Search Results for: peak transit

San Diego’s Insane $163.5 Billion Plan

By | | Policy brief, Regional planning
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If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, then San Diego’s latest regional plan  is completely insane. The draft 2021 Regional Plan, which was released on May 28 by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), includes all of the latest planning fads: active transportation, complete streets, density, rail transit, density, transit-oriented development, microtransit, density, and vision zero. Did I mention density and rail transit?

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

The plan backs up these ideas with dollars, proposing to spend more than $80 billion on transit, $9.8 billion on high-density housing districts, $4.3 billion on bike paths, and $0.0 billion on new roads. In all, the plan proposes to spend $163.5 billion over the next 30 years, more than half of which would go for transit and transit hubs. Some of this is for operating expenses, but transit capital improvements alone would cost $52 billion. Continue reading →

San Jose Discovers Light Rail Is Not Resilient

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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As of this writing, light-rail service in San Jose remains cancelled more than 24 hours after the mass shooting that left 10 people dead. This was a terrible event, and I join Governor Gavin Newsom in wondering “what the hell is going on in the United States?” Beyond that, I don’t feel qualified to write about gun control, mental illness, or other factors that may have played a role in this tragedy.

However, it does point out one more problem with light rail or any rail transit: such systems require central control that can easily be disrupted by accidents, terrorists, or other criminals. Buses, which the Valley Transportation Authority is using in place of light rail in the aftermath of the shooting, don’t need such central control and are less vulnerable to natural or human-caused disasters.

Light rail has been a thorn in the side of Silicon Valley transportation since the 1980s. San Jose’s bus-only system carried 38.5 million trips in 1984, or 29 trips per resident of the San Jose urbanized area, also known as Silicon Valley. Continue reading →

The Case Against Amtrak

By | | Transportation
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CNN says that, with Biden’s proposal to give Amtrak $80 billion, “Amtrak’s moment may finally have arrived.” But what would it mean for Amtrak to have a “moment”? Would it mean that passenger trains return to once again become an important source of transportation, as they were in the 1920s? Or does it mean that Amtrak will get a lot more money for continuing to carry a trivial share of the nation’s passenger travel?

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

Since 1971, Congress has given Amtrak about $54 billion in subsidies, which in today’s dollars is about $85 billion. Biden’s plan would nearly double that in one fell swoop. But this is not going to double Amtrak ridership. For one thing, eleven years ago Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor had a $52 billion maintenance backlog, and it is undoubtedly larger now if only due to inflation. More than half of the $80 billion Biden proposes to give it will be spent rehabilitating existing infrastructure, not making improvements that are likely to increase ridership. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Disaster Gets More Disastrous

By | | Transportation
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When we last looked at the Honolulu rail project, less than a month ago, the projected cost had risen from $5 billion (when the city decided to build it) to $11.3 billion and the date it was expected to open had been delayed by more than 11 years. It’s gotten even worse since then.

Wheels that are too narrow will slip off tracks at joints like these, known as “frogs.” Photo by Meggar.

The latest problem is that the railcar wheels are too narrow for the tracks. To negotiate “frogs,” the places on switches where tracks cross, the wheels need to be a half-inch wider. Continue reading →

Restoring Trust to the Highway Trust Fund

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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In what some considered to be a backroom deal, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority agreed last month to give more than $500 million a year in toll revenues to New Jersey Transit, up from $164 million a year in the previous five years. The decision was a surprise to the public, as it was made with no preliminary discussion under an agenda item innocuously listed as “State Public Transportation Projects Funding Agreement.”

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

This decision to use highway user fees to prop up a transit agency known for its bad management, including “nepotism, cronyism and incompetence,” further erodes the trust highway users have in the people managing state and local transportation resources. This trust is important partly because roads are mostly funded by a variety of excise taxes that don’t automatically adjust for inflation. Increasing the taxes is more politically difficult if users don’t believe that the funds will go for the facilities they thought they were paying for. Continue reading →

Post-COVID: More Driving, Less AM Congestion

By | | Transportation
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A recent survey from PriceWaterhouseCooper found that the majority of office workers want to continue working at home at least three days a week after the pandemic, and most employers are likely to let them do so. In fact, a higher percentage of employers — 83 percent vs. only 71 percent of workers — think that remote working during the pandemic has proven successful.

Data collected by Streetlight, which tracks people’s cell phones, reveals that the large numbers of people working at home has nearly eliminated the morning rush hour. However, the afternoon rush hour remains and is in many places worse than before. Before the pandemic, San Francisco had an afternoon peak that lasted from 4 to 6 pm. By June, 2020, the peak began around noon and lasted until 5.

Notice that these graphs show the percentage of daily travel, not total travel. Since total travel in June 2020 was less than June 2019, the afternoon peak period was not as severe in 2020 as it had been before the pandemic. But that could change as the economy recovers if total miles of travel return to close to 100 percent of what they were in 2019. Continue reading →

Mileage-Based User Fees for Highway Finance

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Six years ago, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) announced that it was inviting up to 5,000 people to voluntarily join its mileage-based user fee program. The Antiplanner rushed to be among the first to apply, which turned out to be unnecessary as, after two years, only 745 vehicles were participating in the program.

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

That number is likely to increase soon, as the state has imposed a stiff vehicle-registration fee on electric and other fuel-efficient cars, a fee people can waive if they add their car to the mileage-based fee program. Annual fees for electric cars will go from $20 to $153; fees for cars rated to get better than 40 miles per gallon jump from $20 to $76 per year. Continue reading →

Patsies for Corporate Welfare

By | | Transportation
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On April 7, our loyal opponents at the American Public Transportation Association are holding a virtual conference on high-speed rail. The conference is sponsored by several companies that expect to profit enormously if the United States builds high-speed rail, including:

  • Alstom, a French manufacturer of rail cars for French and Italian high-speed trains, as well as conventional and transit rail cars for, among others, Honolulu, Ottawa, and many other cities;
  • Systra, a government-owned French engineering firm that does the engineering for new TGV routes as well as for French transit lines;
  • HDR, an American engineering company that talked many cities into building streetcar lines by falsely claiming that the streetcars would lead to economic development; and
  • HNTB, another American engineering firm that has help build or rebuild rail transit lines in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and other cities.

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The environmental impacts of high-speed rail: An 80-foot right-of-way times 8,600 miles is 130 square miles of land disrupted by rail construction; times 20,000 miles is 300 square miles of disrupted land. Photo from the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Continue reading →

The Future of Work Is in a Small Oregon Town

By | | Regional planning
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Richard Florida, who got famous for telling cities they needed to increase their densities to attract what he called the “creative class” of workers, now admits (in an article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal) that the future of work is in a small town in Oregon. I happen to live near that town and pass through it several times a year. It is so small that, from the highway, you wouldn’t know you were in a town if it were not for the sign.

The Job Capital of America. Photo by Peggy Rowe-Snyder (Pegro62).

Yet that town today is the location of so many advertised jobs that it has been called “the job capital of America.” The town’s name is Remote, and apparently it is the only town in the country with that name. So whenever anyone advertises for “remote workers,” some job web sites assume they mean Remote, Oregon. Continue reading →

The Truth about Pelosi’s Subway

By | | Transportation
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When the 2021 COVID-19 relief bill included funding for the BART expansion to San Jose, which didn’t have much to do with the coronavirus, Republicans labeled it Pelosi’s subway. Others disputed this description, saying that the BART line was 50 miles away from Speaker Pelosi’s district. Nevertheless, the earmark has apparently been removed from the bill.

$1.7 billion spent digging a hole and filling it up.

The bill still included $1.675 billion for transit capital improvement projects, which are not obviously vital considering that transit ridership is down by 65 percent. The American Public Transportation Association has created a list of 23 projects that are eligible for these funds. The San Jose BART line is not on the list. Continue reading →