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Getting the Most from Driverless Cars

By | | Transportation
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Back in 2009, when I first suggested that urban transportation would soon be taken over by driverless cars, a friend of mine told me that he would never use a driverless car because “I get a testosterone thrill from having my hands on the wheel of a car.” I point out to him that, if cars drove themselves, we wouldn’t need open container laws and he and his girlfriend could make out in the back seat while the vehicle was in motion. His eyes bugged out and I knew I had won a convert.

What’s happening in the back of this van? Only the occupants and Waymo know for sure. Photo by Rob Pegaroro.

So I wasn’t surprised to read a report that “San Franciscans are having sex in robotaxis,” with some people doing it so often it is almost routine. Many of the vehicles have darkened windows that make it difficult to see inside, especially at night, creating a comfortable feeling of privacy. The travelers may not realize that Waymo and Cruise have cameras recording both outside and inside the vehicles, but the companies say no one looks at the videos unless there is some kind of an incident such as an accident. Continue reading →

Working from Home Expected to Rise

By | | News commentary
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Mike Myers, the director of Portland’s community safety program, is in charge of reducing gun violence and increasing street safety. This job paid him $208,263 last year, and he manages to do it while working at home. Home, for Myers, happens to be a gated community in Las Vegas, 750 miles from Portland.

Click image to review a copy of this report.

Perhaps it is only a coincidence that Portland has seen the fastest-growing homicide rates in the highest in the nation and the city suffered a record number of homicides in 2022. Or perhaps there are some jobs that just can’t be performed as well at home, at least if that home is hundreds of miles away. Continue reading →

Spending Other People’s Money

By | | Transportation
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Washington state Democrats believe that a Portland-Seattle-Vancouver high-speed rail line is vital to the future of the Northwest. It is so vital, in fact, that they want someone else to pay for it, namely the federal government. The federal government, after all, seems to be unique in the world in that it can spend unlimited amounts of money without raising taxes to cover those costs.

You’ll never guess why they think high-speed rail is needed so badly. According to a letter from Washington members of Congress to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the high-speed train will “allow people to live in less densely populated areas and work anywhere in the megaregion.” So much for the supposed benefits of high-density living! Continue reading →

Oregon Governor: Keep Homeless Inside UGBs

By | | Housing
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Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, knows what her priorities are. With her endorsement, the state is spending billions of dollars to deal with its housing shortage. Thanks partly to that housing shortage, homeless camps can be found all over the state, from Portland to tiny Sisters, a city of 2,000.

“Unmanaged” homeless camp in Portland. Photo by Graywalls.

Some of that money is supposed to be used to create managed homeless camps, where homeless people supposedly will have access to “food, hygiene, litter collection and treatment for mental health and substance abuse.” However, Governor Kotek recently informed officials in Bend, central Oregon’s largest city, that they would not be allowed to have a managed homeless camp outside of the city’s urban-growth boundary. “We must exhaust every possible option within the UGB for shelter sites,” she said. Continue reading →

The Irrational Planning Process

By | | Regional planning
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Land-use and transportation planning is supposed to follow a rational planning process. That process includes defining the problem that needs to be solved, identifying alternative solutions, evaluating the alternatives, developing a final plan based on the best alternative or combination of alternatives, implementing the plan, monitoring the effects to see how well reality matches planning assumptions, and using the results of that monitoring as feedback into future plans.

This 1969 book describes the rational planning process on page 95.

The rational planning model has been around since at least 1969. Yet today, more than 50 years later, hardly any government agency follows this model. Instead, most government plans I’ve reviewed follow what can only be called an irrational planning process. Continue reading →

Land-Use Law Kills Nearly 100 People in Maui

By | | Planning Disasters
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At the latest count, 93 people died in the Maui fire that also burned most of the town of Lahaina. The blame for this fire can be traced directly to Hawaii’s 62-year-old land-use law, which was written to protect Hawaii’s agricultural industry but had the opposite result.

The land-use law divided the state into urban and rural zones and heavily restricted development of the rural areas. As the state’s population grew, Maui’s median home prices rose from about 3 times median family incomes in 1969 to 7.9 times median family incomes in 2021. Any prices above 5 times median incomes are unaffordable since banks won’t approve a mortgage for a home that costs that much more than a family’s income. Continue reading →

New Orleans Dismantles Bike Lanes

By | | Transportation
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In 2020, New Orleans planned to install bike lanes on 75 miles of streets, reducing the capacity of those streets to move cars. The residents of the first neighborhoods where they were installed strongly protested and are happy to report that, in late July and early August, all newly installed bike lanes have been or are being removed. Concrete barriers that once separated bicycles from autos have been ground away and stripes separating bicycles from autos have been replaced by signs reminding auto drivers to share the roads with bicycles.

Although strongly supported by many bicycle advocacy groups, bicycle lanes have questionable benefits for bicycle riders. The lanes are designed to safeguard bicycle riders from being hit from behind by automobiles, but this kind of accident is rare. Instead, most bicycle-auto collisions take place at intersections, and bicycle lanes usually disappear at the intersections. By creating an illusion of safety, bicycle lanes may increase cycling on busy streets and effectively put more bicycle riders in harms way by encouraging them to cross intersections where they are more likely to get hit. Continue reading →

June Driving 0.75% Greater Than in 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove slightly more miles in June 2023 than they did in June 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Highway driving first reached 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June of 2021 and has been hovering around 100 percent ever since. In comparison, flying didn’t reach 100 percent until January of this year, while Amtrak has been hovering around 90 percent since August 2022 and transit has never exceeded 72 percent.

For a detailed discussion of Amtrak results, see last Tuesday’s post. For a detailed discussion of transit and airline results, see last Saturday’s post.

Urban driving was only 99.0 percent of pre-pandemic levels, but rural driving more than made up for it at 105.3 percent. Total miles of driving exceeded 2019 numbers in 27 states, with the biggest gains in Idaho (117%), Missouri (114%), Alaska (114%), Colorado (113%), Wyoming (112%), and Michigan (111%). Driving is still only 76 percent of pre-COVID levels in the District of Columbia and is also woefully short in Illinois (84%), Massachusetts (91%), Maryland (92%), California (93%), Hawaii (94%), Washington (94%), and Georgia (94%). Driving in all other states was at least 95 percent of 2019 miles. Continue reading →

New Jersey Challenges New York’s Cordon Fee Plan

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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With federal approval of New York’s environmental assessment, most of the federal, state, and local obstacles to New York City’s cordon pricing plan — which almost everyone erroneously calls a congestion pricing plan — have been removed. But there is still one more: New Jersey is suing to stop the plan because New Jersey residents would pay a large share of the costs yet get few of the benefits. As several New Jersey legislators have accurately pointed out, the plan “is nothing more than a cash grab” aimed at helping to close the deficit of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and specifically the subway system, which New Jersey drivers would rarely use.

Save money by staying out of the orange zone.

The plan calls for charging anyone who drives into Manhattan south of 60th street between 6 am and 10 pm to pay $23. This is expected to earn $1 billion a year, all of which would go to the MTA to help cover its $2.5 billion annual deficit. Low-income people would be able to use the amount they pay as a tax credit, but if they are low income they probably aren’t paying much in taxes. New Jersey residents would pay the $23 instead of, not on top of, existing tolls, which effectively increases their cost of entry into Manhattan by 56 percent. Taxi and other for-hire drivers would pay the fee just once a day even if they recross the cordon several times. Continue reading →

Amtrak Carried 90.5% of 2019 PM in June

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Amtrak carried 90.5 percent as many passenger-miles in June 2023 as the same month in 2019, according to the company’s monthly performance report released yesterday. This is only the third time Amtrak exceeded 90 percent of pre-COVID levels; the first time, in November 2022, it carried 90.8 percent and the second time, in April 2023, it carried 90.9 percent.

Data for driving is not yet available but an update will be posted here when it is. See Saturday’s post for a discussion of transit and air travel.

When measured by number of riders, the Northeast Corridor performed best, carrying 93.6 percent of 2019 numbers. Long-distance trains carried 85.5 percent while state-supported day trains carried just 81.4 percent. Amtrak didn’t reveal passenger-miles by train in 2019 so a comparison using that measure by route or train type isn’t possible. Continue reading →