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Another Billion-Dollar Boondoggle for San Jose

By | | Transportation
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San Jose’s transit system is a mess, partly because the region decided to spend billions on light rail even though it is completely unsuited for such transportation. But in addition, the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is simply poorly managed. For example, in 2021 the agency spent $249 per mile operating buses and $536 per vehicle-mile operating light rail, when the national averages are only $158 for buses and $389 for light rail.

In 2019, fares paid by VTA riders covered just 9.1 percent of the agency’s costs. As if that wasn’t pathetic enough, by 2021, this had fallen to 3.4 percent. At the same time, the share of Silicon Valley workers taking transit to work fell from 4.8 percent to 1.1 percent. More Silicon Valley residents who live in households without cars drive alone to work than all of the ones who take transit to work. Continue reading →

Transit and the Collapse of Downtowns

By | | Transportation
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Transit advocates cheered when, in 2018, a census of downtown Portland found that 42 percent of the 102,000 people who worked downtown took transit to work. What they didn’t want to hear is that less than 10 percent of workers in the Portland area worked downtown, and transit only carried 3.4 percent of non-downtown employees to work. As demographer Wendell Cox says, “transit is about downtown.”

Long an icon of downtown Portland, Jackson Tower is facing hard times. Photo by Steve Morgan.

While I’ve reported on the impacts of telecommuting on transit, just as important is the decline of many downtowns due to the pandemic and the inability of many cities to solve problems of crime and homelessness. Portland’s downtown is doing so bad that the owners of Jackson Tower recently defaulted on their mortgage, which a representative of the owners blames on “the deterioration of downtown.” A court has appointed a receiver who may end up selling the graffiti-marked building at foreclosure. Continue reading →

2021 Transportation Subsidies

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Government subsidies to all modes of transportation except highways greatly increased during the pandemic even as most passenger transportation declined. According to data recently released by the Department of Transportation, subsidies to driving rose 39 percent in 2021 than 2019, while subsidies to all other passenger modes increased by 180 to 350 percent.

Per passenger-mile subsidies to Amtrak were 30 times greater than subsidies to air travel in 2021, while per passenger-mile subsidies to transit were more than 230 times greater than subsidies to driving.

According to just-released table HF-10 from the 2021 Highway Statistics, government agencies spent $97.5 billion in property taxes and other general funds on highways in 2021, up from $80.3 billion in 2019. However, part of this expense was offset by diversion from highway user fees to transit and other non-highway activities. These diversions amounted to $38.1 billion in 2021, up from $33.3 billion in 2019. The net subsidy to highways, then, was $59.5 billion in 2021, up from $45.1 billion in 2019. Continue reading →

Portland Update

By | | Urban areas
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I am so glad that Bojack — that is, Lewis & Clark Law professor Jack Bogdanski — is back on line, as he provides a daily reminder of why I am so happy that I moved out of Portland. Bojack’s old blog chronicled Portland’s political hijinks from 2002 through 2013, then sadly went silent.

Photo by Victoria Ditkovsky.

Now he’s back with an even darker view of what life is like in the place whose motto was once “the city that works.” Here are just a few of his recent posts. Continue reading →

Driverless Car Update

By | | Transportation
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San Francisco may soon have two self-driving taxi services as Waymo and Cruise have applied to begin such operations in May. Perhaps not coincidentally, this has been accompanied by a spate of complaints that self-driving cars have been unable to deal with San Francisco’s fog, are delaying buses, and unexpectedly stop in the middle of traffic.

Meanwhile, in London, Bill Gates recently tested an experimental driverless car developed by a company called Wayve and was very happy with the results. Unlike Cruise and Waymo’s cars, which depend heavily on detailed maps of roads and terrain, the London cars just learn to deal with traffic like any human driver. That means that, once they can drive in London, they’ll be able to drive in any city in Great Britain without any further preparatory work. Continue reading →

Peter Zeihan on Transport

By | | Transportation
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The “long-term success” of a nation “isn’t simply based on economic dynamism,” says political scientist Peter Zeihan. It also requires a sound transportation system.

What are the chances that the video I originally posted here would be deleted the day I posted it? Photo by Yathagu.

Zeihan is the author of several books on geopolitics, the study of how geography affects political and international relations. He made these comments on page 8 of his 2014 book, Accidental Superpower. Lately, he has been posting YouTube videos almost daily taking a geopolitical view of current events such as the war in Ukraine, the economic meltdown in China, and the future of the global trading system. Continue reading →

Airline Data Suggests International Travel Changes

By | | Transportation
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Americans flew 96.2 percent as many domestic passenger-miles in January 2023 than the same money in 2019, according to data released by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) yesterday. These data come more than a month after other transportation-related data, so I usually rely instead on Transportation Security Administration passenger counts to see how well air travel is recovering since the pandemic. However, unlike TSA counts, the passenger-miles reported by the BTS sort domestic from international travel.

International air travel in January was only 78 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to the BTS data. This conflicts with TSA counts, which were 103 percent of January 2019, which is impossible if domestic was 96 percent and international 78 percent. The BTS numbers are generally revised upwards slightly, but this is a large discrepancy. I suspect the BTS numbers, which are based on data reported to them by the airlines, are more reliable than passenger counts. Continue reading →

Homelessness Down Since 2010, Up Since 2020

By | | Housing, Useful Data
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Nearly 600,000 Americans were homeless in 2022, according to a report recently released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The department has been attempting to count homeless numbers each year since 2007, and the latest numbers are based on counts made in January 2022.

Click image to download a 15.5-MB PDF of this 112-page report.

According to HUD’s counts, the total number of homeless people in the U.S. grew by nearly 2,000 between 2020 and 2022 — but that’s just 0.3 percent and easily within the margins of error of the counts. HUD also estimates the number declined by more than 54,600 between 2010 and 2022, which is large enough to be more likely. Continue reading →

U.S. Drove 4.3% More Miles in 2/23 Than in 2/19

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 224.1 billion miles in February 2023, which was 4.3 percent more than in the same month in 2019, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration yesterday. This was the biggest increase in driving over pre-pandemic levels since the pandemic began.

For more information on transit, Amtrak, and air travel, see Monday’s post.

Driving increased, relative to 2019, on all kinds of roads in both urban and rural areas. Urban driving was 2.5 percent greater than in 2019; rural driving was 10.2 percent greater. Continue reading →

Transit Carries 70% of 2019 Riders in February

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Public transit carried 70.2 percent as many riders in February 2023 as it did in the same month in 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration late last week. This is the first time ridership has exceeded 70 percent of 2019 numbers since February 2020.

The transit line on this chart has been updated to reflect the latest adjustments to the National Transit Database going back to late 2020.

Amtrak, meanwhile, reports that it carried close to 89 percent as many passenger-miles and the Transportation Security Administration reports that airlines carried more than 100 percent as many passengers in February 2023 as in February 2019. February highway data will be released later this month. Continue reading →