Search Results for: peak transit

Stuck in the 1960s

By | | Useful Data
16 Comments

Each year, about one out of 40 households receive a letter from the Census Bureau demanding that they fill out an American Community Survey asking such nosy questions as how much money each person in the household earns each year, how they heat their house, and whether they have a flush toilet. Though some have suggested that people should boycott the decennial census as too “intrusive,” the Antiplanner is a voracious consumer of census data, and so I was proud to receive and fill out the 28-page survey form form this year.

This survey is an annual extension of the Census Bureau’s so-called long form, which has been given to one out of six households each decennial census since at least 1960 (including the Antiplanner’s in 2000). As I filled out the 2009 form, it occurred to me that some of the questions have not been significantly updated since 1960.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
6 Comments

The Antiplanner is flying to Texas today for a busy week of conferences and speeches. My presentations will vary but all will at least touch on a variety of recent transportation and land-use issues including housing affordability, rail transit, and curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Tomorrow, I’ll join faithful allies Wendell Cox and Sam Staley in speaking to the Home Ownership and Land Affordability Coalition tomorrow. The event will take place at the San Antonio Country Club from 11:45 to 2:00 pm. My particular talk will focus on problems with Portland’s smart-growth policies. If you would like to attend, contact Jeff Judson at 210-822-1292 or email jeff@jeffjudson.com.

On Wednesday, Wendell, Sam, and I will be joined by Ron Utt and Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Todd Staples in speaking at an afternoon conference sponsored by Houstonians for Responsible Growth. My talk will focus on free-market alternatives to smart growth. If you are in Houston, please register for the conference.

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Manhattan Without Subways?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
19 Comments

Twenty-two subway lines enter downtown (south of 60th street) Manhattan. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Council (New York’s MPO), these subway lines carried some 400,000 people into downtown between 8 and 9 am on a typical day in 2007 (open the “rec sec” sheet of the Subway data sheet).

A blogger asks, “what would it take in terms of auto facilities to replace the morning rush hour carrying capacity of the NYC subway?” He concludes it would take a minimum of 167 new lanes of bridges, tunnels, or other highways into downtown Manhattan. But there are several alternative views of his calculations.

He assumes that the only alternative to subways is autos. But what about buses? Many 40-foot buses can carry 64 passengers (42 sitting, 22 standing, which means a higher proportion sitting than on a subway). Spaced five bus lengths apart, 11 buses per minute can cruise down a highway lane carrying more than 42,000 people per hour. That means fewer than 10 new lanes would be needed to carry the people now taking subways — and those 10 lanes would take up a lot less space than the 22 subway lines.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
17 Comments

Today the Antiplanner is in Washington, DC, giving testimony to the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development on whether public transit can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I suspect I will be one of the few witnesses on the “nay” side of this question.

Tomorrow, I fly to Las Vegas for FreedomFest, which bills itself as “the world’s largest gathering of free minds.” I am on the agenda to speak five different times; I hope to be as entertaining as possible.
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If you are in DC today or at FreedomFest this weekend, I look forward to seeing you.

New Jersey’s Big Dig

By | | News commentary, Transportation
26 Comments

An alert reader let the Antiplanner know about a transit tunnel New Jersey is starting to build under the Hudson River. It was supposed to cost around $2.5 billion. Now that construction is about to begin, the projected cost has more than tripled to $8.7 billion. Who knows what the final price will be.

Portals to the existing, century-old tunnel under the Hudson.

Of course, they want the feds to pay a big chunk of it — at least $3 billion. All because the existing transit tunnel to Penn Station is “nearing maximum capacity.” Hey, I thought a rail line could carry almost infinite numbers of people.

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Not in Time for the Election

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
11 Comments

Honolulu is voting today on whether to spend $4 to $5 billion on an elevated rail system. The city is hoping the federal government to match local funds, but the mayor is so eager to have the rail line that he wants to start construction before the feds give their approval.

After a campaign in which the mayor used his own campaign funds to pay for newspaper ads slurring rail skeptics, opponents managed to collect enough signatures to put the rail project on the ballot. As it happens, the city published a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), needed for federal approval, just a few days before the election. (The DEIS is dated October 28, but it wasn’t posted on line until November 1st or 2nd.)

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His Lips Are Moving

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
14 Comments

I suppose Denver’s Regional Transit District general manager Cal Marsella has a right to call me a “paid political operative” in the opening paragraph of his reply to my proposal that RTD cancel its FasTracks rail plan. After all, I opened my article by noting that Marsella gets paid more than $290,000 a year.

Of course, that is many times more than I have been paid in my best year, and I was nice enough to not even mention his $10,000 “auto allowance” or his 12.5% bonus. Yet he calls my article “sour grapes invective” that is filled with “distortions, manipulations and factually inaccurate statements.” In fact, it is his article that is filled with distortions and manipulations.

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What about Highway Subsidies?

By | | Follow up, Useful Data
20 Comments

Last week, in a comment on this blog, the highwayman stated, “road users only cover about 20% their costs directly and the rest of the funding comes mostly from income & property taxes.” I don’t know where he gets this information, but it is not credible.

The National Association of Railway Passengers (NARP) claims that “41% of the $133 billion spent on highways came from payments other than the gas tax, tolls, and vehicle taxes and fees.” In particular, NARP counts the proceeds of bond sales and interest on savings as money that comes from sources other than user fees. But how do the bonds get paid back? Mostly out of user fees. Where does the interest come from? Mostly from savings of unspent user fees.

What is the truth about highway subsidies? And what ought to be done about them? The Antiplanner has addressed this topic before, but (judging from the comments) it may have escaped the attention of some readers and I confess that I may not have rigorously covered this subject.

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Another Portland Light-Rail Boondoggle

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

Comments on the draft environmental impact statement for the Milwaukie light-rail line (that’s Milwaukie, Oregon, not Milwaukee, Wisconsin) are due on Monday, June 23. You can email your comments to Metro or send a letter or make a phone call to Metro. If you want to download the DEIS in two documents instead of eleven, the Antiplanner’s loyal ally, Jim Karlock, has posted it on one of his web sites.

Although it is doubtful that Metro cares what the Antiplanner thinks, here is what I will tell them, though possibly in more polite language.

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You Have an Agenda

By | | Transportation
77 Comments

The Antiplanner was in Austin, Texas on Wednesday speaking to people about a revived proposal to build light rail. I showed that light rail requires far more land to produce the same amount of transportation as highways, that it emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than typical automobiles, and that most cities that have built it have ended up cutting transit service to low-income neighborhoods.

After my presentation, someone who was obviously not persuaded came up and said if we didn’t build light rail we would end up paving over Texas. I repeated that less than 3 percent of Texas is urbanized and 95 percent is rural open space.

“Anyone can lie with statistics,” he said. “I think you have an agenda.” I pointed out that my numbers came from the Census Bureau, but he just repeated, “You have an agenda.”

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