The True Cost of Driving

Some smart-growth advocates argue that, even though housing costs more in cities than in suburbs, transportation costs in cities are so much lower that the total cost of housing plus transportation is lower. The problem with these claims is that they are based on average transportation costs.

As Steve Polzin, a transportation researcher from the University of South Florida, points out, low-income people spend a lot less on transportation than high-income people. He estimates the people in the top 20 percent spend five or six times as much on driving as people in the bottom 20 percent.

While wealthier people do drive more than low-income people, they don’t drive five or six times as much. Instead, much of the difference in expenditures “lies in the very meaningful differences between new car ownership and the reality that much of America isn’t driving new cars with high depreciation levels.” In other words, only a few people actually buy cars new and then replace them as soon as they’ve paid them off (which is the assumption that AAA makes in its annual cost-of-driving survey).

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Transportation Notes from All Over

The city of Detroit decided not to build a light-rail line down Woodward Avenue, so some private foundations are trying to raise the $137 million to build it instead. Are they nuts? Do they really think this is the best use of their money?

In 1996, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union forced the county transit agency to restore bus service that had been cut in order to pay for rail service. The Bus Riders Union strongly believes that buses work better than train, but the injunction expired a few years ago and the agency has cut service again. However, the FTA has ordered the transit agency to restore the service.

Tampa voters rejected a light-rail ballot measure in 2010, but the rail nuts think it was only because voters were “confused” about the proposal. One thing that’s clear: the main reason many Tampa officials want rail is they hope it will bring billions of federal dollars pouring into their city.

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If They Only Had a Streetcar

Kansas City sold $295 million worth of TIF bonds to revitalize a part of the city known as the Power & Light District. The developer who benefitted from this money says “the development was successful as part of a broader effort to re-energize the city’s downtown.” Unfortunately, tax revenues are less than a third of what was projected, with the result that city taxpayers are having to make up the difference (as if city taxpayers wouldn’t be paying for it anyway).

The city naturally blames the problems on the recession. But recessions happen. Here’s the difference between private developments and government-subsidized developments: If the private developer guesses wrong, only the investors lose. If the government planners guess wrong, every taxpayer in the city or region loses.
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The Wall Street Journal article about this boondoggle doesn’t mention it, but Kansas City wants to spend another $100 million on a two-mile-long streetcar line connecting Power & Light with other parts of downtown Kansas City. No doubt that will fix the problem. While they are at it, how about an aerial tramway, maybe a new sports stadium or two? Just what the city taxpayers need: more places to sink their money.

The Highway Trust Fund Is Doomed

Congress is wrangling over how to spend federal gas taxes, with the Senate wanting to spend about $15 billion per year more than revenues while the House modestly wants to spend only about $10 billion per year more than revenues. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, the money they have to argue about will soon dramatically decline.

Obama’s fuel economy rules, the CBO says, will reduce per-mile fuel consumption faster than the increase in driving. As a result, by 2040 total gas tax revenues will decline by more than 20 percent. That means less money for highways, transit, bike paths, and whatever else Congress wants to spend the so-called Highway Trust Fund on.

The House and Senate conference committee will begin meeting on May 8 to iron out the differences between the bill that passed the Senate and the one that passed the House Transportation Committee but not the full House. Republican members on the House side include Mica (FL), Duncan (TN), Young (AK), Hanna (NY), Shuster (PA), Capito (WV), Crawford (AR), Beutler (WA), Cravaack (MN), Ribble (WI), Buschon (IN), Southerland (FL), Lankford (OK), Camp (MI), Tiberi (OH), Hastings (WA), Bishop (UT), Upton (MI), Whitfield (KY), and Hall (TX). Several of them, including Mica, Shuster, and Young, are known to be fond of pork barrel.

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Transit Score Not Believable

The Oregonian brags that Portland is “the 10th best city” for transit in the United States. But a close look at the web site doing the ranking reveals this may not be true.

First, they only counted the nation’s 25 largest cities for which they had data. This means cities such as Honolulu and Oakland, both of which are much more transit-friendly than Portland, didn’t even get considered. In addition, “second cities” in urban areas, such as Arlington VA and Long Beach CA didn’t get considered even though they had the data and the cities are among the 25 largest in the United States.

Second, the transit score methodology is based solely on proximity to and frequency of transit routes. Whether those transit routes are actually useful is another story; some may be too slow or not reach many jobs in an urban area.

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You Lose Some, You Lose Some

In February, Amtrak proudly opened what it claimed was the first high-speed rail line outside of the Northeast Corridor. An investment of $32 million in train control and signaling systems now allow it to run trains the 80 miles between Kalamazoo, Michigan and Porter, Indiana, at 110 mph. Since trains were previously operating at 95 mph, this improvement saves travelers 7 minutes.

Barely a month later, Norfolk Southern, which owns the tracks east of Kalamazoo, issued orders slowing Amtrak trains from 79 to 25-30 mph. This will add 45 to 90 minutes to the trip time between Chicago and Detroit.

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Sounds like a lose-lose situation to me. Taxpayers lose a lot of money making trivial improvements to a transportation system that hardly anyone uses. The few people who use it are subjected to delays and lengthy trip times in spite of the spending.

The Hidden Cost of Congestion

Nine months ago, Los Angeles had to close a major freeway for maintenance for a few days, which some people predicted would lead to such terrible traffic jams that they called it carmageddon. In fact, levitra soft tabs So to get past this, spammers just began using real email addresses as their stated return address. This is because they are always busy and purchase generic cialis need to beat a deadline. It allows users to and the experts to communicate directly and the find the solution of the issue cialis tadalafil 20mg encountered. 2. A Simple mobile phone will carry the information best online viagra of all loyalty cards. a lot of people stayed home and the predicted jams didn’t materialize.

Instead, Los Angeles is now experiencing a population explosion. Who could have predicted that keeping traffic moving is an important way of preventing overpopulation?

Living in a Fantasy World

Here’s a great idea: when people stop driving their cars, build light-rail down the freeways and turn the rest of the freeway space into buildings and parks. Think about what that means.

Despite claims that rail transit can move as many people as a 10-lane freeway, the reality is that the average two-track light-rail line moves about as many people as one-fourth of a freeway lane. None move more than about half a freeway lane.

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The good news is that, so far, no public money has been spent on this. But it won’t be long before some smart-growth planner proposes such a thing.

Electric Cars Will Save Us — NOT!

Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that found–surprise, surprise–electric cars aren’t all that green (at least from a climate view) if the electricity used to recharge the cars comes from burning fossil fuels. Yet, in a Colbert-like manner, a colleague of one of the report’s authors asks in a blog post if electric cars are “a good choice or the best choice for lowering global warming emissions?”

As the New York Times points out in its coverage of the report, driving a Nissan Leaf in Denver produces about the same emissions as driving a 33-mph gasoline-powered car. The report doesn’t look at the life-cycle costs, nor does it look at the marginal cost of new electricity.

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Transportation Bill Going to Conference Committee

The House and Senate plan to hold conference committee negotiations over the transportation reauthorization bill. Early this year, the House Transportation Committee had approved the most fiscally conservative reauthorization bill considered by congress since 1991, if not since 1982. Yet the bill never reached the floor of the House due to opposition from fiscal conservatives who said that the bill wasn’t fiscally conservative enough.

So the negotiations will center around the Senate bill, which is far from fiscally conservative in any sense of the word. It requires far more deficit spending than the House bill. It continues to divert a huge share of federal gas taxes to transit, which the House bill would have ended. And it includes all sorts of provisions that have nothing to do with transportation. In short, it is basically a continuation of the 2005 law with a few minor expansions of government power and spending.
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Naturally, House Democrats are elated. Transportation writer Ken Orski says it is likely that numerous “questionable items . . . have been slipped into this massive 1,600-plus page bill” (which is nearly twice as long as the House bill had been). The real fiscal conservatives in the House better do everything they can to kill the conference bill or the gamble they waged killing the House bill will come back to bite them.