Search Results for: rail

Forum on State Transportation Issues

By | | Housekeeping
2 Comments

State transportation issues during and after the pandemic will be the topic of an on-line forum next Wednesday, February 17. The Antiplanner will join several other experts, including Robert Poole, Baruch Feigenbaum, Marc Scribner, Wendell Cox, and Mariya Frost, to discuss highway, transit, and similar issues from noon to 1:30 pm Pacific Time (3:00 pm to 4:30 pm Eastern Time).

The forum is aimed at state policy think tanks, legislative staff, and other people who deal with state transportation issues agencies, budgets, and policies. Presentations will be based on Transportation and COVID-19, a group of articles published in December. More information and event registration are available from the Washington Policy Center.

Speaking of seminars, University of Oxford Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, noted expert on megaprojects, is holding an on-line class on Reference Class Forecasting. The projected cost of constructing the typical light-rail line rises by 40 to 50 percent between the initial cost estimate and project approval. The actual cost of constructing it rises another 40 to 50 percent between project approval and project completion. Continue reading →

Transit 2020: Subsidies Up, Ridership Down

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
2 Comments

The transit industry carried 37.5 percent as many riders in December 2020 as it had in December 2019, according to data released last week by the Federal Transit Administration. This is a slight increase over the 36.9 percent carried in November. For the year as a whole, it ended up carrying 46.1 percent as many riders as it had transported in 2019.

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

The industry had begun the year carrying about 6 to 7 percent more riders than the first two months of 2019, suggesting that it might have been about to turn around the decline that it had experienced over the previous five years. The pandemic foiled this recovery, and the industry avoided total disaster only by the American Public Transportation Association and transit agencies convincing Congress to give transit $25 billion in April and $12 billion in December, with more on the way. This has taught the transit industry a perverse lesson: it doesn’t have to actually carry many passengers to continue to receive subsidies. Continue reading →

A Global Leader in Obsolete Technology

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wants to make the United States the “global leader” in high-speed rail. That’s like wanting to be the world leader in electric typewriters, rotary telephones, or steam locomotives, all technologies that were once revolutionary but are functionally obsolete today. High-speed trains, in particular, were rendered obsolete in 1958, when Boeing introduced the 707 jetliner, which was twice as fast as the fastest trains today.

Slower than flying, less convenient than driving, and far more expensive than either one.

Aside from speed, what makes high-speed rail obsolete is its high cost. Unlike airlines, which don’t require much infrastructure other than landing fields, high-speed trains require huge amounts of infrastructure that must be built and maintained to extremely precise standards. That’s why airfares averaged just 14 cents per passenger-mile in 2019, whereas fares on Amtrak’s high-speed Acela averaged more than 90 cents per passenger-mile. Continue reading →

Transit Subsidies of $108 Per Ride

By | | Transportation
1 Comment

Yesterday, the Antiplanner predicted that at some point people would realize that transit is a waste. That point may have already been reached in Portland, which has voted down new taxes for transit the last four times they have been on the ballot. Moreover, on Monday a Portland television station reported that TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, is spending $108 to subsidize each and every ride on the Westside Express Service (WES).

The report quotes the Cascade Policy Institute‘s John Charles as saying, “They should just admit it was a mistake.” Even a representative of the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates agrees that “it’s too expensive.” Continue reading →

APTA Demands $39.3 Billion More for Transit

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) has proclaimed that transit agencies will need nearly $40 billion more in subsidies, on top of the tens of billions in subsidies they already get, to survive through the end of 2023. It backs this up with a so-called “independent study” that is hardly independent as APTA paid for it. APTA also points out with distress that 65 percent of transit agencies were forced to cut service in 2020.

This $39.3 billion is part of a $111.3 billion transportation package being sought by unions and other interest groups. The package includes $40 billion for school buses, motor coaches, and ferry companies; $15 billion for airline employees; and $17 billion for airports. Note that almost none of this money will end up assisting any actual travelers; it is all for unions and bureaucrats.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to include $30 billion for transit in the next COVID relief bill. This is $10 billion more than President Biden asked for in his $1.9 trillion relief bill. Transit agencies like the New York MTA are already rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of these funds. Continue reading →

Bay Area Arrogance

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

The Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) has seen ridership fall in every year since 2015. The district was originally created to bring office workers from the suburbs into downtown San Francisco, yet downtown is now a ghost town with some of the highest vacancy rates in its history and actual occupancy rates — that is, offices that are actually being used — are probably below 20 percent. BART’s latest ridership numbers themselves are less than 15 percent of 2019 levels. Many of San Francisco’s high-tech employers have already announced that they will allow many of their employees to continue to work from home after the pandemic.

What better time is there for BART to announce its proposal to significantly expand its service? Called Link 21, the heart of the proposal is to build a second tube under the bay connecting San Francisco with Oakland costing a mere $30 billion. Continue reading →

Will COVID Kill Robotaxis?

By | | Transportation
7 Comments

One of the victims of COVID-19 may be robotaxis and with them one path towards a future of autonomous vehicles. Before the pandemic, there were two views of how driverless cars would take over the road.

One model, which I’ll call the Waymo model but it was also endorsed by Uber, General Motors (through its Cruise subsidiary), and Ford, was that robotaxis would replace privately owned automobiles, especially in the urban areas that house 80 percent of the nation’s population. These robotaxis would rely heavily on maps, and would only work in areas that had been mapped. Since many people would be unwilling to buy a car that could only go on some roads, Waymo and other software companies planned to put them in robotaxi or ride-hailing services, at least until the entire country was mapped.

The other model, which I’ll call the Tesla model but it was also endorsed by Volvo and perhaps Volkswagen, continued to rely on private ownership of automobiles. Instead of depending on precise maps, the autonomous vehicles would rely mainly on their own sensors, which would enable them to go anywhere, even potentially off-road. To get to that point, Tesla and other companies planned to incrementally improve the on-board electronics until the computers could completely take over driving. Continue reading →

Expensive and Obsolete

By | | Transportation
9 Comments

“Like electric typewriters, rotary telephones, and Conestoga wagons, high-speed trains are an obsolete technology,” argues an op-ed on Real Clear Policy. The op-ed shows that the Obama administration wasted at least $11.5 billion on ten high-speed rail projects that Wind blows on cialis 5 mg http://opacc.cv/opacc/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/documentos_provas_Exame%20-%20Contabilista%20-%20Contabilidade%20Aprofundada.pdf the rotor blades on the turbine, letting it turn. Cyaniopsia has been spotted in a fraction of a cost you would normally pay in US. sildenafil pill This particular pill should not be practiced by the children as these maybe dangerous if they consume them accidentally. opacc.cv commander levitra Tip #3: Review and Feedbacks If there are no vehicles cheapest online viagra or pedestrians while taking a right turn. produced almost no benefits. “The United States should not waste any more money on such projects,” the op-ed concludes.

Antiplanner readers have seen these arguments before, but it is nice to see that they will reach a wider audience.

2019 Passenger Costs and Subsidies

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

The Federal Highway Administration has posted most highway finance spreadsheets for the 2019 Highway Statistics, which means we now have almost all of the data we need to calculate transportation costs subsidies for airline, highway, Amtrak, and transit passengers. A couple of airline numbers are only available for 2018, but those numbers don’t change much from year to year so should be a good estimate for 2019.

Americans spent an average of 25.0 cents per passenger-mile driving their cars, light trucks, and motorcycles, while highway subsidies averaged 1.1 cents per passenger-mile. Subsidies to highway trucking, incidentally, averaged 0.8 cents per ton-mile. Continue reading →

Americans Are on the Move

By | | Housing, Policy brief
13 Comments

When the pandemic hit, I thought it would slow down sales of existing homes. Instead, home sales in 2020 reached their highest level since the peak of the housing bubble in 2006. I also thought that the pandemic would slow new home construction. Instead, by the end of the year, new home starts also reached their highest level since 2006. When people began moving out of Manhattan, San Francisco, and other big cities, I assumed most of them would consider the moves temporary and would be renting at their new locations. Instead, homeownership took its biggest year-over-year leap since at least 1960 and probably in U.S. history, reaching levels not seen since, you guessed it, the 2006 bubble.

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

Information about moving trends isn’t always clear. In September, Bloomberg writer Marie Patino questioned the conventional wisdom that people were moving out of big cities or indeed that more people were moving than in previous years. However, her data were based on how many people were hiring companies like United Van Lines, when in fact most moves don’t use professional movers. We won’t really know the truth until the dust settles a year or two from now, but we can get a glimmer of that truth by digging into what data are available. Continue reading →