The mayor of San Diego wants to spend $177 billion expanding the region’s transit system in order to make San Diego like “Barcelona, Madrid, Paris.” Meanwhile, Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris are becoming more like U.S. cities, at least in terms of the transportation habits of their residents. Driving is the dominant form of travel in all European cities and is rebounding fast after pandemic lock-downs.
Of course, driving is rebounding even faster in the United States, according to INRIX estimates. Total driving at the end of June, the entire month of July, and the first week of August was more than it had been in the weeks before the pandemic. Of course, it was the middle of winter before the virus, but that’s still an impressive comeback.
Interestingly, that driving hasn’t brought congestion back to its pre-COVID levels. Morning rush-hour driving in most urban areas was only only around 70 to 80 percent of pre-shutdown levels while afternoon rush-hour driving was 80 to 90 percent, with afternoon levels exceeding 100 percent in just a couple of urban areas. As a result, rush-hour speeds are significantly higher than they were before the pandemic.
My interpretation of this is that a lot of people are working at home, so they aren’t driving at rush hour, but they are still driving at other times of the day. As I wrote last week, “people who work at home don’t necessarily drive less than people who commute by car — they just drive at other times of the day.”
Meanwhile, as I noted Monday, June transit ridership down nearly 70 percent. Transit advocates are telling themselves that riders will come back after the virus. A survey of San Francisco commuter-train riders found that 43 percent say they will ride transit after the pandemic is over as much as they did before. A survey of Philadelphia transit riders say they will come back to transit if they are allowed to socially distance themselves.
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These numbers are presented as good news for transit. Get real: if only 43 percent to 55 percent of riders return, the results will be catastrophic for transit agencies. Meanwhile, other transit experts claim people will return to transit “because it’s cheap.” But it’s not: driving a used car or even an inexpensive new car can cost less than riding transit, especially if you have a passenger most of the time.
So now seems to be a bad time to be talking about spending billions on transit. Yet San Diego is not the only place that is considering such nonsense. This November, Austin voters will be asked to approve a huge property tax increase to pay for a $7 billion light-rail system. San Antonio voters will be asked to dedicate an existing sales tax that is now being spent on the city’s water supply on transit instead. I wonder how many San Antonians drink water vs. how many ride transit?
Both sales taxes and property taxes are regressive, yet they are the main ways transit agencies pay for their operations. In this age of social justice, it seems odd that people would support regressive taxes to subsidize transit.
Nationally, only 5.2 percent of people who earn under $25,000 a year take transit to work. In Austin and San Antonio, it is less than 4 percent; San Diego is just under 5 percent. That means we are using regressive taxes to force low-income people to pay for transit rides that 95 percent of them never take. That’s hardly socially just.
San Diego will never be like Barcelona. City grid designs in Europe trace their origins to their medieval counterparts. Many of the earliest cities in the United States, such as Boston, did not start with a grid system. However, even in pre-revolutionary days some cities saw the benefits of such a layout.
The Eixample master plan was devised as a necessary extension to Barcelona’s medieval city walls during the second half of the 19th century. As the Industrial Revolution’s influence began to rise within Spain, newly constructed factories and the subsequent increasing labor demands drew rural citizens to the urban centers, Barcelona tore it’s medieval walls for new development.
The uniform grid city blocks are 133.3 meters (437 feet) by 133.3 meters square. American city block sizes vary.
Hey, AntiPlanner what’s the percentage for people in Portland making $25,000 and under? The “Justice and Equity” folks in Portland are arguing for a new Payroll tax to fund a light rail extension to an upscale mall served mostly by people in cars out to the burbs. It’s a joke because most of those benefiting are government workers who work in down town Portland and ride the light rail for a couple of miles in down town avoiding steep parking fees.
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Get real: if only 43 percent to 55 percent of riders return, the results will be catastrophic for transit agencies.
” ~anti-planner
It _should be_.
Then again, preCovid19 numbers for these agencies were a disaster and it didn’t stop them then.
BTW – If you didn’t catch the transit news the other day, Metro Transit said they’re going back to square 1 after spending $130 million trying to extend the blue line through north Minneapolis.
Just the other day there was news about trying to drum up support for extending on the world’s worst commuter lines, Northstar, to Saint Cloud.
In minniesoda, the nickname for St. Cloud is “White Cloud” to quip about how damn WHITE it is.
Think about that, good ol’ “progressive” Minnesota can’t figure out – supposedly – how to build a train built through the black part of MPLS.
But even on the heels of giving up on a train for BIPOC, they charge forward fora train to White Cl… I mean, St. Cloud.
How inclusive, eh?
Even if they get 100% of their passengers back it doesn’t matter. Trimet’s farebox recovery was only 30%…. even if passenger volumes doubled, which they wont it’ll amount to 60%, not enough to fund the capital costs of lightrail in Portland once system lines hit it’s 30th birthday.
BTW, in what way(s) would this trolley expansion make San Diego like Barcelona? Would it be in the way where they want to secede from the US like Barca’s been wanting to leave Spain?
the Trolley bus. Contrary to a train or a tram, a trolleybus does not need rail infrastructure. This not only results in huge cost and time savings, it also saves a large amount of energy in construction. Granted trolleybuses cant go everywhere but with no need for rail and city grid streets they can accommodate a vast multitude of sites and locations. Quito, Ecuador has a trolleybus system, During peak hours, there is a bus every 50 to 90 seconds (because of the high frequency, there are no schedules). El Trole as it’s called transports 262,000 passengers each day. By choosing the cheap trolleybus over tram or metro or light rail, Quito developed a large network in a short time. The capital investment of the 19 kilometre line was less than 60 million dollar ( hardly sufficient to build 4 kilometers of tram line, or about 1 kilometer of metro line, light rail in the US now costs about 100 million dollars per mile, Portlands Milwaukee line cost 200M per mile) Lower investment costs also mean lower ticket fares, and thus more passengers. The Milwaukee line cost 1.5 BILLION, For that portland could have built 294 miles of trolley bus service. Enough to move several times it’s population.
“Then again, preCovid19 numbers for these agencies were a disaster and it didn’t stop them then.”
They cannot be shamed.
Six years ago, a local public transit agency ran a “pilot” intercity bus operation for 6 months. It started out carrying an average of 1.3 passengers per bus in July, peaked at 2.2 in October, then fell back to 1.7 in December. Yes, per bus!
As the pilot was coming to its end, the consultant concluded that “the time for this transit link . . . may finally have arrived” and the agency proposed buying a new bus for $100-$350 thousand and continuing the service…with CMAQ funds, no less.
Shamelessly, they bought the bus and are, to this day, still paying drivers to run diesel buses carrying fewer passengers than the average tandem bicycle. …using funds set aside to reduce air pollution.
You can’t make this stuff up.
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they bought the bus and are, to this day, still paying drivers to run diesel buses carrying fewer passengers than the average tandem bicycle.
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hahhaha… love the comparison.