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Monthly Archives: October 2021

Music City Sinkhole Disrupts Few Commuters

By | | Transportation
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Almost no one was affected when a sinkhole opened up under the tracks used by the Music City Star, one of the more pathetic commuter trains in the United States. The sinkhole prevented trains from reaching downtown Nashville, though trains continued to operate between the suburb of Lebanon, which has less than 40,000 residents, and the Nashville neighborhood of Donelson, which has about 30,000 residents.

This photo of the Music City Sinkhole is courtesy of Wego Public Transit.
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In 2019, the Music City Star, Nashville’s commuter train, carried just 1,115 riders or 558 roundtrips per weekday. As of August, 2021, ridership was down 84 percent from 2019 levels, so only about 90 people per day are affected by the sinkhole. Nashville should use the sinkhole as an excuse to replace the train with buses. Commuter buses in the region cost between a third and half as much to operate per vehicle-mile as the train and can easily carry the number of people riding the trains, which averaged just 23 people per railcar before the epidemic.

Mismanaged West Coast Ports

By | | Transportation
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Empty shelves in supermarkets and other stores are due in part to hundreds of thousands of shipping containers waiting to be unloaded at ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and other cities. According to market urbanist Scott Beyer, this backlog is due to a combination of labor unrest and NIMBYism.

More than 60 container ships are waiting outside the Port of Los Angeles for space to unload their cargo.

That’s certainly true in Portland, whose container port was completely shut down by labor disputes four years ago, and now is just beginning to function again. Moreover, trucks carrying containers out of Portland face some of the worst congestion in the country, partly due to anti-highway groups that oppose congestion relief on the grounds that it might lead people to drive more. Continue reading →

NYC Office Vacancy Rates Highest in 30 Years

By | | News commentary
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More than 18 percent of office space in New York City is vacant, the highest rate in more than 30 years, according to a report just released by the state comptroller. Rents are down 4 percent and total employment in the city has dropped by 11 percent, almost four times as much as after the 2008 financial crisis.

More than 10 percent of all office space in the nation is shown in this photo, and much of it may remain vacant after the pandemic ends. Photo by Harold Hoyer.

One indicator of the reduction in office use, the report notes, is swipe rates: the number of times that employees access buildings. According to Kastle Systems, a company that manages access systems in many New York City office buildings, swipe rates declined by more than 95 percent in April 2020. Since then, they have recovered to less than 30 percent of pre-pandemic rates. This suggests that a lot of office space that is still under lease may be vacated when leases expire. Continue reading →

The Morality of Protecting Endangered Species

By | | Fish & wildlife, Policy brief
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Since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, around 1,750 plants and animals in the United States have been listed as endangered (meaning in immediate danger of extinction) or threatened (meaning likely to become endangered soon). Of those, 48, or less than 3 percent, have been taken off the lists because they have recovered. That’s not an inspiring success story, particularly since some of those species recovered due to actions that have nothing to do with the Endangered Species Act.

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

In addition to the 48 recovered species, another 10 listed species have been declared extinct. Two weeks ago, the Fish & Wildlife Service announced that it wants to declare another 23 species, including the ivory-billed woodpecker, to be extinct. Continue reading →

AmeriStarRail Responds

By | | Transportation
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Ten days ago, I published an open letter to AmeriStarRail, a company that proposes to take over Amtrak service in the Northeast Corridor. Below, without further comment, is AmeriStarRail’s response (with my questions in italics).

Dear Antiplanner,

Thanks for your detailed questions about AmeriStarRail’s proposal to improve Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service and our bid protest. I saw your Open Letter to ASR on your blog and I wanted to provide these clarifications:

  • the 76 trainsets with at least 12 cars each would be a total of 912 cars
  • ASR did not propose to spend $5 billion improving NEC tracks. We will pay user fees for the tracks and stations. The $5 billion is for trainsets only.
  • AmeriStarRail submitted a proposal to an Amtrak RFP with a bid price of $1 for 76 trainsets and $1 for a Northeast Corridor Trainset Maintenance Center

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Here are our answers to your questions: Continue reading →

Not-So-High Capacity Transit

By | | Transportation
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Unlike light rail, which means low-capacity transit, heavy rail is supposed to be high-capacity transit. But Virginia politicians effectively reduced the capacity of the DC Metrorail system when they demanded, over the objections of the Federal Transit Administration and Secretary of Transportation, the construction of the multi-billion-dollar Silver Line to Tysons Corner. Now Virginia politicians want taxpayers and auto drivers to spend tens of billions more rectifying that mistake.

A Yellow Line train crosses the Potomac River on an underutilized bridge that was ignored in WMATA’s analysis of alternatives to deal with the congested Blue-Orange-Silver lines river crossing. CSX’s Long Bridge is in the foreground. Photo by Ron Cogswell.

When the Silver Line opened, the Blue Line was already running at full capacity. Since the two lines, along with the Orange Line, use the same crossing of the Potomac River into DC, adding Silver Line trains meant cutting Blue and Orange Line trains. The number of Blue Line riders lost probably exceeded the number of Silver Line passengers gained. Continue reading →

August Transit <50% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
1 Comment

Transit’s recovery falters as ridership in August was just 49.97 percent of August, 2019 numbers, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is only slightly above July’s 49.13 percent of July 2019.

I’ll post Amtrak and driving data when they become available.

August data are not yet available for Amtrak or driving, but both were well above transit levels in July. August flying fell slightly from July, probably because of worries about a new wave of COVID and associated health mandates. These factors may have also depressed transit ridership for the month. Continue reading →

Pre-Pandemic Ridership Declines

By | | Transportation
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Ride hailing was the primary cause of transit ridership declines in the years before the pandemic, according to a paper recently published by the National Academy of Sciences. Nationwide ridership had fallen by 14 to 15 percent between 2012 and 2018, and the report blamed about half of this decline on ride hailing, with 4 percent due to lower gas prices, 0 to 4 percent due to increased transit fares, and 2 percent due to higher incomes and increased auto ownership.

I’m not entirely convinced. The estimates are based on a statistical model, not on actual rider surveys or other on-the-ground information. The estimates don’t agree with other transit data I’ve seen.

Ride hailing is expensive compared with transit fares. Yet in the years 2012 to 2018, the number of workers earning less than $25,000 a year who commuted by transit fell by 475,000, a 16 percent decline. Meanwhile, the number earning more than $75,000 grew by 738,000 (a 55 percent increase) while the number earning $25,000 to $75,000 grew by 298,000 (an 11 percent increase). Continue reading →

Addressing Droughts with Water Markets

By | | Policy brief
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“The West is running out of water,” says the Economist. “Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, is at its lowest level since it was first filled in the 1930s.” This is “potentially the worst drought in 1,200 years” warns the Guardian. Moreover, frets the Washington Post, this isn’t just this year: “it’s our new, permanently arid normal.”

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

Many of these alarms were prompted by a major heat wave that hit the West in June, 2021. Since then, the West has cooled but remained dry: as of last week, about 22 percent of the West was in “exceptional drought” compared with just 2.5 percent a year ago. At the same time, the effects of the drought haven’t been as severe as might have been predicted. As of yesterday, for example, 5.9 million acres of land have been burned by wildfire, compared with an average of 6.9 million acres through this date over the previous 10 years. Continue reading →

Good Bye, Peter Rogoff

By | | Transportation
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After six contentious years, Peter Rogoff will leave his $379,600 a year job as CEO of Sound Transit, where he oversaw the construction of billions of dollars of light-rail lines that he didn’t believe in. It’s not clear that his departure is entirely voluntary: he apparently told the Sound Transit board that “he did not foresee remaining in his role beyond the end of 2022.” The board responded by not renewing his contract, which expires in May, effectively firing him.

Peter Rogoff speaking about “advanced transportation technologies” (which don’t include light rail) in 2016. Photo by AvgeekJoe.

I liked Rogoff when he was making $180,000 a year as the administrator of the Federal Transit Administration in the early Obama years. In his first year, he made three discoveries:

  1. America’s rail transit systems had a $77 billion maintenance backlog (since increased to more than $100 billion);
  2. America’s rail transit agencies would rather build new rail lines than maintain their existing ones;
  3. In most situations, bus-rapid transit could do everything rail transit could do for a lot less money.

Continue reading →