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Monthly Archives: April 2020

Expanding Transit’s Mission (& Subsidies)

By | | Transportation
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Due to stay-at-home orders, many small transit agencies that focused on providing transportation for elderly and disabled people are carrying hardly any riders anymore. So, to justify the subsidies they received under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, they are getting into a new business: grocery delivery. They are doing so with backing from the Federal Transit Administration, which has written rules that allow agencies wide discretion for how they use CARES funds.

For example, Island Transit, on Whidbey Island, Washington, is offering free delivery service. “Offering free delivery service for essential items is just another way to fulfill our mission,” says the agency’s executive director.

Apparently, their mission is to take jobs and customers away from existing businesses. Numerous companies already offer grocery delivery, including start-ups like Instacart, Shipt, Peapod, Fresh Direct, and Boxed as well as existing supermarkets such as Walmart, Safeway, and Whole Foods (via Amazon Fresh). On Whidbey Island, for example, on-line shoppers can get deliveries from Instacart, Bailey’s Corner Store, Whidbey Island Seafood, Blackberry Moon, and something run by local high-school entrepreneurs called Whidbey Deliveries. Continue reading →

Anti-Auto Nuts Continue to Act Nutty

By | | Transportation
4 Comments

Evidence is mounting that urban transit has been one of the main spreaders of COVID-19. New York governor Andrew Cuomo says the virus can survive for days on transit seats and metal surfaces. The head of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority was infected by the virus and the head of New Jersey Transit actually died from it.

In the face of this evidence, anti-auto advocates have given up on their efforts to get people out of their cars and onto transit. As a Huffington Post headline reads, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Forcing Cities To Rethink Public Transportation.”

Just kidding. In fact, despite the headline, the story goes on to tell how anti-auto politicians are using the pandemic to somehow argue that more people should be discouraged from driving. Continue reading →

The MCU School of Transportation Planning

By | | Policy brief
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Why do so many science fiction & fantasy visions of future cities have monorails?
Click image to download a three-page PDF of this brief.

Continue reading →

New Virus Research from China

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

A recent paper from China finds that the vast majority of public transmissions of COVID-19 in that country took place on various modes of mass transportation. The study examined thousands of cases of virus and traced them to 318 different outbreaks, thereby showing where people were most likely to contract the disease.

Most of the transmissions took place in people’s homes from family members or other relatives. Outside of homes, more than two out of three outbreaks were due to transport, which the paper defines to include “train, private car, high-speed rail, bus, passenger plane, taxi, cruise ship, etc.” However, beyond this statement, the paper focuses exclusively on mass transport, not private cars.

I emailed one of the co-authors of the paper, Yuguo Li, asking whether they had detected any virus transmissions in private automobiles. He wrote back saying they had not, though he admitted that some of the infections that they attributed to being in homes might have taken place in a private car. But the outbreaks attributed by the paper to “transport” were all forms of mass transportation such as planes, trains, and urban transit. Continue reading →

When Is a Black Swan Not a Black Swan?

By | | Transportation
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According to Wikipedia, a black-swan event is “an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalised after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.” The Antiplanner’s policy brief about black swans was condensed into an article in the Federalist this week.

Almost as if in response, Nassim Taleb, the person who coined the term “black-swan event,” says he doesn’t believe this pandemic is a black swan. Why not? Because he predicted it!

He might have predicted that a pandemic would eventually take place. Tom Clancy predicted that someone would fly an airplane into important buildings in the United States. The Weather Service predicted that Hurricane Katrina would hit the Gulf Coast. Many, including the Antiplanner, predicted that the housing bubble of 2006 would lead to a financial crisis. Continue reading →

Did Autos or Transit Spread the Virus to NYC?

By | | Transportation
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Last week, the Antiplanner reported on a study by an MIT economist that found that the New York City subway “was a major disseminator — if not the principal transmission vehicle — of coronavirus infection.” Now, as if in response, a so-called market urbanist named Salim Furth, has published an article blaming the spread of the virus in New York on automobiles.

First, I have to say I am skeptical of the term “market urbanist” because many (though not all) of the people who claim to be one seem to approve of free markets only so long as they achieve the results that they think are right. They seem to be perfectly willing to interfere in the markets to achieve the “right” results if the market won’t produce that result. For example, they complain about single-family zoning but never mention urban-growth boundaries; they complain about subsidies to highways but don’t mention that subsidies to transit are a hundred times greater per passenger mile.

Anyway, Furth presents the following chart to show that automobiles spread the virus. The chart compares coronavirus cases in New York City zip codes as of April 1with the percentage of residents in those zip codes who drove to work in 2014 through 2018. Continue reading →

MTA Forbade Employees from Wearing Masks

By | | Transportation
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Last week, I pointed out a recent report that blamed much of the spread of COVID-19 in New York City on the subway system. Recently, I’ve collected a series of memos suggesting that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is specifically culpable in this spread.

During the 2012 influenza epidemic, the MTA issued a policy directive stating that the agency would keep a six-week supply of sanitizer wipes, sanitizer gel, and N95 respirators on hand for use by employees. The directive specifically stated that the masks would be available for bus drivers, station attendants, train conductors, and cleaners, among others.

The first COVID-19 death in America was reported in Washington state on February 29, 2020. Rather than make its supposed six-week stockpile of masks available to its employees, MTA issued a memo on March 6 forbidding employees from wearing masks, even if they had their own masks. The memo worried that, if bus operators and station attendants were allowed to wear masks, it could lead to “panicked purchasing of facemasks . . . thereby putting health care providers and their communities at greater risk.” Continue reading →

Class, Not Race, Is the Issue in the Pandemic

By | | Policy brief
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An April 8 article in the New York Times breathlessly revealed that the coronavirus is killing blacks and Latinos in New York City at twice the rate of whites. This fits in with the Times thesis that race has been the most important issue influencing American politics and society since 1619. This allows the Times and other liberal commentators to bash right wingers, who “everyone knows” are racists.

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

But the issue with coronavirus, as with so much else in America, isn’t really about race; it’s about class. The middle class is winning, which isn’t surprising since most policy decisions today are made by middle-class bureaucrats and managers. Meanwhile, the working class is losing, which is sad because it actually forms the majority of people. If there is a right-left divide in the battle between middle-class elites and working-class victims, then the left is firmly on the side of the elites while Trump has brought working-class whites, at least, to the right side. Continue reading →

Transit: The Urban Parasite

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

Far from being vital to American cities, public transit is a parasite, draining the wealth of those cities and producing little in return. A paper released today by the Cato Institute notes that ridership is declining despite increasing subsidies and the usual justifications for those subsidies no longer apply.

Click image to download a PDF of this report. Click the link in the previous paragraph to read an HTML version of the report.

Needless to say, the paper was written by the Antiplanner and brings together in one place many Antiplanner policy briefs published in the last few months. These include the briefs on 2018 transit commuting, 2018 transit ridership, transit’s lack of energy efficiency, recent transit history, transit capital costs, and transportation costs and subsidies by mode. Continue reading →

50. Lessons from an Iconoclast

By | | Iconoclast
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Fifty years ago this week, I was planning the events for my high school’s version of the first National Environmental Teach-In (later called Earth Day). All of the speakers my friends and I invited were either politicians or government officials. If I knew then what I know now, that event would have been much different. Here are a few of the main lessons I’ve learned since then.

  1. Don’t trust the government

Everyone knows that “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” is a joke. Yet too many people still believe that government works the way their high school teachers taught them. I recently watched some college students debate whether to privatize public transit, and one of them said, “I think transit should be run for the public interest and not for profits.” I wondered what made him think that any public agency operates in the public interest, but that’s what we are taught and that’s what many implicitly believe.

People in Congress and state legislatures know better; they’ve seen how the sausage is made. Yet most of the legislation they pass assumes that the bureaucracies they create and fund will automatically work in the public interest. The Supreme Court put this assumption into a legal precedent called the Chevron decision. In reality, we can’t trust any level of government — the legislators, the executives, or the bureaucrats — to work in the public interest, even if we could define it. Continue reading →