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Applying Value Engineering to Transit Projects

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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In 1997, Tidewater Regional Transit—which served Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia—proposed to build an 18-mile light-rail line between the two cities. Virginia Beach voters, however, rejected the plan. So, in 2000, the transit agency (which since 1999 had been known as Hampton Roads Transit) decided to build 7.4 miles from downtown Norfolk to the Norfolk-Virginia Beach city limit. In 2003, the project was estimated to cost less than $200 million and attract 10,500 riders a day.

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

Few places were less suited to rail transit, which is mainly designed to bring lots of commuters into job-rich downtowns. Although the Hampton Roads area has nearly 1.5 million people, it doesn’t have any large job-filled downtowns. According to Wendell Cox’s analysis of central business districts, downtown Norfolk had fewer than 25,000 jobs in the mid- to late-2000s, and fewer than 800 of them took transit to work. Continue reading →

Zero-Based Transportation Policy

By | | Transportation
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“The devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns on various forms of transportation create an opportunity to review the successes and failures of federal transport policies before Congress reauthorizes federal highway and transit programs,” says a report that will be released by the Cato Institute tomorrow. Antiplanner readers can get a preview copy today.

Back in the 1970s, the Carter administration imposed a zero-based budgeting process on first Georgia and later the federal government, requiring that every agency justify every dollar of its budget every year, as opposed to just justifying budget increases. This was probably a good idea once, or once every ten years, but not every year as it required too much bureaucratic overhead to implement. Continue reading →

The Future of Work Is in a Small Oregon Town

By | | Regional planning
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Richard Florida, who got famous for telling cities they needed to increase their densities to attract what he called the “creative class” of workers, now admits (in an article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal) that the future of work is in a small town in Oregon. I happen to live near that town and pass through it several times a year. It is so small that, from the highway, you wouldn’t know you were in a town if it were not for the sign.

The Job Capital of America. Photo by Peggy Rowe-Snyder (Pegro62).

Yet that town today is the location of so many advertised jobs that it has been called “the job capital of America.” The town’s name is Remote, and apparently it is the only town in the country with that name. So whenever anyone advertises for “remote workers,” some job web sites assume they mean Remote, Oregon. Continue reading →

2020 Congestion Down 74% from 2019

By | | Transportation
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The coronavirus and associated lockdowns have cost many their health or incomes, but one benefits is that the average American driver spent 74 percent less time sitting in traffic in 2020 than they did in 2019, according to INRIX’s latest Global Traffic Scorecard. People working at home, of course, saved even more time. People who continued to commute to work saved at least $51 billion, while people who worked at home saved billions more.

Curiously, the worst-congested city in the world, according to INRIX, was Bogota, Columbia in both 2019 and 2020. After that, however, the rankings completely changed, with New York, for example, climbing from 14 to 3. Continue reading →

The Truth about Pelosi’s Subway

By | | Transportation
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When the 2021 COVID-19 relief bill included funding for the BART expansion to San Jose, which didn’t have much to do with the coronavirus, Republicans labeled it Pelosi’s subway. Others disputed this description, saying that the BART line was 50 miles away from Speaker Pelosi’s district. Nevertheless, the earmark has apparently been removed from the bill.

$1.7 billion spent digging a hole and filling it up.

The bill still included $1.675 billion for transit capital improvement projects, which are not obviously vital considering that transit ridership is down by 65 percent. The American Public Transportation Association has created a list of 23 projects that are eligible for these funds. The San Jose BART line is not on the list. Continue reading →

Are Greater Densities Worthwhile?

By | | Policy brief, Regional planning
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An article in The Urbanist last month breathlessly reveals that the city of Seattle can be built up into a city of 2 million people without a lot of high-rise development. All that is necessary to achieve that growth, the article claims, is to rezone single-family neighborhoods to allow midrise apartment buildings.

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

As of 2019, Seattle had slightly more than 750,000 people living at about 9,000 people per square mile, making it the sixth-densest of the nation’s 50 largest cities. The Urbanist proposal represents a 165 percent increase in population resulting in densities close to 24,000 people per square mile, denser than any city in America other than New York City and a few of its suburbs. Continue reading →

January Transit Ridership Down 65.7%

By | | Transportation
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Transit agencies carried only 34.3 percent as many riders in January 2021 as in January 2020, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration last Friday. This is a sharp drop from the previous four months, when ridership was 37 to 38 percent of 2019 numbers.

The latest Amtrak data show that its fortunes have improved slightly, as the passenger miles it carried (as a percent of the previous year) grew from 22.4 percent in December to 26.8 percent in January. That’s still pretty pitiful. Continue reading →

Making Housing Less Affordable

By | | Housing
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The Colorado legislature is considering a bill to allow cities to require developers to provide “affordable housing” in their developments. This is called “inclusionary zoning.” Such requirements have three effects.

This five-story building is typical of the new housing being built in Denver. It has 871-square-foot one-bedroom apartments for rent for $2,400 to $3,600 a month. Someone would need an income of nearly $100,000 a year to afford one. Inclusionary zoning would make it even more expensive. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

First, developers respond to the higher costs by building fewer units of housing. Second, to pay for the units they have to sell or rent at below-market rates, they raise prices on the market-rate units. Third, existing home sellers or landlords, seeing that new units are going for higher prices, raise their prices as well. Voila! Inclusionary zoning makes housing less affordable. But don’t believe me: here’s a paper that proves it using real-world data. Continue reading →

No One’s Riding Trains So Spend More

By | | Transportation
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Amtrak ridership is down more than 75 percent. Commuter-rail ridership is down more than 80 percent. So naturally Amtrak and commuter-rail agencies want more money to expand service.

Commuter train in Utah. Photo by Paul Kimo McGregor.

Amtrak wants to resume service on a route from New Orleans to Jacksonville, or possibly just to Mobile, that had been dropped after Hurricane Katrina. The renewed route would begin operating in 2022 with full federal funding of operating costs for the first year. The implication is that Amtrak is demanding that Alabama and other states provide some of the funding after that. Proponents claim a 15-to-1 benefit-cost ratio. It’s more like 1-to-15. Their legislatures should say no. Continue reading →

Blaming the Messenger

By | | Transportation
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Ridership on New York City subways is down by 67 percent from before the pandemic. Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Sarah Feinberg says it is all the media’s fault.

The MTA “was really ill-served by some of the early coverage of the pandemic,” she says. “People started thinking, ‘the last place I want to be is in a crowded subway car.'” She claims that “study after study” has found that transit was not “vectoring the virus.”

The New York Post article reporting on her statement snarks that she made it “without referencing specific studies.” But what do you expect? The Post, after all, is part of the media. Continue reading →