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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 →

Chicago-St. Louis Rail Failure

By | | Transportation
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Nearly two months ago, the Antiplanner reported that, after spending $2 billion, the Chicago-St. Louis high-speed rail would be speeded up from an average speed of 55.7 miles per hour (for the fastest train in the corridor) to 59.6 miles per hour. These higher average speeds were to go into effect on June 26 and would supposedly reduce travel times between Chicago and St. Louis by half an hour from what they had been before spending the money.

I am reminded of this by an article in the paper edition of Trains magazine, which reported that trains were indeed speeded up on June 26. However it turns out the gains are even worse than I reported. Yes, one of the five trains in the corridor will go an average of 59.6 miles per hour (but the others will go slower). But the $2 billion spent in the corridor didn’t come close to fulfilling the promises made when the federal government handed out the funds in 2010. Continue reading →

June Transit Carried 71% of Pre-COVID Riders

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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America’s transit agencies carried 71.4 percent as many riders in June 2023 as they did in the same month of 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration yesterday. This is the highest percentage of 2019 ridership since February, 2020. One reason for the gain above previous months is that June had two more business days in 2023 than it did in 2019.

Data are not yet available for highway or Amtrak travel. However, boarding numbers from the Transportation Security Administration indicate that the airlines carried 100.8 percent as many riders in June of 2023 as June of 2019. I’ll post updates for driving and Amtrak when those data are released. Continue reading →

Affordable Sprawl vs. Costly Walkability

By | | Regional planning
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A Pew poll released Wednesday found that 57 percent of Americans say they would rather live in a neighborhood with larger houses spaced further apart, even if it means driving to stores or restaurants, as opposed to one with smaller homes closer together but with shops and cafes within walking distance. That’s up from 53 percent in 2019 but down from 60 percent in 2021.

Do you prefer this . . .

The survey also found that young people and Democrats were more likely to want walkable communities while older people and Republicans were more likely to want more drivable communities. As with the general results, all groups tended to move towards a preference to low-density areas after the pandemic, and have partly moved back since then. Continue reading →

Americans Continue to Move out of Big Cities

By | | News commentary
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“Nobody wants to be in a large, crowded city during a pandemic, but what about afterward? Don’t they miss bright lights? Theater? All-night diners?” asks MoveBuddha, a relocation service. “So far, the answer has been, ‘no.'” The company’s data show that net migration continues to be away from major cities and to small towns and exurban areas.

Click image to review this report.

The only cities over 250,000 that saw positive net in-migration actually prove the rule that people are leaving large, dense cities. Honolulu saw 2.19 in-migrants for every out-migrant, but the city of Honolulu covers the entire island of Oahu, of which only 37 percent is urbanized, so many of those in-migrants may have gone to rural parts of the city. The second-most was Anchorage at 2.17 in-migrants for every out-migrant, but, like Honolulu, Anchorage covers a huge area that is rural. In fact, less than 4 percent of the borough of Anchorage is considered urban. The only other two large cities that are gaining more in-migrants than out-migrants are Tulsa and Charlotte. At fewer than 2,000 people per square mile Tulsa is one the lowest-density big cities in the country (and also one of the most affordable), while Charlotte isn’t far behind at about 2,500 per square mile. Continue reading →

How Do You Define “Feasible”?

By | | City planning
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A recent study concludes that it is feasible to convert some downtown buildings into residences. However, given the qualifications they put on this statement, I strongly suspect the authors’ definition of “feasible” is quite a bit different from mine.

Can the owner of this office building feasibly convert this space to residences? The answer, according to some, is “yes” so long as taxpayers give the property owner enough subsidies. Photo by Tomi Knuutila.

First, at least some of the building conversions they studied were hotels, not office buildings. Hotels, which are already residential in a sense, have a lot more plumbing that make them easier to convert to residential uses than offices. Continue reading →

Portland Makes the New York Times

By | | Housing, News commentary
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A few years ago the New York Times was praising Portland as the “city that loves mass transit” (meaning it loved to spend money on mass transit, not actually ride it) and the city where people were willing to live lightly in 400-square-foot apartments. How the mighty have fallen: Last Saturday, Portland rated most of the top half of the Times front page with an article about homelessness, drug addiction, and death.

Click image for a larger view.

The article and accompanying photos jump to fill two entire interior pages of the newspaper. At around 3,500 words, the article qualifies as a long read, especially for a newspaper. But for many people, including Jack Bogdanski, the article was more notable for what it didn’t say than what it did. Continue reading →

Hawaiian Governor Suspends Land-Use Law

By | | Housing
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Hawaii’s housing prices aren’t quite as high as California’s, but they are close. This isn’t because Hawaii is running out of land; the vast majority of land on each of the main islands is rural. Instead, it is due to a 1961 land-use law and subsequent amendments that placed most of the land in the state off limits to development. One result is that the state’s population is declining as people are leaving for more affordable places.

Governor Josh Green has responded by issuing a proclamation suspending the land-use law and several other laws, including a historic preservation law, for one year in order to allow homebuilders to construct 50,000 new homes in the next five years. Naturally, environmental groups are upset, and it isn’t clear to me that a governor can suspend a law passed by the legislature, but at least it will make people aware of what the real problems are and how to fix them. Continue reading →