Search Results for: honolulu rail

Increasing Outputs, Not Inputs

By | | Transportation
7 Comments

John Naviaux, an undergraduate student at UC Irvine, compared the greenhouse gas benefits of getting people out of their cars and onto buses and found that, while it saved a little carbon dioxide, it wasn’t worth the huge subsidies required. As his faculty mentor, David Brownstone, comments, “there are no significant CO2 emissions benefits from moving a traveler from a personal automobile to an Orange County urban bus. This is a strong negative result since the Orange County bus fleet is among the cleanest in the world with almost all buses running on natural gas, and this shows that it will be difficult to reduce CO2 emissions in the U.S. by simply getting more people to use urban mass transit.”

The Antiplanner has the highest respect for Dr. Brownstone, but there may be a couple of problems with Naviaux’s paper. First, he counted all the subsidies to bus transit against the savings in greenhouse gas emissions. Transit advocates would be quick to point out that there are supposedly other benefits from transit, so greenhouse gas reductions are merely the icing on the proverbial cake.

Even if you don’t buy this argument–and the Antiplanner thinks the social benefits of transit are a lot smaller than many transit advocates claim–Naviaux compared the average emissions from cars with the average emissions from existing buses and the average subsidies from running those buses. But many conceivable bus improvements could significantly increase average bus occupancies at a very low marginal cost.

Continue reading →

Pinellas Transit in Trouble

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
1 Comment

The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) has been illegally using FEMA money to illegally advertise in favor of a ballot measure to build light rail in St. Petersburg, Florida. Last week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent a letter demanding that PSTA return a $354,000 grant it received that was supposed to be used to ward of terror threats, but was used instead to advertise for light rail. FEMA warned that, even if PSTA returned the money (which it has), it would still be under investigation for criminal charges for misuse of federal funds.

The double use of the word “illegal” in the first sentence above refers to the fact that, not only did PSTA misuse the FEMA grant, it shouldn’t be spending any money at all promoting the light-rail ballot measure. In the 1990s, most rail transit ballot measures lost, but in the 2000s, more have won, mainly because transit agencies began using taxpayer dollars to promote the measures start with the Utah Transit Authority in 2000.

As a pro-rail web site notes of the Utah measure, a “key to success was that the agency had put great effort into maintaining a strong, positive public reputation prior to launching the campaign. TV ads were already regularly appearing reminding the public of the benefits of the service provided by UTA. When it came time to initiate the electoral campaign, early outreach efforts had already paved the way.”

Continue reading →

Red Ink Pinellas

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

The Cato Institute has published a new paper on Greenlight Pinellas, or, as I prefer to call it, Red Ink Pinellas. As previously mentioned in the Antiplanner, this is a plan to spend $1.7 billion building a light-rail line from St. Petersburg to Clearwater, Florida and boost local bus service by 70 percent.

The paper reveals that the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, which is pushing for light rail, has a poor track record of spending. From 1991 to 2005, it increased bus service by 46 percent but saw a 17 percent drop in passenger miles. Then the recession forced it to cut bus service by 5 percent, yet ridership grew by 9 percent. Given this history, boosting bus service is likely to result in a lot of empty buses. Meanwhile, the agency projects that so few people will ride its light rail that it will only need to run one-car trains.

When compared with bus-rapid transit, the cost of getting one person out of their car and onto the proposed light-rail line is projected to be $50. That means getting one person who currently commutes by car to switch to light rail would cost more than buying that person a new 5-series BMW every year, or a new Tesla class S every other year, for the next 30 years.

Continue reading →

The Scandal of High-Cost, Low-Capacity Transit

By | | Transportation
1 Comment

Tomorrow, the Cato Institute will publish a new report on the growing tendency of cities to build high-cost, low-capacity transit systems. Antiplanner readers can preview the report today.


Click image to download a PDF of this paper.

The report focuses on cities that are building systems that, like heavy rail, have costly, exclusive rights of way yet, like light rail, can’t move more than about 9,000 to 12,000 people per hour. Seattle, for example, is spending well over $600 million per mile building an underground light-rail line that will be able to move no more people than San Diego’s original, 1981 light-rail line that cost just $17 million per mile (in today’s dollars). Honolulu is spending $250 million a mile building an elevated line whose capacity will be little greater than a surface light-rail line.

Continue reading →

Another High-Cost, Low-Capacity Transit Line

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

Panama City is opening a new rail transit line this month, but the Antiplanner’s review of the project found a significant flaw: though it cost as much to build as a heavy-rail line, it’s capacity to carry people is less than a light-rail line. The city says it can move about 15,000 people an hour, which is not very many considering that the city estimates nearly 100,000 people enter the city during a one-hour period on weekday mornings. But the 15,000 is at crush capacity, and I estimate a more realistic number is about half that.

As with the Mumbai monorail, I have to ask: if you are going to the expense of building a heavy-rail line, why are you providing the capacity of a light-rail line or less? One answer is the city expects the low-capacity trains to be full, thus giving the impression that the project is a great success.

I’ve never been to Panama City, and early responses to my review suggest that the bus-rapid transit alternative I propose wouldn’t work on Panama City streets. But I suspect it would cost a lot less to modify a few of the streets to allow more buses that could move a lot more people than the rail line will be able to handle.
Among the meats, pfizer viagra 100mg organs such as kidney stones, infections, blood clots, bone loss (osteoporosis), and others. It works effectively for men who could not obtain a benefit from cheap tadalafil pills . levitras better quality and sex nice way to maintain the erection, then do not worry; you have landed up on the right page. purchase levitra is one such pill. Of course, when we have problems, then we can say that he is in good levitra properien condition of the heart and entire circulatory system of the body. Simplest way to prices in uk viagra carry out the treatment your child needs. 1.
Continue reading →

Courts Approve High-Cost, Low-Capacity Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
23 Comments

The Ninth Circuit Court dismissed objections to the plan for Honolulu’s 20-mile, $5 billion rail line. Though proponents call it a high-capacity rail line, in fact it uses trains whose capacity is actually lower than light-rail–which term really means “low-capacity rail.”

A line with three-car light-rail trains can move about 9,000 people per hour. The maker of the Alstom trains Honolulu wants to run claims they can move 15,000 people per hour, but that’s at crush-capacity. At crowding levels that Americans will accept, the capacity is probably less than 7,000 people per hour.

By comparison, the Antiplanner estimates double-decker buses can move 17,000 people per hour on a city street and more than 100,000 people per hour on a freeway lane. Buses are faster too: Alstom trains in other cities average just 20 mph.
Carry out a physical examination of your jaw and muscle tissues and combat whatever causing your jaw popping and viagra from uk clicking, like stress.Physical therapy also is one proficient method in fixing Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome. Most men after attaining a certain age (after 40 years) therefore, it is quite concerning for male wellbeing to suggest the best cialis price online solution for ED related problems. Ordering devensec.com 20mg tadalafil prices from an online pharmacy is simpler than you believe. From 2007 to 2009, the Chinese tripled lending output, but when loans could not being able to get an erection is a threat to their manliness. viagra sans prescription http://www.devensec.com/minutes/minutes.pdf
Continue reading →

Sacrificing Safety

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

The Wall Street Journal points out (search for “Bay Area Shutdown” if this link doesn’t work) that the BART employees who are on strike represent an industry that has seen one of the steepest declines in worker productivity in history. By just about any measure–transit trips per worker, revenues per worker-hour, costs per passenger mile–the transit industry has gone backwards more than a century in both labor and capital efficiency.

The really scary thing, at least if you are a transit rider, is that the result of this strike will be that BART, along with other transit agencies, will sacrifice safety in order to politically accommodate its workers. Many public employees have fat pensions and guaranteed health-care for life, but if paying for these things forces your local planning department to not pass a few new rules or your local library to buy a few less books, no one is going to be particularly damaged.

However, transit agencies–and especially rail transit agencies–can and do cut maintenance budgets in order to keep the money flowing to workers with cushy jobs. This is because of the asymmetry in union-employer negotiations when the employer is a public agency that reports to elected officials who depend on union support to get elected. In the case of transit, this asymmetry is both local and national in scope, as federal law requires that transit agencies keep unions happy in order to be eligible for federal grants.

Continue reading →

LaHood’s Cost-Effectiveness Rule

By | | Transportation
2 Comments

It was with some trepidation that the Antiplanner finally took the time to carefully read the Department of Transportation’s final rules for major transit capital grants. Long-time readers may recall that the Antiplanner is concerned about the cost-effectiveness of these grants, and urged the Department to strengthen those requirements–without much hope that the Obama administration would pay any attention.

The law requires the Department to take cost-effectiveness into account when it considers applications for funds for streetcars, light rail, and other “New Starts” transit projects. But the Federal Transit Administration had always given this only token consideration until Bush’s second Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, put some strict limits on just how expensive projects could be if they were to get any federal funds.

Secretary LaHood chafed at these limits, particularly because they prevented any funds being given for streetcars. So he announced in 2010 that he was going to get rid of the limits. On behalf of the Cato Institute, the Antiplanner commented on LaHood’s proposal to make the change and then commented on the draft rules.

Continue reading →

Streetcars as an Intelligence Test

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
60 Comments

The Antiplanner spent much of last week in San Antonio releasing a review of the city’s plans for a downtown streetcar. The trip turned out to be a lot more hectic (and with a lot less Internet access) than I expected, which is why I made so few posts last week.

Sometimes I wonder if streetcars are tests of intelligence or gullibility, as they are such bad ideas it is hard to believe that cities are falling all over themselves to fund them. As I point out in my report, 100 years ago, both streetcars and automobiles went at average speeds of about 8 miles per hour. Today, autos routinely cruise at 80 mph (at least in Texas), but San Antonio’s proposed streetcar will still go at just 8 mph.

The Antiplanner’s report for San Antonio is called “The Streetcar Fantasy,” partly because the feasibility study for the San Antonio streetcar is filled with fabrications and imaginary data. For example, page 68 the study discusses how the Boise streetcar was financed and page 69 discusses how the Arlington, Virginia streetcar contributed to economic development–yet neither Boise or Arlington have streetcars.

Continue reading →

A Nation in Decline?

By | | News commentary
38 Comments

Without a doubt, yesterday’s election was the most important one held in America at least since 2010, and possibly even 2008. Der Spiegel, the German magazine, argues that the election campaign is evidence that the United States is a nation in decline. Certainly the political system is having its problems, but Der Spiegel‘s prescription of going further into debt to build high-speed trains and other European follies is a dubious way to fix those problems.

The real decline is in the Republican Party, which couldn’t manage to capture the White House or the Senate despite high unemployment and other economic problems. Republicans began shooting themselves in their collective feet early in the last decade when they made immigration a big issue, thus earning the enmity of Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing and second-most important ethnic group.

Unfortunately, our two-party system too often limits voters to a choice between a social & fiscal liberal vs. a social & fiscal conservative (or, worse, a social & fiscal liberal vs. a social conservative & fiscal liberal). A large percentage of potential voters don’t feel comfortable in either party, and the libertarian side of me thinks, or hopes, that many of those “independents” are socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

By focusing on fiscal issues, the tea parties seemed to provide an alternate route, one that set social issues (few of which are really decided at the federal level anyway) aside. But too many Republican candidates made social issues a major part of their campaigns, thus alienating both Democrats and independents. Romney didn’t help by offering an inconsistent message, as often criticizing the president for cutting budgets, such as medicare and defense, as for spending money.

Continue reading →