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Spending Money We Don’t Have on Projects We Don’t Need

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter DeFazio yesterday released a proposal to spend tens of billions of dollars the federal government doesn’t have on projects we don’t need. Congressional authorization for federal spending on highways and transit expires this year, and DeFazio proposes to renew this with a program that will increase spending by 62 percent without increasing the taxes that support it.

Whereas the previous law spent an average of $61 billion per year over the last five years, DeFazio’s proposal would spend almost $99 billion a year over five years. At one time, federal spending on highways and most transit came out of gas taxes and other highway user fees and Congress didn’t spend more than came in. Since the mid-2000s, however, Congress has ignored actual revenues and spent billions of dollars a year out of general funds. The 2015 law, for example, simply appropriated $51 billion of general funds into the Highway Trust Fund (which despite the name spends money on both highways and transit).

DeFazio’s bill would not only increase this deficit spending, it includes a poison pill for highways while it unleashes spending increases on transit. For highways, the bill would include a “fix it first” provisions that says that states cannot increase highway capacity until they get existing roads in a state of good repair. No similar provision is made for transit even though transit is in a much poorer state of repair. Continue reading →

Trump Administration Favors BRT

By | | Transportation
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The Federal Transit Administration has announced that it is providing capital funding for twelve transit projects in 2020. Eight of the projects are bus-rapid transit and the other four are extensions of existing rail lines.

The Trump Administration’s proposed 2019 budget called for “winding down” the New Starts (capital grants) program “by limiting funding to projects with existing full funding grant agreements only” (p. 87). Congressional authorization for the New Starts program expires this year, and the budget called for “eliminating discretionary grants programs” including New Starts.

The administration’s proposed 2021 budget calls for renewing the BUILD program (formerly known as TIGER), which is a discretionary grants program, but says nothing about New Starts. This presumably means that the administration still wants to not renew it. Continue reading →

CDC Recommends Single-Occupant Cars

By | | Transportation
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For more than a month, transit agencies have been telling people not to ride transit unless they are “essential workers.” Now those same agencies are outraged that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is giving people the same advice as they go back to work.

In an advisory page for employers of office workers, CDC urges employers to “Offer employees incentives to use forms of transportation that minimize close contact with others, such as offering reimbursement for parking for commuting to work alone or single-occupancy rides.”

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Maybe 35 Percent Wasn’t Enough

By | | Transportation
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When I let associates know that I was projecting that transit ridership after the pandemic would be 25 to 35 percent lower than before, some of them suggested I was overestimating. Now Reuters reports that in China, “transit ridership in large cities remains down about 35% two months after lockdown restrictions were lifted.” At the same time, auto sales there have sharply increased.

Reuters also frets that a shift from transit to cars will lead to more congestion. In fact, in most cities not enough people ride transit to make a different in traffic congestion. Where there is a difference, I suspect there will be less congestion, not more, because the real switch will not be from transit to driving but from transit and driving to working at home.
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Transit agencies, of course, want people to feel like they can safely ride the obsolete transportation they are offering. New York’s MTA alone says it will cost $500 million more a year to keep everything from ticket machines to transit seats disinfected. That’s just one more reason to rethink whether we really need transit all that much.

NYers Say They’ll Use Transit Less or Not at All

By | | Transportation
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As a result of the pandemic, 44 percent of New York City residents expect to “avoid public transit entirely” after stay-at-home orders end. Since, in 2018, 56 percent of New Yorkers rode transit to work, it may be that the 44 percent who weren’t riding transit are the ones who say they won’t ride it in the future.

However, another 31.5 percent say they expect to use transit less. Just 18.5 percent say they expect to use transit as much as they did before the pandemic. If people do what they say they are going to do, New York City transit is going to lose a lot of riders. The survey also found that 5.5 percent say they expect to work at home, which is just 1 percentage point more than the 4.5 percent of New Yorkers who worked at home in 2018.
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Surveys are, at best, a first approximation of future behavior. Tomorrow’s Antiplanner policy brief will present my projections of transportation in the first year or two after the pandemic. They will rely less on what people say they are going to do and more on what we have learned during the pandemic. I’ll be interested in your comments.

COVID-19 Reduces March Ridership by 41.5%

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
2 Comments

It will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that transit ridership in March 2020 was well below March 2019. April’s will be even lower, but for now we have just the data for March released earlier this week by the Federal Transit Administration.

Those data show that overall rail ridership declined by 46 percent while total bus ridership fell by 38 percent. Among the nation’s largest urban areas, the declines ranged from just 8 percent in Oklahoma City to 54 percent in Washington, DC. At the lower end of the range, Richmond — just a few miles from Washington — saw just a 12 percent drop; Raleigh was 18 percent; and San Antonio was 19 percent. At the upper end of the range, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco-Oakland, and Seattle all lost between 40 and 47 percent of their riders. Continue reading →

Shut Down Public Transit Now!

By | | Transportation
8 Comments

An op-ed in InsideSources argues that public transit should be shut down as it is a major source of viral infections. No one reading this will be surprised that the Antiplanner wrote the op-ed, but the Antiplanner isn’t the only one who thinks so.

Writing in yesterday’s USA Today, University of Tennessee law professor Glen Harlan Reynolds points out that “mass transit kills.” I know some commenters on this blog point out that New York subways didn’t have to be as deadly as they were, but just two months ago people didn’t know enough about the virus to know how to protect themselves, with some experts (relying on misinformation from China) even arguing that masks could do more harm than good. Since each infectious disease is different, the safest course is to avoid public transportation.

New York City shut down its subways yesterday morning for the first time in its history. The goal is to give crews a chance to disinfect subway cars and stations and open them up again, but just overnight may not be enough as cars can quickly become reinfected every morning. Continue reading →

What Happens After the Pandemic?

By | | Transportation
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Everyone everywhere is asking how the pandemic will change their business, and transportation agencies are no exception. What do you think?

David Zipper, writing for CityLab, wonders if commuter-train ridership will return after the pandemic. It’s currently down as much as 97 percent in some cities.

Bus ridership hasn’t declined as much as rail — an indication that most rail riders are white-collar workers who can work at home but most bus riders are not — but it’s still down 60 to 70 percent. But transit agency officials everywhere wonder if they will get back the riders they have lost when the pandemic is over. Continue reading →

The Metropolitan Transmission Authority

By | | Transportation
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“The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is now the Metropolitan Transmission Authority,” an MTA subway conductor told CBS News. “They are transporting this virus.” (The video with this statement is on Huffington Post.)

That’s been true for awhile, but the problem now is that thousands of homeless people have discovered the comforts of riding subways empty of commuters and other regular riders. The MTA says it has lost 95 percent of its riders but is still providing 25 percent of regular subway service for “essential workers.” However, those essential workers have to step around homeless people and their carts of belongings. Continue reading →

Expanding Transit’s Mission (& Subsidies)

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

Due to stay-at-home orders, many small transit agencies that focused on providing transportation for elderly and disabled people are carrying hardly any riders anymore. So, to justify the subsidies they received under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, they are getting into a new business: grocery delivery. They are doing so with backing from the Federal Transit Administration, which has written rules that allow agencies wide discretion for how they use CARES funds.

For example, Island Transit, on Whidbey Island, Washington, is offering free delivery service. “Offering free delivery service for essential items is just another way to fulfill our mission,” says the agency’s executive director.

Apparently, their mission is to take jobs and customers away from existing businesses. Numerous companies already offer grocery delivery, including start-ups like Instacart, Shipt, Peapod, Fresh Direct, and Boxed as well as existing supermarkets such as Walmart, Safeway, and Whole Foods (via Amazon Fresh). On Whidbey Island, for example, on-line shoppers can get deliveries from Instacart, Bailey’s Corner Store, Whidbey Island Seafood, Blackberry Moon, and something run by local high-school entrepreneurs called Whidbey Deliveries. Continue reading →