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Monthly Archives: April 2019

Confirmation

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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The Antiplanner has focused on a few themes in recent years: density is expensive; buses can move more people than rails; transit systems are mismanaged; transit is losing rides to ride hailing. Recent research papers from a variety of sources have confirmed these ideas, at least in part.

First, Steve Polzin and Jodi Godfrey at the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transit Research have examined transit ridership trends, noting that ridership in Florida is declining twice as fast as the rest of the nation. These declines aren’t due to decreasing service, as some have said; in fact, service in many Florida urban areas has increased and, if it decreased, did so only after ridership declined. Instead, they blame the decline on “the fact that more travelers now have additional options,” notably ride hailing, working at home, and increased auto ownership.

Transit systems in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area have been hit particularly hard by ridership declines. Broward County Transit (Ft. Lauderdale) has lost more than a quarter of its riders since 2014. To make matters worse, the agency is under investigation for falsifying overtime records for favored employees and, for some reason, hiding buses from Federal Transit Administration inspectors. Continue reading →

The Nation’s Worst Transit Agencies

By | | Transportation
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The Antiplanner has often called San Jose’s Valley Transit Authority (VTA) the nation’s worst transit agency (with some competition from DC Metro). It would be nice, however, to confirm that with hard data. The question is what are the best ways to measure agency performance?

A previous comparison of transit agencies used 23 different measures of performance. Some of these were outputs, such as trips per capita and farebox recovery. Most, however, were inputs, such as revenue miles, expenses per capita, and vehicle miles between failures. But inputs are not a sound measure of performance; an agency can spend a lot of money but carry few riders; it can run a lot of vehicle miles, but if they don’t go where people want to go, they are not serving the public well; it can have lots of breakdowns, but if people are still riding it, it must be doing something good.

So I want to focus on outputs, and I’ve tentatively identified four: Continue reading →

Transport Then and Now

By | | Transportation
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The Guardian has published comparison maps showing historic transit systems vs. modern systems in those same cities, leading commenters to lament that “big oil and the automobile industry destroyed public transport.” Yet the maps that make up the article were made more for artistic purposes and not as any scientific study of the history and fate of public transit.

The first thing to note is that the maps only include rail lines, not buses. Yet, as another article in the Guardian notes, American transit systems began converting rails to buses as early as the 1920s, with 20 percent of them having completed the conversion by 1930 (years before the so-called General Motors streetcar conspiracy). The maps misleadingly make it appear that transit service has shrunk when all it did was change modes.

The second thing to note is that, on most maps, the artist only included streetcars and rapid transit (light and heavy rail). One historic map shows interurban lines, but none show commuter rail. In Los Angeles, for example, commuter rail has replaced some of the longer-distance Pacific Electric lines, but this isn’t shown on the maps. Continue reading →

Rolling Homeless Shelters

By | | Housing, Transportation
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Transit advocates have a new reason to justify subsidies to public transit: transit vehicles provide shelters for homeless people. San Jose’s perennially cash-strapped Valley Transportation Authority is proposing to cut its only all-night bus route, but homeless advocates are protesting the plan because the buses are “another lifeline” to homeless people. The night-time buses cost taxpayers half a million dollars a year, money that could probably be more effectively spent on behalf of either homeless people or transit riders.

In Minneapolis, the Green Line light rail, which runs all night, has become the shelter of choice for 200 to 300 people seeking to escape the winter’s cold. Heartless people who have their own homes complain that the homeless people make light-rail cars overcrowded, filthy, and smelling of urine, so much so that Metro Transit has had to add four staff members to clean the cars every morning. Some suggest that Metro Transit should stop running the trains from 2 am to 4 am to keep homeless people from using them overnight, but homeless advocates object that such people “need our help.”

The link was strong even levitra cialis viagra after considering other factors associated with impotence – such as smoking, drinking alcohol, diabetes, high blood pressure and bad effects of certain drugs. The most encouraging part from the group was that they improved their blood glucose purchase generic viagra level is gained. CBT is performed by viagra without prescription free a licensed therapist – a reputable practitioner that your main physician can recommend – and focuses on changing the pondering and behavior from the nervousness sufferer. Feeling commonly begins to return within a viagra prescription canada few weeks and the numbness might be entirely gone after several months. While there are several different causes of homelessness, the problem is clearly worsened by growth-management planning that makes housing expensive. One study estimates that a 10 percent increase in housing prices results in a 14 percent rise in the rate of homelessness. A study released last month in Oregon concluded that “high rents are to blame for the severity of the state’s homelessness crisis.” Continue reading →

Regulating Affordability

By | | Housing
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Two recent op-eds illustrate the dilemmas lawmakers face when dealing with unaffordable housing. The first explains to readers on Capitol Hill how Oregon is pretending to make housing more affordable when in fact almost everything it does makes it less affordable.

The article points out that in 1971 Oregon’s then-governor Tom McCall told a national group, “We want you to visit our state, but for heaven’s sake, don’t move here!” To make sure they didn’t, the Oregon legislature passed and McCall signed a 1973 land-use law that ended up limiting all urban growth to less than 1.2 percent of the land in the state. Naturally, developable land has become expensive and housing has become unaffordable, which helps keep people from moving to the state.

The article suggests, however, the state officials must be disappointed that Washington has made itself even less affordable despite not passing a similar law until 1990. As a result, many of the efforts made to provide “affordable housing” must be viewed as ways “to prevent a flood of Washingtonians from moving into more affordable Oregon.” Rent control, which every economist agrees makes housing less affordable, is only one of the ways the state is doing that. Continue reading →

Transit Ridership Falls Again in February

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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America’s transit systems carried 4.7 percent fewer riders in February 2019 than the same month in 2018, according to data released last Friday by the Federal Transit Administration. All major forms of transit saw declines except hybrid rail, which grew because of a new San Francisco Bay Area line that opened in mid-2018. Overall, rail and bus each declined by 4.7 percent.

Ridership dropped in 39 of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas. The biggest declines were in Providence (-15.9%), Milwaukee (-14.3%), Louisville (-13.0%), Detroit (-11.1%), Kansas City (-11.0%), Phoenix (-10.8%), and Philadelphia (-10.2%). Ridership even declined in Seattle (-5.8%), which had been enjoying a sustained period of growth.

The biggest ridership growth was in Richmond (12.6%), testimony in favor of that transit system’s redesign with the help of Jarrett Walker. Ridership also grew significantly in Dallas-Ft. Worth (12.2%), Denver (5.3%), Austin (5.2%), Buffalo (4.5%), Atlanta (2.8%), and Salt Lake (2.3%). Ridership also grew by less than a percent in Houston, Washington, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and San Juan. Continue reading →

Driving Is Growing But Growth Is Slowing

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Late last month, the Federal Highway Administration reported that Americans drove a record number of miles in 2018: 3.225 trillion miles in all. While the Department of Transportation heralded this as a sign of a “robust economy,” detailed data show that driving grew by only 0.38 percent over 2017. This is slower than the previous year’s growth of 1.21 percent, and slower than the nation’s population growth of 0.62 percent, which means per capita driving declined by 0.24 percent.

While any growth at all is better than the transit industry is doing, this slow growth may be more of a sign of an on-coming recession than a robust economy. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal incomes declined by 0.1 percent in January, 2019, though they grew by 0.2 percent in February. Bloomberg says that some indicators suggest that we are facing the highest chance of a recession since 2008.

Of course, some people are using the growth in driving as one more argument for a big infrastructure spending bill. In fact, the need for a new federal spending program is becoming more questionable every day. Continue reading →

Shakeout in the Intercity Bus Industry

By | | Transportation
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As an apparent result of low fuel prices, the intercity bus industry is going through some turmoil, with major carriers cancelling some routes and other routes popping up. Perhaps the biggest shock is that Stagecoach, which revolutionized the bus industry with the introduction of Megabus in 2006, sold Megabus to a California investment firm after reporting a 3.2 percent decline in revenues.

Luxury carrier Vonlane offers Texas Triangle passengers a choice between legrest seats. . .

Yet the industry isn’t fading away. New carriers are introducing new models, with more dynamic schedules and more first-class services. All of these changes are reported in the Chaddick Institute’s 2019 Outlook for the Intercity Bus Industry. Co-author Joseph Schwieterman has been watching the industry more closely than anyone else since Megabus began shaking it up in 2006, and the more recent shake ups are just about as revolutionary as the first Megabus routes. Continue reading →

Lowest Transit Ridership Evah

By | | Transportation
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A recent news story reported that DC Metro ridership had fallen to its lowest level since 2000. Another story reported the Philadelphia bus ridership had fallen to its lowest level since 2002. While the Antiplanner has been tracking the decline in transit ridership for several years, I never thought of expressing it in this particular way.

So I decided to look at major urban areas and transit agencies to see how many years it has been since their ridership has been as low as it was in 2018. If nothing else, this would give me the ability to casually say at cocktail parties, “Did you know that Los Angeles transit ridership is the lowest it has been since 1997?” Unfortunately, for some reason, the Antiplanner doesn’t get invited to too many cocktail parties.

In any case, I decided to compare calendar year 2018 ridership data with the Federal Transit Administration’s historic time series. One slight problem is that the historic time series is based on the fiscal years of the individual agencies, so the 2018 data, when it is published, won’t be exactly the same as the calendar year 2018 numbers. But the historic time series goes back to 1991, while the monthly time series that is the source of the calendar year data only goes back to 2002. Continue reading →

Death of a Megafolly

By | | Transportation
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Duke University’s basketball teams inspire hostility nationwide, but now the school has earned the scorn of of nearby community leaders due to its rejection of the $3-billion Durham-Orange counties light-rail project. In refusing to donate land for the rail right of way, Duke cited concerns about electromagnetic interference, vibration, and other threats to Duke research and medical programs.

$151 million a mile to take 0.08 percent of vehicles off the road.

Some argued that Duke’s decision left the project only “99 percent dead” because the GoTriangle transit agency could use eminent domain to take the land from Duke. But, nearly three weeks after Duke made its decision, the GoTriangle board “unanimously but reluctantly” voted to kill the project. Continue reading →