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U.S. Road Conditions and Performance in 2020

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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While Americans drove their cars only 84 percent as many miles in 2020 as in 2019, according to data recently published by the Federal Highway Administration, they drove semi-trucks 101 percent as many miles. These and other data are from the 2020 Highway Statistics, an annual compilation of data on the condition, use, and financial status of the nation’s highway network.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Unlike the annual National Transit Database, which the Federal Transit Administration releases as a group of two dozen or so tables together each fall, the Federal Highway Administration releases Highway Statistics incrementally. To date, it has released most of the 2020 tables relating to the extent and performance of highways, but very few financial tables. This policy brief will review some of the non-financial tables that have been released. Continue reading →

Pandemic Increases Importance of Affordability

By | | Housing
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Americans who moved across state lines in 2021 ended up in urban areas whose median home costs were almost $36,000, or 7.4 percent, less than the urban areas they moved from, according to Zillow. This follows a trend that began in 2020, when interstate movers ended up in areas with $29,500 lower median prices.

Prior to 2020, affordability seemed to be less important an issue. In 2018, the median prices of destination urban areas were only 0.1 percent less than origin areas, and in none of the four years before 2020 were they more than 2.0 percent.

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Census Shows People Fleeing New York, California

By | | News commentary
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Large numbers of Americans migrated away from heavily urbanized states last year, but the nation’s overall population grew by only 0.1 percent, according to data released by the Census Bureau early this week. Not only was this was the lowest rate of population growth in the nation’s history, “17 states and the District of Columbia lost population,” said the bureau.

Some of those population losses were quite large. According to this Census Bureau table, between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, New York lost more than 319,000 people, or 1.6 percent of its residents. California lost nearly 262,000 people, or 0.7 percent of its residents. DC’s population dropped by 2.9 percent; Illinois’ by 0.9 percent; and Hawaii’s by 0.7 percent. Other states that lost population included Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

The fastest-growing states were Idaho (2.9%), Utah (1.7%), Montana (1.7%), Arizona (1.4%), and South Carolina (1.2%). Numerically, the fastest-growing states were Texas (+310,000 residents), Florida (211,000), Arizona (98,000), North Carolina (94,000), and Georgia (74,000). (All these numbers are rounded off as they are only estimates.) Continue reading →

Goodbye, Cato

By | | Mission
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The Cato Institute fired me last week. After fourteen years during which I wrote four books, 38 papers, hundreds of articles, and spoke at scores of conferences, they unceremoniously dumped me at a zoom meeting like someone throwing out a wad of used tissue paper.

Their explanation was that they had reorganized their economics policy group and I no longer fit within the new organization. I hadn’t been a part of any policy group for my first eight years at Cato and fit just fine.

I should have been alerted early this year when I received a poor performance review on my previous year’s work for the first time since starting the job. The poor review had nothing to do with my actual performance and was solely because my supervisor disagreed with me on one point of housing policy. The disagreement went back to 2016, so I didn’t understand why he brought it up in the 2020 performance review. I’ll probably write about that disagreement in more detail here in the future. Continue reading →

Illinois High-Speed Rail Goes 55.7 MPH!

By | | Transportation
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This week, a mere twelve years after getting $1.4 billion in high-speed rail funds from the federal government, to which was added $500 million of Illinois taxpayer dollars, Amtrak and Illinois have finally increased the speeds on trains between Chicago and St. Louis. Where previously trains were limited to 79 miles per hour, now they can go 90 miles per hour in some places.

Illinois hopes to eventually operated Chicago-St. Louis trains with cars and locomotives like the ones shown here, but after a mere twelve years not enough have been delivered to make that possible.

This will “make rail travel competitive with driving,” claims one journalist. Actually, it still won’t even come close to being competitive with driving. Continue reading →

October Driving 97.7% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Americans drove 277.5 billion vehicle-miles in October 2021, which was 7.1 percent more than in 2020 but 2.3 percent less than in 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Driving on rural interstate highways was 4.0 percent greater than in October 2019 and total rural driving was 0.3 percent greater, while urban driving was 3.5 percent less than in 2019.

Transit numbers are from the National Transit Database; Amtrak numbers are from Amtrak’s Monthly Performance Report; air travel numbers are from the Transportation Security Administration.

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Amtrak’s Revolving Door

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak announced last week that its current chief executive officer, William Flynn, will retire in January and be replaced by Stephen Gardner. Gardner thus will become the company’s fifth CEO in six years.

Amtrak’s new CEO will oversee the spending of $30 billion to improve the Northeast Corridor and another $30 billion or more to increase service in other parts of the country. Photo by Simon Brugel.

Six years ago, Joseph Boardman had been one of Amtrak’s longest-serving CEOs, having been hired in 2008. But there were reports that he suffered temper tantrums and profanity-laced tirades to subordinates. Many people were happy to see him go when the board of directors replaced him with Charles “Wick” Moorman in late 2016. Continue reading →

Begger-Thy-Neighbor Shinkansen to Open in 2022

By | | Transportation
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The West Kyushu Shinkansen or high-speed rail line is nearing completion and will open in 2022, a few years late. Construction of the 41-mile (66-kilometer) line began way back in 2012 and is expected to cost $5.44 billion, or more than $130 million per mile. The line isn’t connected to any other high-speed rail line and offers some insights into rail politics.

The West Kyushu route is the tiny dotted line on the far left of this map.

Kyushu is the third largest Japanese island and is located less than a mile from Honshu, the main island. The two islands were connected by a conventional railroad tunnel under the Kanmon Straits in 1942, by a highway tunnel in 1958, a highway bridge in 1973, and a high-speed rail tunnel in 1975. For what it’s worth, I’ve been through both the conventional and high-speed rail tunnels but can’t say much about them because it was too dark to see. Continue reading →

Reducing Greenhouse Gases from Flying

By | | Transportation
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Rail advocates say we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on high-speed rail to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from flying. But there is probably a more cost-effective way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from flying, such as using aviation fuel that emits fewer net greenhouse gases.

Of course, there’s no reason to think that high-speed rail would reduce greenhouse gas emissions anyway. The best study on the issue found that the huge amount of greenhouse gases emitted during construction would require 71 years of savings to balance out. But rail lines must be extensively rebuilt every 20 to 30 years, and I don’t see that the study factored the greenhouse gas emissions of such reconstruction into the analysis. Continue reading →

Costs Rise, But by How Much?

By | | Transportation
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The cost of electrifying commuter trains between San Francisco and San Jose has gone up to $2.44 billion, according to Caltrain, which runs the trains. What’s interesting is that Caltrain says this is an increase of $462 million over the “initial estimate.” That would make the initial estimate $1.98 billion.

A new Caltrain electric-powered passenger car being delivered to California. As part of electrification, the entire fleet of locomotives and passenger cars must be replaced. Photo by Martijn van Exel.

However, I have a 2015 document from the Federal Transit Administration that puts the cost at $1.758 billion, or $222 million less than the supposed “initial estimate.” This estimate is in “year-of-expenditure” dollars, meaning it is adjusted for inflation. It’s funny how initial estimates creep up over time to make it seem like the cost overruns aren’t as great as they really are. Continue reading →