Transit in August 2022 carried 63.4 percent as many riders as in August 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is the second-highest since the pandemic began (the highest being in June) and only the third time in the last two years that transit has carried more than 60 percent of pre-pandemic numbers. One reason for the increase may be that August 2022 had one more business day than August 2019.
Amtrak and the Federal Highway Administration have not yet published August data, but airlines carried more than 91 percent as many passengers in August 2022 and August 2019, according to Transportation Security Administration counts. I’ll post the Amtrak and highway data when they are made available.
When compared with July 2022, the biggest gains among major urban areas have been in Phoenix (24%), Denver (22%), Cincinnati (21%), and Riverside-San Bernardino (16%). Urban areas that are still lagging include Chicago (55% of 2019 numbers), Washington (56%), Atlanta (53%), Detroit (24%), and Minneapolis-St. Paul (49%). DC and the Twin Cities are doing poorly because their downtown are among the slowest to recover and I presume the same is true for the others. In addition, the Twin Cities light-rail system has the most transit crime, per passenger-mile carried, of any in the nation, which is discouraging both ridership and downtown recovery.
Denver did well partly because of a month-long experiment offering free transit. Considering that the national July-to-August increase was 7.6 percent, only about 14 percent of the increase in Denver can be attributed to free transit. Even with that boost, Denver ridership was only 66.2 percent of August 2019, just a little more than the national average.
Meanwhile, Albuquerque’s experiment with free transit has led to demands that fares be restored because of the increased crime that was associated with the no-fare program. Instead of free transit for everyone, members of the city council are proposing a program of giving free passes to anyone who presents a photo ID. It isn’t clear how this will reduce crime unless they demand that everyone using a pass scans it to record their trip, which in turn raises privacy issues.
As usual, I’ve posted an enhanced spreadsheet (14.6 MB) with annual totals in columns IX through JR; mode totals in rows 2211 through 2249; transit agency totals in rows 2261 through 3259; and urban area totals in rows 3266 through 3755. Column JS compares August 2022 with August 2019; JT compares August 2022 with August 2021; JU compares 2022 to date with January through August 2019; and column JV compares August 2022 with July 2022. These enhancements have been made to both the UPT (unlinked passenger trips) and VRM (vehicle-revenue miles) worksheets.
With self-driving cars just around the corner, why are we still wasting money on public transit?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere
Transit deregulation would do more than government agencies…. If you’re too poor to afford groceries you receive a subsidy (SNAP) and spend it how you see fit. Education reform advocates argue in favor of vouchers to allow parents to assign school choices. Even where subsidies are concerned FREEDOM OF CHOICE yields more positive results. With transit we subsidize the agency. In other words a government agency takes money from u and gives it to another government agency to spend on your behalf. Because they’re so good at making financial decisions…..
In 1914, the owner of a Ford Model T Touring Car in Los Angeles realized he could make a little extra money by getting a chauffer’s license and charging people a nickel for a ride. Within a year, more than 60,000 people in cities all over the country were emulating his example. Jitneys, as they were called (apparently a slang term for a nickel), were faster than streetcars, and since drivers were often willing to depart from fixed routes, they were more convenient as well. Immigrants and poor blacks made excellent use of them or became drivers of such jitneys themselves. The streetcar industry felt threatened by jitney competition. While the streetcars were private, they paid franchise fees to the cities and jitney drivers did not. So streetcar companies asked government for regulatory protection against the jitneys, cities gladly complied. The regulations killed the jitney industry, reducing the number of jitneys nationwide by 90 percent by the end of 1916. But eliminating Jitneys did not save streetcars, whose ridership peaked in 1919.
Jitneys ran in cities with ethnic backgrounds up until the 60s and 70s….
Jitney’s were common in San Francisco up til the 70’s. In the 1910s, there were 1,400 jitneys operating in the city, according to SFMTA records, and they remained ubiquitous into the 1970s, patronized by the city’s Asian and Latin community. But around that time the city wanted to encourage public transit use on MUNI and BART. It disliked the competition, so began issuing fewer permits and forcing jitneys to raise fares, as not to undercut the public option. In 1978, the city stopped issuing permits altogether and Jitney’s were sunk.
Imagine veing so vindictive youll outspend your neighbor for a car whose brand you dont even like, imagine buying a air fryer when you dont cook, buying a wine wrack even if you dont drink. That’s what government does…. they outspend you, ruin you, cripplevyour business then havevthe audacity tobsay they’re coming to solve your problem.
That’s right, LazyReader. Government should do what it does best, building freeways, not building train tracks, just like it says in the Constitution.
Shit for brains….
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and post ROADS.” The Post Office has the constitutional authority to designate mail routes.
So Congress had authority to establish commerce , transportation routes….. I keep a pocket Constitution with me
It’s LazyReader, not NO reader. And read prior comments I’m a advocate for reducing federal Government role in roads and transportation..
Here’s a better series ideas for improving transit equity and utilization.
1: pass a law keeps transportation spending within its revenue base. Thus would diminish road building too.
2: adopt FIX IT FIRST policies.
3: deregulate industry so private providers can provide transportation services.
The US Constitution stipulates Post Roads for HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGES. The founders never DREAMED that liberals would twist their intent to use government power to lay track for steam-powered railroads or even worse, automobiles with internal combustion engines.
Founders never dreamed of computers and internet
How izz fancy magic picture box let us convey freedom of speech.
Founders knew the progress of technology….. Which is why they wrote it as carefully as they could to illustrate what they couldn’t fathom. But if you think the government should only bestow subsidies upon you for obsolete technology.
Which is why you should read amendment 10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Article I, section 8 gives Congress the power to “fix the standard of weights and measurement. So instituting Standards for utilizing resources like road signs and highway widths.
The reason for Federalization came about result of finishing infrastructure, and incorporating Universality among it.
I’m not holding my breath, tital federal un involvement…. but decreasing their responsibility and taking of financial assets and re-relegating them to states would in long run be better and even possibly make transit more competitive.
SNCF, the French national railroad, was one of the original operators to come to California in the early 2000s to help develop the state’s “bullet train” that would run from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The rail company, however, opted to leave for the war-torn, yet “less politically dysfunctional,” North African country.
N.Y. Times: How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails
America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare. Political compromises created a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CONAN-REV-2016/pdf/GPO-CONAN-REV-2016.pdf
The applicability of Congress’s power to the agents and instruments of commerce is implied in Marshall’s opinion in Gibbons v.
Ogden,
713 where the waters of the State of New York in their quality as highways of interstate and foreign transportation were held
to be governed by the overriding power of Congress. Likewise, the
same opinion recognizes that in “the progress of things,” new and
other instruments of commerce will make their appearance. When
the Licensing Act of 1793 was passed, the only craft to which it
could apply were sailing vessels, but it and the power by which it
was enacted were, Marshall asserted, indifferent to the “principle”
by which vessels were moved. Its provisions therefore reached steam
vessels as well. A little over half a century later the principle embodied in this holding was given its classic expression in the opinion of Chief Justice Waite in the case of the Pensacola Telegraph
Co. v. Western Union Telegraph Co.,
714 a case closely paralleling Gibbons v. Ogden in other respects also. “The powers thus granted are
not confined to the instrumentalities of commerce, or the postal service known or in use when the Constitution was adopted, but they
keep pace with the progress of the country, and adapt themselves
to the new developments of times and circumstances. They extend
from the horse with its rider to the stage-coach, from the sailingvessel to the steamboat, from the coach and the steamboat to the
railroad, and from the railroad to the telegraph, as these new agencies are successively brought into use to meet the demands of increasing population and wealth. They were intended for the government of the business to which they relate, at all times and under
all circumstances. As they were intrusted to the general government for the good of the nation, it is not only the right, but the
duty, of Congress to see to it that intercourse among the States and
the transmission of intelligence are not obstructed or unnecessarily
encumbered by State legislation.”
Gotta Minnesota’s Metro Transit. They were overly focused on serving middle class downtown workers – people that require no help in getting around – and they’re paying for it today, with only 1/2 their previous useage.
That’s going to create huge problems for the agency.
Throw on to of that their $3B+light rail to noone line opening up, and sucking up what few resources they have left.
Pop some popcorn and pull up a seat. Things are going to get even more messy for Metro Transit. More drama, drama, drama. Fun fun.
”
The US Constitution stipulates Post Roads for HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGES
”
|~janehavishm
Do you purposely lie or are you just too dumb to realize peopel can google before you make stuff up?
In January Brussels adopted a citywide speed limit of 30 km/h (19 mph).
After eight months:
– Traffic deaths/Serious injuries down 25%
– Crashes down 20%
– Traffic noise down as much as 50%
https://www.brusselstimes.com/183067/zone-30-evaluation-fewer-accidents-lower-speeds-decreased-noise-pollution