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Promise Rapid Transit, Deliver Streetcars

By | | Transportation
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On November 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Austin voters foolishly agreed to raise property taxes in order to build 28 miles of light rail at a projected cost of $5.8 billion. To avoid congestion, the downtown portion of light-rail lines would go through a four-mile-long tunnel.

Artist’s impression of light rail running near downtown Austin.

No one reading this blog will be surprised to know that, in the short amount of time since then, projected costs have nearly doubled to $10.3 billion. Early this week, the city’s transit planners announced a new plan that would build fewer than half as many miles of light rail. Continue reading →

January Driving 98.9% of 2019

By | | Transportation
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Americans drove 98.9 percent as many miles in January 2023 as they did in the same month of 2019, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration yesterday. Driving in rural areas averaged 4.6 percent greater than in 2019, while driving in urban areas was about 3.4 percent less.

Amtrak numbers are from the company’s monthly performance report; see this post for a discussion of those numbers. Transit numbers are from the Federal Transit Administration and air travel numbers are from the Transportation Security Administration; see this post for a discussion of those numbers.

January’s urban driving exceeded 2019 miles in 20 states. The biggest gains were in Rhode Island (up 22%), Louisiana (10%), Idaho (8%), New Jersey (8%), Texas (7%), and Pennsylvania (5%). The biggest shortfalls in urban driving were in Michigan (down 16%), Colorado (-16%), Arkansas (-15%), North Dakota (-14%), and Hawaii (-13%). Continue reading →

Now the 20-Minute Suburb

By | | Regional planning
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As if the 15-minute city wasn’t bad enough, planners are now promoting what they call the 20-minute suburb. According to its supporters, suburbanites are fed up with driving everywhere and are demanding that the suburbs be rebuilt at higher densities with lots of “town centers” so that everyone can walk to a shop in 20 minutes.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill concept for denser, 20-minute suburbs with lots of transit.

How do planners know this? Because during the height of the pandemic, a lot of people bought bicycles causing, for a brief time, a bicycle shortage. Based on this and similar anecdotal information, planners agree that the time is ripe to completely rebuilt the nation’s suburbs by eliminating single-family zoning and building lots of dense mixed-use developments. Continue reading →

Portland Bicycle Ridership Declining

By | | Transportation
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Portland, Oregon has 385 miles of bikeways, 121 of which have been built since 2014. But these bikeways have failed to boost the number of bicycle riders in the city. In fact, a report from the city of Portland says that, in the wake of COVID, the number is declining rapidly.

According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the share of Portland employees riding bicycles to work peaked at 7.2 percent in 2014. By 2019, it had fallen to 5.2 percent. The pandemic led to a surge in bicycle sales, and the share grew to 5.4 percent in 2020 but then fell dramatically to a measly 2.8 percent in 2021. Continue reading →

Metro Transit Spends Millions on Transit Security

By | | Transportation
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Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Metro Transit is going to spend $3 million a year hiring private security to deter crime at six of the region’s light-rail stations. As the Antiplanner recently documented, light rail attracts more crime than any other form of transit and the Twin Cities’ light rail attracts far more crime than any other light-rail system in the United States.

Patrons of the Twin Cities’ light-rail system suffer nearly twice as much crime as those of the next-highest system and at least six times as much as those of all but three other systems. Click image to download the Antiplanner’s report on Minnesota transportation in a post-COVID world.

Light rail attracts crime because fare enforcement is spotty and potential criminals figure that, if they can ride the trains for free, they can get away with other crimes as well. The Antiplanner recommended that Metro Transit install gates at every light-rail station, similar to those used for heavy-rail lines, but Metro Transit rejected this idea. Continue reading →

Enabling Homelessness

By | | Housing
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More than 5,000 people are homeless in Oregon’s Multnomah County, most of them in Portland, and Oregon has the fourth-highest rate of homelessness in the nation. According to community-service worker Kevin Dahlgren, the problem is that the bureaucracies and non-profit groups that work on the homeless issue spend their time enabling people to remain homeless, rather than trying to rehabilitate them so they can get a job and housing.

The homeless crisis is making parts of Portland unlivable, yet the social service groups “are part of the problem,” says Dahlgren. Instead of getting people permanently off the streets, Portland and other cities are now giving away tents, blankets, and other materials that allow homeless people to remain on the streets. What they should be doing, says Dahlgren, is “ending homelessness by empowering, not enabling” homeless people. Continue reading →

Amtrak Carries 87% of Pre-Pandemic Pass-Miles

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Amtrak carried 87.0 percent as many passenger-miles in January 2023 as in January 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report released earlier this week. That’s up from December’s 80 percent but down from November’s 91 percent.

Amtrak ridership seems to be bouncing around between 80 and 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Amtrak’s January ticket revenues were only 83 percent of January 2019, but its basic operating expenses were 122 percent of 2019’s. As a result, its net losses were 52 percent greater in January 2023 than the same month in 2019. Continue reading →

What’s Wrong with the 15-Minute City

By | | City planning
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“What is the 15-Minute City?” rhetorically asks urban planner Steve Mouzon. His answer: “It’s every city ever built by humans on this planet until a century ago, but with a catchy new name.”

A 15-minute city in the 1920s. Click image for a larger view.

In other words, a 15-minute city is crowded. It is noisy. Living quarters are cramped. Grocery stores are small and high priced. Crime and contagious disease are continuing worries. Income inequality is high and only the wealthy enjoy true mobility; most people are confined to walking. Continue reading →

BART Is in Self-Destruct Mode

By | | Transportation
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The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (BART) spends a lot of money, and anytime a government agency has a lot of money to spend, there is a potential for corruption. For example, a month ago it was revealed that BART spent $350,000 to help one homeless person.

These $2 million cars were recently delivered to BART along with three times the service delays as the 40-year-old cars they replaced, which is a problem that should have been examined by the inspector general.

That revelation came from the BART Inspector General’s office, which was created in 2018 (about 50 years too late) to monitor BART spending. But BART itself hasn’t been too thrilled about having someone look over its shoulder. Continue reading →

Transit Ridership Falls in January

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Transit carried 66.4 percent as many riders in January 2023 as January 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration earlier this week. Though this is a slight improvement from the 66.0 percent of December 2022, the total number of January riders was lower than December’s. This is unusual: normally, January sees more riders than December. January 2023 had one fewer working day than January 2019, which may have contributed to the decline in ridership from December.

Transit ridership has hovered around 66 percent of pre-pandemic (2019) numbers for the last five months, suggesting it may not grow much further. Early in the pandemic, I predicted that ridership would never recover to more than 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels, which I later revised downwards to 70 percent (a projection supported by McKinsey). That’s looking to be slightly too high. Continue reading →