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Spending More, Getting Less

By | | Wildfire
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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Forest Service Chief Randy Moore have announced a new strategy to fix the nation’s wildfire crisis. Not surprisingly, the most important part of that strategy is to give them a lot more money.

Click image to download a 34.0-MB PDF of this report.

The Forest Service plan, if it could be called that, consists of two simple steps: 1. Give them enough money to do 5 million additional acres of hazardous fuel treatments a year for ten years. 2. By the time that ten years is up, they promise to write another plan for the next ten years. Continue reading →

St. Louis Streetcar May Live Again

By | | Transportation
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Everyone from the Wall Street Journal to Reason magazine to Planetizen seems to be worried about the future of the St. Louis Loop Trolley. Nearly everyone in St. Louis agrees that it was a failure, but the Federal Transit Administration has demanded that the city keep running it or repay the $37 million in federal funds used to build it.

The trolley trundles down Delmar Boulevard. Photo by Paul Sableman.

There is supposed to be a good reason for the federal “claw-back” policy: if local officials know they will be required to fund operations, they might be reluctant to ask for federal funds to build a project in the first place. Unfortunately, elected officials have time horizons measured in election cycles, so they really don’t think far enough ahead to worry about operating costs. Continue reading →

Does the Transit Industry Still Need Rescuing?

By | | Transportation
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No matter how you may feel about vaccinations, the story of the COVID vaccine is pretty amazing. COVID was first publicly reported on December 31, 2019. Within two weeks, scientists had published the DNA sequence for the virus. Barely a month later, a vaccine had been designed and manufactured. After nine months of clinical trials, the vaccine was authorized by the Food & Drug Administration and millions of doses were made available.

MTA officials attempt to pass out masks to customers who appear totally disinterested in this great photo op. Photo by Marc Hermann, MTA.

Meanwhile, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan in March 2021, the third of three COVID relief bills. The plan included $30.5 billion for public transit, most of which was to be distributed using the same formulas that were used to distribute other federal transit funds. Continue reading →

Boulder’s Open Space and the Marshall Fire

By | | Policy brief, Regional planning, Wildfire
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At 11 am on December 30, 2021, a small fire was reported near the intersection of state highway 93 and Marshall Road in Boulder County, Colorado. Though driven by high winds, it took a full hour for the fire to creep across three miles of grasslands to the town of Superior, where it proceeded to burn 533 homes to the ground. It also crossed U.S. 36 into the city of Louisville where it burned another 332 homes, as well as 106 homes in unincorporated areas outside the two cities. In addition to killing at least one and possibly three people, the fire also destroyed about 100 other structures, including a hotel, and damaged 150 or so more. In all, it burned more than 6,000 acres in 30 or so hours before snowfall the evening of December 31 put it out.

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

As it happens, I had given a presentation on wildfire to the Independence Institute, Colorado’s free-market think tank, just two months before the fire. The presentation noted that state and local land-use regulations that require compact development make cities more vulnerable to fire. The Tubbs fire in 2017 destroyed nearly 3,000 homes in Santa Rosa, California and nearby communities while the Camp Fire in 2018 destroyed more than 14,000 homes in Paradise, California and nearby communities. Continue reading →

The Cincinnati Nightmare

By | | Transportation
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“Hey!” says someone in Cincinnati every few years. “Here’s some obsolete infrastructure that should never have been built in the first place. Let’s spend a few billion dollars finishing it!”

The stuff of nightmares: the unfinished Cincinnati subway. Photo by Jonathan Warren.

They are referring, of course, to the infamous Cincinnati subway. If you’ve never heard of it, it is because it never operated. But if you are transit wonk, you’ve almost certainly heard of it and have probably heard some other transit wonk wax nostalgic about how wonderful it would have been if the city had ever completed it. Continue reading →

Purple Line’s Costs Up 98%, Delayed 4 More Years

By | | Transportation
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Maryland’s Purple Line is now expected to cost more than $3.9 billion to construct, up from under $2.0 billion at the time the line was approved, according to a report from the Maryland Department of Transportation. The $3.9 billion includes a $250 million settlement with previous contractors and $219 million spent by the state on the project after the previous contractor quit. The opening date has also been pushed back to fall, 2026, compared with the original date of mid-2020 and the most-recent date of late 2022.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and then-Secretary of Transportation Peter Rahn have a laugh at the expense of the taxpayers when they announced that the state would build a “cost-effective and streamlined version of the Purple Line” in 2015. Memo to Gov. Hogan: Light rail is never cost-effective especially when it is predicted to make congestion worse. Photo by Purple Line Transit Constructors.

Like Honolulu’s rail line, the Purple Line is a project that should never have been approved. Even the Federal Transit Administration said it was not worth building until the state fabricated new, ridiculously high ridership estimates. Now that construction has begun, state officials intend to throw good money after bad no matter what the cost. Continue reading →

Point Reyes: Cattle Grazing Yes; Oyster Farming No

By | | Public lands
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Environmental groups are suing the National Park Service’s Point Reyes National Seashore to stop a plan to kill elk (which are native to California) in order to provide more grass for cattle (which are not). Point Reyes is one of the few units of the National Park System that allow cattle grazing, and the ranchers whose cattle use the area claim that the elk are in their way.

Cattle grazing in Point Reyes National Seashore pollute streams and spread disease to native elk. Photo by John Loo.

This is the same Point Reyes that shut down an oyster farm, fabricating claims that the “oyster feces” were “smother[ing] native species” of plants, which was never proven. The reality is that oyster farmers do their best to preserve water quality as oysters themselves are highly sensitive to pollution. Despite the exposure of these fraudulent claims, then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar shut down the operation, saying that no commercial activities should be allowed in the parks. Continue reading →

Bus Companies Recovering

By | | Transportation
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The nation’s private bus industry is recovering from the pandemic, reports the Chaddick Institute, which has followed the bus industry for nearly two decades. Examples of this recovery include:

One sign of recovery is the introduction of the Jet bus, a first-class service between New York and DC which has just 14 motion-cancelling seats aboard each coach.

  • Fifteen different carriers are once again operating buses in the New York-Washington corridor;
  • New, first-class bus services are being offered by Texas’ Red Coach in October and the NY-DC Jet (which promises the smoothest possible rides thanks to”motion cancelling technology”) in November;
  • A variety of bus companies, including Adirondack, Burlington, Martz, and New York Trailways, Jefferson, and Peter Pan have increased their bus frequencies and services since July 2021;
  • FlixMobility’s purchase of Greyhound, showing that it is optimistic about the future of intercity bus services.

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Killed by the Pandemic: Virginia Railway Express

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Transit was hit hard by the pandemic, and one of the hardest-hit agencies was the Virginia Railway Express (VRE). Ridership in April and May 2020 was only 2.5 percent of what it had been the year before. By November 2021, ridership was still only 17.5 percent of pre-pandemic numbers.

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

VRE operates commuter trains from northern Virginia to Washington DC’s Union Station. It has two lines, one heading west to Manassas and the other heading south to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania. It is a true commuter-rail operation, with trains heading into Washington in the morning and heading out in the afternoon but not providing on weekends or other times of the day. Continue reading →

November Transit Reaches 56.2% of Pre-Pandemic Riders

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The nation’s transit systems carried 56.2 percent as many riders in November 2021 as in November 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration on Friday. Though an improvement over October’s 53.5 percent, transit still lags behind the airlines, at 84.0 percent, and Amtrak, at 76.6 percent.

Amtrak numbers from its Monthly Performance Report; airline numbers from the Transportation Security Administration; November highway numbers will be available in a week or so.

Transit bus ridership numbers were up to 60.5 percent of pre-pandemic levels while rail numbers reached 52.2 percent. Ridership has still failed to reach 50 percent of pre-pandemic numbers in Detroit (35.4%), San Francisco-Oakland (45.0%), Washington DC (45.5%), Sacramento (48.4%), San Jose (49.1%), and Chicago (49.8%). At the other extreme, ridership has recovered the most in Los Angeles (72.1%), San Diego (64.7%), Tampa-St. Petersburg (63.9%), Las Vegas (63.4%), Dallas-Ft. Worth (62.6%), Houston (61.2%), and San Antonio (60.6%). The New York urban area, which produces about 45 percent of all transit numbers in the U.S., was slightly above average at 58.3 percent. Continue reading →