When David Levinson was at the University of California, Berkeley, he calculated that it would cost more to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco on high-speed rail than either flying or driving even if the high-speed rail line cost only $10 billion to build. When he directed the University of Minnesota’s Accessibility Observatory, he pioneered research showing that automobiles provide access to far more jobs than transit.
So when I learned that he has co-edited a new book, Applications of Access, that is available for on line for free, I immediately downloaded it to learn about the latest research about access. It turns out you get what you pay for, as I found the book to be a big disappointment.
In the introduction, Levinson points out that, as early as 1903, analysts realized that the parts of urban areas that offered the best access to jobs would be more valuable than areas that had less access. More recently, people have realized that low-income people have less access to jobs than high-income people, which is supposed to be inequitable.
It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that, if areas with better access are more valuable, they are going to be occupied by people who can afford to pay those higher values. You can call that inequitable, but one of the perks of having a higher income is that it gives people more choices about where to live, which in turn gives people incentives to try to earn higher incomes, which contributes to the wealth of society as a whole. The bottom line is that it is no more inequitable than the fact that high-income people are more likely to shop at Whole Foods while low-income people are more likely to shop at WalMart.
If the best access to jobs is provided by automobiles, then the best way to reduce inequities is to make sure that low-income people have access to automobiles and that their routes to work are as uncongested as possible. Unfortunately, for the most part Applications of Access doesn’t recognize this; instead, too many papers in the book focus on improving transit and “active transportation” (walking and cycling) in order to reduce access inequities.
According to the 2019 American Community Survey, table B08119, 82 percent of Americans who earn less than $25,000 a year get to work by automobile, while only 5 percent take transit and about another 5 percent walk or bicycle (the bicycle number is inexact because it is included in “other”). If low-income people live in areas that have poor access to jobs, then telling them to walk or bicycle isn’t going to do much good. Nor is telling them to take transit, which Levinson’s work shows can’t access more than a small percentage as many jobs as driving.
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The one good paper in the book is number 13, which found that construction of a new road in a major urban area reduced travel times and increased job access. The paper also found that this resulted in more competition for those jobs, since more people could reach them, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it means that employers are more likely to hire the best people available for each job.
Immediately before this, however, paper number 12, which was co-authored by Levinson, focuses on how American cities can “reduce the number of non-work vehicle trips” by forcing more people to live in dense, mixed-use areas. Such dense areas are, of course, more congested, which is one reason why they generate fewer trips. In other words, the paper celebrates the loss of accessibility.
Coincidentally, the Washington State Department of Transportation recently published an Equity Study. Like paper 13 in the Levinson book, the study found that new highway construction reduced inequities by making more jobs accessible to more people. Like most of the other papers in the Levinson book, the study spent most of its pages instead promoting new investments in transit and active transportation.
What accounts for these chains of illogic? Researchers doing these studies have two blind spots. First, they are all college-educated people who have good jobs that allow them to avoid congestion through flexible working hours and remote work, and they don’t remember or never knew what it is like to have a working-class job with inflexible hours. Second, they think the goal of transportation policy is to simultaneously help low-income people and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the only way they can conceive of doing both is to focus on transit, walking, and cycling.
Transportation analysts need to recognize that transit, walking, and cycling are fundamentally inferior forms of transportation, and that is especially true for people who live in areas that aren’t close to jobs. Instead of trying to lock low-income people into using inferior forms of transportation, people concerned about transportation equity should help them use the form of transportation used by the vast majority of Americans, namely the automobile.
Reason numero Uno.
CARS STOP AT EXACT DESTINATION. They leave exact destinations and arrive at exact destinations. NO OTHER transportation technology is capable of doing such a thing; at the same price per mile per capita.
Long before cars were even invented or popular we had roads….. they were paved with dirt, brick, cobblestone, or gravel or some shit, they were primitive and unstandardized but they existed….. And allowed for carriages and horse and buggies to move. When cars were first introduced they were wealthy hobbyist toys, when Henry Ford started making cars; he did something truly revolutionary; he turned cars from rich peoples toys into mass marketable consumer goods.
CONTRARY to popular belief Ford did not invent the assembly line, cars or mass production. Mass production dates back to the ancient world. Nor did Eli Whitney. Ford invented two things few economists remark about.
– Incentivized wages
– Generic consumer product market.
When cars became popular and successful; they used the same infrastructure as the horse and buggy, in fact sharing it; attempts to combine roads to visit distant locations caught on when national parks and outdoorsmanship became pasttimes.
Airlines, railroads, and rail transit systems are all highly labor intensive, which makes them vulnerable to a loss of fares and, where subsidized as where tax revenues make the majority of operating expenses; which during a recession is financially devastating. By contrast, highway operations are not as labor intensive, and the most important; highway costs, maintenance, can be deferred for a year or two without slowing down traffic. Since maintenance of roads and highways is mostly proportional to it’s use, maintenance of a highway or even local road system funded out of user fees or some minor tax can fluctuate without any degradation. Even if a few cracks or potholes appear on the roads they can be repaired with local labor with minimal input, Even an average citizen with NO labor skill can repair a pothole with 15 dollar bag of cold asphalt.
Rail transit by contrast is skill/labor intensive and very protectionist of it’s labor market and when SHTF; railroads always beg for bailout during bad economy. Roads need no such bailout, nor should receive any. short distance passenger rail was rendered obsolete by buses in the 1920’s and 1930’s…long distance trains were rendered obsolete by planes and buses were cheaper (ableit slower)
Antiplanner: “….walking, and cycling are fundamentally inferior forms of transportation”
If so, there’s reasons…. US cities and counties have done little to encourage it. Let’s be honest, Europe didn’t heavily adopt bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and build transit because they care for the environment, they did it because of energy crisis they’ve been battling even BEFORE World War II and Still is Today.
Modal split data shows Europe uses cars for the majority of their travel, despite this their vehicles are MORE fuel efficient and traffic accidents less casualties.
US is spoiled, we haven’t had an “Energy Crisis” since the 1970’s. And we have nearly twice as many deaths……Today we whine about the price of energy/electricity, But compared to Europe we pay considerably less.
Average Gas price US: 3.00 dollars/gallon
Average UK Price: 7! a gallon
Average EU price: 6 a gallon.
Average US Electricity rate: $0.12 per kilowatt hour
UK price: USD equivalent of 26 cents per kWh
Germany: 36 cents
(Granted a decrease in EU energy prices would be very good for their colder winters. But prices run the advantage of seeking substitutes or adjustments which improve efficiency.)
Bicycles themselves are a mature technology with not that much to improve upon. They don’t need rails, overhead lines, traffic management systems, traffic lights, smart grids, smart phone aps, gas stations, batteries or superconductors, charging ports, digital doodads, computerized gizmos. They require none of those things; all the “Technology” is in the bike.
Traffic and lack of transportation options came from two things…Street planning and how government views “live-ability”. Post World War II the US adopted the “Dead Worm” neighborhood concept, that relegates neighborhoods to move via only one road. A dead end, begins on a feed road which feeds the highway. With only one way out, you have only one way to get anywhere. If you can bypass the highway you cut out traffic (I used to drive to work everyday using a back-road technique avoiding state route highway. Though 5-7 minutes longer, I was never late and I never went above 50 mph. By adding a mere five minutes I cut gas use by not having to speed demon my way.)
Even when Europe built new highways post war years; they adopted the street grid, a system they’ve been using to design cities for centuries. US adopted the cul-de-sac which has only ONE way out/in. While the antiplanner mentions this urban design fad is better for crime? He fails to note, Europe in general has less crime despite more accessibility of public spaces and infrastructure.
Urban design has less to do with crime, cultural habits and who you allow.
Europe has mixed use marketable planning. US zoning laws of compartmentalization led to a preference for corporate big box stores vs. small businesses but it totally makes sense. If I’m just walking around, and I don’t have to park a car, I’m much more likely to walk into what ever store strikes my fancy. it is heritage. Cities in Europe were being build and expanded over the span of centuries. This made it so that surrounding villages became absorbed in the growing cities. This is a big reason why the cities’ shops and facilities are spread out like they are: they were independent villages first. In North America, they had build from scratch most of their cities. Early US cities like PHilly and Boston adopted this mindset….. Once post war years and rampant subsidies. Yes the government did subsidize the prototype Burbs. From early rural electrification in the 1930s and beyond.
My own neighborhood;
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hog+Neck+Rd,+Maryland+21122/@39.1299834,-76.5155747,274m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7fec46d5af29b:0xe5f02e275c6b914f!8m2!3d39.1278323!4d-76.5185952
There were no sidewalks or pedestrian crossing points, making it physically dangerous to walk there. So, no shopping for me unless I’m very careful. For a few days, I started to walk the neighborhood to get to know it and sat and read at a playground, but a police car stopped me because someone called about a suspicious guy walking around (me). Granted I was in all black and hadn’t shaved in days; What made me suspicious is that I was the one walking!
Anyone who’s a fan of SciFi Knows Ray Bradbury….
But before hand he wrote a story called “The Pedestrian”…. Bradbury’s inspiration for the story came when he was walking down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles with a friend in late 1949. On their walk, a police cruiser pulled up and asked what they were doing. Bradbury answered, “Well, we’re putting one foot in front of the other.” The policemen did not appreciate Ray’s joke and became suspicious of Bradbury and his friend for walking in an area where there were no pedestrians. Inspired by this experience, he wrote “The Pedestrian”, which he sent to his New York agent Don Congdon in March 1950.
Let’s be honest, Europe didn’t heavily adopt bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and build transit because they care for the environment, they did it because their cities were designed before the advent of the automobile, with narrow, often convoluted streets. Additionally, Europeans have been poorer than Americans for well over 100 years and mostly remain so today. They just can’t afford cars as Americans can.
The telephone system we had a few short decades ago required a copper wire connection between users. If Bob isn’t at home or at work, you couldn’t call him. This is not unlike public transit — if you don’t live near a bus stop you can’t get where you’re going unless you like to walk long distances.
Now we have cell phones. Wherever we are, we can use our phone to call anyone wherever he/she is. Who wants to go back to landlines?
@rovingbroker
There are advantages to landlines, Namely Section 230 which treats phones in conventional sense as utility. By contrast, half the shit on your phone is subject to a company that can basically shut ya down if you speak outside party or affiliation lines.
Twitter CEO jack dorsey is stepping down. Isn’t it funny how all the anti-establishment, anti-capitalist “rebels” have evolved into the things they once swore never to be? Dorsey made his coin and has now left his creation in the hands of people that would have never hired young Jack or even allowed him to speak. LMAO.
Land/phone lines have faster, cleaner and uninterruped internet. the silicon valley titans; are they really trust worthy. A redundant, low tech internet/phone system…..while slower is orders of magnitude more liberating. “Democratize Democracy”
I’m sure that’s what the wizards behind Twitter, Facebook, and Google told themselves good would follow til they transformed into the greatest censorship, snitchery, and propaganda agents in world history.
Parag Agrawal who is the coming CEO of Twitter, made it pretty transparent that free speech is not a preference for the company
”
If so, there’s reasons…. US cities and counties have done little to encourage it
” ~lazyReader
It has nothing to do that if one drives, they go to the main shopping area 6 miles away instead of settling for whatever t-shirt being sold at the local gas station?
It has nothing to do with that if one were to grocery shop for a family of 4, restricted to what one could carry walking, you’d have to go shopping for food nearly every frickin day?
Nor could it be that people aren’t big on walking or biking in when the windchill is -36F?
Or maybe they’d rather not sweat to death in the middle of summer, hoofin it for an hour?
Or maybe, just maybe, cuz they have the wealth to splurge on this luxury we call the automobile….. maybe because 99% of people want and use that, the government’s followed their lead?
It would be interesting to ask the authors of each paper in this book; 1) how many square feet their house is; 2) how they get to work; 3) how many cars they have in the household and how many cumulative miles they put on their car annually; 4) what price per tonne of CO2 reduction their policies would achieve. In my experience most of these authors probably live in large single family houses, drive to work, their household puts a surprisingly large number of miles on their cars, and they no idea what the cost of CO2 reduction is from their plans. I would then point out that any policy based on hypocrisy is doomed to failure, and any claim of CO2 reduction is meaningless without a cost per tonne of reduction. Some authors probably even get free subsidized parking.
The US has according to geographic survey, 1.2 to 1.6 BILLION parking spots. 3x Mire than there are cars 5x more than cars on the road any given time. You cut 25% if parking as New retail. Homes or conversion back to green space or urban farms which would yield 1500 square miles if space.
1500 square miles are 0.048% of the land area of the continental United States.
The federal mandates never had any teeth and that should be a critical lesson for all liberty-loving people: The federal government is actually very weak. They depend on local, state, and private entities for enforcement of their mandates.
If states refused to assist with enforcing federal tax law, for example, the feds might make some desperate gambit to scare people into complying again but they’d never get any significant number of people. They’d just start going broke and massively downsize, effectively ending most federal regulations.