a waste of money as Miami can’t generate enough transit traffic to effectively use dedicated bus lanes. The heart of the debate has nothing to do with transportation and everything to do with politicians’ egos.

“People in the south understand that if they settle for a bus, they’ll never get a rail,” said one politician. “Nobody wants buses.” Let me give you a clue: nobody except contractors and politicians really wants rail either. More than 90 percent of Miami-Dade commuters drive to work and less than 6 percent take transit (less than 1 percent of which uses existing rail). Continue reading →

Transit: It’s for High-Income People Now

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

Remember when transit agencies guilt-tripped voters into supporting transit because it helped poor people who couldn’t afford their own cars? Nearly all poor people today have cars, so the number of low-income people who take transit to work is declining. Meanwhile, the fastest growth in transit commuting by far has been among people who earn more than $75,000 a year.

The Census Bureau divides workers into eight income classes. I don’t know how they decided on the division points, but in 2010, five of those classes had about 20 million people, while the $10,000 to $15,000 per year class had about 11 million and the $50,000 to $65,000 plus $65,000 to $75,000 together had about 20 million. The above chart, which is from table B08119 of the 2016 American Community Survey, shows that the income class most likely to take transit was the over $75,000 per year category. This was also true in 2010. Continue reading →

Charlotte’s Transit Disaster

By | | Transportation
9 Comments

Ridership on Charlotte’s new $1.1 billion (actually closer to $1.2 billion) light-rail line is well below expectations. But that’s okay, says the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), because they expected it to be below expectations.

The line was projected to carry an average of 18,900 weekday trips in its opening year. When combined with the existing light-rail line, which carried about 15,750 weekday trips in 2016, the total should have been more than 33,500. In fact, it carried just 24,544 weekday trips in May, two months after its March opening.

According to CATS, the shortfall is entirely due to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte ending its Spring semester. “You go from a 28,000- or 29,000-student campus down to 4,000,” said CATS spokesman Olaf Kinard. “For us to have over 24,500 riders [in May] — that’s strong.” Students get free transit passes, so CATS is essentially depending on free riders to justify its expenditure of more than a billion dollars. Continue reading →

Happy Independence Day

By | | Mission
3 Comments

Some 245 years ago, Americans protested unfair taxation and subsidies by tossing tea into Boston harbor. What would we dump today? Streetcars? Regional growth-management plans? Politicians who “give” us things Garlic Garlic free tadalafil is fortified with allicin, a compound that facilitates blood circulation in penis and enhances the supply of blood flow to the reproductive organs. According to a research in Pennsylvania, “People with higher level of copulation act have 30% more antigen immunoglobulin than who don’t do.” (Antigen protects from cold and flu and provides an effective immune system). viagra 50mg viagra free consultation learningworksca.org The best thing about this drug is that both the forms compromise of the same chemical composition as the brands and the US generics. This drug works by relaxing vessels and pumping more blood flow to the penis allows for an erection to be achieved and sustained long enough for intercourse (in other words, fight the cialis 10mg generico effects of ED). by mortgaging the future? We would be better off without all of them. In any case, rejoice in the freedoms we have and continue fighting for the ones we have lost.