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Monthly Archives: January 2020

27 Quintillion Transit Charts

By | | Policy brief
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Last June, I posted a spreadsheet capable of producing more than a thousand charts about urban transit. This year, I’ve slightly outdone that with a spreadsheet capable of producing literally quintillions of different charts. This spreadsheet is an enhanced version of the National Transit Database’s time series spreadsheet for service data and operating costs.

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

As downloaded from the FTA web site, the raw spreadsheet is about 7 megabytes in size and has individual worksheets showing, for every transit agency and mode, operating costs (totals plus breakdowns into vehicle operations, vehicle maintenance, facilities maintenance, and general administration), fares, trips, passenger miles, vehicle revenue miles, vehicle revenue hours, directional route miles, and other data. All of these show annual numbers from 1991 through 2018 except for fares, which only go back to 2002. Continue reading →

36. An Invitation from Yale

By | | Iconoclast
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In the spring of 1998 I received a phone call from someone at the Yale School of Forestry. The school was offering fellowships to people who had worked in the conservation movement. The fellowships–lasting one semester per year alternating with a fellowship to someone from the timber industry–were given out on a competitive basis, but my caller informed me that if I applied he guaranteed I would get it.

That was very flattering, though it turned out he had previously made the same offer to my friend Andy Stahl, who had garnered more headlines than I had during the spotted owl wars. Andy couldn’t do it, but he suggested my name. I applied, was accepted, and made plans to spend fall semester, 1998, in New Haven.

As part of the fellowship, I was encouraged, but not required, to offer a course relating my experiences to students. There were also funds to bring in several guest speakers. The school would provide me with an office, an apartment, and an intern. In addition, they would pay me more for four months than I had ever previously earned in two years. According to my friends, it wasn’t more than I was worth, but I was still living in voluntary poverty as a part of being an environmental activist, even though I was no longer really accepted in the environmental community. Continue reading →