Search Results for: peak transit

The Law of Large Proportions Saves Energy

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Americans drove more miles in 2019 than the previous year but used less energy to do so, according to data released by the Department of Energy last week. This isn’t a new trend: American energy consumption for highway passenger vehicles has declined 12 percent since 2007 despite the fact that we are driving 7 percent more miles.

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The data were published in edition 39 of the Transportation Energy Data Book, which has information all modes of transportation, often going back to 1970. The data in the book show that not only is our energy consumption for transportation declining, the carbon footprint of motor vehicles is also falling, which helped the United States reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent since 2005. The book also has information about petroleum production around the world, auto ownership for many other countries, toxic air pollution, and other energy- and transportation-related topics. Continue reading →

Forum on State Transportation Issues

By | | Housekeeping
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State transportation issues during and after the pandemic will be the topic of an on-line forum next Wednesday, February 17. The Antiplanner will join several other experts, including Robert Poole, Baruch Feigenbaum, Marc Scribner, Wendell Cox, and Mariya Frost, to discuss highway, transit, and similar issues from noon to 1:30 pm Pacific Time (3:00 pm to 4:30 pm Eastern Time).

The forum is aimed at state policy think tanks, legislative staff, and other people who deal with state transportation issues agencies, budgets, and policies. Presentations will be based on Transportation and COVID-19, a group of articles published in December. More information and event registration are available from the Washington Policy Center.

Speaking of seminars, University of Oxford Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, noted expert on megaprojects, is holding an on-line class on Reference Class Forecasting. The projected cost of constructing the typical light-rail line rises by 40 to 50 percent between the initial cost estimate and project approval. The actual cost of constructing it rises another 40 to 50 percent between project approval and project completion. Continue reading →

Bay Area Arrogance

By | | Transportation
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The Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) has seen ridership fall in every year since 2015. The district was originally created to bring office workers from the suburbs into downtown San Francisco, yet downtown is now a ghost town with some of the highest vacancy rates in its history and actual occupancy rates — that is, offices that are actually being used — are probably below 20 percent. BART’s latest ridership numbers themselves are less than 15 percent of 2019 levels. Many of San Francisco’s high-tech employers have already announced that they will allow many of their employees to continue to work from home after the pandemic.

What better time is there for BART to announce its proposal to significantly expand its service? Called Link 21, the heart of the proposal is to build a second tube under the bay connecting San Francisco with Oakland costing a mere $30 billion. Continue reading →

Americans Are on the Move

By | | Housing, Policy brief
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When the pandemic hit, I thought it would slow down sales of existing homes. Instead, home sales in 2020 reached their highest level since the peak of the housing bubble in 2006. I also thought that the pandemic would slow new home construction. Instead, by the end of the year, new home starts also reached their highest level since 2006. When people began moving out of Manhattan, San Francisco, and other big cities, I assumed most of them would consider the moves temporary and would be renting at their new locations. Instead, homeownership took its biggest year-over-year leap since at least 1960 and probably in U.S. history, reaching levels not seen since, you guessed it, the 2006 bubble.

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Information about moving trends isn’t always clear. In September, Bloomberg writer Marie Patino questioned the conventional wisdom that people were moving out of big cities or indeed that more people were moving than in previous years. However, her data were based on how many people were hiring companies like United Van Lines, when in fact most moves don’t use professional movers. We won’t really know the truth until the dust settles a year or two from now, but we can get a glimmer of that truth by digging into what data are available. Continue reading →

November Driving 89% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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After two months of driving slightly more than 90 percent of 2019 levels, driving fell to 88.9 percent in November, 2020, according to traffic trends published Friday by the Federal Highway Administration. The slight reduction in driving was due to the second wave of state-ordered lockdowns that took place in November.

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Urban driving declined the most, being about 87 percent of 2019 levels while rural driving was about 92 percent. Arizona and Louisiana actually saw slight increases in rural driving but no states saw increases in urban driving. By comparison, urban transit and the airlines both carried only 37 percent of 2019 riders in November 2020, while Amtrak carried just 26 percent of its 2020 ridership.

Supercommuting and Marchetti’s Constant

By | | Policy brief
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The number of supercommuters–people who commute more than 90 minutes each way to and from work–has grown much faster than the total number of workers in the United States. In 2010, 2.4 percent of commuters spent more than 90 minutes en route; by 2019, it was 3.1 percent.

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These supercommuters are not evenly distributed across the country. Instead, both the number and the rapid growth of supercommuters are concentrated in a few states, mainly California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington. In particular, the Boston, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington metropolitan areas all have large numbers and higher than average growth of supercommuters. These states and urban areas are all known for using some form of growth management to minimize sprawl. Continue reading →

RTD Violated Stay-at-Home Orders

By | | Transportation
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Denver’s Regional Transit District lost 68 percent of its riders last April due to Colorado’s stay-at-home orders. Rather than obey the orders, some of RTD’s staffers visited some of the so-called transit-oriented developments along its rail lines and found — gasp! — 40 to 50 percent of the parking spaces were empty. They concluded that those parking spaces were a waste and should be taken away, perhaps filled with more mid-rise housing.

What time of day would you count spaces in an apartment parking lot to see how many were needed? RTD picked 10 am to 3 pm. Photo by Bearas.

According to RTD’s report, they did the parking lot counts between 10 am and 3 pm in the middle of a week in April. RTD’s reasoning seems to be that, since everyone was supposed to stay at home, any empty spaces meant that no one really needed those spaces. Continue reading →

Buttigieg for Transportation Secretary

By | | Transportation
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President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate Pete Buttigieg to be Secretary of Transportation. As mayor of South Bend, Buttigieg promoted a “smart streets” program that used tax-increment finance funds to turn one-way streets into two-way streets, widen sidewalks, add bike lanes, and build traffic calming measures and roundabouts in the downtown area. According to some, these measures helped revitalize downtown.

Wall Street Journal writers Jeanne Cummings and Gerald Seib listen to Pete Buttigieg speak at an infrastructure forum held last February. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

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The Obscure Origins of the Deep State

By | | Policy brief
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The idea that there is a “deep state” is strongly associated with Trump-loving conservatives. Many other people view this as a nonsensical conspiracy theory. But the United States does have a deep state. Another term for it is government bureaucracy.

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The nation’s founders envisioned three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. These branches had different powers and were designed to act as checks and balances against one another. It worked, more or less, for many years. Continue reading →

Watching the Sausage Get Made

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak ridership is down by 87 percent, so Amtrak needs a $2.9 billion rescue from Congress, the company’s executive vice president, Stephen Gardner, told a congressional subcommittee yesterday. Transit ridership is down 70 to 90 percent, added American Public Transportation Association president Paul Skoutelas, so the transit industry wants a $32 billion bailout from Congress.

Those are just their short-term demands, as was made clear in the hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. Both Amtrak and New York commuter railroads want $20 billion for the Gateway Project, which would replace bridges and tunnels between Newark and New York City. Transit agencies want $106 billion to restore their backlog of poorly maintained rail systems. And even that is only the beginning. Continue reading →