When Obama started talking about an $850 billion infrastructure package to stimulate the economy, state and local transportation agencies began licking their chops. The federal government currently spends only about $45 billion per year on transportation of all kinds, so $850 billion would be almost 20 years of spending.
Free money.
Flickr photo by Tracy O.
As it turns out, only about $45 billion of the stimulus package is for transportation, which will be like the feds doubling spending for one year. The stimulus bill will not build a lot of new highways or light-rail lines. But it might set some bad precedents for future federal spending.
Historically, most federal highway and transit spending has been in the form of “formula grants.” The formulas use such criteria as population, road miles, and transit vehicle miles of service. Most of the funds in the stimulus proposals fall back on the same formulas that were in SAFETEA-LU, the 2005 reauthorization of federal transportation funds.
The biggest non-formula grant program was New Starts, in which Congress (starting in 1991) offered a huge pot of money for transit capital improvements on a first-come, first-served basis. This gave transit agencies an incentive to choose high-cost transit systems, such as light rail, in order to get as big a share of the New Starts pot as possible.
The Florida Department of Transportation has a web page comparing transportation portions of the bills passed by the Senate and House. The House bill would spend $30 billion on highways; the Senate $27 billion. Divided among 50 states and 400-some metropolitan areas, this isn’t a heck of a lot. Total highway spending in 2006 was about $161 billion, and some of the $27 to $30 billion will replace lost revenues due to people driving less. So the total boost in spending might be about 15 percent.
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The transit industry currently spends about $45 billion per year on both capital and operations, so the House version especially will give transit a much bigger (26.7%) boost than it gives to highways. What will transit agencies do next year when it is time for them to cut back on spending? No doubt they will demand a bailout.
A potentially bigger problem is that 24 to 28 percent of this highway-plus-transit funding goes to transit. TEA-21 and SAFETEA-LU dedicated only about 15.5 percent to transit, so the stimulus bill significantly increases transit’s share. Despite transit industry propaganda, there is no reason to think that transit spending will be any more stimulating than highway spending, and in the Antiplanner’s opinion the reverse is likely to be true. If the stimulus package is an indication of what Congress will do in the next reauthorization, then the federal government is poised to waste a lot more money on transit.
Perhaps partly to make up for less spending on highways and transit, the Senate bill also includes $5.5 billion for discretionary grants that can go to highway, bridge, transit, rail, port, and intermodal projects. This will be a first-come, first-served pot like the New Starts program and will lead states and cities to propose all kinds of crazy things so that each can get as big a share of the pot as possible. In the Antiplanner’s not-so-humble opinion, that makes this a very bad idea.
Both the House and Senate bills provide $1.1 billion for Amtrak and other intercity rail projects, which is a waste but no surprise. The Senate bill also includes $2 billion for high-speed rail, which will be the most the federal government has ever spent on that outside of the Northeast Corridor. This would set a very bad precedent.
Finally, the House bill provides $3 billion for airports, while the Senate offers only $1.3 billion. This outside my area of expertise so I don’t have anything in particular to say about it.
In general, however, it is the Antiplanner’s opinion that all of this spending, whether on highways, transit, rail, or airports, is going to go to waste. All of these things can either be funded out of user fees or they shouldn’t be done at all. If Congress wants to stimulate the economy, it should offer low-interest loans to states and metro areas to spend on projects that will eventually pay for themselves out of user fees. That would be just as effective at stimulating the economy without racking up huge deficits that can never be repaid or creating constituencies for more wasteful spending in the future.
Update: In case you haven’t seen it, Stimulus Watch lists the projects submitted to Congress by American cities. These aren’t necessarily the projects that will be funded by whatever stimulus package is approved, but they give an idea of some of the inane things that cities want someone else to pay for and allow people to give their feedback on individual projects.
Kevyn Miller,
What you have failed to do is provide anything other than preconceptions to support your arguments.
That’s right, Kevin. All that data I cited from Eurostat’s Panorama of Transport is merely “preconceptions.”
Because when you walk you don’t get to make that ostentatious gesture to your poor cousins of driving past in your shining new automobile.
Incomprehensible. I didn’t say the trip was on foot, and even if I had your statement above would still be utterly meaningless as an answer to the question. Do you have an answer?
msetty,
Right. You wouldn’t.
So in cases where I do choose to incur the greater costs of traveling 10 miles, it’s most likely because I AM GETTING A GREATER BENEFIT IN RETURN FOR THAT GREATER COST. Otherwise, as you say, I wouldn’t make that choice. I’d choose the shorter, cheaper trip instead. So benefit increases with distance. So transportation benefit is a matter of passenger-miles, not simply the number of trips.
Comprendez? The logic here really isn’t very hard to understand. Try.
Rivlin:
My point still stands. In A VERY LARGE PERCENTAGE OF CASES, you DON’T get greater benefits from traveling longer distances, particularly if a closer location OFFERS THE SAME BENEFITS.
Let’s see if YOU understand. If I live within walking distance of Safeway X, and 5 miles from Safeway Y, but Safeway X and Safeway Y offer the same general benefits, e.g., selection and pricing, then I’m going to travel to Safeway X two blocks or 0.25 mile away, and probably a lot more often than Safeway Y 5 miles away, BECAUSE it is less of a pain in the ass to travel 2 blocks than 5 miles, even on foot!
I don’t know what’s wrong with your brain, but you don’t get that BOTH conditions can exist side by side, and vary depending on what exactly what “benefit” one needs, or wants, at a given time. Creating benefits for those who chose to live in mixed use areas and near transit is exactly the point of what my side is arguing here, among many other things.
As for the relative importance of TRIPS vs. PASSENGER MILES, both are important starting points when discussing transportation. The non-technical public understands the concept of TRIPS more readily than passenger miles, which requires more explanation.
If you think I don’t understand passenger miles, you’re dead wrong. Actually it is part of the concept of “transit traffic density” that an associate and I have been working with for years. For this collection, see http://www.publictransit.us/ptlibrary/trafficdensityonline.htm, and http://www.publictransit.us/ptlibrary/specialreports/sr2.trafficdensityretrospective.htm.
msetty,
My point still stands. In A VERY LARGE PERCENTAGE OF CASES, you DON’T get greater benefits from traveling longer distances, particularly if a closer location OFFERS THE SAME BENEFITS.
No, your “point” is irrelevant. You are just utterly confused. If a longer trip didn’t provide greater benefits than a shorter one then the traveler wouldn’t choose to make the longer trip, would he? He’d make the shorter one instead. If he DID make the longer trip, then it would be because the longer trip DID provide greater benefits. Passenger-miles data reflects ACTUAL TRIPS, not potential trips that might have been taken if the cost-benefit mix were different.
If I live within walking distance of Safeway X, and 5 miles from Safeway Y, but Safeway X and Safeway Y offer the same general benefits, e.g., selection and pricing, then I’m going to travel to Safeway X two blocks or 0.25 mile away, and probably a lot more often than Safeway Y 5 miles away, BECAUSE it is less of a pain in the ass to travel 2 blocks than 5 miles, even on foot!
More confusion. You’re now confusing costs and benefits attributable to trip distance with costs and benefits attributable to trip mode. Whatever mode of transportation you use for the trip, longer trips cost more than shorter ones and must therefore provide greater benefits to justify the higher cost.
And you cannot measure aggregate transportation costs and benefits attributable to mode on the basis of your PERSONAL PREFERENCE. Just because YOU would rather walk 2 blocks than drive 5 miles doesn’t mean that the next guy would.
Rivlin, don’t be such a hater.
Rivlin has the crazy Scott’s argumentation patterns. I assert Rivlin is a sockpuppet and as such deserves our ignorage, as you can’t argue crazy.
DS
Dan,
You have just afforded me more cubicle privacy:
my co-workers are avoiding me as I chant “sockpuppet” over and over, laughing uproariously.
Rivlin’s Rodney Dangerfield-esque, bulging eyes argumentative “style” (sic) is almost as funny as Glen Becks’s “crazy eyes.” See this:
rawstory.com/news/2008/Colbert_gets_anal_exam_in_honor_0212.html
“Passenger-miles data reflects ACTUAL TRIPS”
And that is all it does. Which is why it inevitably ends up supporting the status quo. Which is why the antiplanners ONLY use this data to make an argument. Again…
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” -Mark Twain
“I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.” -George Canning
“There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.” -Rex Stout
Rivlin:“You mean you asserted those claims. You’ve offered nothing to substantiate them.”
ws: You (wrongly) asserted that Europe is just as auto-dependent as Americans by posting their automobile per/passenger miles. I am asserting that cities in Europe that have biking and walking numbers constituting half of all trips total trips to have different land-use patterns than typical cities in the US (with exception to central cities and dense neighborhoods).
Why can you assert, with statistical backing, and I cannot?
What is your explanation on the Netherland’s high walk/bike numbers? It has nothing to do with land uses?
Rivlin: No, your “point†is irrelevant. You are just utterly confused. If a longer trip didn’t provide greater benefits than a shorter one then the traveler wouldn’t choose to make the longer trip, would he? He’d make the shorter one instead. If he DID make the longer trip, then it would be because the longer trip DID provide greater benefits. Passenger-miles data reflects ACTUAL TRIPS, not potential trips that might have been taken if the cost-benefit mix were different.
ws: Humans are a species of convenience. They will take the shorter route when/wherever it’s possible (*most* of the time). Shorter trips would occur more if developments were allowed to bring services closer to homes. Longer trips occur because things are further out. Is this choice of the default “choice”? Assuming Americans had the choice of a 5 minute walk vs. a 5 min drive, what would most Americans choose? What about 25 minute walk vs. 5 min drive? A 10 minute walk vs. 5 minute drive? Certainly there’s a threshold of the maximum distance someone will willingly walk (or drive for that matter).
When everything is stacked against the viability of alternative transportation methods such as walking, biking, and mass transit; choice is really just a matter of convenience for people.
You’re confusing “choice” with rules, regulation books, and poor planning that dictate those longer trips. I.E. many of our suburban land-use patterns. If we keep building the crap that we have been building, people will choose to drive longer distances, not because they have options, but because it’s the only option.
Don’t get me wrong, cars are great (I always get a chuckle out of carless cities). There’s something to critisize when 80-90% of all trips in the US are by the automobile. Certainly something is dictating this.
The only benefit any person recieves from any trip comes from achieving the purpose of the trip. Ipto facto the length of the trip is irrelevant, assuming of course that there are multiple locations where the trip purpose can be satisfied and therefore multiple trips lengths that can achieve the same benefit.
But for any person to calculate the benefit/cost ratio for various trip length options they need to be able to know what the benefits and costs are. Rivlin may go to all the trouble of obtaining all the necessary data and spend the time making the necessary calculations but the vast majof people don’t.
Local roads and footpath are funded from property taxes or sales taxes so the cost of the infrastructure is not an immediate consideration to most people. Likewise the cost providing parking spaces alongside stores is charged to all customers not just to those customers who utilise the parking spaces.
How valuable is your time, or staying warm and dry? Essentially the value what you percieve it to be at that particular moment in time. Likewise our choices of where to live and work are guided by perceived differences rather than real differences.
So, when the benefits are immediately apparent and the costs are not, we shouldn’t be surprised that people opt for trips that are longer than the economic optimum.
The EU’s decision to emulate Ameraica’s interstate highway system including the same central funding mechanism has triggered a dramatic growth in auto passenger/km that would not have occured if the users had been directly charged for usage in the form of tolls instead of the costs being hidden in exhorbitant fuel taxes. In effect the big box retailers and spec property developers are being subsidised by people driving within their local communities, particularly village/rural communities.
Conflating trip length with trip benefit is the sort of thing politicians do to justify populist policies and downplay the unintended negative consequences.
ws,
You (wrongly) asserted that Europe is just as auto-dependent as Americans
No, I didn’t assert that. You need to read my posts more carefully.
What is your explanation on the Netherland’s high walk/bike numbers?
What “high walk/bike numbers?” Where is your data? There is no need to “explain” data until you actually produce it.
When everything is stacked against the viability of alternative transportation methods such as walking, biking, and mass transit; choice is really just a matter of convenience for people.
More silly, unsubstantiated assertion. How have you determined that everything (“Everything?” Really?) is stacked against the viability of alternative transportation? Where’s your evidence?
Maybe if you could restrain your urge to enter yet another rambling, stream-of-consciousness polemic and tried making an actual, you know, POINT, with a clear proposition and a clearly articulated argument supported by appropriately sourced evidence we might be able to have a meaningful exchange.
Kevyn Miller,
The only benefit any person recieves from any trip comes from achieving the purpose of the trip. Ipto facto the length of the trip is irrelevant
This nonsense yet again. Since the COST of the trip increases with its distance, longer trips must have a correspondingly more beneficial “purpose” than shorter ones to justify them. I’m not going to spend $1,000 to fly 3,000 miles to Europe unless the “purpose” of that trip is worth at least $1,000 to me. In contrast, I only need a “purpose” with a much lower benefit to justify a much shorter trip, because the cost of that shorter trip is also much lower.
I don’t know if you really can’t understand this incredibly elementary point or if you’re just pretending not to understand it. The ubiquitous measure of transportation utility used by the community of academic and government transportation researchers is the PASSENGER-MILE (or in most countries, passenger-kilometer). I somehow doubt that you’re going to be very successful at persuading people that this entire community is fundamentally mistaken about the true nature of transportation costs and benefits and that they should be measuring utility in units of trips instead.
“Since the COST of the trip increases with its distance, longer trips must have a correspondingly more beneficial “purpose†than shorter ones to justify them.”
If only the world was this simple. Sometimes you HAVE to make the trip weather it benefits you or not. Sometimes you get the benefit without traveling at all. Your assertion is a silly theory that is true only some of the time. It is far from absolute.
For my friends and “comrades in arms:”
If Rivlin bothered to actually look at typical transportation models, TRIPS are the first metric output from such equations. Passenger miles are also important as a metric, but hardly the ONLY metric to measure the value someone attaches to a TRIP, 2 blocks long, 10 miles or Transatlantic.
Transportation professionals also look at the cost of travel, travel times, and a whole host of other metrics as well as TRIPS and trip length (the last measured in passenger miles/kilometers). Trip length is an important metric in the Pantheon of transportation analysis, but just one of many.
For crying out loud, State DOTs and city traffic departments routinely report average daily traffic, e.g., the number of “trips” passing a given measuring point during a given interval (usually 24 hours), but almost always before they report vehicle miles traveled, which is always a calculated number.
Rivlin doesn’t understand, or refuses to understand (because it would undermine his unconvincingly one note point) the possibility that short TRIPs often substitute for longer trips, provided that the value obtained from the closer destination is higher than the more remote destination. This is one of the key reasons why increasing mixed land uses is so important.
Transportation professionals understand this, but giving the way Rivlin flogs his proposition–which is sometimes true, often false–I seriously doubt he is a transportation professional. Rivlin, are you? If so, what kind? Given your one dimensional assertions, I wonder how and on what basis you decided that one metric was so overwhelmingly important.
Sometimes you HAVE to make the trip weather it benefits you or not.
Really? When do you HAVE to make the trip weather (sic) it benefits you or not? Give us some examples.
Sometimes you get the benefit without traveling at all.
And the relevance of this observation to the question of how to measure transportation benefit is….what?
msetty,
If Rivlin bothered to actually look at typical transportation models, TRIPS are the first metric output from such equations.
The issue is transportation benefit. Do please show us your evidence that “typical transportation models” measure transportation benefit in units of trips rather than units of passenger-miles. Trips is a useful measure of benefit only in a few contexts, such as measuring changes in transportation benefit over time where trip distance is constant.
Rivlin doesn’t understand
msetty doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.
Rivlin:“What “high walk/bike numbers?†Where is your data? There is no need to “explain†data until you actually produce it.”
ws: You can clearly see the bike/walk as total percentage of trips:
HERE
Note, the Netherlands is near 50% for all trips. Over 50% including mass transit.
Now, why are the bike/walk rates so high in the Netherlands? Do tell. It *can’t* be their land use patterns. That would be a crazy assertion.
Rivlin: “More silly, unsubstantiated assertion. How have you determined that everything (â€ÂEverything?†Really?) is stacked against the viability of alternative transportation? Where’s your evidence?
Maybe if you could restrain your urge to enter yet another rambling, stream-of-consciousness polemic and tried making an actual, you know, POINT, with a clear proposition and a clearly articulated argument supported by appropriately sourced evidence we might be able to have a meaningful exchange.”
ws: Maybe you should stop reading into my writing so intensely. I didn’t literally mean everything, and you know it.
I don’t need numbers to tell me that people don’t walk or bike due to low-density, single-use zoning density. Although, I could show statistics showing the low rates of walking/biking of total trips taken in many areas and correlate this using simple logic. Would this have made you happy if I did so?
Just because you slap a report with numbers doesn’t mean you’re interpreting them correctly (as shown clearly by numerous posts stating otherwise regarding your points).
Kevyn Miller: “So, when the benefits are immediately apparent and the costs are not, we shouldn’t be surprised that people opt for trips that are longer than the economic optimum.”
ws: Get that free-market non-sense out of here, it doesn’t belong on the antiplanner site!
The reference regarding percentage of trips by various modes in Europe that Krugman failed to identify is:
trb.org/publications/sr/sr257.pdf
Table 2.2 on page 30 (page 46 of the PDF)
————
I’ll take Rivlin’s refusal to answer my questions about his overall knowledge as meaning “…I [Rivlin] don’t know jack shit except the point I’m torturing to death.”
ws,
Note, the Netherlands is near 50% for all trips.
Figure 1 from your source reports that walks account for 22% of trips in the Netherlands. The figure for bikes, 25%, is clearly anomalous. Only one other nation even breaks 10%. For most nations, it’s between 1% and 5%. And one obvious reason for the Netherlands’ outlier status is its very high population density. Other than a couple of tiny islands and principalities, the Netherlands has the highest population density in Europe. It has so little land relative to the size of its population that it has even reclaimed new land from the North Sea. You can’t seriously suggest that the Netherlands tells us anything meaningful about land-use and transportation policy choices in comparison to most other countries given that its policies are largely forced on it by its extreme shortage of land.
And in terms of distance of travel, even in the Netherlands the car is the overwhelmingly dominant mode of transportation.
Rivlin:“Figure 1 from your source reports that walks account for 22% of trips in the Netherlands. The figure for bikes, 25%, is clearly anomalous. Only one other nation even breaks 10%. For most nations, it’s between 1% and 5%. And one obvious reason for the Netherlands’ outlier status is its very high population density.”
ws: 25% is an anomaly in regards to biking, however some of the countries listed make up for their lack of bike mobility in other transportation modes (particularly walking or mass transit). Netherlands is right at the average of the total trips by foot for all of the countries listed (23% is the average excluding US, Canada, and Australia – 20% including these countries). The Netherlands is slightly above the average for total walk-bike-mass transportation pie (slightly above 50%). Most of the countries averaged 40-45% of all trips occurring with either with walking, biking, or mass transit. I would hardly constitute the Netherlands’ transportation modes (bike, walk, mass transit totals) as an “anomaly” when compared to many European countries. An anomaly from the US, Canada, and Australia, for sure.
Rivlin:“Other than a couple of tiny islands and principalities, the Netherlands has the highest population density in Europe. It has so little land relative to the size of its population that it has even reclaimed new land from the North Sea. You can’t seriously suggest that the Netherlands tells us anything meaningful about land-use and transportation policy choices in comparison to most other countries given that its policies are largely forced on it by its extreme shortage of land.”
ws: This whole discussion began when you wrongly asserted the Europe is overwhelmingly automobile based. You stated that the Netherlands does not have drastically different land-use and transportation patterns (you pointed out the Netherlands, specifically).
Here is what you said in post #35:
Rivlin: “I thought it was clear. My point was that msetty’s suggestion that there is a dramatic difference in land-use and transportation patterns between the U.S. and Europe (specifically, the Netherlands) is false”
ws: At first you say Netherlands isn’t that different from the US in regards to transportation/land-use, now you say it’s vastly different and that we cannot draw anything meaningful from it. You’re not eating your own feedback unless – I am missing something in what you’re stating.
Rivlin:“And in terms of distance of travel, even in the Netherlands the car is the overwhelmingly dominant mode of transportation.”
Well, I am glad you added that caveat (distance travel). Per mile/km basis is good to know, but it would do me no good if I wanted to travel across a continent, to which an airplane would be my best bet. Under your “analysis”, the automobile represents the most travel passenger miles – therefore it’s the best mode of transportation. This is a false claim (I’m not saying that you’d agree with this statement).
In fully understanding transportation systems, percent of total trips needs to be taken into account. Cars are good for certain types trips, as well as airplanes, biking, walking, and mass transit. A longer trip is not necessarily a better trip (and neither is a short one for that matter).
msetty,
The TRB study you cite contains an excellent discussion of the historical, economic, geographical and political differences between the U.S. and Europe that have shaped differences in their transportation and land-use patterns, which I think can be broadly summarized as follows:
1. Historical. The layouts of most large European central cities were established many hundreds of years ago, with narrow streets and a great amount of priceless historical architecture, and cannot easily be adapted to accommodate very large numbers of cars. This more or less forces a greater reliance on transit to accommodate transportation demand than in U.S. cities. American cities have the luxury of being able to accommodate a much larger share of cars, because they were established much more recently than European cities, in many cases long after cars had become affordable to average Americans.
2. Economic. Related to 1, Americans have long been richer than Europeans. This enabled average Americans to afford cars long before average Europeans could. This contributed greatly to the spread of car-oriented development in the U.S.
3. Geographical. Population density in most areas of the U.S. is much lower than in Europe. There is much more land per person. So land is cheaper. So there is much less economic incentive in the U.S. to conserve land when building housing and other infrastructure.
4. Political. Political power in the U.S. is, by design, highly decentralized. State and local governments tend to have much more power than their regional and local equivalents in Europe. This makes top-down central planning much harder politically in the U.S. than in Europe.
Of course, even given these differences, Europe is becoming more and more like the U.S. More car-oriented. More suburbanized. More sprawling.
ws,
25% is an anomaly in regards to biking, however some of the countries listed make up for their lack of bike mobility in other transportation modes (particularly walking or mass transit).
They don’t “make up” for it. Each mode is different. The Netherlands is clearly an outlier with respect to bike trips, at least as represented by these numbers. No other country even comes close.
Most of the countries averaged 40-45% of all trips occurring with either with walking, biking, or mass transit.
Nonsense. Only 3 of the 17 countries featured on the chart have combined walk-bike-transit trip shares of between 40 and 45%. There is huge variation between countries in this number. Even excluding the U.S., Australia is at one end with 14% and Latvia at the other with 67%.
But the bigger problem with this data is that there’s no definition of “trip,” so the results are basically meaningless anyway. Each country did its own survey using its own definition of “trip.” Switzerland, apparently, counts any distance of 25m or more as a “trip.” So if you walk to the end of your yard and back in Switzerland, that’s two walking trips. It’s laughable. If you walk to the bus stop, take the bus, and then walk to your final destination at the other end, is that one transit trip, or one transit trip plus two walking trips? How about if you drive to the train station and park, and then take the train? One transit trip, or one transit trip plus one one car trip? How about if you take a bus to the train station and then take the train? One transit trip or two? How about if you transfer from one train to another? Without a clear, common definition of “trip” these comparisons tell us nothing useful. A clear illustration of this definitional problem in modal share comparisons of trips is the use of “unlinked trips” by U.S. public transit agencies to report transit use. A journey that would be counted as a single trip if made by car is instead counted as two or more trips if made by transit when it involves multiple “boardings” of transit vehicles.
ws,
This whole discussion began when you wrongly asserted the Europe is overwhelmingly automobile based.
It’s not wrong. Europe is overwhelmingly “automobile based.” Europeans do the overwhelming majority of their traveling by car. It’s just not quite so overwhelming as it is in the U.S., although the Europeans are catching up.
A longer trip is not necessarily a better trip (and neither is a short one for that matter).
Here we go again. Yes, a particular longer trip is not necessarily “better” (provides greater utility) than a particular shorter trip. In some comparisons of trip pairs, the shorter trip will cost more than the longer one. But in the aggregate, measuring transportation benefit in total, longer trips must provide more benefit than shorter ones because in the aggregate they COST MORE. The further you travel the more it costs in energy. The further you travel the more it costs in time. If people could get the same benefit from a shorter, cheaper trip, they wouldn’t make the longer one.
Other than a couple of other former British colonies, the USA has the lowest population density in rhe OECD. It has so much land relative to the size of its population that it has even outlawed living on vast tracts of land designated as National Parks. You can’t seriously suggest that the USA tells us anything meaningful about land-use and transportation policy choices in comparison to most other countries given that its policies are largely forced on it by its extreme shortage of population.
Here are the Household Travel Survey results from one of the other former British colonies which happens to be the only country in the OECD that matches the USA’s population per public road km.
http://www.mot.govt.nz/latest-results-1/
Note that the regions with the highest time budget mode shares for walking and cycling are amongst the least densely populated in the country but have the highest proportion of population living in small towns and villages. Population distribution may be as important as population density.
Rivlin: “Nonsense. Only 3 of the 17 countries featured on the chart have combined walk-bike-transit trip shares of between 40 and 45%. There is huge variation between countries in this number. Even excluding the U.S., Australia is at one end with 14% and Latvia at the other with 67%.”
ws: Here’s what I said in post #72:
“Most of the countries averaged 40-45% of all trips occurring with either with walking, biking, or mass transit”
The Average European percentage is: 42% (walk, bike, mass transit percentage). I said 40-45% as a generality for discussion. You’re either not reading my posts correctly, or reading into them too much.
Rivlin: “A clear illustration of this definitional problem in modal share comparisons of trips is the use of “unlinked trips†by U.S. public transit agencies to report transit use. A journey that would be counted as a single trip if made by car is instead counted as two or more trips if made by transit when it involves multiple “boardings†of transit vehicles”.
ws: There are certain issue regarding methodology of this data. Most of the data compiled from European countries are done through surveys, to which most people would not include “linked” trips, I am assuming.
Rivlin: “The further you travel the more it costs in energy. The further you travel the more it costs in time. If people could get the same benefit from a shorter, cheaper trip, they wouldn’t make the longer one”.
ws: Define what a long trip really is? What’s the average trip distance in Europe compared to the US (I believe in the US, the average distance is about 10 miles for a work commute).
I think you’re insinuating that people are taking “longer” trips without defining what a long trip is.
Rivlin:“It’s not wrong. Europe is overwhelmingly “automobile based.†Europeans do the overwhelming majority of their traveling by car. It’s just not quite so overwhelming as it is in the U.S., although the Europeans are catching up.”
ws: I had no idea “overwhelming” had so many degrees to it. Clearly you’re trying to paint a picture that Europe is Topeka, Kansas with a huge Wal-Mart parking lots and only car transportation.
I’d agree that Europe has increased its automobile ownership greatly over the years, but certainly it’s not even close to US’s numbers like you try to insinuate. You can keep denying that land-use and urban form don’t have anything to do with transportation numbers; it’s not going to change the fact of the matter.
Well, I’m here late to the discussion after a week off of reading the AP.
I won’t try to get in on discussions, but add a few things.
Most readers probably won’t even be visiting the comments a few days after the beginning anyway.
Regarding trips & miles traveled, consider this:
How much can be accomplished with one trip by walking or biking? Compare a car trip to a big-box; that could take 5 to 10+ trips by other modes. Think about carrying purchases & trunk space.
Also, consider that one car trip will get you to your destination. Otherwise there are often combinations of trip modes.
Measuring the effectiveness of travel modes can obviously be done in various ways. The point should be that cars offer many more options in area coverage, speed, convenience, comfort, safety, etc. And for transit, there needs to be a high density for substantial coverage. Many people prefer low density. Please stop the coercion for all to live in high density. I would guess that many who are pro-transit are hypocrites who drive. Keep in mind that is far less opportunity (ie accessible jobs, retail) in transit.
The decision of living farther away from high concentrations of “stuff” involves many items. Trade-offs are made. Actually there are few things that a dense core city offers that people “miss”. For culture & similar, occasional visits are fine. People living in cores have to tolerate many more negatives, and are deprived of many items that low density offers, such as nature.
People who like transit should live near stops & not try to take freedom from others.
Back to main point of the pork package
(hurting the economy with more debt & waste):
Should spending on transit on roads be proportional to usage?
That would be fair & great if it were to be true, meaning over 20 times for roads.
True cost?
Triple transit fares.
Add ~$0.30/gallon gas tax.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/UrbanIssues/bg1721.cfm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901843.html
http://www.reason.org/ps346/index.shtml
Scott:“The decision of living farther away from high concentrations of “stuff†involves many items. Trade-offs are made. Actually there are few things that a dense core city offers that people “missâ€Â. For culture & similar, occasional visits are fine. People living in cores have to tolerate many more negatives, and are deprived of many items that low density offers, such as nature.”
ws: There is nothing natural about this: Natural Suburb?
Ecologically speaking, “nature” is better in contiguous tracts than fragmented developments. I would agree that those living in a low-density rural settings certainly have ample open space, but you’d have to have a creative imagination to say that those living in subdivisions (usually named/marketed after the “natural” element they destroyed or displaced – i.e. Oak Hill, Deer Run, etc.) offer ample natural amenities with their non-native lawns and ornamental shrubs.
In fact, people of high-density Manhattan have more access to natural elements through Central Park than many people do with their tiny, fenced backyards (the backyard was meant to replace the idea of a park).
I find your arguments that suburbs are “leafy, green, and natural” to be a stretch of the imagination in many regards. And I am not a super-high density, live-in-the-central-city-or-die type of person, either.
I’ve seen some of the street “trees” that they put in new subdivisions. Usually they get no taller or wider than 25 feet. Have developers ever heard of an elm tree? I find bigger ones in the city, which is quite funny that people perpetuate that low dense suburbs are “leafier”.
Scott Says:
Well, I’m here late to the discussion after a week off of reading the AP.
I won’t try to get in on discussions, but add a few things.
Most readers probably won’t even be visiting the comments a few days after the beginning anyway.
Regarding trips & miles traveled, consider this:
How much can be accomplished with one trip by walking or biking? Compare a car trip to a big-box; that could take 5 to 10+ trips by other modes. Think about carrying purchases & trunk space.
THWM: Stuff could also be delivered too.
Scott: Also, consider that one car trip will get you to your destination. Otherwise there are often combinations of trip modes.
Measuring the effectiveness of travel modes can obviously be done in various ways. The point should be that cars offer many more options in area coverage, speed, convenience, comfort, safety, etc. And for transit, there needs to be a high density for substantial coverage. Many people prefer low density. Please stop the coercion for all to live in high density. I would guess that many who are pro-transit are hypocrites who drive. Keep in mind that is far less opportunity (ie accessible jobs, retail) in transit.
THWM: Well that’s kind of like loading the deck. If you make your built environment harder for transit to compete(zoning & forced parking requirements), then don’t really complain about the end result.
Scott: The decision of living farther away from high concentrations of “stuff†involves many items. Trade-offs are made. Actually there are few things that a dense core city offers that people “missâ€Â. For culture & similar, occasional visits are fine. People living in cores have to tolerate many more negatives, and are deprived of many items that low density offers, such as nature.
People who like transit should live near stops & not try to take freedom from others.
THWM: It would be nice if we had a fair and open market for transportation, but sadly we don’t.
Scott: Back to main point of the pork package
(hurting the economy with more debt & waste):
Should spending on transit on roads be proportional to usage?
That would be fair & great if it were to be true, meaning over 20 times for roads.
True cost?
Triple transit fares.
Add ~$0.30/gallon gas tax.
THWM: It’s not that simple, people that only drive are for the most part lucky that roads are next being sacrosanct politicaly. That isn’t the case with railroads or transit.
This is a double standard that every one pays for, knowingly or not.
Scott: Compare a car trip to a big-box; that could take 5 to 10+ trips by other modes. Think about carrying purchases & trunk space.
If you do your shopping on the way home home from work you’ve got those problems licked.
Please stop the coercion for all to live in high density.
Likewise, please stop the coercion for all to live in low density.
People living in cores have to tolerate many more negatives, and are deprived of many items that low density offers, such as nature.
But now that inner city living has become more expensive than living in the burbs people living in cores don’t have to worry that their neighbourhood might be taken taken over by lowlife scum.
People who like transit should live near stops & not try to take freedom from others.
Likewise, people who like autos should live & work near freeway interchanges & not try to take freedom from others.
I would guess that many who are pro-transit are hypocrites who drive.
True for some, but I would guess that many who are pro-transit are realists who use whichever mode is most appropriate in the circumstances, including driving, and are merely arguing for the removal of regulatory distortions and transparent pricing to allow the market to actually work.
oops…”removal of regulatory distortions and introduction of transparent pricing”…
. THWM: “Stuff could also be delivered.”
You think that you’re suggesting something new? Montgomery Ward was an innovator in doing that over a century ago. Most people prefer to purchase in person; there are many advantages to that. Delivery is costly & time consuming.
. THWM: “loading the deck. If you make your built environment harder for transit to compete(zoning & forced parking requirements), then don’t really complain about the end result.”
People have chosen to move away from using transit. I’m not complaining about low transit. The problem is that more resources could used for roads & paid for with a higher gas tax. In addition to lower density, there are so many other conditions that have changed since transit was extensively used 80 years ago.
. THWM: “It would be nice if we had a fair and open market for transportation, but sadly we don’t.”
That would be good. The price to pay for using transit would need to roughly triple. The user fees for using roads would need to roughly double (about +$0.40/gallon). Parking & externalities is rather difficult though.
. THWM: “People that only drive are for the most part lucky that roads are next being sacrosanct politically. That isn’t the case with railroads or transit. This is a double standard that every one pays for, knowingly or not.”
Roads have been underfunded for years. Population has been growing faster faster than lane-miles; VMT even faster (until the last year).
Transit is given special political emphasis, receiving considerably much more money proportionally. It is a double standard, in favor of transit.
Previously, Scott: Compare a car trip to a big-box; that could take 5 to 10+ trips by other modes. Think about carrying purchases & trunk space.
. Kevin: “If you do your shopping on the way home home from work you’ve got those problems licked.”
Sure, people might do that now, by car or whatever mode that they use. But without a car, only so many goods can be carried.
What “problems licked” are you referring to?
Walking or biking to 5-10 stores, & home each time, is still needed, compared to one drive to a big-box store.
. Kevin: “Likewise, please stop the coercion for all to live in low density.”
How do you get that idea?
I’m not against high density. I’m against forced high density. People should have freedom in property & actions & such. Of course the “force” is not actual, but many policies (UGBs)are against further low density.
What this high vs. low (or both ) density boils down to is an argument over 1% of the land. Less than 3% of the US is urbanized. At the low density of 3,000 ppl/sq.mi., the continental US can handle 90 million more people on just 1% of the land.
People who like cars are not trying to reduce freedom.
How do you think that are?
Unless they are among the many hypocrites who are pro-transit.
Kevin, is your angle coming from the UK? That makes a big difference, particularly in country density.
Scott:“That would be good. The price to pay for using transit would need to roughly triple. The user fees for using roads would need to roughly double (about +$0.40/gallon). Parking & externalities is rather difficult though.”
ws: Where is your doubling of the gas tax number coming from? Including all externalities, particularly with costs associated with local street construction, fire/police protection, burden oil puts on our national trade deficit, and environmental degradation; I’d argue this figure seems rather low.
Scott: “I’m not against high density. I’m against forced high density. People should have freedom in property & actions & such. Of course the “force†is not actual, but many policies (UGBs)are against further low density.”
ws: The UGB gets more bad press than it deserves. Yes, it had the possibility to increase home prices and create more dense developments; however there’s comprehensive codes and zoning that limit dense developments from occurring in specific areas.
Generally speaking, I hear bad things said about growth boundaries but nothing in regards to minimum parking requirements, which eat up a lot of land (which could partially be blamed for increasing home prices). You have certain development where the parking lots are twice (or even larger) as big as the actual buildings. There’s also instances of people who do not own or want a car, who have to pay the cost of the parking space(s) in their development – which is passed off to them in the cost of their housing purchase.
In regards to cities that have a growth boundary or are restricted by natural resources available that limits their available land; reducing or getting rid of the minimum parking requirement can create more developable land for housing, instead of car storage.
Scott, My apologies. If I had seen your other recent comments I would have responded in a more moderate and reasoned fashion to reflect the tone you normally exhibit in your comments.
So I’ll answer your queries as best I can.
“Think about carrying purchases & trunk space.”“If you do your shopping on the way home home from work you’ve got those problems licked.â€Â
Although I don’t live in the inner city I am a bachelor so I was looking at this problem from the perspective of the demographic allegedly responsible for the inner city population ‘boom’ – bachelors, dinks and empty nesters. For them carrying the ingredients for their evening meal isn’r a hardship and doesn’t need a trunk, although empty nesters might resort to “grandma’s shopping trundler’.
“Likewise, please stop the coercion for all to live in low density.”
This was just counterpointing your comment coercion to live in high density. There are certainly some commenters on this site that take that view. Most (including AP sometimes) are arguing against zoning and other planning rules that either directly or indirectly coerce people into either low or high density, usually because of the way they distort pricing signals to developers and landlords. We are obviously in broad agreement, however I argue that minimum parking codes have the same impact on the provision of high density housing that the UGB has on low density housing. Reduces supply and increases costs. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the cities with greatest home price inflation have both UGBs and MPRs in place.
“People who like cars are not trying to reduce freedom.”
That was essentially my response to your statement “People who like transit should live near stops & not try to take freedom from others.”
I think I pretty much covered this with my comment about the impact of MPRs. Actually people who like transit should live near transit stops and people who like driving should live near freeway or arterials. That way they minimise their interference with each other’s freedom and the freedom of walkers and cyclists. Auto users are paying for freeways and arterials but everybody pays for local streets so there is no reason that local streets should be priorised for autos. Let the citezens decide, not the planners or ‘city hall’.
“Unless they are among the many hypocrites who are pro-transit.”
In my limited experience those who are anti-auto or pro-cycling practice what they preach. Most of those who are seriously pro-transit accept it’s limitations and aren’t rabidly anti-auto.
Most of those who are sick of the amount traffic using “their” street, even if it’s actually a main road, and advocate better transit as the solution to “traffic” are the real hypocrites. They are the ones who think everyone else should use transit and get real affronted if someone living on a different street spins the argument around.
To me, your comment reads that those who are pro-transit are hypocrites if they use any other form of transport. Your comment sounds like it’s based on pro-transit=anti-auto, pro-auto=anti-transit and/or the absolute argument of there only being pro and anti with no middle ground. I don’t think the phrase multi-modal has been hijacked yet so maybe that’s what we should call those arguing the middle ground: multimodalists.
Multi-modal is a concept that has proved it’s worth in freight logistics so it’s worth a try as a solution to, or conceptual framework for, urban transport. Emphasising that freight logistics is voluntary and it’s success depends on knowing the whole costs for each mode and each system. Sometimes JIT can end up being more expensive than holding more warehouse inventory.
ws, “create more developable land for housing, instead of car storage.”
Every business owner will recognise this choice problem. It’s what economists refer to as oportunity cost. Can earn more rent from this land or floor area for parking or housing? Minimum parking requirements taking that choice away from the landlord. So they build their apartment on the outskirts where cheap land makes the MPR affordable. Except they can’t build apartments because planning regs specify one dwelling per lot and a minimum lot size. So we get sprawl, unless there’s a UGB, then we just get silly home prices.
Letting a new generation of planners solve the problems caused by an earlier generation of planners ain’t smart anything IMHO.
Scott. New Zealand. The antipodies of Britain. Still a loyal member of the British Commonwealth though. But we absolutely definitely give the USA a run for it’s money for autocentricity, single storey housing and quarter acre paradises.